the title's curse (2)
The lovers were on tour. They knew the gods had granted them something out of the ordinary. Star crossed lovers. So often, this play, and every other play they'd seen by Shakespeare, had been bastardised, dull, the juice sucked out of the text. They had been blessed. They strolled on stilts through cavernous theatres, criss-crossing a continent. A cast of half a dozen, climbing in and out of the crazy car which they drove on stage. A production which made the play sing, clown, cry.
Each night the lovers went merrily to their deaths. Their love was so beautiful it had no trouble being born again. It was so innocent it could somehow get away with the fact that she, the actress, could be visibly pregnant with his, the actor's, child. The copy of the lovers' love, their love embraced love with the same beauty that the writer's lines secured immortal for the creatures of his mind. A love so beautiful that their stage names spoke of nothing but love.
The actors basked in this congruence. If anything, it seemed perhaps their love might even eclipse their characters', whose love was condemned to be killed night after night.
Yet, in spite of the child that was due, it began to cross the actors' minds that in the act of death, Romeo and Juliet enshrined the incorruptibility of the love they shared. A love that can never be tainted, or sullied. They saw, some days when the tour was dragging on too long and both longed just to be home, to be free of their shades, that in death, their fictional characters had been granted the last laugh.
So it came as no surprise to either of them, that moment when their car veered off a jagged Brazilian road, came off the cliff; crashed into a tree; seperated from the way of life. One died instantly, and though the other lived a week or so, apparently comatose, they knew their obligation. The obligation to match the lovers' love. It felt right, in the midst of coma, to succumb to the pull of death; so they might know the full beauty of that thing the poet consecrated, that dream in life called love.
Each night the lovers went merrily to their deaths. Their love was so beautiful it had no trouble being born again. It was so innocent it could somehow get away with the fact that she, the actress, could be visibly pregnant with his, the actor's, child. The copy of the lovers' love, their love embraced love with the same beauty that the writer's lines secured immortal for the creatures of his mind. A love so beautiful that their stage names spoke of nothing but love.
The actors basked in this congruence. If anything, it seemed perhaps their love might even eclipse their characters', whose love was condemned to be killed night after night.
Yet, in spite of the child that was due, it began to cross the actors' minds that in the act of death, Romeo and Juliet enshrined the incorruptibility of the love they shared. A love that can never be tainted, or sullied. They saw, some days when the tour was dragging on too long and both longed just to be home, to be free of their shades, that in death, their fictional characters had been granted the last laugh.
So it came as no surprise to either of them, that moment when their car veered off a jagged Brazilian road, came off the cliff; crashed into a tree; seperated from the way of life. One died instantly, and though the other lived a week or so, apparently comatose, they knew their obligation. The obligation to match the lovers' love. It felt right, in the midst of coma, to succumb to the pull of death; so they might know the full beauty of that thing the poet consecrated, that dream in life called love.
posted by maldoror at 00:31
1 Comments:
Ah Mr F - yet another blog spills forth from your head/hand/mind - can we keep up?
Contact to be made soon I hope?
J
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