Beware of Italics

Ophelia: You called, My Lord?

Hamlet: No I didn’t. Why are you here when nobody likes you? Go away!

Petruchio: Even I think that’s mean.

Romeo: Go find Juliet and ask her if she would come here and tell her she has the most beautiful eyes, that make the very sun seem dull, and the loveliest hair and a face that puts to shame Aphrodite herself...oh and bring her this sonnet I wrote her...and actually I’ll go find her myself for I can’t bear to be apart from her another moment!

Petruchio: …

Petruchio: … Yeah he’s not coming back. Next!

Coriolanus: Go find my wife and ask her to come here and also ask her if she's seen Aufidius. Actually, have you seen Aufidius...or heard any news of him?

Servant: No I haven't… Is there a name or a description I could use to find your wife?

Coriolanus: Hold on. I know this one.

Petruchio: Wow... We’ll come back to you. Next!

Orlando: I refuse to participate in this farce. It’s demeaning to women.

“Ganymede”: Nonsense! Any real man (which I totally am) wants women to obey him without question!

Orlando: That’s wrong! That’s not being a “real man”; that’s just being a bully. I would never treat Rosalind that way and I hope no one else would either!

“Ganymede”: … You pass the test.

Orlando: What?

"Ganymede": What?

Benedick: HEY BEATRICE!

Beatrice from 3 rooms away: WHAT?

Benedick: CAN YOU COME HERE A SECOND?

Beatrice: WHY?

Benedick: SOME MAN HERE WANTS TO SEE IF YOU’RE OBEDIENT.

Beatrice: WHY ARE YOU PERPETUATING THE OBJECTIFICATION OF WOMEN INSTEAD OF PUNCHING HIM IN THE FACE?

Benedick: YOU MEAN YOU DON’T WANT TO COME HERE AND SHOW OFF YOUR OBEDIENCE? I AM SHOCKED AND HEARTBROKEN!

Beatrice: HA. HA. SO HILARIOUS.

Beatrice: … HE STILL DOESN’T SOUND VERY PUNCHED IN THE FACE. I SUGGEST YOU FIX THAT UNLESS YOU WANT TO SLEEP ON THE COUCH FOREVER!

Benedick: ON IT!

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“I’m sure you feel much better since you’ve got that out of your system,” said Barney heartlessly.

This makes me laugh.

“That sounds John Fosterish,” teased Valancy.

“What have I done that deserved a slam like that?” complained Barney.

That makes me laugh even more.

They passed several Stirlings, who groaned and reflected that now spring was come they would encounter that shameless pair everywhere.

Damn right.

Valancy, prowling about Deerwood shops, met Uncle Benjamin on the street; but he did not realise until he had gone two blocks further on that the girl in the scarlet-collared blanket coat, with cheeks reddened in the sharp April air and the fringe of black hair over laughing, slanted eyes, was Valancy. When he did realise it, Uncle Benjamin was indignant. What business had Valancy to look like - like - like a young girl? The way of the transgressor was hard. Had to be. Scriptural and proper. Yet Valancy’s path couldn’t be hard. She wouldn’t look like that if it were. There was something wrong. It was almost enough to make a man turn modernist.

I have SO much to say about this paragraph. Firstly, Valancy is ‘prowling’ and I love it. And now she’s a girl. Not an old maid, not ‘still young but not young’. She’s a girl in a cool-sounding coat with flushed cheeks and a secret laugh. I wonder if the fact that the Stirlings haven’t seen her for a few months means that they notice the changes immediately. If Uncle Benjamin had seen her weekly in his store, maybe he wouldn’t have noticed the change?

If they had looked the least bit Valancy would have gone in. But they did not. Valancy would not disturb them for worlds.

I wonder what Barney thought when Valancy asked him to stop and sneaked up to her old house to look in the window.

Uncle Benjamin is back! Let's celebrate Canada Day with a Hey-it's-that-Canadian-actor fancast poll!

How are we all imagining Uncle B? So far, he's sort of been the Michael Scott of the Stirling clan (as one bookclubber has pointed out, he loves getting everyone together to come up with a plan, but his plans don't actually amount to much). For all his presence in the story, though, we don't have a lot to go on by way of physical characteristics.

He's "a wealthy and childless old widower." How old is "old"? We know from Edward Beck that Valancy considers 48 to be "old", but we're not sure of the exact age "old" begins for her (though presumably it's well after 35).

He has pudgy hands: "Uncle Benjamin punished his pudgy left hand fiercely with his pudgy right." Hmm. Is this more of LMM's fatphobia? Or is it establishing Uncle B as one of those clan members who, while being visibly well-provided-for themselves, were constantly judging Valancy for being skinny while never doing anything to help her family in their straitened, penny-pinching circumstances? As a store proprietor, Uncle B was in a good position to at least bring by some bruised produce for the poor widow's household occasionally (and make a big deal out of his generosity in doing so), but we don't ever hear of him doing that.

He's "wheezy":

Uncle Benjamin would ask some of his abominable conundrums, between wheezy chuckles, and answer them himself. Uncle Benjamin, wheezy, pussy-mouthed. With great pouches under eyes that held nothing in reverence.

For those of you who are tempted to Google "pussy-mouthed," let me just warn you now that that is a Bad Idea. The OED suggests that it could be a corruption of "pursy-mouthed", which most likely means puckered (but coincidentally "pursy" could also mean wheezy or fat). Maybe the folks working on original drafts and translations have a better sense of this one?

He asks the same dreadful riddles over and over, but when he bothers to come up with new material he can actually be funny:

You have asked that riddle at least fifty times in my recollection, Uncle Ben. Why don’t you hunt up some new riddles if riddle you must? It is such a fatal mistake to try to be funny if you don’t succeed. “It’s a pity you couldn’t have had your premonition a little sooner,” said Uncle Benjamin drily.

And while Uncle James is the clan oracle, Uncle Benjamin does seem to be the self-proclaimed clan organizer ("Let us be calm", "We must be guided by developments", etc.) Does the rest of the clan just go along with it because of his money? Or is his busybody energy just that strong?

All that said, on to fancasting!

I have no idea how Bookclubbers are envisioning Uncle B (or how old everyone thinks "old" means), so I'm going to offer a whole range of possibilities, ordered from youngest to oldest.

Also - because I think it would be hilarious to cast a genuinely talented comic actor to deliver all of Uncle Benjamin's terrible jokes and get called out by Valancy for his lack of success at being funny, that's who I'm focusing on in this poll. (For non-Canadian bookclubbers, comedy is one of Canada's prime exports, so we're spoiled for choice here.)

Finally - while you all probably know by now that I try to keep a hypothetical modest CBC-style production budget in mind when fancasting, I'm aware that some of the "Hey, it's that guy" actors here are pretty deep cuts for bookclubbers who are not Canadian (and even for Canadians who aren't familiar with the generation of comedians who came out of the Toronto Theatresports scene / Second City / The Red Green Show), so I'm throwing in some more famous options here as well.