Celia Copplestone
Art Neuendorffer
AYLI Act 2, Sc 4
CELIA I like this place. And willingly could waste my time in it.
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*Persona Grata,* (1954) by theater critic Kenneth Tynan:
<<People have compared [Orson Welles] to Thurber's Eliot Vereker, the
explosive intellectual whose trick it was to throw hard-boiled eggs into
electric fans, and who would loudly toss off aphorisms such as:
'Santayana? He's a ton of feathers', or: 'When you have said Proust was
sick, you have said everything'. Welles's opinions are equally sweeping,
but a trifle more amiable:
T. S. Eliot: 'What's the problem about *The Cocktail Party?*
It's a straight commercial play with a traditional comic climax
that Saki used and Evelyn Waugh used-surprising martyrdom
of well-bred lady in exotic surroundings.'
Shakespeare: 'I think Oxford wrote Shakespeare. If you don't agree,
there are some awfully funny coincidences to explain away. . . .'>>
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The Cocktail Party
http://www.enotes.com/cocktail-party/
<<T. S. Eliot is best known today as a poet, even though his production
in that area was relatively meager, he wrote less than four thousand
lines of poetry, but volumes of groundbreaking literary criticism and
seven plays Today, Murder in the Cathedral, his 1935 drama about the
murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1170, is probably his
best-known play and the one most often performed. During his lifetime,
though, Eliot achieved the most popular success with The Cocktail Party.
The play opened at the prestigious Edinburgh Festival in 1949, with Alec
Guiness in the role of Sir Henry Harcourt-Reilly. In America, it opened
on Broadway in January 1950 and ran for 325 performances, taking in
approximately one million dollars. It won the New York Drama Critics'
Award for 1950. Both the London and New York productions
were met with mixed reviews, particularly aimed at Eliot
for the play's similarities to his previous dramas.>>
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<<T. S. Eliot was at Princeton in 1948, working on the play One-Eye
Riley, which would eventually develop into The Cocktail Party, when he
received word that he had garnered that year's Nobel Prize for
literature. His literary reputation was built mainly on his proficiency
as a poet and a critical theorist, but in the later years of his life
most of Eliot's work was concentrated on writing drama
that would display his Christian sensibilities.
The Cocktail Party concerns a married couple, Edward and Lavinia
Chamberlayne, who are separated after five years of marriage. The first
and last acts of the play feature cocktail parties held at their home
where their marital problems are aggravated by the pressure of having to
keep up social appearances. Part satire of the traditional British
drawing-room comedy and part philosophical discourse on the nature of
human relations, the play, like many of Eliot's works, uses elements
that border on the ridiculous to raise audiences' awareness of the
isolation that is the human condition.
Eliot himself had to point out to friends and critics the subtle debt
that this play owes to Alcestis, by the Greek playwright Euripides
(480-406 B c). In the Greek tragedy, the title character sacrifices her
life for her husband, King Admetus of Thessaly, but is rescued from
Hades by Hercules. In Eliot's version, Lavinia is brought back by a
mysterious Unidentified Guest at the party, who turns out, in true
twentieth-century form, to be a psychiatrist whom Edward and Lavinia
both consult. They learn that their life together, though hollow and
superficial, is preferable to life apart; a lesson that is rejected by
the play's third main character, Edward's mistress, who, with the
psychiatrist's urging, sets out to experience a life of honesty &
uncertainty.
Many readers familiar with T. S Eliot's works do not realize that he was
American by birth. In fact, he came from an old New England family. His
grandfather, William Greenleaf Eliot, moved to St. Louis in the 1830s,
where he founded Washington University and was instrumental in the
opposition to slavery, decades before the issue was settled by the Civil
War. His father, Henry Ware Eliot, was a local businessman who worked
his way up to the presidency of the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company of St.
Louis His mother, Charlotte Stearns, was an author and a social crusader
credited with great social advances in the then-novel field of juvenile
justice. Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on
September 26, 1888.
