Jules Chéret, 1880 Parisian advertisement for a recurring Saturday masque performance
8,691 words
This past winter I lost my last grandparent — the most stubborn one, still to the end a strict English schoolteacher after having long since retired from the profession in the 1970s. She suffered through the desegregation years while working at Marshall High and was never dishonest about the experience. She possessed that combination of Southern decorum and irascible (and accurate) bluntness, which gave her the ability to reduce anyone, including 250-pound, six-foot-three black football players, to tears. (more…)
Promotional image from the UK’s Almeida Theatre production of The Duchess of Malfi (performed from November 30, 2019 through January 25, 2020)
5,736 words
I. Classical Western Thought on Justice and Revenge
One of the most fascinating discussions to emerge from our collective Western inheritance concerns the definition of justice and the double-sided nature of justice or vengeance (personified memorably in pop culture through the literal “two-faced” character of Harvey Dent and his Janus-faced coin). Aristotle (384-322 BC) determined that “justice” had at least two different meanings: (more…)
Lin-Manuel Miranda as Alexander Hamilton.
1,409 words
Alexander Hamilton is arguably the most popular Founding Father of our era — and it’s all thanks to one incredibly cringe hip-hop musical.
Hamilton first premiered in 2015 and has been a popular sensation ever since. Its tickets go for astronomical prices and its soundtrack sold millions of copies. (more…)
2,221 words
Stage plays are not often banned, censored, or otherwise suppressed in modern Britain, but when they are it’s usually something to do with ethnic group sensitivities. When in 2004 a play called Behzti (Dishonour) by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti concerning the issue of rape within the Sikh community was about to be performed at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, local Sikhs reacted with sufficient fury to have the play cancelled. (more…)
56:35 / 10,232 words
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John Maler Collier, “Clytemnestra,” 1882
7,478 words / time: 49:12
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Editor’s Note:
The following text is Michael Polignano’s transcription of Jonathan Bowden’s lecture “Western Civilization: A Bullet Through Steel,” (more…)
