Pull rabbits out of my hat, not very relevant perhaps...

[venta]

Well, everyone who was heartily sick of me grumbling about the somewhat uninteresting dilemmas with which last year's desk calendar presented me will be delighted to hear that this year we have... the Forgotten English calendar. Every day I get an outdated word, and some random trivia.

Today's is slightly disappointing - apparently a monkey spoon is a spoon bearing the figure of a monkey. However, yesterday's trivia pleased me muchly.


Tuesday 6th, 1734 marked the death of John Dennis, English playwright and critic. In 1709, he "devised a method of simulating thunder onstage with a large mustard bowl for his dramatic work Appius Virginia."

The play flopped, but he later heard his thunderclaps being used in a production of Macbeth, and apparently exclaimed "See how the rascals use me. They will not let my play run, yet they steal my thunder!"

A quick google suggests that a mustard bowl is... well, a small bowl, to put mustard in. So presumably even a large mustard bowl wouldn't be huge. So how does one make a thunderclap with such a thing ? I guess dropping a metal bowl might suffice, but I'm assuming it was something more complicated than that, or it would hardly have needed someone to "devise" it...

Comments

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

Further to this, I think all the mustard bowls I've seen have a spoon, which sort of pokes out of a hole in the lid. This means that you don't even need to provide extra balls, just use the spoon in a similar rolling manner.

Does that make sense?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yup, rumbling rather than clapping makes sense.

I'm impressed, though, I've never knowingly seen a mustard bowl. The images google turned up appeared to be unlidded, but I didn't search extensively.

I shall no doubt feel remarkably inferior next time I mix up mustard in an eggcup :)

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

I've only seen them in the sort of programme about antiques that gets shown on lunchtime TV. I generally mix mustard in an egg cup, too...