Tommy Noonan

            On Wednesday after midnight I did my usual search for bedbugs and found none. So far there's only been one sick one that I've seen since pest control came a week ago. 

            My right arm hurt a lot this morning but it didn't affect my flexibility. 

            I published "La java des chaussettes à clous" (The Tap dance of the Hobnail Boots) by Boris Vian on Christian's Translations. 

            I memorized the third chorus of "U.S.S.R / U.S.A." There's just one verse left to nail down and I should have it done tomorrow. It might take a long time to work out the chords though because it seems like a complicated melody. 

            I tried to log on to my Shakespeare Zoom lecture twenty minutes early but when I clicked on Quercus from the U of T website I kept on getting either an error message or more frequently a "site unavailable" message up until five minutes before class. Then it took quite a while for the meeting to open and by then I was three minutes late. 

            Professor Lopez was talking about our perspective as readers in history. There is an automatic temptation to refer our interpretation of Shakespeare to history. It's the 16th Century and we are willing to be taken along. The social conventions are different and there are rigid heirarchies. Can we take for granted the resolution as a resolution? Reading is a historical activity. Human relationships were just as complex in that time. 

            The Comedy of Errors is a trivial artefact but it represents relations between humans in three dimensions. Shakepeare is interested in human relationships. 

            Things don't add up in the play. There are numerical intricacies. 

            In 1.1 Aegean is told that because of conflict between Ephesus and Syracuse he must pay 1000 marks for tresspassing or else be put to death. 1000 marks is a round theatrical sum and so we might as well say it is $1000. Aegean is given a day to find the money. Antipholus of Syracuse says to his slave Dromio of Syracuse, take this $1000 to our hotel. It is a clear dramatic signal. Since Aegean needs $1000 and Antipholus has $1000 we may think at this point that the money will make its way to Aegean and save his life. The mechanics are in place for that to occur but it does not correspond mathematically. At the end it is Antipholus of Ephesus that pays the life saving fine even though Antipholus of Syracuse has the money and is the son whom Aegean raised. The $1000 is mentioned in 1.1 and 1.2. In 5.1.386 all mistakes are clear to Antipholus of Syracuse but it is Antipholus of Ephesus who provides the money to pay his father's fine. It does not add up. Then the duke says there will be no fine after all and so the money is not needed after all. There is no answer to this math problem and there is no mathematical cancelling out. 

            On the timeline of the play. In 1.1.124f the youngest twin after 18 years from the shipwreck became inquisitive and went to find his brother. Antipholus spends five summers roaming through the boundaries of Asia, so now it has been 23 years. Aegean does not go looking for his son right away. How long did he wait? In 5.1.310 when Aegean encounters Antopholus of Ephesus and thinks he is the son he raised he says it has been 7 years since he last saw him. That means he waited for 2 years. So now it's been 25 years since the beginning. Shakespeare is specific and the historical span is defined by the numbers he troubles to give in the play. In 5.1.410 Aemilia has a different understanding of the time span and says it has been 33 years. Aemilia and Aegean diverge by eight years. It does not add up. It is possible there is a mistake. But the inconsistency of time is of a piece with the inconsistency of money, so it may be deliberate. 

            There is a strong interest in everything coming together but the joined whole does not fit in the end. It is not just a matter of forensics. There is a whole disposition on the part of the author on the parts of the whole. But the unified whole is greater and less than the sum of its parts. Figurative math.

            Matched pairs: 

            Antipholus of Syracuse and Antipholus of Ephesus. When they meet in the end there is only indirect communication through Adriana, hinting at a sibling rivalry. 

            Dromio of Syracuse and Dromio of Ephesus are more similar in that they are both slaves. They are hand in hand in the end but their solidarity is uneven because one is engaged and so Nell will become the other's sister in the future. They express a mutual fantasy of precedence and social leveling.

            Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Syracuse. 

            Antipholus of Ephesus and Dromio of Ephesus. 

            Adriana and Luciana echo the other sibling pair but they are not twins. They are also different in attitude. Adriana is married but not submissive while Luciana, even though unmarried claims she would be an obedient wife. 

            Aegean and Aemilia do not know they are matched until the end. 

            Antipholus of Ephesus and Aedriana are matched in marriage although antagonistic. She believes that to be married is to be of one flesh. They come together in the end but it does not smooth the tensions. They are reunited in a bad marriage. 

