Eps 1-3 The Strange Case of Seeking Miss Hyde: Or; On The Foolishness of Not Suffering Fools, Gladly
- purple_peril_
- Jan 30, 2023
- 10 min read
Updated: Sep 15, 2024
Part I: A Dunce’s Complaint (1)
Episode 1
‘We Three’: A Dominatrix and a Fool (2)
By my sore hind, it’s about time I got off my hindquarters. (3)
You’ve all been asking me to write about my night at the UK Fetish Awards, haven’t you?
There’s a lot to gossip about, I know, but I’m faced with a very pressing matter: The Strange Case of Miss J. Hyde (Professional Dominatrix Extraordinaire). (4 and 5)
A case that began that very night, - in the not-so-gloomy environs of Ol’ London Town’s Embankment.
I need to utter my testimony. (6)
But I also need to address a snag because there’s was always a snag, you see:
After my ‘polite and palatable’ first meeting with Miss J. Hyde, I’d like to seek her out for the pleasure of another encounter. However, her web-site mysteriously states that she ‘doesn’t suffer fools’.
Naturally, I’m very upset to learn this heart-breaking news.
I don’t understand her position.
Do you?
Does she?
She ‘doesn’t suffer fools’!
Whyever not?
What’s she got against fools?
What’s she got against me?
I think she’s underestimating the company of fools. She’s denying herself the pleasure of their idiocy.
I’m worried about her well-being.
Policy seems unwise, if you ask me. (9)
An anomalous prohibition.
If the whole world be full of fools, surely Miss J. Hyde is placing severe limitations on her potential clientele? (10)
Unless, of course, this whole Pro-Domme thing is an extended ruse to fool us all?
…
Notice I’ve refrained from calling Miss J. Hyde’s foolhardiness foolhardy because that would be foolhardy.
Mind you, if I am calling Miss Hyde a fool and I’m a fool then she might not be a fool after all, - because I’m a fool.
Phew, I’m off the hook!
Well, I’ll be fooled.
…
Stop fooling around.
Episode 2
‘Are you willing to pay a deposit?’
In answer to that question, on the website, Miss J. Hyde offers two options:
1) Yes, of course.
2) No. I'm just dreaming and have entered all my details here to waste my own precious time. (1)
...
Oh dear, things look even more gloomy.
Miss Hyde seems to have a back-up policy about not wasting time. (2)
This second defensive strategy is like a McAfee Firewall against fools.
Military precision.
No playing for time.
This isn’t starting well, is it?
To expostulate:
Why day is day, night night, and time is time, Were nothing but to waste night, day and time. Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief: (3)
There’s no Option 3!
Option 3 should read:
3) Yes, of course. I’m more than happy to pay a deposit but I have one reservation. I’m terribly worried about your policy on fools, which I happen to think is foolish, and I risk wasting my time, and possibly yours, in attempting to persuade you otherwise.
Is there any way of resolving this double-bind?
Would it be foolish of me to send you a deposit, considering I’m a fool and therefore highly likely to lose it?
Episode 3
The Preamble. Night. Embankment. UK Fetish Awards:
Or; Shameless Purposeless Namedropping Not-so-Subtly Disguised as Scene Setting
It’s not really a preamble, is it?
You know prefix ‘pre-‘ means ‘before’, and all that shit.
Doesn’t matter; this episode is rhizomatic, darling, rhizomatic.
Anyway, at the UK Fetish Awards, I could mention bumping into our host, Rico Patel, and our hostess, Zara Du Rose; or saying ‘Hey-ho’ to Miss Fortune (1), chatting to Dave; or finally meeting Miss ‘Queen Bee’ Kim Rub; or introducing myself to A------ E---------- because Emmeline wasn’t so good at introducing me to her at the top of a loud busy Walthamstow Underground escalator in 2016 when we were on our second date, (an incident I’ve entirely forgotten and forgiven, by the way); wandering around confused, wandering around bemused, wondering why everyone keeps standing on a raised platform only to discover weeks later it was for taking 3-D photos; nodding to Yasmin on the stairs; applauding Miss Ruby Alexia for winning an award; foolishly applauding my severe shortcomings for not winning an award; or trying to find The Gents Loo, - a closet conveniently hidden in a fucking wall behind another fucking wall – like those spare rooms nestling behind bookcases in spy novels, or doors concealing underground passages in first-wave Gothic fiction, or secret cabinets behind closed urban doors in second-wave Gothic fiction (2); meeting Jamie Moon, DJ, a second time but in 3-dimensions; meeting and hanging out with Amy; or turning around in the entry queue to find myself followed in by a dominatrix known publicly as ‘Lady Perse’, whose tall-towering Helen of Troy look-down-from-‘the topless towers of Ilium’-poise is so enigmatic (in real life) that I subsequently trip over my reversed feet with slippery sophistication and launch myself horizontally, butt-first, into the venue (3).
Oh Maestro, forgive me; - I’m sorry you’ve wasted your art nouveau suit-handiwork on such an uncoordinated neurasthenic fool.
Neurotic, even.
Anyway, all this I could tell you, but it would be a bit foolish if I did.
I don’t know if you've gathered but this confession is all about Seeking Miss J. Hyde. A quest! Going into those moments would deroute the narrative sideways by byways, highways and flyways.
I think it’s an impertinence to list them, to be honest; it breaks that precious bond of trust between writer and reader – the treasured narrative contract!
And it would waste the reader’s time.
And time is something of which we’re all short.
…
Hamlet knew that when he gazed at Yorick’s skull.
It’s amazing what you learn from fools.
Even dead ones.
Quite chop-fallen?
To this favour we must come. (4)
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.
[to be continued...]
The Foolish Footnotes
Well, it's certainly foolish of me to waste my time adding scrupulous academic references on the nature of foolishness. What kind of idiot would do that?
1 A Dunce’s Complaint
Replaying only the title, not the premise, of Shakespeare’s poem ‘A Lover’s Complaint’; -replayed in a foolish key, of course.
2 ‘We Three’: A Dominatrix and a Fool
2 ‘We Three’ is one of the most wonderful paintings the late Renaissance has gifted us. It is a picture of two fools. I always love showing this to people for the first time and watching that look of recognition steal upon their faces, finally, when they realise who the third fool is.
For a fuller discussion of ‘these two smiling innocents’, see John Southworth, Fools and Jesters at The English Court, (Stroud: Sutton, 1998), pp. 150-151.
3 ‘hind’: echoing Sir Thomas Wyatt’s sonnet to Anne Boleyn, ‘Whoso list to hunt’. Indeed, the ‘vain travail has wearied me so sore’ in writing this confession, but I think hunting is more delicately reconfigured here as ‘seeking’. Mind you, I think I identify more with the deer. I just hope I don’t come to suffer the same fate as dear Anne.
4 ‘pressing matters’: echoing Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s bawdy quibble in that wonder of the stage, The School for Scandal 1.1.286; ‘They do say there were pressing reasons for it’, ed. F. W. Bateson (London: A&C Black, 1979), p. 22. I’m using it to foreshadow a pressing matter in a later episode in this confession: ‘The Existential Erection’.
5 A direct allusion to the full title of R. L. Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, in order to foreground what Gilbert and Gubar describe as ‘the evidential technique’, although they explore this in relation to Frankenstein. Vic Sage explains that the technique of embedding ‘authentic’ documents (such as letters, testimonies, witness statements, memos, newspaper articles, naval logs, transcriptions) in the Gothic genre not only authenticate the strangeness (by way of verisimilitude) but place the reader in a legal process of surveying the evidence as a crime case – the documents composing a case file; you’re an amateur detective, if you will.
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, ed. Robert Mighall (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2002), all further references to this edition, unless stated otherwise. For Gilbert and Gubar’s famous essay ‘Mary Shelley’s Monstrous Eve’ where they track Mary Shelley’s multiple reworkings of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, see this superb edition of Frankenstein, ed. J. Paul Hunter (New York and London: WW Norton, 1996), pp. 225-240.
I also had the pleasure of being taught by Professor Victor Sage, too, a wonderful man; probably the only lecturer who knew how to read aloud and really should have recorded some of those audiobooks. You should have heard him read Dickens!
See the chapter ‘Strange Cases’, pp. 187-232 in Horror Fiction in the Protestant Tradition (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988), but for his focus on Jekyll and Hyde particularly, pp. 207-211.
6 ‘utter’: echoing the name of Mr Utterson, Dr Jekyll’s lawyer, who plays that very role of amateur detective and who also utters his testimony as eye witness…
7 ‘Poor Yorick’: in my view, the most profound scene ever written for the stage; 5.1.136 of Hamlet. A scene where Hamlet, who has played the fool since putting on his ‘antic disposition’ in 1.5, finds himself fooled by two gravediggers (incidentally played by two clowns, thankfully referred to as ‘clowns’ in the Cambridge edition). On finding, or imagining he finds Yorick’s skull, he realises the purposeless of seeking status, money, promotion, - everything, for death comes to us all and we return to the ground (Hamlet, 5.1. 64-94). Hamlet even imagines the ‘noble dust’ of Alexander being used to plug a beer-barrel (Hamlet, 5.1.167-184). Suddenly, we realise that death is a jester, and we are the fools. For death being ‘the great leveller’, where status dissolves and we all become equal, see Michael Bristol’s compelling discussion of this scene in the chapter ‘Treating Death as a Laughing Matter’ in his Carnival and Theater,(London and New York: Routledge, 1985), pp. 179-196. References to Hamlet are to Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, The New Cambridge Shakespeare, updated, ed. Philip Edwards, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). See also The Fools of Shakespeare by Frederick Warde (London: McBride, 1915), p. 141, for his observation that the characters are ‘set down as ‘‘Two Clowns as Gravediggers’’’, although he chooses to follow suit with the amended editions.
