Day: August 2, 2018

A Grateful Haiku

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every step counted

letters formed words, filled pages

the tale unfolded

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❤with special thanks to my readers and reviewers ❤

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Available now @Amazon

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Words and Photography ©2018 Tanya Cliff ~ to contact me

Entry posted in haiku, poetry, books & Legend of the Lumenstones.

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David Bruce: William Shakespeare’s 2 HENRY VI: A Retelling in Prose — Act 1, Scene 2

— 1.2 —

The Duke and the Duchess of Gloucester talked together in their house. In this culture, wives called their husbands “lord.” The Duchess’ name was Eleanor, but the Duke sometimes called her Nell.

The Duchess of Gloucester asked, “Why does my lord droop his head, like over-ripened wheat, hanging the head at Ceres, goddess of grain’s plenteous load? Why does the great Duke Humphrey of Gloucester knit his eyebrows as if he were frowning at the favors of the world? Why are your eyes fixed on the sullen earth, gazing on that which seems to dim your sight? What do you see there? King Henry VI’s diadem, adorned with all the honors of the world?

“If that is so, gaze on, and grovel on your face, until your head is encircled with the same. You should wear the diadem. Put forth your hand and reach at the glorious gold.”

Groveling while lying face down was a part of supplicating infernal supernatural spirits for help.

She continued, “Is your arm too short? I’ll lengthen it with mine. And, having both together heaved the diadem up, we’ll both together lift our heads to Heaven, and never again abase our sight so low as to permit even one glance at the ground.”

The Duke of Gloucester said, using his wife’s nickname, “Nell, sweet Nell, if you love your lord, banish the cancer of ambitious thoughts. May that thought, if I should imagine ill against my King and nephew, virtuous Henry VI, result in my last breath in this mortal world! My troubling dream last night makes me sad.”

“What did my lord dream? Tell me, and I’ll repay you with the sweet recounting of my morning’s dream,” she said.

In this culture, people believed that morning dreams were true dreams.

The Duke of Gloucester said, “I thought that this staff, my symbol of office at the court, was broken in two; by whom I have forgotten, but I think it was broken by Cardinal Beaufort, and on the pieces of the broken staff were placed the heads of Duke Edmund of Somerset and William de la Pole, who is the first Duke of Suffolk.

“This was my dream. What it forebodes, God knows.”

“Tut, this was nothing but an argument that he who breaks a stick of the Duke of Gloucester’s grove of trees shall lose his head for his presumption,” the Duchess of Gloucester said. “But listen to me, my Humphrey, my sweet Duke.

“I thought I sat in the seat of majesty in the cathedral church of Westminster, and in that chair — the coronation chair — where Kings and Queens are crowned, there Henry VI and Dame Margaret kneeled to me and on my head set the diadem.”

“No, Eleanor, then must I chide you outright,” the Duke of Gloucester said. “Presumptuous dame, ill-nurtured Eleanor, aren’t you the second woman in the realm, second only to the Queen, and aren’t you the Lord Protector’s wife, and beloved by him? Haven’t you worldly pleasure at your command, above and beyond the reach or compass of your thought? And will you still be hammering and working at treachery that will tumble down both your husband and yourself from the top of honor to the feet of disgrace? Get away from me, and let me hear no more about your morning dream!”

“What, what, my lord! Are you so choleric and angry at me, Eleanor, simply because I told you my dream? Next time I’ll keep my dreams to myself, and not be rebuked.”

The Duke of Gloucester replied, “No, don’t be angry; I am pleased again. I am no longer angry.”

A messenger entered the room.

The messenger said, “My Lord Protector, it is his highness’ pleasure that you prepare to ride to St. Albans, where the King and Queen intend to go hawking.”

St. Albans was a town twenty miles north of London.

“I will go,” the Duke of Gloucester said, and then added, “Come, Nell, will you ride with us?”

“Yes, my good lord, I’ll follow quickly,” the Duchess of Gloucester said.

The Duke of Gloucester and the messenger exited.

Alone, the Duchess of Gloucester said to herself, “Follow I must; I cannot go before, while the Duke of Gloucester bears this base and humble mind. If I were a man, a Duke, and the next of blood, I would remove these tedious stumbling blocks and smooth my way upon their headless necks. And, being a woman, I will not be slack to play my part in Lady Fortune’s pageant.”

She still wanted to be Queen of England.

Sir John Hume, a priest, entered the room. In this culture, priests were called “Sir” as a mark of respect.

Hearing a noise, she said, “Who are you there? Sir John! No, don’t be afraid, man. We are alone; here’s no one but you and me.”

Sir John Hume said, “May Jesus preserve your royal majesty!”

Kings and Queens were called majesty and sometimes grace; Dukes and Duchesses were called only grace.

