Taproot Student Mats, Show 2

Study Guide-Sherlock Holmes/Christmas Carol

Sherlock Holmes

and the Case of the Christmas Carol B Y

Nov 28th, Dec 4th & Dec 5th Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Christmas Carol

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Feb 5th 2013 Jeeves in Bloom

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Apr 2/Apr 24 2013 The Whipping Man

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May 21st 2013 Bach at Leipzig

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Plot Synopsis

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L O N G E N G A U G H

PLOT SUMMARY

STUDENT MATINEES COMING SOON! 

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Evidence of Dickens

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Evidence of Doyle

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Spotlight on the Playwright

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Read and Discuss

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Behind the Scenes

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solitary study of chemistry where accurate results can be predicted and there are no annoying demands from “whining humanity.” Time Period: 1894 Main Location 221B Baker St., London Three years ago Sherlock Holmes and his arch nemesis, Professor Moriarity fought with each other at the top of Reichenbach Falls and fell together over the edge. Both were presumed dead. Now Holmes has re-appeared in London. His old companion Dr. Watson, his landlady Mrs. Hudson, the policeman, Lestrade and many other former compatriots are prepared to welcome Holmes back with open arms, but the Holmes that has returned to them is very different. Although still brilliant, this Holmes is bitter, angry and has no time for people. He has decided to devote his days to the

Then, on Christmas Eve, Holmes has an encounter with some ghosts. First there is the spirit of his old enemy Professor Moriarity who warns Holmes that his life needs to be reformed and that three spirits will visit him during the night. The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future each take Holmes on a journey; showing him his boyhood , his first love, the people who care about him, the innocents who are wrongly accused because he wasn’t on the case, and what the future will be like if Holmes continues on his present course. As the terrible visions from the future fade away, Holmes returns to the present. It is Christmas morning in 1894 and Holmes has some choices to make that will determine the shape of his future.

Main Characters Sherlock Holmes: Dr. Watson: Mrs. Hudson: Inspector Lestrade: Constable Garrison: Uncle Tim: Eli & Wiggins: The Ghost of Moriarty: 1st Spirit: 2nd Spirit: 3rd Spirit:

A brilliant consulting detective Holmes’ friend and former housemate. Holmes’ landlady A police detective A London policeman who later fights as a soldier in WWI A relative of Dr. Watson’s Two members of the Baker Street Irregulars. The ghost of Holmes’ arch enemy, Professor Moriarty The Ghost of Christmas Past The Ghost of Christmas Present The Ghost of Christmas Future

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Charles Dickens “Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was born the son of John and Elizabeth Dickens. John Dickens was a clerk in the Naval Pay Office. He had a poor head for finances, and in 1824 found himself imprisoned for debt. His wife and children, with the exception of Charles, who was put to work at Warren's Blacking Factory, joined him in the Marshalsea Prison. When the family finances were put at least partly to rights and his father was released, the twelve-year-old Dickens, already scarred psychologically by the experience, was further wounded by his mother's insistence that he continue to work at the factory. His father, however, rescued him from that fate, and between 1824 and 1827 Dickens was a day pupil at a school in London. At fifteen, Dickens found employment as an office boy at an attorney's, while he studied shorthand at night. His brief stint at the Blacking Factory haunted him all of his life — he spoke of it only to his wife and to his closest friend, John Forster — but the dark secret became a source both of creative energy and of the preoccupation with the themes of alienation and betrayal which would emerge in his novels. Dickens’ early childhood experiences also gave him a deep concern for social injustice and the hard plight of the working poor in Victorian England—these themes also pervade his writings. In 1829 he became a free-lance reporter at Doctor's Commons Courts. This was the beginning of a successful career as a newspaper reporter. In 1836, he began work on The Pickwick Papers. This series of humorous stories continued in monthly parts through November 1837, and, to everyone's surprise, it became an enormous popular success. Dickens now embarked on a full-time career as a novelist. Oliver Twist was begun in 1837 and Nicholas Nickleby got underway in 1838. A Christmas Carol, the first of Dickens' very successful Christmas books — intended as "a whimsical sort of masque intended to awaken loving and forbearing thoughts" — appeared in December 1844. Dickens’ novels were enormously popular during his lifetime. His most famous titles, including David Copperfield (1849), Bleak House (1851), Little Dorrit (1855), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1860) and Our Mutual Friend (1864) were written in monthly or weekly installments and published in various periodicals. Dickens became a master of this serial style of story-telling. As his popularity increased, he began touring the world to give lectures and public readings. By the mid-1860’s Dickens’ health was failing, due in part to over-work. He refused to cut back, however, and continued both his writing and his public tours against his doctor's advice. Dickens's final public reading took place in London in 1870. He suffered a stroke on June 8 at Gad's Hill. He was buried at Westminster Abbey on June 14, and the last episode of his unfinished final novel, Mystery of Edwin Drood appeared in September, 1870. “ Text acquired and edited from biography found on: http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/index.html

