689 Thomas Kyd (with Brian Vickers) | My Last Book with Jonathan D.S. Schroeder

Summary

Podcast Summary: The History of Literature Episode 689: Thomas Kyd (with Brian Vickers) | My Last Book with Jonathan D.S. Schroeder Host: Jacke Wilson | Released: March 24, 2025

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Introduction to Thomas Kyd and Brian Vickers

In Episode 689 of The History of Literature, host Jacke Wilson delves into the life and works of the Elizabethan playwright Thomas Kyd with esteemed scholar Brian Vickers. The episode not only explores Kyd's renowned play, The Spanish Tragedy, but also unveils Vickers' groundbreaking research attributing additional works to Kyd, potentially reshaping his place in literary history.

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Thomas Kyd: Biography and Educational Background

Brian Vickers begins by painting a comprehensive picture of Thomas Kyd, born in 1558 to Francis Kyd, a scrivener in London. Kyd's upbringing in a literary household provided him with a robust education, primarily focused on Latin grammar and rhetoric—a common curriculum of Elizabethan grammar schools influenced by Erasmus.

Quote:
"Kidd's father was a scrivener. So that's a rather restricted background, but nonetheless something that gave him fluency in the English and the Latin language."
— Brian Vickers [04:22]

Despite his solid educational foundation, much of Kyd's personal life remains obscure, a typical scenario for many playwrights of the era who operated outside the spotlight enjoyed by contemporaries like Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.

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The Spanish Tragedy: A Revolutionary Play

The Spanish Tragedy stands as Kyd's most significant contribution to Elizabethan theatre. Vickers highlights its success and groundbreaking elements, particularly its focus on revenge—a theme that would later be prominent in Shakespeare's works.

Quote:
"The Spanish tragedy was an absolute money spinner, an absolute box office success because of the dramatic end."
— Brian Vickers [12:10]

The play's protagonist, Hieronymo, embodies the archetype of a revenge hero, setting a precedent for complex characters in subsequent tragedies.

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Influence on Shakespeare's Hamlet

Vickers draws a direct line of influence from The Spanish Tragedy to Shakespeare's Hamlet. He points out structural and thematic similarities, such as the revenge-driven narrative and the use of a play within a play to reveal truth and instigate action.

Quote:
"Hieronymo as the solo hero is very much the model for Hamlet."
— Brian Vickers [15:05]

This connection underscores Kyd's pivotal role in shaping the trajectory of English drama.

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Expanding Kyd's Literary Corpus: New Attributions

Challenging traditional literary boundaries, Vickers presents his research attributing three additional plays to Thomas Kyd: Arden of Faversham, Fair M, and a distinct version of King Lear spelled as L.E.I.R. These works, previously attributed to other playwrights or left anonymous, showcase Kyd's versatility beyond tragedy into genres like comedy and romance.

Quote:
"If you're a careful reader, you will notice these phrases cropping up. But you can now find them much more accurately by running a computer,—running a playtext through a computer."
— Brian Vickers [19:07]

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Methodology: Unveiling Authorship Through Linguistic Analysis

Vickers elaborates on his methodological approach, combining traditional literary analysis with modern computational techniques to identify distinctive phraseology consistent across the attributed works. This rigorous analysis strengthens the case for Kyd's authorship, moving beyond mere stylistic similarities to substantive linguistic evidence.

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Elizabethan Play Attribution Practices

The episode sheds light on the norms of play attribution in Elizabethan England, where plays were often published without authors’ names, favoring the theatre company's ownership over individual recognition. This historical context explains the anonymity surrounding many playwrights, including Kyd.

Quote:
"In the Elizabethan theater... the plays only ever advertised the play, not the author."
— Brian Vickers [21:46]

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Reception and Academic Pushback

Vickers anticipates and addresses potential criticism of his assertions, recounting instances of pushback from established academics. Notably, he references a contentious review by Emma Smith in the Times Literary Supplement, which he disputes by highlighting prior negative interactions unrelated to his scholarly work.

