A Pain in the Arras

It's annoying when people try to make you like things. It usually has the effect of making you despise them even more.

My Uncle Raymond is convinced that BMW's are the acme of automotive cool. I have always regarded them as prickmobiles, and his ill advised advocacy has only served to confirm the rightness of my view.

I used to feel the same way about Shakespeare and Charles friggin' Dickens. Teachers trying to shove those two down my craw produced what I fully expected to be a life long antipathy.

"Falstaff is one of the finest comic creations in literature."

Discuss.

"Falstaff is a fat, unfunny, drunken bloater."

'Hamlet' was the worst. People hiding behind curtains so they could jump out and stab people didn't strike me as very frightening. The play within a play was shite. Ophelia was a whinging cow. Rozencrantz and Guildernstern had stupid names and, being dead, weren't even in the play.

I still remember the groans and muffled "oh for fuck's sake" elicited by the announcement that an amateur dramatic troupe would be visiting to treat us to a performance of 'the Tempest'.
It wasn't so bad actually, as the longueurs were mitigated by Miranda's tit popping out half way through the second act. Rather a fine tit it was to, as I recall.

I appreciate Shakespeare these days and, to be honest, I prefer Charles Dickens to a lot of the post modern garbage that masquerades as the modern literary novel.

Funny how things change.