Evidence: | 'Shakespeare provided a political script for J.R. Clynes, the son of an Irish farm labourer, who rose from the textile mills of Oldham to become deputy leader of the House of Commons. In his youth he drew inspiration from the "strange truth" he found in Twelfth Night: "Be not afraid of greatness". ("What a creed! How it would upset the world if men lived up to it, I thought") Urged on by a Cooperative Society librarian, he worked through the plays and discovered they were about people who "had died for their beliefs. Wat Tyler and Jack Cade seemed heroes". Reading Julius Caesar, "the realisation came suddenly to me that it was a mighty political drama" about class struggle, "not just an entertainment"... Elected to Parliament in 1906, he read A Midsummer Night's Dream while awaiting the returns'. |
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Century: | 1850-1899 | ||||||||||
Date: | unknown | ||||||||||
Country: | England | ||||||||||
Time: | n/a | ||||||||||
Place: | city: Oldham | ||||||||||
Type of Experience (Reader): |
|
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Type of Experience (Listener): |
|
Reader: | John Robert Clynes |
Age | Child (0-17) |
Gender | Male |
Date of Birth | 27 Mar 1869 |
Socio-economic group: | Labourer (non-agricultural) |
Occupation: | son of millworker, became leader of House of Commons |
Religion: | n/a |
Country of origin: | England |
Country of experience: | England |
Listeners present if any: (e.g. family, servants,
friends, workmates) |
n/a |
Additional comments: | n/a |
Author: | William Shakespeare |
Title: | Julius Caesar |
Genre: | Drama |
Form of Text: | Print: Book |
Publication details: | n/a |
Provenance: | unknown |
Record ID: | 2482 | |
Source - | ||
Author: | Jonathan Rose | |
Editor: | n/a | |
Title: | The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes | |
Place of Publication: | New Haven | |
Date of Publication: | 2001 | |
Vol: | n/a | |
Page: | 123 | |
Additional comments: | n/a |
Citation: | Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven, 2001), p. 123, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=2482, accessed: 29 March 2024 |
See J.R. Clynes, 'Memoirs' (1937) |
Reading Experience Database version 2.0. Page updated: 27th Apr 2016 3:15pm (GMT)