User talk:Engleham

Welcome!

Hello, Engleham, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! (isn't it nice to see a tag that isn't a warning?) Rklawton 07:56, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please do not keep undoing other people's edits without discussing them first. This is considered impolite and unproductive. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing Wikipedia under the three-revert rule, which states that nobody may revert an article to a previous version more than three times in 24 hours. (Note: this also means editing the page to reinsert an old edit. If the effect of your actions is to revert back, it qualifies as a revert.) Thank you. Tom Harrison ^Talk 15:16, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

An agenda

It is wrong to use the Wikipedia to serve your own, self-serving agenda. WP:Not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_soapbox IP Address 03:47, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Do not vandalise your talk page

Removing warnings from your talk page is Talk page vandalism. It may become a blockable (or bannable) offence, if you continue to do it. IP Address 17:09, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And don't vandalise others' talk pages either

I mean this edit to User:IP Address's user page. Angus McLellan (Talk) 14:35, 21 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to Wikipedia. We invite everyone to contribute constructively to our encyclopedia. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing. However, unconstructive edits, such as those you made to User:IP Address, are considered vandalism. If you continue in this manner you may be blocked from editing without further warning. Please stop, and consider improving rather than damaging the hard work of others. Thanks. - Dakota ~ 05:52, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please stop removing warnings fron your talk page. It is considered vandalism. Thanks.--Dakota ~ 05:52, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Stop removing warnings

Please do not remove warnings from your talk page or replace them with offensive content. Blanking your talk page will not remove the warnings from the page history. If you continue to blank your talk page, you will lose your privilege of editing your talk page. Thanks. ⇒ SWATJester ^Ready Aim _Fire! 05:56, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is your last warning. The next time you vandalize a page, as you did to Talk:James I of England, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. Dakota ~ 05:58, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is the edit you did a page blanking [1]. I also reverted the page. Your statement on that page concerning me can be considered a personal attack. See Wikipedia:No personal attacks.--Dakota ~ 06:56, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User Dakota Kahn aggressively deletes any criticism of herself (and of her multiple IP POV-pushing friend going by the moniker IP Address), so any defence is futile. Few things are more distasteful than those who dictate against a behavior, while doing exactly the same thing themselves. Which is why I've never had much time for self-serving hypocrites.

Engleham

Sexuality of William Shakespeare

You added the following passage, without citation:

In Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio's speech is littered with homosexual imagery: he talks of 'open arses' and 'poppering pear's (i.e. the penis and scrotum) and the 'blind bow boy's butt shaft'. His famous 'Queen Mab' speech is an attempt to woo Romeo, which Romeo doesn't understand, leading leading the frustrated Mercutio to say that Romeo's 'bosom' is 'frozen'.

The "blind bow boy's butt-shaft" is of course cupid's arrow. The other lines are in this speech:

If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.
Now will he sit under a medlar tree,
And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit
As maids call medlars, when they laugh alone.
Romeo, that she were, O, that she were
An open et caetera, thou a poperin pear!
Romeo, good night: I'll to my truckle-bed;
This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep:
Come, shall we go? (Act 2, scene 1)

Of course the context is explicitly heterosexual. Mercutio is saying that Romeo wishes that "his mistress" were a medlar fruit, which was supposed to resemble to female genitals, and that he, Romeo, were a fruit that resembles male genitals, so that they could have sex in the orchard with the other fruit.

The reference to wooing and to a "frozen bosom" is is this passage,

True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air
And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger’d, puffs away from thence,
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south. (Act I, Scene iv)

You can argue that this refers to Mercutio's attempts to convince Romeo of the valuelessness of dreams, but it seems a bit of a stretch to say that the Queen Mab speech was an attempt to seduce Romeo. The other passage is explicitly sexual, so I suppose one could argue that there is a homoerotic subtext there, especially as the last line refers to Mercutio's exclusion from the orchard-bed. But we cannot say that this is simply what the verse directly says, since it doesn't, and in any case we need a citation from a scholar for homoerotic readings. Paul B 09:47, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I am already aware of the site, and had already assumed that you had copied the information from it. Gavin Marshall is an actor and choreographer, not a scholar. His is an imaginative interpretation for a particular performance. It also contains factual errors, such as the false claim that the "frozen bosom" is Romeo's, when the words make it abundantly clear that it isn't. You should never present an individual opinion as a fact. Paul B 22:03, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Henry James

Restored your talk page. Just a friendly word from a fellow editor: you can get in trouble for blanking your talk page, especially if it contains warnings. Anyway, thanks for your additions to the HJ article. I've added more material on James' private life, including quotes and citations from some of James' more intimate letters. HJ guarded his privacy so zealously, so we may never know the exact truth about many of his relationships. That's why I had to splatter all sorts of NPOV qualifiers around.

On the HJ talk page I suggest that we may need to spin off separate articles about James life, the sexuality issue, etc. For instance, the article doesn't even mention the "obscure hurt" controversy and whether James was even physically capable of a sexual relationship. Trying to get all that into an already extensive article might be too difficult. But I've written so many Wikipedia articles about James and his works that I'm pretty well tired out on the subject. Just got finished writing a long article on The Whole Family, for instance. Down the road, maybe we can start work on some spinoff articles.

Again, thanks for your contributions, and please don't blank your talk page. I don't want to see you get in any trouble at Wikipedia. Casey Abell 22:41, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just posted a comment on the Henry James talk page about our recent additions to the Life section of the article. I can't agree with your "ghastly mess" characterization of the section or the article as a whole. I've reread the section and the entire article, and—if I say so myself—I think the prose is interesting, well-organized and balanced.

Also, and I'll warn right now that I'm about to preach, I would try to pull back on extreme statements of opinion about other Wikipedia contributors. I notice that you've now included on your user page an attack on some Wikipedia editors as "the most loathsome hypocrites, bullies and ill-educated individuals it is possible to [imagine]." I appreciate your honesty, but this sort of personal attack—while nice and lively for a flame board on the Web—is not really constructive in writing an encyclopedia. More specifically, it's likely to nudge other editors towards viewing you as an POV-pusher intolerant of other people's views. And I'm afraid that the blanking of warnings on your talk page will only contribute to that impression.

Please don't take this as anything but mild and constructive criticism. We don't all have to love each other to death around here, but the best way to build and influence the encyclopedia is to treat other editors as if they are just as non-loathsome, non-bullying and well-educated as yourself. Even if you're not sure about that (wink). Casey Abell 15:28, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

MedCab James I of England case

Hi, I am going to be the mediator for the James I of England MedCab case and the discussion is going to start on the talk page. Also, could I ask your opinion on this version of the article? Addhoc 18:24, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]