Tony Harrison: The Big H

Length / Form Film poem

Allusion to Classical figure Herodotus is alluded to as the ‘inventor’ of history

Relationship to Classical text Rachel and the eleven ‘mams’ sing an extract from the 12th century Play of Herod  (from the Fleury Manuscript), in Latin.

Classical/post-Classical intertexts Commissioned by the BBC as a nativity play for December 1984. The classroom setting and repeated chanting of Latin vocabulary (Latin numbers and variations on ‘Pro Rege et Lege’, the motto on the Leeds coat of arms) recall some of the poet’s own experiences of Latin pedagogy at Leeds Grammar School. As it often is in Harrison’s poetry (e.g. ‘Classics Society’: Collected Poems, p.130), the elite status of classical languages is represented alongside conventions of ‘Received Pronunciation’ and didactic authority figures.

Comment Note the foreshadowing of the schoolroom scenes in the earlier poem ‘Rhubarbarians, I’ (From ‘The School of Eloquence’ and Other Poems, 1978): ‘Nay, wiseowl Leeds / pro rege et lege  schools, nobody needs / your drills and chanting…