sunday papers "william wilde edition"

national | politics / elections | opinion/analysis Monday June 26, 2006 00:51 by iosaf

(((it helps if you're brainy to read the sunday papers)))

It has long been observed et cetera.., As your national poet & someone who has read Chomsky's tarot cards, I want to move the Irish cultural narrative beyond the Othello quotation frenzy of C.J. Haughey's state funeral & draw your attention to the European Day of Action yesterday to close migrant internment camps. This is where our 25 states send mostly Africans & Moors so we don't see thier desperation.

The title of this edition of The sunday papers is a play on nomencliture
being both a simultanteous play on the name of Oscar Wilde's father Sir William Wilde
and Alderman Dr William Shakespeare H.dip.Ed. F.R.C.S.I., M.B.E.,

gather round!
for the first time since the "exodus edition" of the sunday papers, iosaf is going to tell you a story.

if they cross the border of Europe - they've reason to be Proud. some day they will get a Pride day. just like NYC paddy's day & some of our community ;-)

I have often wondered, what was more shocking to the audience of thier time-

Is it the life of William Wilde, optician to the King of Sweden and how he coped with his wife's trials for treason? or Is it the crux moments in Shakespeare's play "Titus Andronicus" (the only of his two plays with prominent African or Maghrebi characters). When they can no longer hear the words of one of the actors on stage, the actor playing the part of Lavinia, the daughter of Titus Andronicus. She has been mutilated and left without her hands and tongue so she can bear no witness to her past, she just can't talk. Ah! the audience shout (some heckle) "give her something to write on" Without reflection on how amazing it was that by that time most theatre goers were mildly literate.
Certainly that is not the most shocking moment of Shakespeare's play, let us remember the moment in the final act when after Titus has slain the empress's sons in revenge (they were defilers of his daughter and caused the murder of his sons) He invites Caesar and his perfidious wife the empress to his house, they both thinking him mad. Naturally they think him mad, his house is no "Unicorn restaurant".., he las long left the interlocking circles of power.., discredited Titus can only He has spend the weeks distributing amongst the citizens of Rome certain letters damning Caesar and Senate in the name of mute Lavinia. A matter of which no-one really gives a damn. Shakespeare's prototype of his obligatory cycled Leaving Certificate English course doesn't really pay attention.
So, full of arrogance both Caesar and the empress come to his house, to eat a humble pie. A humble pie whose blood and offal have been collected by the mute Lavinia at her father Titus' bidding, from the slain bodies of the now discovered sons. At last the fact known to the audience in the drama but "unsaid" in the real world of the stage is revealed :- the identity of "rape & murder". The spectators are shocked, they're no longer eating thier snacks. No consumption, no silent exits to the toilets to sneak in a cigarette. Then the bard drops the bombshell -
Titus tricks Caesar into approving by classical court of law references a death sentance on Lavinia.
He murders his own daughter with imperial permission, for she was a victim of a horrible crime and can not live beyond that point in "her public shame". So he breaks her neck.
"jayzhus why you do dat?" asks Caesar ( & most of the audience).
General Titus explains that she was a "shameful victim" (of the kind we don't have in Eire anymore because we're all liberal now) of a the crime they had just been talking about. Caesar has heard it all before. No protest, no pamphlet, no crime, no rape can really ruffle Caesar's feathers.
name the villains is the emperor's only response.

& you know what?

Titus tells him it was his wife's sons.
& then he shares the recipe of the pie with his guests.

Caesar "the idiot" through all the play has had no idea all along - he is so "out of touch" - he has no idea who fathered his wife's sons, he has no idea who really killed who, he has no idea if Aaron the Moor prototype to Othello in all but virtous words, his "special security advisor" was really a monster - he has no notion how to deal with the goths or vandals of the north, but yes but
he now knows what was in the pie.., the humble pie he has just eaten.....
BANG! it all ends.......
they're all dead..............
"dats the romans for u................says Shakespeare".
curtain goes down.

or did contemporary audiences find it more shocking to deal with the moment when Oscar fingal Flaterty wilde told his parents Esperanza & William Wilde that he was into piccadilly rent and posh english boys?

Of course William Shakespeare wanted to follow up on Titus Andronicus & Oscar Wilde didn't really at the crucial end want all the public feedback.

More than half of North Great George's Street Dublin has signed thier name to the academic reputation of such theses. But Othello wasn't really what Shakespeare intended to be the sequel of Titus Andronicus nor De Profundis really what Oscar Wilde intended to be the end of his work. That is merely a comparison based on prejudice, be it positive or negative, on racist profiling assumptions or even - vice in drama.

This last week, We have seen Mary Harney and Michael Mc Dowell in a Public display of Affection assuming affectation.

We have noted the man who's not eating on Kildare Street.

We still want a caravan for the mammy.

We have all got word about the bouncy castle.

We're mostly eating God
Bless us.

its holidays.
only the grass roots pay attention.

I suggest you listen to popcorn whilst reading this article.

(being the 1974 popular BBC music themetune, now remixed with copyright on 16 tracks and reproduced on 3 editions ((annual)) of "now That's music" if you ate "Milk Tray delight" or took MDMA in any adulterated form you heard the tune popcorn) fnord

Have a good week.