User talk:Bishonen

Latin for the Illiterati

I don't have my reference books at hand so I'll get back to you on this. The Latin pun I like best is in the Vulgate, from Matthew: Et tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram ecclesiam meum aedificabo. PedanticallySpeaking 19:50, Sep 23, 2004 (UTC)

My dear Bishonen,

Interesting research project I had from your article Lucus a non lucendo. My Cassell's suggested your translation was correct but I didn't find the phrase in either of Jon Stone's books Latin for the Illiterati or More Latin for . . . I did find it in my trusty Brewer's Companion, however. The 15th edition (p. 655) says "An etymological contradiction. The Latin phrase was formerly used by philologists who explained words by deriving them from their opposites. It means literally 'a grove (so called) from not producing light,' from lucus, 'grove', and lucere, 'to shine,' 'to be light.' It was the Roman grammarian Honoratus Maurus (fl. late 4th century AD) who provided this famous etymology . . . " Honoratus I had trouble tracking down because, like so many Romans, he can be listed in several ways. I did learn from my New Catholic Encyclopedia that there are two saints named Honoratus, but tracked our man down in Brittannica (1974). "Servius, also known as Marius (or Maurus) Servius Honoratus," is how they list him. He did a big commenatary on Virgil, "a precious source of knowledge about Roman antiquities" and my 1944 Brittanica calls him "the most learned man of his time." Aside from the attribution question--Brewer's certainly could be wrong--and some clean-up I think it's a useful addition here. I'd never seen it and will have to shoehorn it into my discourse. Ave atque vale! PedanticallySpeaking 14:56, Sep 25, 2004 (UTC)

Mangled manga

Hey, nice job! Not many people can translate that rare and incomprehensible language known as Gibberish into English! :^) - Lucky 6.9 01:58, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, Lucky, I'll proudly remove it, then. :-) I'm reading Bathing here, on Cleanup 21 Sept — hilariously over-encyclopedic. "A swimming bath is a bath in which persons propel themselves by moving their bodies." --Bishonen 02:19, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Upsala Nya Tidning

Thanks for the info. It might be well-known around the world, but to me the local university was better known. Feel free to de-stub the article :) - Mgm 19:06, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)

Hilarious!

Well, you know how to get my attention -- making a Middle English literature article cat. :-) I didn't even look at the history to see who wrote it. I just went in and pedantically talked about Pandarus and Pandaro being different in Chaucer and Shakespeare and included the legal charge of pandering and what a panderer is. Sorry about that, but very funny. Geogre 02:08, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Blended learning

They both had more history than I felt comfortable simply deleting, so I went to IRC #Wikipedia, and enlisted the help of User:Angela (who is the most meticulous, knowledgable, helpful, etc. Wikipedian I've encountered), and she took care of merging the histories at the hypenless title. Niteowlneils 23:51, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Minor, eh?

Moving the article, correcting all the links to it, including on my user page, and the internal references is minor? Wow. I'd hate to see what you consider a major edit. :-) Thanks for fixing my spelling. Could have sworn that I checked twice and that it was Lilo, but this morning both sources I used have two l's. I wonder why they changed in the night. Geogre 12:30, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Barry in The Rehearsal (play)

I read your Barry article, and I rewrote my The Rehearsal article three times or thereabouts. I think the prose finally works. Anyway, I put in a reference to Barry at the end of it. The 'She-Tragedy,' though, is a microtrend, isn't it? It's a thing that claims the boards entirely for about 5 years? In that last par. of The Rehearsal I kind of say that you could stop playwrights from silliness for a little while, but they kept shouting at the rafters for 200 more years. Geogre 13:10, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Rake

Just a thanks for your useful additions to that article. Kicking myself for not thinking of them. Smerdis of Tlön 19:35, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

