"...some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them..."

It's Epiphany, better known Twelfth Night.  Which, as one of Shakespeare's best loved comedies, Twelfth Night recounts the tale of young Viola, who in mourning her brother, becomes a cross-dresser; Duke Orsino, who, though an Albanian tyrant, spends his days moping about the castle, pining for some girl who doesn't love him; the never-subtle Sir Belch (He's fat and has gastric issues, get it?); the old lets-trick-a-guy-into-acting-crazy-and-then-throw-him-in-a-dungeon thing; and, of course, twinned couples getting married to the wrong twin and not caring about it.

Your loyal blogger is certainly not badmouthing Shakespeare, but obviously, the what passes for comedy has changed in 400 years.

Actually, as someone who watches a lot of BBC, I suppose it hasn't.  This pretty much sounds like any given episode of Little Britain.  In fact, it is the exact storyline of the 2006 Amanda Bynes film She's the Man. Still, this is why I prefer the Bard's histories and tragedies to his comedies.

Though The Taming of the Shrew was pretty good when it was Ten Things I Hate About You.  But to be fair to Shakespeare, Ten Things... had Larisa Oleynik and Letters to Cleo in it.  It couldn't be anything other than great.


Speaking of things that are great, let us thrust this upon you: Thursday, January 21st, from 3:30 to 5:00 PM, we are having an Open House to rechristen the Children's Library.  In case you haven't been down here in a little while, the Children's collection is back in the Main Library Building, with a new room of its own (decorated with murals by the terrific Whitney Kreb).  We're going to have cookies, cocoa, and and creative story time, so we hope you'll drop by with your wee uns!