At Freddie's by Penelope Fitzgerald

Author:Penelope Fitzgerald [Fitzgerald Penelope]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-10-24T04:00:00+00:00

Sitting half way down the stalls, in N22, from which supposedly very little could be heard and which therefore served as a test for all the others, Ed Voysey was by now in a very nervous condition. William Beardless, who preferred to discuss each point alone with the director, sat beside him, in N23. William was not an easy person to deal with. It was cruelty, nothing less than cruelty, to be asked to deal with him. With his high reputation, distinctive style, and large following, he occupied his own chosen ground, but insecurely, always on the watch for infringements. Ed felt obliged to listen to him, although one part of his mind was calculating how long one could do this without becoming insane, and everything they said was interrupted by snatches of taped music from the stage, where the cast were waiting to rehearse the carry. This music was disturbing in itself, being in fact Land of Hope and Glory played backwards, the Edwardian dream, as Ed saw it, in reverse.

‘What is it, William, what ails you, dear William?’

‘I just want to query the passage in Act Four where I, where King John hears of his mother’s death. The messenger has six lines there to tell me that my noble mother’s dead, her ears are stopt with dust, and all I say in reply is: “What! Mother dead!”’

‘Well –’

‘“What! Mother dead!” would seem inadequate, I think, even if said – and mothers must die there, as elsewhere – in Surbiton or Tonbridge.’

‘Surely you’ve got some more lines, William, some more to say at that point, some more lines there.’

‘You cut them yesterday’, said the assistant stage manager, from two rows back.

The greatest of actors would rather be cheated of a pound of flesh and blood than of even half of one of his lines; if he didn’t feel this, he would not be an actor. Moved by his principal’s anguish, Ed yielded, and restored all that he had removed. Beardless, with an irritating smile of Christian forgiveness, received the lines back from his director’s hands. Ed could now go ahead with the run-through for the new carry.

Shakespeare had slipped up badly, in Ed Voysey’s view, in leaving Arthur, the morsel of dead royalty, lying on the stage for over a hundred lines while various lords discussed what to do next. Better to cut everything, except the moment where Hubert enters and is wrongly accused of murder. Boney would have to draw his sword there in self-defence and the flash of light from the blade should tell all the better because he wouldn’t be wearing that conspicuous gold watch. Ed mentioned this as a kind of joke, to lighten the tension, or rather the lack of it, as Boney had emerged from the dressing-rooms only after being called twice, and looking drowsily amiable. But at the mention of his watch he stiffened.

‘I’ve never been on stage without it.’

All the cast looked as though Voysey, whether he had ever worked with Boney before or not, should have known this.

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