The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides/ Poetry Made...

The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. is a travel journal by Scotsman James Boswell first published in 1785. In 1773, Boswell enticed his English friend Samuel Johnson to accompany him on a tour through the highlands and western islands of Scotland. Johnson was then in his mid sixties and well known for his literary works and his Dictionary. The two travellers set out from Edinburgh and skirted the eastern and northeastern coasts of Scotland, passing through St Andrews, Aberdeen and Inverness. They then passed into the highlands and spent several weeks on various islands in the Hebrides, including Skye, Coll, and Mull. After a visit to Boswell's estate at Auchinleck, the travellers returned to Edinburgh. Johnson published his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland on 18 January 1775.

It was widely read, discussed and criticised, especially for some skeptical remarks Johnson made questioning the authenticity of the Ossian poems, which were then all the rage. After Johnson's death in 1784, Boswell published his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. This work was based on a diary Boswell had kept during the 1773 tour and included detailed descriptions of where he and Johnson had gone and what Johnson had said.

The Journal served as a teaser for the longer biography Boswell was preparing for publication, his Life of Samuel Johnson, which would exhibit the same qualities. Boswell's Journal and Johnson's Journey make an interesting study in contrasts. Johnson considers things philosophically and maintains a high level of generality. Boswell's approach is more anecdotal, even gossipy, and succeeds in large part because of Boswell's keen eye and ear for detail. Both accounts are still widely read and admired today.

[edit] See also

• Scottish literature

[edit] External links

• The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, at Undiscovered Scotland (annotated HTML edition with cross linking to Johnson's book)
• The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides at Internet Archive (scanned books color illustrated original editions)
  • The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 1936 edition, expanded from the original manuscript. Reviewed in "Boswell in Full", Time Magazine, 1936.
• The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides at Project Gutenberg (plain text)
• The Native Scottish Diet in Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides

"Manners before morals," Mrs. Erlynne observes in Wilde's Lady Windemere's Fan (1892).

Manners before Morals"態度比道義還重要"

1947/11/2
胡適 在中央周刊 撰"援助與自助" 談中國當然需要美國貸款 不過美國在貸款時不要提出有傷他國民族尊嚴的條件
因為"態度比道義還重要"......

"Manners before morals," Mrs. Erlynne observes in Wilde's Lady Windemere's Fan (1892).

Manners before morals! Many a woman has a past, but I am told that she has at least a dozen, and that they all fit.

Lady Windermere's Fan - The Insults of Oscar Wilde

- [ 翻譯這個網頁 ]

www.insults.net/html/oscar_wilde/lady_windermeres_fan.html - 頁庫存檔

Whether the fogs produce the serious people or whether the serious people produce the fogs, I don't know... Manners before morals! Many a woman has a past, ...

Cheapside

Cheapside
(chēp'sīd')

A street and district in London, England. It was the market center of medieval London and the site of the Mermaid Tavern, a gathering place for Elizabethan poets and playwrights.

中古英文 cheap意思為 market

---wikipedia

Cheapside is a street in the City of London that links Newgate Street with the major road junction at Bank tube station (via a short section called Poultry) with a number of streets including Queen Victoria Street, Cornhill and King William Street. To the east is the Bank of England, whilst to the west (towards Newgate) is St. Paul's Cathedral, St. Paul's tube station and the Paternoster Square area.

In medieval times it was known as Westcheap, as opposed to Eastcheap, another street in the City. The boundaries of the wards of Cheap, Cordwainer and Bread Street run along Cheapside and Poultry, whilst prior to boundary changes in 2003 the street was divided amongst Farringdon Within and Cripplegate as well as the current three.

Poultry is a short continuation of Cheapside at its eastern end, starting at the cross-roads with Queen Street and King Street, towards Bank Junction.

Contents 1 History 2 Literary connections 3 Contemporary Cheapside 4 Etymology and usage 5 References 6 External links

History

Cheapside in 1823, looking west towards St. Paul's.

Photochrom of Cheapside, circa 1890-1900

Cheapside is the former site of one of the principal produce markets in London, cheap broadly meaning "market" in medieval English (see below Etymology and usage). Many of the streets feeding into the main thoroughfare are named after the produce that was originally sold in those areas of the market, including Honey Lane, Milk Street, Bread Street and Poultry.

