The Shakespearean play-goer who complained of the cliches

[Laurence Horn]

On Sep 24, 2014, at 4:39 PM, Benjamin Barrett wrote:

> Wow, thank you for this quick find (finding?).
> 
> I don't know what a debbie is (not defined by Wiktionary or the OED),

Maybe a girl/young woman of the genre typically named Debbie?  I've seen "a Jennifer" used as a general name of that kind, and of course there's "a Sheila" in Oz.

LH 

> 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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