Fiction
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Fiction’
Dr Watson is looking for rooms in London, and an old colleague suggests someone who might be able to help him.
Dr Watson, an army surgeon invalided out of the Royal Berkshire Regiment in the Second Afghan War (1878-1880), is looking for rooms in London. Fortunately, he runs into young Stamford, a colleague from his days at Barts, and Stamford knows someone wanting a flatmate to go halves on the rent at 221B, Baker Street.
Charles Dickens sketches for us the shyly ingratiating youth who gets himself in a tangle in the presence of Beauty.
Charles Dickens’s ‘Sketches’ is a collection of character portraits in words, supposedly written for young ladies to prepare them for going about in society. His word-painting is of such dexterity that bashful young gentlemen everywhere will raise their hats to him - if they haven’t left them behind in the street.
Viola tries to tell Orsino, Duke of Illyria, that his beloved Olivia is not the only woman deserving of his attention.
Viola is pretending to be Cesario, a page-boy in the court of Orsino, Duke of Illyria. The Duke uses her as a go-between in his courtship of Olivia, but Viola has fallen in love with Orsino herself, and tries without success to interest him in the possibility of a rival.
Emma tries to reconcile her father to the unaccountable tastes of his nearest and dearest.
Mild Mr Woodhouse cannot quite forgive Mr John Knightley for carrying off his daughter Isabella as bride, even though he dotes on his little grandchildren Henry and John. It is left to Isabella’s sister Emma to calm his fear that the boys’ father is altogether too rough-and-tumble with them.
In Charles Dickens’s tale set around Mugby Junction, a man sees his life flash by like a ghostly train.
At the start of his railway-themed story ‘Mugby Junction’, Charles Dickens wants to tell us about the lead character, whom we know thus far only as a man with two black cases labelled ‘Barbox Brothers’. He is standing with the station’s sole member of staff on the otherwise deserted, rain-soaked platform at three o’clock in the morning.
Don Pedro’s brother John tries to ensure that the course of true love does not run smooth.
‘Much Ado About Nothing’ is William Shakespeare’s enduring comedy of love, imposture and high society, written in 1598 or the following year. The topsy-turvy plot (of which what follows can only be a glimpse) is full of gossipy wit, but it deals with a serious subject: a lady’s reputation.