The Royal Family is invariably treated sympathetically and affectionately on stage, whatever the political hue of the playwright
IT may come as a relief that no one has revived it in time for the current celebrations, but there is actually a play in existence about a royal wedding. Prompted by the marriage in 1960 of Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones, it’s called The Blood of the Bambergs and was written in 1962 by John Osborne.
It lifts its plot from The Prisoner of Zenda and is based on the idea that, in a moment of crisis, an Australian photographer takes the place of the groom, for whom he is a dead ringer. Hardly one of Osborne’s best works, it’s a bilious attack on British royalty-worship and the only surprise is that it got staged at all.
At the time, all scripts, under an act instituted by Sir Robert Walpole in 1737, had to be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain for approval. The act was only repealed in September 1968, which will prompt discussion on its 50th anniversary this year.
One of the many powers granted to the Lord Chamberlain was to protect monarchs and living politicians from theatrical impersonation; it was only the common-sense intervention of George Vl that enabled plays about Queen Victoria to escape the censor’s blue pencil. If Osborne’s work got through the net, it was because the Lord Chamberlain’s reader grasped the potential absurdity of banning a ‘horrid play’ based on a once-popular novel.
What is striking now is the needless anxiety about portraying the Royal Family on stage. Far from being savagely satirised, they invariably emerge sympathetically. One reason, I suspect, is the recurrent fascination with the gulf between the ceremonial public figure and the private person.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May 16, 2018 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May 16, 2018 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds
