"Indolent Belaqua, much loved by Beckett, is met in Ante-Purgatory by Dante, and I like to imagine that as an instrument player he sat under his rock with a lute, or guitar.
"My research into treasonable music led me to discover that there was a time when women who killed their husbands could be considered to have commited treason;
"Husband-murder, in particular however, was seen more as an affront to social hierarchies rather than any one particular person or rank. Killing the patriarch of a household was a threat to the social order—akin to disobedience against a feudal lord or the monarch—and the delicate balance of power and gender roles that governed early modern England, as strengthened by Protestant doctrine: “if any servant kill his Master, any woman kill her husband, or any secular or religious person kill his Prelate to whom he owes Obedience, this is treason.”(1) Special legal status thus existed for husband murderers, and
