We’re playing the Fools:
Acting the things we’re really Feeling!²
The poor player Struts & Frets their hour
Upon the stage and then is heard no more …³
Is it better to prevent a Repetition
Of so much Suffering—
And Quit the Stage?⁴
Acting is to the Actor,
And Not to the Audience.⁵
They who assume a Character
That does not belong to them—
Betray themselves by Overacting it!⁶
We compensate underplaying onstage—
By Overplaying Reality …⁷
Tragedy’s most important act is the Sixth:
The raising of the dead from the stage’s battlegrounds—
The straightening of wigs & fancy gowns—
The removal of knives from stricken breasts—
The taking of nooses from lifeless necks—and
Lining up among the Living to face the Audience.⁸
Drama’s vitallest expression is the Common Day!⁹
Our struggles are the reverse of the actor’s:
We seek not to enter, but to escape, a Part …¹⁰
¹ Franz Kafka tr. John Williams, The Trial
² Agatha Christie, N or M?
³ William Shakespeare, Macbeth
⁴ Hermann Hesse tr. Basil Creighton, Steppenwolf
⁵ Walt Whitman, A Song of the Rolling Earth
⁶ Aesop tr. Thomas James, The Ass in the Lion’s Den
⁷ Joseph L. Mankiewicz, All About Eve
⁸ Wisława Szymborska tr. Barańczak & Cavanagh, Theatre Impressions
⁹ Emily Dickinson, Drama’s Vitallest Expression
¹⁰ Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things