#controversial for Laurence Olivier in 1965

[justforbooks]

The battle to remove censorship from the British stage was fought primarily at the Royal Court theatre in London during the mid-1960s. The plays of Edward Bond, one of the most important British dramatists of the 20th century, who has died aged 89, were an essential part of that story and that struggle.

Bond had submitted plays to George Devine’s recently established English Stage Company at the Royal Court in 1958 and, as a result, was invited to join the theatre’s Writers’ Group. His first performed play, The Pope’s Wedding, was given in a production without decor on 9 December 1962, and Devine then commissioned a new play, which Bond submitted in September 1964.

That play, Saved, was presented privately for members of the English Stage Society in November 1965 after the lord chamberlain – the official censor to whose offices all new theatre plays had to be submitted – demanded cuts in the text. The play was the most controversial of its day, not just because of the explicitness of the sexual swaggering and dialogue, but because of a scene in which a baby is stoned to death in its pram.

The stays of middle-class propriety in the contemporary theatre had already been given a good vicious tug in the work of David Rudkin and Joe Orton, but this was something else. There was uproar in the theatre, and in the reviews, and a visit by the police. The theatre was hauled into court after an alleged minor breach of the club licensing laws, and many notable witnesses, including Laurence Olivier, spoke in the play’s favour. Penelope Gilliatt wrote in the Observer that the play was about brutishness, not brutish in itself: “The thing that makes Saved most painful to watch is the fact that the characters who won’t listen to other people’s desperate voices are in despair for lack of a listener themselves.”

Bond’s next play, Early Morning, was banned outright. It was a surreal fantasy, featuring Queen Victoria and Florence Nightingale as lesbian lovers, two conjoined twin princes, and cannibalism in heaven. Again, the vice squad paid a call, performances were cancelled and a private dress rehearsal arranged for the critics in April 1968.

By now the theatres bill was on its way in the House of Commons, becoming law in September. Plays were finally removed from the control of the lord chamberlain, who had held censorious sway over the nation’s entertainment since 1737. Violence, sex, political satire and nudity were bona fide subjects at last for the modern theatre.

William Gaskill, the artistic director of the Court in succession to Devine, mounted a Bond season in 1969 that established his reputation both in Britain and abroad, during a tour to Belgrade and eastern Europe. Saved was given 14 productions in West Germany and opened to acclaim in the Netherlands, Denmark, Japan, Czechoslovakia and the US.

This period was one of defiance at the Royal Court, and the experience marked everyone who worked there for life, none more so than Bond and Gaskill. Bond was acknowledged as the inheritor of Brecht’s legacy in the flintiness of his writing and the uncompromising artistic vision of his scenes and stage pictures.

He wrote many fine plays in the subsequent decade: his Lear (1971) was a majestic, pitiless rewriting of Shakespeare, with Harry Andrews unforgettably scaling a huge, stage-filling wall at the end; Bingo (1973) and The Fool (1975) drew chilling portraits of English writers – Shakespeare (played by John Gielgud at the Court – and by Patrick Stewart in a 2010 revival at Chichester) and the rural poet John Clare (Tom Courtenay) – at odds with their societies, driven respectively to suicide and madness; and The Woman (1978), the first new play to be produced on the National’s new Olivier stage, was an astounding, panoramic survey of Greek myths and misogyny.

Bond was born in Holloway, north London, one of four children. His parents were farm labourers in East Anglia and had come to London looking for work. Bond was evacuated during the second world war, first to Cornwall and later to live with his grandparents near Ely, Cambridgeshire. He attended Crouch End secondary modern school in London in 1946 and left when he was 15. “That was the making of me, of course,” he said, “you see, after that nobody takes you seriously. The conditioning process stops. Once you let them send you to grammar school and university, you’re ruined.”

He enjoyed the music hall and was impressed by Donald Wolfit as Macbeth at the Bedford theatre in Camden Town in 1948: “I knew all these people, they were there in the newspapers – this was my world.”

After school he worked as a paint-mixer, insurance clerk and checker in an aircraft factory before beginning his national service in 1953. He was stationed in Vienna and started to write short stories.

