Oi, no!

Ack, mid-way, mid-way! Looking forward to home/ don't want to come home . . . if it were even remotely possible for me to come to Grad School in London . . . I'll probably be just as happy at most any of the Universities in the U.S. . . .

?

Met with my mentor again today and am very happy to have further refined my focus to how alterations to text affect humor within the plays - how humor functions and how alterations affect this function. This choice has been of course shaped by what I've read and seen - Irving cuts out nearly all of the low humor within his plays, especially that spoken by the women (though in Romeo and Juliet Mercutio is practically castrated) and, as in my earlier discussions of Romeo and Juliet and Merry Wives of Windsor (and other plays) note, humor is altered much in modern productions through cuts too - though the bawdy bits usually remain, often for the "cheap laugh" they induce - sometimes bits even being added.

Very happy too to say that Prof. McDonald (my advisor here) arranged for a meeting between myself and the Master of Text at the Globe Theatre - which happens tomorrow evening! Very excited and have a good list of questions of which I'll probably be lucky to get halfway through - but better to have too many questions than too few!

Will be adding on a day or two of the Irving studies - just want to look at a couple more scripts - then jumping ahead to Olivier/ Gielgud. Will be trying too to figure out what is accessible at UNH's library and what's only available here - have time before I need to write my Senior Thesis - and for my IROP presentation I believe I'll have a solid thesis/ supporting evidence anyway, and either way definitely want to use my time here focussing on what's only available here.

Walked around lots and lots this weekend, Saturday mostly to/ from/ around a place called Portabella Market, in some ways like an outdoor fleamarket but generally really neat. Bought - perhaps shouldn't have, but did - a spiffy bowler hat - photos to come perhaps but if the hat's as good a quality as I hope it is most of you will eventually see me in it!

Also discovered recently the existence of BBC Proms - or concerts. Hope to catch a few of these - very inexpensive and, from what I hear, very good. Beethoven's 5th Symphony's going on tonight - I think I'll try to catch it!

Oi, oi, oi! Not going to be able to go everywhere I want to go here - not enough time left! But some definites - Greenwich, the Tower, and St. Paul's. I really also want to go back to at least one place for say half a day - the Tate Modern.

Well, hope everyone is well!