Jan. 11th, 2012

monk222: (DarkSide: by spiraling_down)
Marvin Rosenberg gives us a good mood for the opening scene of "Hamlet" with the guards on watch on the battlements of Elsinore.

_ _ _

Midnight on a high platform, a castle battlement. A deep bell tolling out the uneasy hour. A lonely sentinel, distraught. Something is wrong with this night.

The aura of foreboding darkness, in the daylight performances of Shakespeare’s Globe, would grow from the repeated mention of night and the show of flickering torches or lanterns, hung on walls or carried by the frightened armed men on guard. These fearful sentinels, peering into the imagined, haunted blackness, conspire with the marvellously conditioned imaginations of Shakespeare’s audiences to sustain a mood of ominous midnight danger - mortal danger, and more than mortal, from the aura of an uncanny presence against which the sternest weapons are helpless. In the public night performances, the actual darkness would intensify the climate of threatening mystery by fighting against the torchlight, or the swinging windblown lanterns, with shifting, sinister shadow.

[...] The theaters of the world have moved back toward letting night scenes become what Hamlet’s text makes them: places of mystery, at the boundary of the human world, with only darkness beyond.

[...]

In this cold winter night, the wind is often likely to be bitter, in bite and bark; it whines and sighs - in modern times electronically, sometimes interweaving with a human wail, or a siren. [...]

Mist clogged the air in Tom Taylor’s 1873 staging; wreaths of smoke and fog have often since cloaked the battlement, to enhance mystery and make seeing more difficult for the sentinels - who have also been vexed by lightning, thunder and other signals of tempests

-- Marvin Rosenberg, “The Masks of Hamlet”
monk222: (DarkSide: by spiraling_down)
Marvin Rosenberg gives us a good mood for the opening scene of "Hamlet" with the guards on watch on the battlements of Elsinore.

_ _ _

Midnight on a high platform, a castle battlement. A deep bell tolling out the uneasy hour. A lonely sentinel, distraught. Something is wrong with this night.

The aura of foreboding darkness, in the daylight performances of Shakespeare’s Globe, would grow from the repeated mention of night and the show of flickering torches or lanterns, hung on walls or carried by the frightened armed men on guard. These fearful sentinels, peering into the imagined, haunted blackness, conspire with the marvellously conditioned imaginations of Shakespeare’s audiences to sustain a mood of ominous midnight danger - mortal danger, and more than mortal, from the aura of an uncanny presence against which the sternest weapons are helpless. In the public night performances, the actual darkness would intensify the climate of threatening mystery by fighting against the torchlight, or the swinging windblown lanterns, with shifting, sinister shadow.

[...] The theaters of the world have moved back toward letting night scenes become what Hamlet’s text makes them: places of mystery, at the boundary of the human world, with only darkness beyond.

[...]

In this cold winter night, the wind is often likely to be bitter, in bite and bark; it whines and sighs - in modern times electronically, sometimes interweaving with a human wail, or a siren. [...]

Mist clogged the air in Tom Taylor’s 1873 staging; wreaths of smoke and fog have often since cloaked the battlement, to enhance mystery and make seeing more difficult for the sentinels - who have also been vexed by lightning, thunder and other signals of tempests

-- Marvin Rosenberg, “The Masks of Hamlet”
monk222: (Bonobo Thinking)
It has been a long, long time since I have read anything by Bill Kristol, and when I saw the headline blurb on a piece about Romney's tenure at Bain, I was sure it was going to be another one of those "Rah, rah, go, Capitalism, go!" hurrahs, but Kristol really surprised me. Capitalism must serve the common good? Now that is music coming from the Republican side, and from a true-blue Republican at that.

When one reads this piece alongside Brooks's column yesterday, making a liberal case for serious government reform, one can feel the stirring of optimism in the blood.

Read more... )
monk222: (Bonobo Thinking)
It has been a long, long time since I have read anything by Bill Kristol, and when I saw the headline blurb on a piece about Romney's tenure at Bain, I was sure it was going to be another one of those "Rah, rah, go, Capitalism, go!" hurrahs, but Kristol really surprised me. Capitalism must serve the common good? Now that is music coming from the Republican side, and from a true-blue Republican at that.

When one reads this piece alongside Brooks's column yesterday, making a liberal case for serious government reform, one can feel the stirring of optimism in the blood.

Read more... )
monk222: (Mori: by tiger_ace)
Tensions with Iran are heating up in the gulf.

_ _ _

A new aircraft carrier strike group has entered the Arabian Sea and another is on its way, a Pentagon official said in a news briefing Wednesday -- a shuffling of the U.S. fleet amid rising tensions with Iran.

Officials said there is no connection between the fleet movements and threats from Iran, however, the arrival of the USS Carl Vinson comes on the heals of Iranian military exercises in the Persian Gulf and threats to block the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil transit route.

And the killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist in Tehran on Wednesday further escalated tensions, as the Obama administration denied any role in the death.

-- Fox News

_ _ _

You know this just makes Iranian leaders itchier for nuclear weapons. As things stand, Iran has to be intimidated by this kind of show of force, but they know if they had the nuclear option at their fingertips, this kind of threat would mean nothing to Iran, just as North Korea's nuclear weapons made that country fairly immune to military threats.
monk222: (Mori: by tiger_ace)
Tensions with Iran are heating up in the gulf.

_ _ _

A new aircraft carrier strike group has entered the Arabian Sea and another is on its way, a Pentagon official said in a news briefing Wednesday -- a shuffling of the U.S. fleet amid rising tensions with Iran.

Officials said there is no connection between the fleet movements and threats from Iran, however, the arrival of the USS Carl Vinson comes on the heals of Iranian military exercises in the Persian Gulf and threats to block the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil transit route.

And the killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist in Tehran on Wednesday further escalated tensions, as the Obama administration denied any role in the death.

-- Fox News

_ _ _

You know this just makes Iranian leaders itchier for nuclear weapons. As things stand, Iran has to be intimidated by this kind of show of force, but they know if they had the nuclear option at their fingertips, this kind of threat would mean nothing to Iran, just as North Korea's nuclear weapons made that country fairly immune to military threats.

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