history – Page 2 – JAMES D. MACDONALD

A Minizine

The Minor Hours and Small Thoughts Magazine is very amusing. Check it out. It wouldn’t kill you to support it, either.

Right then. Not every entertainment in Shakespeare’s England was, how shall we say this? high-brow. To that end, let me present to you Singing Simpkin, a jig (that is to say, a short comedy — all singing, all dancing) that might have been presented between acts in a theater, or in a tavern yard. OrContinue reading “That’s Comedy!”

Plagues Gone Past

Where are the plagues of yesteryear? So there I was, reading Fifty Years in the Magic Circle by Signor Blitz (the memoirs of a mid-19th-century magician) when I saw this bit (pp. 58-59): Irish Wit. During the season, a band of Russian horn-players appeared at the Theatre Royal. Their style of music was originalContinue reading “Plagues Gone Past”

A Complete Silk Act

One of the perennial topics in these parts goes something like this: “I’ve signed up for a talent show. What should I do?” Let me make a suggestion, under the rubric “everything old is new again.” In Jean Hugard’s Silken Sorcery (1937), the last chapter describes the Stillwell Silk Act. Here’s what Hugard says: CHAPTER XII THEContinue reading “A Complete Silk Act”

My New Favorite Movie

A while back I had some computer problems. As in Black Screen of Death computer problems. As in Called-MicroSoft and the Level-One-tech-couldn’t-help-me problems. So that is how I wound up on the phone with a Level Two tech, a nice young man who lives in Mumbai. The process took quite a while, what with downloadingContinue reading “My New Favorite Movie”