Hey presto!
Subtitle: Swift and the quacks
By: Hugh Ormsby-Lennon
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Newark
Language: eng
Number of pages: 412
ISBN-13: 9780874130874
Description: Traveling "medicine shows," both ancient and modern, galvanized Jonathan Swift's imagination. Dubbing such multifaceted vagabond entertainments his "Stage-Itinerant" or "Mountebank's Stage," Swift mimicked their argot, puffery, and slapstick in A Tale of a Tub (1704). The author reveals how the stage-itinerant not only furnished the Tale with its irresistible model but still parades that missing link, long sought, which conjoins the dual objects of Swift's ire: "gross Corruptions in [both] Religion and Learning."
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: Si vulgus vult decipi, decipiatur; title: Classis stage-itinerant; title: From gabble and harangue to quack's bill; title: Universal improvement of mankind; title: Ejaculating the soul; title: Aping the medicine show: Mencken, Salmon, Yworth; title: Doctor and presto; title: Dumfounding; title: Apollonius of Tyana; title: Beginnings and endings, terrae filius on Grub Street.