“What are you saying!” the Duchess of Gloucester said. “Majesty! I am only grace.”

“But, by the grace of God, and my advice, your grace’s title shall be multiplied,” Sir John Hume said.

“What are you saying, man?” she asked. “Have you conferredyet with Margery Jourdain, the cunning witch,and with Roger Bolingbroke, the conjurer who raises spirits?And will they undertake to do me good by helping me to succeed?”

“They have promised to show your highnessaspirit raised from the depth of underground — Hell — that shall answer such questionsas shall be asked him by your grace.”

“It is enough,” the Duchess of Gloucester said. “I’ll think about the questions I will ask. When we return from St. Albans,we’ll see that these things are completely done.”

She gave the priest some money and said, “Here, Hume, take this reward; make merry, man,with your confederates in this weighty, important cause.”

She exited.

Alone, Sir John Hume said to himself, “I, Hume, must make merry with the Duchess’ gold, and by Mother Mary I shall. But be careful now, Sir John Hume!Seal up your lips, and speak no words but stay mum. This business requires silent secrecy.

“Dame Eleanor gives me gold to bring the witch. Gold cannot come amiss, even if the witch were a Devil. Yet I have gold that comes to me from another source. I dare not say it comes from the rich Cardinal Beaufort and from the great and newly made Duke of Suffolk, yet that is the case.

“To be plain, they, knowing Dame Eleanor’s aspiring and ambitious disposition, have hired me to undermine the Duchess of Gloucester and buzz these conjurations in her brain.

“People say, proverbially, ‘A crafty knave needs no broker,’ that is, no agent, yet I am the Duke of Suffolk’s and Cardinal Beaufort’s broker. Hume, if you are not careful, you shall go near to calling them both a pair of crafty knaves.

“Well, so it stands; and thus, I fear, at last Hume’s — my — knavery will be the Duchess of Gloucester’s wreck, and her conviction and condemnation will be her husband Humphrey’s fall.

“No matter what happens, I shall have gold from them all.”

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Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved

***

David Bruce’s Lulu Bookstore (Paperbacks)

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/brucebATohioDOTedu

David Bruce’s Amazon Author Bookstore

http://www.amazon.com/David-Bruce/e/B004KEZ7LY/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1

David Bruce’s Smashwords Bookstore

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David Bruce’s Apple iBookstore

https://itunes.apple.com/ie/artist/david-bruce/id81470634

David Bruce’s Barnes and Noble Books

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David Bruce: Rehearsals Anecdotes

George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet once needed a leading dancer to perform as Apollo at short notice, and Peter Martins, a young dancer with the Royal Danish Ballet, was called in to dance. Everything seemed to Mr. Martins to go well at the first performance, and the critics agreed, but the next day at rehearsal Mr. Balanchine said to him, “Before we begin, you know, you do it all wrong.” (Mr. Martins says he got the impression during the rehearsal that perhaps the one thing he had done right was to show up for the performance.) Then Mr. Balanchine showed him what he wanted. Later, Mr. Balanchine told Mr. Martins’ teacher, Stanley Williams, that he had been impressed with the young dancer at the rehearsal: “I changed everything, and he remembered everything.” This led to Mr. Martins’ being asked to join the New York City Ballet.

The dress rehearsal for Primitive Mysteries wasn’t going well, although Martha Graham had worked on its choreography for over a year. Finally, she was ready to give up and take the dance off the program. Deeply frustrated, she screamed at her dancers, “That’s enough! Get out of my sight! Go home! Go away!” Fortunately, music director Louis Horst told the dancers to stay, then he went to Ms. Graham’s dressing room and talked to her. She then came out of her dressing room and began rehearsing again. On February 2, 1931, Primitive Mysteries debuted in New York’s Craig Theater. The audience applauded so much that 23 curtain calls were needed, and critics acclaimed Primitive Mysteries a masterpiece.

Sir Adrian Boult once accepted an invitation to conduct British music with a famous American orchestra that was known for a few eccentric qualities. Sir Adrian and the orchestra practiced well together, and he was able to remove the eccentric elements of the orchestra’s performance and replace them with elements of nobilmente. However, at the concert, the orchestra played with all of its original eccentricity and with none of Sir Adrian’s nobilmente. Following the concert, an annoyed Sir Adrian asked the concertmaster why the orchestra had played one way during rehearsal and a very different way during the concert. The concertmaster replied, “The rehearsal’s all yours—but the concert’s all ours.”

