Wuthering
Expectations

  A Distinguished Crankologist

Wednesday, June 3, 2026

What I Read in May 2026 – “These stories appeal to my sense of humor as well as my taste for formal constraints.”

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NOT SHAKESPEARE Poems and a Defence of Ryme (1592-1605), Samuel Daniel – Author of the “Delia” sequence of fifty sonnets, a genuine seque...
Friday, May 29, 2026

George Chapman's All Fools - some wit, some wealth

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George Chapman has the funny distinction of being famous, courtesy of Keats, but unread.  He was one of the finest poets and playwrights of ...
4 comments:
Wednesday, May 13, 2026

What I Read in April 2026 – And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart

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Thomas Mann filled a lot of my time, alongside the non-Shakespearian stuff.  Just two plays to go in this round, George Chapman’s All Fools ...
2 comments:
Tuesday, May 12, 2026

Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedie of Mariam, the earliest extant English play by a woman - Are Hebrew women now transform’d to men?

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The English theater world was deeply hostile to women, possibly until quite recently, but the late 16th and early 17th century period went a...
Saturday, May 9, 2026

The hilarious Doctor Faustus - I am not so very fond of laughter

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Zeitblom, the narrator of Doctor Faustus , presents an interpretation of his composer friend Adrian Leverkühn suggesting that his avant gard...
6 comments:
Friday, May 8, 2026

Misreading Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus correctly - who has not felt how aestheticism prepares the way for barbarism in one’s own soul

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A funny thing happened while reading Thomass Mann’s 1947 novel Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn as Told by a...
2 comments:
Saturday, May 2, 2026

Thomas Heywood's early melodrama A Woman Killed by Kindness - I’ll say you wept, I’ll swear you made me sad

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I have called Thomas Dekker and Henry Chettle hacks, but Thomas Heywood was the greatest hack of the Age of Shakespeare, having “an entire h...
2 comments:
Monday, April 27, 2026

Getting a bit heavy-handed, aren’t you, Inspector? - some British culture via An Inspector Calls

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  Several years ago I came across a survey of British teachers of English literature.   Over time, many groups have greatly revised, often i...
10 comments:
Tuesday, April 21, 2026

The Malcontent by John Marston - Come down, thou ragged cur, and snarl here

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What do I want to say about John Marston’s The Malcontent (1603, maybe 1604)?  It is unusual.  Marston is unusual, with a distinct poetic a...
2 comments:
Thursday, April 9, 2026

What I Read & Where I Went in March 2026 - the real disgrace of England is the railway sandwich

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London and Cornwall, St. Ives and Penzance and so on, is where.  I got some good Shakespearing in – The Tempest at the Wanamaker, the littl...
4 comments:
Tuesday, April 7, 2026

The Tragedy of Hoffman by Henry Chettle - The first step to revenge

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His father hanged by the neck until dead for the high crime of piracy, Hoffman vows Revenge! on the duke who executed his father.  By chance...
Monday, March 9, 2026

Ben Jonson's Sejanus His Fall - Is there not something more, than to be Caesar?

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After triumphantly beating up John Marston, Ben Jonson indulged in some Shakespeare envy and wrote a history play, or perhaps a tragedy, Sej...
Saturday, February 28, 2026

What I Read in February 2026 – Mouek mouek mouek… Ma-a-a-a… Ma-aa-a… said Saha

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I am almost on my way to London.  Some Shakespearian and Not Shakespearian activities are on the schedule. My reading, before this trip, w...
5 comments:
Friday, February 27, 2026

Ben Jonson's Poetaster - Oh, terrible windy words!

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It’s the War of the Theatres!  Ben Jonson feuding with John Marston and Thomas Dekker!  Who cares! Poetaster, or the Arraignment (1601) f...
Tuesday, February 24, 2026

Marston's poetics - foamy bubbling of a fleamy brain

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The plays that have survived from the early London stage are language-crazed.  When have so many commercial writers been poets, great poets?...
2 comments:
Monday, February 23, 2026

John Marston's Antonio and Mellida and Antonio's Revenge - Here’s flesh and blood which I am sure thou lov’st

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John Marston does something with the pair of plays Antonio and Mellida (1599?) and Antonio’s Revenge (1600?) that I do not think I have ev...
2 comments:
Wednesday, February 18, 2026

Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday - hire him, good master, that I may learn some gibble-gabble; ‘twill make us work the faster

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I think of Thomas Dekker as one of the great hacks of Shakespeare’s time, writing over a long career a large number of plays, mostly lost, t...
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