From Shakespeare to Punk Rock and Punk Chess
In this podcast I trace the origins of punk, from Shakespeare to today’s music scene and the rise of the chess punk.
My interest in punk in general, and punk chess in particular drew my attention via Dr Google to a poem by from the great English poet and satirist John Dryden..
Mac Flecknoe; or, A satyr upon the True-Blue-Protestant Poet, T.S.[1]) is a verse mock-heroic satire written by John Dryden. It is a direct attack on Thomas Shadwell, another prominent poet of the time.
In his vicious poetic attack on his literary enemy, Shadwell, Dryden begins his poem poem begins in the tone of an epic masterpiece, presenting Shadwell's defining characteristic as dullness. He is Dryden subverts the theme of the defining characteristic of an epic hero by giving Shadwell a negative characteristic as his only virtue. There is very little ambiguity about it - Dryden uses classic tones is saying that Shadwell and his work are no better than excrement.
The reference to punk can be found in the couplet in the poem about a nursery in the land of NonSense ruled by, who else, Shadwell, crudely throughout disguised as Sh-. Readers would have no doubt about Dryden’s target ..