Once Saved had been performed and he knew he would always work in the theatre, he bought a house on the edge of a small village, Wilbraham, near Cambridge, and lived there contentedly with his wife, the German-speaking Elisabeth Pablé, a writer, whom he married in 1971 and with whom he collaborated on a new version of Wedekind’s Lulu based on some newly discovered jottings and manuscripts in the early 90s.

His early plays were often based in situations and societies he was familiar with, whatever their period setting, but Bond’s later work took on a more resonant, prophetic, some felt pompous, tone. Put simply, according to Richard Eyre and Nicholas Wright in Changing Stages, their 2000 account of the British theatre, Bond used to ask questions; now he gave answers.

He acquired a reputation as a rather remote guru, and his later, proscriptive epics about the failure of capitalism and the violence of the state were more often performed by amateurs than by the leading companies in Britain.

The Worlds (1979), for instance, was first given by amateurs in Newcastle, but its scope was immense, charting the collapse of a successful business operation riddled with strike action, terrorism, kidnappings and long speeches. In one of these, a terrorist defines the two worlds as one of appearance and one of reality. In the first, she says, there is right and wrong, the law and good manners. In the second, which controls the first, machines and power.

Before going into what he called voluntary exile from the British theatre establishment, Bond wrote the “pastoral” Restoration (1981) for the Court, an often witty inversion of a Restoration comedy, with Simon Callow in full flow as Lord Are, and Summer (1982) for the National, a comic, modern rendering of The Tempest set in the sunny Mediterranean.

Bond was a dapper, withdrawn man who could be intimidating, but disarmingly gnomic and self-deprecating when he was in the mood. Sympathetic interviewers could be treated to bilious attacks on directors such as Sam Mendes – whose 1991 revival of his 1973 comedy The Sea, a beautiful play of madness and dehumanisation in an Edwardian seaside town, he loathed – and Trevor Nunn (who, he said, turned the National Theatre into “a technicolour sewer”), though he never raised his voice and often dissolved into mischievous chuckling.

Even the collapse of eastern European socialism could not stem the flow of Bond’s writing. “Before, as a socialist writer,” he once told me, “you knew there was a framework, a system to which the play might eventually refer. But now, the problem of the last act has returned! And I was always a critic of the system to start with. That’s why I wrote my version of King Lear.”

More recently, you had to hunt pretty hard to find his new work. There was an intriguing season of six plays at the Cock Tavern in the Kilburn High Road, north London, in 2008, and several more performed by Big Brum, a theatre-in-education company in the Midlands, between 2012 and 2014.

Jonathan Kent directed a revival of The Sea at the Haymarket, starring David Haig and Eileen Atkins in 2008, while Sean Holmes provided the first London production of Saved in 27 years – still harrowing, more pertinent than ever – at the Lyric, Hammersmith, in 2011.

Following the example of Brecht, Bond was prolific in supplying his work with the extra apparatus of poems, prefaces and notebooks, though, unlike Brecht, a giant of an intellectual all-rounder in comparison, and a far superior poet, he was always better when restricting himself to stage dialogue.

He also wrote for films, including the screenplay for Nicholas Roeg’s Walkabout (1971), set in the Australian outback and starring Jenny Agutter and David Gulpilil, and the Nabokov adaptation Laughter in the Dark (1969), as well as contributing dialogue for Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966) and Nicholas and Alexandra (1971).

At his best, he was a genuine poet of the stage, and exerted an enormous influence on at least two generations of theatre workers after him. It is possible that some of the unknown plays of his later, post-nuclear apocalyptic period will be ripe for assessment. The place of at least 10 of his earlier plays is secure in the national literature and they are certain to be revived. He remains much admired and often performed in France and Germany.

Elisabeth died in 2017.

🔔 Thomas Edward Bond, playwright and director, born 18 July 1934; died 3 March 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

#just for books #Edward Bond #in memoriam

[greatmuldini]

When the Sheffield Repertory Company, on 18 October 1948, invited local journalists to meet the new talent for the new season, it was not the shy smile of a timid stranger that for the Telegraph photographer epitomized the joyous occasion but the incandescent, albeit no less self-conscious, charisma of the naturally gifted performer - who may have begun his formal training on that very day in 1948 but who, by his own admission, had been acting “since birth.”

Indeed, the formal introduction of the new Assistant Stage Manager came a good seven months after the young prodigyhad been granted permission to study with the Company: his first appearance to that effect in the Minutes of the Executive Committee on 9 March 1948 was followed over the summer of 1948 by small to medium sized roles for which he received full credit but no regular pay. The precarious arrangement was revised when a "striking performance" in The Hasty Heart convinced the Executive Chairman that a “very difficult part” had been “played remarkably well.”

Originally performed on Broadway in January 1945, The Hasty Heart takes place at a British military hospital somewhere in South-East Asia, where six wounded Allied soldiers are recuperating from their war wounds. Each one of them represents his particular corner of the Empire or, in the case of “Yank,” a former colony. Looking after them is the equally archetypal female character, Sister Margaret, whose no-nonsense style of nursing soothes fraying tempers, and her compassionate approach helps to heal not just physical wounds. One patient, however, presents an existential problem: proud and stubborn Scotsman Lachlen McLachlen is terminally ill but has not been told he has very little time left. Margaret falls in love with Lachlen and agrees to marry him despite the looming death sentence. When Lachlen finds out he is furious but can in the end be convinced to accept the inevitable as he learns to accept the heartfelt friendship of his comrades and the unconditional love of his fiancée.

Lachlen’s change of heart is the result of an intervention by the “difficult” character, whose presence is required for the sole purpose of effecting that change. As the catalyst who brings about the final reversal of Lachlan's fortune, Blossom provides the evidence of their shared humanity - ironically by being different from everybody else. When Lachlen, hurt and angry at the perceived betrayal of his friends, and the indignity of his situation, declares his intention to leave the hospital and die alone, it is Blossom who steps forward to offer a parting gift. Blossom - who does not speak a single word of English and therefore would not have been aware of what the others knew - communicates non-verbally the pure, raw, primitive emotion that he alone can express. His affection is pure, untainted by superior knowledge or ulterior motives and allows Lachlen to recalibrate his own highly irrational response.

Blossom is a "difficult" character for the actor, who must convey meaning mostly through mime - and who must perpetuate the racial stereotype of the “silent black warrior” as dictated by the script, the tastes of the time, and stage conventions beyond his control: in New York, the part was played by African-American actor Robert Earl Jones (1910-2006, father of James); the 1946 West End cast featured Nigerian expatriate and star of stage and screen, Orlando Martins (1899-1985), who also took the role in the 1949 film version. The Sheffield Repertory Company, as a permanent ensemble, remained throughout the post-war period a close-knit group of local players whose white working class background would have matched the equally homogenous crowd in the auditorium.

While “exotic” characters and locations were a welcome diversion from the daily grind of the steel mills, true-to-life authenticity would not have been the foremost concern on anyone’s mind. Likewise, any lofty notions of "inhabiting the character" would have been dismissed out of hand in the fast-paced environment of the repertory system with its weekly or, as in Sheffield, bi-weekly change-over. Unlike the commercial long-running ventures on Broadway or Shaftesbury Avenue, regional repertory companies relied above all on the "quick study" and improvisation skills of the actor, favouring versatility over diversity. The need for speed also meant that certain shortcuts were considered legitimate, including the use of Blackface to indicate a character's non-white ethnicity.

The challenge for the actor underneath the generic makeup would have been to preserve the dignity of the individual in his care. The experienced producer, for his part, who elected to trust the most junior member of the Company with that responsibility, would have made his choice fully expecting his protégé to succeed. More than an adequate performance, Geoffrey Ost would have seen the “disciplines of the theatre” brought to life on stage - for the final time by the amateur. With their next production, the Sheffield Playhouse set the scene for a professional debut that could have launched a respectable career for the new Assistant Stage Manager had the fierce young “teaboy” been so inclined.

