Theatre Thursdays

Welcome back to Theatre Thursdays. I was hoping to make it a few more weeks without using Shakespeare, but who are we kidding? He refuses to be shirked for too long, and three weeks is too long.

Ah, the Percy family. Gotta love 'em. They ended up on utterly the wrong side of history, yet they have the appeal of winners because they're so... zesty. Specifically, you gotta love Lady Percy, who really knows how to play what Tranny Head might call the green beans card. Her asshat husband has been ignoring her for two weeks straight while he gets up to some rebellious antics with her brother (not a euphemism). So not only is this gal not getting laid, which is basically her only power play in Renaissance England, she's also being kept out of all the fun civil war plans just because she has ovaries.

"Nuh-uh," is her take on that, "I'm a Mortimer [another feisty ancient family on the wrong side of the Wars of the Roses], and I won't take your shite. You are gonna tell me what's up, or else." So here, she butters him up but good by using the only weapon she has: green beans... and by surreptitiously calling him a little girly man for having bad dreams.

Oh, and later in the scene she threatens to break his dick off. This betty is pure pep.


LADY PERCY: O my good lord, why are you thus alone?
For what offense have I this fortnight been
A banished woman from my Harry's bed?
Tell me, sweet lord, what is't that takes from thee
Thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden sleep?
Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth,
And start so often when thou sit'st alone?
Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks
And given my treasures and my rights of thee
To thick-eyed musing and cursed melancholy?
In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watched,
And heard thee murmur tales of iron wars,
Speak terms of manage to thy bounding steed,
Cry 'Courage! to the field!' And thou hast talked
Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents,
Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets,
Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin,
Of prisoners' ransom, and of soldiers slain,
And all the currents of a heady fight.
Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war,
And thus hath so bestirred thee in thy sleep,
That beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow
Like bubbles in a late-disturbèd stream,
And in thy face strange motions have appeared,
Such as we see when men restrain their breath
On some great sudden hest. O, what portents are these?
Some heavy business hath my lord in hand,
And I must know it, else he loves me not.

Henry IV, part 1
Act II, scene iv