            Antipholus of Syracuse wants to be matched with Luciana. When she thinks he is her sister's Antipholus she is not interested. When she knows he is not she is silent on the matter. He indirectly proposes in the end but she does not answer. It does not add up. 

            Dromio of Ephesus is engaged to Nell the kitchen maid. 

            With Antipholus of Syracuse and Luciana she is reluctant; with Dromio of Ephesus and Nell he is reluctant. The genders are inverted. 

            I asked if the Courtesan is part of a matched pair with either of the Antipholi. He answers that she is an independent actor but he will talk about her more on Monday. 

            All of the pairs are kept separate and then mixed up. There are similarities and differences in each pair. Playwrights played with coordinating pairs in this way a lot at that time. It generates the gravitational pull of the ending. It is like the musical effect of suspension and resolution from discord to harmony. 

            Aegean and Aemilia's reunion is laconic. Relations between husbands and wives are hard to define. 

            Both of the Antipholi beat their slaves. 

            The Courtesan is sexually single.

            I weighed 88.9 kilos before lunch. I had crackers and five year old cheddar with a glass of limeade. 

            I weighed 88.7 at 18:10. 

            In the afternoon it was raining and so I didn't take a bike ride. Instead I did some exercises while listening to some YouTube videos of the Comedy of Errors. One of them summarized the play in seven minutes. The other was the film of an amateur Shakespeare in the Park production in Los Angeles. I just took in the first part of the live play but it was confusing because they had more than one actor playing Aegean. 

            I typed my Shakespeare lecture notes and was finished before 19:00. I finished reading Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. I was surprised that I'd reached the end because the e-book that I have is 605 pages long while the narrative is finished before page 300. Following that are reviews of the work. There is however the refutation of Douglass's authenticity by a neighbouring slave owner named Thompson who knew Douglas when he was a slave. After that is Douglass's response to the refutation and so I'm reading that. 

            I made pizza on naan with Napolese sauce, a cut up steak and extra old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching the first episode of the fourth season of Gomer Pyle. 

            In this story Aunt Bee comes to visit Gomer and wants to take him for dinner in town. But Gomer can't leave the base because he's on barracks duty and must clean the barracks while the other men are on Sunday liberty. Bee wants to hang out with Gomer while he works and Gomer somehow concludes that would be all right. But once she's there she insists on taking over. She wonders why the Marines don't hire a woman to come in once a week to clean up. She sends Gomer to the mess hall to get vinegar for cleaning the windows. Sergeant Carter walks by and sees Bee mopping the barracks floor. As gently as possible he directs Bee to a waiting area but while she's walking away she hears Carter yelling at Gomer. Carter sends her away again and then punishes Gomer for letting a civilian woman into the barracks. Bee wanders back and finds Gomer pointlessly moving a pile of dirt back and forth. Carter sends Bee to the gate where a radio host named Johnny Clark is interviewing visitors to Camp Henderson. The colonel hears Bee on the radio complaining about Carter and the sergeant gets in trouble. The radio announcer also has a TV show and invites Bee to be interviewed the next night. Before Bee's TV appearance Carter tries to be nice. Bee comes to visit and he's staying gentle and polite but then Gomer allows himself to be hit in the head with a mock grenade when he stops to wave at Bee. Carter finally refuses to be nice and blows up at Gomer. Bee is shocked but Gomer has a talk with her and so when she appears on the TV show she no longer complains about Carter's behaviour and says that Gomer explained that Carter's kind of roughness is necessary to build good Marines. 

            Johnny Clark was played by Tommy Noonan in the final performance before his death. He started out on Broadway and then moved out to Hollywood. He formed a comedy team with Peter Marshall and they became Noonan and Marshall. They had some sucess in clubs and on TV, appearing on Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town. They did a few movies together and then Noonan co starred in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and A Star Is Born. It was raining hard and the leak from the upper frame of my living room window was getting worse, despite my having told the landlord a couple of weeks ago that he hadn't fixed it as he believed. Either he didn't repair the roof or he repaired it in the same ineffectual way as before. Water was splashing from the window ledge onto the floor in front of the window and I had to use several paper towels to wipe it up. Finally I laid a bathmat on the floor and another one on the ledge to absorb the dripping. I couldn't put a bucket under it because it wouldn't fit on the ledge.