#Patrick McGoohan #The Hasty Heart #Blossom #is a native of Basutoland a British Crown Colony until 1966 We are expected to suspend our disbelief in any theatrical situation #but a super-human effort would have beenr required to mistake a lanky Irish lad fora bulky Bantu from Southern Africa #Verisimilitude could not have been the strategy #this is where the character's lack of English comes into play #the actor must entirely resort to the use of body language #which suits some actors more than others #the most egregious transgression #of our modern sensibilities however #the one that stretches our disbelief beyond belief #is the liberal application of #blackface #still acceptable for Orson Welles in 1951 #controversial for Laurence Olivier in 1965 #unsustainable for Black Minstrels on the BBC in 1978 #I would like to believe that Blossom could have been #ahead of his time in 1948

[faithfulnews]

Faith on film and TV: Five takes on the life of Jesus that you can watch this Easter

With Easter just ahead and many of us stuck at home during the coronavirus pandemic, there is no better time than now to both watch movies about the life and death of Jesus. You should be able to find several on television this weekend.

Christ has been depicted in a variety of ways on film over the last six decades. Some depictions have been better than others. Some of these movies made headlines and some did not. The debate over which portrayal of Jesus was most realistic, authentic or powerful has raged on for years.

In 1997, James Martin came up with his own list, republished two years ago in America magazine. In it, he made some controversial picks, ones that keep this debate going every Easter. For many, movies about Jesus allowed many people who would otherwise not have an interest in Christianity or faith and awaken some religious curiosity.

Easter — Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection — is the most significant event of the Bible, one that changed the course of history. There are a number of movies that have captured that moment in both a touching and stirring manner. At the same time, several actors have portrayed Jesus to great public acclaim. The movies, appealing to Christians of all denominations, are a wonderful way to celebrate Easter and educate younger people to the life and times of Jesus.

This list doesn’t consider edgy pop-culture phenomena such as Jesus Christ Superstar or sacrilegious ones like The Last Temptation of Christ, with its mentally unbalanced and rather depressed messiah who calls himself a sinner. Instead, I have focused on serious interpretations through the years of the life of Jesus. As Christians prepare for Easter, here are five movies about Jesus, both in theaters and on TV, that rise above the rest:

* The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964)

Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, the film (it’s Italian title is Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo) is a 1964 drama of the story of Jesus based on Saint Matthew’s account. The film starts at the Nativity and runs through the Resurrection.

Why did the Italian director choose Matthew? For Pasolini, Matthew was best because “John was too mystical, Mark too vulgar and Luke too sentimental.” Jesus is played by little-known Spanish actor Enrique Irazoqu and depicted largely as a barefoot peasant. In 2015, the Vatican’s newspaper L’Osservatore Romano called the neorealist film the best ever made about Jesus.

* The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)

A year after Pasolini’s film, The Greatest Story Ever Told is one of those epic movies popular in the 1960s. While Pasolini’s film was simple and low-budget, The Greatest Story Ever Told retells the Biblical account of Jesus life in grandiose style and cost $20 million at the time.

The ensemble cast featured the recently-deceased Max von Sydow, famous also for playing a priest who takes on the devil in The Exorcist, as Jesus. The movie, directed by George Stevens, also features Charlton Heston in the role of John the Baptist. It remains the only Hollywood-made film that — from my point of view — tackled the life of Jesus in a sober and serious way.

* Jesus of Nazareth (1977)

A TV mini-series about the life of Jesus featuring some of the biggest names in movie history wasn’t just a dream, but it was actually made into one of the best representations regarding the life of Jesus. The stellar cast included Anne Bancroft as Mary Magdalene, Laurence Olivier as Nicodemus, Anthony Quinn as Caiaphas, Rod Steiger as Pontius Pilate, Michael York as John the Baptist, James Earl Jones as Balthazar and Robert Powell in the film’s main role playing Jesus.

The film, directed by Franco Zeffirelli, became the gold standard for what a production about the life of Jesus until the release of The Passion of the Christ. The film captured the essence of Jesus’ life and the suffering and sacrifice he ultimately had to endure during his final days. Powell’s Jesus, tall and blue-eyed, has been criticized by some as an unrealistic version of the Christ. Nonetheless, Zeffirelli’s film is beautiful in so many ways in the way it presents Jesus as both gentle and forceful.

