Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:50 PM

While I did spend a little over two hours today listening to a foreign opera, I resisted spending $28 for an anthology in which I was primarily interested in one 20-page story. That seemed excessive.

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:33 PM

From The Double Life of Doctor Lopez:

If Lopez retired he would be free, but to live freely with secrets was a contradiction, as his itching desire for money or status would soon tempt out those secrets. ... Lopez had to be kept inside the system, because he knew too much. Like being royal physician, intelligencing was a job for life.

I'm suddenly envisioning an Elizabethan version of The Prisoner, in which agents who want out sent to The Village.

Then, after a few moments trying to tease out the implications (Could that be what happened to Marlowe in Deptford? What's a period equivalent for Rover?), I realized why I could never turn it into a plausible story:

Elizabeth was too cheap. Easier to have them killed than pay for their upkeep.

Oh well. One plot bunny free to a good home...

PS: Yes, I am listening to William playing in the background; can't understand a word they're saying, or even tell who is who, but it sounds nice...

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:05 PM

Ian just asked me how many points my psychological disadvantage is worth.

I'm not terribly good at game mechanics.

Anybody care to suggest an answer?

PS: Handed Ian the keyboard:

In HERO, it would probably be a Psych Lim (Unc, Moderate) for 5 points.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:50 PM

The new Swedish opera Marlowe is about to air live on Swedish Radio P2.

I believe this should be the correct link for the webcast, or you can just open the streaming audio directly in Windows Media Player, if you want to listen independent of your web browser.

There's some kind of introduction at 1pm EDT (19:00 Swedish time), and the opera itself is scheduled from 1:30 until 4 pm (19:30 — 22:00).

This opera in two acts is a fantasy based on what might have happened during the years in the life of William Shakespeare that are commonly referred to as ‘the lost years’ (the years 1584 — 1592), about which nothing is known about the dramatist and actor who, only one year later in 1593, had made his name in London. Historical fact and free fantasizing based on some of the theories that have been presented for the Bard's lost years are mixed in this opera into a thrilling tale of love, power, espionage, counterfeit and jealousy in a 16th century sub-culture where we meet — besides William Shakespeare himself — among others Christopher Marlowe, the greatest dramatist in England at the time.

The singers are Mattias Nilsson as William Shakespeare, Andreas Landin as Christopher Marlowe and Anna Artursson as Anne Shakespeare. The other roles are played by Jakob Högström, Anna Artursson, Daniel Hällström, Karl Rombo and Joakim Schuster with Andreas Lundmark. Director: Carl Kjellgren. William has been composed by B. Tommy Andersson. Libretto by author Håkan Lindquist.

Length of the performance approx. 2 x 60 mins + interval of 30 mins = 2 hrs 20 mins.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:40 AM

So, as I've mentioned earlier, I'm currently in the middle of reading The Double Life of Doctor Lopez: spies, Shakespeare and the plot to poison Elizabeth I by Dominic Green.

I previously knew the same bare-bones history as most people who've heard of Lopez:

Dr. Roderigo Lopez was Queen Elizabeth's Jewish doctor, was accused by the Earl of Essex of plotting with Spain to poison the Queen, and was executed for treason, a sensation which led to revivals of Marlowe's Jew of Malta and inspired Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice.

It's generally assumed that Essex scapegoated Lopez for his religion, probably to gain advantage in the factional conflicts among Elizabeth's courtiers (Cecil, Essex and Raleigh).

I haven't yet completed the book, but there's so much more to the story than that.

First of all, referring to Doctor Lopez as merely ‘Queen Elizabeth's physician’ would be like... describing Bill Frist or Howard Dean simply as a doctor. It's true, but it's not the whole picture. Each man is better known, and more accurately described, under other titles.

Lopez was an intelligencer. At one point, Green calls him "London's leading conduit for mail, funding, and intelligence from the Low Countries."

Puts a slightly different spin on things, doesn't it?

Furthermore, Lopez was also "Lord Ambassador" to Don Antonio, Grand Prior of Crato and putative King of Portugal in exile. [For all practical purposes, Philip II of Spain was officially recognized as ruler, but that didn't stop Antonio's lifelong quest to retake his kingdom.] And in all the Elizabethan histories I've read so far, I never knew what a large role the Portuguese issue played in foreign policy. It really clarifies the whole Counter-Armada episode (an utter debacle of an invasion attempt, almost painfully amusing the way Green describes it).

I'm still only halfway through the book, so don't know whether Green thinks Lopez is guilty of what history accuses him. But there's clearly much more to Lopez than simplified history presents.

I'll just close by pointing out that when I left off reading last night, Essex just asked Lopez to act as a projector to ferret out plots against the Queen.

Hmm...

