โ Scribed by Wodehouse, P G
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
With "William Tell Told Again" P. G. Wodehouse ventured into the area of Children's literature. Originally published on November 11th, 1904, the story fits exactly the title, as Wodehouse retells the legend of William Tell in kind of a "Fractured Fairy Tales" manner. Of course, retelling a legend which is fairly straight-forward is considerably different then the carefully crafted twisting tales that Wodehouse is famous for, and even different than his earlier school stories which tended to have not quite so many twists to them. Nevertheless, Wodehouse does an admirable job of turning the legend into a light, quick, and enjoyable read.
Wodehouse takes some liberties with the legend itself, and of course turning it into a humorous light-hearted story changes it quite a bit from the serious telling of the tale. One device which does well is the adding in of characters like "Arnold of Sewa", a man who always thinks he should be chosen for the important jobs, but apparently the rest of the townspeople don't agree as he ends up sitting on the sidelines complaining how he could have done better. At the same time, some of the changes prove problematic at times, especially when the story is at its most serious point. Wodehouse pretty much has to abandon the humor at that point and rely on the characterizations from earlier in the book to carry the reader through to the end.
All in all this is a decent foray into children's literature and was a nice diversion after four books of school stories. Adding to the story itself are the illustrations which are mixed in with the story, and the verse which accompanies each illustration. In this way, one gets two telling of the story, one in verse and the other a novel. The illustrations are by Philip Dadd, and the verse was written by John W. Houghton.
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
With "William Tell Told Again" P. G. Wodehouse ventured into the area of Children's literature. Originally published on November 11th, 1904, the story fits exactly the title, as Wodehouse retells the legend of William Tell in kind of a "Fractured Fairy Tales" manner. Of course, retelling a legend wh
SUMMARY: IA Blandings novel /IThis is the first Blandings novel, in which P.G. Wodehouse introduces us to the delightfully dotty Lord Emsworth, his bone-headed younger son, the Hon. Freddie Threepwood, his long-suffering secretary, the Efficient Baxter, and Beach the Blandings butler. As Wodehouse w