A Plausible Man: The True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom's Cabin, Susanna Ashton, c. 2024.

A Plausible Man: The True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom's Cabin, Susanna Ashton, c. 2024. Clemson University. Fascinating. Really, really good. 

Introduction

• began in 1850
• visit to Harriet Beecher Stowe's house in Brunswick, Maine
• "a genuine article from the "Old Carliny State"
• Stowe may have never known the man's name, but drawing on that experience in 1850, seven weeks later, Stowe began to write Uncle Tom's Cabin
• a novel that helped inspire th most consequential social revolution in the history of the Western world: the overthrow of modern slavery
• he was fleeing to Canada; he went by the name of John Andrew Jackson
• his story was more significant than the novel
• born enslaved sometime around 1820
• wife Louisa and daughter "Jinny"
• later, a lecturing career under the mercurial patronage of powerful British Baptist Evangelicals who assisted him in publishing his memoir, The Experience of a Slave in South Carolina (1862) -- during the US Civil War!
• feloniously inveigling -- p. xi
• Doctor Clavern ("Doc") -- Sumer County
• Doctor was Jackson's father -- that's another generational story in this book
• that began the author's search for the Jackson family
• the Clavon / Clabon / Clyburn family -- p. xii
• Jackson: no direct descendants but many nephews and nieces survived
• honored their patriarch "Doc" with generation after generation naming at least one child "Doctor," "Dock," or "Doc."
• this modern family of Clavons  (author used this name for the Clavon family and Clavern for Jackson and his father) surprisingly rich with clergy, salespeople and vibrant personalities;
  
• photo of Dr Doctor Clavon, 2022 -- awarded a doctorate degree from George Washington University in engineering, 2022
• 
  

Prelude: The Man Who Came Back -- W.P.A. Interview with Jake McLeod (1936)

• Federal Writers' Project
• 83-years old, Jake McLeod, interviewed in 1936 (born 1853, before the US civil war; would. have been ten years old in 1863)
  
• agreed to be interviewed by federal agents to speak about survivors of slavery
• native of South Carolina
• interviewers: H Grady Davis and Mrs Lucile Young
• mentions a Black Creek man; Charleston area
• a fascinating story: it turned out to be the story of John Andrew Jackson, who achieved almost mythical status in Black memory even while he was effectively erased from history, by many of his former white friends and allies
• 1846: John Andrew Jackson fled a slave labor camp near the area of Lynchburg, South Carolina, close to the Black River, or what McLeod called the "Black Creek."
• after the US Civil War, Jackson returned with barrels and boxes of secondhand goods shipped from Northern communities; Jackson went back and forth over the decades that followed
• 1881: Jackson bought a lot in the tiny town of Lynchburg, close to the crossroads where he had once lived back when he was enslaved by Robert English and, as Sumter County property records demonstrate, immediately adjacent to McLeod's small parcel of land
  

Chapter 1:"Feloniously Inveigling" -- A Judgment on the Kidnapping of Doctor (1821) -- Lynchburg, South Carolina (1821 - 1846)

• story begins with a man named Doctor
• two white men got into a fight over a slave, Doctor, along the Black River 
• along the coast of the Atlantic, slightly closer to Myrtle Beach to the north than to Charleston to the south
• page 10: early genealogy: read this when you have time
  

Chapter 2: The Reverend Loweryk's Story Based on Facts (1911) -- Lynchburg, South Carolina (Fall-Winter 1846)

• from a book by Reverend I. E. Lowery, Life on the Old Plantation in Ante-Bellum Days or A Story Based on Facts
• Lowery's story serves up his competing truths about the Black community of Lynchburg

Chapter 3: "Speaks Plausibly" -- The Reverend and His Runaway Advertisement (1847) -- Lynchburg - Charleston, South Carolina (December 1846 - February 1847)

• begins with facsimile of a $50 reward of a man named Jackson; published in the Sumter Banner
  
• about 30 years of age
• tall, nearly six feet in height, stoug and well proportioned
• "speaks plausibly"
• has a wife in Houston County, Georgia, belong to Mr J. R. Mac Law 
• notice signed by Thomas R. English, March 27, 1847
• the story of Jackson's escape 
  

Chapter 4: Henry Foreman's Boarding House Census Report of 1850 - Boston, Salem, and Western Massachusetts (February 1847 - November 1850)

• begins with a facsimile of a portion of the 1850 Census
• shows Henry Foreman and his family living at the Boston boarding house along wiht a list of Black men in their twenties; all with the profession of "Seaman" and of "unknown" place of birth
• "Andrew Jackson" is listed on the very last line

Chapter 5: "A Genuine Article" -- Harriet Beecher Stowe's Letter to Her Sister (1850) -- Maine (November 1850 - March 1851) -- this is where it really begins!

