09w20:3 Shakespeare's Blog Part XVII

Posted May 14th, 2009 by timothy. 0 Comments

Goodreads | 2009 week 20 number 3 (Shakespeare’s Blog Part XVII)

May 14th
This afternoon I must to act. It is but the part of Antonio is The Two Gentlemen. Speaking to Proteus I say:

Muse not that I thus suddenly proceed;
For what I will, I will, and there an end.
I am resolv’d that thou shalt spend some time
With Valentinus in the Emperor’s court.

And Proteus, my son, that is Dick Burbage, stands grinning there. I would shout at him: Tell me, tell me whether it be true. Here is the platform of truth and nakedness, I will have none of thy lying. Wert thou with her or no? And so I forgot the line following and must be prompted by the bookholder. Then my shame near makes me shiver with an ague. I look out on grinning faces among the groundlings – few, very few, they like not this play well – and up at the wooden heavens and back at the curtained study and think perhaps I am dead and already a ghost. Then I think I hear whispering and laughter from a sidebox: it is she, it is she with another. This will not do, it cannot be supported, I must purge her out. But I know I may not.

(Anthony Burgess, Nothing Like The Sun, p.155)