Big Lizards:Blog:Entry “Grumbles, the Coincidental Coda”

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April 13, 2006

Grumbles, the Coincidental Coda

Hatched by Dafydd

If you read the previous post to this, Grumbles From the Griped, you shall understand how amused I was this evening.

After racing to finish that post -- and making the utterly witless mistake of ascribing Gulliver's Travels to Daniel Dafoe instead of Jonathan Swift (duh), may UC Santa Cruz (my alma mater) and Trinity College, Dublin (his) forgive me -- Sachi and I went to the theater to see Shaw's Arms and the Man, which neither of us had seen staged before.

In the second act occurs the following bit of byplay between the Lady Catherine (Bulgarian gentry) and her daughter's fiance, Major Sergius:

CATHERINE

You look superb--splendid. The campaign has improved you. Everybody here is mad about you. We were all wild with enthusiasm about that magnificent cavalry charge.

SERGIUS

(with grave irony)

Madam: it was the cradle and the grave of my military reputation.

CATHERINE

How so?

SERGIUS

I won the battle the wrong way when our worthy Russian generals were losing it the right way. That upset their plans, and wounded their self-esteem.

I jumped, of course. I felt almost like Wilson, in the play Harvey, when he looks up Pooka in the encyclopaedia -- and the entry reads:

P-O-O-K-A --- Pooka -- from old Celtic mythology -- a fairy spirit in animal form -- always very large. The pooka appears here and there -- to this one -- and to that one -- a benign but mischievous creature -- very fond of rumpots, crackpots, and how are you, Mr. Wilson?

I feel very dramatic today.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 13, 2006, at the time of 11:04 PM