Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 3, 1994 TAG: 9411260009
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL ACHENBACH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A: Shakespeare didn't write about every English king - it only seems that way. The Why staff is constantly getting the events of Henry VI Part 3 mixed up with the events of Henry IV Part 2, and we're extremely annoyed that Richard III isn't the sequel to Richard II.
(Henry IV Part 1 is the sequel to Richard II - which is why we personally call Henry IV Part 1 ``Richard II 2,'' the literary experts be damned.)
There is one way to understand Shakespeare's history plays in a single nugget of near-wisdom: Most of them were about the events leading up to and including the Wars of the Roses, a civil war that lasted for decades in the 1400s.
Shakespeare was writing at the end of the 1500s. From his standpoint the Wars of the Roses were roughly as far in the past as the American Civil War is to us today, and similarly crucial to English history. You might say Shakespeare was the Ken Burns of his time.
The bard wrote two tetralogies - that's eight plays total - about the events from the reign of Richard II (1377-99) through that of Richard III (1483-85). Every king got a play named for him except Edward IV, who was between Henry VI and Richard III (there will be a test). Shakespeare didn't write the plays chronologically; he started with Henry VI and ended with Henry V.
At the end of Richard III - you know, the one with the famous line, ``A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a - darn, I stepped in poop again'' - Richard III is defeated by this chap Henry Tudor, who takes the throne and becomes Henry VII.
Henry VII didn't get a Shakespeare play because his reign was kind of boring. He ended the civil war. Peace reigned. Henry VII was part of the House of Lancaster, which had been warring with the House of York for a century. He married Elizabeth of York. The Lancastrians and Yorks thus came together in wedded bliss. Good for England, bad for drama. Shakespeare was no dummy, he wasn't going to write a history play without lots of swordplay, evisceration and fiery speeches about letting loose the dogs of war.
The bard's writings (he also threw in the Henry VIII play near the end of his career) helped explain the basis of the Tudor family's claim to the crown.
``It's almost a kind of propaganda for the ruling family,'' says Georgianna Ziegler, reference librarian at the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Phyllis Rackin, an English professor at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in Shakespeare's histories, points out that Shakespeare may have had a simple motive for writing about those kings: People were interested.
``He thought people would want to come to see them and he thought he could make money and make his reputation,'' Rackin says.
Some people will write anything for a buck.
Q: Why are big dams curved, with the convex side toward the water?
A: You think you know this. You are thinking: It's stronger that way. And that is true. But why is it stronger?
Simple: Dams are made out of poured concrete. Concrete is a brittle substance. That has a technical meaning: It cracks. That's how it fails, by cracking. When something cracks you don't want to put it under tension, pulling it apart, but rather under compression, pushing it together.
The water compresses the dam. If the water was pushing against a concave surface (bowing away from the water) it would put the concrete under tension instead of compression.
If you could build a steel dam it wouldn't matter, because steel isn't brittle, it's ductile, it can be put under tension or compression. But steel is expensive, it can't be poured like concrete, and it rusts.
This is a good day to make a vow to be less brittle and more ductile.
\ The Mailbag:
We keep tripping over Sen. George Mitchell's health care reform bill, which is 1,400 pages long and sits in a cardboard box on the floor. This is not your average copy: it's printed on one side only, so it's literally 1,400 pieces of paper. (We're no experts, but we've read some of this thing and we think it's highly questionable whether this bill will pass. The votes just may not be there.)
So: Who wants it? We will send the Mitchell bill, and the 100 percent cotton T-shirt (large) that a reader mailed us showing the skeleton of a cow, and a sleeve of CIA golf balls - that's right, with the CIA seal superimposed right on the dimples - to whoever provides the best answer to the question, ``Why do men wear neckties?'' Send entries to Joel Achenbach, The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington D.C. 20071. (Employees of The Washington Post, their relatives, employees of their relatives, anyone who claims to be a Washington ``outsider'' but is obviously an insider, and Sen. George Mitchell are ineligible to win.)
Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB