49
Sir Philip Sidney reminded comedians that when the audience is laughing they aren’t necessarily the better for it.
In 1579, Stephen Gosson wrote School of Abuse, accusing Elizabethan theatre of being a frivolous and bawdy distraction from England’s serious social problems. Some three years later, Sir Philip Sidney replied with An Apologie for Poetrie, a gentle defence of the drama; but even he could find little to say for comedians who thought that anything that raised a laugh was entertainment.
Posted October 8
50
Persian scholar Al-Ghazali feared for any country where morals were lagging behind brains.
Al-Ghazali, known in Medieval Europe as Algazel, was a Persian scholar roughly contemporary with Anselm of Canterbury. In 1095, feeling compromised by political and academic expectations, Ghazali abruptly left his prestigious teaching post and embarked on a ten-year pilgrimage to Damascus, Jerusalem and Mecca. The Revival of the Religious Sciences was the fruit of his soul-searching, and one of the most important Islamic works after the Quran itself.
Posted October 5
51
When the Reformers sold off the treasures of Durham Cathedral, they sold a priceless piece of Scottish history into oblivion.
The Black Rood of Scotland was an heirloom of the Scottish royal family, captured by the English at the Battle of Neville’s Cross in 1346 and added to the treasures of Durham Abbey. After the sixteenth-century Reformers ransacked the cathedral, the cross disappeared. A generation later, the Rites of Durham recalled some of the wonderful history of the vanished relic in a breathless tale, edited here by John Davies in 1671.
Posted October 1
52
After the murder of King Duncan, Lady Macbeth is alarmed to see her husband losing his grip on reality.
Macbeth has stabbed Duncan, King of Scots, as he lay in his bed, hoping to give a little assistance to a witch’s prophecy that he would one day be King. Both Macbeth and his wife, who is the driving force behind the plot, are understandably jittery; but it soon becomes clear to the ever-competent Lady Macbeth that her husband is losing his grip.
Posted September 26
53
Nearly seventy years after his death, the roguish laird still cast a spell over the farm-folk of the Highlands.
In 1803, William Wordsworth, his sister Dorothy and their friend Samuel Coleridge travelled to Scotland, taking in beautiful Loch Lomond and the Trossachs. They begged bed and board from a startled Scottish farmer, and at breakfast the following morning (it was Saturday August 27th) the Macfarlanes told them in their slow English about Rob Roy.
Posted September 21
54
The Revd Edmund Dixon urged young people to think about what a little politeness could do for them.
In 1855, the November 24th issue of Charles Dickens’s Household Words carried a long article on good manners. Written by frequent contributor the Revd Edmund Saul Dixon, it took a look at etiquette in England, France and Arab lands, and the Arabs were the clear winners. The opening lines impressed on young readers the importance of courtesy, in a fashion suggesting that Dixon had a quite remarkable pet dog.
Posted September 21