While in Stratford, after we were through seeing Henry V - a long but brilliant cap to the first part of the history cycle we saw - we walked quickly down the street from the Courtyard theater to The Dirty Duck. This is the bar that the RSC actors frequent, and it's usually hard to get a seat after the shows are done. We snuck in.
There was a terrible cover band that covered, among other things, "Wonderwall." It was bad. I had bad beer and one of the cover band artists came up to Ken, drunkity as drunk can be, and started talking to him.
But we saw the actor who played Richard II. I almost spoke to him about how amazing he was, but I didn't. I kind of wish I had.
Later this week I was rereading an old New Yorker article assigned to us while we were reading King Lear, about Ian McKellan. The course of the article came to performing in Stratford, and the 100 yard area that McKellan's life consisted of while he did it, mainly: his house in Stratford (he has one in London too), the Courtyard Theatre, and The Dirty Duck.
So I drank at the same pub as Ian McKellan. Suck on that, America.
And now, for your reading pleasure, a wee bit of Richard II:
| Thus play I in one person many people, | |
| And none contented: sometimes am I king; | |
| Then treason makes me wish myself a beggar, | |
| And so I am: then crushing penury | 36 |
| Persuades me I was better when a king; | |
| Then am I king’d again; and by and by | |
| Think that I am unking’d by Bolingbroke, | |
| And straight am nothing: but whate’er I be, | 40 |
| Nor I nor any man that but man is | |
| With nothing shall be pleas’d, till he be eas’d | |
| With being nothing. Music do I hear? [Music. | |
| Ha, ha! keep time. How sour sweet music is | 44 |
| When time is broke and no proportion kept! | |
| So is it in the music of men’s lives. | |
| And here have I the daintiness of ear | |
| To check time broke in a disorder’d string; | 48 |
| But for the concord of my state and time | |
| Had not an ear to hear my true time broke. | |
| I wasted time, and now doth time waste me; |
Yum yum yum
2 comments:
I really liked "Copenhagen" a lot. Wonderful story with some intriguing philosophical implications. But I can tell you right now that the department would shoot it down for a thesis. It's too long, for one, and I think they would say it's way above and beyond anything someone can manage in less than month (much like "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?").
My fave histories, you ask? That would be "Henry V", "Richard III", and "Henry IV" (both parts). I loves me some English history spiced up by a dash of Shakespeare. ;o)
Have you seen Shakespeare's grave yet? I went with some BADA folks, but my friend Lucia and I got distracted by the cool graveyard that surrounded it (taking pictures of stuff, prancing like bogies) that the church was closed before we could get in. I took a photo of the Dirty Duck's placard, but did not go in... there's a place somewhere in Stratford that has really great pizza and drinks we went to though ... can't recall its name.
I'll look forward to your impassioned defense... just remember, though, there's always time for procrastination! I think your idea for pinning the blame sounds like a great play - though I'd point out that you really can't pin it on either based on history and what's present in the play. They certainly were there for the theoretical phase but neither really can be held responsible either by history or the play itself for the bomb - it's not that it comes to an ambiguous resolution, it's that the initial mystery/problem is flawed. It seemed to me that neither really thinks that he himself or the other can really be blamed for the bomb, as any blood on hands is pretty far removed.
Also, in small-cast plays I find it's hard to get by without at least one mean person. There was no anger in any of them, they were all nice people talking to other people they liked and respected. There maybe was a father yelling at son moment or two, but no barbs from anyone. I think a discussion about the implications of research application is a good one, but I think someone from the "actually built the bomb" party needs to be present as well.
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