That is All You Need to Know

 
That is All You Need to Know trailer
We were in Salisbury again last week, to see That is All You Need to Know, a production by Idle Motion at Salisbury Arts Centre telling the story of the Bletchley Park codebreakers.

Gawain & the Green Knight

Oh, wow! Yesterday we went to the Four of Swords Theatre's Gawain & the Green Knight in Exeter Cathedral. If you're in the region, check out out future productions.

Ouida - misattributed photo

Further to the previous post about late-Victorian female authors, I've run into a slight puzzle concerning Ouida (Maria Louise Ramé) and image attribution.

Bayan time (18) - Mysteries

Panic time,  more like! I've signed up to play in the band for a local production of The Mysteries, Tony Harrison's adaptation of the mediaeval mystery plays - rather strange retellings of Biblical stories where the canonical texts are embellished with folk-myth accretions and contemporary dramatic elements.

Ben Beeson, the musical director, was looking for a slightly off-the-wall band line-up, and asked me if I'd like to take part. It's quite a challenge. The production is on in about a month, and my sight-reading is very slow; plus I've had to rapidly sharpen my ability to find specific notes and chords on the bayan. However, the first rehearsal went pretty well, and it seems more people than I realised are in not so different a position.

From the flyer:

Tuesday 23rd to Friday 26th April, St Margaret's Church
The Mysteries
Tony Harrison's adaptation of the mediaeval mystery plays, presented by Estuary Players: Director Alan Caig / Musical Director Ben Beeson
7.30pm
Tickets £8 from Topsham News or telephone 01392 873043
www.topshamestuaryplayers.org.uk

"The Mystery Plays represent the beginnings of English drama. Performed by the craft guilds around mediaeval cities, they were designed to teach the stories and lessons of the Bible - Old and New Testaments - at a time when not only was the Bible not translated into English, but most people could not read anyway.

"They are a rugged but poetic way of telling stories, and are told with humour, passion, and a relentless devotion to moving the plot along.

"Estuary Players are aiming to make this a big production, with a live band throughout, a large cast and all in the exciting setting of Topsham's magnificent parish church. We are using the adaptation made by poet Tony Harrison for the acclaimed National Theatre production in the early 80's, although that eventually extended to three full plays, and included long plays about the Harrowing of Hell and Doomsday which we are not going to attempt.

"Harrison drew on all the extant cycles, the complete ones of which are the York, Wakefield and Coventry versions, and he retained the mediaeval English where it was understandable still, but where not he retained a Northern rhythm and vocabulary so that the whole is as authentic as it can be and still be perfectly understandable to modern audiences."

Elaborating on this: "I've had to rapidly sharpen my ability to find specific notes and chords on the bayan". It may may sound surprising, pretty lame even, that I haven't practised this as much as I might. But the bayan strongly depends on muscle memory (particularly for the left hand, whose buttons the player can't see) and when playing I'm chiefly aware of the relative positional relationships associated with the key of a tune - tonic, dominant, subdominant, relative minor - rather than what their note names are. I don't often need to (say) hit a G# with no context.

To help with this, I ran up a little reference chart for the white notes.

The convention with button-key accordion note charts is near-invariably to present the keyboard like this as if you were looking at it lying on your side. I don't know why - maybe it's ease of fitting on a page, maybe it's piano accordion influence - but I've never found it very easy to use.

The one I made (right) breaks with that convention, by being orientated the way you actually see the right-hand keyboard if you lean over and look down at it, and I find it a lot more helpful.

- Ray

A fight with sledgehammers!

Let's have something sensational.

A while back, I noticed references to a lost 1902 English short film called A Fight with Sledge Hammers, whose existence is attested in a number of movie books, and which some have called "the first video nasty". A contemporary description:

Two blacksmiths bash each other to pulp with hammers. throw iron bars at each other, and all for the love of a girl. See the sensational ending in which Joe holds Fred's head on the anvil and is about to bang his brains out with a sledge hammer but is prevailed upon by the girl to spare the other's life. See the victor crawl battered and bleeding across the floor, his all but senseless form dragged up on to its feet by the policeman who takes him into custody.
- 1902 advertising blurb, reproduced in The Miracle of the Movies, Leslie Wood, 1947

There's a flyer reproduced here - Ultra-violence from the dawn of the movies - at the blog The Vault of Buncheness.

I was interested in tracking the origins. The Internet Movie Database credits the script to ...

Wilson Barrett (sketch "The Sledgehammer")

... (Wilson Barrett being a successful late-Victorian actor-manager well-known for melodramas) and this detail immediately tracked the story back to an original:

Another domestic play, The Sledgehammer, adapted from the Flemish original of Neston le Thiers, was completed early in 1897. It is a melodrama of murder, false accusation, wrong conviction, and tables turned on the criminals and had its debut with one of Barrett's own road companies in February at the Theatre Royal, Kilbern [sic]
- The art of the actor-manager: Wilson Barrett and the Victorian theatre, James Michael Thomas, UMI Research Press, 1984

A bit of Googling found "Neston le Thiers" to be a misnomer for the Flemish playwright Nestor de Tière, and the original to be his 1893 rural melodrama Roze Kate, het Treurspel der Smeden (Rose Kate, the Tragedy of the Blacksmiths). The full text of the play (in Flemish) is in the Internet Archive (ID rozekatehettreur00ti) - but despite the date, there's no sign of the English translation online.

It looks a good yarn. Matheus Dirix, a middle-aged blacksmith, has three sons: the nasty Jacob and the weak-willed Simon, and the hardworking Everard (who is betrothed to Rose Kate). The ailing Matheus dies, and some months later his widow plans to remarry. Jacob and Simon realise that the marriage would lose them their inheritance, and Jacob pushes Simon into murdering their mother, framing Everard, who is sentenced to death. Rose Kate, to help her fiance, flirts with Jacob and Simon in turn, hoping to trick them into giving something away. This sets the two brothers against each other, and they fight with sledgehammers. Both are fatally injured, but before he dies, Jacob confesses to the murder, in front of witnesses.

Here's the exciting climax, in which the two fight, watched by Rose Kate and a hidden witness, Walkiers:

SIMON (Een stap vooruitdoende). Wat wacht ge? Hier staat een man.

JACOB Ik vrees u niet! Hier ben ik, laffe hond! dom beest! ellendige verrader! Uw leven wil ik!

(Beiden zwaaien de hamers achteruit en slaan: de hamers botsen op elkander. Beiden wijken een stap. — Walkiers verschijnt in de deuropening links en ziet, in het halfdonkere staande, onbeweeglijk toe).

SIMON Gij gaat ter helle! — Verdoemd! (Den hamer wegwerpend). Te licht is die! (Hij grijpt cen anderen). Aan mij! Roze Kate! Aan mij! Aan mij!

JACOB (Ook van hamer verwisselend) . Aan mij! En al het goed aan mij! O beest, te schoon, de kans! Aan mij de erfenis, aan mij alleen!

(Zij kampen: zij treffen elkander op den schouder. Een gebrul ontsnapt hun).

SIMON Te licht, die slag!

JACOB Voel deze!

(Zij kampen en slaan met overgeweldige kracht. Gelijktijdige dubbele slag. Jacob treft Simon op het hoofd, en Simon treft Jacob op de borst: Simon ploft, als van den bliksem getroffen, dood ten groude; Jacob wankelt en valt eindelijk roerloos neer. Rose Kate werpt den fakkel weg ...)

Translating idiomatically as best I can manage:

SIMON (taking a step forward). What you waiting for? Here's a man.

JACOB I'm not afraid of you! Here I am, cowardly dog! stupid beast! wretched traitor! I want your life!

(Both hammers swing back and forth: the hammers collide on each other. Both take a step. - Walkiers appears in the doorway and looks left, standing in the half dark, motionless).