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Evidence of Dickens (HOLMES walks towards the door. Suddenly behind him the FIRST SPIRIT appears—she is a woman dressed as a military nurse during the Crimean War, much like Florence Nightingale.) FIRST SPIRIT:

William Sherlock Holmes.

HOLMES:

You are, I deduce, the First Spirit whose coming was foretold to me.

FIRST SPIRIT:

I am.

HOLMES:

I would suppose being a spirit, that you would not have a profession, yet you are dressed as a nurse of the Crimean War, though festooned with holiday decorations.

FIRST SPIRIT:

You were born at a time of war, William. And I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.

HOLMES:

My past, I deduce.

FIRST SPIRIT:

Indeed.

HOLMES:

If you reflect the martial aspect of my birth year, why do you appear as a nurse, not a soldier?

FIRST SPIRIT:

Christmas, even in a time of war, is the time of peace.

HOLMES:

Wars--a periodic necessity, I fear, to keep Mankind in check. Well, let us not tarry. The game is afoot. I must dress and grab my coat.

FIRST SPIRIT:

You have no need for these where we are going. Follow me.

HOLMES:

Through the window? I am likely to fall.

FIRST SPIRIT:

Bear but a touch of my hand here, (she puts her hand on Holmes' heart) and be lifted in more than spirit.

Examine the Evidence Here is a scene from our play in which Sherlock Holmes meets The Ghost of Christmas Past. Compare this scene with the beginning of Chapter II in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. In what ways are the two scenes similar? How are they different? What words has the playwright changed in the dialogue to make it sound more like Sherlock Holmes?

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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle “Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was born to an affluent, strict IrishCatholic family in Edinburgh, Scotland. Doyle's mother, Mary, was a lively and well-educated woman who loved to read. Her great enthusiasm and animation while spinning wild tales sparked the child's imagination. As Doyle would later recall in his biography, "In my early childhood...the vivid stories she would tell me stand out so clearly that they obscure the real facts of my life." After Doyle graduated from Stonyhurst College in 1876, he decided to pursue a medical degree at the University of Edinburgh. At med school, Doyle met his mentor, Professor Dr. Joseph Bell, whose keen powers of observation would later inspire Doyle to create his famed fictional detective character, Sherlock Holmes. While a medical student, Doyle took his first stab at writing, with a short story called The Mystery of Sasassa Valley. Doyle's first paying job as a doctor took the form of a medical officer's position aboard the steamship Mayumba, travelling from Liverpool to Africa. After his stint on the Mayumba, Doyle settled in Plymouth, England for a time. He spent the next few years struggling to balance his burgeoning medical career with his efforts to gain recognition as an author. Doyle would later give up medicine altogether, in order to devote all of his attention to his writing and his interest in “spiritualism”—the belief that one could make contact with the spirits of the dead. In 1886, still struggling to make it as an author, Doyle started writing the mystery novel A Tangled Skein. Two years later, the novel was renamed A Study in Scarlet and published in Beeton's Christmas Annual. A Study in Scarlet, which first introduced the wildly popular characters Sherlock Holmes and his assistant, Dr. Watson, finally earned Doyle the recognition he had so desired. It was the first of 60 stories that Doyle would pen about Sherlock Holmes. Doyle continued to actively participate in the Spiritualist movement from 1887 to 1916. He also composed four of his most popular Sherlock Holmes books during this period: The Sign of Four (1890), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892), The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894) and The Hounds of Baskervilles, published in 1901. In 1893, to Doyle's readers' disdain, he had attempted to kill off his Sherlock Holmes character in order to focus more on writing about Spiritualism. Public outcry was tremendous. In 1901, Doyle reintroduced Sherlock Holmes as a ghost in The Hounds of Baskervilles and later brought him back to life in The Adventure of the Empty House. In 1928, Doyle's final twelve stories about Sherlock Holmes were published in a compilation entitled The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes. Having recently been diagnosed with Angina Pectoris, Doyle stubbornly ignored his doctor's warnings, and in the fall of 1929, embarked on a spiritualism tour through the Netherlands. He returned home with chest pains so severe that he needed to be carried on shore. On July 7, 1930, Doyle collapsed and died in his garden while clutching his heart with one hand and holding a flower in the other.” Text acquired and edited from biography found on http://www.biography.com/people/arthur-conan-doyle-9278600?page=2

