The Order Of Ancient Mysteries

In "In the beginning...", the Introduction to Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: The Doll's House (New York, 1995), pp. 8-11, Destiny of the Endless informs us that:

"...the Order of Ancient Mysteries...was in no wise Ancient, having been founded only sixteen years earlier..." (p. 8)

I think that Destiny of all beings ought to know better. This organization is called not the Ancient Order of Mysteries but the Order of Ancient Mysteries. It is not possible to found an Ancient Order now but it is certainly possible to found a new Order for the purpose of investigating and studying whatever Ancient Mysteries there may be.

But does Burgess conceal or deny the fact that he has founded the Order and pretend that this organization is as Ancient as the Mysteries that it studies? That would indeed be dishonesty of high degree. I think that Sandman Midnight Theatre, which I must reread, hints at this.

I met a biographer of the founder of Wicca who said, "Gardner was adept at saying things that were true but misleading." When I requested an example, I was told that Gardner asked someone to write a ritual for him, then wrote in one of his books, "Another ritual that I have heard is...," not stating but nevertheless making his readers believe that this was an ancient ritual. I think that deliberately making someone believe an untruth is lying.

Happy Christmas, everyone.

Iambic Pentameter

Marlowe: I'll stick with boys...my horned "actresses."
Shakespeare: More wine! More ale! And buss me quick, my sweet!
Sweet Kit. The play I gave you. Did you read...?
Marlowe: I must confess I have. I thought it, well...
You act well, Will, but...listen, let me read...
"Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!
"Comets importing change of times and states,
"Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,
"And with them scourge the bad, revolting stars."
At least it scans. But "bad revolting stars"?
Shakespeare: It's my first play.
Marlowe:                                And it should be your last.
Shakespeare: God's wounds! If only I could write like you!
In Faustus, where you wrote...
"To God! He loves thee not! 
"The God thou servest is thine own appetite, 
"Wherein is fixed the love of Beelzebub.
"To him I'll build an altar and a church,
"And offer lukewarm blood of new-born babes."
It chills my blood!
Marlowe:             And so it should, good Will!
Shakespeare: I would give anything to have your gifts.
Or more than anything to give men dreams,
That would live on long after I am dead.
I'd bargain, like your Faustus, for that boon.
Dream: Are you Will Shaxberd?
Shakespeare:                            Aye, sir. Have we met?
Dream: We have. But men forget, in waking hours.
I heard your talk, Will. Would you write great plays?
Create new dreams to spur the minds of men?
Is that your will?
Shakespeare:   It is.
Dream:                    Then let us talk.

Neil Gaiman says on p. 56 of Hy Bender's The Sandman Companion (London, 1999) that he wrote this dialogue (The Sandman: The Doll's House, New York, 1995, pp. 125-127) in iambic pentameter so I have tried to transcribe it accordingly but am not sure whether I have laid out the first three lines of the quotation from Faustus correctly.

This is another parallel with Poul Anderson. Anderson's Shakespearean novel, A Midsummer Tempest, is presented as prose although much of its text is blank verse, one passage is a Shakespearean sonnet and several chapters end in rhyming couplets.