Quote:
"I had criticized some years ago... I hate to say this, but by an English academic whose work I had criticized some years ago."
— Brian Vickers [30:47]

This segment underscores the contentious nature of literary attribution and the challenges faced when proposing revisions to established historical narratives.

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Implications for Literary History

By attributing additional plays to Kyd, Vickers not only enriches our understanding of his oeuvre but also emphasizes the collaborative and often anonymous nature of Elizabethan theatre. This reassessment invites scholars to reconsider Kyd's influence and legacy within the broader tapestry of English literature.

Quote:
"It changes it in the sense that we can now see him not as a one-off playwright, as if he'd simply written this great tragedy, but as a playwright who wrote for Theatre Company and wrote them a play in the genre that they wanted."
— Brian Vickers [27:12]

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Conclusion: Future Directions and Final Thoughts

The episode concludes with an optimistic outlook on potential future discoveries in Elizabethan drama, though Vickers remains cautious about the likelihood of unearthing additional significant works by Kyd. The conversation invites listeners to engage with the ongoing scholarship and consider the dynamic nature of literary history.

Quote:
"I mean, I've stuck my neck out, obviously, attributing Arden of Faversham and Fair M to him. And no doubt I shall get some very critical book reviews."
— Brian Vickers [30:20]

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Final Remarks

Jacke Wilson wraps up the episode by acknowledging the contributions of both Brian Vickers and Jonathan D.S. Schroeder, hinting at future episodes exploring diverse literary figures and themes. Listeners are encouraged to stay tuned for upcoming discussions on iconic authors and intriguing literary phenomena.

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Notable Quotes Summary:

1. Brian Vickers [04:22]:
   "Kidd's father was a scrivener. So that's a rather restricted background, but nonetheless something that gave him fluency in the English and the Latin language."

2. Brian Vickers [12:10]:
   "The Spanish tragedy was an absolute money spinner, an absolute box office success because of the dramatic end."

3. Brian Vickers [15:05]:
   "Hieronymo as the solo hero is very much the model for Hamlet."

4. Brian Vickers [19:07]:
   "If you're a careful reader, you will notice these phrases cropping up. But you can now find them much more accurately by running a computer,—running a playtext through a computer."

5. Brian Vickers [21:46]:
   "In the Elizabethan theater... the plays only ever advertised the play, not the author."

6. Brian Vickers [30:47]:
   "I had criticized some years ago... I hate to say this, but by an English academic whose work I had criticized some years ago."

7. Brian Vickers [27:12]:
   "It changes it in the sense that we can now see him not as a one-off playwright, as if he'd simply written this great tragedy, but as a playwright who wrote for Theatre Company and wrote them a play in the genre that they wanted."

8. Brian Vickers [30:20]:
   "I mean, I've stuck my neck out, obviously, attributing Arden of Faversham and Fair M to him. And no doubt I shall get some very critical book reviews."

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This episode offers a compelling exploration of Thomas Kyd's contributions to Elizabethan literature and highlights the evolving nature of literary scholarship. Brian Vickers' research not only honors Kyd's legacy but also invites listeners to reconsider the intricate web of influences that shape literary history.

Transcript

[Jack Wilson]

