The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 18.0077 Thursday, 1 February 2007
From: Nancy Charlton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 30 Jan 2007 02:22:24 -0800
Subject: Prince Charles
Readers of SHAKSPER might enjoy this NY Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/nyregion/29royals.html?th&emc=th
Part of this account:
"In a second-floor classroom, Charles and Camilla watched the Harlem
Children's Zone theater troupe run through a scene from "A Midsummer
Night's Dream," the play it performed at the National Black Theater for
two nights last month. Fittingly, it was the play-within-a-play
sequence, in which the six "rude mechanicals," or laborers, perform
"Pyramus and Thisbe" for Theseus and Hippolyta, the royal couple.
The actors, who mostly ranged in age from 12 to 14, performed in
modern-day workmen's uniforms, but held close to the original dialogue.
The prince and duchess sat with their hands clasped in their laps, her
legs pressed together, his stretching wide of his shoulders and pointing
wider still, horseman that he is.
They laughed much more heartily than they had to when Trevor Campbell, a
13-year-old playing Nick Bottom, delivered his show-stealing monologue
toward a wall, which in this case was merely a brick that he held in his
hand. ("O Wall, O sweet and lovely Wall/Show me thy chink to blink
through with mine eyne!")
When they were finished, the prince looked to his wife and said, "Shall
we go have a word?" He then put his hands on his thighs and stood to
have a little one-on-one with each of the actors.
"He asked me, do I get to do other plays besides this one, and I told
him yes, sir, I have," Trevor said afterward, beaming. "He asked if I
liked reading Shakespeare and said it was important to perform it as
well as reading it."
In the evening, Charles received the Global Environmental Citizen Award
from the Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global
Environment."
I heard part of his speech on C-Span and found it highly literate if not
quite literary. The Prince never seems to say anything new, but this was
a little better than his usual recital of received opinion. He really
made a vivid case for preserving the natural environment. I heard echoes
of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Hopkins as he pointed out that in a society
where three-fourths of people live in cities, they may not know what is
missing and so won't miss it if it's gone.
Nancy Charlton
Portland, Oregon
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