Where Joliffe Plays Detective

A Play of Isaac by Margaret Frazer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My first book by this author, and I really liked it. Went back and forth on a score--4 or 5--because I bet I'll like others in the series even more, but why be cheap? It was a fun book, a pleasure to read, so let's give it all the points.

I've read more than a few mysteries set in medieval or renaissance times, and I find most of them are so dreary I can hardly get through them. I think that's intentional--the dreary part, not the "hardly get through them" part--but I don't like it. Maybe life was mostly dreary then, and this is, after all, a murder mystery, but it's not supposed to be a bad experience for the reader, IMO. It's supposed to be fun to read. And this one is.

Fun why, you ask. First, I generally liked the main characters, which include Joliffe and the others in the troupe. (I found the minor characters interesting and well drawn, too, FWIW.) They're not totally best buds, and so they bicker and annoy each other part of the time, but it's friendly enough, and they all look out for each other. They're pretty good people, too, or so it seems to me, with engaging backstories, though I didn't read the previous series where they showed up. In other words, I like to side with them and cheer for them. Second, the setting is well done, with the land, the town, the society, the economy, and pretty much all the details seemingly accurate. Anything out of place is beyond my knowledge. The story inhabits that setting in a way that I enjoy, kinda like when you have a really good diagram of a ship or something and you can say "Oh, that's how that fits together..." Scratches a brain itch. And third, it's a good mystery.

Joliffe and the troupe he's part of have a gig in Oxford for the Corpus Christi festival, and when they're kind toward a mentally challenged theater-loving young man, they get invited to his rich family's home (well, barn) to stay a few days and perform a little for the family and their get-togethers. A body is found outside the barn where they are camping, and though they aren't explicitly named as suspects, they know how precarious their position is, and Joliffe takes it upon himself to solve the mystery.

It's good stuff: good pacing, plenty of intrigue, no dry patches. Now that I know the characters, I'm eager to see more of their stories, as well as others by this author. Fingers crossed.

Recommended for those historical mystery readers like me who haven't already discovered these books.

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Where Figaro Fights the Powers that Be

The Marriage of Figaro by Beaumarchais
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the play, not the opera.

And it's okay. Frothy. All hijinks and mistaken identities and hiding behind furniture.

To be fair, the play deals with some important themes, especially the unearned power and authority of the aristocracy. Figaro is going to marry Suzanne, but the nobleman they both work for wants to sleep with her before Figaro does. He's said it. Everybody knows it. It's gross. In a long speech, Figaro is lamenting a political system that could allow that:

No, Your Lordship, you will not have her, you will not have her! Just because you're a great nobleman, you think you're a great genius! Being an aristocrat, having money, a position in society, holding public office--all that makes a man so arrogant! What have you ever done for all this wealth? You took the trouble to be born and nothing else!

Such language coming just years before the French Revolution, you can see why authorities didn't like it. In fact, in that same long speech, Figaro complains about censorship in the press and theater. But he also complains about women being unfaithful. It's kind of a wide-ranging rant and feels tacked on.

But mostly this is a silly romp. Figaro is getting married; the count has lost interest in his own wife and wants Figaro's; young lovers are getting in trouble; and a number of characters have designs on other characters, to the point that Marceline tries to force Figaro to marry her through appeal to the court but turns out to be his long-lost mother. Ooops! And we just move on. The play is filled with schemes that don't work and tricks that are discovered and lucky coincidences, making the plot such a muddle you're just glad it all gets sorted in the end.

I can imagine this being staged in a clever, witty way, earning laughs, if the direction is really strong, but if they're not careful I think it'd end up just a mess.

I agree about the aristocrats, though. He had a point.

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Where They All Are Horrible People

Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I find this so tedious. Probably my least favorite Shakespeare play.

There's just no one to like in this story. Cleopatra is horrible, the most spoiled, narcissistic, useless character since Iago. Antony is an unsympathetic, selfish fool. Lepidus is useless. Caesar is no better than the rest. I literally don't care who wins and who survives in this story.

My Roman Empire is how stories set in the Roman Empire are dry as dirt.

Everyone here is fighting for a huge empire, for riches, all while holding on to their honor and reputations, and then when they have a bunch of power and money and honors they... just spend their time sitting around, eating, arguing, being obnoxious. If they aren't fighting, they're out of ideas. Some of the richest people in the history of the world and their lives look unbearably crappy.

So I don't care about them and I don't like them and I'm glad when I get to the end.

Wait--I actually like Caesar's sister who marries Antony. Octavia. She's a good character. She didn't deserve the stuff that happened to her, and Antony's death was probably a good thing in her life.

I'd like to see a play about Octavia. Maybe she took up painting miniatures and had a happy life with her second husband, a kind man who managed an import-export business and taught their kids how to fly kites.

Anyway.

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Where It's Technically a Comedy

Comedia Famosa De La Verdad Sospechosa/ Famous Comedy of the Suspicious Truth by Juan Ruizde Alarcon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This early Seventeenth century play by Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, the inspiration for a number of similar plays in other languages, is witty and moderately entertaining, but not super fun. It's alright. I wouldn't really want to see it performed.

It's the story of a young man returning to Madrid after finishing his schooling, and he seems like a young gentleman at first to us and to his father, but moments later is revealed as a wild liar. He tells complex lies for no good reason, and pretty soon has himself tangled up in them. His father is horrified and furious, a rival for the love of a beautiful woman is ready to duel with him, and the woman of his dreams, who was ready to fall for him, discovers he can't be trusted.

In English translation, it's hard to tell whether or not it would come off as comedic. A couple scenes have that feeling, but mostly it feels moral and didactic from beginning to end. You hope the young man will learn his lesson and redeem himself, but [400-year-old spoiler] he doesn't, and goes to the end unrepentant. Oddly enough, he ends up with a beautiful woman, just not the one he was aiming for, so I guess it's a feel-good screwball comedy, but there's no way he deserved the woman. I feel bad for her. He's gonna keep lying.

I'm curious about some of the speeches and how they would appear on the stage. Many of them are crazy long. They speak in paragraphs as a rule throughout the play, but some of the speeches are several hundred words long, and one of them--a particularly involved lie--is over 1000 words. it's the longest I remember seeing in theater. I'm afraid they would turn out dull, but it may be that, staged and delivered properly, they are funny. Probably just depends on the director and the tone they go for.

Anyway, the play doesn't much speak to me, but it is interesting in its own way. I could probably be talked around on it.

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