The Townely Second Shepherd’s Play
This assignment is unusual in that it is hand written by me and (gasp) legible. I suspect I left it too late to get it typed by my wife who was busy with work, children etc etc. Whether typed or hand written, in those days you could get away with a lot of things as far as formatting was concerned. On the other hand, an unsubstantiated comment or infelicity of expression was certainly noted. Looking at this essay, I suspect a hand written assignment made me more likely to succumb to my flaw of interminable sentences. Having my wife type something was editing on the fly as she would let me know it was dreck. I even think that typing myself in the age of word processor to come, impeded my prolixity somewhat.
For some reason I thought it was a good idea to compare a Mystery Play to Life of Brian and what followed was a clumsy attempt to understand a pre-enlightenment mindset. For some reason, I seemed to come back to this idea a lot and this may be where it all started.
I have typed this essay for posterity (egad). With the technology available now, I know that I was under the word count – a rarity for me.
I think I might have got 20/20 for this but I slipped up with a bit of a stretch in the final paragraph and I only got 19/20. The comments were encouraging and I got the good mark for “originality and clear expression” or maybe because I didn’t bore him. He commented that “It’s good to get something original and outrageous now and again.”
