Anyone bothered by anachronistic lyrics?

[ErinDillyFan]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 10:39am

SiriusXM On Broadway has been playing "This Can't Be Love" from the "Boys From Syracuse" a lot lately. It bothers me that "Romeo & Juliet" are mentioned in the lyrics, which wasn't written until more than 1800 years after the time the shows is supposed to take place.

I know there are many others I have heard over the years, but can't recall them now.

But, does this tweak other's nerves?

Updated On: 3/12/14 at 10:39 AM

[ErinDillyFan]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 10:51am

I remember another from "Oklahoma", "The Surrey with the Fringe on the Top". Isinglass curtains that were available in 1906 could not be rolled up and down. Those weren't available until the 1930s.

[ErinDillyFan]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 10:52am

I think there are one or two from "The Music Man"

[tazber]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 11:09am

You know, I just heard one recently and I simply can not remember which CR I was listening to.

But yea, it bothered me.

[Mattbrain]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 11:17am

Always something to nitpick with you lot, isn't there?

[oasisjeff]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 11:23am

I'm not bothered by this, as long as you aren't looking this stuff up on your iPhone during the show.

[ErinDillyFan]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 11:44am

I am anachronistic enough myself not to have an iPhone.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 11:49am

Depends on the context.

The Boys From Syracuse is a screwball comedy. The setting is ancient what is now Turkey. The score is jazz. It is based on Comedy of Errors (which, in turn was based on two Roman comedies by Plautus) which, with the same setting, certainly was first performed in 1594 in Elizabethan costumes.

When Antipholus of Syracuse says "in Verona my late cousin Romeo" in "This Can't Be Love" it's exactly right for the material. They are cousins because they both descend from the pen of the Bard. The simultaneously illogical but perfectly logical and blithe lyric is in perfect keeping with the spirit of the show.

Even in Comedy of Errors itself, Shakespeare employs a somewhat similar conceit. He mentions something that would never have been known by the ancient Ephesians. America!

And he gives the line to the same character:

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE (comparing a fat maid's body to a globe):
Where America, the Indies?

It may even be that Larry Hart's glib ebullient choice to have Antipholus anachronistically name-drop Romeo was a wink to a similar choice by Shakespeare to have Antipholus mention America.

It may be noted, however, that there are many anachronisms in Shakespeare. Clock and doublet are mentioned in Julius Caesar though neither existed in 44 AD; Hamlet studies at Wittenburg the university of which didn't exist until 1502. Whether each of these were oversights, carelessness, artistic license, etc. is a subject of debate.

Now consider another literary reference comparing the young lover in a musical to a lover in literature. Marius in LES MIS is compared to Don Juan (and, yes, the J is not silent because the reference is to Byron's Don Juan (1819) and Byron mispronounced it). It would bother me if instead of being compared to Don Juan Marius had been compared to a romantic hero first penned after the June Rebellion of 1832, e.g., Don Jose (also with the J pronounced by the way because it would be Merimee, Bizet, Meilhac and Halevy's Don Jose and they mispronounced the name (at least anyone singing Carmen in French does).... these chauvinistic French and English writers!). Merimee didn't write Carmen until 1845.

Why would it bother me in LES MIS when it didn't in BOYS? Because unlike The Boys From Syracuse, Les Miserables is not an ebullient jazzy screwball comedy in which a clever anachronism might score as pure fun. Les Miserables is a serious telling of an epic drama. And there would be nothing gained by having Grantaire use a premonitory allusion to a lovelorn hero instead of an au courant one (whereas's Antipholus's allusion to Romeo is a charming lyrical coup).













Updated On: 3/15/14 at 11:49 AM

[ErinDillyFan]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 1:01pm

henrikegerman: well said. Thank you for the insight. It's days like this when the MA in English Lit. really pay off!

I don't know if "bothered" is the right term. I notice these things, which then side tracks my brain and disengages me from the song for a moment.

I had forgotten the "my late cousin Romeo" line. But, no doubt Hart was making the reference intentionally for the reasons you state.

