Editing Humpty Dumpty (section)

==Adaptations==
American actor [[George L. Fox (clown)|George L. Fox]] helped to popularise the nursery rhyme character in a nineteenth-century  [[pantomime]] on [[Broadway theatre|Broadway]],<ref>L. Senelick, ''The Age and Stage of George L. Fox 1825–1877'' (University of Iowa Press, 1999), {{ISBN|0877456844}}</ref> where he figures as a clown. During the 19th century, too, Humpty Dumpty gave his name to a number of musical items, dependent either on the nursery rhyme or on the pantomime. They include [[Alfred Caldicott]]'s [[Glee (music)|glee]] of 1878<ref>''Monthly Musical Record'', 1 June 1878, [https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Monthly_musical_record/VG4n_35SHRgC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=music+%22Humpty+Dumpty%22&pg=PA93&printsec=frontcover p. 93]</ref> and E. P. Sweeting's [[Round (music)|round]] of 1893,<ref>[https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Hora_Novissima/s2MRAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=music+%22Humpty+Dumpty%22&pg=PT3&printsec=frontcover ''The School Music Review'']</ref> as well as [[Walford Davies]]' 1907 ''Humpty Dumpty'', described as "a short cantata for children, consisting of a prelude, four short settings of the old nursery rhyme, and part of the scene between Alice and Humpty Dumpty (from ''Alice Through the Looking-Glass'')".<ref>[https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Humpty_Dumpty_A_Short_Cantata_for_Childr/pl9DwAEACAAJ?hl=en Google Books]</ref> There were also purely musical items in the US, such as the 1875 [[galop]] by Harry R. Williams,<ref>[https://jenikirbyhistory.getarchive.net/media/humpty-dumpty-galop-1?zoom=true Get Archive sheet music]</ref> the 1876 [[polka]] by E. Jullian Gray<ref>[https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Humpty_Dumpty_polka/X-sxyqH4Oo4C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Humpty+Dumpty+polka%22&pg=PP1&printsec=frontcover ''Fairy Stories by E. Jullian Gray'']</ref> and the 1900 [[schottische]] by H. Engelmann.<ref>''Catalogue of Title Entries'', vol. 23, [https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Catalogue_of_Title_Entries_of_Books_and/9-ujMXIDSGEC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=schottische+%22Humpty+Dumpty%22&pg=PA287&printsec=frontcover p. 287]</ref>

=== Lewis Carroll's ''Through the Looking-Glass'' ===
[[File:Humpty Dumpty Tenniel.jpg|thumb|Humpty Dumpty and Alice, from ''[[Through the Looking-Glass]]''. Illustration by [[John Tenniel]].]]

Humpty Dumpty makes an appearance in [[Lewis Carroll]]'s ''[[Through the Looking-Glass]]'' (1871). There [[Alice (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)|Alice]] remarks that Humpty is "exactly like an egg", which Humpty finds to be "very provoking". Alice clarifies that she said he looks like an egg, not that he is one. They then go on discuss [[semantics]] and [[pragmatics]]<ref>F. R. Palmer, ''Semantics'' (Cambridge: [[Cambridge University Press]], 2nd ed., 1981), {{ISBN|0-521-28376-0}}, p. 8.</ref> when Humpty Dumpty says, "my name means the shape I am".<ref>L. Carroll, ''Through the Looking-Glass'' (Raleigh, North Carolina: Hayes Barton Press, 1872), {{ISBN|1-59377-216-5}}, p. 72.</ref>

A. J. Larner suggested that Carroll's Humpty Dumpty had [[prosopagnosia]] on the basis of his description of his finding faces hard to recognise:<ref>{{cite journal|author=A. J. Larner|year=1998|title=Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty: an early report of prosopagnosia?|journal=Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry|volume=75|issue=7|pages=1063|doi=10.1136/jnnp.2003.027599|pmc=1739130|pmid=15201376}}</ref>

{{quote|
"The face is what one goes by, generally," Alice remarked in a thoughtful tone.

"That's just what I complain of," said Humpty Dumpty. "Your face is the same as everybody has—the two eyes,—" (marking their places in the air with his thumb) "nose in the middle, mouth under. It's always the same. Now if you had the two eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance—or the mouth at the top—that would be ''some'' help."}}

=== James Joyce's ''Finnegans Wake'' ===
[[James Joyce]] used the story of Humpty Dumpty as a recurring motif of the [[Fall of man|Fall of Man]] in the 1939 novel ''[[Finnegans Wake]]''.<ref>J. S. Atherton, ''The Books at the Wake: A Study of Literary Allusions in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake'' (1959, SIU Press, 2009), {{ISBN|0-8093-2933-6}}, p. 126.</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Worthington |first1=Mabel |title=Nursery Rhymes in Finnegans Wake |journal=The Journal of American Folklore |date=1957 |volume=70 |issue=275 |pages=37–48 |doi=10.2307/536500 |jstor=536500 |url=https://doi.org/10.2307/536500}}</ref> One of the most easily recognizable references is at the end of the second chapter, in the first verse of the [[The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly|Ballad of Persse O'Reilly]]:

{{poemquote|
Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
And curled up like Lord Olofa Crumple
By the butt of the Magazine Wall,
(Chorus) Of the Magazine Wall,
Hump, helmet and all?}}

===In science===
Humpty Dumpty has been used to demonstrate the [[second law of thermodynamics]]. The law describes a process known as [[entropy]], a measure of the number of specific ways in which a system may be arranged, often taken to be a measure of "disorder". The higher the entropy, the higher the disorder. After his fall and subsequent shattering, the inability to put him together again is representative of this principle, as it would be highly unlikely (though not impossible) to return him to his earlier state of lower entropy, as the entropy of an isolated system never decreases.<ref name=Entropy>{{cite news|last=Chang|first=Kenneth|title=Humpty Dumpty Restored: When Disorder Lurches Into Order|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/30/science/humpty-dumpty-restored-when-disorder-lurches-into-order.html|access-date=2 May 2013|newspaper=The New York Times|date=30 July 2002}}</ref><ref name="Entropy 2">{{cite news|first=Lee|last=Langston|title=Part III – The Second Law of Thermodynamics|url=http://www.engr.uconn.edu/pdf/HartfordCourantNIEchapter3sci10C_0708.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080513044934/http://www.engr.uconn.edu/pdf/HartfordCourantNIEchapter3sci10C_0708.pdf|url-status=dead|archive-date=13 May 2008|access-date=2 May 2013|newspaper=Hartford Courant}}</ref><ref name="Entropy 3">{{cite journal|first=W. S.|last=Franklin|title=The Second Law of Thermodynamics: Its Basis In Intuition and Common Sense|journal=[[The Popular Science Monthly]]|date=March 1910|page=240|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WiADAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA240}}</ref>