Play

The past four years I have been blessed by the Abilene Shakespeare Festival, and so am filled with excitement and gratitude as I prepare to, once again, participate in a production with this company. I have been asked to serve as Assistant Dramaturge for the ASF production of Henry IV pt. 1 (a play I didn't know much about, so I've learned a lot! :) ).

Yesterday, as I was doing research, reading from Harold C. Goddard's "The Meaning of Shakespeare", I was blindsided and inspired by his commentary on the character of Falstaff. Falstaff can -- and has been -- described as both a gluttonous, irresponsible and cowardly hedonist and a life-loving, witty gradfather. Scholars and theatre artist alike have long asked the questions Wikipedia (yes, I'm using that website...) asks, "What makes portly Sir John so entertaining? How is it, when his actions would repulse many in both a modern and medieval context, we find ourselves so attracted to this lying tub of lard?"

Goddard takes a crack at what it is about Falstaff that attracts us to him and, in the process, arouses in me a desire to live more fully. I have hope that his words might also encourage others so here, copied from the pages of his first volume of "The Meaning of Shakespeare", is Goddard's inspirational commentary:

"Is there any activity of man that involves the same factors that we find present in this Falstaff: complete freedom, an all-consuming zest for life, and utter subjugation of facts to imagination, and an entire absence of moral responsibility? Obviously there is. That activity is play.

Except for that little item of moral responsibility, “play” expresses as nearly as one word can the highest conception of life we are capable of forming: life for its own sake, life as it looks in the morning to a boy with “no more behind/But such a day to-morrow as to-day,/And to be boy eternal,” life for the fun of it, as against life for what you can get out of it – or whom you can knock out of it. “Play” says what the word “peace” tries to say and doesn’t. “Play” brings down to the level of everyone’s understanding what “imagination” conveys to more sophisticated minds. For the element of imagination is indispensible to true play.

Play is not sport. The confusion of the two is a major tragedy of our time. A crowd of fifteen-year-old school-boys “playing” football on a back lot are indulging in sport. They are rarely playing. The one who is playing is the child of five, all alone, pretending that a dirty rag doll is the right mother of a dozen infants – invisible to the naked eye. Even boys playing war, if they are harmonious and happy, are conducting an experiment in peace.

Play is the erection of an illusion into a reality. It is not an escape from life. It is the realization of life in something like its fullness. What it is an escape from is the boredom and friction of existence. Like poetry, to which it is the prelude, it stands for converting or winning-over of facts on a basis of friendship, the dissolving of them in a spirit of love..."