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Macbeth
ACT I SCENE I A desert place. Thunder and lightning.
[Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches]
First Witch When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
Second Witch When the hurlyburly's done,
When the battle's lost and won.
Third Witch That will be ere the set of sun.
First Witch Where the place?
Second Witch Upon the heath.
Third Witch There to meet with Macbeth.
First Witch I come, graymalkin!
Second Witch Paddock calls.
Third Witch Anon!
ALL Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air.
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/...
Whether the story is in a tense play like Macbeth, a film like The Sting, or a fantasy or mystery story, we get a thrill when the chase begins and a chill when it ends.
Act 5, Scene 8
MACBETH
Thou losest labour:
As easy mayst thou the intrenchant air
With thy keen sword impress as make me bleed:
Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;
I bear a charmed life, which must not yield,
To one of woman born.
MACDUFF
Despair thy charm;
And let the angel whom thou still hast served
Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb
Untimely ripp'd.
MACBETH
Accursed be that tongue that tells me so,
For it hath cow'd my better part of man!
And be these juggling fiends no more believed,
That palter with us in a double sense;
That keep the word of promise to our ear,
And break it to our hope. I'll not fight with thee.
MACDUFF
Then yield thee, coward,
And live to be the show and gaze o' the time:
We'll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
Painted on a pole, and underwrit,
'Here may you see the tyrant.'
MACBETH
I will not yield,
To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet,
And to be baited with the rabble's curse.
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'
http://www.shakespeare-literature.com/...
The setting of thrilling stories is usually ominous with fog in London, or the whispering of trees in a forest.
From the Prologue of The Solitary House by Lynn Shepherd:
From where we stand, the air is so deadened with a greasy yellow fog that you can barely see three paces ahead, and risk stumbling in the street over milk-cans, shattered bottles, and what look at first like rat-ridden heaps of rags, until they stare back at you with gin-hollowed eyes, and hold out their blackened hands for hard cash.
From Two O’Clock Eastern Wartime by John Dunning
Page 309
The woods deepened, the trees grew thick and tall. The road turned sharply and brought him into a long straightaway. He covered this at the same relentless gait; the road dipped left and the trees began thinning out. He came into the marshlands, and far across the way he saw the flashing red light of the radio station…
He moved on. Again the trees closed in and the forest looked ancient and enormous. He might have stepped back a thousand years, to the age of Arthur, or half a step to Shakespeare’s day. If a man wanted to imagine himself in a forest of ancient Cornwall, or a wood near Stratford, this was a good place to do it.
A small cottage rose out of a dark misty glade…
Even reading a biography gives us chills as we watch young men debating and playing rugby in 1913 in
Tolkien and the Great War by John Garth. We know what is coming and what horror awaits them in the trenches and No Man’s Land of WW I.
The chase in this true story is to learn about Tolkien as he acts to become a writer and to write his books on Middle Earth.
On page 62 we find J. R. R. creating a language called Qenya.
Crucially, Tolkien used Qenya to create a world like our own, yet unlike. Its trees are ours but their names make them sound as if they on the verge of communication: the laburnum is lindelokte, ‘singing cluster’. While siqilisse, ‘weeping willow’, also means ‘lamentation’ itself. This is the world of austa and yelin, ‘summer’ and ‘winter; of lisele, piqele, and piqisse, ‘sweetness’, ‘bitterness’, and ‘grief’. But enchantment courses through Qenya: from kuru ‘magic, wizardry’ to Kampo the Leaper, a name for Earendel, and to a whole host of other names for peoples and places that emerged during a coupe of years’ work on the lexicon. For Tolkien, to a greater extent even than Charles Dickens, a name was the first principle of story-making. His Qenya lexicon was a writer’s notebook.
It is not so much that we seek cheap thrills in bad books as that we accept the chill as part of the setting that accompanies stories that keep us reading and touch our heart.
Part of the thrill of the chase is watching the detective gather clues and deal with them.
In Andrea Camilleri’s stories about Inspector Montalbano, there are times when he receives an insight while dreaming. Montalbano is known for not giving up. It is thrilling to watch him work and see him closing in on the truth.
The Terra-Cotta Dog
The Snack Thief
The Voice of the Violin
Excursion to Tindari
The Smell of the Night
Rounding the Mark
The Patience of the Spider
The Paper Moon
August Heat
The Wings of the Sphinx
The Track of Sand
The Potter’s Field
Inspector O in the four mysteries by James Church set in North Korea knows he should not try to find the answers, but still continues the hunt and faces extreme danger as a result. The things he uncovers are bone-chilling. We learn what it is like to live under a dictatorship.
A Corpse in the Koryo
Hidden Moon
Bamboo and Blood
The Man with the Baltic Stare
In the mystery Bad Things Happen by Harry Dolan, we learn about a man using the name David Loogan and we have to wonder why he is “using” the name and who he really is and what is in his past. That worry continually sits in your mind as the story unfolds and a young girl likes him. Is she in danger?
In the fantasy story, Way of Kings vol 1 The Stormlight Archives, by Brandon Sanderson there are many chilling things. One is the intro of the chapters where thoughts of dying people are collected. Another is the fact that the hero is a bridge carrier and they die rapidly. A third is the story of a young woman who has to go to great lengths to save her family. We are drawn in by the chilling events and follow the characters on their journeys with great concern.
We are drawn into stories with settings that are scary and evoke the story and we turn the pages due to the suspense that holds us in thrall with concern for the characters.
What are your favorite stories that thrill you and chill you and that you couldn’t lay down?
Diaries of the Week:
Write On! The Good Fight
by GussieFN
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Thursday Classical Music OPUS 85: Brahms' Symphony #1 in C Minor+*
by Dumbo
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Books So Bad They're Good: Coming Attractions!
by Ellid
http://www.dailykos.com/...
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