Heavy rain all morning, so I sat in the window to catch the little light, and knitted on my kimono jacket while listening to the last disc of the Arkangel "Romeo and Juliet". I was rather indifferent to this version at first -- it isn't bad, by any means, but I thought Romeo (Joseph Fiennes) a bit too overwrought and Juliet (Maria Miles) oddly underwrought. Certainly there are difficulties inherent in presenting a play entirely through voices alone, and I've gotten used to the visuals of movies, such as most obviously the glorious "Romeo and Juliet" scenes in "Shakespeare in Love", with the nuances available to the actor and to the audience of glances and gestures. I had a bit of trouble adjusting to this for a while.
But the last scenes got to me, especially when her family finds Juliet (the last surviving of their children) apparently dead on her wedding morning -- "But one, poor one, one poor and loving child, / But one thing to rejoice and solace in, / And cruel Death hath catch'd it from my sight! ... O day! O day! O day! O hateful day!" The thunderstorm outside echoed around me and made the thunder in the recording wonderfully atmospheric. Romeo mourning over the supposedly dead Juliet had me in tears -- "Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath, / Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty" -- and Juliet kissing the newly-dead Romeo, the quiet agony of "Thy lips are warm!"
"For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo."
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