Anna Kamaralli
,@kamaralli
0
Following
1
Followers
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
-
Thank you so much for organising this, Nora. Getting other people’s takes definitely showed me things that I would not have picked up reading on my own.
My final thought is probably that I’m surprised at the 1622 date for this play. Its overall ‘feel’ for me is that it owes heaps to medieval morality plays, and if I’d read it without knowing I would have guessed a much earlier composition date.
I’m still both baffled and kind of delighted by the removal of the two eligible noble ingenues from the marriage market, on their own petition. Twist!
-
Like most others here, I’m picking up this final act as a fantasy of purging the country of women. Donobert’s opportunity to bequeath his estate to two men, now his daughters have removed themselves from the picture. The installation of Uther as king and foretelling of his having a son without any mention, unless I missed it somewhere, of Igraine. Merlin having no interest in giving his mother a pleasant life, only getting excited by the prospect of a monument to her death. And the competitive imagining of what could be done with the last women standing, that foreign interloper who poisoned her husband to no real benefit to herself but just because… that’s what foreign queens do? They’d all be much happier if they could have sons without involving women at all, wouldn’t they?
-
Alas, some aspect of my system absolutely refuses to let me post a picture, so instead of a witty, thowaway visual I am forced to included a laboured attachment, that hopefully is still worth a laugh.
I am completely staggered in this play by how they chose to use a pair of nubile ingénues. I kept expecting them to turn up again and have some integrated purpose for the plot. I mean, I’m impressed by the choice to diverge so far from formula, but I’m really wishing I had access to the conversation where that was the direction decided on. “So… those two romances we set up, what if we… not?”
-
-
Since there’s been some discussion of Webster and his potential influence, Edol reminded me of Webster’s Sir Thomas Wyatt (play and character). Wyatt “would run through fire” for the sake of the true Queen, but transforms into fury and martial resolve when she follows her hormones (like Aurelius) and marries a Spaniard. I haven’t made a lines comparison, but the feel is just the same.
Also shocked all over again with the way, like in Merry Wives of Windsor when Master Ford beats Falstaff disguised as the old woman, it’s presented as a simple funny gag for a man to beat a woman, and one specifically shown to be vulnerable, at that, who hasn’t done anything except be unappealing to his sensibilities.
-
I’m sorry, I broke one of the three cardinal rules and forgot to introduce myself before we got started. I’m Anna, and I want to expand my reading of Early Modern plays by playwrights other than Shakespeare. This one sounds gloriously outré enough to shoot right up to the top of the list. I’m in Sydney, so will probably post at odd times, relative to everyone else.
-
I’ve never read this, and so am finding it great fun (and surprisingly rare) to read an EM play without knowing in advance what is going to happen.
I love that Modestia is given a soliloquy, and a deeply philosophical reason, to desire a spiritual path for herself, in preference to marriage.
That is one hell of an entrance Artesia gets, and I wish I could see how it would have been handled in the staging. She is obviously framed to be dazzling, heralded by cornets and flanked by Saxon Lords, and instantly rendering the King incapable of coherent thought – how would the original production have made her look in order to signal such impressiveness? If anyone knows something about how the C17th English conceived of what would make Saxons distinctive in appearance, I would be very interested to hear it. I realise that my sense of the Saxon represented in later British art is pure Victoriana!
-
-
