an April anarchy
Let it be known that bookelfe and Pamela Dean were both absolutely correct in their recommendation of Christopher Fry's play The Lady's Not For Burning. I read it today in study breaks and was unutterably charmed by the whole thing.
In Tam Lin one of the characters describes it by saying that it's about two people who save each other from death, and from life. Which is an excellent way of putting it! It's definitely about love and death in approximately equal measures, which of course puts it so far up my alley it's clawing at the wall.
The writing style -- I don't know, the closest I can come is 'the unholy union of Tom Stoppard and John Webster'. The poetry is gorgeous, the humour consistent and clever, the satire beautifully handled. And at one point someone makes a grand metaphor about genitalia which involves artichokes.
The two main characters are in the Beatrice-and-Benedick mould, except with a lot more discussion of alchemy! and hanging! and skeletons! and how dare the other person waltz around being so inconveniently attractive, they are trying to cultivate an air of disaffected rationalism here!! *_* I love them to bits and now want to name my first daughter Jennet. Jennet is (ironically enough, given the plot) exactly like a Discworld witch crossed with a Jane Austen heroine. AMAZING <3
ILLUSTRATIVE QUOTES BELOW.
JENNET: What can we see in this light?
Nothing, I think, except flakes of drifting fear,
The promise of oblivion.
THOMAS: Nothing can be seen
In the thistle-down, but the rough-head thistle comes.
Rest in that riddle. I can pass to you
Generations of roses in this wrinkled berry.
There: now you hold in your hand a race
Of summer gardens, it lies under centuries
Of petals. What is not, you have in your palm.
Rest in the riddle, rest; why not? This evening
Is a ridiculous wisp of down
Blowing in the air as disconsolately as dust.
And you have your own damnable mystery too,
Which at this moment I could well do without.
JENNET: I know of none. I'm an unhappy fact
Fearing death. This is a strange moment
To feel my life increasing, when this moment
And a little more may be for both fo us
The end of time. You've cast your fishing-net
Of eccentricity, your seine of insanity
Caught me when I was already lost
And landed me with despairing gills on your own
Strange beach. That's too inhuman of you.
THOMAS: Inhuman?
If I dared to know what you meant it would sound disastrous!
JENNET: It means I care whether you live or die.
You have cut yourself a shape on the air, which may be
My scar.
THOMAS: Will you stop frightening me to death?
Do you want our spirits to hobble out of their graves
Enduring twinges of hopeless human affection
As long as death shall last? Still to suffer
Pain in the amputated limb! To feel
Passion in vacuo! That is the sort of thing
That causes sun-spots, and the lord knows what
Infirmities in the firmament. I tell you
The heart is worthless,
Nothing more than a pomander's perfume
In the sewerage. And a nosegay of private emotion
Won't distract me from the stench of the plague-pit,
You needn't think it will. -- Excuse me, Richard. --
Don't entertain the mildest interest in me
Or you'll have me die screaming.
JENNET: Why should that be?
If you're afraid of your shadow falling across
Another life, shine less brightly upon yourself,
Step back into the rank and file of men,
Instead of preserving the magnetism of mystery
And your curious passion for death. You are making yourself
A breeding-ground for love and must take the consequences.
But what are you afraid of, since in a little
While neither of us may exist? Either or both
May be altogether transmuted into memory,
And then the heart's obscure indeed.
*
THOMAS: So much for me.
JENNET: Thomas, only another
Fifty years or so and then I promise
To let you go.
THOMAS: Do you see those roofs and spires?
There sleep hypocrisy, porcuous pomposity, greed,
Lust, vulgarity, cruelty, trickery, sham
And all possible nitwittery -- are you suggesting fifty
Years of all that?
JENNET: I was only suggesting fifty
Years of me.
THOMAS: Girl, you haven't changed the world.
Glimmer as you will, the world's not changed.
I love you, but the world's not changed. Perhaps
I could draw you up over my eyes for a time
But the world sickens me still.
JENNET: And do you think
Your gesture of death is going to change it? Except
For me.
THOMAS: Oh, the unholy mantrap of love!
JENNET: I have put on my own gown again,
But otherwise everything that is familiar,
My house, my poodle, peacock, and possessions,
I have to leave. The world is looking frozen
And forbidding under the moon; but I must be
Out of this town before daylight comes, and somewhere,
Who knows where, begin again.
THOMAS: Brilliant!
So you fall back on the darkness to defeat me.
You gamble on the possibility
That I was well-brought-up. And, of course, you're right.
I have to see you home, though neither of us
Knows where on earth it is.
*
See?? Now THAT is romance. And I didn't even show you the other pair of lovers, who are adolescent and long-suffering and adorable, or MARGARET whom I would actually love to play on a stage because every single thing she says is hilarious, or Nicholas and Humphrey and their amiable craziness, or the chaplain who is in love with his violin.
