# Mistakes in classic literature
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [May 8, 2004, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227 "2004-05-08T21:43:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 9
### Author:  [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)
#### Post date: [October 25, 2006, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/161 "2006-10-25T23:23:59Z")
[QUOTE=Nava]
Y’all realize that, originally, “desert” meant “area mostly uninhabited” and not “dry hot area”?
Alaska is mostly desert. Promise.
[/QUOTE]
Desert. As in “deserted”. Ain’t etymology grand?
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### Author:  [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)
#### Post date: [October 25, 2006, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/162 "2006-10-25T23:30:40Z")
[QUOTE=rowrrbazzle]
According to a Martin Gardner “Mathematical Games” column, two- and three-cent coins were still in circulation in 1906. Bronze two-cent and silver three-cent coins were last minted in 1873. Nickel three-cent coins were last minted in 1889. (see [http://www.usmint.gov/faqs/circulating\_coins/index.cfm?flash=no&action=faq\_circulating\_coin](http://www.usmint.gov/faqs/circulating_coins/index.cfm?flash=no&action=faq_circulating_coin)) So the $.27 could reasonably be a dime, a nickel, and four three-cent coins.
[/QUOTE]
Or, you know, _it’s an intentional absurdity by a comic writer,_ which is what I always assumed.
[QUOTE=cher3]
There have been several Sherlock Holmes examples but this:
[inquote elided]
reminded my of “The Yellow Face” where he has the child of a black man and a white woman turning out be be much darker-skinned than her father.
[/QUOTE]
Well, since actual skin color can be a function of sunburn, this could be a girl who was outside a lot.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [October 25, 2006, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/163 "2006-10-25T23:33:15Z")
[QUOTE=The Man With The Golden Gun]
My favorite is in Shakespeare’s **Julius Caesar** where he mentions a clock striking the hour. The play takes place in ancient Rome, which didn’t have clocks.
From what I hear, Shakespeare is full of little anachronisms like that.
[/QUOTE]
I’ve seen a picture of a production at the Folger Shakespeare Library where all the actors are wearing, not Roman togas, but Elizabethan doublets and hose. Apparently, that’s how the play would have been presented at the Globe. People in those days, learning history from books that rarely mentioned the details of daily life, did not have enough historical consciousness to imagine that those details might have been very different. You’ll see the same thing in Medieval art – Caesar or Alexander is always pictured wearing a Medieval knight’s armor.
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### Author:  [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2006, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/164 "2006-10-26T00:09:55Z")
[QUOTE=foolsguinea]
Well, since actual skin color can be a function of sunburn, this could be a girl who was outside a lot.
[/QUOTE]
Nope: she was kept hidden indoors.
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### Author:  [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2006, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/165 "2006-10-26T00:10:50Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
I’ve seen a picture of a production at the Folger Shakespeare Library where all the actors are wearing, not Roman togas, but Elizabethan doublets and hose. Apparently, that’s how the play would have been presented at the Globe. People in those days, learning history from books that rarely mentioned the details of daily life, did not have enough historical consciousness to imagine that those details might have been very different. You’ll see the same thing in Medieval art – Caesar or Alexander is always pictured wearing a Medieval knight’s armor.
[/QUOTE]
[Henry Peacham’s sketch](http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/pberek/titusimage.html) of a sixteenth-century production of _Titus Andronicus_ shows Titus in a toga and other actors – playing Goths and a Moor – in Elizabethan costume. Therefore, I suspect it may be less a question of historical consciousness than historical sources. Evidently, Shakespeare’s company _did_ know that a Roman patrician would wear a toga, but they may have had no way of knowing how a Gothic queen would dress (and probably wouldn’t have cared to get the details right in any case, since their audience wouldn’t know either, and putting a character in a fancy Elizabethan dress and a crown was the quickest visual way to convey the idea of “queen”).
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### Author:  [@Cunctator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cunctator)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2006, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/166 "2006-10-26T00:33:51Z")
[QUOTE=Scissorjack]
And in **The Silver Chair** {look, I’m reading all the Narnia books to my son at bedtime, OK?}, why didn’t Jill just write the bloody signs down? It would have saved forgetting to repeat them.
[/QUOTE]
🙂
I remember thinking exactly the same thing as a child when I first read **The Silver Chair**.
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### Author:  [@Mapache](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mapache)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2006, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/167 "2006-10-26T02:00:20Z")
I don’t know whether you’ll accept Patrick O’brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels as classics, yet, but they will be someday. I think they’re classics today, anyway. And most of the time his descriptions are incredibly accurate, but he does make a few surprising mistakes. In the first book he has Captain Aubrey taking a star sight at three A M on a stormy night, which you can’t do for several reasons. Also he describes Diana Villiers as fairly tall, but not quite coming up to Sophie Aubrey’s ear. Later he tells us that Diana is five feet ten, which would make Sophie at least six feet five (I have measured several women’s ears-to-top-of head tp figure this out). Also several of his characters change their names from one book to another; Akward Davis becomes Akward Davies, for instance, which is even more confusing because the first book has a big mean guy named Davies who is black, which Akward isn’t. Anyway OBrian is still the best writer of the past fifty years, IMNSOHO.
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### Author:  [@Number](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Number)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2006, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/168 "2006-10-26T02:34:52Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
I’ve seen a picture of a production at the Folger Shakespeare Library where all the actors are wearing, not Roman togas, but Elizabethan doublets and hose. Apparently, that’s how the play would have been presented at the Globe.
[/QUOTE]
I saw _Julius Caesar_ at the newly-restored Globe in 1999 and all the actors were in Elizabethan dress. At the time I did wonder whether they were being true to the original production or just didn’t have the budget for Roman outfits.
In retrospect that was a little silly. How expensive could a toga be?
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### Author:  [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2006, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/169 "2006-10-26T06:48:03Z")
Was it a Eugene O’Neal play where a one-armed character is noted as burying his head in his … hands? Can’t seem to find it right now.
Another Shakespearean error, although by omission: he sets an entire play in Venice and never once mentions the watery nature of the transport facilities.
And there’s a Holmes story where a vital clue is which direction a bicycle was travelling; the great detective deduces this from the fact that the rear wheel’s track is over the front wheel’s one! Of course that would occur no matter which way it was going …
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### Author:  [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2006, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/170 "2006-10-26T06:49:15Z")
[QUOTE=Askance]
Eugene O’Neal.
[/QUOTE]
**O’Neill**! Gah!!!
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### Author:  [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2006, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/171 "2006-10-26T06:56:53Z")
Hmm, well, Donald Ogden Stewart wrote a _parody_ of a Eugene O’Neill play, titled _For the Freedom of the World: A Drama of the Great War_, that had a one-armed lieutenant.
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### Author:  [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2006, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/172 "2006-10-26T12:38:22Z")
“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”–The insurance man tells Katie that her estranged sister Sissy gave birth to another baby “but he wasn’t able to insure it, because it only lived two hours.” Later in the book, when Sissy gives birth in the hospital, the doctor gives the child oxygen and “for the first time, Sissy heard the cry of a newly born baby.”
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### Author:  [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2006, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/173 "2006-10-26T12:44:51Z")
[QUOTE=Askance]
Another Shakespearean error, although by omission: he sets an entire play in Venice and never once mentions the watery nature of the transport facilities.
[/QUOTE]
That is probably evidence that Shakespeare didn’t know much about Venice, but to be fair, you can get around Venice the same way as people mostly got around cities in Shakespeare’s day, by walking. Would any of the characters in The Merchant of Venice have needed to take a gondola anywhere?
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2006, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/174 "2006-10-26T12:54:44Z")
[QUOTE=Scissorjack]
{look, I’m reading all the Narnia books to my son at bedtime, OK?}
[/QUOTE]
Me too! In fact, we’re finishing The Silver Chair tonight. (I was amazed at how many times Mr. Lewis was able to use the word “poop” in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I eventually had to start substituting the word “deck” so we could get on with the story.) 🙂
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### Author:  [@Kizarvexius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kizarvexius)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2006, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/175 "2006-10-27T01:08:23Z")
In _The Pirates of Penzance_, W.H. Gilbert, normally a stickler for the small details, flubs the timeframe of the second act somewhat.
Act II is set in “a ruined chapel by moonlight”. It begins with the female chorus, led by Mabel, singing to the Major General. One of Mabel’s lines is as follows:
> [@](#):
>
> See, heav’n has lit her lamp,
> The midnight hour is past,
But during the dialogue that follows the song, these lines are spoken:
> [@](#):
>
> **General** : …At what time does your expedition march against these scoundrels?
> **Fred**. At eleven, and before midnight I hope to have atoned for my involuntary association with the pestilent scourges by sweeping them from the face of the earth - and then, dear Mabel, you will be mine!
So it would seem that Frederic is running a bit behind schedule. In most productions, Mabel’s sung line is amended to say “The **twilight** hour is passed.”
Another mistake on Mr. Gilbert’s part may be found in _The Sorcerer_. In this somewhat obscure operetta, Alexis slips a love potion into a pot of tea, from which most of the villagers of Ploverleigh subsequently partake. Once the potion begins to take effect, they all collapse to the ground in a charmed sleep (end of Act I). Twelve hours later (opening of Act II) they awaken, and it is then that the potion’s amorous properties kick in. Each unmarried person who has partaken of the magic philter falls madly in love with someone ill-suited for them (by Victorian standards). A merry time is had by all as the young pair off with the old, the rich with the poor, the slim with the portly, etc. Towards the end of Act II, Aline, who is in on the plot but had refused to take the potion, regrets her decision. She pours herself a cup of tainted tea and drinks it down. Somehow the potion takes its full effect without the mandatory 12 hour waiting period and she instantly falls in charmed, irrevocable love with the first unmarried man she sees – the vicar – much to the consternation of her fiance Alexis. No explanation is given as to why Aline did not fall asleep for 12 hours like everyone else had.
Actually, the reason for the inconsistently is that Mr. Gilbert trimmed the operetta down a bit for its first revival. In so doing he inadvertantly introduced the aforementioned plot hole.
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### Author:  [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2006, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/176 "2006-10-27T01:37:21Z")
[QUOTE=Dung Beetle]
Me too! In fact, we’re finishing The Silver Chair tonight. (I was amazed at how many times Mr. Lewis was able to use the word “poop” in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I eventually had to start substituting the word “deck” so we could get on with the story.) 🙂
[/QUOTE]
That and “gay”: yes, I _know_ it had no homosexual connotations back then, but it’s still hard to resist a smirk at exchanges like ‘“All right. Gay’s the word,” said Scrubb. “Now, if we could only get someone to open this door. While we’re fooling about and being gay, we’ve got to find out all we can about this castle.”’
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### Author:  [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2006, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/177 "2006-10-27T10:03:18Z")
Yeah, nit-picking Gilbert & Sullivan operas…
One of the Major-General’s talents is the ability to “whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore.” However, Frederick will have his 21st birthday on Feb 29th 1940, that means he was born in 1852, and the show starts with him 21 years old in 1873. HMS Pinafore was not performed until 1878. Explain that one.
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### Author:  [@betenoir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/betenoir)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2006, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/178 "2006-10-27T11:13:46Z")
Hee hee. Nit picking someone else and writing “1940”. What version of Godwin’s law is that? Hee hee hee. 😉
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### Author:  [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2006, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/179 "2006-10-27T11:39:13Z")
Sorry, what’s my error? 1940? what’s wrong with that?
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### Author:  [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2006, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/180 "2006-10-27T11:43:25Z")
[QUOTE=Peter Morris]
Yeah, nit-picking Gilbert & Sullivan operas…
One of the Major-General’s talents is the ability to “whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore.” However, Frederick will have his 21st birthday on Feb 29th 1940, that means he was born in 1852, and the show starts with him 21 years old in 1873. HMS Pinafore was not performed until 1878. Explain that one.
[/QUOTE]
Two things are going on there. (1) Pirates of Penzance was first performed in 1880, after HMS Pinafore, so that the audience would have been familiar with the earlier opera, and wouldn’t have done the calculations. (2) WS Gilbert obviously forgot (or did not know) in his calculations that 1900 is not a leap year, so would have subtracted 84 from 1940, giving 1856 as the year of Frederick’s birth, and 1877 as the year when the action of Pirates was supposed to take place, so there’s really only a 1 year discrepancy.
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