In a year in which levity as often as not was king, here was a "Hamlet" that dared to look into the darkest recesses of the grief-stricken soul.
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Grandma would be beyond surprised at what Adrian Gostick and Scott Christopher have to say in "The Levity Effect: Why It Pays to Lighten Up" (Wiley).
Since part of the educational purpose of this type of drama was to teach pupils how to behave and express themselves in accordance with the requirements of the upper classes, tragedies were preferred to comedies, because the latter were considered unsuitable in their levity and crudeness.
In fact, she's apparently something of an expert on the subject of levity in law: in 2003, she published an essay entitled, "Brutal Choices in Curricular Design...Top 10 Ways to Use Humor in Teaching Legal Writing".
Only thirty-seven years old:— so much already done for immortality — so much time remaining to maintain and to extend his fame, and to atone for errors in conduct and levities in composition; who will not grieve that such a race has been shortened, though not always keeping the straight path — such a light extinguished, though sometimes flaming to dazzle and to bewilder?
In Ferguson last summer, there wasn't much levity in the days after Mike Brown was killed, either.
You can see levity in everything he does – in the eyes of that affable murderer Dexter, or in the movement of the leaping but gravity-bound Newton on stage at the New York Theater Workshop.
This is a nice, small joke that provides a few grace notes of levity in what is otherwise a lugubrious exercise in spiritual bushwa.
His work is the perfect expression of who he is -- courageous, powerful and multicolored -- gathering us all in an artistic endeavor that values human spirit, connectedness and levity in the face of adversity.
