Background: In a NY Times review of Alexander Waugh’s The House of Wittgenstein, Jim Holt refers to Ludwig as “was the greatest philosopher of the 20th century.” This inspired Brian Leiter to run a poll to “settle this once and for all” (answer: Wittgenstein by a narrow plurality). Harry Brighouse, at Crooked Timber, linked to the poll, and a long list of comments ensued.
All well and good, but not the point of this post. Tom Hurka, in comments, gives us this:
At the Edinburgh Festival in 1977 I saw a wonderful play called ‘Ludwig and Bertie.’ It was about Wittenstein and Russell … and Bertie Wooster. You see, Russell and Wittgenstein have agreed to meet, for the first time, in the Trinity College, Cambridge library, which happens to be where Bertie Wooster is going to meet this new man he’s hired, called Jeeves. (He’s going to the library to find an ethics book and read about this ‘categorical aperitif.’) Well, various misidentifications follow, with Russell thinking Bertie is Wittgenstein (and utterly unsuited to philosophy) while Wittgensein thinks Bertie is Russell (and the stupidest man he’s ever met). It all reaches its climax when Russell encounters Jeeves, who’s of course been the Wittgenstein family butler in Vienna and taught Ludwig everything he knows. How, Russell asks him, can the sentence ‘The present king of France is bald’ be meaningful if there’s no present king of France? ‘May I venture to suggest, sir,’ Jeeves replies, ‘that we can analyze this sentence as saying that there is one and only one x such that x is the present king of France and x is bald?’ Fantastic!
Google doesn’t yield much, but I did find this from “the cover blurb on a published version of the play” in a lit-ideas post by David Ritchie
Bertie Wooster has become betrothed to Honoria Russell, daughter of the famous philosopher and Hefeweizen expert, Bertrand Russell. Bertie’s Aunt Dahlia finding herself once again short of funds for her magazine, “Milady’s Untenaable Propositions,” asks Bertie to break into Ludwig Wittgenstein’s bedroom in dead of night and steal his priceless, gold-plated poker, a souvenir of the famous encounter with Professor Popper. Bertie bungles the burglary, escapes with the aid of Jeeves and goes to ground in underneath a ladder in the library. The action begins with Honoria discovering what Bertie has not yet understood: that the ladder, underneath which he pretends to busy himself with the works of Spinoza, is not only not unoccupied, it is festooned with yards of Hildegard Wittgenstein, daughter of Ludwig and a Brownie leader of ferocious aspect. Honoria announces that the engagement is at an end. Hildegard announces that she has been compromized and must therefore marry Bertie. The fathers square off to debate the proposition. Jeeves saves the day and puts both of them right on minor but important points.
Please, God, I would dearly love to have a copy of the play.
I cowrote the play. Can probably dig out a copy.
I’d love to see it, please. Thank you!
can you give a link to the play?
Nice one Steve. I remember really enjoying the play: I had just graduated with a degree in philosophy and doing some ASM work for the university review group. There were a few good things at Edinburgh that year (our review, alas, was not amongst them). ÃŒ expected to see “Ludwig and Bertie” go on to be performed elsewhere. Be great to see the text and relive the show.
I remember this too. Loved it at the time. The rhinoceros!
Interesting. I’ve just stumbled on this while I was google-bating. I recently closed a production, of Douglas Lackey’s Ludwig And Bertie (different play, same title) here in New York where I played philosopher G. E. Moore; friend and referee to the 2 title characters. I think this version with Jeeves and Wooster probably had more laughs than the too historically bound story we attempted, but it is a very interesting coincidence I should stumble upon this string. If there is an electronic version of THIS Ludwig and Bertie, I would love to read it.
Pat