Eps 4-6 The Strange Case of Seeking Miss Hyde: Or; On The Foolishness of Not Suffering Fools, Gladly

Part I: A Dunce's Complaint [continued...]

Episode 4

A Motley Brat-and-Bells, Pleading a Plea, Gladly

There it is. In black and white, dear readers: Miss J. Hyde ‘doesn’t suffer fools’.

Not even ‘gladly’.

This is a no-compromise, no-nonsense, no-loophole policy.

No room for negotiation here.

(I tell you, I wouldn’t like to sit through a performance of King Lear with Miss J. Hyde. If you excise all the fools from King Lear, you would only have ten minutes of dramatic action left over from a four-and-a-half hour play. That wouldn’t be a very good deal for your hard-earned readies. Especially if you’ve earned your money from fooling about; - it takes a lot of effort, you know!) (1)

Sexually, textually, and technically, as a ‘motley-brat-and-bells’, I’m excluded from Miss J. Hyde’s realm and ostracised with utmost prejudice.

Oh, woe! Oh, sorrow!

Take pity on this poor melancholy dunce!

I’m an outcast, a vagabond, a nomad, a wanderer!

I’m homeless.

Even denied the hide of the land! (2)

I’m not even a poor peasant.

I’m an unlicensed fool. (3)

‘Oh, Majesty, I make this plea…’

…

So, it came to pass, that this testimony, by my testes, is by no means a simple testimony. (4)

This is a strange case to be cracked.

And… this is a complaint!

A persuasive complaint.

A plea.

A Knave’s Complaint! (5)

…

I hope Miss Hyde doesn’t complain about my lack of compliance.

Mind you, she probably won’t get to that ‘pretty pass’ because, if Miss J. Hyde doesn’t suffer fools gladly, will she ever bother reading this? (6)

A sometime paradox, if you will! (7)

Let’s give it a try!

Honour pricks me on. (8)

Honesty pricks me on.

Miss J. Hyde, foolishly, has not drawn a distinction between ‘witty fools’ and ‘foolish wits’, so I’ve got a bit of room for manoeuvre here… (9)

A loophole, methinks, in the snag.

Episode 5

A Letter of Application

Ok, time to apply myself.

Now, what does Miss J. Hyde require? Hmm, let’s see.

Ok. Yes. Hmm. Right.

It says here that willing victims must submit a respectful letter of application.

I love the firm-but-unfair type; - all this seems pretty procedural.

Unfair enough.

A letter of application.

Really?

I think she’s got that wrong. A letter of supplication, more like!

Hmm. Too submissive.

Not quite me.

Not quite mischievous enough.

Aha!

A letter of provocation! That’s it.

Ok, this is going to demand all of my artistry to negotiate the dangerous pathways between application, supplication and provocation.

Don’t overplay your hand, Mr. peril, just arouse a bit of interest; respectfully.

Go for it, you brat-and-bells! (1)

…

Now, as you know, I’m a little prone to the odd digression and, over time, I’ve come to appreciate that this might be rather frustrating to readers who, simply, just want me to get on with it. Cut to the chase, as it were.

That’s what I’m going to do for you now.

I can be a very considerate boy, you see.

Very considerate.

Sometimes.

So, I’ve provided (enclosed in a neat appendix) a link to an exact replica, - or double, of the manuscript that I sent to Miss J. Hyde!

My letter of application!

Obviously, it’s not a precise copy because the original was written in blood.

Contractual, you know. Mephistopheles demands it.

Anyway, I strongly suggest that you follow the link without hesitation.

Why?

a) You might feel impatient and just want to know how I resolved all of these dilemmas, which will excuse you from wading through further drivel. Saves time. Saves precious time. OR:

b) You intend to read on but think this document is crucial evidence in a strange case file.

So follow this link below.

I beg you.

Link to the Letter of Application, Supplication, Provocation. [Press HERE]

Episode 6

The Testimony Begins: Simply

To begin at the beginning, if you please.

Don’t accuse me of being a simpleton; - I know that the simple start is to simply start at the start.

In these cases, when laying down a witness statement, it’s always important to remember to put forward your account plainly, succinctly, and without comment. (1)

Otherwise you could be accused of being biased.

Or misleading a court.

Or being too wordy.

Or being circumlocutory.

Or wasting someone’s valuable time.

And never repeat yourself.

Never ever repeat.

Ever.

Never.

Ever.

That’s the worst sin.

