OneGuyFromBarlick

In case you were wondering.... I haven't heard anything from Bob since Sunday.....

THUNDER

Damn them! They will not let my play run, but they will steal my thunder. John Dennis, 1709.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this is the first recorded use of the idiomatic expression ‘to steal one’s thunder.’ Some scholars regard the attribution as doubtful, but a good—and apparently true—story lies behind it. John Dennis, a playwright of modest talent, had staged a rewrite of John Webster’s Appius and Virginia. As a play it was a flop, but for it Dennis had invented a new way of sounding thunder on stage, banging sheet metal, an improvement on the traditional method of torturing a large wooden bowl with a wooden bat. The theater owner soon (after only three performances) scrapped Dennis’s Appius and, looking for a surer-fire revival, put on Shakespeare’s Macbeth. That play has two scenes (both of them involving the three witches) calling for thunder, and Dennis’s new device was used—and praised. So his thunder was stolen, and he did react badly. Whether or not he actually coined the phrase, John Dennis was a pugnacious sort. Perhaps he had to be, for he was born a saddler’s son in Holborn, London, on September 16, 1658. He had a prosperous uncle, though, a London alderman, who sent the boy to Harrow School and then on to Cambridge where he graduated BA at the then relatively advanced age of 21. In both places he found he had a way with words, which won him an award at Harrow but trouble at Cambridge. There one of his verbal quarrels escalated to violence and resulted in a termination of his fellowship. A little later, in London, John Dennis sued his own mother for allegedly stealing money bequeathed him by that uncle. Settling out of court, Dennis moved on to establish himself as a literary man in what was becoming a very competitive environment. London was filling up with literary men. In this environment, Dennis made his name with patriotic bombast and political invective. He hated France and popery, no doubt sincerely, but it helped to sell his writings. Dennis’s celebration of the great victory at Blenheim, Britannia triumphans (1704) brought him a cash reward from Blenheim’s hero, John Churchill, duke of Marlborough, and a minor post under Queen Anne, at £52 per year. Neither the sinecure, nor his plays or poems, proved enough to keep Dennis out of debtors’ prison. He certainly lived too extravagantly and offended too many people, but his way with words survived, and so did his aggressiveness. Having generally failed as a playwright, Dennis soon emerged as a leading critic and essayist, taking sides in English politics (generally with the Whigs) and sniping at other writers. Such scribblers were, at the time, a dime per dozen, and were also infamous for changing sides on the proverbial dime, but Dennis made his reputation (and enough to live on) with interesting reflections on the old masters, including Shakespeare, combative rhetoric about the French and any Briton who might ally with them, and scathing attacks on other leading essayists of the time, notably Alexander Pope. Their battles won Dennis a minor place in Pope’s Dunciad, itself a landmark in satirical invective, but it was not enough. Blind, aging, and ill, Dennis survived on small gifts from old allies and former patrons, At his death in 1734 he had retained enough friends to be buried in a churchyard and enough money to avoid a pauper’s grave. John Dennis has since been recognized as a pioneer in Shakespeare scholarship, but this came far too late to ease the miseries of his old age. ©.