I just finished reading the play Death’s Jest-Book by Thomas Lovell Beddoes. The language in this thing is stunning, though the play is a bit oblique, with characters often doing things for no discernible reason at all. Actually, that seems to be one of the major themes of the play: the inability to really KNOW another person and accurately predict what they will do.
The damn(ed) thing is in the public domain and you can actually read most of it here: happy public domain copy online. (To read additional acts simply change the number in the address after “jestbook” but before “html” to 2 or 3.)
Any play which begins this way:
Mandr. Am I a man of gingerbread that you should mould me to your liking? To have my way, in spite of your tongue and reason’s teeth, tastes better than Hungary wine; and my heart beats in a honey-pot now I reject you and all sober sense: so tell my master, the doctor, he must seek another zany for his booth, a new wise merry Andrew. My jests are cracked, my coxcomb fallen, my bauble confiscated, my cap decapitated. Toll the bell; for oh! for oh! Jack Pudding is no more!
Joan. Wilt thou away from me then, sweet Mandrake? Wilt thou not marry me?
Mandr. Child, my studies must first be ended. Thou knowest I hunger after wisdom, as the red sea after ghosts: therefore will I travel awhile.
Joan. Whither, dainty Homunculus?
Mandr. Whither should a student in the black arts, a journeyman magician, a Rosicrucian? Where is our country? You heard the herald this morning thrice invite all christian folk to follow the brave knight, Sir Wolfram, to the shores of Egypt, and there help to free from bondage his noble fellow in arms, Duke Melveric, whom, on a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, wild pagans captured. There, Joan, in that Sphynx land found Raimund Lully those splinters of the philosopher’s stone with which he made English Edward’s gold. There dwell hoary magicians, who have given up their trade and live sociably as crocodiles on the banks of the Nile. There can one chat with mummies in a pyramid, and breakfast on basilisk’s eggs. Thither then, Homonculus Mandrake, son of the great Paracelsus; languish no more in the ignorance, and weigh anchor for Egypt.
has me all atwitter. But then I have a crazed obsession with bizarre and madcap language…
Gads! That sounds brilliant brilliant, ooh. I need to get past this distaste for reading lengthy things online. Perhaps this will do it, I’ll mark this and go to checking it out. Yon!
It’s completely wild.
It seems to be best readen in small chunks.