The podcast "The Rest is History" recently released a series of podcasts on the life of Lord Byron. I recommend that for those interested in the man and his times.
Yes I think if Bertie knows it, everyone knows it. That’s the first thing I thought of when I read it. But I do think the range of reference to Macbeth, in the Code of the Woosters is impressive.
Hah. But this proves, I think, the place of Byron's "The Destruction of Sennacherib" in the old canon. As I wrote some years ago: "You’ll sometimes see [Wodehouse] praised for the wide range of his literary references. Don’t believe it.…Wodehouse’s references—particularly in the first-person with which Bertie Wooster narrates his stories—are almost entirely from the Edwardian schoolboy canon: the Bible and Shakespeare, the kind of Anglican hymn heard in British public schools, Victorian parlor poetry, the Bible and Shakespeare again, a few popular songs from the 1880s, Kipling, and the Bible and Shakespeare once again."
The podcast "The Rest is History" recently released a series of podcasts on the life of Lord Byron. I recommend that for those interested in the man and his times.
This is one of those super-fun poems to read, like "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere." Thanks for the re-visit!
This was in a high school English textbook, and although I was not especially taken with the poem, the first two lines have stayed with me ever since.
"Loud" is a good description of the meter.
Yes I think if Bertie knows it, everyone knows it. That’s the first thing I thought of when I read it. But I do think the range of reference to Macbeth, in the Code of the Woosters is impressive.
Some people, at least one person, know the first line because Bertie Wooster did.
Hah. But this proves, I think, the place of Byron's "The Destruction of Sennacherib" in the old canon. As I wrote some years ago: "You’ll sometimes see [Wodehouse] praised for the wide range of his literary references. Don’t believe it.…Wodehouse’s references—particularly in the first-person with which Bertie Wooster narrates his stories—are almost entirely from the Edwardian schoolboy canon: the Bible and Shakespeare, the kind of Anglican hymn heard in British public schools, Victorian parlor poetry, the Bible and Shakespeare again, a few popular songs from the 1880s, Kipling, and the Bible and Shakespeare once again."