come forth, delicious things.

Malvolio’s Revolve

The joy of Shakespeare is that even if you see the same play dozens of times, each production is its own, unique experience.

Having said that… there are certain bits of stage business that often crop up in numerous productions. One of my favorites is Malvolio’s revolve.

Just for fun, here are various examples of Malvolio’s revolve that have been captured on film. (If the gifs don’t work, check out my original post here.)

Alec Guinness in the 1970 ITV Saturday Night Theatre production  does the classic dubious, self-conscious revolve, although Sir Toby and his gang are safely behind a hedge and don’t have to hide.

Nicholas Pennell in this 1986 filmed production at the Stratford Festival of Canada executes a confident and rarely-seen double revolve, forcing his peanut gallery to duck out of sight.

In this filmed version of the Renaissance Theatre Company’s 1988 production, Richard Briers executes a very slow , dubious revolve that is notable for being counter-clockwise. In my experience, most Malvolios revolve in a clockwise direction.

Finally, this Stratford Festival production milks the revolve for all it’s worth, with Tom Rooney’s Malvolio turning at just the right speed to miss Sir Andrew’s desperate dash across the stage.

indigostohelit

"AO3 has had an Old English language category for a minute, but none of the fic in it is in Old English, which I think is a crying shame. I'm not sure if anyone has posted fic in Old English before in, uh, all of human history, so I figured how better to inaugurate fic in the (arguable) origin of the English language than with the (arguable) origin of modern fanfiction?

This is the most unbelievably niche thing I have done in my entire life, and the category is competitive. Chapter 1 is the fic; Chapter 2 is a translation and translator's commentary, meant for an audience of non-Old English speakers. I love this language and its wildly homoerotic and emo poetry very deeply—if your primary reaction to a fanfiction in Old English is "why the sweet hell would you do this" a) you are right but b) I do want you to have a good time wondering with me how Captain Kirk would describe advanced computational technology in a language designed mainly for medieval men who are horse girls.

ga ga goncharov, italy’s most famous slav

so let’s say there’s some very zealous, very low-ranking fresh young Imperial officer on duty the day they take the Senator from Alderaan into custody. 

and he is very very nervous because a) he’s been here for like a week and b) none of that week required him to be in a room with Darth Vader. which he now is. so he is trying to focus very very hard on Doing Everything Exactly According To Protocol, as a means of not focusing on the seven-foot evil wizard standing fifteen feet away.

and part of the protocol for processing new prisoners is to make a new file for them in the prisoner database, and enter all their biographical details and vital statistics and a gene sample and their known associates and the nature of their terrible crimes against the Empire and so on. which he does! very meticulously!

except the computer keeps throwing an error message. the stupid thing keeps beeping at him, this awful grating little noise that makes his shoulders ratchet up tighter and tighter every time it honks at him, and he can’t fix it and Darth Vader is right over there—

except oh god oh fuck the beeping noise must be annoying Darth Vader, too, because he’s coming over here and our poor junior officer is convinced he’s going to die before he even lives long enough to send his first paycheck home to his poor widowed mother —

he stammers out an apology. Vader just stares at him. he swears he’ll figure out the problem right away, sir, it’s probably a bug in the system, it’s just that for some silly reason it keeps saying this gene sample doesn’t match the one on file for the Senator so he can’t get her logged as a new prisoner just yet —

“Dismissed,” says Vader. the poor kid flees, gratefully.

Vader considers the matter. in fact, his underling was correct: the gene sample, which he saw taken through his very own helmet lenses, does not match the official record of Senator Leia Organa, heir to the throne of Alderaan. so: perhaps the sample on record was falsified. not impossible, but very, very difficult. and ordinarily a crime attempted by the lowly and desperate. he cannot see any need for it, in the daughter of a queen.

another possibility presents itself. Alderaan has no history of using royal doubles, as some worlds do. but Bail Organa has worked closely with royal houses where the practice is long-established. perhaps he was inspired. perhaps the girl they captured is not Leia Organa at all.