[Update: Thoughts upon the book's completion in a subsequent post.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:25 AM

So, last night during a break in the rain, Ian and I stopped at Mandarin Reading for dinner. [I particularly love their Sizzling Rice Soup With Chicken, and Chow Foon.]

My fortune:

Angels are among us; when you find them, cherish their presence everyday.

[Appending the traditional "...in bed", this reminded me of things Bear has been writing about recently.]

Ian's:

Alas! The onion you are eating is someone else's water lily.

What does that mean!?!

Simply put, Mandarin Reading has the strangest cookie supplier. [This is the same place I've seen such fortunes as "An optimistic attitude is a force multiplier." and "Never smell the inside of a hat."]

Oh, and though it's been a while, I meant to post my Free Will Astrology horoscope for the week:

The dreams you have in the coming nights may be disturbing. Eagles may be dive-bombing warm and fuzzy little sheep. Lions may be pouncing on gentle deer and big bullies may be stealing the lunch money of cute little kids on the playground. You should not, however, view these dreams as bad omens. If you respond to them correctly, they will not turn out to be prophecies about literal developments in your waking life. And what is the correct response? Toughen up the part of you whose feelings are too easily hurt. Strengthen the protection that surrounds your vulnerabilities. Stand up for yourself with a courage that is graceful, not macho.

That particular night, I dreamed I was an outfielder for the Red Sox and made a very bad, embarrassing blunder. I thought I might've got away with it, but then they replayed it on the Jumbotron screen. Fortunately, it was the bottom of the ninth and the Red Sox were in the lead, so it didn't negatively impact the score, but it was tremendously embarrassing...

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:30 AM

I got a spam message from The Forward with the subject:

“How to Find Jewish Lore”

And I thought cool!

Folktales are neat, and maybe there'll be something to help Ian with the Jewish History class he'll be teaching in the fall.

Then I opened the message and realized it was actually an invitation to find Jewish Love

Much less interesting.

PS: Folks reading through aggregators, may not have noticed this, but I've updated my previous post. An observant reader informed me that the Doctor Who novel The Empire of Glass is available as a free ebook from the BBC and (in other formats) at manybooks.net. FYI.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:35 PM

Good news: The web simulcast of the Swedish opera about Shakespeare and Marlowe airs at 1:30 pm local time. Meaning that it's actually reasonably-scheduled for American listeners, and I'll probably try to catch it.

Less-good news: I don't understand Swedish, and according to the lead actors' biographies (and this Swedish->English translator), both Mattias Nilsson, who plays Shakespeare, and Andreas Landin, who plays Marlowe, are baritones, which will make it more difficult to differentiate the leads.

Cool news: In the next season of Doctor Who (Season Three) they will visit Shakespeare.

Cooler news: In response, somebody has posted a list of all relevant-to-Shakespeare events in the Doctor Who canon.

Somewhat annoying news: I've just added another novel and two short stories to my Marlowe list. [And I've some uncertainty about a third short story.] This raises the list to 69 items, and drops me back below the 50% mark.

Request: All these Doctor Who books are out-of-print, in some cases expensively-so. I've been a fan of the TV show for 25 years, but never read much of the licensed fiction (I have many of the reference books and novelisations, but not the original books).

Do you have any of the following, and if so, would you be willing to lend me:

• The Empire of Glass by Andy Lane (1996)
• Short Trips: Companions, anthology (2003)
• Short Trips: Past Tense, anthology (2004)

Thanks in advance.

The most impressive production of Midsummer Night's Dream I ever saw was by a five-person troupe in 1991. They were a touring company from Actors From The London Stage. Sets and costumes were nonexistent, and with such a small company, they do a lot of doubling, inevitably requiring an actor to take two roles in the same scene. Yet, even then, the actors were clear enough that I never had difficulty separating one character from another.

For years, I've wanted to see them again, and for Ian to see them.

They're coming back to Boston this fall!!!

September 18?24, they'll be at Wellesley College for Hamlet.

Anybody else interested?

[That will make the second Hamlet in Boston this fall. Actors' Shakespeare Project will also be performing the play, opening about the same time.

Speaking of Shakespeare, and a little closer to the present, this summer's New England Shakespeare Festival touring Midsommer Nights Dreame comes closest to Boston next Sunday at Menotomy Rocks Park, Arlington. The show starts at 5pm and it's free.

Anybody else interested in a group gettogether?

And that is ramblingly all.

Update: Just found out that the Doctor Who novel The Empire of Glass is available as a free ebook from the BBC and (in other formats) at manybooks.net. Woo-hoo!
The list has been updated with the links.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:00 AM

Question: How many road crews disrupted traffic on Lis's commute into work? [The two construction vehicles bracketing our driveway counts as one.]

