Naturally, I was ushered in to that... place, with these... people. I am in early tomorrow. It does not bear thinking about. It is slavery, however you dress it up.
In other news, I have now reached 852 lines of my play, Boadicea: Queen of the Iceni. I have written it in the same structure and style that Elizabethan playwrights and poets modelled their plays upon, in the classical style. That is, to say, “…five acts each divided by a chorus, …lengthy deliberative speeches, and …quick verbal exchanges…” (Winston, 2006, p.31 [Seneca in Early Elizabethan England]). I have excised several lines because they are unpatriotic (it is a lost section on the trustees of offshore trust funds, which echoes the misery that the very poorest members of our society bear the burden in terms of tax and red-tape, only to further profit the already filthy rich). These same lines will still be used, but in another play I have written, The Brothers Gracchi, a Roman play about the brothers, Tiberius and Sempronius Gracchus. This play has many parallels to today, but it is also a historical play. Yet such a 'rant' does not really fit in Boadicea: Queen of the Iceni which is a great British play, a patriotic play, commemorating the Platinum Jubilee. I thought to myself, "If I were reading this play, what might irk me, or seem to not fit?" I read it as its dedicatee may read it. I cannot have any part of this play which is not thoroughly British in character, even if it mainly draws upon historical and mythological aspects. Words cannot express just how useful studying both Latin and a master's degree in classical studies (even some Ancient Greek!) has been in writing this play. I expect, that like Christopher Marlowe's greatest magnum opus, I shall never see it performed in my lifetime, but that's okay. Marlowe and I have much in common (and as much at variance). Marlowe came 199th out of 233 students in the order of seniority of his first degree (Venn, 1910, pp.372–373 [Grace Book Δ, Containing the Records of the University of Cambridge, 1542–89]). Yet this does not mean, by any yardstick that Marlowe's contribution to the very best of English poetry and plays, and indeed as a magnificent Latin translator, has gone unnoticed, just as it was in his lifetime - to a certain extent. Marlowe (my personal hero) has achieved creative immortality, there is no reason to think that I cannot achieve the same, as well deserved.
This is the opening to Act 2, Scene 3 (of Boadicea: Queen of the Iceni):
Sable Ceberus, his serpentine maws,
guarded Hades’ bronze made faded jade doors.
Callizena threw honey cakes his way,
which, laced with languored venom made drowsy
the three headed hound during his vigil,
no sooner wolfed down, made the huge beast still.
Savage river Phlegethon meanders
and echoes its flaming waters splutter
fire, spitting molten comets in waves,
ripple where once Hippolytus had bathed,
Asclepius too, given life again.
A second stream, almost lifeless, laments,
its grave waters are filled with souls wailing.
Crossing the point of no return, Hermes
arrived to guide the live soul of the queen
to cross again the threshold in safety.
Upon the Styx’s waves cleaved a chariot
drawn by two hippocampi, Cloud and Storm,
the rider’s face, its usual lustre lacked,
his demeanour, as hers: downcast, forlorn.
The references used to pen such exalted verse are as follows:
Tibullus 1.3.71
Virgil, Aeneid 6.420-425, Georgics 3.37-38 and 4.478-479
Silius Italicus 13.564-565
Ovid, Metamorphoses 15.532-534
Seneca, Trojan Women 448-450.
Max.
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