Clause, King of the Beggars, is a central character in The Beggars Bush (1622) and the later variations of it. At the end of the play it is revealed that he is actually Gerrard, a deposed Earl of Flanders, who before the action starts has rescued his heir Florez and apprenticed him to an English merchant Goswin, whose business and name Florez has inherited. Gerrard has taken the disguise of Clause the beggar, but his natural authority has lead to his election as the King of the beggars, in the episode which formed the droll The Lame Commonwealth. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: May 30th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers, Speculations, The Play | Tags: Francis Kirkman, Godmanchester, Izaak Walton, The Lame Commonwealth, The Play | No Comments »
“Like the grave Senators of Beggars-Bush; with Poverty, sole Empresse . . . [and] . . . thou, whose potent Oratory. Makes Beggars-Bush admire thy eloquent story . . . “
A Pleasant Comedie, Entitled Hey For Honesty, Down With Knavery, translated out of Aristophanes his Plautus, was first published in 1651. The text is from Act 3 Scene 1 of this very loose translation. This is the standard literary usage. Beggars Bush is a metaphorical location, the Senators are ironic. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 25th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: Ben Jonson, Literary, Thomas Randoplh | No Comments »
The Dialogue of Silvynne and Peregrynne contains the earliest literary reference to an identified contemporaneous location, at Philipstown, (now Daingean), County Offally, Ireland;
“Then they passed aloofe for feare of the greate ordynaunce of the forte, which dismayed them mightely, but yet they burned the moste parte of the subberbs withowt the north gate called beggars bush to the hinderance, and undoinge of many an honest subiect.” Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 25th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: Christopher Marlowe, County Offaly, Henry Chettle, Henry Porter, Ireland, John Day, Martin Marprelate, Philip Henslowe, Philipstown | No Comments »
There is a reference to Beggars Bush in a version of the popular melody “Yellow Stockings” printed in a dubious Irish anthology. It isn’t possible to be certain about the author of the verse, which is almost certainly a literary creation rather than a collected “folk song”, although one reviewer rather cruelly suggested it was “neither Irish nor literature”. All that can be said is that the author and printers assumed that readers would understand the phrase, which is consistent with the standard literary usage. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 25th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: Donnybrook, Ireland, Walter Jones, Yellow Stockings, songs | No Comments »
“If ever a grig was spent out of the way he always behaved as if we should all of us go home by beggar’s bush!”
False Colours is set in 1817. The remark is made by the spendthrift dowager mother of the central character, explaining why she did not admit all her borrowing to the family lawyer during her husband’s lifetime. The usage is in the correct historical literary sense. A grig is a farthing.
Author
Georgette Heyer (1902-1974) supported her family by writing on average one crime novel and one historical romance every year from about 1931 until the early 1970s. She is best known for a series of romances set in the Regency period. Although not appreciated, or even reviewed, by critics, for many years she sold more than 100,000 hardbacks annually and her paperbacks were issued in print runs of 500,000.
Her historical novels are sometimes criticised for the amount of incidental detail and colour she included, but not accuracy of it. She had her own reference library and collected period material.
Source
Heyer, G., False Colours, The Bodley Head, London, 1963 (p.21)
Posted: April 25th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: Georgette Heyer, Literary | No Comments »
The story is set around Copthorne on the Surrey/Sussex border. The main character is the daughter of a farm labourer born in 1834. Her father works at a farm called Pickdick. She is sent as a child to scare birds in an oat-field on nearby Beggars Bush farm where she sees a vision and becomes a preacher for the Colgate Brethren. It appears the Colgate Brethren meet at another farm called Horn Reed. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 25th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: Literary, Sheila Kaye-'Smith, Sussex | No Comments »
“if a man be a tree invers’d, he’s beggar’s bush”
The usage is clearly literary, and consistent with standard literary usage. However, the form is unusual. The concept goes back to Aristotle History of Animals, “Man is an inverted tree, and a tree is an inverted man”. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 24th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: Cambridge, John Cleveland, Literary | No Comments »
The poem is from a collection Sea Weeds: Poems Written on Various Occasions, Chiefly During a Naval Life published for Thomas Trotter (1760-1830) who at that time was a surgeon practicing in Newcastle. The text says no more about the “maniac” who is supposed to have cut it down. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 24th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: East Lothian, Thomas Trotter | No Comments »
A play in three acts produced by the White Rose Company in Harrogate during the week beginning Monday 22 April 1940. A proposed London run never took place. The play was never published. A copy of the script was located in November 2007 in the Lord Chamberlain’s Archive at the British Library where it had been submitted for censorship. A revival is scheduled for October 2011. As with the play The Beggars Bush by Fletcher and Massinger the eponymous place is just that, and no more. It appears to have been an attractive name, but no more. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 10th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: James Joyce, Literary, The Play, Victor Canning, W H Auden | No Comments »
XVI. The Hero
He parried every question that they hurled:
“What did the Emperor tell you?” “Not to push.”
“What is the greatest wonder of the world?”
“The bare man Nothing in the Beggar’s Bush.” Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 10th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: James Joyce, Literary, W H Auden | No Comments »
