Playwriting and Catherine de Medici - 9/21/2014

 [I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order. The date in the title is the date it was written.Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 6/9/2025] 

Interlibrary loan actually works! Six months late, but last Friday turned up a book on writing plays. I do not have it with me, or I would give the title. I read it. I used up the last of the copy card I bought with dad's money for stuff I want to try. It had mostly exercises. Turned out, I was not as ignorant as I thought, but I still do not understand intellectually how to divide a play into acts. Any understanding is a visceral one from reading Shaw.

I also read Leonie Frieda's Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France (Harper Perennial, 2005). A good chronicle with a last chapter analyzing the chronicle. I would have like a bit more explication of Catherine's ambiguities and some more depth on why Catherine was considered to be some of what she is reported to have been (such as a notorious poisoner). I still think Margot is the interesting story. How much this has to with Isabelle Adjani (Queen Margot, 1994) is probably a great deal. Frieda has me interested in the dynamic between mother and daughter.

I wish now I had looked up the date for Christopher Marlowe's The Massacre of Paris. I'm sure it was a propaganda piece, but what was the propaganda's purpose?

I wrote a letter to Cathy S, and it went out in today's mail. I wonder if I will hear from her again. Silence from home and Gayann.

Fall hit me tonight. Just now. A twinge in my heart. Imagining what might have been - getting things ready for school. I killed that life as dead as Catherine de Medici.

Taking a hiatus from the writing. Not even going to re-read "Driving Down a Blind Alley". Will buy a typewriter cartridge next week. Last one till money comes through from KH. This one is really getting the working over. I can't be satisfied. Cue Muddy Waters.

I noticed I am back on my reading list: The Brothers Karamazov. Have not been able to find The Song of Solomon at the library. If that is not in when I finish The Brothers, then War and Peace is next on the list. Thinking I will read Hasler between Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. I suspect that will be the only time in history anyone will write or even think of the preceding sentence.

sch 

[Cathy never did write back; no idea why not. There were other cases like her who might drop me a line and then disappear.

While trying to supply links, I found these sites and found them interesting enough to pass along:

Adventures of a Tudor Nerd – Exploring the 16th Century and Beyond

The Ultimate Resource for Elizabethan Drama | ElizabethanDrama.org

sch 6/8/2025]