John Webster as a Rat

Do you know anything about John Webster being an informant against Dekker and/or Jonson? I know I know it to be the case, but I can't for the life of me think of anyone who says it. I have it as hearsay, I think. From Greenblatt, maybe? Anyway, it's not important, but am I right that he informed on his friends? Geogre 04:25, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, no, I don't. My, ah, field is the 1696-1697 season, you know. At Drury Lane. Especially the casting repercussions of actor Hildebrand Horden getting killed in a duel in May, that's my specialty. You got any questions about Horden, I'll be fine. ;-) Sorry. Are you writing about Webster, or about the other guys? --Bishonen 12:54, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Oh, I added something to the Webster article, and I added that he had informed. The Singing Badger, who is a Ren. fan, removed the informant bit & asked for my source. Well, my sources are secondary, so that's no good. Horden? I've never even heard the name. I looked for what the DNB costs, by the way. It costs more than a car. I looked for used, beaten copies of the Concise DNB, and the used bookstores on Amazon are entirely clueless. They sell individual volumes of the 3 volume set as "the Concise DNB," and you can't even figure out that it's just one volume except that they say, "The book is in good shape." There are three books. The one book seller that has all three volumes wants $500, and the Concise isn't even that good for people like us. Compared to all that bother, a trip to Johns Hopkins library is cheap and easy. Anyway, it's not Webster making me wish for the old days of biking to a well stocked library -- it's everybody else. I also have discovered that the Mafia Movers who brought me to Baltimore neglected to deliver at least one box of books. Geogre 14:29, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No, no, I was kidding about Horden, I just wanted to mention the most minor figure I could think of there, to satirize my own shortsighted peering at these ephemera of history. I'd be flabbergasted if anybody had heard of Horden. (Mind you, he was a promising actor, so for all I know he might have become the next Betterton, if he hadn't been killed in a duel at a young age.) You're describing the very same Amazon phenomenon I was complaining about before. What's the point of offering books for sale in such a way? Who's going to buy a single volume without even knowing which volume? Bah. And each time, for a dizzying moment, one thinks they are talking about the whole set, and at such a reasonable price, too. Bah bah.
A whole box of books ?? Say it's not so. You're sure the box isn't, uh, somewhere? There are four unopened movers' boxes in my hall, where they form a convenient surface for putting down odds and ends on. What books are you missing, that you know of? --Bishonen 15:06, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- You know, on my talk page, I didn't figure out that the title of the talk subdivision for Short View was a link to the article. When I read it, I was very impressed. Anyway, at least one box is gone. I already knew that they failed to deliver at least one table, though they delivered the legs for it. There are far, far, far too many missing books that I'm now discovering, particularly reference and particularly therefore a heavy box, that aren't around for it to be just my imagination. I have no unopened movers' boxes. I did a better job, when I moved in, of unpacking everything. I wonder if I can get a government grant to get a Segway scooter. That would be the perfect way to get to Hopkins to do research. I no longer have a laptop, but I still have paper and pens, and that's all I need.
- I assume you saw the invitation to work on Addison and Steele. How do I explain that journalism of the period is something you either jump into over your head or not at all. My studies and interest could be 18th 1, but really they're Satire. Oh, and I added a couple of rakes to the list, and I added a little to the "Harold and Maude" article, critical stuff. Geogre 17:09, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Dramatists etc...

Hi Bishonen,

Thanks for your note on my page. Indeed, I'm no native English speaker, and just tried to follow the content of the former "dramatist" article - assuming that Wikipedia can't be wrong ;o) - only extended it a bit to theatre directors too.

Just two minor questions still to you:

Is the usage of the word "Dramatist" and "Playwright" as you describe it identical in all English-speaking countries? If that is the case I would make the "Dramatist" article a "redirect", without further commentary, to "Playwrights"...
In English language, can "librettists" be considered either "Dramatists" or "Playwrights", or both, or neither?

