Arthurian Traditions for Thursday

[godinakilt.livejournal.com]

There is a note on the door of the Celtic Studies classroom instructing students to go to the Danger Room Shop. Once there, they will see that it has been recreated into a verdant, rolling landscape. A castle perches on a distant hill (but it's only a model), overlooking an open, grassy area, where Camulus has greated a fairly impressive and quite tasteful throne at one edge, a much lesser chair beside it. He is lounging in godly fashion on said throne when the class arrives.

"It is time," he announces with relish. "Amuse your god. Present your play. You may have a few minutes to organise yourselves. I am told that the Danger Room Shop can accomodate any staging needs you have. Angel, I'll take your essay and you can come sit over here while we mock watch your classmates present."

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[notstakedyet.livejournal.com]

Angel handed his essay on women's roles, symbolic and literal, in Arthurian Tradition. He took a seat by Camulus. "Any popcorn?"

Cole and Phoebe's Play Part 1

[sensethevisions]

Phoebe and Cole, being the only other students in the class besides Angel since no one else ever seems to show up, programmed the Danger Shop to be a forest with a river, chirping birds, and deer...as well as two horses, upon which Cole and Phoebe, in costume, are mounted. They look nervous because OMG they forgot all about the assignment until just now.

A narrator comes to the front and starts reciting Tennyson's poem, Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere. As he speaks, Cole and Phoebe, obviously portraying Lancelot and Guinevere, perform the tryst inferred by the poem.


Like souls that balance joy and pain,
With tears and smiles from heaven again
The maiden Spring upon the plain
Came in a sunlit fall of rain.
In crystal vapor everywhere
Blue isles of heaven laugh'd between,
And far, in forest-deeps unseen,
The topmost elm-tree gather'd green
From draughts of balmy air.


A gentle rain appears in the Danger Room, but falls only on the portion of the room where Cole and Phoebe are playing out the poem.

Phoebe separates from Cole and urges her horse into a gentle walk through the forest and to a tree as she watches the rain. She sits on her horse, still as a statue.

Sometimes the linnet piped his song;
Sometimes the throstle whistled strong;
Sometimes the sparhawk, wheel'd along,
Hush'd all the groves from fear of wrong;
By grassy capes with fuller sound
In curves the yellowing river ran,
And drooping chestnut-buds began
To spread into the perfect fan,
Above the teeming ground.


As the rain stops, Cole lets his stallion strut around the area, acting every bit the famous knight as he preens and flexes his sword arm looks around in a very noble fashion.

Then, in the boyhood of the year,
Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere
Rode thro' the coverts of the deer,
With blissful treble ringing clear.
She seem'd a part of joyous Spring;
A gown of grass-green silk she wore,
Buckled with golden clasps before;
A light-green tuft of plumes she bore
Closed in a golden ring.


At this point, Cole and Phoebe come together in the center of the "stage" and walk along, leaning towards each other from their horses and portraying two lovers out for a secret and romantic ride.