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Lovestruck Worms: The Black Prince
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16739 |
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THE ARTS
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| Issue
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9 / 1989 |
2,276 Words |
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Herb Greer
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Shakespeare remarked that men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love. Was he denying love as a cause of death, or as a stimulation for the appetite of worms? The fantasy of love-struck worms nibbling hungrily at a corpse might fit nicely into an Iris Murdoch novel or play: carrion instead of chocolate as a consolation for unrequited passion. That, at least, is the impression left by The Black Prince, performed at the Aldwych Theatre, London.
The play turns on a certain experience frequently referred to as love, but which in the real world is no such thing. I mention this in connection with Murdoch's play because--if the interviews published in the British press can be believed--she intends this work as both comment on and reflection of love in the real world. A long and exceedingly solemn article in The Guardian quotes her unambiguously: "Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality."
Murdoch, being a philosopher as well as a player of fictional games, must certainly be amused by the spectacle of her theater piece contradicting (not to say blowing away) her own categorical statement. Her story is not about love as a discovery of reality, but about how passion disguised as love can and does deny and, given enough force, change and destroy reality altogether.
Various Passions
That is what happens with The Black Prince. Condensed from one of her novels, it traces the effect of various passions on a number of people. At the center among them is a retired tax inspector, Bradley Pearson, who has literary aspirations; he is waiting for inspiration to write the perfect book. For this he claims to need the tranquility and solitude of a seaside house, but he is unable to get there throughout the first act because his acquaintances and an irritating ex-wife (Christine) keep getting in the way. A friend hits his wife over the head with a poker; afraid he has killed her, he appeals to Bradley for help. Fortunately she is alive. Bradley's neurotic sister arrives; she has left her husband and wants to stay with Bradley, until the husband pleads for her to return. To help things along, she attempts suicide. Bradley, aided by a doctor, saves her.
The marital quarrel with a poker took place between Rachel--a spiteful woman who tries to seduce the impotent Bradley--and her husband, Arnold, a best-selling author with a wandering eye. These people have a beautiful and nubile daughter, oddly named Julian, who also is very attracted to Bradley. She more or less seduces him into an affair, during which both of them eventually talk wildly of marriage. He resists for a while, only to collapse into a foolish, passionate dependence on her. The audience is expected to accept this as love.
In the second act, the two of them have a brief idyll in Bradley's seaside house. It is broken up by a number of traumatic events. A phone call informs Bradley that his sister has finally succeeded in killing herself, but he decides not to deal with the funeral. Instead he hangs up and goes to bed with the beautiful Julian, who has dressed as Hamlet to stimulate him. He has tried this once before, only to prove impotent. This masquerade, plus the decision to be selfish and ignore his sister's death, enables him to overcome
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