• begins with a facsimile of part of a letter from Harriet Beecher Stowe to her older sister Catharine Beecher
• tells the story of the man that came to her house and provides a scene that she would later use in Uncle Tom's Cabin

 

Chapter 6: Race: United States -- The New Brunswick Census of 1851: Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada (1851- 1856)

• begins with a facsimile of a portion of the 1851 Census for Saint John County, Kings and Sydney Wards. Note heading of "Blacks in King's Ward -- Chiefly Servants" and John Jackon, age 35; listed as the 19th name in the far left column

Chapter 7: The Experience of a Slave in South Carolina by John Andrew Jackson (1862): The British Isles (1856 - 1862)
begins with a facsimile of a cover of a book, The Experience of A Slave in South C

Chapter 8: The White Preacher and the Black Slave Lecturer (1865)

Chapter 9: "One Thousand Acres" -- A Letter to General Howard (1868)

Chapter 10: "Hard Labor" -- Court Minutes from Surry County, North Caroline (1881)

Acknowledgments

Notes

Image Sources

Index

The Sociological Imagination, Fortieth Anniversary Edition, C. Wright Mills, c. 1959, 2000

2000 copyright with new afterword by Todd Gitlin.

See wiki: C. Wright Mills.

See wiki: sociological imagination.

From wiki: Sociological imagination is a term used in the field of sociology to describe a framework for understanding social reality that places personal experiences within a broader social and historical context.

Personal issue:
an individual drops out of college after his first year
Broader social and historical context:

upwards of 20 - 30% of college students drop out ofter their first year. (AI, google, January 9, 2025)

So, this is a "field of study" within sociology: sociological imagination.

It was formulated by C. Wright Mills after WWII and published during rapid years of US industrialization, being first published in 1959.

From AI, google, January 9, 2025:

Some of the most important events in US history during the 1950s include: the Korean War, the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement marked by the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, the integration of Little Rock Central High School with the "Little Rock Nine", and the rise of rock and roll music popularized by Elvis Presley.

A wiki entry makes the point that C. Wright Mills (from hereon out, "Mills") did not discuss much with regard to race.

From wiki entry on Mills: 

William Form describes a 2005 survey of the eleven best selling texts and in these Mills was referenced 69 times, far more than any other prominent author. 

Frank W. Elwell, in his paper "The Sociology of C. Wright Mills" further explains the legacy Mills left as he "writes about issues and problems that matter to people, not just to other sociologists, and he writes about them in a way to further our understanding." 

His work is not just useful to students of sociology, but the general population as well. Mills tackled relevant topics such as the growth of white collar jobs, the role of bureaucratic power, as well as the Cold War and the spread of communism. 

I think the Holocaust example in wiki was way too simplistic, linking it to a failure of Germans have a sociological imagination.

Gitlin: "craftsman" was one of Mills' favorite words, p. 230. Mills says he was a Wobbly, defined as the "opposite of a bureaucrat."

Issue of "bureaucracy." Max Weber.

Who was Mills' audience? Who was he addressing? Who was he writing for?

Did your college professor address that question? If so, what did your professor suggest?

What was Mills' view on society?

C. Wright Mills was an American sociologist in the 20th-century. He believed in social conflict theory, meaning he thought that society was structured by a ruling elite controlling lower classes through shared institutions.

Gitlin, p. 239: "Mills did not sufficiently apply his sociological imagination to the vexing, central problem of race. Mills himself hated racism, but although he lived through the early years of the civil rights movement, he wrote surprisingly little about the dynamics of race in American life. The students of the civil rights movement interestd him as one of many groupings of young intellectuals rising into history around the globe, but the way in which racial identification shaped and distorted people's life-chances did not loom large for him. -- That whole paragraph on p. 239 needs to be read and re-read.

From wiki's Mills entry:

The Power Elite (1956) describes the relationships among the political, military, and economic elites, noting that they share a common world view; that power rests in the centralization of authority within the elites of American society.[60][page needed] The centralization of authority is made up of the following components: a "military metaphysic", in other words a military definition of reality; "class identity", recognizing themselves as separate from and superior to the rest of society; "interchangeability" (they move within and between the three institutional structures and hold interlocking positions of power therein); cooperation/socialization, in other words, socialization of prospective new members is done based on how well they "clone" themselves socially after already established elites. Mills's view on the power elite is that they represent their own interest, which include maintaining a "permanent war economy" to control the ebbs and flow of American Capitalism and the masking of "a manipulative social and political order through the mass media."[58][page needed] Additionally, this work can be described as "an exploration of rational-legal bureaucratic authority and its effects on the wielders and subjects of this power."[47] President Dwight D. Eisenhower referenced Mills and this book in his farewell address of 1961. He warned about the dangers of a "military-industrial complex" as he had slowed the push for increased military defense in his time as president for two terms. This idea of a "military-industrial complex" is a reference to Mills' writing in The Power Elite, showing what influence this book had on certain powerful figures.[61]

The Power Elite is a 1956 book by sociologist C. Wright Mills, in which Mills calls attention to the interwoven interests of the leaders of the military, corporate, and political elements of the American society and suggests that the ordinary citizen in modern times is a relatively powerless subject of manipulation by those three entities.

So, if that's true, again, who is Mills' audience? To whom is he writing?

    -- a) a political science graduate student planning to run for political office
    -- b) Laura's blue-collar husband who is seen as nothing more than a cog in the gear that may soon be replaced by a robot / AI
    -- c) fellow professors looking for tenure
    -- d) Olivia, an ROTC student that 20 years from now might be a commander in the military (USAF)?

    -- e) CEOs of American publicly traded companies

A follow-on question to whom is he writing, why is he writing? What is his goal?

Obviously, as a sociologist, Mills lives on (based on the 2005 survey). The question is to what extent did his writings in the 1950s predict / match American realities in 2025? 

For example:

  -- Mills seems to have missed the importance of race relations; or would he argue that people like me are over-emphasizing race relations today?

  -- can billionaire CEOs today like the CEO of JPMorgan (a bank); CEO of XOM (largest public oil company in the world); CEO of  Amazon (Jeff Bezos) relate to this; or is a new post-Trump model needed? In other words, has Mills succeeded and now it's time to move on?

Did Mills simply expand Eisenhower's "military-industrial" complex into Mills' "military-industrial-political" complex?

Indian -- New Notes -- January 7, 2025

Introduction

Tropical Gothic

Kerala, town of Guruvayur, the Garuvayur temple
Dedicated to Vishnu, one of the great trinity of Hindu deities 
since the 1700s, many assaults on the temple: Dutch, Muslims, French
but the most notable, 1931: untouchable caste demanded entry
“temple-entry” movement
Closely associated with E. V. Ramaswami Naiker, a low-caste intellectual
In opposition to the main party of Indian nationalism, the Indian National Congress
Naiker: Congress was in reality a Brahman-dominated claque devoted to the preservation of high-caste privilege and hierarchy
Commander-in-chief of Congress, Mahatma Gandhi arrives; takes control of()
1935: Naiker prevails; wins legal victory that everyone can enter the temple
The guruvayar temple encapsulates the tension between hierarchy and equality









Babel-Mahal




Far Pavilions



Spinning The Nation

A House Divided

The Last Viceroy

Flames



Leveling The Temple



Epilogue, or Divine Developments

India: Rough Draft -- Comments -- January 7, 2025

 For the blog: a reader asked his followers what book they planned to read by the end of this year, 2024.

My response: India: A History, John Keay, c. 2000, 2010.

“John Keay’s India: A History earned wide acclaim as the greatest single-volume book about India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh when it was [first] published in 2000. It has now (2010) been fully revised with four new chapters that the reader up to the region’s present day.

“India: A History spans five millennia in a sweeping narrative that tells the story of the peoples of the subcontinent, from their ancient beginnings in the valley of the Indus to current events in the region.

“In charting the evolution of the rich tapestry of cultures, religions, and peoples that comprise the modern nations of Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, Keay weaves together insights from a variety of scholarly fields to create a rich historical narrative. Wide-ranging and authoritative, India: A History is a compelling epic portrait of one of the world’s oldest and most richly diverse civilizations.”

I would assume that somewhere along the line Steve Jobs and Tim Cook (metonyms for the entire C-suite of the Apple corporation) were given intense briefings on the history of China and  India.

Of the two, the India briefing would be the most interesting, the most complicated and the most challenging for the presenter to put together.

The US is one country: politically, economically, culturally, socially.

China is one country: politically, economically, culturally, socially.

India is not one country. India is a land mass with 36 Indian countries (28 states and 8 union territories). The 28 states have their own governing body; the eight union territories are administered by the central government (think District of Columbia in the US).

In the US one can move from Boston to Los Angeles to Dallas to Spokane and “fit in” immediately. No new language; no new religion; no new nothing. At most, politically from red to purple to blue or vice versa.

I assume it is quite similar in China. I could be wrong. Probably am.

But India: 36 Indian countries. Moving from one Indian country to another Indian country means a new language, a new culture, a new religion, and  unless it’s a union territory, a new political system.

Do not take this out of context.

Instead of one Chinese country with one party, the Communist Party with one clear-cut leader, or one American country with one president “straddling” two political parties, India has 36 countries gerrymandered based on language.

The Indian subcontinent has 18 official languages. Most Indian states / territories have a single official language. Some have two or a few more. One state has one official language and sixteen additional unofficial languages. Another state has a corresponding two and eleven; and a third state has a corresponding four official languages and eight unofficial languages.

Five states and one territory have English as an official language. English is the only official language in one state and in one territory.

The second bullet for the brief for Tim Cook: there are only two important dates in Indian history —
1947: independence of the Indian subcontinent; and,
1956: the Indian subcontinent completely reorganized into states and territories based on the language used in that locale.

A third date is, perhaps, also important: separation dates of Bangladesh and Pakistan from “India.”

So, two initial bullets:
India does not exist as a country (as Americans would define a country),
the Indian subcontinent has 28 states and eight union territories “organized" by language. 
there are only two important dates in the Indian subcontinent for outsiders to know: 1947 and 1956

The third bullet: geographically —
the Indian subcontinent is the size of Europe with none of the geographic diversity of Europe
the Indian subcontinent is boring with the same relatively dry, flat land north to south, east to west
think of the United States from, perhaps, Indiana to Utah, without the rivers and the lushness, or Americans would say, “fly-over country."

The fourth bullet: know the state / union territory in which you plan to do business
the major urban center(s)
language
religion
politics
economic system
what that “country” (state or union territory) brings to the table

And that’s it.

Geographically, the map:

Although the size differences are entirely different, overlay a map of the US island of Manhattan over the entire Indian subcontinent.

mountains separate Manhattan from Canada (Himalayas — northeast; and, Kirthar Range — northwest)
the Hudson River is the Arabian Sea
the East River is the Bay of Bengal
there is no counterpart to Long Island 
Delhi / New Delhi is in the Bronx — perhaps close to where the NY Mets call home
Bombai (Mumbai) is on the Hudson across from New Jersey
Tamil Nadu is the Manhattan Battery
Sri Lanka would have the Statue of Liberty
West Bengal (and Bangladesh)  would be Westchester on the way to Connecticut, Yale, and Rhode Island
Calcutta: West Bengal (the far northeast)
Bhopal: geographic center of subcontinent India; perhaps Harlem?
Pakistan: Pennsylvania
Afghanistan: upstate New York
Nepal: north of the Bronx
Tibet: north of Nepal

Next: where does Apple plan to place its factories?

The states / union territories of note:
Delhi / New Delhi: a union territory (need to check) squeezed in between Haryana and Uttar Pradesh
Calcutta: West Bengal
Bombay (Mumbai): Maharashtra
Madhya Pradesh: Bhopal

History:
history as John Keay divides the chapters of his book
“no" history until fairly recently
Pre-1750; pre-British colonization
13th century AD, Islamic conquest but very biased and often unhelpful
The British Conquest, 1750 - 1820
US Civil War - War of 1812
Pax Britannia: 1820 - 1880
American expansionism
Awake the Nation: 1880 - 1930
American railroads
US Labor Movement
At the stroke of the Midnight Hour: 1930 - 1948
WWII
Ghandi
Surgical Procedures: 1948 - 1965
US post-WWII
US Civil Rights movement
India: massive reorganization
The Spectra of Separatism: 1962 - 1972
Vietnam
Bangladesh
Pakistan
Demockery (sic): 1972 - 1984
Bangladesh
Pakistan
Midnight’s Grandchildren: 1984 —
the end of the Cold War
immense changes in global alliances

Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus" and Goethe's "Faust"

Link here.

Portable Magic: A History of Books and their Readers, Emma Smith, c. 2022.

Introduction

Page 2: American folklorist -- Stith Thompson; wiki.

Page 3: "... ept or inept..."

