View Single Post
Old 05-23-2011, 06:54 AM   #274
Anguirel
Byronic Brand
 
Anguirel's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: The 1590s
Posts: 2,825
Anguirel is a guest of Tom Bombadil.
In which the star-cross'd passion of Rumillo and Ķrildė is first laid before a discerning, and limited, public (Aldarion by name)

"I have to move fast and visit regularly to catch the newest scripts here," Aerwen explained to her new acquaintance, as they passed through the threshold of the establishment, under a hanging sign depicting an ibis.

"If they fall to obscurity, a few copies are bought up by collectors - among whom I have sometimes myself bidded - and the rest tend to be burnt. But if they catch any attention - either noble patronage, or the esteem of some city scholar or poet, or even become performed by some touring company - they are in danger of suppression by the Revels office if they get too successful; and in any case, Lindir of the Ibis doesn't like books that get too popular; he thinks it prejudices the tone of his merchandise..."

The shop was a great deal more extensive, and less comfortable, than it had looked from the Course outside. It was impossible to get a straight or diagonal view in any direction, so contorted were the L-shapes of its dustily clustered shelves; Aerwen looked tentatively in one direction in particular whence they saw a cold, absorbed man with a shaven pate, presumably the Lindir Aerwen had mentioned. But she took Aldarion off down another path, wriggling through the impromptu corridors with all a bookworm's hunger and facility.

"Of course, many of the best scripts - the back catalogue of the Swan Players, for example - have been performed already, and this presents a lesser problem; they already have a reputation, and a market, and sponsors to back them; you find them handsomely bound in folios with gilded edges. What I'm going to show you is a bit odder; a playwright whom, ah, rumour has it has been performed somewhere; but no one knows under quite what circumstances; ah, yes..."

They were immediately under a silver plaque that informed them Theatricals, L. Aerwen impatiently shifted the initial volume, the anonymous and long Lamentable Trago-History of the Laiquendi, obviously looking for something not far off from the start, and last settled on a small, dark quarto, neatly but unspectacularly bound in a blue that was almost but not quite black. Silver impressions on the spine read Lameleg, Beren, Arvedui part 1.

"Right author," Aerwen was muttering, half to herself, "wrong plays; rough prentice pieces only..." Her long white hand with its bitten nails whipped out a volume only a little bit further along, identical in appearance except that it read Lameleg, Beren, The Tragedy of Romillo and Ķrildė. She passed it to Aldarion with a gentle smile, open at this Prologue:

Two shipholds, alike in antiquity,
In Vinyalondė, where we lay our scene
From ancient to first mate in mutiny
Have risen, spilling blood and rum unclean:
From forth the bilges, midst these fatal crews
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their chance:
Whose misadventures and untimely news
Be interspersed with duelling and with dance.
The fearful passage of grim Anfalas
And the continuance of the boatswain's rage
Whom, but the vinous leaf, naught may relax,
Is now the bare hour's traffic in our page:
The which, if you (when wearied) yet forebear
To slumber on't, we'll venture good repair.


"Romance, pirates, and a fairly harmonious measure of versification," Aerwen murmured with an intonation between scepticism and admiration, "but my, the poetry has barely warmed up here...do flick on..."

Last edited by Anguirel; 05-24-2011 at 02:34 AM.
Anguirel is offline