Fred Astaire was a hard worker who believed in practicing even things that weren’t likely to appear in his movies. While rehearsing for Funny Face, he was dancing with an umbrella, and director Stanley Donen asked him to open the umbrella and dance with it to see if any moves happened that would look good in the movie. Mr. Astaire opened the umbrella, danced with it, then closed it again—all impeccably. Mr. Donen asked him how he was able to do that so well, and Mr. Astaire replied, “I’ve practiced it.” According to Mr. Donen, that was part of the secret of Mr. Astaire’s success: “He would practice things that didn’t have any immediate connection with anything.”

When it came to his dancing, Fred Astaire was a perfectionist. He sometimes rehearsed 18 hours a day, losing up to 15 pounds in the process. In addition, when his dancing partners rehearsed with him, at the end of the practice, they would sometimes find blood in their shoes. Mr. Astaire once explained why he rehearsed so much: “I wanted to make it good, then make it better.”

Albert E. Kahn spent several months photographing Soviet ballerina Galina Ulanova, always being careful not to interrupt her in her practices, performances, or teaching sessions. Once, he did interrupt. Ms. Ulanova had been teaching 19-year-old Katya Maximova to dance Giselle, and at one point she had embraced her. Mr. Kahn had not caught the moment with his camera, so he asked her to repeat the embrace, saying, “It was such a beautiful moment.” She replied, “That beautiful moment is gone forever. Now you mustn’t interrupt us. We’re working.”

Hans Richter once conducted an Anton Bruckner symphony at a time when the works of Bruckner were seldom played. During the rehearsal, Bruckner himself was present. At one place, Richter ran into difficulty and called to Bruckner, “F or F sharp in that chord?” Flushed with pleasure, Bruckner leapt to his feet and answered, “Anything you like, Herr Kapellmeister; go on, go on!”

Buddy Ebsen is perhaps most famous as Jed Clampett onThe Beverly Hillbillies; however, he and Vera Ebsen were a famous brother-and-sister dance team during the 1930s. Frequently, they rehearsed in hot, unvented, rehearsal halls, leaving pools of sweat on the floor. Other people used to come into the rehearsal hall, look at the pools of sweat on the floor, and ask, “Were the Ebsens here?”

Herbert von Karajan sometimes did the lighting for the operas he conducted. Sir Rudolf Bing felt that frequently his lighting was murky, and after Mr. Karajan once told him that the lighting for a certain opera had required “eight full-length lighting rehearsals,” Sir Rudolf replied, “I could have got it that dark with one.”

Vaslav Nijinsky’s Le Sacred de Printemps was, in the words of critic Cyril W. Beaumont, “an attempt to show the birth of human emotion in a primitive age.” It was very difficult to execute, and when it was unveiled for the first time, it required 120 rehearsals, although only six performances were given.

Gladys Cooper complained that Noël Coward believed that actors should show up at the first rehearsal knowing their lines, whereas she liked to learn her lines during rehearsals. Mr. Coward told her, “I did not expect word perfection at the first rehearsal, but I had rather hoped for it on the first night.”

Peter Ustinov was habitually late for rehearsals. By accident, he once arrived 10 minutes early for a rehearsal. Sir Peter immediately apologized to the director, Denis Carey, “I’m sorry, Denis. Utterly unforgivable. I assure you such a careless mistake will never happen again.” Mr. Carey said later, “It didn’t.”

Anna Pavlova took dance rehearsals seriously. Early in her career, she arrived at the Marinsky Theatre, but discovered that she had forgotten her practice clothes. No problem. She wrapped two towels around her body and practiced—despite the sniggering of the stagehands in the theater.

***

Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved

***

David Bruce’s Lulu Bookstore (Paperbacks)

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/brucebATohioDOTedu

David Bruce’s Amazon Author Bookstore

http://www.amazon.com/David-Bruce/e/B004KEZ7LY/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1

David Bruce’s Smashwords Bookstore

http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/bruceb

David Bruce’s Apple iBookstore

https://itunes.apple.com/ie/artist/david-bruce/id81470634

David Bruce’s Barnes and Noble Books

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/david-bruce

Edgar Lee Masters: Mrs. Kessler (Spoon River Anthology)

MR. KESSLER, you know, was in the army,
And he drew six dollars a month as a pension,
And stood on the corner talking politics,
Or sat at home reading Grant’s Memoirs;
And I supported the family by washing,
Learning the secrets of all the people
From their curtains, counterpanes, shirts and skirts.
For things that are new grow old at length,
They’re replaced with better or none at all:
People are prospering or falling back.
And rents and patches widen with time;
No thread or needle can pace decay,
And there are stains that baffle soap,
And there are colors that run in spite of you,
Blamed though you are for spoiling a dress.
Handkerchiefs, napery, have their secrets—
The laundress, Life, knows all about it.
And I, who went to all the funerals
Held in Spoon River, swear I never
Saw a dead face without thinking it looked
Like something washed and ironed.

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