Absurdtrousers

Hi,

Thanks for the note. I've seen the play you refer to. It was many years ago so I don't remember the details. I have memories of Philip Gosse wandering the beach getting stressed about Darwin and coming up with his Omphalos theory; the seriously ill young Edmund being 'comforted' by being told he was about to meet Jesus, and his later Darwinian 'adaptation' to his environment. The chronology of the play is odd as I recall, since Omphalos was published before The Origin, and yet the play has to portray it as a response to Darwinism, so you get an odd glossing over of the sequence of events by inventing a scene in which Darwin's supporters are lobbying for pro-Darwin scientists some years before the publication of Origin. Anyway, I'll happily look at it. Paul B (talk) 10:07, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I've now had a quick read over the article. I wouldn't want to add anything, since it includes everythuing I remember apart from a bit of minor dialogue about Robin Hood! I guess the historical background is what's at issue. Gosse's book is nearly 400 pages long, so I wouldn't call it a "pamphlet", though if that's the word used in the play, then it should stay. Of course it is really addressed to the evidence of an old earth from geology rather than evoluionary theory, and is mainly aimed at the forms of "old earth creationism" proposed by the likes of Adam Sedgwick, who believed that the earth was millions of years old, but that each new species was separately created by God in sequence. He does discuss the evolutionary theories of Chambers in Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, but in very dismissive terms ("this writer has hatched a scheme by which the immediate ancestor of Adam was a Chimpanzee and his remote ancestor a Maggot!"). Potter glosses over this complex pre-Darwin background to present a straight Darwin v Bible narrative, and to merge the adaptationist model to the story. I think we should be able to include this without rousing wrath of those tiresome OR pedants. Paul B (talk) 10:30, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

It's true that Darwin did confide in close associates, but I don't think there is any evidence of the kind of lobbying depicted in the play. In reality, of course, models of evolution existed before Darwin, but they were scientifically unconvincing and easily dismissed. The evidence for an old earth was more troubling to Gosse, I think, since that was based on very solid science. Darwin is mentioned twice in Omphalos, both times approvingly (quotes from his Beagle book), whereas Sedgwick is repeatedly subject to sarcastic criticism, and seems to be a particular target. Paul B (talk) 10:42, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I've added a section on the historical background. The visit of the Darwinian lobbyist is based on the passage I quoted, though I have my doubts about its accuracy since EG's language is so evasive; he says that his father was "among those who were thus initiated, or approached with a view towards possible illumination" about "natural selection". I have read Omphalos, and it's obsessed with geological time and the fossil record, not with evolution as such. Though it does discuss it, there is no hint that he associates the idea with Darwin or with the concept of natural selection.

Incidentally, I remember the acute embarrassment of watching Double Dare with my parents as a child, or rather I remember my embarrassment at my mother's embarrassment, and my inability to ever see a Cadbury's flake advert innocently since. Paul B (talk) 14:15, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks. keep upo the good work yourself. Paul B (talk) 11:19, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

King Lear

Hello, I think you're right that King Lear is set in a world which has been forsaken by the divine, but that might not mean the piece would lack a religious element. See my comments at the Lear talk page. Btw we don't know what kind of Christian beliefs Shakespeare held, but it's been suggested, by Anthony Burgess at least, that he took part in the work on the King James Bible, as one of the "style consultants". Strausszek (talk) 01:27, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I think it's very worthwhile to look around for cues on Cordelia as Christ, on the motivations of the people in King Lear and of rationality, nothingness and madness. I'll see if I can find more by Jan Kott in his Shakespeare our Contemporary book or elsewhere. Olsson doesn't quite explicitly say Cordelia is a figura Christi, but the link is sort of implied - a dozen pages before he has briefed the reader on Girard's view of the Bible and of Jesus as the man who unravels the mimetic and sacrificial deception and breaks the circle of violence, and the conditions that he sets out for the Bible are basically the same as in Lear - that's what he locks down with saying "the sacrificial crisis is present in King Lear" more directly than anywhere else in Shakespeare. He also notes that his essay was written at a Girard summer seminar in California, and had been read by the man himself.

I've been wanting to add something too about Grace in von Trier's Dogville and Manderlay as a figure incorporating Christian symbolism. That's been noticed by some critics, it's definitely one side of the character/s but I understand it's a controversial point and some film critics and moviegoers just don't want to see it (I am not committed to this by hardline religion, but coming from a Christian background it's hard to miss). At the same time, Dogville is about a woman who has no firm social position, nothing to stand on, no prior friendships in this little dingy town, and so she's forced to bend to arbitrary wishes and commands from everyone else: she has to smile for the camera all the time. It will be some time before I'll put my hands to that one though. Strausszek (talk) 14:26, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Beast With Two Backs

Hi, I'd be happy to help out on that article, but I don't think I've actually seen that play, or if I have I don't remember it, so any details I add would ghave to be just about the incident itself. Paul B (talk) 21:18, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Audio theatre an article to audio dramas

Please if you have time and you know anything to it (I have seen that you have made edits in the article area which owns relations on it) , please look on the article Audio theatre, somebody placed a erase discussion on it. after we have had a merge discussion. It would be interesting what you would say to the merge and the delete discussion. And possibly it could help to contact other people that they should help also. )-: Merry Xmas --Soenke Rahn (talk) 14:59, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

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