¶ In Moby-Dick, “The Monkey-Rope,” another one of Melville’s joculo-Shakespearean entertainments.

“There is some sneaking Temperance Society movement about this business,” he suddenly added, no approaching Starbuck, who had just come from forward. “Will you look at that kannakin sir: smell of it, if you please.” Then watching the mate’s countenance, he added: “The steward, Mr Starbuck, had the face to offer that calomel and jalap to Queequeg, there, this instant off the whale. Is the steward an apothecary, sir? and may I ask whether this is the sort of bellows by which he blows back the breath into a half-drowned dman?”

Not to mention the flogged-to-death Siamese-twins image.

¶ In Don Quixote, Sancho continues to dream about governing ínsulas. The bachelor, Don Sansón, encourages Don Quixote to appear in the Zaragoza lists, where “he could win fame vanquishing all the Aragonese knights, which would be the same as vanquishing all the knights in the world.”

¶ In Squillions, a whispering campaign at the Admiralty aims to shut down Noël Coward’s production of In Which We Serve, the patriotic re-telling of, among other adventures, Lord Mountbatten’s misadventures in Crete; but the interference halts abruptly with a letter from “Bertie” to “Dickie.”

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 at 10:45 am. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.