The Reading Room

12:30 AM

The two comments under this question seem the epitome of chatty to me, but maybe the first one is saying something deep? Are they adding anything of value?

(I should add that the reason I bring it up in chat instead of flagging is I remember seeing other comments like these on other stacks, but was confused why they were there)

(comments of the second type)

(the first one there is just unintelligible to me)

Napoleon Wilson

12:55 AM

Well, I simply flagged the second, it's the kind of useless comment that can go right away. But I wouldn't be surprised if it survives. Flagging and removing comments can be somewhat of a site-by-site lottery.

For the first one I'm probably just too dumb, too.

verbose

1:09 AM

Repcap again! Three days in a row

bobble

10.4 QPD

verbose

@bobble I flagged them both. The first is apparently the type of thing one does if someone says “Macbeth” in the theatre: debag the individual and tweak his genitals. (The language is pretty gender specific; not sure what they’d do if the person who said it was female)

Tsundoku

9:27 AM

@bobble The first comment was a quote from the TV series Blackadder the Third. It's something two superstitious actors say each time someone pronounces Macbeth.(CC @NapoleonWilson )

Don't Mention Macbeth | Blackadder The Third | BBC Comedy Greats

►

I have noticed a serious lack of British high culture in this chatroom :-P

Now if people had flagged that comment because it should have read "Hot potato, orchestra stalls, Puck will make amends.", that would be a different matter.

Rand al'Thor

10:16 AM

@bobble I got a bunch of upvotes on Watership Down Q&A too. Seems like someone was going through that tag.

Tsundoku

Watership Up?

verbose

10:30 AM

💧🚢 ⬆️ 🐇

Bookworm

11:18 AM

0

Q: Meaning of "in whose presence nothing is required but perfect passivity."

This context is from The children's bach by Helen Garner They all walked out on the summer afternoon. The men took Arthur to bowl and bat, deep in the park near the drinking fountain, but the women kept going, with Billy between them, as far as the big cemetery and in through the turnstile. Bill...

Rand al'Thor

1:23 PM

@verbose Your Scottish-play answer has inspired a new HNQ on another site:

13

Q: Was there an increased interest in 'the spirit world' in the aftermath of the First World War?

In this excellent answer on Literature Stack Exchange, a quote from Alexander Leggatt's 'William Shakespeare's Macbeth' states: The sense that evil forces are at work in Macbeth may be a product of the aftermath of the First World War, whose horrific death toll produced a new interest in the spi...

world-war-one

Bookworm

2:09 PM

0

Q: Meaning of deliverance in time?

I was listening a rap and I heard this sentence: Each shiver will deliver us deliverance in time Burn the innocents for penitence if we preempt the crime What does that even mean? Deliverance in time? I thought deliver is to provide or hand over something, like food or cargo. And burning the in...

meaning

Rand al'Thor

2:33 PM

I just asked a new Fontane question (although I still have fewer than @bobble), which may, if some wordplay is lost in translation, be easy for a German speaker like @NapoleonWilson to answer.

Bookworm

0

Q: What is the significance of "Come, Effi"?

In Chapter 3 of Theodor Fontane's novel Effi Briest, which I've started reading online, there seems to be some kind of foreshadowing when Effi's future husband Baron von Innstetten is talking with (or being talked at by) her father: He turned his gaze again and again, as though spellbound, to th...

german-literature theodor-fontane effi-briest

Tsundoku

3:18 PM

@Randal'Thor How many spoilers do you want? ;-)

Napoleon Wilson

It seems to hinge entirely on the previous incident it refers to, so without having read the book it would be rather unanswerable and if anything I'd search for someone who read the book rather than someone who merely speaks the language it's been written in.

Bookworm

0

Q: Significance of the first 18 lines of The Canterbury Tales being a single sentence

Here are the first eighteen lines of the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer: When April with its sweet-smelling showers Has pierced the drought of March to the root, And bathed every vein (of the plants) in such liquid By which power the flower is created; When the West Wind als...

poetry style the-canterbury-tales geoffrey-chaucer

Tsundoku

3:36 PM

As far as I know, Fontane does use foreshadowing. So I'll continue reading the book to see whether my suspicions are confirmed.

bobble

@Tsundoku I apologize for being an America lowlife

Rand al'Thor

@Tsundoku I already read Wikipedia's plot summary, so I'm OK with spoilers.

bobble

5:53 PM

North!

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