Mike O’Hare is right to say that poker and craps are not Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
But then neither were Tweedledum and Tweedledee, except to a versifier with a tin ear for music. Here’s the original epigram:
Some say, compar’d to BononciniThat Mynheer Handel’s but a Ninny
Others aver, that he to Handel
Is scarcely fit to hold a Candle
Strange all this Difference should be
‘Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee!
Now, I’ve never heard, or for that matter heard of, Bononcini. (My taste runs to the pre-Baroque, from Hildegard to Tallis and Byrd.) Perhaps his towering genius remains to be rediscovered. But the point of the epigram is that his music and Handel’s were more or less indistinguishable. I rather doubt it.