The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio. Have you ever had the urge to sneak behind the cordoned off areas of a museum or roam the halls after closing time? The Smithsonian's flagship podcast, Side Door, will sneak you behind the scenes of the world's largest museum and research complex. Come learn about the ghosts that supposedly walk the museum halls after dark, how a train robbery gave rise to criminal forensics, why leeches are actually the coolest thing ever, and how to get away with murder in the Arctic. Maybe you'll discover stories of history, science, art, and culture you won't find in a display case you can listen to Side Door wherever you get your podcasts or find us [e-mail] sidedoor spring starts with savings at the Home Depot, so if you're working on getting your yard spring ready, you'll need the right tools to get it done. Like the Ryobi One 18 volt cordless string trimmer, now only $129, or the Ryobi One 18 volt cordeless blower, also for only $129. Save on cordless power during spring starts event at the Home Dep through April 2. Hello. On November 6, 1558, a parish register in England recorded the baptism of Thomas, son of Francis Kidd, citizen and writer of the Court Letter of London. Francis Kidd rose to become the warden of the company of scriveners. In the eyes of history, perhaps, and certainly literary history, his son Thomas outdid his illustrious father mainly by authoring the Spanish Tragedy, a groundbreaking work largely credited with influencing Shakespeare and his psychological study of Hamlet. Only a handful of Thomas Kyd's plays survived, although a contemporary reference to him as industrious Kidd has long intrigued us with the prospect of what we might have lost. Until now. Scholar Brian Vickers has proposed some new works to attribute to Kidd which can point us toward a better understanding of Kidd, the playwright, and a reassessment of his position in literary history. Brian Vickers, today on the History of Literature okay, here we go. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for joining me. Today we travel back to the world of Elizabethan England, that incredibly fertile period that helped give rise to Shakespeare. He's such a literary supernova that it's easy to forget that even the brightest of stars don't just appear out of nowhere, they seem autonomous. But there's matter that comes before, and in this case, it's long been known that Thomas Kidd was one such supplier of star fuel. We'll hear all about that from our guest. And then we'll hear from scholar Jonathan D.S. schroeder about his choice for the last book he will ever read. But first, Brian Vickers. Okay. Joining me now is Brian Vickers, a Fellow of the British Academy and Senior Research Fellow at the School of Advanced Study at London University. His previous works include The1, King Lear and Shakespeare. Co author a historical study of five collaborative plays. He's here today to discuss his new book, Thomas a Dramatist Restored. Brian Vickers, welcome to the history of literature.

[Brian Vickers]

Thank you.

[Jack Wilson]

So I thought we could talk about Thomas Kidd as he's traditionally been known in the first half of our conversation, and then we can talk about your new discoveries that open some new windows into Thomas Kidd's life and works in the second half. So let's begin with kind of just the biographical facts here. Who was Thomas Kidd?

[Brian Vickers]

Thomas Kidd, born in 1558, was the son of Francis Kidd, who had the post of citizen and writer of the Court Letter of London. That's to say he was a scrivener, a professional scribe. He was able to engross charters, contracts, testaments, official documents and so on. So he was born into a literary family. Scribes were supposed to know everything to do with grammar and all the legal vocabulary and all the other things. We know that he has a grammar school education. He was entered into the Merchant Tailor's School, the original one in London, which was in what today we have the postcode EC1, Suffolk Lane. And the Elizabethan grammar school, of which Eton, for instance, and Winchester were other examples, was based on a scheme of education drawn up by the continental Latin scholar Erasmus. And it was a six to eight years intensive study of Latin grammar, reading a graded sequence of Latin authors from simple to difficult, composing Latin prose and verse, incorporating the figures of rhetoric and so on. Now, this was a very, very narrow curriculum. They didn't do anything else, okay? No history, no geography, no physics, just Latin. And this meant that all the people who had been to grammar school might know nothing about physics, but they knew everything about grammar, Latin grammar, Latin rhetoric and so forth. So he and his fellow students would have learned a great deal in Latin. Very few people had Greek and they were also able to write Latin. And there are Latin passages in Kidd's works which he's obviously written himself. Now, apart from that, we know, I think it's fair to say nothing about his life, right? And that is very true. Typical of the dramatists who worked in the theatre, they were not distinguished, they were not known to courtiers. There are two great exceptions, of course, Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. But like every other dramatist working in the public theatre, Kidd's life was hidden. He came from an established middle class. Marlowe's father was a shoemaker, Shakespeare's father was a glovemaker and so forth. And as I say, Kidd's father was a scrivener. So that's a rather restricted background, but nonetheless something that gave him fluency in the English and the Latin language. Now, how he got involved in the theatre, we do not know. This is a peculiar situation. He was engaged as a secretary to an Elizabethan gentleman. And the secretary in those days was a person who wrote, was asked to write documents in Latin, legal documents and in English, and to write proper letters, formal letters, using the very technical, conventional script. You didn't just write it in the same script that you used for your own personal letters. It was extremely formal. And his patron had a theatre company of his own. So Kidd lived and worked in a Elizabethan mansion near the Thames. And he wrote as business asked him. And when he could, clearly he wrote drama. And the odd thing about him is, is that his patron arranged, also hired as a secretary cum writer, Christopher Marlowe. And there was a very odd business where someone had written a nasty slander, xenophobic slander, xenophobia has been going on in countries all over the world for a long time on the door of the Dutch church. And it was a very nasty libel attack on this church. And the person who did it signed it Tamburlaine. Now, Tamburlaine was the hero of Marlowe's most famous play, most famous play, the, you know, a medieval warrior who conquered most of Europe and so on. And whoever put this up there was clearly trying to frighten people by signing it Tamburlaine. But the officials of the Privy Council took this literally, decided this was Marlow signing himself as Tamburlame. So they went and wanted to arrest Marlowe. They couldn't find him there. He shared a room, as I say, with Kidd in the house of Lord Strange. So they took away Kidd and some of the documents on his table, which were completely innocuous documents that he or Marlowe had been copying, but they did include one which belonged to Marlowe, which was an ancient, I mean a medieval, completely out of date satire. And they seized this thing, they put the kid in prison and they tortured him.

[Jack Wilson]

Oh, geez.

[Brian Vickers]

They probably, they were not stupid. They would realize that he'd have to be able to sign a document saying that he had been cross examined so they didn't destroy his right hand, which they might have done otherwise. Many of the people who were tortured by the authorities had to be carried out on a stretcher. So he was lucky that he got away with that.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about the Spanish tragedy, which has been attributed to him for several centuries now and has kind of made his name in the literary world. How important was the Spanish tragedy to Elizabethan theater?

[Brian Vickers]

Well, the Spanish tragedy was an absolute money spinner, an absolute box office success because of the dramatic end. Geronimo suffers by having his son is killed by an enemy and he wants his revenge. It's his only. His only child. And he works a slow but fatal revenge which ends with an extremely bloody punishment by Hieronymo on not only the man who's killed his son, but on his other relatives. And at the very end, when Hieronymo is tortured and they want him to deliver the truth about why he's done this, he bites his tongue out and spits it in their face, which was a very famous. They probably did this using a little bit oxen's tongue, a very common dish. So Hirano was an extraordinary figure and he was the first real hero of a revenge play. And the Spanish tragedy was effectively the first revenge play in which revenge was the main content and everything else.

[Jack Wilson]

And revenge is even a character in the play.

[Brian Vickers]

Yes, very good. Yes. Revenge appears on stage like some of the choruses in Greek tragedy.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. And we know that the play was. It was a runaway success, and we can tell that it influenced Shakespeare, right?

[Brian Vickers]

Yes.

[Jack Wilson]

And how do we know that?

[Brian Vickers]

Well, we can tell largely from Hamlet. Hamlet is a revenge hero. He has to find out who has killed his father. And once he's find it out, he has to take revenge on Claudius the king. And many of the situations in Shakespeare's Hamlet echoes those in the Spanish tragedy. And in both plays, the revenge is connected to a play within the play. Okay. At the end of the Spanish Tragedy, Kid has set up a play which is then at the last moment turned into a murder, turned into the revenge. And of course, the play within the play in Hamlet is used much more subtly, but it's the play that reveals Claudius guilt. So that's one reason. And Hieronymo as the solo hero is very much the model for Hamlet.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Okay. So there were a couple of other plays that were traditionally attributed to Thomas Kyd.

[Brian Vickers]

No, no, I must hold you there. They were totally not attributed to kid. I have attributed them.

[Jack Wilson]

Oh, okay. Why don't we Just take a quick break and then we'll come back and we'll talk about your discoveries, okay?

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[Brian Vickers]

Well, one of his contemporaries refers to him as Industrious Kidd.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Which suggests there are a lot of.

[Brian Vickers]

Plays to use that for a person who's only written one play would be, you know, sarcastic.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Brian Vickers]

So we know that he wrote more than one. And the three that I have attributed to him have had various other authors attributed to him, particularly the play called Arden of Faversham.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay.

[Brian Vickers]

And this is an extremely good play. And naturally any anonymously published play which was in any way good was attributed to Shakespeare. And there are still people who think that. But anyone who analyzes the plot structure and above all the language will see how much is identical with Kids practices and with kids language.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Now, what methods were you using? Were you just reading these side by side or did you have a. The help of computers? Or how did you determine that there were sufficient resemblances to the Spanish tragedy.

[Brian Vickers]

Certainly to begin with, just by reading them side by side. And then I began analyzing the types of phrase that Kidd uses. An author's phraseology. Any author who writes a body of work will have certain phrases that he repeats. We all do it, whether it might be the bottom line or whatever. And you can analyze these phrases. If you're a careful reader, you will notice these phrases cropping up. But you can now find them much more accurately by running a computer, running a playtext through a computer. And you then find that there are a considerable number of phrases which appear in the Spanish tragedy. They also appear in Arden of Faversham. They also appear in King Lear and His Three Daughters. And they also appear in this little comedy called Fair Mirror. And, you know, if it were a question of one or two phrases, anyone could say, well, that's just an accident. These are phrases in, you know, everyday speech. But it's much more than that. These are quite distinctive phrases. And moreover, they are used in the same situation in each play. Someone who's hurt will say this, or someone who's planning to deceive someone will use exactly the same phrase in each of these plays. And if you've got 20 of them, for instance, there's no chance that this was a coincidence. This is obviously the same author.

[Jack Wilson]

Now, do you have a theory as to why these came out anonymously and why Thomas Kyd's name wasn't attached to them?

[Brian Vickers]

Well, it wasn't attached to them to begin with. As you know, the Spanish Tragedy was attributed to him quite early on, relatively. But the point we have to grasp is that in the Elizabethan theatre, with a few exceptions, I mean, Shakespeare and Johnson were the two best known. But when Shakespeare and Johnson first wrote a play for a theatre company, they were paid their fee and that was it. The play then belonged totally to the theatre company.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Brian Vickers]

Who would advertise it? Obviously, on posts, there's posts around the town. There were someone who would go around sticking up posters, you know, hamlet, new play starts tomorrow at the Globe. And the posts only ever advertised the play, not the author. And the accounts that the theater companies gave of their work simply would say, Hamlet, a play recently performed by the King's Men. They were concerned the playwright had sold the play for six months or whatever, and that was the end of his Name, none of them felt compelled until, as I say, someone like Shakespeare became very famous.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. I'm looking now at a frontispiece for the Spanish tragedy when it was published, and you're right, it doesn't mention Thomas Kidd anywhere. It lists the name of the printer. It says, printed by W. White and tells you where you can buy it right off.

[Brian Vickers]

That's all you needed to know.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Brian Vickers]

In the Elizabethan theater. I mean, it's very strange that these writers were content with that. And that did, of course, gradually change the use of an author's name on the title page. With Shakespeare, I think it happened for the first time in 1598. He published about six plays by then, and, of course, he was by then the most famous dramatist in England. Otherwise, you wrote the play for the theater, and it was then their play, not yours.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Okay. So the three you mentioned, the three that you are newly attributing to Thomas Kyd, King Lear kind of jumps out at us because of the famous name, of course. What can you tell us about that play? I see that it's spelled L, E, I, R. I guess that helps us keep it separate from Shakespeare's play. What can you tell us about the Thomas Kyd version of it, and how does it relate to the later play that Shakespeare wrote?