SIMON You go to hell! - Damn! (He throws away the hammer). That's too light! (He grabs another). To me! Rose Kate! To me! To me!

JACOB (Also swapping hammers). To me! And you're better off with me! You beast, this is too good a chance! The inheritance is mine, all mine!

(They fight: they hit each other on the shoulder. A roar escapes them).

SIMON Call that a blow?

JACOB Feel this!

(They fight with greater vigour. With a simultaneous double blow, Jacob hits Simon on the head, and Simon hits Jacob in the chest: Simon collapses dead to the ground, as if struck by lightning; Jacob falters and finally falls down motionless. Rose Kate throws the torch away ...)

The play seems to have done well, both in its native language (Nestor de Tière was acclaimed as an author of vigorous and realistic peasant dramas) and in Wilson Barrett's translation. It had a London revival in July 1911, and a further boost overseas in 1914 when the Australian and New Zealand rights were acquired by Messrs George Willoughby (see Stage Jottings, The Auckland Star, 31 January, 1914).

Apart from the 1902 English one-act segment filmed by Dicky Winslow as A Fight with Sledgehammers, in 1912 the full play was filmed as a silent in Holland by Oscar Tourniaire as Roze Kate, with the plot somewhat elaborated (for instance, to include a frantic horse ride by Roze Kate to get the confession to the authorities in time to save Everard from execution - see Of joy and sorrow: a filmography of Dutch silent fiction, Geoffrey Donaldson, Stichting Nederlands Filmmuseum, 1997). The 1912 film is also lost.

Roze Kate would make a nice am-dram revival as a piece of period Grand Guignol melodrama. I rather see it updated, with Simon and Jacob fighting it out with chainsaws ... *

- Ray

* A concept that has unfortunately stuck in my mind ever since I misheard the lyrics of Country Life by Show of Hands as containing the line:

Lost two fingers in a chainsaw fight

It's actually "a chainsaw bite".

Phillpotts censorship drama!

Cold Comfort Watchett Hill Farm, setting of The Secret Woman

Kevin Dixon, at the always interesting Torquay's Other History section of The People's Republic of South Devon, recently mentioned Eden Phillpotts' 1912 spat with the Lord Chamberlain over the dramatisation of his Dartmoor-based tragic melodrama The Secret Woman: Torquay’s Other History: Eden Phillpotts upsets the Censors.

I'd heard about this before, but never bothered to chase up the details. A spot of background: inthe UK, censorship of theatre by the Lord Chamberlain's office came about with the Licensing Act 1737, a piece of political gaming to suppress criticism of Robert Walpole's government. The Lord Chamberlain's power were reduced in the Theatres Act 1843 to censorship of plays not " fitting for the preservation of good manners, decorum or of the public peace", and this was the situation that still applied in 1912.

 Anyhow, the Lord Chamberlain refused permission for the staging of The Secret Woman unless a few sentences were altered; Phillpotts, on a point of principle, refused to give in. Most accounts describe it thus far, but don't elaborate. However, I just found the details in the 1924 book The Place of Eden Phillpotts in English Peasant Drama by Charles William Meadowcroft.

What were these passages to which the Chamberlain objected? It was impossible to find out without writing to Mr. Phillpotts and he has kindly furnished me with the passages in dispute. These thoroughly support Mr. Phillpotts in the position he took at the time.

The censored passages in The Secret Woman show, as Phillpotts says, that only principle was involved and that the passages themselves were nothing out of the way except in the pudding mind of the authorities.

The passages are as follows:-

p. 31
"I saw the two of them thicken into one" [deletion]

p. 36
"The way of a man's body
My flesh and blood's a bit too much for you"—to—"a bit too much for me sometimes."

Act IV p. 72 (bottom)
"I only nursed my flesh" to end of sentence [I only nursed my flesh an' kept it plump an' sweet for him]

It all seems pretty trivial even by the standards of the time, but Phillpotts digging his heels in turned it into a Cause. The allegedly controversial nature of the content was countersunk by the cryptic references to it in a House of Commons question:

Mr. LYNCH asked the grounds on which leave was refused to Mr. Eden Philpotts to produce a play entitled "The Secret Woman"?
Mr. McKENNA [Home Secretary] Leave has not been refused to produce the play "The Secret Woman." On consideration, and after consulting his Advisory Board, the Lord Chamberlain licensed this play to the manager of the Kingsway Theatre on the 5th instant, subject to the elimination of five short passages, which were considered objectionable.
Mr. LYNCH Will the right hon. Gentleman, for the benefit of the Members of this House, kindly read those passages which were struck out as objectionable?
Mr. McKENNA I shall be very happy to show the passages in question to any Member of the House privately, but I should be most unwilling to read out in public passages of so objectionable a character.
- Hansard, HC Deb 19 February 1912 vol 34 cc286-7 286

A group of respected writers wrote a letter to Times, of which the gist was the following:

"We, Mr Phillpotts's fellow-writers, have read this play, and find it to be the conscientious work of an artist doing his best in his own way. . . . To our mind the play is worthy work, such as a stage of high aims should ever be ready to welcome, and we feel a warm indignation over the stigma cast by the Lord Chamberlain upon an author whom his fellow-writers and the English-speaking world generally have for many years held in admiration and esteem. Never in all these years of novel- writing has a word been breathed by any responsible person or paper against his fair fame ; but the moment he has the ambition to write a play in the same spirit that inspired his novels he is at the mercy of an official who knows no better than to serve him thus. "

Mr Phillpotts is the victim to-day, but of course it may be any of us to-morrow. Many of us have never written plays, though most of us would like to do so. There is not perhaps another field so fine in the England of to-day for a man or woman of letters, but all the other literary fields are free. This one alone has a blind bull in it.

" We who sign this letter may be otherwise engaged ; some of us may be old and done, and no longer matter. Our chance has gone by. But there are men and women who are coming — are they also to be warned off? Can we strike no blow for the young ?

William Archer. Henry James.
J. M. Barrie. Jerome K. Jerome.
R. C. Carton. George Moore.
Joseph Conrad. Gilbert Murray.
Arthur Quiller-Couch. John Masefield.
W. L. Courtney. Alfred Noyes.
Arthur Conan Doyle. Arthur Wing Pinero.
John Galsworthy. Elizabeth Robins.
Frederic Harrison. G. Bernard Shaw.
Anthony Hope Hawkins. Alfred Sutro.
Maurice Hewlett. H. G. Wells.
W. H. Hudson. I. Zangwill."

- quoted from Censorship in England (Fowell, Frank; Palmer, Frank, 1913, Internet Archive ID censorshipinengl00foweuoft)

Thomas Hardy, interestingly, declined to be a signatory. Michael Millgate says in his 2001 book Thomas Hardy's Public Voice: The Essays, Speeches, And Miscellaneous Prose: "He thought The Secret Woman undistinguished as a play, the changes demanded by the Lord Chamberlain easy to accommodate, and the letter of protest overstated". Nevertheless, the play attracted attention as a data point in an ongoing censorship debate at the time, and a telling one because when it was staged uncut as a free performance, nobody could even pinpoint the problem.