In Medieval times, the royal processional route from the Tower of London to the Palace of Westminster would include Cheapside. During state occasions such as the first entry of Margaret of France (second wife of Edward I), into London in September 1299, the conduits of Cheapside customarily flowed with wine.^[1]

During the reign of Edward III in the 14th century, tournaments were held in adjacent fields. The dangers were however not limited to the participants: a wooden stand built to accommodate Queen Philippa and her companions collapsed during a tournament to celebrate the birth of the Black Prince in 1330. No one died but the King was greatly displeased and were it not for the Queen's intercession, the stand's builders would have been put to death.

On the day preceding her coronation during January 1559, Elizabeth I passed through a number of London streets in a pre-coronation procession and was entertained by a number of pageants, including one in Cheapside.

Meat was brought in to Cheapside from Smithfield, just outside Newgate. After the great Church of St. Michael-le-Querne, the top end of the street broadened into a dual carriageway known as the Shambles (referring to an open-air slaughterhouse and meat market), with butcher shops on both sides and a dividing central area also containing butchers. Further down, on the right, was Goldsmiths Row, an area of commodity dealers. From the 14th century until the Great Fire, the eastern end of Cheapside was the location of the Great Conduit.

Literary connections

Cheapside was the birthplace of John Milton, and Robert Herrick. It was for a long time one of the most important streets in London. It is also the site of the 'Bow Bells', the church of St. Mary-le-Bow, which has played a part in London's Cockney heritage and the tale of Dick Whittington. Geoffrey Chaucer grew up around Cheapside and there are a scattering of references to the thoroughfare and its environs throughout his work. The first chapter of Peter Ackroyd's Brief Lives series on Chaucer also colourfully describes the street at that time.^[2] Thomas Middleton's play A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1613) both satirises and celebrates the citizens of the neighbourhood during the Renaissance, when the street hosted the city's goldsmiths.

William Wordsworth, in his 1797 poem The Reverie of Poor Susan, imagines a naturalistic Cheapside of past:

And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.

Jane Austen, in her 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice, characterises Cheapside as a London neighbourhood frowned upon by the landed elite:^[3]

"I think I have heard you say that their uncle is an attorney in Meryton"

"Yes; and they have another, who lives somewhere near Cheapside."

"That is capital," added her sister, and they both laughed heartily.

"If they had uncles enough to fill all Cheapside," cried Bingley, "it would not make them one jot less agreeable."

"But it must very materially lessen their chance of marrying men of any consideration in the world," replied Darcy.

Charles Dickens, Jr. wrote in his 1879 book Dickens's Dictionary of London:

"Cheapside remains now what it was five centuries ago, the greatest thoroughfare in the City of London. Other localities have had their day, have risen, become fashionable, and have sunk into obscurity and neglect, but Cheapside has maintained its place, and may boast of being the busiest thoroughfare in the world, with the sole exception perhaps of London-bridge."^[4]

Hugh Lofting's book Doctor Dolittle, published in 1951, names a quarrelsome London sparrow with a Cockney accent Cheapside. He lives most of the year in St. Edmund's left ear in St. Paul's Cathedral and is invited to the African country of Fantippo to deliver mail to cities because the other birds are not able to navigate city streets.

Cheapside is also depicted in Rosemary Sutcliff's 1951 children's historical novel The Armourer's House, along with other parts of Tudor London.

In a more contemporary treatment, the Cheapside of the Middle Ages was referenced in a derogatory sense in the 2001 movie A Knight's Tale as being the poor, unhealthy and low-class birthplace and home of the unlikely hero.

Also, Mary "Jacky" Faber lived there in Bloody Jack by L. A. Meyer.

Contemporary Cheapside

Looking east down Cheapside (prior to the construction of One New Change) towards London's financial district and historic centre.

Cheapside today is a street of offices and developments of retail outlets. It can no longer be described as "the busiest thoroughfare in the world" (as in Charles Dickens, Jr's day) and is instead simply one of many routes connecting the East End and the City of London with the West End.

Cheapside was extensively damaged during The Blitz in late 1940 and particularly during the Second Great Fire of London. Much of the rebuilding following these raids occurred during the 1950s and 1960s and included a number of unsympathetic contemporary attempts at recreating the centuries-old architecture that had been destroyed. In recent years many of these buildings have themselves been demolished as a programme of regeneration takes place along Cheapside from Paternoster Square to Poultry.

The draft Core Strategy of the City's Local Development Frameworks outlines the vision and policies for the Cheapside area, aiming to increase the amount of retail space along and near the street, and make the area a good environment for visitors and shoppers. The plan is to re-establish the street as the City's "High Street", including as a weekend shopping destination (until recently many retail units in the City were closed on Saturday and Sunday).^[5][6] A major retail and office development at the heart of the scheme, One New Change, opened 28 October 2010.^[7] It is sited on Cheapside at the intersection with New Change, immediately to the east of St. Paul's Cathedral.^[8][9]

To address the anticipated rise in the number of shoppers as a result of the regeneration, the street itself has undergone reconstruction works to make the area more sympathetic to pedestrian traffic; the works are expected to make Cheapside the main shopping area in the City of London.

Etymology and usage

Cheapside is a common English street name, meaning "market-place", from Old English ceapan, 'to buy' (cf. German kaufen, Dutch kopen), whence also chapman and chapbook.^[10] There was originally no connection to the modern meaning of cheap ('low price', a shortening of good ceap, 'good buy'), though by the 18th century this association may have begun to be inferred.

Other cities and towns in England that have a Cheapside street include Barnsley, Birmingham, Bradford, Brighton, Bristol, Derby, Halifax, Lancaster, Leicester, Liverpool, Luton, Manchester, Nottingham, Reading, and Ascot. There is also a Cheapside in Bridgetown, Barbados; Lexington, Kentucky; and London, Canada.

References

Sources consulted

• A Glossary and Etymological Dictionary: Of Obsolete and Uncommon Words William Toone (Bennett: London, 1834)
• Kings and Queens of Britain, Williamson, D. (1986), Salem House, ISBN 0-88162-213-3.

Endnotes

1. ^ Williamson, D. (1986), Kings and Queens of Britain, p. 75, Salem House, ISBN 0-88162-213-3.
2. ^ Ackroyd, Peter (2005). Chaucer (biography), chapter 1 at Random House.com
3. ^ Austen, Jane (1813). Pride and Prejudice, chapter 8 at Pemberley.com
4. ^ Dickens, Charles, Jr (1879). "Cheapside". Dickens's Dictionary of London. Retrieved 2007-08-22.
5. ^ City of London Corporation draft Core Strategy, accessed July 2010
6. ^ City of London Corporation Cheapside area improvements
7. ^ Thomas, Daniel (27 October 2010). "Retail centre gambles on Square Mile". Financial Times. Retrieved 29 October 2010.
8. ^ One New Change
9. ^ InCheapside One New Change
10. ^ A Glossary and Etymological Dictionary: Of Obsolete and Uncommon Words William Toone (Bennett: London, 1834)

External links

• View, looking eastwards, of Cheapside in early Stuart times, showing the Cheapside Cross and the Standard
• The Cheapside Initiative official website

A TALE OF TWO CITIES: I. The Period

http://www.answers.com/topic/a-tale-of-two-cities

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

By Charles Dickens

---

Contents

!!!!	Book the First—Recalled to Life
I.	The Period
II.	The Mail
III.	The Night Shadows
IV.	The Preparation
V.	The Wine-shop
VI.	The Shoemaker
!!!!	Book the Second—the Golden Thread
I.	Five Years Later
II.	A Sight
III.	A Disappointment
IV.	Congratulatory
V.	The Jackal
VI.	Hundreds of People
VII.	Monseigneur in Town
VIII.	Monseigneur in the Country
IX.	The Gorgon's Head
X.	Two Promises
XI.	A Companion Picture
XII.	The Fellow of Delicacy
XIII.	The Fellow of No Delicacy
XIV.	The Honest Tradesman
XV.	Knitting
XVI.	Still Knitting
XVII.	One Night
XVIII.	Nine Days
XIX.	An Opinion
XX.	A Plea
XXI.	Echoing Footsteps
XXII.	The Sea Still Rises
XXIII.	Fire Rises
XXIV.	Drawn to the Loadstone Rock
!!!!	Book the Third—the Track of a Storm
I.	In Secret
II.	The Grindstone
III.	The Shadow
IV.	Calm in Storm
V.	The Wood-Sawyer
VI.	Triumph
VII.	A Knock at the Door
VIII.	A Hand at Cards
IX.	The Game Made
X.	The Substance of the Shadow
XI.	Dusk
XII.	Darkness
XIII.	Fifty-two
XIV.	The Knitting Done
XV.	The Footsteps Die Out For Ever

---

Book the First—Recalled to Life

I. The Period

It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief,
it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light,
it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope,
it was the winter of despair,

we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way— in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever.

It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood.

France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.

In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing their furniture to upholsterers' warehouses for security; the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, being recognised and challenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his character of "the Captain," gallantly shot him through the head and rode away; the mail was waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and then got shot dead himself by the other four, "in consequence of the failure of his ammunition:" after which the mail was robbed in peace; that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand and deliver on Turnham Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled the illustrious creature in sight of all his retinue; prisoners in London gaols fought battles with their turnkeys, and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball; thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at Court drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St. Giles's, to search for contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fired on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand at Newgate by the dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall; to-day, taking the life of an atrocious murderer, and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer's boy of sixpence.

All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Environed by them, while the Woodman and the Farmer worked unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and the fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine rights with a high hand. Thus did the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures—the creatures of this chronicle among the rest—along the roads that lay before them.

Will Gadhafi suffer the same fate as Richard III?

VOX POPULI: Will Gadhafi suffer the same fate as Richard III?

Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a daily column that runs on Page 1 of the vernacular Asahi Shimbun.

2011/10/05

Macbeth and Richard III are two main characters of William Shakespeare's plays who are portrayed as villains. The latter was an actual king of England who lived from 1452 to 1485. In the play, he realizes his ambitions to usurp the throne by using every conceivable scheme. But in the end, the king dies in battle after being abandoned by his supporters.

I found the column "Kaze" (Wind) that ran on the opinion page of last week's vernacular Asahi Shimbun interesting for the way it likened former Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi, who vanished in a civil war, to Richard III. I was also surprised to learn that Gadhafi has his own views about Shakespeare.

Even though I am not well versed in Shakespeare's play, Gadhafi's flight makes me think of the last act of "Richard III." With his allies switching sides, the horseless king is vastly outnumbered by his enemies and shouts: "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"

But the king wanted a horse not to escape, but to go on fighting. I wonder for what purpose the colonel, who is believed to be in hiding in Libya, wants a "horse." I don't want to see any more bloodshed.

In the final act of the play, the ghosts of people who were killed by the king appear one after another. Meanwhile, the other day I read a story that apparent human remains were found buried near a prison for political prisoners in Libya. A "senryu" satirical poem that recently ran in The Asahi Shimbun goes: "Once a dictator exits/ Human remains appear." Could they be precious human sacrifices for a new age?

Whatever the case, with the lifting of the weight of a dictatorship, Libya remains in chaos. This is to be expected, as various groups keep vying with each other to reap the "fruit of revolution." "All's Well That Ends Well" is the title of another Shakespeare play. But in the real world, the end is also the beginning of the next stage. I hope Libya will overcome its current difficulties.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Oct. 3

* * *

Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

Dictionary Johnson/ A Dish of Tea with Dr Johnson

Dictionary Johnson

It feels like impudence to review a show whose protagonist staunchly affirms the irrelevance of the theatre critic. We are, so Dr Samuel Johnson tells us, merely ‘a species of dung beetle... [each] a fellow who makes himself fat upon other men’s droppings’. But it’s hard to imagine that A Dish of Tea with Dr Johnson – a light, humane stroll through Johnson’s life and writings – will be feeling any harsh stings from critics, dung beetle or no dung beetle.

Out of Joint’s latest two-hander is an undeniably cozy pleasure. Samuel Johnson – ‘Dictionary Johnson’, to his 18th Century contemporaries – may have shaped our language more than anyone except Shakespeare, but only 20% of people on the street can vaguely identify him (and I do hope most of them are following his updated dictionary definitions on Twitter).

To rectify this situation, Johnson (Ian Redford) and his biographer Boswell (Luke Griffin) invite us to spend a jovial hour or so in drinking tea with them at the Arts Theatre, which shouldn’t take too long out of anyone’s day –although such is Johnson’s fondness for the fashionable drink, that ‘he has been known to drink up to fourteen cups at one sitting’.

In Redford’s gentle portrayal, Johnson’s notorious appetites are part of his zest for living, ‘a hunger for humanity’. But Max Stafford-Clark’s adaptation encompasses Johnson’s morbid melancholia as part and parcel of this vivacity: Redford’s Johnson is a man hypersensitive to both light and dark in the human experience. His remedies verge from the foolhardy – ‘he who makes a beast of himself [with drink] gets rid of the pain of being a man’ – to the Stoic, insisting that one should ‘never mention your own mental illness’ to avoid dwelling on it.

But for all this very modern concern with depression, for the most part A Dish of Tea with Dr Johnson is an old-fashioned series of straight sketches, which hit a happy stream of comic high notes. Even when Johnson insists on seriousness, he does it with a smile: he has never wastes conversation on ‘vapid women with no opinion’, he insists, because ‘they have softness, but so do pillows’.

Some of the best laughs are at the expense of Scots Nationalists, although audience members of such persuasions will likely chortle just as happily as their English fellows to see Johnson’s pomposities on the subject so exposed. Oats, in Johnson’s dictionary, is defined as ‘a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people’.

