The Duchess of Malfi, a play by John Webster, makes up much of the backdrop to Robert Galbraith’s The Silkworm and its literary antecedents, namely, Agatha Christie’s Sleeping Murder and P. D. James’ The Skull Beneath the Skin (see my discussion of this influence here). You had a wonderful education indeed if you read this play or saw it performed as a young person in the United States, where, in my experience at least, ‘Early Modern Drama’ means ten generous helpings of Shakespeare at least to any condiment-sized presentations or discussion of Jonson, Kyd, or Webster.
I was delighted to find, consequently, a British production pf Duchess of Malfi in period costume available free online. I reproduce its first four parts below and provide a link to the rest of the show at the end for your easy access. Free online texts if you choose to read before viewing or while watching can be found at Gutenberg.com as plain text, at LarryAvisBrown.com with notes, and at FullBooks.com as poetry per the Arden edition.
For the remaining nine parts of this production, see the full collection on YouTube. Enjoy — and let me know what you think in the comment boxes below!
I have also been reading the Father Anselm novels of William Brodrick, an Augustinian monk become barrister become novelist. If P. D. James wrote Brother Cadfael mysteries as historical thrillers, you’d have the sort of book Brodrick writes. The language and questions explored are relatively magisterial compared to Christie and Rowling — and the plotting and slow release are comparable to those two, which is to say, “very, very good.” I have read four of the six Anselm novels and am looking forward to reading the fifth, The Discourtesy of Death.
I discovered this morning that Brodrick has written two more novels, Summary Justice and Blind Defense, which I have ordered. I have done so because it occurs to me that these novels have a lot in common with the Cormoran Strike mysteries, enough in common that reading and discussing them here at HogwartsProfessor might be a healthy exercise while we wait for Strike5, a novel I fear may be several years away (Rowling’s retreat from the public sphere since January may be a sign of her getting down to work on her screenplay and novel commitments, or, just as likely, it may mean she is taking time off to work on personal issues rather than writing).
The five points of correspondence?
I’ll allow that the last point is a little weak.
So, here’s my challenge. I am going to start discussing the first Benson and De Vere novel, Summary Justice, on 1 October. You have all of September to buy and read the book. I will restrict conversation here to the first book for two weeks; after 14 October I will begin posting on Blind Defence with speculation about Forced Confessions. I hope, of course, that you will join me on this adventure so I am not talking to myself. And you can be sure HogwartsProfessor will continue to be the home of the best discussion of all things Rowling and Galbraith, especially with respect to Strike5.
Brady Pendelton has posted a hermetic interpretation of J. K. Rowling’s first two Fantastic Beasts screenplays,
Are there problems with the essay? Sure. I found one distracting mistake, for instance, the assertion that Newt “asks Jacob” to be obliviated at the end of Beasts. There may be more missteps I missed. I enjoyed his discussion of Marvell and the aside about ‘The Hanged Man.’ Your mileage may vary; it’s pretty esoteric stuff and the argument is not conventionally discursive. I wish, too, there had been a lot more on the screenplays and its alchemical content, especially Crimes of Grindelwald. He doesn’t mention the couples as representatives of the four elements, Dumbledore and Grindelwald as the Quarreling Couple of Mercury and Sulphur, or Nicolas Flamel.
Dolores Gordon-Smith spotted three Agatha Christie mysteries on J. K. Rowling’s bookshelf in the photo taken for the back cover of the Bloomsbury adult edition of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Mrs. Gordon-Smith is a mystery writer herself (check out her brilliant Jack Haldean novels if you haven’t already!), a Potter pundit, and a great fan and close reader of Dame Agatha. She noted that Rowling had almost certainly decided to name the Hogwarts Saga’s Weasley daughter Ginny with the proper name Ginevra after the red headed teen girl in Christie’s Appointment with Death who is also a spirited Ginny/Ginevra.
Appointment with Death, however, was only one of the three Christie’s on Rowling’s shelf that Mrs Gordon-Smith spotted. With it are Dead Man’s Folly and Murder in Three Acts. David Llewellyn Dodds has found four more Christie paperbacks on a different part of the bookshelf in the same picture. Based on the Ginny/Ginevra find in Appointment, I have read and posted about other links with Harry and Cormoran in that book, in another Christie mystery with obvious correspondences to a Rowling title (cf., The Pale Horse with Lethal White), those Christie mysteries which Rowling has said she enjoyed (The Moving Finger, Murder at the Vicarage) or just collections I have read at random (The Complete Miss Marple Short Stories, Murder at the Manor).
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