Tuesday 24 April 2007

Current Favourite Stage Direction...

From John Lyly's The Woman in the Moon, probably written for a children's company c. 1590 and published 1597: ‘She playes the vixen with euery thing about her’.

Sadly, it doesn't mean that the newly-created Pandora has turned into a fox, though stranger things happen in Lyly's plays. Instead, she apparently takes out her anger -- induced, wouldn't you know, by the malign influence of Saturn -- on the frons scenae and any prop within reach. Further stellar SDs come later in the same scene, as she reacts sulkily and violently to the approaches of four unfortunate shepherds: She hits him on the lips ... She strikes his hand ... She thrusts her hands in her pocket ... She winkes and frownes’. Marvellous stuff -- it's easy to forget, amid discussions of Euphuism and allegorical representations of Elizabeth I, just how funny Lyly can be.

AND -- Pandora was once played by none other than Katharine Hepburn (there's a great picture in Leah Scragg's new Revels edition of The Woman in the Moon). UPDATE: Here's the picture, from Bryn Mawr's website:


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