[Brian Vickers]

Okay, well, the spelling was that of the King Lear is a figure in what we might call mythological history. He was deemed to. He's in Holinshed, for example. Holinshed's History of Great Bitcoin. And that was how his name was spelled in those days. Kidd's treatment of that is rather more emotional and pathetic than Shakespeare. Gonerill and Regan are, of course, the evil ones again, but there's nothing quite as nasty in his play. The daughters dislike their father, and they would have wanted some kind of to hurt him. But the play is a comedy, or what we would call a tragicomedy. The two evil daughters are ousted, and Cordelia marries the king. I believe something like that. It's a play with puns in it, you know, bawdy puns. This is not what you'd expect of the Spanish tragedy, but bawdy puns belonged to comedy. There are two men who are going to be given Gondrell and Regan in marriage, along with half the kingdom. And so they say. Cornwall says to Cambria, well, if I have one half and you have the other, then between us, we must needs have the whole, where whole is spelt with a w at the beginning. And Cambria said, the ho. How mean you that spelled without a W. I hope we shall have two hoes between us. I mean, Cornwall says, why the whole kingdom with a W. Again, you wouldn't imagine from the Spanish tragedy that the same dramatist could write such pretty but amusing to Elizabethan audiences.

[Jack Wilson]

Right, right. And Fair M is a love comedy. Is that kind of more of the same, of this bawdiness? Is that similar in tone?

[D]

Yes. Fair M is a romance involving M for Emma who ends up marrying William the Conqueror.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[D]

And it's the peasant comedy of Fair M, the miller's daughter of Manchester with the love of William the Conqueror. And there are a couple of bawdy jokes in it, but it's really a romance with two romantic triads. There are two men who love Emma and she doesn't actually love either of them. She manages to find the third man whom she does love. But it's a kind of pretty standard Elizabethan comedy, alternating scenes and playing little tricks.

[Jack Wilson]

So with these three works being added to Thomas Kyd's corpus.

[D]

Yes.

[Jack Wilson]

How does that change the way we understand him?

[D]

Right. It changes it in the sense that we can now see him not as a one off playwright, as if he'd simply written this great tragedy, but as a playwright who wrote for Theatre Company and wrote them a play in the genre that they wanted. Fair M is a romantic comedy from the outside with loss of identity and people drinking from a magic fountain and so on. Arden of Faversham is a new kind of play. It's based on a story that is the lamentable and true tragedy of Mr. Arden of Faversham in Kent. Now, this was a storybook published only in 1592. So Kidd picked that one up straight from the bookseller's table and turned it into a contemporary comedy, which is very unusual, actually. And the other one, I mean, a Fair M is a comedy. So here we have someone who's written one century, one comedy and one history, the three main genres of the Elizabeth, apart from the mask. The mask was, of course, for private performers in some nobleman's house.

[Jack Wilson]

So do you feel confident that you've found the only three that are out there that kid wrote, or do you think there are other discoveries to be made?

[D]

Oh, that's a wicked question. I don't know. I mean, there are, you know, a couple of hundred of anonymous plays, but many of them are quite frankly, limited interest, you know, analogous to a Sunday night play written for tv. You know, you watch it that night and you may never watch or even hear of it again. So all I can say is not impossible, but with a dramatist of this quality, you know, and the Elizabethan drama has been searched forward and backwards by particularly German scholars in the 19th century, and then American scholars catching up with the Germans and then English scholars catching up with the Americans. You'd be very doubtful, if anything of any quality, by which I mean sustained writing style. There are many plays which are bits and pieces, some written by, you know, two or three writers without unifying their style. But I'd be very surprised if anything of any quality has not yet been recognized.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[D]

I mean, I've stuck my neck out, obviously, attributing Arden of Hojam and Fe em to him. And no doubt I shall get some very critical book reviews.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. I was going to ask you about that because if I've learned anything in doing this podcast, it's that authorship in the Elizabethan era is hotly contested and seems to arouse a lot of passions. I was wondering if you've gotten any pushback or if anybody has taken. Has. Has criticized your theory or if you're anticipating that and what you think their objections will be.

[D]

Well, I do anticipate that, and I will deal with it clearly. But there will be a pushback. And in fact, we've already had. There was a very unpleasant review in the Time of Literary Supplement, actually, by. I hate to say this, but by an English academic whose work I had criticized some years ago.

[Jack Wilson]

Speaking of revenge.

[D]

Exactly. Yes. This is an essay by a lady called Emma Smith, who I'm afraid I trod on her toes about eight years ago. But as you know, revenge is best eaten cold.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, we've had Emma Smith on the podcast before, so she is a friend of ours here. But we can keep both of you in. We'll give both of you a chance here.

[D]

Okay. I mean, she's not criticizing her academic work at all. She just, for some reason, when she was reviewing my book, she said, this is how the book begins. Yes. I once had a letter from Brian Vickers. He was in Manila and he'd lost his passport, so he'd written to me asking for money. This is literally how this TLS review begins. And. And then said, well, you know, she then said some negative remarks about the book, but, I mean, this was a scam, as you will well know. If anyone in Manila writes to you asking for £200 because they've stolen it. Because they've stolen his passport. You know, I don't know why she thought fit to mention this in the trs, but whatever. Whatever.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, what I think would be kind of fun is if some enterprising producer would mount a production of the Spanish tragedy along with the three plays that you've identified here. And, you know, viewers could have a long weekend or watch it over the course of a month or something and then kind of decide for themselves if they see some resemblances. Yeah, yeah.

[D]

Are you thinking of any director or company with whom you have contacts?

[Jack Wilson]

Well, I don't have many, but maybe among our listeners, maybe that'll. Maybe I just inspired somebody do something like that and they can have you come and give a little talk to set things up for the viewers.

[D]

Well, that would be terrific. I mean, Arden, the Favish Room in particular, which is a murder story in the end, which has many resemblances to the Spanish tragedy. That would be very interesting.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, well, let's leave things there. The book is called Thomas a Dramatist Restored. Brian Vickers, thank you so much for joining me on the history of literature.

[D]

You're very welcome.

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New you.

[Jack Wilson]

This year is more you on Bumble. More of you shamelessly sending playlists, especially that one filled with show tunes. More of you finding Geminis because you know you always like them. More of you dating with intention because you know what you want and you know what? We love that for you. Someone else will too. Be more you this year and find them on Bumble. And finally today, Jonathan DS Schroeder was here for a wonderful conversation, unforgettable. After he and I discussed his discovery of a long lost slave narrative by the brother of Harriet Jacobs, which Jonathan found in the archives of an Australian newspaper and which has opened a new window into slave narratives and how they were formed, how they were edited, how they were shaped and molded, and what happens when one doesn't fall into that paradigm. What we see that's different. Anyway, after he and I discussed that topic, I asked him a special question. Okay. We're joined now by Jonathan D.S. schroeder, literary historian and editor of the United states, governed by 600,000 despots, a newly discovered first person slave narrative written by the brother of Harriet Jacobs, Jonathan. This question comes from a listener who asks, what do you want your last book to be? This will be the last book you will ever read. You can either choose one that exists or describe one that has not yet been written.

[Jonathan D.S. Schroeder]

