Masterpiece
*****
Excellent
**** 1/2
Very good
****
Good
**** 1/2
Just okay
***
Not for me
**
Definitely not for me
*

Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)

Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)
by Anne-Marie MacDonald

1990, 89 pp.
Rating: stars4h.gif

Good Night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is hilariously fun. Winner of the 1990 Governor General’s Award for Drama and written by the author of Fall on Your Knees, this play takes the main character, Constance, and puts her in the middle of Othello and Romeo and Juliet with very funny results.  Plot lines are changed, lines rearranged, and we get to really know the players as never before.

If you’re familiar with both plays you will be in stitches in parts.  Lines from the original plays are in italics to help the reader know the difference between those lines and MacDonald’s.  Even MacDonald’s are written in iambic pentameter.

Highly recommended — especially for lovers of Shakespeare or those participating in the Canadian Literature Challenge.

Bravo!

The Birds – Aristophanes

Well, it’s late and I just finished reading this play by Aristophanes. It’s about two guys who go to the birds to set up a utopian city in the clouds so they can “oust” the gods from Olympus. Supposedly the birds were created before the Titans and were more worthy of being worshipped than the Olympians.

I guess this is supposed to be a parody of utopianism. It is funny in places, though some of it was bawdy. I’m glad I read this play because it’s a classic, but I probably wouldn’t recommend it to others. I do think it’s cool that a play can survive over 2000 years after it was written, though.

414 BC, 48 pp.

Rating: 2.5