Puffins Labours Lost
(Shutterstock)
The latest cause célèbre in the Woke Wars has been the decision by Puffin publishers to eliminate politically incorrect words (such as fat, men and ugly) from the collected children’s works of Roald Dahl. This censorship, post-mortem, was immediately attacked by that Polyphemic literary giant Sir Salman Rushdie, as well as by Gyles Brandreth and Richard Osman amongst others, while Queen Consort Camilla, a noted Dahl enthusiast, also subtly, but very publicly, conveyed her disapproval of Puffin’s nanny editing. Even Rishi Sunak joined in the excoriation of the hapless mini avian.
The outcome, a partial Puffin retreat, whereby, it seems, that Penguin will keep the Dahl originals in print, while Puffin will publish their expurgated version. Without in any way condoning Puffin’s act of literary vandalism, I must point out that this kind of posthumous emasculation has long been a prominent feature of the English literary scene, albeit in this case, one relating to a self-confessed proponent of anti-Semitism.
Thus, Nahum Tate, poet laureate and near contemporary of John Milton, rewrote Shakespearean tragedies to sanitise the plots and contrive happy endings.
Nahum Tate (1652 – 1715) was an Irish poet who became Poet Laureate in 1692. Tate is best known for his 1681 happy ever after rewrite of Shakespeare’s King Lear, and for his epic poem on Tea, Panacea, written not long after Milton had completed his great epic, Paradise Lost. Tate had three claims to fame:
He was born in Dublin and came from a family of Puritan clerics, who rejoiced in such Old Testament names as Praise God Barebones and (in Ben Jonson’s parody) Zeal of the Land Busy. Nahum was the son of Faithful Teate, an Irish cleric who had been a local rector, until his house was burnt down by an angry mob, as a result of his passing information to the government about plans for the Irish Rebellion of 1641.
Next, for his efforts to better the Bard; and finally for his undoubted genius for bathos, as witnessed by the following extract, from his epic in praise of tea, Panacea:
Fame sound thy trump, all ranks of mortals call,
To share a prize that will enrich them all.
You that with sacred oracles converse,
And clearly would mysterious truths rehearse,
On soaring wings of contemplation rise,
And fetch discoveries from above the skies,
Ethereal TEA your notions will refine,
Till you yourselves become almost divine.You statesmen, who in storms the public helm,
Would guide with skill, and save a sinking realm.
TEA, your Minerva, shall suggest such sense,
Such safe and sudden turns of thought dispense,
That you, like her Ulysses, may advise,
And start designs that shall the world surprise.
When Nahum died in 1715, in the borough of London’s Globe Theatre, many onlookers claimed they could see his soul being lowered into the fires of hell, presumably for committing the sin of trying to improve Shakespeare. He was buried at the Church in Southwark, of St. George the Martyr, on 1 August 1715.
Tate was unlucky, since the process of literary evisceration is now chiefly associated, not with his name, but with Dr Thomas Bowdler 1754-1825. Bowdler was a member of the Royal Society, who was known to play expert chess, to be an associate and opponent of the great French Master, Philidor, as well as being the man who ‘bowdlerised’ Shakespeare as Editor of the ‘Family Shakespeare.’ There he wrote, “those words and expressions are omitted (i.e. from his edited version of Shakespeare) which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family.”‘Bowdlerising’ has become since then synonymous with prudish expurgation or censorship. However, he was evidently no mean chess player and his most spectacular win is undoubtedly a forerunner in the conceptual sense of the Anderssen v Kieseritsky immortal game. (See below for links).
Bowdler’s victim, in what was probably the most imaginative game of chess ever played until that time, was a military man (Puffin would doubtless say, person) and statesman (oops, statesperson) who achieved great eminence in everything he undertook, a sort of Midas of the Mind.
Field Marshal Henry Seymour Conway (1721 – 1795) was a British general and statesman. A cousin of Horace Walpole, he began his military career in the War of the Austrian Succession. He held various political offices including Chief Secretary for Ireland and Leader of the House of Commons. He eventually rose to the position of Commander in Chief of all British armed forces.
Conway was made a full general on 26 May 1772, while remaining an important figure in the Commons, opposing the British attempt to suppress the American Revolution. He was rewarded with a cabinet position and the office of Commander in Chief of the Forces, in the new Rockingham ministry of March 1782. His political career finally terminated in 1784, when he lost his seat in parliament, due to his opposition to the new government of William Pitt the Elder. Conway focused thereafter on his military responsibilities, retaining his post as Commander-in Chief until his complete retirement in January 1793. He was promoted to Field Marshal on 18 October 1793 and died, at his home, in Berkshire, on 9 July 1795.
Bowdler and Tate were not alone in trying to improve the unimprovable. Bowdler was aided by his sister Henrietta Maria, in detoxifying Shakespeare, as well as the mammoth task of verbally cleansing the Augean Stables of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Meanwhile Charles and Mary Lamb were busy making Shakespeare harmless in their summaries. It must be conceded that the labours of the Lambs and the Bowdlers were wildly popular in their day.
However reprehensible the Puffin purification might now appear, a modest perusal of both the historical and present literary landscape, will demonstrate that rewriting of the greats is,in fact, all around us. What theatre or film director has not cut or amended Shakespeare when attempting to portray the Bard’s work? For example, Olivier’s film of Richard III is a triumph, but it involves considerable alteration of the original – in a rare case, for the better, in my opinion. My favourite lines of Hamlet: Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind away. Oh, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall, t’expel the winter’s flaw,” are nowadays serially omitted.
And what of Shakespeare’s great contemporary, Christopher Marlowe? My all time favourite line in the whole canon of English literature is the sonorous opener of Tamburlaine the Great part two: Egregious viceroys of these Eastern Parts. It is, sadly, always omitted from modern productions, or, if retained, rewritten as Most noble Viceroys.
Noble and egregious are not the same things! Noble refers to the genius of Shakespeare and Marlowe. Egregious is what Puffin and their compliant cohort of airbrushing “sensitivity readers” have done to the works of Roald Dahl!
Most noble, of course, also applies to the following contests:
The Immortal game (Anderssen vs. Kieseritzky)
A couple of postscripts follow. The first relates to the article of February 25, Can this be true? AI, Go and chess. In a gratifying message, Toby Manning of the British Go Association has kindly endorsed my views, and provided a link to the games where the human player triumphed over AI.
And in a second and final reference to nobility in this week’s column: we are pleased to report the following recovery statement from David Sedgwick, the UK’s premier arbiter, who writes:
“I have been discharged from Croydon University Hospital and shall be continuing my recuperation for the next 8 or 9 days at a nursing home in Norbury. During this temporary stay, I am not actively seeking visitors but …I would like to thank everyone who has contacted me while I have been in hospital.”
I’m sure we would all want to join in wishing David a speedy recovery and a swift return to duty.
Raymond Keene’s latest book “Fifty Shades of Ray: Chess in the year of the Coronavirus”, containing some of his best pieces from TheArticle, is now available from Blackwell’s . His 206th book, Chess in the Year of the King, with a foreword by The Article contributor Patrick Heren, and written in collaboration with former Reuters chess correspondent, Adam Black, is in preparation. It will be published later this year.
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