When in Rome...?

[alexxkay]

I'm in the middle of reading a book kestrell got me for Xmas, _Shakespeare and Amateur Performance: A Cultural History_, by Michael Dobson. Recommended for those who, like many of my friends, have an interest in the subject.

While it is thoroughly researched and footnoted, the jargon is rare and authorial tone is light. The author occasionally lets his inner ham out to play, as in the following delightful sentence, discussing a man from Geneva who spent many years in England, performing amateur plays in French, then on returning home, produced a bunch of amateur Shakespeare performances in English:

A combination of Nick Bottom and the Scarlet Pimpernel, Lullin clearly knew all about the potential cultural cachet to be gained from being the right kind of foreigner in the right wrong place at the right time: as the old maxim has it, 'when in Rome, do as the Greeks do'.