Poppyland
The critic and
his graveyard by the sea, the poet thereabouts, the successful playwrights, the
village girl.
Clement Scott of
the Daily Telegraph, Swinburne (under the supervision of Watts-Dunston),
Sims & Pettitt, Louie Jermy.
The critic dies, the
poet is pummeled, the playwrights thrive, the girl goes mad.
The city and the
country that do never meet.
The
actor-playwright Wilson Barrett (The Sign of the Cross) appears, Alfred
Austin the poet laureate and Sir Henry Irving do not, certainly not Ibsen.
Alan Howard,
Phoebe Nicholls, John McEnery, John Shrapnel et al.
Mrs Brown
This would have
to be ten times greater to be a portrait of Queen Victoria, as it is a hundred
times better than a Masterpiece Theatricale. But it surpasses the notion of its
premise for an abstract truth quite in keeping with its elements. VR and John
Brown and Ponsonby and Disraeli are all rich and fine but they are not up to
snuff, they make you sneeze and say, “shall we have oats, Bully?”
That is the very
ticket. Losey is required for this, the Divisionist painting recombines in the
eye, here is the naked thing after the fact, Losey in the mind reconstructs the
cold grief and the great hairy man for a very satisfactory treatment.
Richardson to
Wood (The Charge of the Light Brigade),
“‘...But
I think it’s too long, and I don’t think we can have Queen Victoria fucked by a
bear, not even a very funny Russian bear, do you?’ So we didn’t.”
Frears reconciles
this to the picture plane as The Queen.
Shakespeare
in Love
Virginia Woolf’s
incandescent Shakespeare, consuming all its dross. How the muse goes a progress
through the mind of a genius.
John Webster is le
voyeur, Marlowe the martyr.
Shagsbere as
nonce-writer, with the fount of inspiration to him and an education in the theater.
The principal
structure is undoubtedly William K. Howard’s Fire over England, much
anagrammatized but splendidly visible in the duet for queen and maid.
Zeffirelli’s Romeo
and Juliet is the key to much of the handling.
Among Stoppard’s
themes are the invention of love and the New-found-land (as filmed, by way of
De Mille’s The Ten Commandments).