Introduction Paradoxical
Kenneth Tynan, the British drama critic, began a talk by saying something we might have thought improbable, but was actually true.
Here is an example of the Introduction Paradoxical:
“The most characteristic play on the subject of physical love is Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. It is characteristic because it has no love scenes. The English, as their drama represents them, are a nation endlessly communicative about love without ever enjoying it.
“Full blooded physical relationships engaged in with mutual delight are theatrically tabu. Thwarted love is preferred…
“At the end of a play–it is customary for the hero to say, as he does in Robert’s Wife: “I was deeply in love with a fine woman,” and for the wife to reply, “My dear, dear husband”; but there should be no hint elsewhere in the text that they have as much as brushed lips.”
Imagine you have just made this speech. How do you think your audience would have reacted? You have confronted them with an embarrassing paradox. How would you handle the Q&A?
Consider Your Audience
You could start with the proper elderly in your audience. They might be perfectly happy with the fact that the British theater is subtle when handling sexual material.
How about the middle class woman who dragged her husband to your lecture and was somewhat taken aback by the idea of allowing nudity on stage (Tynan wrote Oh! Calcutta)? Her husband might have had no such objection, although he would probably have kept his opinion to himself.
And then there are the radicals, the long-haired artists preaching that, to limit any art is fascism, an effort to limit the imagination of mankind. Let nudity prevail.
Where are you now as this paradoxical author and speaker who tipped over the apple cart, who smeared eroticism across the British stage? Are you up for all that chaos and conflict?
Tynan’s motto was: “Write heresy, pure heresy.” He pinned to his desk the exhilarating slogan: “Rouse tempers, goad and lacerate, raise whirlwinds.”
That he did. He kept a small portion of his audience happy, The rest were aghast, disgusted, and annoyed.