Ralph Fiennes on "Coriolanus"

Grettir,
I was not only sleepy in my school days, I was bad. One day when I was awake, I stood up and told a teacher whom I hated that I refused to memorize the dumb things he required everyone to memorize. I told him a good education teaches a person how to think, not to repeat what someone else thinks. He flunked me big time. So I need some suggestion of books too for sure from our commenter friend Kalabagh. It is not too late. Meantime, realizing how miserably uneducated I was, one day I acquired Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare because it was a Book Club offer costing nothing except you had to buy 3 books after the freebie. I thought Asimov was a peculiar enough person to get to know; so I took the offer. Holy Moses! I just checked Amazon.com and found out the book now sells for US$125 but fortunately there are used ones for US$14.99 plus $3.99 shipping. So if you don’t mind Asimov’s way of insisting on telling you about every single grape in the entire vineyard when all you are looking for is a shovel you left between two vines, his is a handy reference to have. Now I am not giving out this bit of info to you or anyone reading for free (especially the $14.99). (just kidding! LOL) You need to give me a reference in return for a play, any play, Adam Mickiewicz wrote. I can’t read Polish. So I need something in English, unless you also have it in Chinese. I am dying to remediate my uneducated condition, as our commenter friend reminded me, result of falling sleep too much in class. The reason I need to remediate is this: Joseph Elsner, a good friend of Fryderyk Chopin, said of the playwright in a letter he wrote on Nov13, 1832 from Warsaw to Chopin who was then in Paris, “I had only to mention the name, Mickiewicz, and at once Hell with its horrors and Heaven with its hopes arise before my eyes and would make me forget that I am on earth – were I not in Warsaw.” Pretty cool stuff, no? So you must help me. I have a feeling our commenter friend can't help me. Meantime, I want to mention to our commenter friend and his friends and their friends in case anyone of them too fell asleep in class that there are Chinese playwrights too, not just English, Polish and Peruvian. One very great one died on the same day Shakespeare and Cervantes died. The world lost three giant literary figures on the same day once upon a time. But the Aztec calendar did not write that down on their list of who was going to die. Maybe some student in the Aztec school too fell asleep in class. Gosh! I am going to be sleepless for nights just thinking about how many students in the world, especially those who read The Eocnomist , fell asleep in class . . . .And it’s all Coriolanus' fault.

Grettir,
I read my own long thing again. I write a very poor satire. Anyway, I couldn't put up with the commenter's comment and I let him or her have it. Hope you got the point in my badly written satire. :)

Jesus, Ashbird! You put so much energy sometimes into your postings it is kind of scary. Thanks for it but I am not the one to ask to judge whether or not satirical texts are good or otherwise; the depth of my knowledge about satire is restricted by what Jerry Seinfeld used to put in his shows:)

Regarding Adam Mickiewicz I don't believe he was much of play writer, he was primarily poet. When I said that Shakespeare's place in Polish school programs is probably occupied by him I meant that he is comparably major figure in Polish literature. Surprisingly, Mickiewicz is considered also a major figure in Lithuania. Some of his verses are dedicated to that small Baltic country. That's because Poland and Lithuania used to comprise one state at the time (although Polish and Lithuanian languages are completely different from each other) much like Austria and Hungary used to be.

By the way, I would not blame too much those students who were feeling sleepy in the high schools of former Soviet Union. Majority of programs back then were very boring indeed, especially those related to social studies and alike. In that respect, if Coriolanus was a subject to learn it could have been much more interesting. It would be overly optimistic I believe to think that Mr. Fiennes effort can change it anyhow. Anyways, that country is long gone. And that's another tragedy for many, undoubtedly of Shakespearean proportion.

Small minds tend small details and so here I go. It seems that Tang XianZu ruined the party by holding on for a few more months in 1616.

HRA, Thanks for the correction. I got the info from another source which clearly was not as reliable as I had thought.

Stand corrected. For those who wonder what your comment references, Tang XianZu was an author and playwright in the Ming Dynasty. His most famous work was The Peony Pavilion.

Apologies if I scared you! I was primarily reacting to the other reader's comment that you slept too much in your school days. I have a tendency to jump to defend what I perceive to be unjust comments that seemed to come from nowhere and serve no other purpose than to ridicule. Clearly I overreacted, not to mention you have a more gracious and effective way of dealing with it, if what I perceived were true.

I do think, though, if students fall asleep in class, the fault lies with the teacher, not the students. That was my satire.

Thanks for the info on Mickiewicz. I read about him in the collection of letters written by Chopin after he left Poland at the age of 18, never to return. The name stuck. Apparently George Sand was a friend and raved about his poetry in the letters she wrote to him.

Thanks again. I won't scare you so much again. :)

Erratum - Meant to say: "... jump to defend anyone against what I perceived to be unjust comments ..."