Diary 9th And 10th July 2019

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Tuesday 9th July - Today involved little more than preparing for Wednesday when I have to see my new welfare officer. In the evening I decided to watch a Shakespeare Play online. There are 16 of the plays I have not yet read or seen in performance. I settled on The Merry Wives Of Windsor which I found disappointing, though well acted (by The Shakespeare By The Sea company). It is a fairly preposterous farcical runaround. It centres on John Falstaff, the larger than life drunken womanizing Knight of four of the history plays. He was much loved so when Shakespeare killed him off in Henry V, fans were outraged. The independent Merry Wives was written to give the great man one last adventure but it is a weak one. Falstaff writes identical love letters to two married women hoping to seduce them but the women compare letters and set elaborate traps to humiliate Falstaff several times. It turns into a rather silly runaround. Wednesday 10th July - My meeting with my advisor went OK, but she seemed unsure when she needs to see me again. I walked from the welfare office to the library, (they are only a few minute walk apart) and when I logged on the computer there I found she had set my mandatory appointment for a week on Monday, meaning I will have to cut a long weekend in Manchester down by a day just to report to her again on my job search activity. Annoying. Tonight I watched another Shakespeare play online, Cymbeline, oddly presented as a tragedy in many book editions but no one dies, characters have a happy reunion at the end and everyone ends up happy. It runs like King Lear, when King Cymbeline banishes his son in law, his wicked step-wife tries unsuccessfully to poison everyone, the King is reunited with sons stolen off him in infancy, and even the invading Romans are welcomed. The God Jupiter turns up to magic everything to a satisfactory end. Where is the tragedy? Arthur Chappell