You know, it's such a [cliche] about Shakespeare being topical, and our contemporary, and then you go along to QPAC on a lazy Saturday afternoon and bloody see Measure For Measure , a three hundred and fifty year old comedy on the absurdity of enforcing personal morality with the legal system, and the dangers of investing executive and judicial powers in the one person.
Basically, if Philip Ruddock ... or actually, the death penalty is involved, so let's say John Ashcroft ... had offered to pardon the life of an adulterer on death row if his about-to-become-a-nun sister would sleep with him, and John Ashcroft was actually called Angelo, you'd have the play. Ok, plus a lot of other convoluted plot points and disguises. Also, I realised that the creators of Blackadder were big Shakespeare nerds, but not that they lifted whole chunks of script (Blackadder II, "Head", in which there's a hilarious mixup over the timing of executions).
More reading: Tags
Cam Riley: South Sea Republic. Freedom, liberty, equity and an Australian Republic.

Comments
  • cam . # .
    Best Shakespeare line: \"Thou art but a scurvy fellow\". I think it was Malvolio?

    cam
  • cam . # .
    Take it back: I think that was in the Twelfth Night. My non-existant english-lit street cred just went from zero into negative numbers.

    cam
  • You know: If Measure 4 Measure, as Baz Luhrman and other l33t h@x0rs would no doubt restyle it, is any indication, scurvy isn\'t that rare an insult in the comedies.  Shakespeare was working to a deadline, he knew the worth of code reuse :)