Vader runs the gene sample against the ship’s database. it is woefully incomplete, of course, containing only a fraction of the Empire’s billions of citizens: the ship’s own complement, a selection of known criminals and Rebels they might encounter, high-ranking officials whose identity must be confirmed should the Emperor require their presence. unlikely that this girl, whoever she is, would have a record here, or even a partial match—

the computer beeps at him. it’s a cheerful beep, this time, not the error message that stymied the junior officer. the computer reports that the gene sample is a partial match for Pooja Naberrie, the Senator from Naboo. they are, with eighty-nine percent probability, first cousins.

and Vader just. kind of stands there. for a minute.

when he goes to Leia’s cell, there’s no interrogation droid with him. he goes in. he shuts the door behind him. he stands, there, silent, for frankly a worryingly long time, until Leia has run through her entire stockpile of  “how dare you, I’m a member of the Senate on a humanitarian mission” and “whatever you want, you can’t possibly think I would be of any help” and “well, if you’re going to interrogate me, get on with it already” and “are you even listening to me?” and  falls silent herself. 

Vader has been listening to her. he has also been listening to the Force, which seems to think that she’s not lying. obviously the humanitarian mission part is bullshit, that goes without saying. but the “I’m Senator Leia Organa” parts and the “I won’t help you” parts? yeah. he searched his feelings. he knows them to be true. the Force is singing in his head, bright and clear, in a way it hasn’t for nearly twenty years.

there’s still Tarkin to deal with, though. Vader turns and leaves the cell without a word.

Tarkin wants to blow up Alderaan. this is unacceptable, obviously, and Vader forbids it on the grounds that the Queen and the Viceroy possess vital intelligence, not disclosed to their daughter, that must be acquired. said intelligence being, not that he’s saying this out loud, how the fuck Bail got his hands on his daughter, and who else knows about it.

“the fate of the galaxy rests on it,” is what he does say out loud. from the way the Force harmonizes with his words, that might even be true.

so the Death Star just. parks there. in an incredibly threatening orbit around the planet. they issue a demand that the Organas surrender themselves, or else, but apparently the happy couple just left for a low-tech weekend retreat in the mountains, what awful timing, they’re sending someone to fetch them right away. Vader shuts himself up in his quarters, to seethe and watch the surveillance feed from Leia’s cell. he’s not really paying attention to much else. 

and it’s not like a random freighter getting tractored in for being an incredibly obvious smuggling vessel is the kind of thing you’d alert Darth Vader over, anyway. 

so he’s still sitting there, one great big thought filling up his whole entire head, watching Leia take a frustration nap, when her cell door opens. 

and a trooper comes in.

and the trooper takes off his helmet.

The Thief

Everyone: Gen no.

Gen: GEN YES.

The Queen of Attolia

Everyone: Eugenides no.

Eugenides: EUGENIDES YES.

The King of Attolia

Everyone: Attolis no.

Attolis: ATTOLIS YES.

A Conspiracy of Kings

Everyone: Sophos yes.

Everyone: Kamet yes.

Kamet: KAMET NO.

The Attolian: Kamet yes.

Everyone: Pheris no.

This is one of those non-poem things that are among my favorite poems.

As the OP stated, the use of alliterative consonants is aesthetically just great, especially the placement of the strongest use at the end: “fuck him on the floor.” The use of “chintz” is indeed great word choice.

Because I’m insane, decided to scan the poem:

Not only is the second sentence, indeed, perfect iambic pentameter, the entire poem is perfectly metered, though the first sentence has four iambs rather than five.

There are further things I love about this poem, though: I like the casual connotations of “keep it real” juxtaposed with “chintz.” It causes me to interpret the “chintz” more strongly as meaning something fake, a facade. There is also of course the coarseness of “fuck,” which is a contrast with “chintz” but a different kind of contrast, gutsy and carnal where “chintz” is flimsy and inanimate.

And then there is the storytelling: there is SO MUCH storytelling in just these two lines. To break it down: The speaker is having sex with a married man, in the house he shares with his wife, which is “filled with chintz”—something that here connotes fakeness, in contrast with “keep it real.”

The illicit encounter in the poem takes place within a house filled with facade, the flimsy construction of the wife’s marriage and domestic sphere, but the encounter itself is a taste of something “real.” That’s a story, and it’s just two lines.

This is EIGHTEEN SYLLABLES, y’all. The amount of meaning condensed into these eighteen syllables is stunning, and it is so elegantly done.

like, a traditional reading of this is sympathetic towards the husband: his wife has filled his house with fakeness and has thus driven the husband to find real, grounded connection with the narrator.

the closely-paired his, however, makes me think that perhaps the emphasis should be understood differently: his wife has had the temerity to fill his house with chintz. the objection is less about the chintz and more about that which the husband possesses defying his ownership: the woman who belongs to him has done something he disapproves of to another thing he rightly owns, and her removal of these things from his control feels like--and is framed and shamed by the poem as--a transgression which then justifies the second line to us.

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