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Evidence of Doyle This story can fit 150-200 words.

your own articles, or include a calen-

finished writing your newsletter, con-

ofthe upcoming events a special Carol, vertDr it to a Web site andwith post his it. relative In scene from your Sherlock Holmesdar and Case of the or Christmas Watson talks Onethis benefit of using newsletter offerHolmes. that promotes a new product. Uncle Time about his years living with as a promotional tool is that you can reuse content from other marketing

You can also research articles or find

market studies, and reports.

Wide Web. You can write about a variety of topics but try to keep your articles short.

WATSON: is the most brilliant manbyIaccessing have ever materials, such as Holmes press releases, “filler” articles theknown. World And the most aggravating. And unorganized. And unsanitary. While yourTIM: main goal of distributing a UNCLE Unsanitary?

newsletter might be to sell your prodWATSON: He to keeps his tobacco in the tipcontent of a Persian uct or service, the key a successful Much of the you put slipper. in your You should have seen Mary the last time Caption describing picture or graphic. weit went visit. Shecan spent entire feigning interest in his memorabilia newsletter is making useful there to yourfor a newsletter alsothe be used forafternoon your while covertly giving it asite. heavy dusting. readers. Web Microsoft Publisher offers a simple way to convert your newsletter A great way to add useful content to UNCLE TIM: He must have been an fellow lodger. to aaggravating Web publication. So, when you’re your newsletter is to develop and write

WATSON:

Infuriating. By turns hyperactive and comatose, an addict of tobacco and his deuced seven S t o r y H e a d l i n e per cent solution, a self-taught violinist capable of ear- scratching improvisations that sound like cats mating, a repressed egotist who says he cares nothing for public opinion but who courts compliments like a young girl--Sherlock Holmes is impossible! Do you know what he did with my service revolver one long summer afternoon?

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UNCLE TIM:

Do tell.

WATSON:

He took a box of cartridges, sat in an armchair on one side of the room, and proceeded to impress the initials of Our Queen into the opposite wall with bullet holes.

UNCLE TIM:

Good Lord!

WATSON:

He had clients trooping into our study at any time of day or night, including an unending succession of attractive young women, all of whom, with the exception of my dear late wife, preferred flirting with him to flirting with me. Sherlock Holmes was the worst person to live with that you could possibly imagine.

UNCLE TIM:

So why did you live with him for 10 years?

WATSON:

Because I liked him! Because Sherlock Holmes is the wittiest, brightest, most noble, most enjoyably eccentric man I have ever met! And I know him. I know his mood by which pipe he chooses, which when he's feeling meditative and which when he's disputatious. He is my dearest friend…whether or not he ever acknowledges it again.

Examine the Evidence Read the description of Sherlock Holmes given by Dr. Watson in Chapter II of The Study in Scarlet and at the beginning of the short story, “The Musgrave Ritual” found in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. What information given in the dialogue above is drawn from these sources? Full text of several Sherlock Holmes stories can be accessed online through this link: http://arthursbookshelf.com/adventure/doyle/ complete-holmes.pdf

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Spotlight on the playwright John Longenbaugh has been writing and directing plays here in Seattle and elsewhere for over 20 years. A graduate of London’s Central School of Speech and Drama, he’s been the artistic director of Ursa Major Theatre and Theatre Babylon, and has written nearly a dozen full-length plays and a lot of shorter ones. Favorites include Scotch and Donuts, Little White Pill, The Man Who Was Thursday (staged at Taproot in 2002), How to be Cool, and the collected evening of shorts Arcana, recently staged at Open Circle Theatre. He is a proud member of The Dramatist Guild and The Sound of the Baskervilles. (photo by Eric Stuhaug)

Notes from the Playwright “I decided to write a play as a Christmas present to myself—one I might actually enjoy watching as an alternate to A Christmas Carol, which I’ve seen over a dozen times, most often in ACT’s superb adaptation. Dickens’ classic never fails to provide the right amount of humor, drama, and emotion, from that first growling encounter between Scrooge and poor Bob Cratchit to the redemption of the old skinflint, dancing about in his nightshirt. But surprises? Not so much. And so, enter Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle had already given his hero a Christmas story of his own, “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle,” in which a Yuletide goose conceals a priceless jewel. But though Holmes in this story reveals a streak of Christian forgiveness and an affable acceptance of the holiday, it doesn’t dispel the impression that he doesn’t like people very much. Without the friendship of loyal Watson, Holmes is a solitary figure, aloof, unattached and given to perilously dark moods. He’s the last person you’d find at a holiday party. Of course this is as it should be. A warm and sociable Holmes, full of good cheer and bonhomie, isn’t really Holmes at all, is he? But what if the already dark turn of his intellect were to turn…just a little darker? So two classic Victorian stories meet, Dickens’ tale of a crabbed but redeemable old miser and Conan Doyle’s immortal character, a brilliant man with some very dark demons. I’m grateful to Taproot, Scott Nolte, and Terry Moore for bringing my idea to the stage. We believe that you will find this story a pleasingly familiar Christmas concoction—with a few surprises added to give it some extra kick!” --John Longenbaugh Spot the Suspect Amidst all the “Sherlock characters” in this play, John Longenbaugh also includes one character from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Look for the clues as you watch the full scene between Dr. Watson and “Uncle Tim.” What character from A Christmas Carol do you discover in this scene?

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Read and discuss At the beginning of Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Christmas Carol, HOLMES declares that he will not take any more detective cases. He is tired of people and their “deary and predictable complaints.” The SECOND SPIRIT (The Ghost of Christmas Present) takes Holmes to listen in as INSPECTOR LESTRADE and CONSTABLE GARRISON try to solve a case. HOLMES is enraged to find that INSPECTOR LESTRADE is making wrong assumptions about the suspect. CONSTABLE GARRISON says that he wishes Sherlock Holmes were helping them. GARRISON thinks that they are missing something and is afraid that an innocent man is going to hang due to lack of evidence. LESTRADE tells him not to worry. LESTRADE:

(speaking to Constable Garrison) You just pass on your notes to the suspect’s lawyer and I promise you justice will be done. (Lestrade and Garrison exit)

HOLMES:

(looking after them, furious at Lestrade) Idiot! Justice isn't "done!" It must be fought for! Championed!

SECOND SPIRIT:

What does it matter, Holmes?

HOLMES:

What?

SECOND SPIRIT:

So the clerk goes to jail. He is a most ordinary young man, and if he is innocent, not guilty, what of that?

HOLMES:

It is an injustice! Any injustice, any perversion of the rule of law, makes us less of a society!

SECOND SPIRIT:

But what care you for society, when they have such dreary and predictable complaints?

HOLMES:

I am chastened, Spirit. But my efforts as a detective are not unique, much as I would hope for them to be. There are other detectives, and they will take up the cases that I do not.

SECOND SPIRIT:

There are other detectives, but there is only one Sherlock Holmes. Do you consider what you mean to young men like Garrison? Is it not something to be a hero to others?

HOLMES:

It is a responsibility and a burden. Let them seek out their heroes elsewhere.

Make Your Deductions Read this scene aloud in class and discuss. Why is Holmes so passionate about injustice? When someone doesn’t take action to prevent injustice—are they guilty of allowing the injustice? Why do you think Sherlock Holmes find it a burden to be someone’s hero?

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Behind The Scenes

The Master of Disguise: With the exception of Terry Edward Moore (playing Sherlock Holmes) each actor in Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Christmas Carol plays at least two or three different characters. For example Actor Pam Nolte needs costumes for her roles as Mrs. Hudson, The Ghost of Christmas Past and a WWI professor (see design sketches above). Each of these costumes needs to be distinctive to the character, but they can’t be too complicated or the actor will not have time to change backstage before their next scene. See if you can identify the same actor returning as a different character. What costume pieces (wigs, mustaches, hats, coats etc) are used to make each character different?