The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips

Author:Arthur Phillips [Phillips, Arthur]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-679-60506-5
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-04-18T16:00:00+00:00

“That is not the same as the Harry-in-the-night stuff from Henry V. That’s him saying he’s not God’s chosen, and maybe no one is. That would make an audience queasy, or the Master of the Revels. And get a writer in some hot water, I would think. And be the end of a play: no more editions, no folio.”

She had a point and a semi-explanation for the play’s disappearance. From King John to Henry VIII and every king in between, Shakespeare’s audiences watched one after another variety of human and incompetent monarch walk in front of them and reveal his inner failings. Shakespeare let people see their kings as men, fallible, far enough from divine right that they should submit to man’s law. If Arthur was Shakespeare’s, then they saw this king go so far as to admit he was nothing special. It’s amazing the English managed to hold off from executing a real king of their own until 1649. (To this day, theater can still do that, provoke rebellion in subjects or phobia of rebellion in authorities. I was in a comedy revue in college that in one performance was particularly disrespectful to the administration. We were then blamed when some drunk took a dump in a dormitory elevator later that night, just as Shakespeare’s company was blamed for a coup attempt after putting on a play about a coup.)

“So?” Petra poked my side with her toe. “What are you going to do?” Dana was in the bathroom.

“What do you think I should do?”

“Me? Well, I think Shakespeare wrote it.” She ran her bare feet over Maria’s back, one beagle-thickness above my chest.

“Me, too.” I put my hands on her feet, held them on the dog.

“So there you go.” She smiled and held my eye.

There you go: accepting the play, believing in my father, and her feet and eyes not pulling away. Arthur, my father, and Petra: all three of them became credible at the same instant. Can you reset history, go back to where things broke down and “begin anew upon our proper path”? So that the decades that followed would change their essence, shed tragedy to become softly sentimental comedy?

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