Your incessant monologizing fills the castle with ennui

[sovay]

Hey, I've thought of a meme.

Sparked by the fact that I wouldn't actually want to be a Stoppard character—I'd die in a fire or I'd be A.E. Housman—who would you like to be a character in a play by? Why? Whose plays would you absolutely not want to find yourself in? (Nota bene: to be differentiated from the writers whose plays you feel like you're living in already. Given how most of my friendlist seems to be doing, that way lies Oh, yeah? I'll see your O'Neill and raise you Sarah Kane.) No fair just calling Shakespeare.

Otherwise I've stopped sleeping again, which makes the idea of more frequent posts seem even more remote and exhausting. I should still try.

In the meantime: talk to me about theater!

Comments

[sovay]

Do want: Corneille, Dumas (pere), Rostand. Because there is a moral compass, people's fates are not arbitrary, and things matter.

I must admit that my favorite version of Cyrano de Bergerac is the one where the Roxane-figure gets to be furious with him for never trusting her enough to tell her of his love, but you do get beautiful language in the original.

Lord Dunsany (much as I love reading him, his characters are mostly screwed).

I've never read any of Dunsany's plays. (I may not even have been more than generally aware that he wrote plays.) What are they like, other than everyone mostly being screwed?

[zdenka]

They tend to be based on a single conceit. Things happen because they are dramatic, and human effort is often futile before fate or the whims of the gods.

For example: a group of English scammers steal an idol's jeweled eye. It does not end well. A group of beggars trick the city into believing they are gods so as to live a life of luxury. It does not end well. Two dead burglars locked outside the gates of Heaven get the bright idea of breaking in. It does not end well and also there is EXISTENTIAL DESPAIR.

I rather like "King Argimenes and the Unknown Warrior," but it's not clear that the protagonist and his allies are morally or politically superior to the king he overthrows.

Oh! And I completely love "The Lost Silk Hat," which has a very different tone. A man has quarreled with his sweetheart, and he is going to go off and die in Africa or somewhere, except he has accidentally left his hat inside and he can neither go back in to get it nor be seen in the streets without a hat. He comes up with various ridiculous schemes to get the hat back, "helped" by a random poet, who wants the man to go off and die in Africa because it would be romantic. In the end, he reconciles with the girl, to the poet's utter disgust.

[sovay]

A man has quarreled with his sweetheart, and he is going to go off and die in Africa or somewhere, except he has accidentally left his hat inside and he can neither go back in to get it nor be seen in the streets without a hat. He comes up with various ridiculous schemes to get the hat back, "helped" by a random poet, who wants the man to go off and die in Africa because it would be romantic. In the end, he reconciles with the girl, to the poet's utter disgust.

I am faintly amazed this was never adapted for film, because—depending on when it was written—I can think of a raft of actors who it might have been made for.

[zdenka]

I would love to watch that.