The pen is mightier than the sword. By Ann Evans.
A little while ago, I
had a Facebook profile picture taken of me holding a pen and a sword
– well actually it was a large wedding cake knife, but the message
was the same – The pen is mightier than the sword. So
I was quite surprised to learn that the person who first came up with
that phrase was Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. Or in
short, Lord Lytton. This caught my interest as I live in Lord Lytton
Avenue.
So,
deciding to do a little more research on him I found that Edward
Bulwer-Lytton was an English novelist, poet, playwright and
politician. Born in 1803 he was hugely popular and wrote 27 novels,
earning him a considerable fortune. Knebworth House, famous for its
rock concerts (I've seen David Bowie and Queen there), was his home.
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| Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
Through
his writing, he came up with a number of phrases which have been
turned into cliches, such as the great unwashed,
dweller on the threshold,
the almighty dollar, as
well as the infamous opening line: It was a dark and stormy
night.
Lytton
wrote the famous line The pen is mightier than the sword
in his 1839 play Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy. The
play was about Cardinal Richelieu and the line comes in Act II, scene
II:
True, This! —
Beneath the rule of men entirely great
The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold
The arch-enchanters wand! — itself is nothing! —
But taking sorcery from the master-hand
To paralyse the Cæsars, and to strike
The loud earth breathless! — Take away the sword —
States can be saved without it!
Research
shows that the play opened in London's Covent Garden Theatre on 7th
March 1839 with William Charles Macready in the lead role. He
believed its opening night success was 'unequivocal'. It seems that
Queen Victoria attended a performance a week later.
It was his opening sentence, It was a dark and stormy night however that really sparked the controversy. This was the opening sentence of Paul Clifford, which read:
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
And while his
writing was popular back in the 19th century, in more recent times
his style is often mocked and regarded as melodramatic or purple
prose.
Coining another cliché
– not created by him, but by Roman poet Lucretius, one man's meat
is another man's poison, as Writers Digest described this opening
sentence as “the literary poster child for bad story starters.
While the American Book Review
ranked it as #22 on its 'Best first lines from novels' list. So, I
suppose it's all a matter of taste.
It
probably is one of the most well used phrases. There's a board game
entitled It Was a Dark and Stormy Night,
where contestants are given first lines of various famous novels and
must guess their origin. And the
cartoon dog Snoopy, created by Charles M Schulz uses the phrase
regularly.
There's
even a website and writing competition dedicated to the skill – or
otherwise of Bulwer-Lytton. In 1982 the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction
Contest was formed – and still runs to this day. This was sponsored
by the English Department at San Jose State University to recognize
the worst examples of “dark and stormy night” writing. Entrance
have to compose the opening sentence to imaginary novels. Every year
it attracts thousands of entries from all over the world. The 'best'
of the resulting entries are then published in a series of paperback
books, starting with It was a Dark and Stormy Night
in 1984, available from Penguin Books and Amazon.
And
the debate goes on as to whether Bulwer-Lytton was indeed a great
writer or a master of purple prose. The website
http://www.bulwer-lytton.com
has a fun quiz which you can take part in, where they list a dozen
extracts from novels, and you guess whether the extract was written
by Lytton or Dickens. I scored a very poor 33%. See how you get on.
Please visit my website: www.annevansbooks.co.uk
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