All fans of great literature will already know the incredible work of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, but sometimes his work can be so cryptic as to be opaque. Luckily, the previous owner of this used book was kind enough to add her marginalia to increase understanding.
on August 24, 2012 at 7:20 am
Oral sex. You know … like when you talk about it through social intercourse.
on August 24, 2012 at 8:38 am
The film of Rochester’s life, “The Libertine”, is so ruined by poor lighting, miserably poor sound and self-indulgent camera work that it’s hardly worth sitting through. However J. Depp wasted an excellent performance on it. I love his first lines: “You will not like me. And you will like me even less as we go on.”
Rochester’s state portrait shows him leaning on a table with a monkey at his elbow and a goat lying at his feet…both symbols of sexual appetite. He spent his entire short life trying to embarrass the hell out of his pious mother and her friends. Job done.
on August 24, 2012 at 9:16 am
So this “Rochester” of whom you speak … not the same person that Jack Benny kept mentioning in his comedy routines?
With two different ink colors in the marginalia, though, it seems like she was really working hard on this verse. Even if she had to look up standard SAT vocabulary words.