mons at various times between the beginning of his career 10335, and the publication of the volume, still, the earliest could not have been closer to al Harba's death than eighteen years Moreover, the sermons are an attack on the stage in general, with their harshest m\ecti\e reserved for actors, and al-Harba was not an actor Finally, every other event the sermons descnbe takes place on Arrakis, yet if the account of al-Harba's AL-HARBA QUESTION AL HARBA QUESTION death is true, the drinking bout would have had to be on Fides But suppose that the account is factual, what difference does it make'' History preserves the names of great, middling, and wretched writers who drank more than they ought, if the quotation from The Dusty Palms shows anything, it shows that the writer thought a drunken stupor an undesirable state, an observation that might occur to alcoholic or teetotaler alike Putpinail seems unaware that his second and fourth charges contradict each other Karene" Ambern says al-Harba was a recluse, Tonk Shaio says al-Harba was called a plagiarist to his face Moreover, if al-Harba was a traveling salesman, as arguments 3 and 4 presuppose, then he would have neces sanly appeared in public, not just on one world but on many The contentions fit together so poorly because their authors grasp at every straw that can possibly be interpreted as anti-Harban Nevertheless let us consider each separately Champagne in My Slipper was published in 10324, seven years after al-Harba's death The playwright was unable, and his wife, off on Hde$, unlikely to challenge a misstatement Also, one must consider the credibility of the book in general Apparently m an at tempt to recoup her shrinking share of the limelight, Karene" Ambem claimed in her book to have shared the bed of every important man (or woman) of the pnor sixty years, including Police Commander Bannerjee, the ghola Duncan Idaho, Harq ai-Ada, and Leto II himself Some of her stories may be true, the difficulty lies in knowing which ones No historian accepts anything stated in Ambero's book without independent corroboration, and literary historians should be no less cautious There is certainly no supporting evidence for her claim that al Harba had a ' 'hideously deformed body " Was al-Harba a secret computer enthusiast7 This charge is rather clearly more far-fetched than the others, and need not detain us long Other than a traditional belief about al-Harba's earlier occupation, no shred of evidence sup-ports the third point Until such evidence is forthcoming, mere is nothing to answer Finally, what was al-Harba's standing among the playwrights of his time1' Certainly Shaio's play preserves some literary squabble of the times, it may even refer to al-Harba Such flytmgs were plentiful and, for the most part, mere showmanship But the poet al Mashrab, an occasional playwright himself, said in his memoirs that he loved al-Harba ' for his understanding and quiet ways ' The artist and set designer Anam Strosher said of al Harba and the writer Au'Riil that "staging their plays has been the supreme joy of my life s work, but if I had to choose between knowing them and staging their plays, I would rather have known them (Both quota tions from F S Mank, Monuments of Atreidean Drama III, 454 \ 628 ) THE CLAIMANTS FARAD'N CORRINO If al Harba did not write the plays bearing his name, who did9 Rtrdd'n Comno was the first to be suggested Like the two later contenders he was of noble birth, furnishing his supporters with their first argument Wnt ing openly for the theater, they daim was beneath the dignity of a nobleman and statesman, and knowledge of his authorship would have lowered his prestige at Court This point furnishes a good example of the selective thinking so often shown in the controversy Duke Mintor, the father of Duke Leto Atreides, performed publicly many times in the bullnng and, in fact, died there, Feyd Rautha Harkonnen killed over a hundred slaves in public gladiatorial contests, many of them while he was na-Baron, and often with members of the Royal House in attendance If activities like these did not lower Atreides or Harkonnen's prestige it is hard to see why writing a play would lower Farad n s The most original evidence m support of Farad'n Comno was produced for the world in Izhnaikas Bauf s The Great Cryptogram (10647) Bauf discovered what he named the Plowing Cipher in the play Carthage and its method was elegantly simple Bauf would locate a passage m which the tirst letter of the first word was F (for Farad n) and the first letter of the last word was 0 (for Comno) Between these points, the first letter of an) word could be selected, moving alternately along the lines from left to right and from right to left (hence the term plowing ), skipping over words which did not contain the next needed letter When the end of the AL-HARBA QUESTION 8 AL-HARBA QUESTION passage was reached, Bauf proceeded back up to the top, and if necessary, back down again.