Regarding categorization in general: if you have particular problems or questions: just ask - not sure whether I'd be able to answer, I go only from my personal experience too, and from the three "basic" guidelines regarding categorization, i.e.:

--Francis Schonken 15:07, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Reply to additional post on my talk page:

Please make sure all English speaking people would experience "Dramatists" and "Playwrights" as covering the same. What I understood by now is that "Dramatist" is a posh term for "Playwright" in English.
In Dutch (my native language) a "librettist" is someone who derives a text for a musical production (Opera, etc...) from e.g. a play: a play is written by a playwright, while a libretto can be made by either a "composer" or the playwright him/herself (who then becomes librettist in addition to being a playwright) or a by a "third party" librettist. E.g. Janacek worked as well with librettos produced by the "original" playwright (such libretto is nearly never identical to the original play), with librettos produced by "third party" librettists, and with librettos he derived from plays (and other books) himself. If what you assume is true, then Janacek (and Wagner, etc...) could be categorized "Playwrights" (besides "Opera composers") - does that feel right to you - for me it still feels odd?
Regarding clicking on a "category" at the bottom of a "category" page: what opens then is the parent category you clicked. In fact the categories in the box below on a category page are all the (direct) parent categories. For "higher-up" parent categories you keep clicking on the Categories below in the category box, for every new category that opens, till you reach a "top" category. Now that's theory: categories are still in expansion, and major hick-ups occur. See also Graph/Tree comparison on wikipedia:categorization.

--Francis Schonken 16:34, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

See Category talk:dramatists from now on

I even proposed a new idea there, that I think should possibly cover it all.

--Francis Schonken 17:04, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Smutty Plays

Say, did you make redirects for all the forms of The Short View and A Short View and Short View? Just asking. That's what I've been doing non-stop for the Licensing Act article now (and redefining links that are to the 1692 Licensing Act). Great article. I think I may have to put it in your boast file, if you don't, soon. Geogre 18:12, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I did the A but not the The (nobody calls it that, and if they do they deserve to get lost). Oh, hey, though! You just made me realize that it's imperative to redirect the spelling Prophaneness. That's often used, and is indeed the original spelling (which I thought proper to modernize). Absolutely. Thank you. Isn't smutty a great word?

I've been too busy writing to update my boast file. ;-) You put it in if you really want to, and Restoration comedy, too. Did you see what a sad stub that was before before Bish blew all the hot air into it? It's not done yet, I hasten to add. I've got all this John Vanbrugh comedy stuff in my text editor, but I've realized the 1911 EB architecture part is beyond cleanup. It always was beyond me to rewrite. :-( I have the references, but I just can't focus on the subject of architecture, it's, well, never mind, it's just not interesting to me. I'm thinking of putting up a call for help on the Pump or something. Though I'm sure people (e. g. Giano) have better things to do, this would probably take some reading-up. The only Vanbrugh-as-architect thing that I like is the tease couplets: Swift's "Van's genius, without thought or lecture,/Is hugely turned to architecture, and somebody elses epitaph, "Lie heavy on him, earth, for he/Laid many a heavy load on thee". (The second one is misquoted all over the www, nobody cares how verse sounds.) It really was a delight to see your Licensing Act, Geogre. --Bishonen 19:23, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- You're right: Prophane. I've been using this antique Oxford Companion for material, and it always fussily provides exact titles. Whatever was en vogue in 1920 is what it uses. In general, that's not bad, but it can lead to problems with, for example, Elizabethan play titles, where they've all been modernized in editions and classrooms. I like the longer version of your article, as well as the original short version. I haven't looked at Restoration Comedy. I should probably stay out of your way on that for a while, since I'm nothing but a fan of it and certainly not a student of it. I'm good at culture around the world of, politics near, and that kind of thing, from my Gould work, but even there I'm more of an 80's and 90's person. As for Van's architecture, you'd be better off with some of those interested in Olde Englande, I think. Now that I've characterized them thus I'd better not name names, but there are people who really, really obsessively note every building. I've encountered quite a few rave reviews of his architecture, though, in art history texts. Perhaps an art history site that's popularizing would have adaptable material? I had never heard Swift's comment before (to my shame), nor the epitaph. (There are so many popular elisions of 18th c. verse that "everybody knows" that it's annoying. They most often clip a foot of the verse, for the popular mind seems to like quatrameter. Maybe that's a sign of the general IQ or something -- people can now only remember 8 syllables in a unit. ("All that glitters is gold," I hear.)) Geogre 20:40, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

