{"id":3622,"date":"2016-03-18T11:44:05","date_gmt":"2016-03-18T16:44:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jaredmcdaris.com\/?p=3622"},"modified":"2016-06-02T15:09:38","modified_gmt":"2016-06-02T20:09:38","slug":"the-wayward-women-dame-anus-letter-soliloquy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jaredmcdaris.com\/?p=3622","title":{"rendered":"The Wayward Women: Dame Anu&#8217;s Letter Soliloquy"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_3623\" style=\"width: 210px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jaredmcdaris.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/sb-da.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3623\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3623\" class=\"wp-image-3623 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/www.jaredmcdaris.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/sb-da-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"sb da\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.jaredmcdaris.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/sb-da-200x300.jpg 200w, http:\/\/www.jaredmcdaris.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/sb-da.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-3623\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sarah Liz Bell as Dame Anu, Act 4 Scene 2 of The Wayward Women<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Dame Anu&#8217;s Letter Speech is an obvious homage to\u00a0Malvolio&#8217;s Letter Speech in <em>Twelfth Night<\/em>. Although it has been &#8220;streamlined,&#8221; removing any interjections from other characters, and it lacks the perennially perplexing puzzler, &#8220;M.O.A.I.,&#8221; I think Anu&#8217;s letter still offers some food for thought. Forged by Dame Grendela (a female Sir Toby by-way-of Fluellen), the letter seems perfectly structured to gull Anu into revealing a side of herself she has hidden her entire life. Grendela, then, somehow possesses unique knowledge of exactly what Anu wants in a man, and precisely how she wants Cordelius to express those attributes.\u00a0She\u00a0even knows how to quell Anu&#8217;s concerns for her own reputation, and feigns\u00a0a willingness to cooperate in her hypocrisy without actually <em>calling<\/em> it hypocrisy. It appears that\u00a0Dame Grendela knows Anu better than she does herself, or even better than Grendela knows <em>herself<\/em> (based on some reactions we see to other speeches in the play).<\/p>\n<p><em>Twelfth Night<\/em> speaks a lot about holding in our desires, especially romantic desires, and how this can warp us. Nowhere is this more strongly paralleled in <em>The Wayward Women<\/em> than with the poor, proud Dame Anu.<\/p>\n<p><span data-offset-key=\"rsao-0-0\"><span data-text=\"true\">COSTUMES by <\/span><\/span><span class=\"_5u8u\" spellcheck=\"false\" data-offset-key=\"rsao-1-0\"><span data-offset-key=\"rsao-1-0\"><span data-text=\"true\">Delena Bradley<br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><span data-offset-key=\"7pjq7-0-0\"><span data-text=\"true\">LIGHTING by <\/span><\/span><span class=\"_5u8u\" spellcheck=\"false\" data-offset-key=\"7pjq7-1-0\"><span data-offset-key=\"7pjq7-1-0\"><span data-text=\"true\">Benjamin Dionysus<br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><span data-offset-key=\"63png-0-0\"><span data-text=\"true\">PHOTO by <\/span><\/span><span class=\"_5u8u\" spellcheck=\"false\" data-offset-key=\"63png-1-0\"><span data-offset-key=\"63png-1-0\"><span data-text=\"true\">INDie Grant Productions, LLC<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dame Anu&#8217;s Letter Speech is an obvious homage to\u00a0Malvolio&#8217;s Letter Speech in Twelfth Night. Although it has been &#8220;streamlined,&#8221; removing any interjections from other characters, and it lacks the perennially perplexing puzzler, &#8220;M.O.A.I.,&#8221; I think Anu&#8217;s letter still offers some &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jaredmcdaris.com\/?p=3622\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theater-stuff","category-wayward-women"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9u111-Wq","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jaredmcdaris.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jaredmcdaris.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jaredmcdaris.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jaredmcdaris.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jaredmcdaris.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3622"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.jaredmcdaris.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3884,"href":"http:\/\/www.jaredmcdaris.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3622\/revisions\/3884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jaredmcdaris.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jaredmcdaris.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jaredmcdaris.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}