The Alexander Korda film “The Private Life of Don Juan” was the last film made by Douglas Fairbanks Jr. A sort of ironic riff on Fairbanks’ own myth, rather like “Don Juan” was for Byron.
In a couple of weeks I’ll be publishing my Annotated Cantos I + II to celebrate the two-hundredth anniversary of their first publication in 1819. What can you expect to find in the PDF e‑book?
Probably the best way to describe what’s there is to show you part of a page: this is from the early part of Canto I. Don José, Juan’s father, has just died and Juan has come into his inheritance.
A few notes on what you can see here.
- The header shows the lines of the poem on this page.
- The Stanzas are numbered in Roman numerals because… that’s how the poem was first printed.
- The poem occupies the left-side of every page where it appears, and…
- Notes occupy the right-hand column, mostly.
- Although hardly invisible here, the words, phrases that are annotated have subtle underlines.
- There are ’timing marks’ to allow synchronisation between the recording and the text
I hope you will follow the narration and skim the notes if you have time. Then, return to the text when and notes later when you have time to read.