Thoughts today on what is left out in the process of selection for analysis and writing. There’s the old saying, “the victors write the histories.” Eavan Boland, the recently deceased poet/teacher whom is mentioned in my book and in past blogs, made a point of saying there is an important difference between history and the past.
Of course, I chose material for my book that supported its thesis, but there was other writing that was very important in the history of comedic Irish literature that was left out. For one, Oliver Goldsmith. His She Stoops to Conquer is considered a comic masterpiece and one of the 18th-century plays that has travelled best in the following centuries.
One of the funniest scenes is when the character Marlow–who is very shy around wealthy, refined women but boldly flirtatious around working-class ladies–tries to speak to Miss Kate Hardcastle. Kate is well-to-do, but Marlow had previously mistook her for a barmaid (she had affected a working-class accent to tease him) and made a lewd pass at her. Here they meet with Kate acting as her normal self and a timid Marlow stammering so much that she has to finish his thoughts for him:
MISS HARDCASTLE. (after a pause). But you have not been wholly an observer, I presume, sir: the ladies, I should hope, have employed some part of your addresses.
MARLOW. (Relapsing into timidity.) Pardon me, madam, I—I—I—as yet have studied—only—to—deserve them.
MISS HARDCASTLE. And that, some say, is the very worst way to obtain them.
MARLOW. Perhaps so, madam. But I love to converse only with the more grave and sensible part of the sex. But I’m afraid I grow tiresome.
MISS HARDCASTLE. Not at all, sir; there is nothing I like so much as grave conversation myself; I could hear it for ever. Indeed, I have often been surprised how a man of sentiment could ever admire those light airy pleasures, where nothing reaches the heart.
MARLOW. It’s——a disease——of the mind, madam. In the variety of tastes there must be some who, wanting a relish——for——um—a—um.
MISS HARDCASTLE. I understand you, sir. There must be some, who, wanting a relish for refined pleasures, pretend to despise what they are incapable of tasting.
MARLOW. My meaning, madam, but infinitely better expressed. And I can’t help observing——a——
MISS HARDCASTLE. (Aside.) Who could ever suppose this fellow impudent upon some occasions? (To him.) You were going to observe, sir——
MARLOW. I was observing, madam—I protest, madam, I forget what I was going to observe.
MISS HARDCASTLE. (Aside.) I vow and so do I. (To him.) You were observing, sir, that in this age of hypocrisy—something about hypocrisy, sir.
MARLOW. Yes, madam. In this age of hypocrisy there are few who upon strict inquiry do not—a—a—a—
MISS HARDCASTLE. I understand you perfectly, sir.
MARLOW. (Aside.) Egad! and that’s more than I do myself.
MISS HARDCASTLE. You mean that in this hypocritical age there are few that do not condemn in public what they practise in private, and think they pay every debt to virtue when they praise it.
MARLOW. True, madam; those who have most virtue in their mouths, have least of it in their bosoms. But I’m sure I tire you, madam.
MISS HARDCASTLE. Not in the least, sir; there’s something so agreeable and spirited in your manner, such life and force—pray, sir, go on.
MARLOW. Yes, madam. I was saying——that there are some occasions, when a total want of courage, madam, destroys all the——and puts us——upon a—a—a—
MISS HARDCASTLE. I agree with you entirely; a want of courage upon some occasions assumes the appearance of ignorance, and betrays us when we most want to excel. I beg you’ll proceed.
MARLOW. Yes, madam. Morally speaking, madam—But I see Miss Neville expecting us in the next room. I would not intrude for the world.
MISS HARDCASTLE. I protest, sir, I never was more agreeably entertained in all my life. Pray go on.
MARLOW. Yes, madam, I was——But she beckons us to join her. Madam, shall I do myself the honour to attend you?
MISS HARDCASTLE. Well, then, I’ll follow.
MARLOW. (Aside.) This pretty smooth dialogue has done for me. [Exit.]
MISS HARDCASTLE. (Alone.) Ha! ha! ha! Was there ever such a sober, sentimental interview? I’m certain he scarce looked in my face the whole time. Yet the fellow, but for his unaccountable bashfulness, is pretty well too. He has good sense, but then so buried in his fears, that it fatigues one more than ignorance. If I could teach him a little confidence, it would be doing somebody that I know of a piece of service. But who is that somebody?—That, faith, is a question I can scarce answer. [Exit.]
A few years before Goldsmith, Laurence Sterne, in his famous comedic novel The Life and Times of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, penned another “battle of the sexes” scene as the widow Wadman tries to find out whether the object of her affection, Tristram’s Uncle Toby, has a groin injury from military battle that would prevent him fathering a child. After futile attempts to find an answer to her question subtly, she bluntly asks Toby “whereabouts” his injury occurred. Toby, who keeps miniature battlefield replicas as a hobby, points to the geographical location rather than the spot on his body.
In the oral defense of my dissertation, I was asked how I selected my material about Irish bulls and whether there could be additional analyses to support the dissertation’s thesis. Goldsmith and Sterne are two authors who could have provided more grist for the mill. I included a passage on James Joyce’s Ulysses but probably could have said more about Joyce, especially if I had the fortitude to read Finnegan’s Wake. Flann O’Brien is another writer who gets no mention in my book. Possibly, I could have considered J.P. Donleavy. But Joyce, O’Brien, and Donleavy are mainly known as novelists. Brian Friel was a monumental playwright of the 20th century, but I find his plays more Realist than Absurdist.
I am familiar with contemporary comedic Irish playwrights like Martin McDonagh, Enda Walsh, and Frank McGuinness. But use of bulls for humor isn’t immediately apparent to me in their work. (McGuinness remarked at a seminar that he doesn’t find Samuel Beckett funny at all, suggesting to me a possible generational gap in what writers consider humorous.) My book stops with Beckett, and the literary scholar Declan Kiberd takes him as a point of departure for his recent analysis (After Ireland: Writing the Nation from Beckett to the Present) of Irish writers in a more globalized world.
Perhaps contemporary writers want to move on thematically. As Kiberd puts it, “many of Beckett’s jokes are epitaphs on discarded hope. They project the condition of a people who had looked backward on frustration and forward to liberation, with no intervening period of fulfillment.”
Indeed, Act II of Waiting for Godot begins with Vladimir trying to sing a ditty about a canine epitaph:
VLADIMIR:
A dog came in–
(Having begun too high he stops, clears his throat, resumes: )
A dog came in the kitchen
And stole a crust of bread.
Then cook up with a ladle
And beat him till he was dead.
Then all the dogs came running
And dug the dog a tomb–
(He stops, broods, resumes:)
Then all the dogs came running
And dug the dog a tomb
And wrote upon the tombstone
For the eyes of dogs to come:
A dog came in the kitchen
And stole a crust of bread.
Then cook up with a ladle
And beat him till he was dead.
Then all the dogs came running
And dug the dog a tomb–
Vladimir’s lyrics have been described as “a post-modern post mortem,” and it might be said that more recent writers, living in a post-modern world, aren’t dealing with the same inherited cultural structures, histories, and linguistic standards as Beckett and writers before him. Perhaps bulls are less vital or at least less obvious now.