I wouldn’t; I’m too polite, you see.

A gentleman.

A ‘real’ gentleman.

I’m too considerate.

And you won’t find me labouring a point to the point of absurdity.

Or talking about a pointless point or pointing to a point pointless.

Or, for that matter, making an interjection; - or an aside.

Or being tempted by a more lengthy digression.

…

Oh, by the way, did I tell you about how immensely proud of myself I was at NNYE Torture Garden?

I met Alexandra H------- who rammed me on the guest list for le Boutique Bazaar for wearing a nice suit!

Incredible!

Actually, I better not let this counter-cultural street-cred business go to my head.

I’d look a right fool.

...

Part II: Enter Miss J. Hyde

Electro Play or Play Electro?

Back to seeking out Miss Hyde.

Let's launch in medias res.

UK Fetish Awards. Embankment.

[to be continued...}

The Foolhardy Footnotes

It takes such a lot of hard work completing these foolhardy footnotes, it's hardly worth the foolhardy hard work.

Episode 4: Footnotes

A Motley Brat-and-Bells, Pleading a Plea, Gladly

1 ‘King Lear’: If Lear is a fool and attended by a fool, and Gloucester ‘stumbled’ when ‘he saw’, and his son Edgar plays the role of mad-innocent ‘poor Tom’, and Cordelia, at the climax, is referred to by her father, Lear, as ‘my poor fool’, and Kent, the loyal servant, after being exiled by Lear foolishly serves him in disguise until he too goes off to die at the end, and Albany, at the end, hasn’t learned the disastrous lessons of Lear’s division of the kingdom in the exposition, when he suggests henceforth ruling hand-in-hand with Edgar, and Edmund, who fools his father and brother is finally fooled by his brother in disguise, and the two sisters, vying for supremacy, double-cross one another, fooled, as they are by Edmund, I’d say this pretty much leaves Oswald, who, after all, is a fool for serving Goneril. Okay, that leaves Cornwall; and he’s just a nasty fucker. Despite all these fools, it’s still a blinding masterpiece. (You see what I did there, didn’t you?) Further references to the play are from ed. R. A Foakes, (London: Arden Shakespeare, 1997).

For the debate over whether Hamlet or King Lear is Shakespeare’s greatest play, (and by implication, erm, greatest play) see R. A Foakes, Hamlet Versus Lear: Cultural Politics and Shakespeare’s Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

2 ‘Hide of the land’: hide, in early English history, the land necessary to support a free peasant family.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/hide-English-land-unit

3 ‘Unlicensed fool’: as opposed to King Lear’s ‘all-licensed fool’, King Lear 1.4.191, and Olivia’s ‘There is no slander in an allowed fool though he do nothing but rail’, Twelfth Night, 1.5.75-76.

4 ‘By my testes’: from the expression ‘To Swear On Your Testicles’ which, according to Albert Jack, ‘is an old phrase dating back to the Romans and their apparent courtroom practice of swearing the truth of a statement on their testicles. In fact, there is so much truth in this, as the Latin word for a witness is testis… See Albert Jack’s entertaining book explaining the origin of many common English idiomatic expression in Red Herrings and White Elephants: The Origins of The Phrases We Use Every Day (London: Metro, 2004), p. 81.

5 'A Knave's Complaint: Even fools have feelings; we just aren’t allowed to voice ‘em.

Good thing too.

Gag ‘em before you’re inundated with gags.

6 ‘Pretty pass’: archaic, a bad situation

7 ‘Sometime paradox’: Hamlet, 3.1. 113-114.

8 ‘Honour pricks me on’: surely the greatest fool of all time?,- Sir John Falstaff, whose parodic ‘catechism’ on the drawbacks of being honourable foreshadows his side-splitting ‘resurrection’ later in the play, 5.4, Henry IV: Part I, 5.1.126-141.

9 ‘Witty fools’ and ‘foolish wits’: Feste in Twelfth Night draws the familiar distinction between the innocent simpleton and witty wise fool, ‘Better a witty fool than a foolish wit’; Twelfth Night, 1.5.30.

See Sandra Billington’s discussion on how theological attitudes to the fool changed from protection of innocent fools to suspicion of professional fools that mimicked them. It seems that the social respectable fools at court were destined to be damned, if it wasn’t for Sir Thomas More’s Utopia; Sandra Billington, The Social History of the Fool(London: Faber and Faber, 2105), pp. 16-28

Episode 5: Footnotes

A Letter of Application

1 brat-and-bells: with a play of the fool’s costume, cap-and-bells.