 Page 3: ah, yes, -- the beginning of another rabbit hole -- Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe, 16th century; and Faust, Goethe, 19th century. But apparently Goethe had worked on and mostly completely his Faust before he ever read Marlowe's play.

Page 4: folklorist Joseph Jacobs: wiki. 

Page 4: "the North Country."

Page 5: Richard de Bury, wiki.

Page 5: practice of chaining books

Page 6: Disney's Fantasia

Page 7: author's home, the North Country, Yorkshire, Leeds

Page 9: Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbevilles

Page 11: "Bookhood" -- 19th century coinage (like "childhood" or "brotherhood"

Page 11: jodhpured -- type of breeches (jeans); named after former state in northwestern India; narrow at ankles; mostly used for riding horses

Page 12 at the bottom -- definition of bookhood -- it's all about the physicality of the book, not the contents.

Page 17: Walter Benjamin, wiki.

Page 19: mentions uncovering a rare Shakespeare first edition in a Scottish library

Chapter 1: Beginnings: East, West, and Gutenberg

Johann, or Johannes, Gutenberg, inventor, and business partner, Johann Fust

Gutenberg Bible
1,282 pages
two columns on each page
42 lines per column
thus often referred to as the "42-line Bible"
Gothic script associated with missals (priests' service books)
finished Bibles first appeared in 1455 (Columbus? 1492)
looked very much like medieval manuscripts; done on purpose
young cleric, later to be Pope Pius II
had heard about the printed quires, bundles of folded sheets
paper had watermarks
Gutenberg went bankrupt, 1455! And Fust confiscated the printing press

Link here:

"selig": Dutch, blessed.

Page 29: 1453 -- Christian Constantinople fell to Ottoman army let by young Sultan Mehmed II; became an Islamic city renames Istanbul, and became the Ottoman capital.

So, it was printed anti-Turkish material, not the Gutenberg Bible, 1455, that opened the publishing floodgates -- but the Gutenberg Bible was an explicit salvo in that religious war.

The Turcica.

The Gutenberg Bible, and the printing industry itelf, thus emerged in response to the religious geopolitics of the 15th century. Wow.

o

Two Gentlemen Of Verona -- The Tapestries Of Pavia -- January 1, 2024

Shakespeare's Guide to Italy: Retracing the Bard's Unknown travels, Richard Paul Roe, c. 2011, in personal library.

Link to notes on that book here.

***********************
Two Gentlemen of Verona

The story leading up to the tapestries of Pavia are included in this chapter! Tapestries of Pavia. May and I saw the tapestries last year when they were on exhibit at the Kimbell Museum in Ft Worth. 

From Digital Narratives:

Background: Thousands of soldiers emerge from the woods, arquebuses and halberds in hand, preparing to fight against the vast French army. The Battle of Pavia tapestry series captures the famous Battle of Pavia, fought between the Habsburgs and French, resulting in a Habsburg victory. These tapestries depict a range of scenes from the battle, including the capture of French King Francis I, the rout of the Swiss, and the retreat of the French army. Within the tapestry, a vast amount of emphasis is placed upon the landsknecht soldiers, landsknecht being the German word for mercenary, who played an instrumental part in the victory of the Habsburgs over the French army. The tapestries themselves connect to a wider image of European consumption, trade and mercenary lifestyles. The tapestries of the Battle of Pavia showcase Europeans conspicuous consumption of luxury goods, their connection to the global trade network, and mercenary culture. 

My notes from Roe's book:

• Most of the 15th century, Italy prospered.

• All of this changed, 1494 (think Christopher Columbus, 1492).
• France, Charles VIII of France invades Italy
• invited by the Duke of Milan -- "Il Moro" to help put down troublesome neighbors
• the invasion market 30 years of hell for much of Italy
• one French king after another invaded

• then another Charles arrives
• troops from Spain, Germany, Swiss Federation arrive in Italy
• "Carlos" --most powerful monarch in Europe since Charlemagne
• Charles V, King of Spain (1516) and Holy Roman Empire (1519) -- but not "confirmed" by the Pope
• domain also included 
• all of Spain's New World possessions; also included;
• the low countries
• kingdoms of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia
• Mediterranean islands, parts of North Africa
• some duchies of Italy

• Medicie Pope Clement VII in Rome, on the side of France.

• Charles V (HRE) defeats the French at Pavia -- 1525 -- 30 km southwest of Milan.

• HRE troops sack Rome!

• "Sack of Rome" -- rome impoverished for years to come

• two years later Pope Clement VII and Charles V (HRE) kiss and make up!

