Classics Retold

Prefiguring is the present participle of prefigure.  It means to show, suggest, or foreshadow something before it actually happens. It can also mean imagining, or visualising an event beforehand. Depending upon the context, the term has specific applications in literature, sociology, and everyday use.  In art and storytelling, prefiguring acts as an early hint or a symbolic precursor of a future event. The author's description of the dark storm at the beginning of the book is prefiguring of the tragic ending. In Chapter 50 of Far From The Madding Crowd, Sergeant Troy in the dressing room of the tent where he is to play as Turpin's Ride within a few minutes peep at his wife Bathsheba Everdene on her raised seat. Troy is in the makeup of Turpin. He is confident that his wife will not recognise him.  But he visualises the consequences of her recognising him by his voice.

Rembrandt Harmenszoom Van Rijn, known mononymously as Rembrandt was a Dutch Golden Age painter, who lived between 16th July 1606 to 4th October 1669. He is one of the great painters of the 17th century. He was born into a well-to-do family; his father was a miller and mother was daughter of a baker.  He was apprenticed to Jacob Isaacsz. van Swanenburg, a Dutch painter, and then to Pieter Lastman, and with Jacob Pynas  In 1625, Rembrandt, together with his friend and colleague Jan Lievens began to accept students   At the end of 1631 he moved to Amsterdam, and began to practice as a professional portraitist. In Amsterdam he stayed with an art dealer, Hendrick van Uylenburgh, who helped him to launch his career. Later he married Saskia van Uylenburgh, the cousin of Hendrik Van Uylenbirhurgh. She was his model for some of his paintings.  Later, the couple moved to Jodenbreestraat, a street in Amsterdam.  The mortgage to finance the purchase of the house in Jod...

Prancing is the action of moving with energetic springy steps, often characterised by high kicks lively bounding, or a proud, strutting gait. The word is most frequently used to describe animals such as horses, but can also refer to spirited human movement.  The term stems from the 14th century Middle English word "prauncen" and is often related to the Old Danish "pransk" (lively/spirited) or German "prangen" (to show off or be in a splendour) In Chapter 50 of Far From The Madding Crowd, Boldwood use this in his dialogue to Bathsheba, "Hark! What's that prancing?" It merely means: "What's that galloping or stamping about outside?"  Hardy often uses horse related verbs very precisely, and here prancing  evokes the image of an animal stepping high and energetically, drawing attention by its movement and noise.

In Chapter 50 of Far From The Madding Crowd, the word brig refers to a two-masted sailing vessel.  A brig was a common merchant and naval ship in the 18th and 19th centuries, having square sails on both masts.  To Victorian readers, a brig would immediately suggest a vessel engaged in coastal or overseas trade.  Since Troy is believed to have drowned after entering the sea, references to ships and seafaring matters help create the uncertainty surrounding whether he is dead or alive.  In modern usage the word brig can also mean a naval prison.  Hardy is using it in the nineteenth-century sense.  A small two-masted sailing ship. 

In Chapter 50 of Far From The Madding Crowd, when Jan Coggan says:  ".... if only I could get out of this cheese-wring ....", he is using a dialect for an extremely tight squeeze or a crush of people.  A cheese-wring (more commonly spelled cheesewring or cheesering) originally meant a device used in cheese making.  After curds were placed in a mould, a press squeezed them to force out the whey and compact the cheese.  By extension the word came to mean any situation in which a person is compressed from all sides.  In Chapter 50 Jan Coggan and Joseph Poorgrass are being pushed forward by the crowd trying to enter the circus tent at Greenhill Fair.  Hardy describes Coggan as being "Jammed as in a vice."  Surrounded by people and unable to move, Coggan humurously compares the crowd to a cheese press.  The image is particularly impressive. Hardy often gives rustic characters vivid farming and dairy-farming metaphors drawn from village life.  The ...

Turpin's Ride to York, formally stylized as The Royal Hippodrome Performance of Turpin's Ride to York and the Death of Black Bess -- is a legendary 19th century Equestrian melodrama written by Henry M Milner.  It dramatized the real life 1738 legend of English Highwayman Dick Turpin, who rode his mare, Black Bess, on the epic 200 mile escape from London to York.  Equestrian Origin  Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was a staple of travelling circuses, Hippodromes, and amphitheatres across UK including Leeds, Cambridge and Coventry.  The performance was renowned for its thrilling acts of horsemanship performed in circular rings, including heart-pounding scenes like Turpin  leaping over a tollgate to avoid pursuing vigilantes.  The play was captured in Thomas Hardy's classic novel Far From The Madding Crowd, where Sergeant Troy performs as Turpin at the Greenhill Sheep Fair.  While travelling Hippodromes and 19th century equestrian melodra...