Cartoonist Ronald Searle (1920-2011) was born on this day one-hundred two years ago. One of the leading illustrators of his day, he was never know for comics, a territory into which he seldom ventured. It is exciting to be able to reintroduce an early, forgotten work of his in comic book form, courtesy of Jeff Nelson.
Macbeth, or Local Thane Makes Good, was first published in the Punch issue of November 7, 1949, on pages 32-33. It was later picked up in the American market by the Saturday Review of Literature in the December 2, 1950 issue. After that, it was not collected in any of Searle's collections or anywhere else, for that matter. For all practical purposes, it has been hidden from view for seven decades.
But now all that has changed with this rediscovered two-page satirical comic irreverently riffing on the plot of "MacBeth." Searle's version of the Scottish play doesn't strike one as especially literary, let alone Shakespearean. Rather, it is a deliberately anachronistic and breezy retelling of the plot, which shuns quoting any of the great lines we all remember. In short, this isn't your high school "Macbeth."
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| Macbeth, or Local Thane Makes Good Ronald Searle Saturday Review, December 2, 1950 Image courtesy of Jeff Nelson |
More than anything else, these pages recall Capsulysses, Searle's four-page condensed version of Homer's Odyssey written by Richard Usborne. It was published in the Punch number of May 25, 1955. You can read that here.
Note: My thanks to Jeff Nelson for rescuing this Searle work from seeming obscurity. This is Jeff's ninth contribution to Attempted Bloggery.
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