Word: lancelot
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...logical, more intellectual, more "grown-up." The nakedness of Arthurian events seems too simple, the characters sound naive. But the characters and events of Arthur's court are in fact as psychologically complex and possible as those of any novel. If they are considered simplistic, bare chains of events (Lancelot loves Gwenyver but she's married to his lord, Arthur), its's because modern readers and rewriters faced with the intricacy of Middle English have simplified the idiom to an extreme, ignored the subtleties in style and reduced the work to the lowest common denominator of its plot. In this...
Schwarz proffers a foreshortened view of Soviet history. Lancelot, professional savior, arrives in a town that has been under the rule of a dragon for the past 400 years, a dragon that demands yearly tribute in the shape of a maiden. Undaunted by the townspeople's desire for peace and quiet ("So long as he's here," one says, no other dragon would dare to touch us"), Lancelot challenges and kills the dragon. But Lancelot is severely wounded in the fight, and while he leaves the town for a year to heal his injuries the opportunistic mayor...
...historical parallels are obvious. Lenin's overthrow of the 400-year-old tsardom was not enough, Schwarz seems to say; he must come back again to erase the habit of servility from his people's souls. Only a Lancelot, he implies, can end the Russian people's submission to dictators who promise them peace and quiet...
...whole, the acting in The Dragon is excellent. Jonathan Epstein, as Lancelot, is properly virtuous, if a bit given to pregnant pauses between his lines. The only time the three-hour show really drags badly is during his pseudo-death scene, which lasts a long 15 minutes instead of five or ten. But perhaps that's how Lancelot should be: a little too virtuous to avoid those long and tedious soliloquies. It isn't easy, after all, to make completely believable a character who tells the maiden he has not seen in a year that he came back a month...
...J.F.K. and recent revelations [Dec. 29]: I had thought he was King Arthur in the Camelot analogy. It appears that he was Sir Lancelot all along...