One of my favorite moments -
Henry Kolker’s
mad scientist, Friar Lawrence, presenting Norma Shearer’s Juliet the vial of potion which will give her the appearance of death. The slightly (and surely, unintentionally) comic visual take provides texture for one of Shearer’s best moments when later she delivers the soliloquy which precedes her imbibing:
What if it be a poison which the Friar
Subtly hath ministered to have me dead,
Lest in this marriage he should be dishonored
Because he married me before to Romeo?
I fear it is. And yet methinks it should not,
For he hath still been tried a holy man.
How if, when I am laid into the tomb,
I wake before the time that Romeo
Come to redeem me? There’s a fearful point.
Shall I not then be stifled in the vault,
To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,
And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
Or, if I live, is it not very like
The horrible conceit of death and night,
Together with the terror of the place—
As in a vault, an ancient receptacle
Where for this many hundred years the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are packed;
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies fest’ring in his shroud; where, as they say,
At some hours in the night spirits resort—
Alack, alack, is it not like that I,
So early waking, what with loathsome smells,
And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad—
O, if I ⌜wake,⌝ shall I not be distraught,
Environèd with all these hideous fears,
And madly play with my forefathers’ joints,
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud,
And, in this rage, with some great kinsman’s bone,
As with a club, dash out my desp’rate brains?
O look, methinks I see my cousin’s ghost
Seeking out Romeo that did spit his body
Upon a rapier’s point! Stay, Tybalt, stay!
Romeo, Romeo, Romeo! Here’s drink. I drink to
thee.
Act 4, Scene 3, 25-60
The language is classic and very characteristic Shakespeare. Hamlet, a character written almost a decade later, might have even reasoned thus.
But Shearer handles it well. Her best moment, imo.
What lovely vitriol. I used to feel that way about Mel Gibson, especially back in '91, when he tackled Hamlet, of all roles. But now that I return to the catastrophe of that first cinema viewing of it I don't feel he's that bad. Love the supporting cast in the Zeffirelli treatment, however. If you haven't seen it you won't regret a once over. The biggest problem I have is with the play itself. Though I love passages, for me it isn't an especially compelling drama. YouTube has it streaming this month:
