From “The Assumption,” a short play based on the medieval Lives of the Virgin. The hero is Mario, a college freshman struggling with his sexuality who mistakes an undiagnosed case of appendicitis for a pregnancy. In this scene, he has been confiding in Lupe, the dorm’s janitress, who reveals herself to be the Virgen de Guadalupe; they are speaking Spanish, which sounds like unrhymed English verse.
This Nov. 4, 2008 will always be synonymous with all kinds of significance, but tonight I reflect on something small, soon to be submerged by the symbols. The way I saw John McCain’s concession speech received was unworthy of the occasion and the man.
Planned or not, we find in “a Moor” a delightful pun on “amor,” love, unfortunately unequaled by any wit in the script proper, but suggestive of a creative potential so undeveloped that its trace could easily escape the spectator’s notice or be trampled by an eye-roll as he hastens through the ninety-minute wilderness.
Robert Fagles, the iconic 40-year Princeton professor whose historic translations of Homer and Virgil enjoyed unprecedented commercial and cultural success in the 1990s and 2000s, died on March 26th following a long struggle with cancer.
Dr. Doris Kearns Goodwin c/o Elizabeth Hayes Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Dear Doris, The Nassau Weekly pauses its inexorable jubilations, ignited last Thursday morning with your wonderful news, to offer you … Read More
Maidens yet unyoked shall shear their hair for you when they wed, and through ages long shall reap the great morning of your tears.” – Euripides Who would not sing for Britney? She knew herself to sing! If not to … Read More
Sometime in an Oxford Greek class in 1895, a professor got off on a tangent about the vast repositories of long-lost ancient texts that might be lying preserved in the hot sands of Upper Egypt….The following year, Egyptian authorities converted what remained of the mineral-rich dirt to fertilizer.