Nineteenth-Century Emo

I have had such a marvellous week of treats at the National Theatre. Not only was there an excellent excuse to put my slowly settling ideas about Frankenstein back into the blog (there is still so much to say!), but I enjoyed a quiet evening with Polly, my netbook, in the foyer cafe before the Q&A last night, pausing only to people watch during the interval of Hamlet, playing at the Lyttleton. But last Friday was the greatest treat: Keats, Shelley and Byron.


Early Friday evening was the Romantic Poets Platform with Josephine Hart, with reading by Damian Lewis (the ginger one), Dan Stevens (cousin what’shisname in Downton Abbey, and Edward Ferrars in the 2008 BBC Sense and Sensibility) and Harriet Walter (gorgeous voice for reading poetry). It was such a treat to hear poetry read so well in such a wonderful space (the Olivier) for only £3.50!

It was the perfect appetiser to the meal that followed: pierogi dumplings, Polish meatball accompanied by Tyskie beer at Mamuśka.

Among many highlights - the seduction scene of Don Juan, La Belle Dame sans Merci - the one the stayed with me longest, for the power of the imagery, the juxtaposition of some silliness into such serious subject matter and sheer mesmerism, was the Mask of Anarchy by Shelley. Hypocrisy riding on a crocodile may become part of my vocabulary of idioms (although it was Fraud who cried millstones, so that’s not the origin of the term ‘crodocile tears’). The triumphal entrance of Anarchy with his declaration: “I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW,” sends shivers up my spine. And then Hope enters the fray, fragile as smoke, but glorious. They could read only half of it (the session was only forty-five minutes long), but the audience was enthralled.

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