In Tam Lin one of the characters describes it by saying that it's about two people who save each other from death, and from life. Which is an excellent way of putting it! It's definitely about love and death in approximately equal measures, which of course puts it so far up my alley it's clawing at the wall.
The writing style -- I don't know, the closest I can come is 'the unholy union of Tom Stoppard and John Webster'. The poetry is gorgeous, the humour consistent and clever, the satire beautifully handled. And at one point someone makes a grand metaphor about genitalia which involves artichokes.
The two main characters are in the Beatrice-and-Benedick mould, except with a lot more discussion of alchemy! and hanging! and skeletons! and how dare the other person waltz around being so inconveniently attractive, they are trying to cultivate an air of disaffected rationalism here!! *_* I love them to bits and now want to name my first daughter Jennet. Jennet is (ironically enough, given the plot) exactly like a Discworld witch crossed with a Jane Austen heroine. AMAZING <3
ILLUSTRATIVE QUOTES BELOW.
JENNET: What can we see in this light?
Nothing, I think, except flakes of drifting fear,
The promise of oblivion.
THOMAS: Nothing can be seen
In the thistle-down, but the rough-head thistle comes.
Rest in that riddle. I can pass to you
Generations of roses in this wrinkled berry.
There: now you hold in your hand a race
Of summer gardens, it lies under centuries
Of petals. What is not, you have in your palm.
Rest in the riddle, rest; why not? This evening
Is a ridiculous wisp of down
Blowing in the air as disconsolately as dust.
And you have your own damnable mystery too,
Which at this moment I could well do without.
JENNET: I know of none. I'm an unhappy fact
Fearing death. This is a strange moment
To feel my life increasing, when this moment
And a little more may be for both fo us
The end of time. You've cast your fishing-net
Of eccentricity, your seine of insanity
Caught me when I was already lost
And landed me with despairing gills on your own
Strange beach. That's too inhuman of you.
THOMAS: Inhuman?
If I dared to know what you meant it would sound disastrous!
JENNET: It means I care whether you live or die.
You have cut yourself a shape on the air, which may be
My scar.
THOMAS: Will you stop frightening me to death?
Do you want our spirits to hobble out of their graves
Enduring twinges of hopeless human affection
As long as death shall last? Still to suffer
Pain in the amputated limb! To feel
Passion in vacuo! That is the sort of thing
That causes sun-spots, and the lord knows what
Infirmities in the firmament. I tell you
The heart is worthless,
Nothing more than a pomander's perfume
In the sewerage. And a nosegay of private emotion
Won't distract me from the stench of the plague-pit,
You needn't think it will. -- Excuse me, Richard. --
Don't entertain the mildest interest in me
Or you'll have me die screaming.
JENNET: Why should that be?
If you're afraid of your shadow falling across
Another life, shine less brightly upon yourself,
Step back into the rank and file of men,
Instead of preserving the magnetism of mystery
And your curious passion for death. You are making yourself
A breeding-ground for love and must take the consequences.
But what are you afraid of, since in a little
While neither of us may exist? Either or both
May be altogether transmuted into memory,
And then the heart's obscure indeed.
*
THOMAS: So much for me.
JENNET: Thomas, only another
Fifty years or so and then I promise
To let you go.
THOMAS: Do you see those roofs and spires?
There sleep hypocrisy, porcuous pomposity, greed,
Lust, vulgarity, cruelty, trickery, sham
And all possible nitwittery -- are you suggesting fifty
Years of all that?
JENNET: I was only suggesting fifty
Years of me.
THOMAS: Girl, you haven't changed the world.
Glimmer as you will, the world's not changed.
I love you, but the world's not changed. Perhaps
I could draw you up over my eyes for a time
But the world sickens me still.
JENNET: And do you think
Your gesture of death is going to change it? Except
For me.
THOMAS: Oh, the unholy mantrap of love!
JENNET: I have put on my own gown again,
But otherwise everything that is familiar,
My house, my poodle, peacock, and possessions,
I have to leave. The world is looking frozen
And forbidding under the moon; but I must be
Out of this town before daylight comes, and somewhere,
Who knows where, begin again.
THOMAS: Brilliant!
So you fall back on the darkness to defeat me.
You gamble on the possibility
That I was well-brought-up. And, of course, you're right.
I have to see you home, though neither of us
Knows where on earth it is.
*
See?? Now THAT is romance. And I didn't even show you the other pair of lovers, who are adolescent and long-suffering and adorable, or MARGARET whom I would actually love to play on a stage because every single thing she says is hilarious, or Nicholas and Humphrey and their amiable craziness, or the chaplain who is in love with his violin.