When the play was actually produced at a private performance in February 191 2, it met with a good reception, and the critics were unable to discover what the objectionable lines might have been. The Times wrote : " No one who obtains an invitation in the hope of finding prurience or blasphemy will be paid for his trouble '; and another journal stated, absolute truth, " that the average playgoer, after hearing the piece, would admit that he failed to guess which were the passages in question, or to recollect any one of them." There are in the play passages of healthy passion and of broad farmyard humour, without which the characters could not possibly have been true to life, and the Censor probably took offence at these passages because they were not couched in drawing-room periphrases. After all, to expect an author to put the double-entendres of Mayfair into the mouths of Dartmoor is no more absurd than forbidding him to use the word " thighs," as Colman did, on the ground of indecency.
- Censorship in England [ibid]

Steve Nicholson's The Censorship of British Drama, 1900-1968 - Volume 1: 1900-1932 (University of Exeter Press, 2005) sheds further light on the background. It seems heels were being dug in on both sides of the debate, as Sir Douglas Dawson, Comptroller of the Lord Chamberlain's Department (who seems to have been a military-aristocratic control freak) viewed it as part of a conspiracy by disgruntled authors to bring down the whole censorship system. He'd advised the pro-censorship MP Sir Edward Carson, for instance:

There are four or five authors whose plays have been rejected in the last ten years, and four or five MPs who I hear are disappointed authors. These eight or ten people are on the warpath to abolish the censor.
- Censorship in England [ibid]

Dawson's no-compromise view prevailed. But the ban was rescinded in 1922, when the then Lord Chamberlain, the 8th Duke of Atholl, found nothing to worry about. His view on the "thicken into one" sentence, for instance, was:

Any one who has been in the mist on a hill and has seen two objects making towards each other and meeting can easily understand this phrase, and I do not for one moment accept the interpretation which appears to be put on it.
- quoted in The Censorship of British Drama, 2005, ibid.

The whole institution of stage censorship in the UK was abolished under the Theatres Act 1968.

The Secret Woman (Eden Phillpotts, New York / Macmillan, 1905, Internet Archive ID secretwoman01philgoog).
The Secret Woman; a play in five acts (Eden Phillpotts, New York / Brentano's, 1914, Internet Archive ID secretwomanplayi01phil).

I've had a quick skim, and it seems "loam and lovechild" melodramatics of exactly the type satirised by Stella Gibbons in Cold Comfort Farm. I'm coming round to the conclusion that Phillpotts, though he tends to be idolised in this part of the country as a regional author, was really not that good a writer. He's a bit like a Thomas Hardy clone, but in comparison to Hardy, I find his descriptive prose uncomfortably dense, his characters unmemorable, and his style overall rather impersonal, in a way that fails to engage my interest in either landscape or story.

- Ray

Full Dark House

Euw. I just spent most of the day in bed coughing, courtesy of a bug I picked up mid-week. But it gave me a chance to read Christopher Fowler's Full Dark House.

I mentioned Fowler's "Bryant & May" detective series in 2010, when I read his 2008 The Victoria Vanishes. Possibly I dropped into the series at the wrong point (i.e. its then final book), but I've remedied that by reading the first, which Felix kindly sent me.

Full Dark House starts with the rather bold device of introducing an elderly duo of London detectives - Bryant and May - via killing one of them off in a bomb explosion. Then the story proceeds by intercutting the surviving partner's investigation with a flashback to their first case together, a series of gruesome murders (apparently themed serial murder based on the Greek muses) in the Palace Theatre in November 1940, during the London Blitz.

Police procedural is a staple of fiction, but Fowler's angle is that Bryant & May work for the bizarre and underfunded "PCU" (Peculiar Crimes Unit) which - with the exception of the dapper and stoical May - is largely staffed by misfits from other departments. Bryant, heading it, is a "tortoise-like" badly-dressed hypochondriac who sees no problem in consulting mediums as an aid to the investigation of crimes such as the "Leicester Square Vampire". Again, the idea of mismatched detective partners is pretty staple, but Bryant and May are extremely likeable, and Full Dark House is populated with similarly sympathetic grotesques.

The plot is, essentially, an extended 'contrafactum' on The Phantom of the Opera, and the book skilfully portrays the gothic atmosphere, and the relationships and conflicts within a theatre company producing a revival of Offenbach's satirical Orphée aux enfers in what proves to be a controversial adaptation: the faux-nude costumes risk breaching the Lord Chamberlain's then censorship of theatrical nudity. Fowler neatly slots this fictional production into the theatre's real timeline - a gap between summer 1940, when a revival run of Chu Chin Chow ceased due to bombing, and summer 1941, when it restarted. Overall the novel is a vigorous and historically accurate take on Blitz-era London - darkly comic without being the least flippant about the horror of the time - and Fowler's general fascination with the little-known corners and 'deeps' of London shines through (for example, I'd never heard of The Other St Paul’s on Vauxhall Bridge) - but without the book turning into a "research dump" of what the author found out. I highly recommend it.

The only downside is that this is a book where (at least, if you're me) you constantly want to Google the details. The Palace Theatre, of course, still exists, and deserves to be considered in its own right a character in Full Dark House. As is easily findable online, it started out in 1891 as Richard D'Oyly Carte's Royal English Opera House, but rapidly failed in that role (in part due to its initial run of Sullivan's lacklustre Ivanhoe) and became The Palace Theatre of Varieties in 1892. Ir's a building of the astonishing complexity required to contain all the machinery of top-of-the-range stage productions. The arthurlloyd.co.uk Musical Hall and Theatre site has a special feature - The Royal English Opera House - Now the Palace Theatre - with photos, contemporary sketches, and even floor plans of its many levels.

As I mentioned back in 2010, there's more of interest at Christopher Fowler's website. His Independent series on forgotten authors is also worth checking out: the Neglected Books site has usefully collated archive links: “Invisible Ink".

- Ray

Cogita ante salis

Curtius Leaping into the Gulf - Benjamin Haydon

THINK BEFORE YOU LEAP

Suddenly, time just …. stops. It's strange. I feel how I suppose a lark's tongue feels when it's suspended in aspic and heading towards someone's gullet. They say when you're about to die, your whole life flashes before your eyes. So I should be seeing my foalhood, my first mating, my racing triumphs at the Circus Maximus. (PAUSES) But I can tell you, I'm not getting any of that. It's just a quiet moment of crystal clarity. I know it's the end of my life, and I have a long, long second for reflection.

Yes, that's me: the one with the hooves and panicked expression. He's the one wearing the false six-pack and that vague “Did I leave those honeyed dormice in the microwave?” look on his face. And we're here for the stupidest reason. Geology. A great hole opened up, right in the middle of the Forum here in Rome. Some said it was a fissure in a lake bed, others that the spot was zapped by lightning, or that it was an earthquake. I didn't get the full story. But it was clearly geological.

I know, it's a big jump (so to speak) from Earth Sciences to taking a suicidal flying leap, but then that's Romans for you. You know them – good solid chaps if you want complicated grammar, roads, sewers, giant crossbows, walls round cities. Consummate engineers. But their grasp of geology is non-existent. Take Vesuvius. Before that unfortunate Pompeii affair, they thought it was just a mountain. Duh. What about Stromboli? Etna? Didn't they know that mountains with that pointy look tend to spout fire sooner or later? Nope. When Vesuvius blew, it was all (SYLVESTER STALLONE ACCENT) “The Gaaads Are Angry” and someone had to make a grand gesture. And Roman grand gestures involve more than tendering your resignation and handing back the keys to the Senatorial washroom. When you screw up in Rome, you have to do something noble but deranged – Horatius chucking himself off the bridge in full armour, and the like.

And that comes to our present situation. Even to me, this obviously geological hole had an obvious solution: Roman engineering. Why didn't they just pour concrete down it? There must have been some left over from building the Colosseum, and a lot more than some Hibernian would hawk around villas offering to concrete their chariotways. No, to them it was another (SYLVESTER STALLONE ACCENT) “The Gaaads Are Angry” situation. And somebody had to take the rap.

They went to the usual haruspex. You know the score: messy entrails all over the place, and a totally useless answer: (ADOPTS GORMLESS VOICE) “Throw into the ravine,” they said – and I quote - “the thing that constitutes the greatest strength of the Roman people”. And you know my view by now; I prefer concrete solutions. But no, they didn't see the answer as simple as filling the thing in. It need another Grand Gesture: a GG. (WEARILY) Sorry, standard joke – we don't have many. Anyway … I was not pleased when that gesture came from him, my master, Marcus Curtius, the nice-but-dim son of the Curtius clan. You've heard of them: patricians, old money, but not a brain cell among them. Marcus not-so-bright Curtius decided that “the thing” etcetera referred to a prime specimen of Roman youth – i.e. himself.

