Prince John: “A knife! He's got a knife!”
Eleanor of Aquitaine: “Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It's 1183 and we're barbarians! How clear we make it. Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war: not history's forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breed wars. We carry it like syphilis inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten. For the love of God, can't we love one another just a little - that's how peace begins. We have so much to love each other for. We have such possibilities, my children. We could change the world.”--James Goldman, The Lion in Winter (1966)
Yes, that’s Katharine Hepburn in the accompanying image as Eleanor of Aquitaine, in the role that netted her a second Oscar trophy. But two years before it became a vehicle for her, on this date in 1966, The Lion in Winter premiered at Broadway’s Ambassador Theatre, with an actress two decades the junior of Kate the Great--the luminous Rosemary Harris--as the estranged spouse of King Henry II of England. (Robert Preston played the latter role onstage; Peter O’Toole would handle it onscreen, repeating the role that had earned him a nomination four years previously in Becket.)
I was fortunate enough to see Harris onstage in Edward Albee’s All Fall Down several years ago, in a production presented by the Roundabout Theatre Co. That same troupe mounted, in the winter of 1999, a revival of The Lion in Winter starring Stockard Channing and Laurence Fishburne.
Both the play and film (adapted by Goldman himself) feature a war of wills, wit and words between Eleanor and Henry, who has decided to let his wife out of prison for the Christmas season as he ponders an heir to the throne among their children. As the quote above indicates, there’s much in the script that actors would virtually kill for.
But even actors of enormous skill can’t hide the fact that this otherwise literate script is more than a little anachronistic. As the sons of Henry and Eleanor scheme against each other and their father for the throne, the tone becomes more than a little like one of those 20th-century Thanksgiving and Christmas family get-togethers. You know--the kind that usually climaxes with, “Mom (or Dad) always loved you best!”
Eleanor of Aquitaine: “Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It's 1183 and we're barbarians! How clear we make it. Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war: not history's forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breed wars. We carry it like syphilis inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten. For the love of God, can't we love one another just a little - that's how peace begins. We have so much to love each other for. We have such possibilities, my children. We could change the world.”--James Goldman, The Lion in Winter (1966)
Yes, that’s Katharine Hepburn in the accompanying image as Eleanor of Aquitaine, in the role that netted her a second Oscar trophy. But two years before it became a vehicle for her, on this date in 1966, The Lion in Winter premiered at Broadway’s Ambassador Theatre, with an actress two decades the junior of Kate the Great--the luminous Rosemary Harris--as the estranged spouse of King Henry II of England. (Robert Preston played the latter role onstage; Peter O’Toole would handle it onscreen, repeating the role that had earned him a nomination four years previously in Becket.)
I was fortunate enough to see Harris onstage in Edward Albee’s All Fall Down several years ago, in a production presented by the Roundabout Theatre Co. That same troupe mounted, in the winter of 1999, a revival of The Lion in Winter starring Stockard Channing and Laurence Fishburne.
Both the play and film (adapted by Goldman himself) feature a war of wills, wit and words between Eleanor and Henry, who has decided to let his wife out of prison for the Christmas season as he ponders an heir to the throne among their children. As the quote above indicates, there’s much in the script that actors would virtually kill for.
But even actors of enormous skill can’t hide the fact that this otherwise literate script is more than a little anachronistic. As the sons of Henry and Eleanor scheme against each other and their father for the throne, the tone becomes more than a little like one of those 20th-century Thanksgiving and Christmas family get-togethers. You know--the kind that usually climaxes with, “Mom (or Dad) always loved you best!”
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