Sunday, May 2, 2010

Saved From The Skip!




My contribution to the "Save Mercutio"campaign currently been waged by followers of Such Tweet Sorrow: the Twitter version of Romeo and Juliet, produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company and Mudlark productions. Surely they cannot ignore the "evidence" presented here???!!!

The Observer: Sunday 2nd May 2010

Lost version of Romeo and Juliet
stuns academics and theatre world

Papers found in skip “no hoax” says expert



Saved from the skip: Shakespeare's "Lethal Joker" Mercutio. Photo: L.Lyon

A fabled lost revision of Romeo and Juliet, often referred to as the “Holy Grail” of Shakespearian scholarship, has been discovered during the insulation of a Birmingham pensioner’s loft, thus saving the fortunes of one of Shakespeare’s most popular but doomed characters. Mercutio, “The Lethal Joker” was a special favourite of Queen Elizabeth the First who, it is said, was so distraught, following the play’s first performance, that she penned a personal letter to the Bard, demanding script changes, on pain of death. In the orginal, Mercutio meets his death in a fight with rival Tybalt, punning to the last: “Ask for me tomorrow and you will find me a grave man”. In the revised text, he flees the scene, but not before making an aside to the audience: “Ask for me tomorrow and you will find me at Gravelly Hill”. He later returns, revealing himself to the Nurse, and declaring his passionate
love for her “ Buxome wenche, thye scoldes have stirred mye errant loynes”. His act of contrition wins Nurse’s heart and they consummate thier passion beside the bodies of the star-crossed lovers: an act that unites the warring Capulet and Montague families.

Following the news, directors, producers and writers from the Royal Shakespeare Company and Mudlark Productions are holding an emergency script revison meeting with actors from the Twitter version “Such Tweet Sorrow”. Ben Ashton, who plays Mercutio, commented: “I want a pay rise.”

Whilst academics and theatre directors assess the impact of the discovery, Jubilant residents of Gravelly Hill, a much maligned suburb of Birmingham, are celebrating an end to years of local speculation that Erdington was the orginal inspiration for Shakespeares’s “Verona”. Local resident Elsie Whitehouse commented “it stands to reason doesn’t it?
Why else is the Gravelly Hill Interchange known as ”Spaghetti Junction?"


Such Tweet Sorrow can be found HERE

2 comments:

Mary said...

This is a work of art in its own right.

Mercutio must live!

Seth said...

Just brilliant. More please!!