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When I was a child, I loved reading George Bernard Shaw. No really. Keep in mind, I was reading Tolkien on my own in what most Americans would call primary school. (We called it lower school). I found several collections of the plays in paperback in my parents library and literally read them to pieces. I suppose this is proof of what a weird child I was. I've seen very few of them acted and I think I stopped reading them at seventeen or thereabouts, but they were a huge source of both intellectual fascination and comfort during my grim little war. I suppose it was a bit like the confederates reading Les Miserables over and over when I think about it. I have carried those rubber banded book bits with me through move after move for more than two decades without opening them again. I became entranced my other authors, other playwrites.

It seemed to me time to see what's in them for an adult, if that makes sense. I've seen very few of them acted. (Candida and Pygmalion for sure, and I think I saw some others in my teens on masterpiece theater). Pygmillion and candida are the only ones I've seen as an adult, so when I spotted several of them acted out on dvd at the library, I thought I'd start with those. I'm watching Devil's Disciple now, one of my favorites if you'd asked me at ten or eleven. I'd thought I'd forgotten what was in it, but five minutes in, it all came back to me. It also has Patrick Stewart in it, who back when this came out, I knew as Sejanus, not Picard, who was in his future. It's weirdly intense for me, my reaction now is overlaid by all those strong emotions I invested it with when I was young. I'm not in the least surprised I took to it so, because I can see exactly what I saw in it then, along with a whole different set of things I see in it now. I'm a little scared to see what else I'll dig up.