The Mirror in my Mind

Day #26: Your favourite couple

Beatrice and Benedick have to be up here. She gives as good as she gets, and vice versa. And you really do get the impression that they actually enjoy one another's company and that the love that apparently comes out of nowhere probably does have some sort of foundation.

On the tragic side, I have to go with Humphrey of Gloucester and Eleanor Cobham. Because, really, you can tell this is a couple who love one another. I sort of think of them as a much older Hotspur and Kate Percy, where they squabble and snipe regularly but really do love one another. And it may be that I am reading too much into the text but it seems to me that Eleanor's fall from grace just breaks Humphrey. He protests when the King demands that he step down as protector, but there's no force behind it. And that is probably because he lost the only person he could truly trust.

Day #27: Your favourite couplet

I am just going to go with the first line that comes to mind:

Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?
Tut, were it farther off, I'll pluck it down.
--3 Henry VI, Act III, Scene II

You wouldn't think the word 'Tut' could make or break the end of a scene, but in this case, it TOTALLY does. It embodies so many different significations -- Richard's pride, his ambition, his utterly shameless confidence in his ability to deceive. And it's this brilliantly executed conspiracy between him and the audience -- we want to see if he can do it, how far he can go. So much, to rest on one little word.

Ron Cook in the BBC 3 Henry VI (1983) - He is charming and utterly adorable. And he nails this couplet.
Andrew Jarvis in the ESC Henry VI, 'House of York' (1990) (speech starts around 3:25; also featuring Ann Penfold as a wonderfully clever and snarky Elizabeth)

I'm out of town this weekend to go to my cousin's wedding in New York, so I will hopefully finish off the meme next week.

( Full List of Questions )

I didn't take as many notes this time, as I was mainly jotting down things I hadn't noticed before, or things that I thought were different.

The first set of reviews is here.

They've more or less transplanted the entire set into the Roundhouse, although the theatre itself is a different shape. My seats, which I thought were going to be extremely high up, and would have been at the Courtyard, turned out to be quite good (I was front row circle, far to stage right).

( Henry VI, Part I )

( Henry VI, Part II )

( Henry VI, Part III )

But now they're over. It makes me so very sad, even though logically I know that it frees up the histories so that other companies can technically do them. I am still sad.