John Gay’s Fable 40: The Two Monkeys
They are shocked by their reception on attending Southwark fair: Men laugh at apes, they men contemn; / For what are we, but Apes to them?
Tag: clown
Top 10 Russian football songs: No. 9: Okolofutbola (“Round Football”, ahem) by Feduk (2013)
The hiphop theme of a cinematic tribute to Spartak ultras: “Stand in line with your brother and don’t take one step back / Russian brigades, like a bumper, ram our opponent.” Extras: Russian football hooliganism’s English roots; Anglicisms in a Russian hooligan lexicon; and use of “hooligan” in Russian before English, in an 1892 decree issued by a Petersburg mayor of Scottish descent.
How to perform El retablo de Maese Pedro aka El retablo de la libertad de Melisendra in Don Quixote with one puppeteer and a narrator/bottler
Whether Cervantes saw it or not, it is possible as he describes.
The secret life of organ-grinders
Speculation in French revolutionary fiduciary currency, the murder of the great British ballad-singer, & a revised date (1802) for the start of the supposedly post-Napoleonic emigration of Italian puppeteers & organ-grinders
Whatever became of Christian Lehmann, pioneering Petersburg Shrovetide zookeeper, Pierrot, illusionist, showman?
Newly uncovered evidence shows that, following the fire which destroyed his Russian theatrical business in 1836, he and his family pursued a career in London and Europe, before repeating their Petersburg triumphs in the USA and Australia. Also, a very curious copyright case.
Tweets for March 2017
Transvestite barrel organ dancers in 1930s Whitechapel and the 1860s London West End
With acrobats, clowns, and Doris and Thisbe, goddesses of wind.
Will Kemp Morris-danced from London to Norwich
But unfortunately he probably won’t figure in the results of the Singing Organ-Grinder’s historical explorations into English popular song.
Mechanical musical instrument invented for the 1851 London Great Exhibition by Henry Mayhew
He also coined “flaxen Saxon.” With other absurdities.
