[j. d. worthington]

I personally have never seen that as a weakness, but I may have to think about that view. To me, though, it has always fit with the idea that the mythological gods and beings of the classical writers were also ruled by such passions.

Incidentally, given your love of Shakespeare, Wilum, here's something you may enjoy thinking about: As the motto for the tale ("I have an exposition of sleep come upon me") is from A Midsummer Night's Dream, what do you think of a possible imaginative connection between Bottom's speech concerning his dream and certain portions of the tale? I ask this because, a while back, in reading "The Tomb", I realized that HPL not only used the Aeneid for his motto for that tale, but was playing on aspects of it as a way of foreshadowing the events as well, through association. He seems to have loved taking such classical themes and tropes and playing on them in more modern terms; perhaps another example of the past reaching forth into the present to engulf certain hapless individuals, or perhaps as an example of how "modern people under lawless conditions tend uncannily to repeat the darkest instinctive patterns of primitive half-ape savagery in their daily life and ritual observances".

At any rate, I'd like to hear your thoughts on the idea of any such connection between Bottom's Dream and those of Joe Slater.