Today was a class day, and all day I was looking forward to attending a play in the evening. The day started out quiet enough as I finished preparing for my class, and stopped in for a latte at the coffee shop. Then when the afternoon rolled around, I went to teach my class. Today's readings were three poems by Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach," "A Farewell," and "The Buried Life," and three poems by A. E. Housman, "Reveille," "The Lads in their hundreds," and "Soldier from the wars returning."
The general reaction, initially, was that these are very depressing poems. In many ways, that's fairly accurate. All of these poems reflect on the loss of a past more rural and agrarian society that has been overrun by the decline in moral values and religion, dare we say faith, that was an apparent result of the growth of the industrial age in Britain. All of these losses seemed to offer only bleak futures for each of the speakers of these poems. This idea seems to be at odds with the much more hopeful idea in the Arthurian material we have looked at. Arthur seems to offer at least a glimmer of future hope (the once and future king) despite the loss of everything in Arthur's present, including his kingdom, his beloved wife, his ideal of rule by law, his best friend, and ultimately his life - or did he? That question mark is what separates these poems that act as a transition from the Romantic period to the early Modernist ideas from the ideas of the Arthurian tradition.
Anyway, the discussion went along fairly well. Not all of my students agreed with the main interpretation presented in class, and that's okay. They were able to explain how they reached their own interpretations. That's the beauty of literary interpretation. As long as the interpretation is firmly rooted in the possibilities allowed and encouraged by the piece of literature, it is a viable position to argue.
When class was over, I had a little time to get ready to go to the theatre. I was a little apprehensive. I was going to see John Gay's A Beggar's Opera. It was going to be performed at the Regents' Park Open Air Theatre. I had been there before, and knew that if it was windy or raining, the performance could be very uncomfortable. However, the weather was perfect.
The play is an 18th century English reaction to the then growing popularity of Italian opera in England. To satirize this situation, John Gay wrote a ballad opera about whores and thieves instead of gods and goddesses. Instead of all of the operatic singing of recitatives and arias, he substituted bawdy lyrics into the melodies of popular opera songs, and turned the whole thing on its ear. I had only read the play before, and I enjoyed it in that form. However, seeing it staged with the gallows humor packed 3 or 4 jokes to a line, sexual innuendo stacked on top of innuendo (literally, sometimes!), a risque hint of bared bosoms, bottoms, and more than a "decent" amount of flesh for the 18th century here and there, it was a riot to watch. I laughed so hard that I nearly fell out of my seat about a dozen times. It really was a brilliant way to end my day. Now, to bed, and to await what tomorrow brings.
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