The observant among you may have noticed the title here: Curtius leaping into the Gulf. Spot the deliberate mistake. Do you see Curtius leaping? No, muggins here is doing the leap. I knew something was up when he came to my stable in full dress uniform, looking quite nervous and talking about all our great deeds together. So I made my excuses: bad mane day, a spot of the glanders, a touch of the trots, being a little (COUGHS) hoarse. (Sorry, another standard joke). But he wasn't having it. With all due ceremony, me caparisoned to the nines, we get cheered along the Appian Way, round the Seven Hills, and into the Forum, and there we are, staring into the abyss, and it staring back at us.

He was completely out of it by then. I think on the way he'd taken a drop of (MAKES DRINKING GESTURE) … you know, to drive away any second thoughts. So it was all down to me, and duty kicked in. I am, after all, a patrician Roman horse – a true equus. It would've let the side down if I'd had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the edge, hanging on with my hooves. I struck a dignified pose, took a suitable run-up, and then we were sailing over the lip, and down and down, and I was thinking “Merda-merda-merda-merda”. And then, strangely, the terror vanished, and for an instant, everything … froze.

I could leave with you with all kinds of morals, and they're all about not getting into scrapes like this. “Never volunteer” is one. “Stupid is as stupid does” is another. But I'll settle for a good old Roman proverb: “Cogita ante salis” - “Think before you leap”.  And now it's time. Heigh-ho. The GG can't wait any longer.

(SHOUTS) GERONIMUS!

---

Pardon the change in format, but I didn't want to waste this. It's an out-take - it wasn't accepted - that I sent in for the Exeter Royal Albert Memorial Museum Gripping Yarns project. The brief was to write a monologue inspired by an exhibit in the refurbished RAMM. It's an odd painting, and I'd never bothered to look into the background until I saw it again recently. The artist, Benjamin Haydon, was rather a sad character who was never that good, in and out of prison for debt until he finally committed suicide, botching even that (he shot himself and cut his throat).

As to the painting, ignoring all the anachronistic embroidery, it concerns the story of a depression in the Roman Forum called Lacus Curtius (the Lake of Curtius). Even the Romans seem not to have had much idea of its origin, and they had several stories. Varro recorded the rather dull one that it opened after a lightning strike, and was named after the consul Gaius Curtius Philo, who had a fence built around it. Another, from Livy, is that it was named after a Sabine leader called Mettius Curtius, who got bogged down in it with his horse during battle. A third, and the most sensational, also comes from Livy, and concerns the chasm opening, and only shutting when the gods were appeased by a noble young Roman, Marcus Curtius, riding his horse into it.

It's all in the territory of origin myth; the Marcus Curtius story is very similar to the Greek anecdote telling a similar tale about the son of King Midas). But it was the one the Romans liked best, with its story of noble patriotic sacrifice. Also, providing an extremely vivid scene, it was the one artists latched on to. A quick Google finds, just for starters ...

Marcus Curtius leaping into the gulf - Giovanni Paolo Pannini (early 1700s)

Marcus Curtius Leaping Into The Void - Eustache Le Sueur

The Death of Marcus Curtius
Pierre Joseph Celestin Francois

The Feat of Marcus Curtius, Simon de Vos

The Leap of Marcus Curtius
Jean-Léon Gérôme.

... and many, many more (see Google Images).

The one that rather tickles me (apart from the "Whoo! Look, no hands!" stance in the Simon de Vos painting) is John Leech's woodcut from Gilbert Abbott À Becket's 1852 The Comic History of Rome, which shows a fairly cheerful Curtius taking an ungainly dive into the chasm, watched by Romans who are clearly there to watch the spectacle over a slap-up picnic.

All of the Leech images are on Wikimedia Commons - Category:The Comic History of Rome - and the book itself is on the Internet Archive (ID comichistoryofro00beuoft). It's worth reading if you're into Roman history, or want to get into it painlessly, as the satirical treatment is merely a vehicle for a seriously-intended purpose. The preface:

Some explanation is perhaps due from a writer who adopts the title of Comic in relation to a subject which is ordinarily considered to be so essentially grave as that of History. Though the epithet may be thought by many inappropriate to the theme, this work has been prompted by a very serious desire to instruct those who, though willing to acquire information, seek in doing so as much amusement as possible.

It is true that professedly Comic literature has been the subject of a familiarity not unmixed with contempt on the part of a portion of the public, since that class of writing obtained the popularity which has especially attended it within the last few years ; but as whatever disrepute it has fallen into is owing entirely to its abuse, there is no reason for abandoning an attempt to make a right use of it. The title of Comic has therefore been retained in reference to this work, though the author has felt that its purport is likely to be misconceived by many, and among them not a few whose judgment he would highly esteem, who would turn away from a Comic History solely on account of its name, and without giving themselves the trouble to look into it. Those persons are, however, grievously mistaken who have imagined that in this, and in similar books from the same pen, the object has been to treat History as a mere farce, or to laugh at Truth — the aim of the writer having invariably been to expose falsehood, and to bring into merited contempt all that has been injudiciously, ignorantly, or dishonestly held up to general admiration. His method of telling a story may be objected to ; nevertheless, if he does his utmost to tell it truly, he ought not, perhaps, to be very severely criticised for adopting the style in which he feels himself most at home ; and if his opinions are found to be, in the main, such as just and sensible persons can agree with, he only asks that his views and sentiments may be estimated by what they contain, and not by any peculiarity in his mode of expressing them.

The writer of this book is animated by an earnest wish to aid, as far as he is able, in the project of combining instruction with amusement ; and he trusts he shall not be blamed for endeavouring to render such ability as he possesses available for as much as it is worth, in applying it to subjects of useful information.

Those who are not disposed to approve of his design, will perhaps give him credit for his motive ; and he may with confidence assert, that, from the care and attention he has bestowed upon this work, it will be found to form (irrespective of its claims to amuse) by no means the least compendious and correct of the histories already in existence of Rome to the end of the Commonwealth. If he has failed in justifying the application of the title of Comic to his work, he has reason to believe it will be found accurate. Though the style professes to be light, he would submit that truth does not necessarily make more impression by being conveyed through a heavy medium ; and although facts may be playfully told, it is hoped that narrative in sport may be found to constitute history in earnest. 

Gilbert Abbott À Becket's The Comic History of England, which is in the same vein, is also on the Internet Archive (ID comichistoryofen00abecuoft).

- Ray

Lady, Come Down

This isn't the movie version for copyright reasons, but an extremely good cover of the song by Daniel Mitchell and Jacob Gooden, from their own filmed version of The Importance of Being Earnest.

Clare and I are great fans of Oliver Parker's 2002 film adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (see the Internet Movie Database). It's a charming interpretation, with a strong cast, perfect costume and setting, and a deal of creative expansion that opens out the play as a movie, in ways unexpected without being obtrusive: for instance, Cecily's Pre-Raphaelite-inspired daydream sequences such as this scene inspired by Millais's The Knight Errant (see also The Beautiful Necessity blog); Gwendolen and Jack getting tattoos (thoroughly authentic for the period); and a relaxed and upbeat ragtime-jazzy soundtrack by Charlie Mole, including the duo serenade Lady, Come Down sung by Colin Firth and Rupert Everett.

A quick Google of reviews suggests people either love or hate this film. Personally, I think it's excellent theatre as well as a good film; isn't it a staple of adaptation to subvert a text, or bring a creative spin to it, through staging and design? Its angle is to bring great warmth to what can be played as a very cynical take on the nature of relationships. For example, the vivid Pre-Raphaelite sequences portray Cecily's fictional journal-keeping as the act of someone with a rich and culturally-informed inner life rather than a gormless fantasist. And it even provides a rational reason why Gwendolen is so set on marrying a man called Ernest.

