Gunpowder Treason
I don’t think I’ve got much to say about patriotic festivals of anti-Catholic bigotry invovling fireworks this year, except to report that I recently flipped through Garry Wills’s Witches and Jesuits — his reading of Macbeth as a gunpowder play — and it’s splendid.
Oh, that is interesting. I recently read Claire Asquith’s Shadowplay (see my LibraryThing review!), and she saw Macbeth as a direct appeal to James on the subject of Catholic persecution. In fact, there’s a substantial section in that book about Coriolanus being a Gunpowder play, the protagonist representing the plotters in various obvious respects. Can’t say it had occured to me.
↓ Quote | Posted 5 November, 2006, 1:19 pmI’d say that November the fifth has gone the way of Christmas, Easter and Halloween, i.e. it’s now mainly a hedonistic festival that only keeps the ideological aspect as a fig-leaf justification for its own existence.
↓ Quote | Posted 7 November, 2006, 12:16 pmWhat’s meant to be the ideological aspect of Hallowe’en?
↓ Quote | Posted 7 November, 2006, 4:16 pmSatanism, probably.
↓ Quote | Posted 7 November, 2006, 4:21 pmIsn’t it the eve of All Souls’ Day or All Saints’ Day, one of the two?From my particular pagan perspective, the whole point is getting to wear a ridiculous black-and-orange striped witch-hat (apparently it offends cockatoos. Who knew?) and eating huge amounts of chocolate.
↓ Quote | Posted 7 November, 2006, 11:07 pmAs far as I know the ‘Gunpowder Play’ is a bit vieux chapeau, the Porter’s disquisition on equivocation having been long linked by commentators to supposed contemporary Jesuit doctrine. That said, I’ll certainly have a look at the book.
↓ Quote | Posted 8 November, 2006, 6:15 pm