| re: Guinevere - Likable | |
| Posted by: showtunetrivia 06:36 pm EDT 08/07/20 | |
| In reply to: re: Guinevere - Likable - Chromolume 02:48 pm EDT 08/07/20 | |
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| I agree. The scenes before this number have Lance being an insufferable prig. He outright says he’s perfect—physically, that is. He’s still working on the spiritual side (which is s nice bit, if you take it with his later admission that he loved Guenevere almost from the first moment they met, so he’s struggling with it even as he says that). She jibes back about working on his humility. So I think she’s not genuinely hoping he’s going to be sliced up (though his fellow knights might be), she wants him taken down a whole bunch of pegs. He’s egotistical, annoying, and he’s taken Arthur’s attention from her. There’s even one little passage where he says the medieval equivalent of “Oh, sire, let’s discuss this elsewhere, it’s not a matter for the little woman.” And it’s already established (in scene three, which I discuss below) that the King and Queen do work together. She’s got reasons to dislike him. It’s the deadly joust that rocks her to her core. The writer in me does want to raise a glass to AJL for one lovely bit of work I noticed while going through the libretto today. At the end of their first scene, she asks Arthur what would have happened if the arranged marriage didn’t come off. He says there would likely be a war. She, echoing the sentiments of her song, replies, “A war? How marvelous!” Scene Three is a few years later, and they are obviously a happy married couple. Arthur, with her help, comes up with the Round Table, etc. At the end of the scene, Arthur wonders if this will work, and admits “It’s folly...it’s infantile...” She interjects, “It’s marvelous!” So in our first two major scenes with Guenevere, she has progressed in three years with Arthur from thinking a war fought over her would be “marvelous” to thinking her spouse’s daring new plan to eliminate war and use “might for right” would be “marvelous.” That, ladies and gentlemen, is a skilled writer at work. Laura |
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