The masterpiece movie, which aired on TV in two parts around the world, is so famous that, four decades later, it continues to be shown on TV during Easter season. Zeffirelli, who died last summer at the age of 96, is famous for another religious-themed film released five years earlier that focused on the life of St. Francis of Assisi. The movie, Brother Sun, Sister Moon, starred British actor Graham Faulkner as Francis and recounted the saint’s humble life.

* The Passion of the Christ (2004)

The Mel Gibson film takes all four gospels and recounts the final 12 hours of Jesus’ life, highlighted by the Passion. It begins with Jesus in Gethsemane, includes the betrayal of Judas Iscariot and the ultimate crucifixion and death of Jesus. Christ was played by actor Jim Caviezel. Gibson, a traditional Catholic, has said he adheres to the Roman Catholic faith before the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965.

Continue reading “Five films about Jesus you should watch this Easter” by Clemente Lisi, at Religion Unplugged.

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[ciathyzareposts]

The Black Gate Bonus: The Books of Britannia

One of many in-game books that make in-jokes and build lore.

         I’d have to look through my notes to see what game first offered full-text books–not as plot devices but just as random background flavor and world-building. It might have been Ultima VI. But even if they appeared in earlier games, Ultima VII is the first game to treat them this extensively, with at least a couple of dozen different titles found on desks, nightstands, and bookcases throughout the homes and workplaces of the Britannian people. The castle alone had more than 15 different books.

     Ultima VII admittedly doesn’t do as well with its books as many later titles. Many of them are goofy, or simply analogues of real-world titles, and not the world-building tomes that we find in, say, The Elder Scrolls series, the Infinity Engine games, or The Witcher series. Still, they’re fun and deserve some additional attention and analysis.

I thought I’d use this entry to organize that analysis, adding new books as I find them. I’m excluding some “plot” books that don’t have much text (like Morfin’s register of venom sales). I’ll add notes to future entries when this one has been updated. The books I’ve found so far are:   The Apothecary’s Desk Reference by Fetoau. A book that accurately describes which potions have which effects. Very useful.

The Art of the Field Dressing by Creston, with a forward by Lady Leigh. It has some advice about cutting cloth into strips to bandage wounds, something that actually works in the game. While Lady Leigh is later found in the game, I don’t believe Creston is.

The Bioparaphysics of the Healing Arts by Lady Leigh. The bible for in-game healers. I believe Lady Leigh will be found later in Serpent’s Hold.

The Book of the Fellowship by Batlin of Britain. The first page of the game manual–the one time it makes sense for a real-life book to appear in the game.

Chicken Raising by Daheness Gon. A relatively useless instruction manual for raising chickens and producing eggs. The anatomical advice seems accurate, but I’m not sure how it helps in-game. Found on the shelf of a farmhouse, which makes sense.

Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang by Ian Fleming. The real-life 1964 book by the author better known for creating James Bond. Lead Ultima VII writer Raymond Benson later went on to become the official James Bond writer from 1997-2002.            

With a couple of syllabic substitutions, this could easily have been a James Bond title.

          Collected Plays by Raymundo. An anthology of plays by the guy who runs the theater in Britain. Play titles include Three on a Codpiece, The Trials of the Avatar, The Plagiarist, Clue, and Thumbs Down. “Raymundo” is the in-game avatar of lead writer Raymond Benson, and at least three of these plays are real plays written by Benson. Clue is a 1977 musical based on the board game–a full 8 years before the Tim Curry film. The Plagiarist and Thumbs Down are more obscure; I’m not sure when or if they were ever staged, but they were published as short stories by Amazon Shorts in 2006. Three on a Codpiece is described in-game as a performance art piece in which audience members “tear an undergarment into tiny pieces, after which they are placed in funeral urns and mixed with wheat paste . . . then the audience may glue the pieces anywhere on [the actor’s] body that they wish.” One Ultima site suggests this might be a reference to Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece (1965).

