The Devil's Disciple:-
True goodness need not be certified by a faith or an institution that claims sole rights to mediate with powers above and absolve people from sins. Adhering to an institution of such nature does not guarantee goodness of a person, and equally, one does not turn devil against one's own true nature simply by rebelling against such an institution,
When it comes to it, a man of noble spirit goes with the soul, and never mind his repudiation of institutions that claim rights to heaven.
Friday, February 21, 2014.
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Cæsar and Cleopatra:-
Here is a fresh look at Cleopatra as the young girl she must have been, compared to the much older Caesar - and while it is delightful in seeing a petulant young pretty girl getting her education rather expensively, through life and war, it is also a scathing commentary on various issues around war and morality and dealing with enemy, with Caesar above his fellow men - and women - providing them insight about why it was wrong what they did wrong.
Most delightful remains the prologue, a monologue by the Egyptian god Ra, addressing the audience disdainfully.
A sample - "O you compulsorily educated people!"
Monday, September 22, 2008.
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Captain Brassbound's Conversion:-
For a long time this was a very favourite play and that merely means when you have lived so much more and read as well, other works add to the favourite lists.
It is an amazing play, beginning with what might be - or should be - a common fear in minds of all colonial masters traveling in parts they misruled once; a bandit capturing and kidnapping a small party of travellers and promising to sell the lord of the group to a dreaded ruler for beheading after a few games.
And from this dreadful start, it then proceeds into a delightful play, with one pompous man (the ex colonial ruler sort, naturally) brought down by one of his own party - his sister-in-law, and the bandit outsmarted by her kind and sympathetic but shrewd dealing with the situation, so he comes out looking like a hero who saved them, in fact.
One of the lines - "it becomes clear that an agitated man pacing furiously cannot win against a woman knitting calmly" - of course this is as I remember it after the few decades it has been since I read it yet again for pleasure. He wrote it much better, of course.
Saturday, September 27, 2008.
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