Episode 6: Footnotes

The Testimony Begins, Simply

1 ‘plainly, succinctly, and without comment’: part of the framing device in the quasi-confessional short story The Black Cat (first published 1843), a masterpiece of the ‘evidential technique’ and a Gothic story whose unreliable narrator keeps readers on their toes throughout. See The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. G. R. Thompson (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), pp. 248-345.

The Letter of Application, Supplication and Provocation: Footnotes

1 The censored letter is partially inspired by the famous double-black page in Laurence Sterne’s endlessly playful novel, Tristram Shandy; an eighteenth century novel that outplays all of the ludic Post-Modern tricks and puzzles of post-war fiction. I’m particularly amused that the double-black page immediately follows the account of the death of Parson Yorick, a character named after the jester in Hamlet.

See Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Ed. Peter Conrad (London: Everyman, 1991), pp. 34-36, originally published 1759-1760.

See John Mullan’s neat account on the British Library web-site:

https://www.bl.uk/restoration-18th-century-literature/articles/the-stuff-of-tristram-shandy

To the Reader: Footnotes

1 ‘Hypocrite lecteur’: from Charles Baudelaire’s ‘Au Lecteur’ (‘To the Reader’), the opening poem of Les Fleurs du Mal(The Flowers of Evil), first published 1861; quoted from The Complete Verse of Baudelaire, Vol I, ed. Francis Scarfe (London: Anvil Press Poetry, 1986), p. 54.

...

...

THE APPENDIX

The Respectful Letter of Application, Supplication and Provocation.

Dear Miss J. Hyde,

It was a pleasure meeting you at the UK Fetish Awards. I particularly enjoyed your explanation of how much you enjoy presenting your subs with impossible choices and the way you laughed about it; I imagine this is what you mean by ‘predicaments’ in your list of kinks and interests. Well, as a ‘polite and palatable’ fellow who tootles about the place asexually most of the time, I was quite alarmed at being rather aroused by this. You might not remember me but I was the ponce wearing a latex suit covered in art nouveau flowers and I appreciated your compliment about it, albeit coyly.

Anyway, I’ve been saving up in order to come to see you for a couple of hours. Birthday treat for myself. If you’ll permit me. By the way, I’ve only just noticed that it was your birthday recently in late December so ‘Happy (belated) Birthday’, I hope it went well.

I’d like to come to see you particularly because you seem to be the only Domme who ‘gets it’ as well as having a wonderful sense of humour and a demonic laugh. This whole ‘let’s pull you apart and put you back together’ very much chimes with my interests in ‘scenic shape’ and ritual. I’m looking for a deeper experience involving the fragmentation of identity, optical and aural disorientation and suspension, and reassemblage: if that doesn’t sound too pretentious. It isn’t by the way, it's absolutely authentic.

I’m a brat.

I enjoy mirrors, pegging, sound effects, psychodramatic scenarios, being whipped, bondage, and might explore electro play because you said that you liked it.

Hard limits are scatology, water sports, sounding, extreme suffocation etc.

I’d be more than happy to send you a deposit, although as I’m a fool myself this might be a foolish decision but it’s all explained in a confession I’ve written for you and dedicated in your honour on my web-site.

My current predicament is attempting to overcome your hard-line policy that you ‘do not suffer fools’ - whereas I’m particularly fond of them, especially Shakespearean ones. I might be a fool myself. Does that rule me out? Is it foolish of me to openly disclose that I’m a fool? I’m a little bit confused by your policy to be honest and not a little troubled by it. Could I be an exception to the rule? Do you think rules are made to be broken, if I give you my consent? (1)

Yours very sincerely,

Alexander.

London’s ‘purple peril’.

…

To the Reader

You fool!

You utter fool!

Some fool's censored this.

What did you expect?

You didn’t think a gentleman would give away his secrets that easily, did you? (Not those kind of secrets, anyway.)

Who do you think I am?

Honestly, you’re a disgrace…

Take that on the bonce, you dunce!

Hypocrite lecteur, - mon semblable - mon frere! (1)

Ok, that bit of Baudelaire was a tad harsh, wasn’t it?

Food for thought though.

As I’m a kind, compassionate, foolishly fond old fool, I’ll tone it down for you:

Lecteur complice, - mon cousin - mon semblable!

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