A Complete Guide to Britannian Minerals, Precious, and Semi-Precious Stones by B. Ledbetter. The book discusses some of Britannia’s natural resources, including veins of gold and lead. It is notable for a paragraph on blackrock, a “recently discovered” substance with little practical use, rumored to have a “profound effect” on magic. This will of course become a major part of the game’s plot. I don’t believe Ledbetter appears in-game. I thought it would be funny if it was the guy who runs the jewelry shop in Britain, but his name is Sean.

The Day It Didn’t Work by R. Allen G. A collection of essays about “overseeing a group of well-meaning misfits in a mechanical environment.” An obvious joke about Richard Allen Garriott and the staff at ORIGIN.                Everything an Avatar Should Know about Sex. This book is blank after the title page. Ho-ho-ho. Or maybe it’s not a joke and it’s foreshadowing the upcoming unicorn encounter.

            The Honorable Hound inn register. The guest list for this Trinsic inn has four recent names: Walter of Britain, Jaffe of Yew, Jaana, and Atans of Serpent’s Hold. Jaana is of course the Avatar’s companion going back to Ultima IV. I don’t believe the others are ever seen or heard from in the series.

How to Conquer the World in Three Easy Steps by Maximillian the Amazingly Mean. The ravings of a “megalomaniac cleric.” He plans to acquire VAS CORP (“Mass Kill”), which he thinks will make everyone fear him, and that not even Lord British himself is immune. I’m pretty sure that Lord British survives a VAS CORP (which is a real spell). Lord British doesn’t even die from VAS CORP IN BET MANI (“Armageddon”). Also, there are no “clerics” in this setting. As an aside, I wonder if employees of Vascorp Network Solutions know that to a portion of the public, their name means “Mass Death.”

Hubert’s Hair-Raising Adventure by Bill Peet. A real 1969 children’s book by a real author. It tells in rhyme how the proud lion Hubert had his mane scorched in a series of escalating misadventures. We learned about its presence in Britannia in Ultima VI, where Lord British spent every night reading it to Sherry the Mouse. I don’t know which idea is worse: that the adolescent Lord British was carrying the book while hiking through the English countryside, or that he later went back for it.              

It’s good that Lord British has priorities.

            Jesse’s Book of Performance Art by Jesse. A “controversial and eccentric Britannian actor” who has published a book of “scripts” for performance artists and argues that performance art is basically the same thing as acting. Jesse is an NPC in Britain who jokes about playing the Avatar and having only three lines: NAME, JOB, and BYE.

Key to the Black Gate. A cluebook to the game, found within the game (but without any of the actual text). Probably meant as a subtle in-game advertisement. Can you imagine needing a cluebook to solve this game?             

A crummy commercial?!

             Lord British: The Biography of Britannia’s Longtime Ruler by K. Bannos. The biography frankly acknowledges that Lord British is from another world. I wasn’t sure that was public knowledge until now. He entered Britannia through a moongate and became one of the rulers of the eight kingdoms of Sosaria. The people proclaimed them the king after he successfully dealt with Mondain, Minax, and Exodus. The book recounts his role in Ultima IV and Ultima V but ends just as the gargoyles become a threat in Ultima VI. Unfortunately, the text also re-affirms the idea that the Avatar is the same hero as the one who defeated Mondain, Minax, and Exodus–the dumbest retcon ORIGIN ever introduced.,           

Part of Lord British’s bio. A party of Fuzzies defeated Exodus and nobody can convince me otherwise.

              Mempto Rays: A Qualitative Study in Metaparaphilosophical Radiation by Mempto. Some rantings about Britannia always being bombarded by radiation “lethal to all non-living matter.” Probably meant as a send-up of pseudo-science in the modern world.

No One Leaves by R. Allen G. This sequel to The Day It Didn’t Work is a humorously-phrased paragraph about missed deadlines and forced overtime.

No Way to Jump by Desmonth. A treatise on tropes found in adventure stories. This is probably another in-joke about game development. After all, Ultima VII, for all its realism, does not allow the Avatar to jump. The issue continues into the present day and is found on TV Tropes as “The Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence.” Note that Ultima VIII does feature jumping and jumping puzzles.

