Bite Me, Tony

"Wuthering Heights"   As a doomed man gasps for breath, the hood covering his mouth expands and contracts with his exertions until the rope coiled tightly around his neck completes its task, and he dangles still from the gallows. The crowd gathered to witness the day's festivities are mostly silent and awe-struck until someone points out the dead man's visible erection, the ejaculate seeping out through the cloth of his trousers. At this, there is a great uproar and the crowd goes wild. Their suppressed excitement bubbles over into an orgiastic free-for-all as participants revel in the aftermath of this public execution in Georgian-era England.   This opening scene pretty much sets the tone for director Emerald Fennell's  "Wuthering Heights" (quotation marks hers not mine). Since I am not well-versed in the history of the UK, I am uncertain if public executions induced sexual frenzies amongst the attendees or not, nor do I know whether this scene was th...

Hamnet (A quick note: In Shakespeare's time, the names Hamlet and Hamnet were allegedly interchangeable. They were one and the same).   For well over a century, the works of William Shakespeare have played an essential role in classroom curricula in secondary schools and colleges throughout the world. Mention Shakespeare to anyone with even the slightest degree of cultural knowledge and they will be able to cite Romeo and Juliet , Hamlet and Macbeth as hallmarks in the canon of western literature, even if they are unable to discuss the finer points of the hallowed classics of a man most consider to be "the greatest writer in the English language". The Bard of Avon, as Shakespeare came to be known, was incredibly prolific in his time, ultimately establishing himself as the Elizabethan Era's finest dramatist. Despite the fact that Shakespeare was, in fact, a small-town boy , his family was of sufficient means to allow the young man to receive a formal education until ...