public intimacies (1 theatre)
first of a series
Public intimacy 1 in the theatre From my seat at the front as I watch young Hamlet berate Gertrude, his mother, Ophelia, his love, Claudius, Polonius and Rosencrantz&Guildenstern, and all of existence, his, and theirs, then die, volleys of spit— vehemence, irony, airborne— all too visible and sparkling, continuously arc, crisscross, through spotlights and the proscenium. The fourth wall, cracked by a sea of troubles, is no shield from the rain.
The last three lines are what make this poem. Between the four walls one is the foundation that will hold or break it apart. Thank you!
I used to live in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the Swan Theatre, the first in the UK to recreate the Elizabethan jutting stage, I was often spat on in the front row. Swords sometimes felt uncomfortably close to eyes too.