A Very Excellent Piece of Villainy

Another short week, and tonight a quiet Friday. Hilarious plans in the works for the morrow, though, as a newspaper advert yesterday brought news of "Dueling Pianos" at a celtic pub across the Harbour. A Nova Scotia native set to take on "European Champion" (can there be such a thing -ed.) Barry Colson of Norway. How can that be anything but hilarious?

Read Titus for the first time last week - and must confess to finding the extremity of Aaron's villainy a bit of a comic riot. Truly, the first in the long line of Dr. Evils. Below is an excerpt after he is caught (in Act 5 Scene 1) lamenting only that he cannot continue tormenting the world's inhabitants. "Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves/And set them upright at their dear friends' doors." It is the "oft" that makes that so humorous. Ah, Master Shakespeare. Happy TFI Friday.

LUCIUS

Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?

AARON

Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.
Even now I curse the day--and yet, I think,
Few come within the compass of my curse,--
Wherein I did not some notorious ill,
As kill a man, or else devise his death,
Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it,
Accuse some innocent and forswear myself,
Set deadly enmity between two friends,
Make poor men's cattle break their necks;
Set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night,
And bid the owners quench them with their tears.
Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves,
And set them upright at their dear friends' doors,
Even when their sorrows almost were forgot;
And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,
Have with my knife carved in Roman letters,
'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.'
Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things
As willingly as one would kill a fly,
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed
But that I cannot do ten thousand more.