Thought for the Day - May 24

Subject: Thought for the Day - May 24
From: Peter T.
Date: 24 May 00 - 09:40 AM

Just some more thoughts about Sir John Gielgud (I spent an afternoon with him some years ago - see the Goodnight, Sir John thread). I happened to mention to him that I had had an interesting experience playing Benedict in Much Ado About Nothing. Somewhere in the second act, I had this nifty little idea, and stuck it in, and was feeling very smart, and about two acts later, Shakespeare stuck in a line that depended completely on this little idea. The bastard had been there waiting for me! I asked him if he had ever had this experience. Sir John replied, "Oh God, all the time. One is always having these bright ideas, and there he is standing in the wings nodding his head saying, good, good, you found that one. It took 400 years for someone to stumble over that little thing. It really is like having his ghost hovering around, very eerie." It reminded me of why actors revere Shakespeare, and are very superstitious about him.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - May 24
From: catspaw49
Date: 24 May 00 - 09:53 AM

Say Peter, do you happen to know how Shakespeare got into making fishing tackle? Was that a little thing he left us? Personally, I hate fishing and have always considered it much ado about nothing.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - May 24
From: Peter T.
Date: 24 May 00 - 09:57 AM

Glendower: "I can call monsters up from the stormy deep!"

Hotspur: "Why, so can I, so can any man -- But will they come when you do call?"

Henry IV, Part I.

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - May 24
From: catspaw49
Date: 24 May 00 - 10:02 AM

Thanks Peter!!! I knew you'd know. Now let's talk about about organizing a cat parade.........

Spaw

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - May 24
From: Peg
Date: 24 May 00 - 10:15 AM

My computer's go to sleep screen has this quotation skimming across in a sea of teal...

For though the chamomile,
the more it is trodden, the faster it grows,
Yet youth, the more it is wasted,
the sooner it wears.

Worked with a lot of Shakespeare, acting and directing, in my college and grad school theatre days...it is by far the most gratifying of all the other texts I worked with and I also understand why actors revere it so. Gielgud and Peter are right on in terms of those little flashes of brilliance whci are right there in the text waiting hundreds of years for discovery. One night around midnight, some actors and I were doing last minute rehearsals of several scenes for a high school demonstration we were doing the next day. We kept flubbing our lines in the Hamlet and Macbeth scenes...but when we got to the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet, my partner David and I knew it cold so started to have some fun (like I said it was late and we were punchy). We started doing all these very bawdy interpretations of the lines "Oh, that I were a glove upon that hand that I might touch that cheek"--"I come, anon" you get the idea)and people were rolling on the floor. They said we had to reprise this and work it up for a variety night the department was doing later that month, which we did. The house, as they say, nearly came down. One of our professors, a fun and wonderfully evil chap, actually stood up during the scene and laughingly wagged his finger and said "Now stop that!"

I was privileged to see some amazing productions in the late 1980s by the Royal Shakespeare Company and in London (including Hamlet with Daniel Day Lewis and Judi Dench) and these performances were unforgettable...

saw Kenneth Branagh's new Shakespeare film recently, Love's Labors Lost, and it is wonderful: an over-the-top romantic musical full of songs from the 1930s, great dancing, very clever...I get to interview him June 2 and am very excited! Even though it is a roundtable and I don't get him all to myself...

Sir Gielgud's death marks the end of an era: the classy, humble actor who rose to stardom and egotistical brilliance only to continuously perfect his craft and gradually see his skill as a magical gift which he is honroed to possess...he once said playing Prospero in "Prospero's Books" was his favorite role...personally I loved him in "The Shooting Party" where he plays an eccentric anti-hunting activist in fin de siecle England...

Lawrence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, James Mason, Richard Burton...how can we ever forget their awe-inspiring work?

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - May 24
From: catspaw49
Date: 24 May 00 - 10:18 AM

Who?

Spaw