Darlings, last night was my final curtain call

When I retired from the 'day job' and moved down here to 'zunny Zummerzet' I was in desperate need of a hobby to provide me with an excuse for not doing the hundred - nay, thousand - and one jobs the Memsahib kept finding for me.  As you all know, I am one of nature's great bores but, alas, friends and acquaintances quickly learn this and run for cover on my approach.  Thus, it became necessary for me to find a source of suckers, sorry, I mean audiences who would put up with me for the occasional hour.  Thus, I started giving talks to various unwary groups which was very much better than sending my friends to sleep because at the end of my scintillating talks - they paid me!

So, for the last dozen years or so I have droned my way round the South West but, alas, much as I love the sound of my own voice, I'm even beginning to bore myself!  So, yesterday, I retired, but did so on a high with not one but two Shakespearean 'bore-a-thons', or if you like, darlings, a matinee followed by an evening performance.  Happily, well, for me at any rate, both talks were my favourite - "A Nun, a Tart and a Dark Lady".

I shall miss those ladies.  The first two, of course, are based on Shakespeare's inventions, Isabella, the young nun from Measure for Measure, and Cressida from his second greatest play Troilus and Cressida.  (The greatest, of course, is King Lear!)  Needless to say, Cressida is not a tart although it took nearly 300 years for audiences to gradually realise it.  The Dark Lady, of course, was not a Shakespearean invention.  Emilia Lanier (née Bassano) was all too real and, one may infer from Shakespeare's Sonnet sequence, she was also exceedingly hot!  I love all three of those ladies and whilst I will miss boring on talking about them, they will remain in my heart for ever.

 

Comments

[AussieD]

Why retire Duffers? If people want you to speak on a subject about which you are passionate and can hold their attention you should continue to do so.

If you are tired of doing so then fair enough but you are a long time "under the daisies" and you need to make the most of your time above them doing the things you like.

[Whitewall]

AussieD is right... "for the last dozen years or so I have droned my way round the South West". Well, the South East is still wide open!

[Fred]

Have you considered having one final encore recorded and uploaded to Youtube, for posterity?

[mike fowle]

That's a good idea, Fred. Surprised to see Troilus and Cressida in your runner up place, David. Perhaps I'm a bit jaundiced as I had to read the Chaucer version at school, but it's hardly ever quoted is it, unless there are some bits where the source is unacknowledged.

[David Duff]

Posterity deserve better than me droning on and on, Fred, and anyway I do enough of it here at D&N!

Mike, there all sorts of reasons why I admire T&C. It is a vicious satire men and their follies as we watch the Greeks encamped outside Troy planning its destruction which will cost an ocean of blood, and for what? For a woman, Helen, whom the French would dismiss as 'une grande horizontale'!

Also, it contains one small interchange outside the city between Ulysses the Greek and Hector the Trojan which brings in that deeply mysterious element that frequently fascinated 'old Will' - time!

Hector
I know your favor, Lord Ulysses, well.
Ah, sir, there’s many a Greek and Trojan dead
Since first I saw yourself and Diomed
In Ilion, on your Greekish embassy.

Ulysses
Sir, I foretold you then what would ensue.
My prophecy is but half his journey yet,
For yonder walls that pertly front your town,
Yon towers, whose wanton tops do buss the clouds,
Must kiss their own feet.

Hector
I must not believe you.
There they stand yet, and modestly I think
The fall of every Phrygian stone will cost
A drop of Grecian blood. The end crowns all,
And that old common arbitrator, Time,
Will one day end it.

Ulysses
So to him we leave it.

[mike fowle]

Thanks, David, I shall have to have another look at it (or even a first look!)