The Shakespearean play-goer who complained of the cliches

[Benjamin Barrett]

Wow, thank you for this quick find (finding?).

I don't know what a debbie is (not defined by Wiktionary or the OED), but this is a better version of this cliched anecdote.

Benjamin Barrett
Formerly of Seattle, WA

Learn Ainu! https://sites.google.com/site/aynuitak1/home

On Sep 24, 2014, at 1:07 AM, ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: The Shakespearean play-goer who complained of the cliches
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Thanks for introducing an interesting topic, Benjamin. Here is an
> instance of the same core joke in 1936, I think. Perhaps the jest can
> be antedated back to the 1600s.
> 
> [ref] 1936 October 17, Ballston Spa Daily Journal, My New York by
> James Aswell, Quote Page 4, Column 2, Ballston Spa, New York. (Old
> Fulton)[/ref]
> 
> [Begin excerpt]
> Leslie Howard has hung out his Shakespearean shingle in one theater
> and the English marvel, John Gielgud, is holding forth in another. . .
> . A pert debbie, attending the Gielgud interpretation the other night,
> quipped in the lobby: "But how can anyone listen to all those old saws
> and ancient wisecracks they've been hearing all their lives?" . . .
> Well, a lot of people go to Shakespeare to recognize the quotations.
> [End excerpt]
> 
> The last quip in the passage above, "people go to Shakespeare to
> recognize the quotations", is nowadays assigned to Orson Welles or
> Oscar Wilde. For example, Richard Lederer implausibly attributes the
> remark to Oscar Wilde.
> 
> Garson
> 
> On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 9:12 PM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM>
>> Subject:      The Shakespearean play-goer who complained of the cliches
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> Evidently in _The Miracle of Language_ (see "A Man of Fire-New Words", =
>> http://www2.d125.org/~rtompson/lederer.pdf), 1991, Richard Lederer says:
>> 
>> -----
>> A student who attended a performance of Hamlet came away complaining =
>> that the play "was nothing more than a bunch of cliches." The reason for =
>> this common reaction...
>> -----
>> 
>> I recall first seeing this about 1992 or 1993, but my recollection is =
>> that it was an elderly woman who said this.
>> 
>> This might be worth researching for those who have an interest in such =
>> developments.

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