Second-guess my love of danger

[sovay]

I always wondered what "Second Edition, Revised" meant in all the copies I'd ever seen of The Lady's Not for Burning, including the one I bought for myself in college and the one with which I became engaged. Turns out it means the green-bound first edition I discovered this afternoon in Raven Used Books is a lot like a first draft. It's a hardcover of the usual dimensions from Oxford University Press; it has a foreword by Fry—not included in later editions—dated January 1949 and from the very first page the text is different. Not everywhere, and sometimes not hugely, and the shape of the play is still the same, but sometimes it's a word altered and sometimes it's a speech and sometimes it's a whole chunk of dialogue. In all cases I could recognize I prefer the revisions. I think this text must belong to the very first production of the play, the two-week run at London's Arts Theatre in March 1948, starring Alec Clunes; the Globe production starring John Gielgud (and Pamela Brown and Richard Burton and Claire Bloom and I know there's an audio recording, but I still want that time machine, with an option on the night Esmé Percy's glass eye came out while he was alleluia'ing it up as Matthew Skipps) didn't go up until May 1949. It was like discovering manuscript Housman. After making a phone call, I took it home for spatch.

Meanwhile, the mail has brought me, courtesy of yhlee, Kristina Sabaliauskaitė's Vilnius Wilno ווילנע: Three Short Stories (2016) trans. Romas Kinka, which two stories in is amazing and reminds me of selkie's A Verse from Babylon (2005), which I just consider another reason everyone should read that book. I had lunch with a_reasonable_man and we talked about the New Deal and Gabriel Over the White House (1933). When I got off the bus at the top of School Street, the sky on the western side of the train tracks was the smoky warm rust I associate with Childe Hassam's At Dusk (Boston Common at Twilight) (1885–86). Rob made steak and shortcut risotto (rice cooked with the last of the sherry mushroom cream sauce) for dinner and I just finished the last of the apple crisp I made with the ginormous quantity of Cortlands and McIntoshes my cousins and skygiants picked in late October. I have been hearing train whistles all evening.

Autolycus thinks that if I am on the couch, obviously what I want is a cat on my lap, and if I am at my desk, obviously what I want is a cat on my shoulder, and either way he makes it very difficult to type. He is a good cat. I work on being here.

Comments

[pameladean]

OH yes, the existence of two versions caused massive confusion in our playreading group. (The only other play that did that to us was Richard II, good grief.) I agree with you about the superiority of the revisions, but it's an amazing look into Fry's thinking processes to see him working so minutely at the text. I don't have a copy of the first draft; somebody in the group just randomly ended up getting it from the library.

Saffron thinks that if I'm anywhere at all I want a cat on my collarbone. She is too long for my lap, but the collarbone works; it merely requires at least one arm and sometimes two, if she goes to sleep and becomes boneless, to support her in the manner to which she has somehow become accustomed. Like Autolycus, she is a very good cat, and like you, I try to live up to that.

P.

[moon_custafer]

While visiting Dubli in the 1980s, my parents came across some students doing a marathon Shakespeare read-through. They’d just got up to Othello and we’re running into trouble because they didn’t all have the same edition. Also an elderly don came out of the building behind them and found himself in the middle of their performance. He took the most sensible course of action, which was to smile seraphically and retreat back through the doors.

[sovay]

(The only other play that did that to us was Richard II, good grief.)

I didn't realize that had substantial variation!

I agree with you about the superiority of the revisions, but it's an amazing look into Fry's thinking processes to see him working so minutely at the text.

Agreed. The timing makes me think that the Globe production (and possibly its New York transfer) must have been a factor. I should see what Gielgud says about it.

She is too long for my lap, but the collarbone works; it merely requires at least one arm and sometimes two, if she goes to sleep and becomes boneless, to support her in the manner to which she has somehow become accustomed.

I can hold Autolycus on my shoulder with one arm if he falls asleep, but that doesn't really help the typing situation.

You have lovely cats.