8 ‘so well’: deliberately misquoting Hamlet, in order to allude to a tune of more than revolting sentimentality – ‘I Know Him So Well’ by Barbara Dickson (whose surname sounds strangely familiar, for some reason) and Elaine Paige, from the musical Chess, the schmaltz of which, even as a child, struck ‘a terror to my fainting soul’; (Christopher Marlowe, Dr Faustus, A-Text, 1.3.84). References to Dr Faustus are to The Revels Plays edition, Doctor Faustus: A- and B-Texts, eds. David Bevington and Eric Rasmaussen (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1993).
You’ll soon see why I’ve quoted Mephistopheles, a bit of musical theatre schmaltz, and Hamlet in the later episode of this confession, ‘The Existential Erection’.
9 ‘Policy seems unwise’: alluding to Desiderius Erasmus’ Praise of Folly, one of the founding documents of Renaissance Humanism and noble defence of foolhardiness, which he dedicated to his pal - Sir Thomas More. He explains: ‘The fact is, kings do dislike the truth, but the outcome of this is extraordinary for my fools. They can speak truth and even open insults and be heard with positive pleasure; indeed, the words which would cost a wise man his life are surprisingly enjoyable when uttered by a clown. For truth has a genuine power to please if it manages not to give offence, but this is something the gods have granted only to fools.’ [My italics] Erasmus of Rotterdam, Praise of Folly, trans. Betty Radice, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993), pp. 56-57.
Is this the birth of the ‘wise fool’, or do we need to dob our cap-and-bells to Socrates for that one? Whichever way, we have the sixteenth century to thank for the rise of the fool. See the chapter ‘The Rise of the Fool’ in Sandra Billington’s updated edition of A Social History of the Fool (London: Faber and Faber, 2015).
Hold on. Did Erasmus say something about kings? No; - ‘She’s all states, all princes, I / Nothing else is,’ John Donne, ‘The Sun Rising’.
(Actually, you don’t want to get me talking about my foolish rising. I’ll do that later for you, in the episode ‘The Existential Erection’.)
10 ‘world be full of fools’: a reference to another Renaissance illustration known as the ‘Fool’s Cap World Map’, reprinted in Beatrice K. Otto, Fools are Everywhere: The Court Jester Around the World, (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. xx.
For a quick link and more accessible discussion, see the Royal Museums Greenwich web-site:
‘Are you willing to pay a deposit?’
1 ‘on her web-site’: you can check Miss Jessica Hyde’s web-site for yourself but do be warned – you might end up like me in a later episode of this confession called ‘let’s pull you aprt and put you back together again.’
2 ‘wasting time’: to echo ‘I like this place/ And willing would waste my time in it’, Celia in As You Like It, 2.5.93-94, ed. Alan Brissenden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 138.
‘One of the most intriguing features of (Shakespeare’s) comedies is the relentless war they wage on conceptions time that lock people into the predictable scripts of their culture’, - see Kiernan Ryan’s chapter ‘Playing for Time’ on The Comedy of Errors in his Shakespeare, 3rd ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 122-133. See also his more extended discussion of the first ten comedies in his Shakespeare’s Comedies, (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009). Professor Kiernan Ryan was the best teacher-tutor-mentor I’ve ever had in my life and I owe him a debt of deep gratitude.
There really is a strong creative association with fooling around, wasting time and the transformation of identity, you know. Why not suspend time, as Shakespeare does in the Forest of Arden, to allow us all to metamorphosise and go fluid?
I think Miss J. Hyde is really missing out.
Mind you, I better not press the point home too much.
I dare not waste her time.
3 ‘To expostulate’: Polonius in Hamlet; Prince of Denmark 2.1.85-92.
The Embankment. Night. UK Fetish Awards.
1 ‘Hey, ho’: from Feste the Clown’s song in Twelfth Night 5.1.366-385. Twelfth Night: The New Cambridge Shakespeare, 3rd ed., eds. Elizabeth Dunno and Penny Gay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2107), pp. 169-170.
2 ‘closed urban doors’: alluding broadly to the opening chapter ‘Story of the Door’ in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, pp. 5-10.
3 Oh, ‘Marlowe’s mighty line’:
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, 5.1.91-92.
‘Marlowe’s Mighty Line’ is itself a quotation, of course, from Ben Jonson’s beautiful and much-misunderstood poem, ‘To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare’. Have a look:
4 ‘quite chop fallen’ and ‘to this favour’: again from that outstanding scene in Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, 5.1. 163-164, with the latter ‘to this favour we must come’ as a deliberate misquotation - for the scene shows us that death will come to us all, not just Queen Gertrude, as discussed in more detail in footnote 7 of Episode 1 above.
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