Friday, May 1, 2015

Meanwhile, back in Ye Olde Printed Canon.

"Then, good-night, your Majesty, and I trust that we shall soon have some good news for you. And good-night, Watson," he added, as the wheels of the Royal brougham rolled down the street. "If you will be good enough to call tomorrow afternoon, at three o'clock, I should like to chat this little matter over with you."
----------------------------------------------------

So sayeth Sherlock Holmes in "A Scandal in Bohemia." Let's break that down.


----------------------------------------------------

"Then, good-night, your Majesty, and I trust we shall soon have some good news for you."

Holmes took a deep breath, preparing to say something else. The King ran out of the room and practically fell down the stairs to get to the ground floor, out the door and into his Royal brougham.

"GO, CURSE YOU! GO! SHERLOCK HOLMES HASN'T FINISHED HIS STATEMENT!" the King shouted to his driver. The coachman's whip cracked over the horses's heads and the carriage started to move.

Sherlock Holmes opened his mouth to speak again.

"And good-night, Watson," he added as the wheels of the Royal brougham rolled down the street. "If you will be good enough to call tomorrow afternoon, at three o'clock, I should like to chat this little matter over with you."

Watson silently treaded after the King, accepting Sherlock Holmes's primary importance to the story.


----------------------------------------------------

Now, just in case you haven't read the original tale in a while, all the non-bold stuff is mine. Fan fiction has always been around to supply that which we aren't supplied in the mainstream entertainment at its source.  So why not fill in the weird temporal gaps in the original Doyle-agented work? But the above is a little weak in the "added interest" department.

So what else can we do with that little time-jump where the King magically makes it down to his carriage and starts riding off between the period in his good-bye and the capital "A" in Watson's good-bye?

----------------------------------------------------

"Then, good-night, your Majesty, and I trust we shall soon have some good news for you."

"And good-night to you, Mr. Sherlock Holmes," the King of Bohemia said, wrapping one Herculean arm around the thinner man and drawing him in for a hearty, full-mouthed kiss. The King then released the dazed detective and headed for the stairs.

"European customs can be so . . . unexpected," Holmes said, trying to recover his composure.

"Is duelling one of Bohemia's customs?" I remarked, the blood rising. "I think I shall have to lay down a challenge to the man!"

"Good of you to defend my honor, Watson, but I think it would be better served by simply leaving it out of your eventual chronicle of this matter."

"I still think the matter needs reprisal of some sort. Just because a man is a noble, it doesn't mean he can . . . ."

Sherlock Holmes wrapping one of his own long, sinewy arms around me, and drew me in for a completely European kiss.

"And good-night, Watson," he added as the wheels of the Royal brougham rolled down the street. "If you will be good enough to call tomorrow afternoon, at three o'clock, I should like to chat this little matter over with you."

"Good-night," I found myself stammering, as I fumbled at the door and made my way down the seventeen steps in a daze.

----------------------------------------------------

The Canon of Sherlock Holmes has always been ripe for expansion and embellishment, whether in historical exploration or solving little mysteries of continuity. There's an aspect to it all that's something of a "Mad-lib" where your own personality can fill in the gap. (Not that I'm all that into boy-kissing, but looking into fan-fiction lately had definitely made that a genre worth using as in example.) I may have just worked "a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid," as Holmes might have criticized. 

Of course, who really knows just what Sherlock Holmes was doing in those narrative gaps, anyway? 

_________________________________________________________________

(All of the above was composed while waiting on a Doyle to finish their work, ironically enough.)

No comments:

Post a Comment