When he was eighteen he entered Harvard, where his studies focused on
classical literature, which would influence the direction of his thought
throughout his lifetime. He graduated from Harvard with a master's
degree in 1910, then studied in Paris.>>
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The Cocktail Party: Summary
<< The first act of The Cocktail Party is the only one divided into three
separate scenes. The first scene opens on a party in the drawing room
of the Chamberlayne home in London with all of the play's major
characters-Edward, Julia, Ceha, Peter, Alex, and the Unidentified
Guest-present. There is witty bantering about people not present, making
this seem like many British drawing-room comedies. Lavinia Chamberlayne
is missing, and her husband, Edward, a lawyer, makes up a feeble excuse
for the absence of his wife, who has invited the guests. He tells them
that she has gone to visit an aunt in the country, but most of the party
guests are skeptical. They all leave except for the Unidentified Guest,
whom Edward asks to stay and talk with him. Edward tells the stranger
that Lavinia left him the day before, and that he tried to cancel the
party but could not reach the people who did attend.
Act 2 takes place in the consulting room of Sir Henry Harcourt-Reilly, a
psychiatrist; he is the Unidentified Guest of the previous act. He goes
over his instructions with his nurse, telling her to send in the first
patient, then to wait until he rings the buzzer three times before
sending in the second, then send the third patient in when the other two
have left. Before he starts seeing patients, Alex enters and says that
he was the one who arranged for Edward to see the doctor. He leaves by a
back door, then Edward enters. Edward immediately suspects, upon seeing
the familiar face, that this meeting and Harcourt-Reilly's presence at
the party were arranged by Lavinia. Harcourt-Reilly explains that there
is probably nothing wrong with him, psychologically, and that it would
not be worth being resentful because his marriage would have turned
out the same whether Harcourt-Reilly had interfered or not.
Edward wants to be put into a sanatorium.
Act 3 takes place in the same place as the first one, two years later.
Edward and Lavinia are preparing for another cocktail party. They act as
a thoroughly domestic couple, worrying about which guests will be
offended and whether the pictures on the walls are straight. Julia
arrives early, and is soon followed by Alex, who has been out of the
country, in an exotic island country called Kinkanja. Sir Henry
Harcourt-Reilly comes in. Peter arrives from Los Angeles, where he has
become a writer for a movie company. When he says that he came to
London to get Celia to do a screen test for his next movie, Alex breaks
the news that she is dead. She was working as a missionary in Kinkanja
when a plague broke out, and she stayed with the infected inhabitants
during a social uprising, only to be crucified and cannibalized.
Harcourt-Reilly expresses no surprise at the way that Celia died,
nor any sorrow that she met such a gruesome end.
He recites a poem about life and death.
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March 1616 poem "To Celia" - Ben Jonson
Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss within the cup,
And I'll not ask for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine;
But might I of Jove's nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.
I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honouring thee,
As giving it a hope that there
It could not withered be.
But thou thereon didst only breathe
And send'st it back to me:
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear
Not of itself, but thee.
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As You Like It Act 1, Scene 3
CELIA No, thy words are too precious to be cast away upon
curs; throw some of them at me; come, lame me with reasons.
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AS YOU LIKE IT Act 3, Scene 4
CELIA Yes; I think he is not a pick-purse nor a
horse-stealer, but for his VERity in love, I do
think him as concave as a coVERED goblet
or a worm-eaten nut.
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http://www.presser.com/pdqbach.html
http://www.sflc.org/concerts/programs/songsprogram.html
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000000ELT/classicalstudio/103-2276227-0823862
Liebeslieder [Lovesong] polkas: S. 2/4,
for mixed chorus and piano (5 hands);
Twelve quite heavenly songs : (arie proprio zodicale, S. 16),
for bargain counter tenor, basso blotto, & keyboards / P.D.Q. Bach
1. To His Coy Mistress Andrew Marvell; Adapted by P.D.Q. Bach
2. To the Virgin, to make Much of Time Herrick; Adapted by P.D.Q. Bach
3. The Passionate Shepherd to His Love Marlowe; Adapted by P.D.Q
4. Why so Pale and Wan, Fond Lover? Sir John Suckling
5. It Was a Lover and His Lass William Shakespeare
6. The Constant Lover Sir John Suckling
7. Song to Celia Ben Jonson; Adapted by P.D.Q. Bach
9. Farewell, Ungrateful Traitor John Dryden
10. Who is Sylvia? William Shakespeare, Adapted by P.D.Q. Bach
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As You Like It Act 1, Scene 3
ROSALIND I'll have no worse a name than Jove's own page;
And therefore look you call me Ganymede.
But what will you be call'd?
CELIA Something that hath a reference to my state
No longer Celia, but ALIENA.