PS from yesterday: If Saugus police are going to block traffic to land a helicopter on Route 1, could somebody in charge please inform the traffic reporters? Totally stopped traffic for about a half-hour, during which time I listened to 1030's traffic report thrice. First time, no mention of the stoppage at all. Ten minutes later, they said they were hearing "reports" of a problem, but didn't know what. Only on their third report did I find out they landed a Medflight on the highway, but only a few minutes after that I saw it take off again, ending the jam. It would've been nice to know what's going on, and since this kind of thing will disrupt traffic, informing the information source of the stuck drivers would be helpful.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:00 PM

In 2004, a Pew Research study revealed that:

Comedy programs are increasingly becoming regular sources of news for younger Americans, and are beginning to rival mainstream news outlets within this generation. One-in-five young people say they regularly get campaign news from the Internet, and about as many (21%) say the same about comedy shows such as Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show. For Americans under 30, these comedy shows are now mentioned almost as frequently as newspapers and evening network news programs as regular sources for election news.

And, in this clip from The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert demonstrates why:

If you haven't seen the original segment with Congressman Wexler, that's also worth watching, via Comedy Central (WMV), YouTube, or Crooks and Liars (WMV or QuickTime).

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:42 PM

Apparently Jim Steinman, songwriter for Meat Loaf on Bat Out of Hell and writer of 80s ballad "Total Eclipse of the Heart", either is or was working on a Batman musical.

On his website, he's released a song written for the Joker, Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?.

One LJ friend calls it "pretty decent" while others are far less charitable.

Listen for yourself and tell me what you think.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:30 AM

Well, I decided to add the Swedish opera to my Marlowe in Modern Fiction list. I don't think I'll get up at 1:30 am to listen to it on the webcast, but it's listed.

And, while I did that, I also decided to include the filk I wrote last year: Back to the days of Christopher Marlowe. May be somewhat egocentric of me, but I've already listed a 24-line poem, so a filk of twice that length would seem to qualify.

So, that brings the list to 66 items, of which I've read/seen 34. Considering my original list was only 26 items (of which I'd read 14), I'm doing pretty well. Of course, many of the new additions are plays and often inaccessible to me, but I'm trying to keep my average above the halfway mark.

As yet unlisted, I know of at least two authors who have written first drafts of Marlowe stories, but those seem a little too early in the process to list. I am willing to offer my services as a beta reader, fact-checker, evaluator compared with what's on the market. But I think I may hold off on listing these works until they're closer to the submissions process. [And at that point, please inform me; I don't know how many Marlowe fans like me exist, but the list could be a useful way to inform publishers that this is a legitimate trend.]

This reminds me: Sarah L. Thomson's YA novel, The Secret of the Rose, comes out next week. I reviewed it back in April, where I wrote:

“I found Secret of the Rose surprisingly refreshing ... I would gladly recommend this book without reservation.”

Check it out!

PS: Statistically speaking, Elizabeth Bear is the most prolific author on the list, with six works written or cowritten. [One more, and she'll have produced fully 10% of Marlowe fiction in the last thirty years; I did notice a few oblique references to Marlowe in Blood & Iron, but those weren't enough to count.]

Second place goes to Sarah A. Hoyt, with three books (her Shakespearean Fantasy trilogy). Four authors each wrote two works apiece, and everybody else only did Marlowe as a one-off.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:20 PM

From a Swedish news site:

Marlowe and Shakespeare united in Swedish opera
Published: 24th July 2006 18:13 CET

They were two of the greatest playwrights ever to write in the English language. They were also both born in England in 1564, and it has been said that both men had relationships with other men. A new Swedish opera goes further, and speculates that William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe were lovers.

While a fair amount is known of Marlowe, many details of Shakespeare's life are sketchy, particularly in the seven years between 1585 and 1592, when all trace of him seems to disappear from the historical record. For Håkan Lindquist, who has written the text to Tommy Andersson's opera, William this has been a gift.

"It's inspirational to have so much freedom when writing about the life of someone so well known," he says.

The opera, written in Swedish, speculates that the men's affair started when Shakespeare was a member of Marlowe's theatre troupe in London.

It is a known historical fact that Marlowe was an English spy in the Dutch town of Flushing. It is not known whether he met Shakespeare in real life, but Lindquist has the young Will follow his lover over to the Netherlands, where the pair continue their relationship.

"Shakespeare goes there because he misses Marlowe," Lindquist explains. In doing this he leaves behind his wife, Ann Hathaway, who had recently borne him the twins Judith and Hamnet.

Lindquist is a well-known novelist in Sweden. Many of his stories deal with gay themes, and his books have been translated into several languages, including English. Writing the libretto for an opera was a new departure, but when Tommy Andersson proposed an opera about Shakespeare and Marlowe's relationship there was no question:

"I jumped at the idea," he says.

<snip>

Lindquist touches on the argument that Marlowe wrote some or all of Shakespeare's plays.