De novo :-(

I keep getting logged out, sometimes just a few minutes after I did something. For once I create an article de novo (She-tragedy, a few minutes ago), and I have to get kicked out and go and do it anonymously. :-( I don't know if it's Mozilla or Wikipedia that hates me. The English Wikipedia, that is. Strangely, the Swedish Wikipedia, that I visit so rarely, keeps me bishonen for weeks on end.--Bishonen 22:11, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Orthoepeia

Thanks for the help, my young, beautiful, androgynous, homosexual, Japanese friend. You've caught me being quite lazy; I'm still getting the hang of this, though.

Not sonnets

Hmm. I was speedy deleting, earlier, and someone seems to have taken it ill. Can't imagine why. Anyway, my user page got blanked. I rolled it back. Then it got blanked again. Hadal rolled it back (one minute had elapsed between attack, reversion, attack and second reversion). Ah, well. I was going to ban the user, but the IP's history shows erratic and sane stuff, meaning that it's a floating IP and probably AOL, so banning is a bad idea. All the same, if there's a repeat, I will put on a 2 hour ban or something. That ought not kill AOL too much and yet stop this monkey spanker. Geogre 05:15, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

What's this?

Vindö just came in, and I can't figure out what a "yard" was, or if it's copyvio. Geogre 12:43, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The contributor means to say yard as in shipyard or dockyard, except referring to a small place that used to build sailboats, not ships. It's the same word in Swedish no matter the size. "Famous" would mean famous in the population of "Swedes interested in sailboats". I have vaguely heard of the Vindö boats as classic long narrow handcrafted wooden boats that sailed well.

Here's a link about the place. The text's not translated from a websource as far as I can see, but has much the feel of being from a book. Nothing to be done about that. --Bishonen 16:33, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Ah. There is a Norwegian patriot on the loose, editing from an IP. He is very industrious, and no matter seems to be too small, if it's Norwegian. (BTW, "Cool and Crazy" was on the cable TV last night, so I saw it again. Odd movie.) Haven't heard from you in a while (by our standards). I keep trying to e-mail you pictures, but my ISP cuts them all off. Geogre 23:45, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, as you know, I wish you'd correspond via e-mail. But I've given up on that. The Wikipedia site is now so slow to load that I'm completely frustrated. For a large part of today, for me to a) go to a page, b) open the edit field, c) post a message, d) preview, e) save, has meant at least 20 or 30 minutes pure waiting time. Actually more, as I also need to keep checking that I haven't been logged out (=more loading). That's provided I don't get an error message that the whole process has crapped out. I don't know if it's the Atlantic divide or if it's the same where you are. But I'm sorry I haven't written, I would have done if I'd noticed that you replied to my "Ping" message, but I only just saw you did. See, another inconvenience of conversing via Wikipedia is that only the latest edit to a page, as it might be to your talk page, appears on my watchlist, so if there's been an earlier one higher up on the page, it's extremely easy to miss. Anyway. Good night, "Geogre". I wish you'd be George again.--Bishonen 00:32, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You're right, of course. We should go back to e-mailing, and I started last night, but my e-mails seem to be either mopey or dopey, with no middle ground between. Geogre 20:07, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sir John Vanbrugh

Yes I do like his work, and I've actually seen some of it (30 years ago), so I'll give it a shot. Thanks for your nice note. Have you seen the history of Worcestershire sauce? Wetman 00:38, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Bishonen confused by cats again (now nowiki'd!)

No bother, always happy to help. Anyway, it looks like they are all in Category:Plays and not Category:Drama now. Sometimes it just takes a while for the actual category pages to update. -Seth Mahoney 17:03, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)

Excuse my intruding with two points:

I'm not sure which of you nowiki-ed but in any case, putting a colon immediately after the opening brackets (as Seth did above; do section edit to see his Wiki-markup) is fully effective and easier.
If verifying removal is urgent enough, it appears that an edit of (in your case) Category:Drama forces the system to update that listing immediately instead of doing it in background in its own good time. (This is esoteric, but similarly, it appears a cat tag that is not in the markup of the article, but gets appled bcz a template transcluded in the article is changed to include the tag, will sometimes never show up until the article is edited again; i'm vague about whether this depends on nested templates.) Of course, even "dummy" edits (adding a blank at end of a line, e.g.) that make no visible change still clutter the history, but doing it once can do wonders for your confidence, and obviate most future need to see the result promptly.

