This sounds great, Ken, & works well (until I recall Goneril & Regan in the play, & their (lack of) feeling for poor C). Will that be a problem throughout, I wonder. How well the poems fit a modern scenario, but crash into the actual (if remembered) play?
Doug
On Apr 11, 2014, at 4:07 PM, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> GONERIL'S VOICEMAIL TO CORDELIA IN FRANCE
>
> I'll make this fast, the cross-Channel rates are absurd.
> You know what happened, don't you? Or maybe not.
> He cursed me. Our father. Before my whole Court.
> He screamed and threw chairs around. He wished me
> sterility. Or thalidomide babies. I hate him.
>
> Now I understand, sweetheart, how what he said to you
> must've been like a knife. How did you endure it
> without throwing something or just hitting him?
> I think he's gone quite mad or just weak in the head.
> Something's wrong with him, no matter what it's called.
>
> How do you pack a King into skilled nursing, get him
> a Home Health Aide or someone who'll wipe his arse,
> someone who'll call him on his vile temper and viler mouth?
> Our sister won't even call him back now. She said
> she's had more than enough of his insults.
>
> A King. I see the kind of bloody King he was.
> Ride out like I did, on horseback with the Duke,
> look at the untended fields, the peasants drunk, slack jaws,
> copulating in the goddamn fields, they're far away from us,
> but they've run out of care, just sadness in this awful place.
>
> You did right, baby, you told him truth he did not want
> to hear and could not stand. Burgundy, fortune-hunter,
> all he wanted was your dowry. About you he cared not a bit.
> He got what he deserved. I hope he had a homebound boat ticket,
> because he'd otherwise have to dive in and swim.
>
> It's sad here now you're gone. You can't see it.
> Our father stand out in the snow, and curses his gods,
> snow falls in his white hair but changes nothing.
> You're missed by me and by Regan. And I hear through letters
> that you're with child? Be happier, sweet, than we were.
>
Douglas Barbour
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