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RO-SE D-ANIEL
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TOTHEON {L} I
EBEGETT {E} R
OFTHESE {I} N
SVINGSO {N} N
ETSMRWH {A} L
LHAPPINE S
SEANDTHA T
ETERNITI E
p(RO)mi(SE) {D} B
YOVREVER L
IVINGPOE T
WISHETHT H
EWELLWIS H
INGADVEN T
VRERINSE T
TINGFORT H
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As You Like It
Act 1, Scene 2
CELIA Or I, I PROMISE thee.
CELIA Sir, you have well deserved:
If you do keep your PROMISEs in love
But justly, as you have exceeded all PROMISE,
Your mistress shall be happy.
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Seven women in the canon of the Mass:
Agnes (purity),
Cecilia (married but continent),
Felicity (happiness) (married),
Perpetua (steadfastness)(married),
Agatha (goodness)(widowed),
Lucy (light) (virgin), and
Anastasia (resurrection) (probably married).
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Dryden's "Song for St. Cecilia's Day":
"From harmony, from heavenly harmony
This everlasting frame began;
From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The Diapason closing full in Man."
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Cecilia of Rome VM (RM)
(also known as Caecilia, Celia, Cecily)
http://users.erols.com/saintpat/ss/1122.htm
<<Cecilia is another of the problem saints, though greatly revered from
a very early time. Her name is even mentioned in the canon of the first
Eucharistic Prayer together with several other saints with questionable
elements in their stories.
First: "Cecilia, though wedded, according to Roman law, to a nobleman
by the name of Valerian, is always listed as a virgin, as well as a martyr,
because her husband respected her private vow to become the bride
of Christ and never exercised his marital rights" (Keyes).
Second: The Latin of first words of antiphon at Lauds on her feast day
are `cantantibus organis,' so since the 16th century she is depicted as
playing an organ and is the patron of church musicand musicians. But it
means music made in her heart to God at her wedding to Valerian, not
that she herself played her own wedding music on the organ. The image
is particularly anachronistic because she would not be playing the
pipe organ with which we are familiar but an instrument similar to a
calliope, which the early Christians would have associated with the
Roman circus and spectacles. Therefore, she would have been
more likely to trample such an instrument underfoot than to play it.
Third: She is commonly listed as a martyr,
but there is no evidence of her martyrdom in Rome.
Cecilia is not mentioned in the early Deposito Martyrum of the 4th
century, nor any of the early saints who were especially interested in
the martyrs (e.g., Saints Ambrose, Jerome, Damasus, and Prudentius). The
first mentioned of her name comes about the year 545 when the Passion of
Saint Cecilia was written. The author of her Life may be an African
refugee who came to Rome c. 488. He uses the argumentation of Augustine
and Tertullian that Saint Valerian and his brother Saint Tiburtius were
real martyrs, but Saint Cecilia is unconnected to them.
Even the date of her death is uncertain--estimated at anywhere between
177 to the fourth century, though the martyrdom of her supposed husband
(according to the Roman Martyrology) was under Emperor Alexander,
who ruled 222-35.
It is more likely that Saint Cecilia was the founder of parish church of
that name in the Trastevere section of Rome. Founders of churches were
often later turned into saints, not just in Rome. See Vie des Saints by
the monks of Abbaye Sainte-Marie for further details on this aspect.
Her name, that she founded a church, and that she was buried in the
cemetery of Saint Callixtus (donated to the Church by Cecilia) is all
that is really known about Saint Cecilia. Her tomb in the cemetery
was the prominent feature of a crypt adjoining the papal crypt
according to inscriptions found there.
Her unreliable story, constructed of legends, tells us that Saint
Cecilia was born of a patrician family in Rome and raised as a
Christian. She wore a coarse horsehair garment beneath her clothes of
rank, fasted, and vowed herself to God. Against her will she was married
by her father to a young, pagan patrician named Valerian. While everyone
sang and danced at their wedding, Cecilia sat apart, saying only the
Psalms. Valerian turned out to be a man of great understanding. On their
wedding night, she told Valerian, "I have an angel of God watching over
me. If you touch me in the way of marriage, he will be angry and you
will suffer. But if you respect my maidenhood,
he will love you as he loves me."
Valerian replied, "Show me this angel." She told him that if he believed
in the living and one true God and was baptized, he would see the angel.
Thus, she persuaded Valerian to respect her vow of virginity. He was
impressed and attracted by his wife's Christian graces, and so Valerian
was baptized by Pope Saint Urban (which would be c. 222-230). When
he returned to Cecilia, he found her standing by the side of an angel as
she promised. The angel told him: "I have a crown of flowers for each
of you. They have been sent from paradise as a sign of the life
you are both to lead. If you are faithful to God,
He will reward you with the everlasting perfumes of heaven."