--Jerzy (t) 17:32, 2004 Oct 13 (UTC)

All that you say feels very familiar. As to "brilliance", i learned abt the colon by noticing someone editing it into what i had writ, without comment. [blush] And learning the edit-it gambit probably involved the brilliance of finally doing an experiment after a long series of coincidences: you see a lot of hangers-on if you decide that some category names really need to be changed.

--Jerzy (t) 20:14, 2004 Oct 13 (UTC)

Oh, wait a minit: i unconsciously read into what you said that you noticed his talk page listed on the cat page. Just mentioning it to keep you lying awake at night. [wink] --Jerzy (t) 20:17, 2004 Oct 13 (UTC)

Buck up, me hearty: the siblings are in (perhaps among others) ~~Category:Written stuff (or whatever)~~ Category:Drama bcz they contain the corresponding tag. Edit each of them, change the corresponding tag to a ~~Drama~~ Plays tag, & bingo, they're moved. (They'll look, as discussed, like they're in both, but as discussed, be patient.) Remember: a cat is just a fancy species of page. (You know that a cat can look at a king don't you? Well, if it's a page, it'll get the chance to. Bada-bing, bada-boom. ROTFLAMOJ. How do i stand it?)

--Jerzy (t) 04:23, 2004 Oct 14 (UTC)

[Strike-thru & (bolded) replacements by Jerzy (t) 05:59, 2004 Oct 14 (UTC)]

BTW, i notice now that Drama does not use the pop-culture def that contrasts it with Adventure, Comedy, and Documentary, and while the text of a Cat should be far less extensive than that of an article, IMO an explicit sentence to avoid that confusion is in order, within the Cat text.

I also note that the descrip of WS Apoc is unreasonable; the cat w/ that descrip should have something like "Apoc'l WS plays" as title, since IIRC there are apocryphal WS poems. (I think you understand that no article on non-dramatic poetry, nor any cat that includes it, can be a child, or any descendant, of drama?) If it were me, i might rename the Cat, but also might just say in its Talk page that it should be done, bcz the quick & easy move tool doesn't work on Cats. (But you seem to have moved so many articles into Plays. So you'll want to know how...) To rename a Cat:

Create a new Cat with the new name (you do so know how),
Copy over the old text,
De-orphan it by editing in (at least one) suitable tag, of a category it can be a sub-Cat of,
Edit the tags in all its children (subcats and articles) to change the name there,
Unless there is a proper use for the old name, consult Speedy Deletion & put it up for speedy.

(In this case, i would make WS Apoc the parent of Apoc'l WS plays.)

Finally, if dramatic port'ls of JC fits in Plays (or Drama for that matter), plays must include drama on film; isn't it time to get such a category turned into a sub-Cat of Plays?
Just a little something-else to keep you awake nites. [smile]
--Jerzy (t) 05:59, 2004 Oct 14 (UTC)

Under Chairman Mao, Life is Happy and Gay

My friend Bo told me that, when he was a child, he danced for Chairman Mao, and the first sentence he learned in English was the above.

I just read "The Shepherd's Week," by Gay. What a cool poem. There are so many neat poems not by Dryden, Swift, and Pope, you know. Anyway, this was anticipatory to writing up an entry on the poem. I'm considering an article on "the pastoral debate" of the early 18th c. It's a pretty tortured thing, but it shows up in several notable poems. Namby Pamby, Pope's references in his blastings of Philips, and Gay's Shepherd's Week are all entries in an argument about how the pastoral should be written (basically, whether you could update it, or if it always had to be Damon and Chloe, etc.).

I keep trying to send images your way, and I keep being thwarted by my ISP. Geogre 03:30, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)