I didn't realise until we got the DVD that the lyrics of Lady, Come Down are actually by Wilde, from his poem Serenade, concerning Helen of Troy and Paris:

Serenade
(for music)

The western wind is blowing fair
Across the dark Ægean sea,
And at the secret marble stair
My Tyrian galley waits for thee.
Come down! the purple sail is spread,
The watchman sleeps within the town,
O leave thy lily-flowered bed,
O Lady mine come down, come down!

She will not come, I know her well,
Of lover's vows she hath no care,
And little good a man can tell
Of one so cruel and so fair.
True love is but a woman's toy,
They never know the lover's pain,
And I who loved as loves a boy
Must love in vain, must love in vain.

O noble pilot tell me true
Is that the sheen of golden hair?
Or is it but the tangled dew
That binds the passion-flowers there?
Good sailor come and tell me now
Is that my Lady's lily hand?
Or is it but the gleaming prow,
Or is it but the silver sand?

No! no! 'tis not the tangled dew,
'Tis not the silver-fretted sand,
It is my own dear Lady true
With golden hair and lily hand!
O noble pilot steer for Troy,
Good sailor ply the labouring oar,
This is the Queen of life and joy
Whom we must bear from Grecian shore!

The waning sky grows faint and blue,
It wants an hour still of day,
Aboard! aboard! my gallant crew,
O Lady mine away! away!
O noble pilot steer for Troy,
Good sailor ply the labouring oar,
O loved as only loves a boy!
O loved for ever evermore!

- Oscar Wilde, 1881, via Bartleby.com

Colin Rudd's version of Serenade is a rather nice straight folk arrangement; I'm not sure about the Darwin Prophet one.

- Ray

Bayan time (14): Peg o' My Heart

I was inspired to learn Peg o' My Heart while watching the current repeat showing of Dennis Potter's musical psychological drama The Singing Detective. It's amazing how old some of these tunes are: long before its re-use as Potter's theme tune, I remember it as being a classic on the radio in my childhood, and it ultimately tracks back to 1913, when it featured in the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway.

This is a fairly light busking arrangement; I deliberately avoided the common tendency with accordion arrangements of Peg o' My Heart to bury this very catchy tune in a soup of chords. I loosely based the intro on that of the 1956 Gene Vincent cover.

As with a lot of well-remembered popular tunes from the 19th and early 20th century, the piece known as Peg o' My Heart is actually just the refrain of the original. You can see the original score at the Duke University Library's Historic American Music Sheet collection (item a0021). On YouTube, Ted Kloba plays a very nice arrangement of the full version on a Chemnitzer concertina (Peg O' My Heart - credit to Clare for spotting this). I've been practising it this very evening.

"Peg", according to the song sheet refers to "J Hartley Manners' wonderful character Peg in Oliver Morosco's production of the comedy Peg O' My Heart at the Cort Theatre, New York" (John Hartley Manners  was a London-born playwright of Irish extraction). Manners' original text was a romantic but, in places, fairly polemical novel concerning the tribulations in English society of Peg, a poor but feisty Irish-American girl who is born of the romance between "an Irish agitator" and an English lady. She finds she is to inherit a fortune - but only on condition that she doesn't see her father for three years and is trained in English manners by her mother's upmarket family. See Project Gutenberg, E-Text No. 3621.

Getting this video up was a bit of an encouragement. I felt very depressed after last Sunday's Topjam session, because I messed up two of the pieces (possibly not in ways as painfully audible to the audience as to me) through sheer performance anxiety (previously discussed). I start getting into a funk the moment anyone or anything's observing - even the video recorder on the laptop. My previous YouTube bayan videos have generally required a dozen increasingly irritated takes and splicing the best bits together; this time it just took two goes, with no splicing!

- Ray

The Dragon of Wantley

Recent post refreshed, in case I have local readers, as a reminder of the current TADs pantomime. Do check it out; I had a peek this evening and was tickled to find one of the numbers is my favourite movie song, Happy Working Song from Enchanted.

Topsham Pantomime 'The Dragon of Topsham'
Matthews Hall, Topsham
Tuesday 6th to Saturday 10th December 2011

The Dragon of Wantley (Relocated to Topsham for added local interest!) by Norman Robbins, presented by TADS (Topsham Amateur Dramatic Society).

Topsham town is in great peril! The beautiful surrounding countryside has been sold to property developers incurring the wrath of the vengeful forest fairy Mauxalinda. Angered at the prospect of a Tesco superstore, she places a terrible curse on Topsham and all its people. Only the dashing principal boy Squire Benjamin can save them but in his way stand the devious Walter de Warthog, Mauxalinda, her evil henchmen and one very hungry dragon...

With a large and colourful cast including idiot bailiffs, a good witch, two outrageous 'dames' and a dancing horse the TADS 2011 Pantomime is packed with comedy and dramatic spectacle and promises to be a real festive treat for all the family.

Daily evening performances at 7.30 p.m and an additional matinee performance on the Saturday.
Tickets £8.00 / £4.00 under 16s, are available from Auntie Julie's Sweetie Shop (01392 874324) Please support your local panto!

Group concessions will be available on Tuesday 6th at dramatically reduced rates for eligible groups. Any community youth groups, schools, Scout/Guide groups etc who would like to attend should email rekadom@hotmail.co.uk for further details.

The background to this is interesting, because this is a modern retelling of a story that goes way back, and it retains the original's anti-capitalist sentiments.  As the Wikipedia Dragon of Wantley article explains, it was an anonymously written satire in the style of a mediaeval ballad, portraying a legal battle about parish tithes in Wharncliffe, near Sheffield. The lawyer More of More Hall is portrayed as a knight slaying the dragon, representing Sir Francis Wortley. The version in Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry has a footnote explaining the origins - see page 417 - though, given the general murkiness of historical recollection, the explanation feels far too pat.

The earliest version of the ballad appeared in the 1685 broadsheet A True Relation of the dreadful Combate between More of More-Hall, and the Dragon of Wantley, which you can read at the English Broadside Ballad Archive (record 22210) or in an early reprint in Playford and D'Urfey's Wit and mirth; or pills to purge melancholy (being a collection of the best being a collection of the best merry ballads and songs, old and new. Fitted to all Humours, having each their proper tune for either Voice or Instrument : Most of the Songs being New set), Volume III (see pages 10-15).

The fight (which the knight wins by hiding in a well and hitting the dragon in the mouth as he drinks, then kicking him in a tender spot with a spiked boot) is described in robust language ...

14.
Oh, quoth the Dragon, pox take you come out,
Thou that diſtrub'ſt me in my Drink;
And then he turn'd and ſhit at him,
Good lack how he did ſtink!
Beſhrew thy Soul,
Thy Body is foul,
Thy Dung ſmells not like Balſam;
Thou Son of a Whore,
Thou ſtink'ſt ſo ſore,
Sure thy Diet it is unwholeſome.
...
17.
At length the hard Earth began for to quake,
The Dragon gave him ſuch a knock,
Which made him to Reel,
And ſtraight way he thought
To lift him as high as a Rock;
And thence let him fall,
But More of More-Hall,
Like a Valiant Son of Mars;
As he came like a Lout,
So he turn'd him about,
And hit him a kick on the Arſe.

18.
Oh! quoth the Dragon, with a Sigh,
And turn'd ſix times together,
Sobbing, and tearing, Curſing and Swearing
Out of his Throat of Leather.
Oh, thou Raskal,
More of More-Hall,
Would I had ſeen you never,
With the thing at thy Foot,
Thou haſt prick't my Arſe Gut;
Oh, I am quite undone for ever.

19.
Murder, Murder, the Dragon cry'd,
Alack, alack, for Grief,
Had you but miſt that Place, you could
Have done me no Miſchief;
Then his Head he ſhak'd,
Trembled, and Quack'd,
And down he layd, and cry'd;
First on one Knee,
Then on back, tumbled he,
So Groan'd, Kick't, Shit, and Dyed.

... and tends to be bowdlerised in many later editions. For example:

It is not strength that always wins,
For wit doth strength excel;
Which made our cunning champion
Creep down into a well,
Where he did think this dragon would drink,
And so be did in truth;
And as he stooped low, he rose up and cried, boh!
And kicked him in the mouth.

Oh! quoth the dragon, with a deep sigh,
And turned six times together,
Sobbing and tearing, cursing and swearing
Out of his throat of leather.
More of More-hall, oh thou rascal!
Would I had seen thee never!
With the thing at thy foot thou hast pricked my throat,
And I'm quite undone forever!

Murder, murder, the dragon cried,
Alack, alack, for grief;
Had you but missed that place, you could
Have done me no mischief.
Then his head he shaked, trembled and quaked,
And down he laid and cried;
First on one knee, then on back tumbled he;
So groaned, and kicked, and died.

- The Household Book of Poetry, D. Appleton and Company, 1869.

The satirical tradition for the story continued in one early adaptation. One was Henry Carey's 1737 "Burlesque Opera", which I guess could be viewed as an adult pantomime satirising operatic staging, with a political dig at Robert Walpole's tax policies. The full libretto is at the University of Virginia Library, The Dragon of Wantley. There's a brief account of it on pages 165-166 of Busby's 1825 Concert room and orchestra anecdotes of music and musicians. Carey wrote a 1738 sequel, Margery; Or, A Worse Plague than the Dragon.

Another take on the story was Owen Wister's 1892 The dragon of Wantley, his rise, his voracity, & his downfall, a romance. Well off Wister's best-known territory (he was author of the groundbreaking Western The Virginian), it's a romantic burlesque. During a Christmas drinking session, the sacristan of the monastery of Oyster-Le-Main has a fright when he opens a cupboard to fetch wine, and a crocodile skin with wings falls out onto him. He kicks it, but is admonished by his superior, Father Anselm, for mistreating "the carcase of our patron saint". Father Anselm then proceeds to tell the one true story of the Dragon of Wantley, in which the dragon is revealed as a convenient fiction aiding the agendas of a number of people, not least the monks of Oyster-Le-Main. There's an edition, nicely illustrated by John Stewardson, at the Internet Archive (ID ofwantleyh00wistdragonrich).

Coming up to date, The Dragon of Wantley looks to me an interesting choice for TADS, as the traditional fairytale-themed pantos have in my view become very stale. Who even knows what, if any, the plot of Mother Goose is? The Norman Robbins version is itself a modernisation of a Victorian pantomime by EL Blanchard, whose sumptuous Dragon of Wantley; or, Harlequin and Old Mother Shipton was staged in Christmas 1870 at the Drury Lane Theatre, London, though it also draws on older incarnations of the story. The character names Mauxalinda and Gubbins, for instance, come from Henry Carey's 1737 burlesque. I've seen the playscript, and the author's intro says:

The Dragon of Wantley is another of those huge, spectacular pantomimes so beloved by Victorian audiences, yet in the 21st century, is totally forgotten by all but historians ... Modern audiences, however, would have found much to mystify them had I simply updated Blanchard’s masterpiece. Pantomime in Victorian times was a far different animal and its humour stemmed from very different sources. In writing my version of this story (based on an English legend involving real people), I have discarded the great spectacular scenes that were used merely to dazzle and amaze, and concentrated on the comedy. Some ofthe character names are those used by Carey and Blanchard, but the rest are my own invention.
- Norman Robbins, The Dragon of Wantley

Non-literary footnote. It's tempting to wonder if TADS' choice of anti-capitalist panto is self-referential, in the light of its dispute earlier this year concerning the lucrative Saturday Morning Market's earlier refusal to downsize by a few stalls to allow sets to stay in place for Saturday matinee performances. See the Exeter Express & Echo: Echo helps drama group to win stay of execution (Feb 5, 2011) and Committee denies pantomime claims (Feb 9, 2011).

- Ray

John H Bartlett and GeoCities

At a loose end after finishing my (very late) tax return, I finished a project I've been planning for a while: to rescue the website of the late John H Bartlett from GeoCities oblivion.

John, who died in 2002, worked at Joel Segal Books; but his main career was as actor, writer and theatre designer.  His notable local productions were a one-man performance of Alexander Pope's poem The Rape of the Locke (a strange bit of mock-heroic satire written to defuse an 18th century scandal caused by an aristocratic twit snipping a lock of hair from a society beauty without permission); and That Tiger Life (a solo drama imagining Oscar Wilde posthumously recounting his life).

So here is: John H Bartlett.  (I recovered the site from the Internet Archive, and took the liberty of tidying up the layout for Blogger).  Apart details of John's productions, it has examples of his artwork for costume, and his interesting commentary on topics such as Restoration acting style, 18th century card games referenced in Pope's poem, the Restoration actor Thomas Betterton, and the voice of Oscar Wilde. It also features the video The Drop, an interesting fable filmed in the vicinity of the bookshop.

After finishing the revision, I found: John H Bartlett (the original site) - Phil Gyford had the same idea of preserving it. Phil's copy, however, keeps the site in its original style. As he describes - Ugly and neglected fragments - GeoCities (one of the original free hosting services, which was closed in October 2009) was a remarkable fossil of an early era of Web design, where ideas about site layout and aesthetics were very different, and personal sites weren't filtered through the visual and structural slickness of Blogger.

- Ray

Oscar

A recommendation, one of a number of excellent things on YouTube that probably shouldn't be: the Sylvester Stallone movie Oscar.

Oscar is ultimately based on a 1958 French stage play by Claude Magnier concerning various personal and financial tribulations in the household of an industrialist (his daughter tells him she's pregnant, and his accountant has embezzled a large sum of money, and so on). It flopped as a 1960 English stage adaptation for Terry-Thomas called It's in the Bag. There was a 1967 straight adaptation in French, Oscar, but John Landis's 1991 English version made an inspired adaptation decision to make the main character an American gangster, Angelo "Snaps" Provolone, who has promised his dying father that he will go straight.

This is a highly under-rated film. As the Chicago Tribune review said, it's slow starting, but then rapidly picks up as fast-paced farce, with Stallone showing a pleasant talent for comedy as the long-suffering Snaps. He's backed up by a cast of generally eccentric characters such as Dr. Thornton Poole (Tim Curry as the weird but enthusiastic linguistics expert who is coaching Snaps in elocution; Lisa Provolone (Marisa Tomei as Snaps's spoiled but ultimately goodhearted daughter); and the Finucci brothers (two dapper tailors whose proud account of how many they "do" in a week horrifies another character who has been told by Snaps that they are hit-men).

Having just a tattered videotape, we just bought the DVD.

- Ray

Isinglass curtains

A conversation in the Globe a couple of days ago turned from a discussion of beer production (for reasons that'll became apparent) to a Rodgers and Hammerstein song. The question arising: what are the "isinglass curtains" mentioned in the Oklahama! song embedded above?

With isinglass curtains you can roll right down,
In case there's a change in the weather.
- "Surrey with The Fringe on Top", Oklahama!, Rodgers and Hammerstein

The object in question is evidently the storm top or storm curtain that attached to the roof of carriages (this is a surrey) and early cars as rainproofing. This is a relatively well-trodden topic, but it's worth retracking as an example of the confusion that can arise if you try to brain out historical/etymological stories purely from the words present (at the level of assuming "plum pudding" contains plums). 

The phrase "isinglass curtains" is actually an anachronism anyway. Oklahoma! is set in 1906, but  a look at Google Books Ngram Viewer for isinglass curtains, and at Google Books, finds the earliest print occurrence to be 1927, after which the term was used for the storm curtains of early popular models of motor vehicle. The explanation for this at least is that the 1943 Oklahoma! was based on a play by Lynn Riggs, the 1931, Green Grow the Lilacs, and Hammerstein's adaptation of the play text altered the character Curly's words. In the play he refers to isinglass windows:

And this yere rig has got four fine side-curtains, case of a rain. And isinglass winders to look out of!
- The Cherokee night and other plays, Lynn Riggs, University of Oklahoma Press, 2003

As to "isinglass", it has two main meanings. One is a clear gelatine derived from fish swim-bladders, used in fining of beer and wine. Historically, it was a versatile and expensive commercial product, used as a gum, a food gelling agent, as the sticking medium for surgical plasters, as stiffener for cloth, as a sealant for preserving eggs 1, and for making mock pearls. The classic source was Russian: the swim-bladder of the "Huso", aka the Isinglass Fish aka the beluga or cavier sturgeon. The etymology of the word "isinglass" isn't 100% certain, but the most likely (according to the OED) is derivation from Dutch "huisenblas" = sturgeon bladder.

The other main meaning of "isinglass": the transparent variety - otherwise called muscovite - of the mineral mica. In some parts of world, notably Russia (hence the name muscovite - i.e. pertaining to Moscow), it's found in large enough sheets to make small window panes, so it was historically used for applications where tough, slightly flexible, heat-resistant, transparent material was needed, such as furnace or lantern windows. Why it's also called "isinglass" isn't clear, but the OED says "from its resembling in appearance some kinds of [the gelatine] isinglass".

Neither of these sound promising curtain material, and the twin meanings are already a recipe for confusion. Some sources opt for the first, despite the unlikeliness of making rain curtains or windows from a water-soluble gelatine:

In the stove window trade, mica acquired the name isinglass, after its resemblance to a gelatin made from fish bladders that was made into windows for carriages and early cars ...
- Roadside geology of Maine, Dabney W. Caldwell, 1998

Some sources mistakenly conflate the two ...

Sturgeon — regarded as a trash fish until about 1870, prized thereafter as sources of smoked meat, oil and the isinglass that was once used as windows in stoves and lanterns ...
- Biologists tackle fishery questions, Milwaukee Journal, March 24, 1991

Isinglass is a mica or clear gelatin made from certain fish bladders, principally the bladders of sturgeon. Isinglass was once used in glues and jellies, as well as (get this) the manufacture of drop-windows on buggies.
- Isinglass: this wordsmith correct in use of language, Richmond Times, Sep 16, 1994

... but the predominant assumption is that "isinglass curtains" refer to curtains with inserts of mica, and some sources explicitly confirm this, such as

... there were the Isinglass curtains — sheets of transparent mica sewn into black leatherette frames ...
- Saturday Review, Volume 50, 1967

But is any of this terminology reliable? A 1937 Q&A in Hospitals: the journal of the American Hospital Association, mentions that the "isinglass windows" of an oxygen tent were actually cellulose acetate, and before that Edwin E Slosson summed up the terminological lag in the area of these substances:

Fish glue films were called isinglass as though they were a kind of glass. When mica took its place it too was called isinglass, even in stove windows, and what is now called mica is mostly celluloid, and what is called celluloid, may be something else. Language lingers and lags behind the advance of science.
- The human side of chemistry, Edwin E Slosson, Am. Journ. Pharm, Nov 1922

This process continues. "isinglass curtains" and "isinglass windows" are names still used for the polymer canopies of powerboats and yachts.

Ultimately the best approach to finding what these isinglass curtains/windows seems to be to avoid the anecdotal, and look in contemporary hardware publications, which have technical descriptions of vehicles. The majority of hits (see "side curtains" celluloid) solidly confirm the existence of vehicle side curtains with celluloid windows; a significant minority (see "side curtains" mica) refer to mica windows. Given the stiffness of mica, however, I'm inclined to think that an isinglass (probably sic) curtain that "rolls" must refer to one of celluloid or of canvas with a celluloid light.  But I guess

With curtains of either celluloid por canvas with celluloid (or possibly mica) curtains you can roll right down,
In case there's a change in the weather

lacks a certain something, and is reminiscent of Charles Babbage's comment on Tennyson's The Vision of Sin.

Another appearance of isinglass curtains in literature: the poem Parent by Josephine Miles.

Letting down the isinglass curtains
Between the wet rain and the back seat
Where new plaster flattened me, my father said,
Wait here. I will get you the sherbet
Of your eight-year-old dreams.
There were no drive-ins then.
The rain roared. Don't go away,
I said to him? He said to me.

Her poetry is worth checking out: minimal yet poignant, often stream-of-consciousness. Parent comes from the 1979 autobiographical collection Coming to Terms, which initially tells of her childhood when she had to endure a full-body plaster cast (hence the "new plaster flattened me") due to disabling arthritis (see Josephine Miles: mentor to a revolution). The isinglass curtains in this case, as told in another poem in the collection, Doll, in the family's Mitchell.

1. Although I suspect many of the references are confusing it with the far more widespread use of water glass, a syrupy solution of sodium silicate, for this purpose.

- Ray

Leaving, by Richard Bradbury

Leaving - a new play by Richard Bradbury.

Jack has lived in the same place all his life but now he is being pushed into leaving. His powerful attachment to the land, though, brings with it contradictory emotions that can only really be explained by understanding his past. "Leaving" is about the fierce passions provoked by a sense of being rooted in a locality. Jack's love for his farm and his rage at what has happened to it over the last 40 years is tempered by the knowledge that the place also has him and his family caught in its tight, almost suffocating embrace.

April 30th and May 1st, 7.30pm at the White Hart, Woodbury, Devon.  Tickets £8 from Joel Segal Books / phone 07917 850258 / or e-mail riversmeetplays@btinternet.com

From the flyer: Richard's novel Riversmeet, about the ex-slave and anti-slavery and social campaigner Frederick Douglass, won an "Exclusively Independent" award earlier this year, and his last play, Become a Man, was commissioned in 2007 by the Greater London Authority as the first play to be performed in the new City Hall. It went on to play to sell-out audiences at the Hackney Empire. He is currently writing a new play, Blood Meadow, about the 1549 Cornwall and Devon rebellion.
- Ray

Angels in America

Clare and I have just been watching the DVD of the HBO miniseries of Tony Kushner's Angels in America (trailer above) and we both highly recommend it. Adapated by Kushner from his play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, it won multiple Emmy awards and follows the breakdown of two couples' relationships against the backdrop of Reagan-era politics and the AIDS epidemic.

If there is a central character, it's Prior Walter, a gay man with AIDS who begins experiencing visions, first of his ancestors and then manifestations of an angel, leading to his belief that he is a unwilling Biblical prophet upon whom America's fate depends. The angst-ridden Louis Ironson, Prior's Jewish partner, has deserted him because he can't cope with Prior's illness, and begins a relationship with a married Republican Mormon Joe Pitt, whose Valium-addicted wife retreats into a private fantasy of Antarctica. The new relationship between Louis and Joe founders on Louis discovering that Joe was employed by the corrupt lawyer Roy Cohn, who is also dying of AIDS, haunted by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg.

This description doesn't remotely do the story justice; it's a gripping and intelligent masterpiece that tackles, and effortlessly interweaves, themes of gay issues, Jewish and Mormon religions, and US politics, with plenty of witty asides such as Wizard of Oz allusions. Throughout, it leaves open whether the various characters' mystical experiences are magic realism or hallucination (for instance, is the Angel real within the story, or a fabulation based on Prior's angel-tattooed nurse?). All the roles are well-cast and well-acted, though Al Pacino stands out for his portrayal of Cohn as a charismatic monster (as in this scene where he is diagnoed with AIDS), and Meryl Streep (in triple roles as Joe's Mormon mother, the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, and an elderly rabbi). The latter, which achieved some publicity a while back, isn't merely a gimmick, but inherited from the stage play's intentions in doubling up roles to show the fluidity of gender identity.

Do check it out. There are (though I'm not sure there should be) plenty of clips on YouTube. The playscript itself is highly readable and readily findable: for instance Angels in America: Part One [Millennium Approaches] & Part Two [Perestroika] (Nick Hern Books, 2007, ISBN-10: 1854599828) on Amazon.

A couple of snippets I liked from the playscript. There's Hannah Pitt's one-sided phone conversation with the officer who has found the hallucinating Harper wandering in a park after gnawing off a piece of tree in a botanical garden:

HANNAH: Pitt residence.
No, he's out. No I have no idea where he is. I have no idea. I have no idea. No idea. No. No. This is his mother. OH MY LORD! Is she ... You ... Wait, officer, I don't ... You found her in the ... Prospect Park? I don't ... She what? A pine tree? Why on earth would she chew a ... (very severe) Well, you have no business laughing about it, so you can stop that right now, that's ugly. I don't know where that is. l've only just arrived from Salt Lake and I barely found Brooklyn. I'll take a ... a taxicab. Well yes of course right now! No. No hospital. We don't need any of that. She's not insane, she's just ... peculiar. Tell her to behave. Tell her ... Mother Pitt is coming.

Or the Angel's first conversation with Prior Walter:

ANGEL: Greetings, prophet!
The Great Work begins.
The Messenger has arrived.

PRIOR: Go away.

ANGEL: Attend:

PRIOR: Oh, God! There's a thing in the air, a thing, a thing.

ANGEL: I I I I
Am the Bird of America, the Bald Eagle,
Continental Principality,
LUMEN, PHOSPHOR, FLUOR, CANDLE.
I unfold my leaves, Bright steel,
In salutation open sharp before you:
PRIOR WALTER
Long-descended, well-prepared...

PRIOR: No, I'm not prepared, for anything. I have lots to do, I...

ANGEL: (with a gust of music)
American Prophet tonight you become,
American Eye that pierceth Dark,
American Heart all Hot for Truth...
The True Great Vocalist, the Knowing Mind
Tongue-of-the-Land, Seer Head!

PRIOR: Oh, shoo! You're scaring the shit out of me...

- Ray

Unhappy mediums

I'm not a great listener to the radio, but this afternoon's Saturday Play on Radio 4 (Confessions of a Medium - available on iPlayer for a week) was rather nice.

Dark comedy by AL Kennedy, set in 1870s London and based on a true story.

Mr Parker is a sincere and kind man who, in search of a higher meaning to life, has moved from conventional religion to seances and spiritualism. He believes he has met his saviour in the guise of Mr Thomson, a charming, erudite and utterly mesmerising medium. But, unbeknown to Parker, Thomson is a complete and utter fake.

Part of the interest is that the play is a historically accurate take on the adept magicianship used by mediums in the Victorian era, the heyday of elaborate physical mediumship. The origin of the "true story" isn't identified in any of the schedules, but from the title I'd guess it drew on the anonymous 1882 account Confessions of a medium (Internet Archive confessionsofmed00londrich). The mechanics of spiritualism by Harry Price ("the first celebrity ghost-hunter") has a number of other accounts and titles such as Revelations of a spirit medium (Internet Archive revelationsofspi00farriala), which caused a sensation on its first publication in 1891. Price writes:

... the work itself is a brilliant and detailed exposé of most of the tricks used by fraudulent mediums, who bought up all the copies they could find and destroyed them. The book is now of the extremest rarity. During a lifetime's collecting of rare books on magic I have found only three copies. One of these I sacrificed in order that a facsimile edition could be produced by the anastatic process 1

Parker and Thomson in the radio play appear to have been inspired by the partnership of Douglas Blackburn and George Albert Smith, who had a similarly ambivalent relationship over whether what they were doing was fraud. Their telepathy double-act even managed to get accredited by the Society for Psychical Research; some years later Blackburn, thinking Smith was dead, revealed how it was done; but Smith turned up and denied it. See the Blackburn and Smith entry in James Randi's An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural. The story is covered in some detail under Confessions of a "Telepathist" on pages 114- in Journal of the Society for Psychical Research for Ocotber 1911.

1. Anastatic printing produced a facsimile by destroying the original. I'm not sure what was up with just copying out the text.
- Ray

Be still ... it's ham tragedy

Yet another example of how the Internet enables anyone to perform in moments linguistic and philological work that might have taken years pre-computing. I was just looking at a Yahoo! Answers question about the origin of the cliched romantic/melodramatic phrase "Be still, my beating heart".

The answer appears to be well known: it first appears in William Mountfort's 1705 play Zelmane as:

"Ha! hold my Brain; be still my beating Heart."

but this is generally repeated without demonstrable citation. However, while Google Books couldn't even get a preview, a plain Google finds the e-text at the University of Virginia Library: Zelmane: Or, the Corinthian Queen. A tragedy.

The phrase was in full swing by the early 1800s, but trying to back-track, the best Google Books could manage was 1774, in a poem in the Lady's and gentleman's diary.

Be still my beating heart! she may return -
Still may return to bless her Damon's eyes;
Return my fair, thy shepherd still is true;
True to those mutual vows, those plighted ties

I can't hack the title for sure at this instant, but it might be The Deserted Swain, by Mrs Blanch Lean, near Redruth. A definite full-view hit, though, for John Hoole's 1775 Cleonice, princess of Bithynia: a tragedy. As it is performed at the Theatre Royal in Covent-Garden.

ARSETES alone
Yet
Be still my beating heart! - O Cleonice!
I feel her now - instruct me every God
In sooothing speech - O! Teach my lips to breathe
In gentlest sounds the fatal word - farewell

- Act 1, Scene 1, Cleonice, John Hoole, 1775

Did people really enjoy this kind of play? Apparently they didn't, and its nine-day run bombed, not helped by an attack of preciousness among the cast.

From the London Review for March 1775 and the European Magazine for March 1792 we gather, that Cleonice was at first rejected by the managers of Covent Garden Theatre. Being doubtful, however, of their own judgment, they referred the matter to Dr. Johnson, who approved of the play, and on the 19th. Dec. 1774 returned it to Hoole with a few complimentary lines.

"Cleonice'' was accepted accordingly and "put in rehearsal, but Mrs. Barry refusing to perform the part of Cleonice, it was given to Mrs. Hartley. Mr. Barry rejecting the part of Lycomedes intended for him, took a subordinate character, and even that he relinquished on the 2nd. night. The Play thus left to itself, without either of the popular Actors, languished out the nine nights, and from that time Mr. Hoole bid adieu to the Stage." Hoole proved his noble character on this occasion by returning a considerable part of the money which he had received for the copyright, alleging, that, as the piece was not successful on the stage, it could not be very profitable to the bookseller, and ought not to be a loss.

- John Hoole, his life and his tragedies, Sägesser, Arthur, Pub. Bern, J. Fischer-Lehmann, 1917

It might have been taken more seriously if Hoole hadn't called two major characters Arsetes and Arsinoe, a detail I'm sure was not lost on the abbreviator of character names for the 1797 Bell's British Theatre edition.

Addendum: Trevor at Kalebeul (see Comments) has just pointed out that we get more hits in the required time slot by searching on "ftill my beating heart", as Google Books doesn't yet recognise the archaic "long s" as "s". Neat: a wrinkle to remember. I see Mr Hoole recycled, as he used exactly the same phrase in his translation of the works of the poet Metastasio. 1

1. No accident that this looks like "metastasis". As explained in a footnote in Vernon Hyde Minor's The death of the baroque and the rhetoric of good taste, it's a Hellenised nickname based on the poet's real surname, Trapassi (which means in Italian "to pass from one place to another" - as is the etymology of "metastasis").
- Ray