Curiosa: Danse Macabre

[nebroadwe]

As a medievalist-by-training, I'm familiar with the Dance of Death as a trope: Death conveying people of every social station, from the highest (Pope) to the lowest (beggar) to the same end. But it was a little startling to open the next clamshell case in my IN tray and read:

Death's Illustrated "Doings" -- English, English, ENGLISH!

on the bookseller's printed description laid in with the pink paper-covered hardback. It seems the English (wow, really? I'd never have guessed!) painter and engraver Richard Dagley designed and published a thoroughly modern version of the Dance in the early nineteenth century and convinced a number of writers (supposedly even Tennyson is involved, but anonymously, for reasons that should become obvious) to supply text for his twenty-four illustrations. Forget Popes and emperors, priests and beggars -- here we've got cricketers --

Softly, my friend! (methinks I hear Death cry)
Whoever bowls, you say! sure you forget
That in Life's feverish fitful game
I am the Bowler, and friend Time "keeps wicket"!

-- hunters --

'Tis Death on his pale horse who follows the throng,
But joins not the laugh, the shout, or the song.

-- alchymists --

What shadowy form doth now his bellows ply,
And smiles a ghastly smile on Alchymy!
'Tis Death! -- th'elixir's spilt -- and lost the prize,
And in the folly of his life he dies.

-- students --

But chief, 'midst hopes untried, with fear afar,
The young pale scholar seeks some dim renown,
Misled by influence of deceitful star,
To where Death hides behind the laurel crown:
Alas, grey age and pallid youth the same!
All leave fair truth, to clutch the phantom -- Fame!

-- fast drivers --

He follows thee, thou gay and vain,
And all thy schemes of pride will mar,
He takes the wheel from thy splendid car
And hurls thee prostrate on the plain!

-- and pre-FDA-regulated dealers in eatables and drinkables --

Well, I'm glad that at last we have hit on a plan
Of destroying that long-living monster, poor man:
With a long-neck'd green bottle I'll finish a lord,
And a duke with a pâté à la perigord;
But to kill a poor wretch is a different case,
For the creatures will live, though I stare in their face.
Thanks to you, though, the times will be speedily alter'd,
And the poor be got rid of without being halter'd.

-- as well as hypochondriacs, fashion-conscious young ladies and their doting mammas, and, of course, lawyers. Some tropes are evergreen ...

Comments

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love this. I'd love a copy of this. I'd set it up with "Poetry for A Young Man" and chortle every time I walked by.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Evidently you can get modern copies from POD services (GoogleBooks has a preview up here (http://books.google.com/books?id=gW79U-2vPSUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22death%27s+doings%22&sig=HTuDFDCSRCUkdbuBzmRpNcj23sw).

Rare Books: Not Just For Collectors. :-)