Johnson’s prejudice against the Scots seems more theatrical than genuine, but he certainly was deadly serious when he marshaled his pen to the defense of the Hanoverian George III against Jacobite claimants to the throne, a controversial alliance that provides us with an intriguing snapshot of the political and intellectual life of the 18th Century. (In one of the play’s more clod-obvious jokes, Johnson laments the horror of having a Scottish prime minister, ‘who has accumulated an unimaginable sum for the National Debt that will plague generations to come.’)

Redford’s Johnson is moved to horror at the thought of England suffering Scottish monarchs, with the surprising exception of Mary Queen of Scots, the empty-headed flibbertigibbet whom the stodgy intellectual Johnson nonetheless eulogizes in a passage prefiguring Edmund Burke’s famous romanticisation of another hopeless fashionista, Marie Antoinette.

But such musing on Scottish melodramas does at least allow us to meet a weird and wonderful range of legendary characters, from Mad King George to the beautiful Flora MacDonald who spirited Bonnie Prince Charlie to safety at Skye – now a rather prim and pious Grande Dame of late middle age.

It is this parade of crazy characters that gives Tea With Dr Johnson its legs. Literary figures of the stature of Oliver Goldsmith (whose mind ‘mind resembled a fertile, but thin soil’) and radical politicians like John Wilkes all flit on stage for a few minutes or so, each portrayed by the nimbly transformative Luke Griffin.

It’s hard to believe that Griffin only had a few days to study for the role, but some of the credit for the play’s development surely belongs to the original performer, Russell Barr, who adapted this exquisite play alongside Redford and Stafford-Clark in the rehearsal room before being taken ill. It seems to owe something to Helen Deutsch’s Loving Dr Johnson, but most of the dialogue is deftly woven from Johnson and Boswell’s own recorded reminiscences.

All the famous one-liners are there: we recall that a second marriage is ‘the triumph of hope over experience’, and ‘one of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes men mistake words for thoughts.’ But above and beyond a mere recitation of Johnson’s greatest hits stands a production of subtle humanity.

Let’s hope that those who crafted it are well remunerated when the show returns to London. After all, ‘no man but a blockheaded ever wrote except for money.’

----

Out of Joint presents

A Dish of Tea with Dr Johnson

adapted by Russell Barr, Ian Redford and Max Stafford-Clark, from James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

Edinburgh Festival SOLD OUT.
London: Arts Theatre West End 3 – 24 September only.
Another chance to see this acclaimed and popular play celebrating of Samuel Johnson’s unique take on life.

4 STARS “A rare treat” Michael Billington, The Guardian

4 STARS “One did not want the evening to end” Paul Taylor, The Independent

4 STARS “A joyous encounter” Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph

4 STARS “Delightful… Johnson was a legendary wit. As such he makes a perfect subject.” Whatsonstage.com

Dates & booking

cast information.

Irritable, generous, seriously depressed yet a great wit: meet Samuel “Dictionary” Johnson – poet, essayist and lexicographer. This evening of stories and conversation brings to life some of the most colourful figures of the eighteenth century.

Ian Redford reprises his much-praised performance as Johnson in a play that features a host of characters from biographer James Boswell and painter Joshua Reynolds to King George III, and Bonnie Prince Charlie’s saviour Flora Macdonald. Trudie Styler(read interview) plays Mrs Thrale, the society hostess who was Johnson’s final, unrequited love*.

“Ian Redford is as close to the real Dr Johnson as one could ever hope to see onstage” Time Out, on A Laughing Matter

Director Max Stafford-Clark says: “A Dish of Tea with Dr Johnson continue’s Out of Joint’s tradition of literary biography. The Libertine was about George Etherege and the Earl of Rochester; A Laughing Matter introduced us to the world of Dr Johnson, David Garrick, Oliver Goldsmith and Joshua Reynolds; and the recent Andersen’s English depicted the visit of Hans Christian Andersen to Charles Dickens.

“With A Dish of Tea with Dr Johnson we return to the fascinating world of the great Dr Johnson. Until the middle of the 19^th Century only the two patent houses, Drury Lane and Covent Garden, were permitted to present drama. So when Samuel Foote, Johnson’s contemporary, presented his evening of comic impersonations and vignettes it was billed as ‘An Invitation to a Dish of Chocolate with Samuel Foote’. From him we have purloined our title.”

*Trudie Styler is not appearing on 10, 11, and 20-24 Sep

梁實秋《英國文學史》

梁實秋《英國文學史》