•  1529: Treaty of Cambrai -- Milanand most of Italy become dependencies of the Spanish Crown

• 1530: Charles V (HRE) arrives at Bologna
• Pope Clement VII makes it official -- crowns Charles V the official HRE (Emperor)
• prior: he called himself HRE but not with official papal confimration
• now he had final confirmation as HRE

• HRE now wanted Milan
• great excitement in Milan where HRE scheduled to arrive

• the play, Two Gentlemen of Verona pretty much anti-climactic after that -- HRE disappears and returns to Spain!

****************************
Nautical Terms In The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Chapter 2: "Sailing to Milan"

"This is the play with the most and most highly varied, descriptions of and allusions to things Italian in the entire Shakespeare canon. Indeed, if critics were to choose one single Italian play to criticize, this is that play. 

Every Shakespearean authority has misread this play with regard to geographical locations and royal titles. 

The confusion begins early (p. 37): Valentine is sailing from inland Verona to inland Milan in a ship!

"Road": authorities "translate" "roads" into seaports. Absolutely incorrect.

"Along select channels of the seas, and in the large and smooth rivers the world over, there are wide laces for ships to anchor called "roads" (though some recent dictionaries call them "roadsteads").

Roads are the preferred places for ships to ride at anchor, either to be served by lighters, or else to compe up, in turn, to a nearby quay, to load or unload passengers and cargo.

A port, on the other hand, is a haven or harbor of calm water with surrounds of solid land, often enhanced with projecting jetties. Ports are a refuge from the stormy hazards of seas or great lakes, as well as being a suitable place to accommodate long-range commerce and transportation.

From wiki: 

A lighter is a type of flat-bottomed barge used to transfer goods and passengers to and from moored ships. Lighters were traditionally unpowered and were moved and steered using long oars called "sweeps" and the motive power of water currents. They were operated by skilled workers called lightermen and were a characteristic sight in London's docks until about the 1960s, when technological changes made this form of lightering largely redundant. Unpowered lighters continue to be moved by powered tugs, however, and lighters may also now themselves be powered.

The playwright's precise knowledge of sailing, and the language of sailors, is legendary. 

Shakespeare clearly differentiated between ports and piers, and roads. -- p. 38.

A port is a facility on a harbor or waterway where ships can dock, load, and unload cargo, while a roadstead is a sheltered area of water near the shore where ships can anchor safely but without the same level of protection or facilities offered by a port.

In Hampton Roads, Virginia, ships could be moored offshore for lightening:
 

Fort Monroe: at the mouth of the roads, on the north side, southeastern-most point of the "Virginia Peninsula."

Newport News Transit Center is on the southwestern-most point of that peninsula, "inside" and on the north side of Hampton Roads.

Meanwhile, Norfolk is on the Elizabeth River, on the south side of the Hampton Roads. The mouth of the Elizabeth River is quite wide and empties into the Hampton Roads. Directly east of Norfolk is Virginia Beach, on the Atlantic Ocean.

Much, much more about naval and sailing terms in this play in this chapter / book.

Shakespeare's Guide to Italy: Retracing the Bard's Unknown travels, Richard Paul Roe, c. 2011

Shakespeare's Guide to Italy: Retracing the Bard's Unknown travels, Richard Paul Roe, c. 2011, in personal library.

 Romeo and Juliet: first chapter in this incredibly well-researched book. Goes hand-in-hand with Brenda James' The Truth Will Out. 

Some takeaways:

Shakespeare's First Folio Plays:

Ten history plays that involve the Sir Henry Neville family.
includes the trilogy of Henry VI and the fourth for a tetralogy: Richard III
also, his contemporary, Henry VIII

Two additional plays set in the British Isles:
King Lear, ancient Britiain
Cymbeline, Wales

Ten non-history plays set in Italy
including Othello -- Act I only; the rest of the play takes place in Cyprus (Turkey)

Three additional plays set in ancient Rome

Ten of his best plays set in places outside of England:
Scotland, of course: Macbeth
Denmark: Hamlet

Years The Plays Were Written:

to be completed later;
an important piece of the story.

********************************
Verona

There are two plays set in Verona and a third play near Verona, in Padua

• Romeo and Juliet (Verona)
  
• The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Verona / Milan)
  
• The Taming of the Shrew (Padua)
  

The rich and famous British, throughout the ages, including those during Sir Henry Neville's lifetime, made the grand tour of continental Europe. Sir Henry Neville certainly did and spent part of his professional / government life in France.

If visiting Switzerland, the most likely / scenic / famous route would be across the Brenner Pass. That's how Goethe began his Italian journey at age 37.

The first major Italian city one enters after crossing the Alps through the Brenner Pass: Verona. 

Verona, from the north is the gateway to Venice to the East, and Milan to the west (Venice, Verona, and Milan are almost at the same latitude in northern Italy). At that latitude, Italy is as wide as it gets and then narrows significantly to the peninsula with Bologna and Florence about halfway between Verona and Rome. Naples, southern Italy, is south of Rome, and on the western coast. 

Despite all the time Sir Henry Neville spent in France, he set only one play in France, As You Like It.

***********************

New word: lazeratto (various spellings): wiki. In Two Gentlemen of Verona. Named after the leper St Lazarus of biblical fame. Hospitals for lepers.

 

*************************
The Merchant Of Vienna
"Venice: the City and the Empire" -- Part 1
"Venice: Trouble and Trial" -- Part II

This play is absolutely full of information about the Jews in Vienna in the mid- to late-16th century. At this time, no Jews lived in England, and except for the few English that traveled to the continent, no one really knew much, if anything, about the Jews, except that spread by rumor or undocumented sources. One wonders if Sir Henry Neville's really purpose of this play was to introduce to his audience, the culture of the Jews, as well as the Venetian Empire.

Like the first chapter on Verona, this is an easy-to-read chapter with a lot of historical information.

Sir Henry Neville was definitely an astute businessman.

This really is cool. His grand tour continues: after crossing the Brenner Pass into northern Italy, he visits Verona (Romeo and Juliet, Two Gentlemen of Verona), then Padua (Taming of the Shrew). Now in this fourth play, he's visiting Venice (The Merchant of Venice). It is very clear that Sir Henry Neville had fallen in love with northern Italy, took copious notes for future plays. This is absolutely amazing.

 *************************
Othello
"Strangers and Streets, Swords and Shoes"

The entire first act is set in Venice.

The rest of the play, Acts II through V, is set on the island of Cyprus.

In the 16th century, Cyprus was a wealthy island under Venetian rule until it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1571: Venetian rule Cyprus was a major overseas possession of the Republic of Venice, along with Crete. The island was a key location for controlling the Levantine trade, and was also a profitable producer of cotton and sugar. Famagusta became a luxurious place for merchants and ship owners, and was known as "the district of churches." 

 

 

 Now, unto Florence. But, a side trip to a little village outside Mantua.

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A Midsummer Night's Dream
"Midsummer in Sabbioneta"

The author mentions that the 16th century has become his favorite Italian century, p 180.

Wow, this in incredible!!! Holy mackerel. A random traveler mentions to the author that the latter needs to take a side trip to a small village outside of Mantua. The village: Sabbioneta.

On the guided tour, hte guide that Sabbioneta came to be called La Piccola Atena -- "Little Athens" because it had become a hospital gathering place for scholars and intellectuals.

Obviously Sir Henry Neville would have been part of this crowd -- a scholar and an intellectual. So, on i grand tour, Sir Henry Neville knew about Little Athens and went there to hang out with his friends. It makes me think of Davos, where the super-rich and occasionally famous and the faux intelligentsia go to hang out every winter for a week or so. 

For Sir Henry Neville, to end up in Sabbioneta, it was a dream come true. Wow.

This author is incredible.

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All's Well That Ends Well
"France and Florence"

The source for this story: a story about Beltramo de Rossiglione and Giglietta de Narthone in The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 - 1375). 

The setting for Shakespeare's "All's Well That Ends Well" is primarily in France, specifically the region of Roussillon.  There are "two" Roussillons (technically a third but the third is not an option). One of the Roussillons is on the road from Florence to Paris, and that's the Roussillon where this play was set.

Tuscan wars: Florence vs Siena, p. 195.

Even though set in France, the author includes it as an Italian play because of all the talk of the war -- and particularly Florence. Tuscany.

The importance of capitalization (upper case / lower case) in Shakespeare.

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A Musical Interlude

Link here. This one absolutely makes my day! 

Stage direction in Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well.

"Tucket" is the English version of the Italian word toccata, from toccare, meaning to touch. In Renaissance Italy a "toccata" was also the royal or noble declaration. [It might be used to alert the audience something important was about to happen -- perhaps the riders were being called to mount, or perhaps royalty was about to enter stage right.]  Its attention-getting style- so tuneful and attractive -- was soon to be adopted in teh early seventeenth century, in compositions of music, such as those of Corelli [Arcangelo Corelli, 1653 - 1713, some four decades after Shakespeare was writing] and Bach [J.S. Bach, 1685 - 1750 -- some seventy-five years after Shakespeare was writing.]

