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Lovestruck Worms: The Black Prince
| Article
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16739 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1989 |
2,276 Words |
| Author
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Herb Greer
Herb Greer is an American writer and playwright who lives in
Britain and on the Continent. |
Shakespeare remarked that men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love. Was he denying love as a cause of death, or as a stimulation for the appetite of worms? The fantasy of love-struck worms nibbling hungrily at a corpse might fit nicely into an Iris Murdoch novel or play: carrion instead of chocolate as a consolation for unrequited passion. That, at least, is the impression left by The Black Prince, performed at the Aldwych Theatre, London.
The play turns on a certain experience frequently referred to as love, but which in the real world is no such thing. I mention this in connection with Murdoch's play because--if the interviews published in the British press can be believed--she intends this work as both comment on and reflection of love in the real world. A long and exceedingly solemn article in The Guardian quotes her unambiguously: "Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality."
Murdoch, being a philosopher as well as a player of fictional games, must certainly be amused by the spectacle of her theater piece contradicting (not to say blowing away) her own categorical statement. Her story is not about love as a discovery of reality, but about how passion disguised as love can and does deny and, given enough force, change and destroy reality altogether.
Various Passions
That is what happens with The Black Prince. Condensed from one of her novels, it traces the effect of various passions on a number of people. At the center among them is a retired tax inspector, Bradley Pearson, who has literary aspirations; he is waiting for inspiration to write the perfect book. For this he claims to need the tranquility and solitude of a seaside house, but he is unable to get there throughout the first act because his acquaintances and an irritating ex-wife (Christine) keep getting in the way. A friend hits his wife over the head with a poker; afraid he has killed her, he appeals to Bradley for help. Fortunately she is alive. Bradley's neurotic sister arrives; she has left her husband and wants to stay with Bradley, until the husband pleads for her to return. To help things along, she attempts suicide. Bradley, aided by a doctor, saves her.
The marital quarrel with a poker took place between Rachel--a spiteful woman who tries to seduce the impotent Bradley--and her husband, Arnold, a best-selling author with a
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