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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