The angel then crowned Cecilia with roses, and Valerian with a wreath of
lilies. The delightful fragrance of the flowers filled the whole house.
At this point Valerian's brother, Tiburtius, appeared. He, too, was
offered salvation if he would renounce false gods.
Cecilia converted him, and he was baptized.
From that time the two young men dedicated themselves to good works.
Because of their ardor in burying the bodies of martyred Christians,
they were arrested. The prefect Almachius told them that if they would
sacrifice to the gods, they could go free. They refused, and Valerian
rejoiced when he was handed over to be scourged. The prefect wanted to
give them another chance, but his assessor warned him that they would
simply use the interim to give away their possessions so that they
couldn't be confiscated. They were beheaded in Pagus Triopius,
four miles from Rome. With them was an officer named Maximus,
who had declared himself a Christian after witnessing their fortitude.
Cecilia buried the three and then decided to turn her home into a place
of worship. Her religion was discovered and she herself asked to refute
her faith. She converted those who were sent to convince her to
sacrifice to the gods. When Pope Urban visited her at home,
he baptized over 400 people.
In court, Almachius debated with her for some time. She was sentenced to
be suffocated to death in the bathroom of her own house. The furnace was
fed seven times its normal amount of fuel, but the steam and heat failed
to stifle her. A soldier sent to behead her struck at her neck three
times, and she was left dying on the floor. She lingered for three days,
during which time the Christians thronged to her side, and she formally
made over her house to Urban and committed her household to his care.
She was buried next to the papal crypt in the catacombs of Saint
Callixtus. In 817, Pope Saint Paschal I discovered her grave, which had
been concealed from the Lombard invader Aistulf in 756, and translated
her body to beneath the main altar of what was later called the titulus
Sanctae Caeciliae, which translates as "the church founded by a lady
named Cecilia." In 1599, during the renovation of the church, Cardinal
Sfondrati opened her tomb and found her holy remains incorrupt. Even
the green and gold of her rich robe had not been injured by time.
Thousands had the privilege of seeing her in her coffin, and many
have been blessed by miracles. The body disintegrated quickly
after meeting with the air.
Under the high altar in Saint Cecilia's Church is a beautiful marble
statue by Maderna portraying the "martyr" bathed in her own blood
as she fell after the stroke of the sword. A replica of this statue
occupies the the original resting place of the saint in the catacomb
of Callixtus. Other artists were allowed to paint pictures
of her after her tomb was opened.
Until the middle ages, Pope Saint Gregory had been the patron of music
and musicians, but when the Roman Academy of Music was established
in 1584, it was put under the protection of Saint Cecilia; thus, her
patronage of music originated. Dryden wrote a "Song for Saint
Cecilia Day" and Pope an "Ode for Music on Saint Cecilia Day."
Valerian, Tiburtius, and Maximus are historical characters; they were
Roman martyrs, buried in the cemetery of Praetextatus, but nothing else
is known of them. Their story as outlined above may is a fabrication;
but it wasn't until recently that scholars were able to elucidate it,
and from the 6th century onwards Saint Cecilia, virgin and martyr,
was held in high honor by Christians in the West. Her legend was
the basis for the Second Nun's Tale in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
Saint Cecilia's emblem is, of course, the organ in images dating after
the 15th century. She is shown with an organ, harp, or other musical
instrument. After she was depicted by Raphael as an organist, her
image has been a favorite subject for stained glass in the choir loft.
Saint Cecilia is the patroness of musicians and Albi cathedral.
Sometimes she is:
(1) crowned with roses carrying a palm;
(2) converting her husband, Saint Valerian;
(3) dragged by oxen (this is also told of Saint Lucy);
(4) in a cauldron;
(5) pierced through the throat by a sword
(a common attribute of many virgin martyrs);
(6) with Saint Valerian, crowned by angels; or
(7) shown in ways similar to Saint Dorothy
(Husenbeth quotes several English rood-screens
on which her attributes seem to be similar)
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<<Clodius, son of AEsop the tragedian, drew a pearl
from his ear of great value, melted it in a strong acid,
and drank to the health of Cecilia Metella. This story
is referred to by Valerius Maximus, Macrobius, and Pliny.>>
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Art Neuendorffer