"There are many people who think that this was the case, but the opera doesn't take that line. Shakespeare and Marlowe do discuss collaborating, though, something that is cut short by Marlowe's death."

<snip>

William has its premiere on 26th July at Vadstena Castle, and continues until 9th August. It will also be broadcast on Swedish Radio's P2 on 29th July at 7:30pm.

• Tickets for William can be bought at www.ticnet.se or by calling 077-170 70 70.
• The performance can be heard on Swedish Radio P2 at 7:30pm on 29th July.
• For more information, visit the Vadstena Academy's homepage.

Well, it's not just for the slashers and pervs anymore.

Have to decide how I'm going to handle this on my Marlowe in Modern Fiction list.

I mean, I've already opened it up to plays, but if I start including foreign-language works, I'll never catch up.
On the other hand, what's the point of a list if it's incomplete?

Thoughts from those of you who might use the list?

PS: Anybody know enough Swedish to tell me whether that radio station webcasts its audio, and if so, when 7:30pm Swedish time is on the East Coast of America?

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:54 PM

Seems like one of the in-things for bloggers to do these days is post links to music videos on YouTube.

I'll confess, I hadn't wanted to draw such attention to YouTube, since it seems like a DMCA shutdown order waiting to happen, but then I saw even Boston.com has gotten into the act.

One of my favorite bands growing up was the Australian group Men at Work. Good tunes, smart and with a sensayuma. Exactly what I like in a band. [And it didn't hurt that I developed a minor crush on sax player Greg Ham, whose appearance reminded me a bit of David McCallum.]

They only released two albums (both of which I still have on vinyl) before "taking a break" and never recovered their place atop the charts. Other groups soon took the New Wave limelight, and Men at Work faded to nostalgia.

These days, radio stations and retrospectives seem only to play "Down Under", but that wasn't their only hit. And they really did a masterful job on their music videos:

Any other fans of the band lurking out there?

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:54 PM

For those who might be curious:

1) I've finally done as I threatened, and created a listing of all the Shakespeare plays I've seen.

It's currently sorted by genre (comedy, tragedy, history, romance), followed by title and date (so, for example, the five productions of Midsummer Night's Dream are listed in the order I saw them).

However through the magic of web technology, you can now re-sort the table any way you'd like. Want to group it by company (all the ASP productions together, for example), or view them all by date? Knock yourself out!

2) I've also created a page for all the filk I've written.

Only four complete songs (with nearly twice as many fragments), but have fun. I certainly did.

And if any more serious filker wishes to improve or complete any of these, be my guest. I assigned everything on the page a Creative Commons license; just let me know, and I'd like to see the finished product.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:54 PM

Stopped off for some wonton soup and Peking ravs at what appears to be a really good Sichuan restaurant in Medford Square.

My fortune:

You are kind and broad-minded.

Ian's:

You will be graced by the presence of a loved one soon.

Went down to McIntyre and Moore for a book I saw my last visit: The Double Life of Doctor Lopez, about Queen Elizabeth's Jewish physician, who was executed for treason. [Here's a review by Benjamin Woolley, author of an earlier read, The Queen's conjurer, about John Dee.]

While there, I noticed another intriguing title. Dissing Elizabeth. I'm enough of a geek that my first guess at its contents was recent dissertations about the monarch (which would interest me). But the subtitle: negative representations of Gloriana clarifies the subject and looks almost as intriguing.

Also, somewhat curious about the Sir Walter Raleigh biography by Raleigh Trevelyan, a direct descendant. Probably not an unbiased account, but what insights might he have from family history?

Finally, after seeing the teaser site for Neil Gaiman's forthcoming film, I came up with the first stirrings of an instafilk:

Grendel's Mom has got it going on!
Grendel, can't you see, you're just not the beast for me.
I know it might be wrong, but I'm attacking Grendel's mom!

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:48 PM

Why aren't I?

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:15 AM

Constitutional law professor and Maryland State Senate candidate Jamie Raskin, on a proposed amendment to ban same-sex marriage:

“People place their hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution; they don't put their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible”

[A variant of this slogan now for sale thru NancyButtons] 

Escambia County (FL) Commission Chairman Mike Whitehead regarding a creationist theme park in violation of the law:

“Scripture also says ‘Render unto Caesar what Caesar demands.’ And right now, Caesar demands a building permit.”

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:11 AM

Well, I never really left since my last post.

I know I haven't been writing much the last several days.

Haven't had much worth writing about.

I had an incredibly productive two-day workweek, after three days of bereavement leave.

Also had over 600 pieces of spam in my inbox, and didn't even bother trying to read back my LJ friends list.

However, after last week's sad family news*, I got some really wonderful news, but it's not really mine to blog.

* Oh, and thanks to everybody for your kind words. They meant a lot to me. The legacy.com obituary site does have an online guestbook if you want to share anything with others in my family.