Been reading this strip for approx. 3 years, and have been intrigued by the slight changes popping up in the annual repeat cycle, and the variable “slip” between time in the strip and real time. Now that folks are commenting on Pandolph’s struggles with life, I am reminded of the only other Pandolph whose name I know – the “Fra Pandolph” referred to in Browning’s “My Last Duchess”. My high school English teacher had us read Browning, and I was later forever changed by hearing a recording of Charles Laughton reading “My Last Duchess”. Both the painter “Fra Pandolph” and the “Duchess” are tragic figures in the poem; you imagine him probably dying on the rack in the Duke’s torture chamber. Maybe our Pandolph carries some of the genes imagined by Browning? Or…, maybe not, as pointed out to me by Charles Laughton. Ah, “Barkeater Lake”, a somewhat random and intriguing tale…
Been reading this strip for approx. 3 years, and have been intrigued by the slight changes popping up in the annual repeat cycle, and the variable “slip” between time in the strip and real time. Now that folks are commenting on Pandolph’s struggles with life, I am reminded of the only other Pandolph whose name I know – the “Fra Pandolph” referred to in Browning’s “My Last Duchess”. My high school English teacher had us read Browning, and I was later forever changed by hearing a recording of Charles Laughton reading “My Last Duchess”. Both the painter “Fra Pandolph” and the “Duchess” are tragic figures in the poem; you imagine him probably dying on the rack in the Duke’s torture chamber. Maybe our Pandolph carries some of the genes imagined by Browning? Or…, maybe not, as pointed out to me by Charles Laughton. Ah, “Barkeater Lake”, a somewhat random and intriguing tale…