HUD HUDSON
This week she has been reading William Shakespeare's As
You Like It.
Jacques: All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
***
Any comments you might have for Xerxes
can be sent to Hud[dot]Hudson[at]wwu[dot]edu.
I will see to it that she receives them.
***
Xerxes' Sophomore Year
Last week Xerxes was reading William Shakespeare's Antony
and Cleopatra
The week before Xerxes was reading William Shakespeare's
Macbeth
The week before Xerxes was reading Jelaluddin Rumi's The
Essential Rumi
The week before Xerxes was reading Harold Bloom's Where Shall
Wisdom Be Found?
The week before Xerxes was reading Anne Fadiman's The Spirit
Catches You and You Fall Down
The week before Xerxes was reading Leo Tolstoy's The Devil
The week before Xerxes was reading Colin McGinn's Shakespeare's
Philosophy
The week before Xerxes was reading Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild
The week before Xerxes was reading Stephen Greenblatt's Will in
the World
The week before Xerxes was reading Martin Buber's I and Thou,
Meetings, and The Way of Man
Xerxes' Freshman Year
The week before Xerxes was reading Allan Chinen's
Once Upon a Midlife
The week before Xerxes was reading G.K. Chesterton's
St Francis of Assisi
The week before Xerxes was
reading Jean Toomer's
Cane
The week before Xerxes was reading
Ikhwān al-Safā's
The Animals' Lawsuit against Humanity
The week before Xerxes was reading Patrick Süskind’s Perfume
The week before Xerxes was reading Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the
Snark
The week before Xerxes was reading John Milton's Paradise Regained
The week before Xerxes was reading Dylan Thomas's The Force that
Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower
The week before Xerxes was reading Stephen Crane's The Blue Hotel
The week before Xerxes was reading Gore Vidal's Creation
The week before Xerxes was reading A.S. Byatt's Possession
The week before Xerxes was reading C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce
The week before Xerxes was reading Mitch Albom's The Five People You
Meet in Heaven
The week before Xerxes was reading Dennis Potter's Blackeyes
The week before Xerxes was reading David Suzuki and Wayne Grady's
Tree: A Life Story
The week before Xerxes was reading James Hogg's Confessions of a
Justified Sinner
The week before Xerxes was reading Alexander Theroux's Theroux
Metaphrastes
The week before Xerxes was reading Mervyn Peake's Titus Alone
The week before Xerxes was reading Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast
The week before Xerxes was reading Mervyn Peake's Titus
Groan
The week before Xerxes was reading Walter de la Mare's
The Three Royal Monkeys
The week before Xerxes was reading John Collier's His Monkey Wife
The week before Xerxes was reading Lois Lowry's The Giver
The week before Xerxes was reading Rudyard Kipling's Mandalay
The week before Xerxes was reading Ralph Helfer's Modoc
The week before Xerxes was reading Stuart McLean's Home
From the Vinyl Cafe
The week before Xerxes was reading Ossie Davis's Purlie Victorious
The week before Xerxes was reading George MacDonald's The Portent
The week before Xerxes was reading Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz &
Guildenstern are Dead
The week before Xerxes was reading Michael Phillips's George MacDonald
- A Biography
The week before Xerxes was reading Christopher Moore's The Stupidest
Angel
The week before Xerxes was reading Gordon Lightfoot's Minstrel of the
Dawn
The week before Xerxes was reading Sun Tzu's The Art of War
The week before Xerxes was reading Robert Graves's I Claudius
The week before Xerxes was reading Philip Ardagh's A House Called
Awful End
The week before Xerxes was reading John Milton's Paradise Lost
The week before Xerxes was reading Mervyn Peake's Mr Pye
The week before Xerxes was reading J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows
The week before Xerxes was reading Riff Raff and Magenta's The Time
Warp
The week before Xerxes was reading William Shakespeare's Timon of
Athens
The week before Xerxes was reading J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion
The week before Xerxes was reading e.e. cummings's anyone lived in a
pretty how town
The week before Xerxes was reading Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici
The week before Xerxes was reading C.S. Lewis's A Preface to Paradise
Lost
The week before Xerxes was reading Stephanie Plowman's The Road
to Sardis
The week before Xerxes was reading Alexander Theroux's Darconville's
Cat
The week before Xerxes was reading Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective
The week before Xerxes was reading T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock
The week before Xerxes was reading Matthew Scully's Dominion
The week before Xerxes was reading Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian
Gray
The week before Xerxes was reading the Prologue in Heaven from
Goethe's Faust
The week before Xerxes was reading Christina Rossetti's Goblin
Market