Updated On: 3/12/14 at 01:01 PM

[ggersten]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 2:21pm

Well, I understand why there are anachronistic lyrics in Spring Awakening - but I don't like them (although I've only listed to the OBCR and never seen a production - so maybe as performed, they are more fitting).

[Jon]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 6:25pm

It bothers me more that the historical events depicted in RAGTIME cover several years, and while little Coalhouse III grows from an infant to a five year old, the other two children in the show do not grow at all.

[kdogg36]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 6:58pm

As I recall, the song near the beginning of Sunset Boulevard is called "Let's Have Lunch" rather than "Let's Do Lunch" because the latter phrase wasn't current in 1949. This attention to detail being the case, I find it amusing (though not bothersome) that Joe sings this: "If it didn't come up roses I'd be covering funerals back in Dayton, Ohio." Unless my understanding of the situation is mistaken, that turn of phrase wouldn't be invented by Sondheim until 1959. :)

[kdogg36]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 6:58pm

(My very first double post)

Updated On: 3/12/14 at 06:58 PM

[KathyNYC2]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 7:42pm

Congratulations!

It usually doesn't annoy me..though I do take notice.

It does not bother me at all that(for example as noted above) the kids in Ragtime don't age but the baby does. I mean I don't expect them to hire different child actors - it would be too expensive. I did notice that in Kinky Boots - Charlie ages to an adult before Lola so you have kid Lola singing with adult Charlie. I can't say that it BOTHERED me..but I did notice and I am not sure it would have been my choice. But I got over it in 2 seconds..LOL

[Mr. Nowack]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 8:19pm

It always bothers me when they sing about stereos in "My Junk" from SPRING AWAKENING. I get that it fits in with the theme and style and all, but it just sticks out so much for me.

Other than that I never really notice them, unless I have a specific knowledge of whatever is being anachronistically referenced. Although it's rather obvious in hindsight, it never occurred to me that BOYS FROM SYRACUSE was set way before Shakespeare's time and the reference is just too good.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 8:33pm

In addition to henriks' wise remarks, one should consider the period in which the show was written. Musical comedy before OKLAHOMA! was highly presentational and made no pretense of accurate representations of the time and place of the plot. ALL Larry Hart's lyrics sound like Larry Hart, Porter's like Porter, etc.

Hammerstein changed this custom by writing lyrics in the characters' voices and moved the musical toward greater representational verisimilitude in the "musical play". He may have erred in his understanding of 1906 isinglass windows, but he doesn't have Ado Annie sing about Babe Ruth or FDR.

[catmandoo]

Posted: 3/14/14 at 9:31pm

Not really anachronistic, but "She barely sticks a toe in down at the tidal pool" from The Little Mermaid always makes my eye twitch... I mean, she didn't have toes (at the time)... and... wouldn't "tail" have fit in just as well?

[AHLiebross]

Posted: 3/14/14 at 10:39pm

The Victor/Victoria movie (which is more of a story with music, rather than a musical), has a song about Paris being gay, with "gay" being a double entendre. The problem is that the term gay meant happy and cheerful during the period that the story took place and the nightclub attendees would not have understood the double entendre.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 3/15/14 at 8:38am

"Gay" was already slang for homosexual by the early 1920's and a sophisticated audience would most certainty have caught the double meaning.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 3/15/14 at 11:13am

Gorgeous Cary Grant in a dress in 1935 using "gay" for the first time on film in Bringing Up Baby:

http://youtu.be/_A8U6aUPW48

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 3/15/14 at 3:04pm

kdogg, Sondheim may have invented "come up Roses." I'm not sure.

Still, it seems perfectly natural to hear Rose tell Louise that everything is coming up roses. And in Gypsy, Rose uses that phrase in 1929, 20 years before Joe does in Sunset.

Joe's line may be, depending on one's view, faint homage or mild plagiarism; but it's not anachronism.




Updated On: 3/15/14 at 03:04 PM

[darquegk]

Posted: 3/15/14 at 3:28pm

The phrase "come up smelling like a rose" for coming up great, clean and scot-free predated Sondheim's "coming up roses." However, the popularity of the song changed the saying it was inspired by, so that now things "come up roses" instead of "coming up smelling like a rose."