So in hearing you ask that question, it makes me think of something that I always remember from Roland Barth. I believe he writes this in Camera Lucida, where he says that the idea that we should read a book once and then not read it again is a product of consumer capitalism. The idea of. And we should focus on that word consumer, which he says is the idea that we should basically devour the book, digest it, and then never, never look at it again. To talk about a last book or a book that you would bring to a desert island for me means that I want a book that I can reread and something that is recursive, that sends me back to the beginning. It doesn't have to be Infinite Jest, which would not be the book I would bring, but rather it could be a book like that. And specifically, I like the idea of books that have an indeterminate ending that is yet not fully indeterminate. It's not fully a lack of closure, but one in which you know there are possible answers to what's going to happen. And you have to go back to the book and read it again to understand if the book is actually leaning one way or another and is asking you as the reader to pay closer attention to all that leads up to that ending, to understand which way the book is kind of tipping you. And usually what I find really interesting there is that that ending is really on the grandest stage and biggest. Concerning the biggest question of the book to get concrete, I would name three examples. Willa Cather's the Professor's House, Henry James, the Bostonians, and Morrison's Song of Solomon. All of them end with kind of endings that are perplexing the first time you read them. What is happening at the end of Song of Solomon when Milkman jumps off Solomon's leap after guitar? What kind of leap is that? Is he. Is this a leap into the air in which he's going to fly and fly into a future in which the legacy of slavery is either amended or where there is a liberation from that legacy of slavery? Or is this a leap to the ground in which he's going to hit the ground and die? That, of course, is a very rich symbolic figure in black diasporic folklore and literature. The figure of the flying African that we know from movies like Daughters of The Dust, the Igbo Landing story, Robert Hayden's O Daedalus, Flyaway Home, and elsewhere. Another example would be at the end of Willa Cather's the professor's house. Godfrey St. Peter has this weird reversion that, in the face of it, seems like a just gross version of modernist primitivism. He becomes a native and a child. And yet the biggest running thread of that novel is this kind of opposition between a kind of Judeo Christian self and one that is built around having a career, having a family, around what Beth Freeman might call chrono normativity, and between a kind of pagan self, one that is more in touch with nature, with the senses, with a kind of sense of love and sadness, that seems to be somehow more receptive to the world rather than projecting onto it. And last, I think the Bostonians fascinates me because that novel is all about the question of, well, if everyone, all of these Northerners and the Southerner Basil Ransom are stuck in their ways, and they're all kind of compulsive types who can't really change what they're doing, how is there going to be historical change? How is something going to change about America if everyone's constantly repeating the past? And Verena Tarrant, this kind of blank slate of a young woman who becomes this charismatic speaker and public figure. The question is, how will she become sort of the person who moves the needle on where history is going, or will she? Because it's indeterminate. And that's kind of the structure of a book that I would like to bring with me. I don't know which, if it would be one of those three books, but that would be the kind of this might be the structure of a book that's not yet written that I would bring with me.

[Jack Wilson]

Now, I'm going to ask you a question. I have a guess, but I'll let you answer first so we can hear what you have to say. And the question I'm thinking is a lot of people might be saying, this is your last book. Don't you want to have some kind of closure? Why do you want the ambiguity? Isn't this a period in your life where you would look forward to having some finality or a real answer rather than just opening up some mysteries? So how would you respond to that?

[Jonathan D.S. Schroeder]

So I read. The question is not saying what is the last book you will read before you never read again, but rather, what is the last book that you will have the opportunity to read or keep reading? And that's why I am looking for something that I can reread so that I don't have to stop reading.

[Jack Wilson]

Got it. Okay. Well, my response to my own question was going to be because life is not necessarily, you know, doesn't have a neat pat answer. And it's almost like a way of paying tribute to life and all of its mysteries and ambiguities that we kind of all have to deal with things not being certain the way they might be certain in a kind of novel where every, you know, has neat, tidy endings for all of the characters and so and so lived happily ever after and like that, that it's sort of like a way of saying this reality is full of a lot of. We have to deal with a lot of complexity and open ended questions and mysteries and that's okay. And art can reflect that and that's okay too.

[Jonathan D.S. Schroeder]

I totally agree. And I would also say that were we to not have books to read, we would still have narratives being tossed around in the world and used to explain experience and we can't escape the text.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay. Jonathan DS Schroeder, thank you so much for joining me on the History of Literature.

[Jonathan D.S. Schroeder]

Thank you so much. I really appreciate this conversation.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, that's going to do it for this episode of the History of Literature, short and sweet today. My thanks to Jonathan D.S. schroeder and of course to Brian Vickers for joining me. We will be back soon with some Sylvia Plath and some Dante and some Mark Twain. That's all coming up soon. And also Icelandic folk tales. We'll talk to an expert in ghosts, trolls and hidden people. Do you know the difference between those three? And no, don't think you know the elves because you've read your Tolkien. He borrowed and changed. As our guest will explain. Christopher Isherwood is on the horizon and Jane Austen and Emil Zola. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.

[Jonathan D.S. Schroeder]

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[Jack Wilson]

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