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Bookworm
Bookworm
12:46 PM
0
Q: Was Molière’s “Misanthrope” inspired by Menander’s “Dyskolos”?

Gareth ReesThe 4th century BCE comedy Dyskolos (“Old Cantankerous”) by Menander was rediscovered in Egypt in the mid-20th century. The Wikipedia article on the play tells us: The Dyskolos inspired Molière, who knew only the theme of the play, as it had not yet been found, in his writing of The Misanthrope ...

french-literature moliere menander the-misanthrope dyskolos
 
 
4 hours later…
Bookworm
Bookworm
4:30 PM
0
Q: Story about a man who bets his head but not his neck with the devil

polm23I remember a story about a man who bets "his head" with the devil and loses. I do not remember what the wager actually was. The devil is ready to chop the man's head off with an axe, but the man says he bet his head and not his neck, so the devil better take all of the head but none of the neck, ...

identification-request short-stories
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
5:19 PM
@Bookworm That guy was smarter than the bloke who set a pound of flesh as a security for a loan.
 
Gareth Rees
Gareth Rees
5:45 PM
@Tsundoku Merchant of Venice employs a similar technicality: "Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh, / But in the cutting it, if thou dost shed / One drop of Christian blood, etc."
 
 
1 hour later…
bobble
bobble
6:48 PM
I'm not in the right state of mind to use the Railway Series book I borrowed from the school library. Perhaps I'll be able to look at the archive.org version later.
 
 
2 hours later…
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
8:50 PM
@GarethRees Of course :-) But that technicality was employed by Portia, not by Antonio.
 
 
1 hour later…
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
9:50 PM
> “I was going through a town called Bathgate at around 11 o’clock at night. And there was a guy leaning and p*ssing against a front door. He then took out his keys and went inside.” (Frankie Boyle on the most Scottish thing he has ever seen)
> “If you get offended by any jokes, by the way, feel free to Tweet your outrage on a mobile phone made by a ten year old in China.” (also Frankie Boyle)
 

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