Another day at Stratford, this time to see Christina, The Girl King, by Michael Marc Bouchard. Fascinating. I must read the play (translated from the French (Canadian) by Linda Gaboriau. I read the information about Queen Christina of Sweden but I'm having a little difficulty relating what I learned to the spin Bouchard has put on it. Apart from the historical accuracy (or in-), I'm also having trouble distinguishing between the writer's and the director's input, and also with the playwright's rule-bending. There are certain rules - well, maybe guidelines - for playwrights that it pays to observe in order to make things clear to the audience. Well, Bouchard has two different people addressing the audience, stretching the allowance for narrative speaker (a no-no, in any case, according to Robert McKee) and then the protagonist addresses an invisible person (not the audience, who is un-co-operative. Not great.

But the play, as I said, is fascinating, because of the subject. Bouchard has packed a lot of different issues into a two and a half hour play, some of them more thorny than others. I have to read the script and think. But the production is fine and the costumes splendid. Stratford continues to be a designer's theatre. I do wish the actress (Jenny Young) playing Queen Christina were more robust and less petite and adorable-looking.

Then I went to bed.

After all, tomorrow is another day.

I'm writing a chapter on Forgetting and I began to write about floaters, the gaffes that float up in the wee small hours of the morning that make getting back to sleep so difficult. I referred to a Huxley novel where I had first learned the term so I looked up Huxley etc. and found me from a blog dated July 11, 2013. And I was wrong. I said floater was in Point Counterpoint and it wasn't; it was in Those Barren Leaves with another mention in Chrome Yellow. Oh dear, that's how errors are perpetuated.

Anyway, I corrected my blog, didn't know how to correct it on the net. It's amazing, though, how things turn up. I'm not famous, not at all, but when I refer to someone who is, they find me. Fame by reference.

Anyway, I was thinking about forgetting and it's such a huge terrifying topic that I had to procrastinate a lot while I thought about it. Today, I will try to finish it - no - round it off. There is no conclusion, is there? We go on we go on, trailing wisps and bits of vague recollections. That makes me think of Wordsworth's line, "trailing clouds of immortality." I wonder if they'll quote me quoting him? Well, if they do, I had better get it right. So I looked it up. It's from the Ode, "Intimations of Immortality" from Early Childhood, and it's quite apt.

 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:

I guess it pays to be (a bit) forgetful.