Episode 849: LL251 Really Isn't That Tough!

I'm starting to feel like I should look up and view productions of Measure For Measure, just to see how the endings have been put on. I still haven't got more than the vaguest ideas of what to put in my own play, although I'm fairly certain I'm opening and closing with tableaux of the final moments of the play, but with distinct differences that should ideally indicate some sort of development in the characters, particularly the ones rehearsing the parts of the Duke and Isabella. It is striking, isn't it, how the women tend to get silenced at the end of Shakespeare's plays? Even in The Taming Of The Shrew, Katherine's long speech is never acknowledged by the women she's meant to be reprimanding. What you get instead are the men, vying to get a word in. I like to think those final lines should be played as them trying to shout the women down, even though there's no suggestion of that in stage directions. Randomly, can I just say that some of the people in my LL251 class complain too much about how difficult and beyond them the class supposedly is? Maybe 'A' Level French in the UK is ridiculously easy or something, because anyone coming out of Singapore with decent 'AO' Level French like I did would have no trouble with LL251. The business vocabulary might be a bit of a stumbling block, but nothing that a good dictionary wouldn't help with. The thing is, half the group clearly has problems with grammatical points that I actually find kind of tedious to have to go over during seminars. Like today, with the pronouns. In three years of French language lessons at Warwick, the one thing I've never liked is how much grammar I have to sit through in seminars despite already knowing it. (Big thanks due here to Mme Pang, Mme Faussat and M. Quenot, obviously.) Anyway, stayed back on campus to help at the launch of David Morley's new collection. Got a free signed copy and a bottle of wine, so that was nice. Loved David's reading as well!