The Prince's Speech

I had one of those “the world is full of holes” experiences last night while at my fourth viewing of the movie “The King’s Speech.”  It was generated by my having gone completely fangirl over Colin Firth two months ago, after seeing this movie for the first time. 

Firth is an actor I hadn’t noticed much until “The King’s Speech” (not every female goes bonkers over “Pride and Prejudice” or “Bridget Jones”). Two factoids, one from a magazine article and one from a fansite, connected in my brain this time when Bertie, the Duke of York, finally plays that record he made in Lionel Logue’s studio … and hears himself speaking Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” speech without hesitation or flaw.

Factoid from article: Firth’s performance of “Hamlet” while studying at the Drama Centre “was the stuff of drama school legend.”  I can believe that.  Factoid from fansite:  Firth was set to finally, finally perform Hamlet professionally in 2001 for a new theater company headed by a former Director of the Drama Centre.  Then Firth had to withdraw because a film’s shooting schedule was moved up.  He wrote a very nice apology to the theater company and the ticketholders, but Lord, I can just imagine what life was like around his house for the next month or so. 

Now to “The King’s Speech.”  When the Bertie’s recitation of “To be or not to be” played on the gramophone, it struck me that this is the first time the public has heard Colin Firth speak those lines. 

The significance of this is that we, the movie audience, only heard Bertie’s reading – because there is no “Colin Firth Hamlet” shading our reception of the words.

Call me over-particular, but that was such a critical moment in the story, any tiny thing that could have prevented the audience from being wholly involved with Bertie would have warped the experience of the rest of the movie.  If a memory of seeing “Colin Firth’s Hamlet” had intruded, the performance would have been compromised.

(Sure, they could have used a different passage of Shakespeare, but it wouldn’t have fit the story, the characters, or the theme even half as well, would it?)

In YU I have Ross Lamos pause, astonished by a realization of the details and choices that led to him to stand in the Albert Jarro gallery holding a tray of exquisite, dangerous jades.   As Shakespeare said through Hamlet, “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends / rough-hew them how we will.”

Holes in the world open up, and it feels like we're being torn open, sometimes. But what future might be pouring in? We certainly can't know at the time.

I remember some great actor, maybe Albert Finney, years ago, playing Hamlet as being age fifty or past, with a production interpretation built around that.  Never say never, Mr. Firth!