![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Knowst thou this paper?
I procured a copy of the 1983 Laurence Olivier King Lear today, for totally non-scholarly reasons. Don't read this bit. It's not actually about King Lear at all really. I tricked you in the spoiler notice. It's kind of about Nightingales. I got hold of this thing because it has Carter and Bell playing Edmund and Edgar and for no other purpose. Not that I don't rate King Lear on its own merits. But two episodes of Nightingales have Carter and Bell transmuting into Shakespearean villains, both of them basically being Edmund in the first one and in the second one, for no particularly sound reason, they take on the roles of Regan and Goneril. With Eric the Werewolf as Cordelia. Yes. My fandom does win.
So obviously getting hold of this copy of King Lear that is clearly Nightingales' most significant secondary text was fairly vital. And just... oh god, really. It was like Shakespeare wrote Nightingales fic for me. Well done, Shakespeare. Obviously it's a bit sad in that it sets Carter and Bell against one another (I'm not doing real names at all because that isn't the point) and Bell's more a sort of noble Shakespearean hero who goes mad and covers himself in mud and doesn't wear enough clothes, but it's fine. There is kissing. Twice. Brotherly forehead kissing, but still. I was never much interested in brother/brother slash till three days ago. I'm kind of getting it now. Well done LJ. Anyway. The first bit of kissing is treacherous, backstabbing, SILHOUETTED tricksy brotherly forehead kissing, and Carter has to stand on tiptoe. And the second is ironic tragic angsty bitter no-brother-of-mine type forehead kissing, just after Bell's run Carter through with his sword. There are lines that turn up later in Nightingales, like 'Knowst thou this paper?' and 'Mark but the penning of it', which I knew anyway but Carter's really saying them, and there are circlets that make sense of Carter's knotting his tie around his head, and Bell rides and then smiles at a horse, which, obviously, is quite hilarious in retrospect and there's talking-to-camera and illegitimacy angst and forehead kissing and oh it's just making me very happy really.
King Lear is basically very like a missing episode of Nightingales. That's my point.
So obviously getting hold of this copy of King Lear that is clearly Nightingales' most significant secondary text was fairly vital. And just... oh god, really. It was like Shakespeare wrote Nightingales fic for me. Well done, Shakespeare. Obviously it's a bit sad in that it sets Carter and Bell against one another (I'm not doing real names at all because that isn't the point) and Bell's more a sort of noble Shakespearean hero who goes mad and covers himself in mud and doesn't wear enough clothes, but it's fine. There is kissing. Twice. Brotherly forehead kissing, but still. I was never much interested in brother/brother slash till three days ago. I'm kind of getting it now. Well done LJ. Anyway. The first bit of kissing is treacherous, backstabbing, SILHOUETTED tricksy brotherly forehead kissing, and Carter has to stand on tiptoe. And the second is ironic tragic angsty bitter no-brother-of-mine type forehead kissing, just after Bell's run Carter through with his sword. There are lines that turn up later in Nightingales, like 'Knowst thou this paper?' and 'Mark but the penning of it', which I knew anyway but Carter's really saying them, and there are circlets that make sense of Carter's knotting his tie around his head, and Bell rides and then smiles at a horse, which, obviously, is quite hilarious in retrospect and there's talking-to-camera and illegitimacy angst and forehead kissing and oh it's just making me very happy really.
King Lear is basically very like a missing episode of Nightingales. That's my point.
no subject
no subject