Evening under Lamplight Podcast

The second part of the horror story of the ditch of thieves, the most spectacular canto in the Inferno.

We enter the horrible ditch of the thieves. If you get the creeps from snakes, you might want to be on your guard. But don't run away: there's a fascinating incident here.

A scene with magic spectacle and guilt, and triumph for Prospero. But his plans are not finished.

A drunken scene, an inept plot to overthrow Prospero, some other nasty business, and some etherial magic. On the surface, a simple, comic moment in the play, but a closer look shows a few deeper aspects here.

The beautiful love scene in the middle of the play, where the world beyond becomes irrelevant as they declare their love.

Dante and Virgil flee from the demons of corruption and slide down into the doleful ditch of the hypocrites, for the next round of surprises.

We're now in the middle of the public corruption episode, where you can't trust anyone, and the sin sticks to them all.

Canto 21 begins an extended episode about public corruption, a sin both horrible and, in an odd way, comic. And because we're in the region of fraud, there's a lot to say about  whom to trust and whom to be suspicious of.

And now for some comic relief, a comic, or perhaps pathetic version of the insubordination theme.

We watch the King and his nobles to see how they are faring on the island, and there's conspiracy and insubordination here, very cleverly dramatised.