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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

My Boy Jack


Michelle Young

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7 minutes ago, QGE said:

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

He was never known as "Jack"

 

    Michelle-put him down for a ticket. I think that is a "Yes"

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Michelle-put him down for a ticket. I think that is a "Yes"

 

Put me out of my misery. Please God.  Is this production sponsored by the CWGC by any chance? Or Stand To!? 

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16 minutes ago, QGE said:

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

He was never known as "Jack"

Except, some think, in the poem, "My Boy Jack".

 

Though I see that this is a misconception, much repeated on the Web, and that the poem refers to Jack Cornwell.

 

Moonraker

Edited by Moonraker
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1 hour ago, Moonraker said:

Except, some think, in the poem, "My Boy Jack".

 

Though I see that this is a misconception, much repeated on the Web, and that the poem refers to Jack Cornwell.

 

Moonraker

 

The poem relates to all sons who were "Jack" Tars in the Royal Navy in the aftermath of Jutland. It can only be understood in the context of the publication in which it first appeared: all of which related to the RN. Kipling was at this stage a chief writer for the Bureau of Propaganda. 

 

His son was only referred to as John or Johnny by his family and peers. and Little Johnny by his fellow subalterns in their memoirs. Something that the 'experts' on his death seem to be blissfully unaware of..... MG

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  • Admin

Martin, I merely posted a link to the theatre production, thinking members who are in the Banbury area might be interested in attending. 

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7 hours ago, Michelle Young said:

Martin, I merely posted a link to the theatre production, thinking members who are in the Banbury area might be interested in attending. 

 

 

My yawp wasn't aimed at you, rather the authors of the production. The Kipling mythology is rather strong. 

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Thanks Michelle for providing the information. I imagine several members of the forum in the Banbury area will be interested.

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21 minutes ago, Steven Broomfield said:

Never having seen it, I would be interested to hear from anyone who does go: is it as bad as Martin thinks it will be?

 

Having not seen it, I don't have a view on the production, but I have a pedantic view on the accuracy of calling John Kipling 'Jack'....in the same way you are Steven and not Stephen..... here's their blurb to to reinforce the point; 

 

Telling the story of Rudyard Kipling sending his 17 year old son, Jack, to war in 1915, the drama covers three periods. 

1913 : the conflict between 15yr old Jack - with defective vision but desperate to get away from home - and his father's determination to send him to war. 

1915 : when Jack, despite his defective vision and aided by his father’s influence, does go to war.  

1924 : Kipling and his wife interview soldiers from Jack's regiment in search of news. 

This emotional and highly charged drama is the account of the anguish at the heart of a man whose storytelling continues to delight millions the world over.

Tickets: £12.50 | £11.50 Concession (Concession Weds & Thurs only)

 

The Kipling Society's view a mere two clicks away... :

 

The ‘Jack’/John confusion

The modern understanding of the poem has been bedevilled by the presumption that ‘Jack’ of the poem is to be equated with Kipling’s son John, an identification set in motion by David Haig in his playscript ‘My Boy Jack’, first published and performed in 1997. 

This identification was reinforced in 1998 by Major and Mrs. Holt’s book entitled My Boy Jack? The Search for Kipling’s Only Son (latest edition 2007) and further reinforced by the television film "My Boy Jack". Derived from Haig’s play, it was first shown in the UK to an audience approaching six million on Remembrance Day 2007 and premiered in the United States in April 2008. For these viewers, the John=Jack equation is cemented in the closing shot where Haig, playing Kipling, reads the poem to himself. This equation, supported by the University of Sussex, was further endorsed by the Imperial War Museum in its "My Boy Jack" exhibition from November 2007 to February 2008. Yet, exactly as John signed his last letter home, written when he was close to the front line, a letter from the Sussex archive, prominent in the publicity for the exhibition, within the family John was John, never Jack, Jack being the name of the family dog.

Given the occasion of the poem, heading the reports on the Battle of Jutland with its great loss of life, ‘Jack’ is evidently the eponymous Jack Tar; and if one is seeking to attach the poem to any individual ‘Jack’, that would be young John Cornwell, the boy sailor (referred to in the press as ‘the Boy Jack’) whose bravery at the Battle of Jutland was recognised with the award of a posthumous Victoria Cross on 15 September 1916. 

But even that identification was overridden by Kipling in the Inclusive Edition (1919) in which he added the years ‘1914-18’ below the title, so disengaging the poem from its original Jutland context, and its possible association with Jack Cornwell, and transforming it into an in memoriam tribute for all those who died at sea and conveying words of stern comfort for those who mourned them. 

A judicious view of the John/Jack issue is taken by Andrew Lycett when he remarks that "My Boy Jack" reveals that Kipling ‘could call on a vast reservoir of pain at the loss of his son’ (p. 471), a comment that does not require us to make any identifications but points to the one of the poem’s most immediate emotional sources.

Edited by Guest
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • Admin
On 30/01/2018 at 13:12, Steven Broomfield said:

Never having seen it, I would be interested to hear from anyone who does go: is it as bad as Martin thinks it will be?

Regrettably, it was pretty dreadful, but it think that was the production rather than the play itself. My heart sunk when they had the trench scene at Loos with the soldiers wearing tin helmets and a film of a tank.  The props were really bad and the acting not much better. Just my opinion, others may have liked it 

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Hmmm...the association of "My Boy Jack" with John Kipling has been accomplished by mainly accident than deliberately.  Either by David Haig or Rudyard Kipling!  So much controversy exists.  There will of course be no easy way to accept any of the views of the war career of John Kipling, whether he is a puppet of his father on the one hand (don't like that view, it ignores the zeitgeist entirely) or just another young patriot.  Not on this tide anyway!

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