And what is all this life but a kind of comedy, wherein men walk up and down in one another's disguises and act their respective parts, till the property-man brings them back to the attiring house. And yet he often orders a different dress, and makes him that came but just now off in the robes of a king put on the rags of a beggar.

4.173 stars

Before popping a sleeping pill and chugging a Sam Adams I read most of this as our plane headed east across the Atlantic. Donald Trump and John Whittingdale serve to this text's centrality. I awoke and finished the book on foreign shores with an eye to the hegemonic (possibly the GCHQ?) and a love for our all so human failings. This is a must for all lovers of Rabelais and Burton. The musing does become a bit edged towards theology, but overall it is a delightful skewering of our arrogance, our biological exceptionalism, our humble fate as fuckwits.