Saturdays Are For Finishing Up Woefully Overdue Anthology Stories
Posted on September 15, 2012 Posted by John Scalzi 26 Comments
Which is what I did with my Saturday, anyway. Yours might have been different.
The story: Called “Muse of Fire” (yes, I know there was a Dan Simmons novella of the same name; no, it has no relation or resemblance to that; yes, it is vaguely related to the opening line of Henry V). Roughly 8,200 words, and best described as fantasy with a scientific bent to it. The anthology is forthcoming from Audible. Should be fun. More details later.
In the meantime, what the heck:
Wait! Derek Jacobi doesn’t stutter in real life?
Wow. Those actors are something else.
I keep waiting for him to twitch, stam…stam…stammer, and squeal “Poison is Queen! Poison is Queen! Poison is Queen!”
This is one of my favorite movie openings ever. Also Henry V is one of my favorite plays. And so any story title that references it, even vaguely, is going to have some of its awesome.
Also I love that this came up when I was in the middle of watching The Hollow Crown :)
I saw this movie in a theater when it was first released; it made me aware that there was much more to Shakespeare than the torture of Romeo & Juliet being forced upon me as a freshman. I’m hooked now, I go to the theater whenever I get the chance.
I think Bill Shakespeare has a career …
Cool. Hopefully there is a print version of the anthology at some point. No ding against Audible I just prefer to read stories rather than have them read to me.
This opening always gave me goosebumps, and like Rob G said, it’s one of the first things that made me realize there was more to Shakespeare.
Now that’s a prologue.
I love Shakespeare. I didn’t hate it in school when we had to read it, but I didn’t love it until I saw some good live productions. I am lucky to currently live in a place with an annual summer Shakespeare festival where they produce four plays each year, and all four plays run ALL SUMMER LONG.
I don’t think I’ve seen that movie version of Henry V though. If the rest of it is as good as the chorus, I think I’ll have to go find it.
Rhonda – It’s a fine film, best on the biggest screen you can beg, borrow … Here, another taste, that of a certain speech: http://youtu.be/OAvmLDkAgAM
I wrote a paper in undergrad re: the motivation of the stage Chorus and the movie Chorus. It was my impression that the theatre Chorus was apologizing and the movie Chorus was boasting.
See what I mean?
Derek Jacobi is the best Chorus EVER.
That movie also has a very good choral setting of “Non nobis”* at the end.
*”Non nobis, Domine, sed Nomine Tuo da gloriam.” (Not to us, Lord, but to Thy Name give glory.”)
O for an Edit button of fire!
I don’t have a big screen myself… but maybe I can use my parents TV next time I’m visiting them. That does look like it’s well done.
Now to find an actual physical movie rental type place which carries that particular movie. (I don’t rent movies nearly often enough to subscribe to a streaming thing, and blockbuster and rogers both disappeared in the past year.)
For those of you with Netflix Henry V is available there.
It’s a cliche, but yes, I would pay to watch Derek Jacobi read the phone book.
Of course, there are no phone books now, so I guess I’d have to pay to watch him read from whitepages.com or something.
Rhonda, maybe check your library. If it has DVDs, it might have Henry V. Worth a try.
Looks like my library has the Lawrence Olivier version of Henry V as its sole DVD version of that play.
I’ll track it down eventually.
You could just watch the Reduced Shakespeare Company do all the histories in three minutes.
Henry V: Act 1, Prologue
Henry V: Oh, for a muse of fire that would ascend.
The brightest heaven of invention!
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,.
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
<3 Derek Jacobi, and this is the reason I first fell in love with him.
Oh, man, the Kenny B Henry V is DEFINITIVE, gah such perfection.
Ah, the opening to my favorite movie, ever. <3
I so love Derek Jacobi. And I’m looking forward to hearing the finished story.
Since we are on the subject, if you are ever in Virginia, see a play here:
http://www.americanshakespearecenter.com/
Er, not really. I fear I never got over him playing Oedipus; not a part best suited to his talents. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t hack that particular part; many have tried and failed. The fact that he was conceited enough to try following in Olivier’s footsteps in doing the double bill with The Critic signified his massively out of control ego. For that matter it still is; Jacobi belongs to the subset of good actors who realise that they couldn’t possibly write Shakespeare’s plays and conclude from this that Shakespeare couldn’t have done so either.
It was, however, exceedingly funny; the actress playing Jocasta was statuesque and Jacobi is small so whenever they embraced, and they embraced a lot, Oedipus would vanish from sight…
That is just awsome. Correct me if I am wrong, but that looks like it is all one take from the match strike to the end. I wonded how many times they had to do it to get it right – how many times the match fizzled.