Shakespearean Daily Diss

“The miserable have no medicine but only hope.” –Measure For Measure, 3.1

“The miserable have no medicine but only hope.” –Measure For Measure, 3.1
Another great Dungeons & Dragons game tonight. The underground assault on the winery of Monsigneur Montalba went off without a hitch, at first. The underground passageway was just where Justiciar Richard Valencourt expected it to be, and it was not filled with terrible subterranean creatures or traps. The magic mouth alarm proved highly inconvenient, but a timely silence, 15′ radius kept the patrolling knight from raising a greater hue and cry. Fortunately–I think–we were sidetracked into investigating a certain passage that ended in a torture chamber/dungeon where the real Duke Patrice I has apparently been imprisoned for the past seven years. We have freed His Grace, but unfortunately the valiant Justiciar lost his life in a fall.
There remains the small matter of finding the sacramental wine, and of destroying it or preventing the poison from being added to it before it can be transported to the churches of Mormont for the festival of the Redeemer, thereby destroying all life on the continent. We’ll see what we can accomplish in session seven, some time in August.

“Was ever woman in this humour woo’d?” –King Richard III 1.2.227
Got Lynne and some of her RWA cohorts to take a night off from their convention to see The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) at our beloved Shakespeare Tavern downtown. Fine work by two of our favorite local actors, Tony Brown and Jeff McKerley, and by a new addition to that list, Paul Hester. Brilliant. Brilliantly hilarious.
See. This. Play. Seven words: Titus Andronicus as a cooking show. Bam!

“Words without thoughts never to heaven go.” –Hamlet, 3.3.103
How refreshing! A survey comes out in which citizens complain that their country is “not family-friendly,” and the phrase isn’t some bigoted code for “not discriminatory against gays”:
Of the 3,000 parents with children younger than five who were surveyed by Mother and Baby magazine and parenting website Mothercare, 96 percent said days out were a “rip-off”, with nine out of 10 parents saying they were charged too much for children’s food portions.
Two-thirds said Britain was “not family-friendly” and nearly half of those questioned felt the country was “anti-child”.
Yep, it was a survey in Britain. Only in other countries, it seems, would the term “pro-family” actually refer to helping families! Stateside, a “not family-friendly” complaint is always prologue to an ignorant anti-gay screed.

“Both like serpents are, who, though they feed on sweetest flowers, yet they poison breed .” –Pericles, 1.1.127-28

“Pray you stand farther from me.” –Antony And Cleopatra, 1.3.18
Watch Monty Python’s John Cleese break new ground at the 1989 memorial service for colleague Graham Chapman. Eric Idle closes with a singalong.