The toccata originated in northern Italy (think Tuscany, Florence) in the late Renaissance period (15th and 16th centuries). Shakespeare was writing in the late 16th century, early 17th century).

Folks are probably more familiar with this version. 

So, if toccatas were originally written for organ, brilliant that Shakespeare turned to trumpets for his plays. Wow.  

According to Richard Paul Roe, p. 199, "a tucket is a run of tuneful notes, generally on a trumpet."

Again, using a precise word.

 

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Much Ado About Nothing
"Misfortune in Messina"

Part 1

Part 2

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The Winter's Tale
"A Cruel Notion Resolved"

 

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The Tempest
"Island of Wind and Fire"

World-Building -- December 29, 2024

 

A Classic On Goethe: Adam Kirsch On Goethe, The New Yorker, January 24, 2016

Adam Kirsch on Goethe, The New Yorker, January 24, 2016, link here.

It beings:

In the English-speaking world, we are used to thinking of our greatest writer as an enigma, or a blank. Though there’s enough historical evidence to tell us when Shakespeare was born and when he died, and more than enough to prove that he wrote the plays ascribed to him, the record is thin. Indeed, the persistence of conspiracy theories attributing Shakespeare’s work to the Earl of Oxford or other candidates is a symptom of how little we actually understand about his life. His religious beliefs, his love affairs, his relationships with other writers, his daily routine—these are permanent mysteries, and biographies of Shakespeare are always mostly speculation. 

To get a sense of how Johann Wolfgang von Goethe dominates German literature, we would have to imagine a Shakespeare known to the last inch—a Shakespeare squared or cubed.

Goethe’s significance is only roughly indicated by the sheer scope of his collected works, which run to a hundred and forty-three volumes. Here is a writer who produced not only some of his language’s greatest plays but hundreds of major poems of all kinds—enough to keep generations of composers supplied with texts for their songs. Now consider that he also wrote three of the most influential novels in European literature, and a series of classic memoirs documenting his childhood and his travels, and essays on scientific subjects ranging from the theory of colors to the morphology of plants.

A bit more:

Then, there are several volumes of his recorded table talk, more than twenty thousand extant letters, and the reminiscences of the many visitors who met him throughout his sixty-year career as one of Europe’s most famous men. Finally, Goethe accomplished all this while simultaneously working as a senior civil servant in the duchy of Weimar, where he was responsible for everything from mining operations to casting actors in the court theatre. If he hadn’t lived from 1749 to 1832, safely into the modern era and the age of print, but had instead flourished when Shakespeare did, there would certainly be scholars today theorizing that the life and work of half a dozen men had been combined under Goethe’s name. As it is, in the words of Nicholas Boyle, his leading English-­language biographer, “More must be known, or at any rate there must be more to know, about Goethe than about almost any other human being.”

Germans began debating the significance of the Goethe phenomenon while he was still in his twenties, and they have never stopped. His lifetime, spanning some of the most monumental disruptions in modern history, is referred to as a single whole, the Goethezeit, or Age of Goethe. Worshipped as the greatest genius in German history and as an exemplary poet and human being, he has also been criticized for his political conservatism and quietism, which in the twentieth century came to seem sinister legacies. Indeed, Goethe was hostile to both the French Revolution and the German nationalist movement that sprang up in reaction to it. More radical and Romantic spirits especially disdained the way this titan seemed content to be a servant to princes—and Grand Duke Karl August of Weimar, despite his title, was a fairly minor prince—in an age of revolution.

One famous anecdote concerns Goethe and Beethoven, who were together at a spa resort when they unexpectedly met a party of German royalty on the street. Goethe deferentially stood aside and removed his hat, while Beethoven kept his hat firmly on his head and plowed through the royal group, forcing them to make way—which they did, while offering the composer friendly greetings. Here was a contrast of temperaments, but also of generations. Goethe belonged to the courtly past, when artists were the clients of princes, while Beethoven represented the Romantic future, when princes would clamor to associate with artists. Historians dispute whether the incident actually took place, but if it didn’t the story is arguably even more revealing; the event became famous because it symbolized the way people thought about Goethe and his values.

 

Early Classical Mss. In The British Museum -- December 29, 2024

Cross-reference with Shakespeare. Link here.

Link here.