Morcar was never Earl of Mercia, and, unusually for the period, Edith of Wessex, Queen Consort of Edward the Confessor, was indeed crowned. But the plot of King and Conqueror requires otherwise on both points. Would that the dialogue were equally reminiscent of Shakespeare.
For example, most of the French have never heard of Agincourt, famous in the English-speaking world because of Shakespeare’s Henry V, which was written 184 years after the event and for reasons of its own. Being a history play does not make a play history. What the French know about the Hundred Years' War is that they won it. The King of England is not also King of France.
And those of you complaining about the colour-blind casting in King and Conqueror, while one does sometimes suspect that that is being done to goad you, do you refuse to watch any production of anything written in English before 1660 if the female roles are played by women?
What do you think of the moustaches?
ReplyDeleteIt makes it possible to tell the men from the women, but in which order? Like today, in fact.
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