On Acting by Laurence Olivier. Philosophical notes on acting “written by a noted thespian of a distant land.” The text notes that it was apparently “one of the many brought to Britannia by Lord British.” Why was the kid hiking with half a library on his back? Anyway, Sir Laurence did in fact publish a book of this title in 1986.

Play Directing: Analysis, Communication, and Style by Francis Hodge. A “respected textbook” written by “an eminent professor emeritus from a university in a distant land.” It is in fact a real-world book, published in 1971 by a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Probably someone that Raymond Benson or someone on the staff at ORIGIN (which was based in Austin) knew. Hodge passed away in 2008.

The Salty Dog inn register. This inn and tavern in Paws lists seven recent visitors: Addom of Yew, The Avatar, Jalal of Britain, Tim of Yew, Blorn of Vesper, Sir Dupre, and Penelope of Cove. Addom is a traveling merchant who later shows up in Moonglow and plays a role in that city’s plot. To my knowledge, Jalal and Penelope never appear in the game, although I think Jalal appears in another register. Tim of Yew is also an unknown (there was a bard named Tim in Ultima V but he’d be long-dead). Blorn is an anti-Gargish racist who we later find in Vesper. The idea that Dupre recently visited a tavern is entirely within his character. The most disturbing entry is that someone is wandering around passing himself off as “The Avatar.”

Thou Art What Thee Eats by Fordras. A nutritional analysis that pre-dates the Atkins crazy by suggesting meats and vegetables ahead of carbohydrates. The author recommends certain foods in order, and I think it roughly corresponds with how filling those foods are in-game. 

The Transitive Vampire by Karen Elizabeth Gordon. This is a real book by a real author, originally published in 1984. As best I can tell, it’s a real book about English grammar and syntax, but all the examples are vampire-themed and there are vampire illustrations. If there’s something deeper going on, someone’s going to have to tell me. I suppose if it actually gets people to read a book on grammar, there are no bad ideas.             

Go figure.

           Tren I, II, III, IV . . . XVII. An autobiography by “the obtuse mage” which “reveals Tren’s life in all of his incarnations as he continually strove to possess more powerful beings.” As far as I know, we never meet a mage called Tren, nor do we ever see an application of magic that involves possession of beings. 

Up Is Out by Goodefellow. A treatise on gravity and mass, including “falling apples.” It’s a clear analogue to Isaac Newton, but I otherwise don’t know if the title and author are a reference to anything. If Goodefellow is an actual Britannian trying to research physics, his life is going to be rough.

Vargaz’s Stories of Legend. This anonymous book is subtitled Reasons Why One Should Never Build Doors Facing North or West. The book has two stories, one about a plague of locusts foretold by Father Antos (Ultima II and IV) which destroyed houses with north-facing doors. The other tale suggests that monsters fleeing sunlight are more likely to flee east and thus invade houses with west-facing doors.

The Wayfarer’s Inn register. This tavern in Britain lists five recent guests: John-Paul of Serpent’s Hold, Horffe of Serpent’s Hold, Featherbank of Moonglow, Tarvis of Buccaneer’s Den, and Shamino. I later found Shamino shacking up with an actress, so he probably only had to stay for one night. I don’t believe Tarvis or Featherbank appear in the game, but John-Paul is in fact the ruler of Serpent’s Hold and Horffe is his Gargish captain of the guard.

What a Fool Believes by P. Nolan. The book only has a brief paragraph, describing it as “the story of a bard, a blonde, and a bottle . . . a classic tale of the war between the sexes.” There’s a song of this name, of course, recorded by the Doobie Brothers and Aretha Franklin among others, but it doesn’t mention a blonde or a bottle and has no association with anyone named “Nolan” (although, in a weird twist, the R&B artist Nolan Porter did cover the song, but not until 2011). 

The Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum. The real book from the real world, except that in the real world, the author is L. Frank Baum. It is given a quick summary in-game. I assume it’s in Lord British’s castle because I stole it for him as part of an Ultima VI side-quest.

         source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/the-black-gate-bonus-the-books-of-britannia/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost