62 October 8
Sir Philip Sidney reminded comedians that when the audience is laughing they aren’t necessarily the better for it.
I recently added this post, Laughter in the House.
Sir Philip Sidney is remembered today chiefly for his selfless gesture as he lay wounded on the field of the Battle of Zutphen in 1586: see ‘Thy Necessity is Yet Greater than Mine’. But Sidney was not only a soldier and gentleman. He was a deep thinker, who wrote what is arguably the first serious work of literary criticism in the English language, An Apologie for Poetrie (ca. 1582). This was a reply to Stephen Gosson’s The School of Abuse (1579), which had been prompted by an outbreak of plague and the feeling that in such times writing plays was at best frivolous, at worst socially harmful. Gosson dedicated his tract to Sidney, an unsolicited honour that placed him in a delicate position. Ever the gentleman, Sir Philip did not name Gosson in his reply, but nevertheless came to the defence of Elizabethan drama.
That is not to say Sidney was uncritical. One of the chief targets for his mild-mannered disapproval was Elizabethan comedy. The comedians of his day took the line that anyone who got a good laugh out of a play must be the better for the experience, but Sidney made an extremely important distinction between laughter and delight, noting that laughter is often produced by very unworthy things.
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63 October 8
As penance for involuntary manslaughter, Heracles was sentenced to slavery under the playful rod of Omphale, Queen of Lydia.
I recently added this post, Heracles and Omphale.
E. M. Berens was an American writer who published several books on Greek and Roman mythology, intended for casual readers and particularly for children. In his preface, he declares “that no pains have been spared in order that without passing over details the omission of which would have marred the completeness of the work, not a single passage should be found which could possibly offend the most scrupulous delicacy”. For many of the Greek myths, this is a challenging goal to set, and the story of Heracles and Omphale, the delectable Queen of Lydia, must have given Berens some pause. Happily, he judged the scrupulosity of American boys and girls to be sufficiently resilient to deal with the mental image of Omphale wearing a lionskin and Heracles in a dress.
Copy Book Posts (37)
64 October 8
Complete each of these statements with a little request for confirmation.
Tag questions are those little questions such as aren’t I? or wouldn’t you? that we attach to the end of a statement in the hope of confirmation. See if you can dream up tags for these sentences. The sentences come from the novels of Agatha Christie.
1 “Life is full of trials, ________?”
2 “She’s not been kidnapped, ________?”
3 “They keep it in the Tower, ________?”
4 “You'd think so, ________?”
5 “So we can’t go and ask the dog, ________?”
Now see if you can make up sentences for these tags.
Do we. Isn’t it. Wouldn’t she. Must I. Haven’t we. Were we. Has he. Have they. Didn’t he. Oughtn’t it. Can you.
65 October 5
Persian scholar Al-Ghazali canvassed the opinions of ancient thinkers and ascetics on the right use of knowledge.
I recently added this post, The Perils of the Learned.
Al-Ghazali (1056-1111), known in Mediaeval Europe as Algazel, was one of the towering figures of Islam at around the time of Anselm of Canterbury in England. In 1091, Al-Ghazali (who was from Tus, now Tous near Mashhad in Iran) was appointed to a prestigious teaching post in Baghdad, but four years later he abruptly gave it up and embarked on a ten-year pilgrimage to Damascus, Jerusalem and Mecca, his faith in academe shaken by the intrigues of Court and University alike. The fruit of his soul-searching was The Revival of the Religious Sciences, in which he examined what the search for knowledge should be like for the truly religious man.
This short extract finds Al-Ghazali canvassing the views of various Muslim authorities on the dangers of learning. It includes a neat aphorism by Al-Khalil ibn-Ahmad (?718-?791), compiler of the first Arabic dictionary, which in various forms may be found in English books of quotations, and which NL Clay set as a test of elocution:
He who knows and knows that he knows,
Is wise; follow him.
He who knows and knows not that he knows,
Is asleep; wake him.
He who knows not and knows not that he knows not,
Is a fool; shun him.
He who knows not and knows that he knows not,
Is a child; teach him.
Al-Ghazali’s views on education are quite well summed up by another English writer, William Hornbye, who wrote in his Horn-Book (1622):
Learning’s a ladder, grounded upon faith
By which we clime to heaven (the Scripture saith);
And ’tis a means to hurry men to hell
If grace be wanting for to use it well.
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66 October 5
Fill the empty boxes with letters, using the clues to help you find the right ones.
A new crossword for the collection.
Fill the empty boxes with letters to make words running across and down. Use the numbered clues to help you find the right words. Click any box to get started.
2 across A sudden flood of e.g. river water, burglaries. 5 letters
4 across Unwise. 7 letters
5 across Mark of punctuation. 5 letters
1 down Former name for Iran. 6 letters
2 down Lazy, drooping posture. 6 letters
3 down Apparently effortless skill or style. 6 letters
Crosswords (5)
67 October 3
Give these words various different shades of meaning just by the way you say them.
Read each of these words out aloud, varying the intonation. Explain how your intonation adds shades of meaning.
If you are doing this with someone else, one of you can say the word and the other can try to describe the mood.
1 Yes. No. Again.
2 Try. Tomorrow. Never.
3 Goodbye. Well. Now.
4 Chocolate. Sorry. Oh.
Questioning. Doubting. Affirming. Denying. Angry. Pleading. Soothing. Annoyed. Impatient. Offended. Outraged. Pleased. Excited.