Brilliant thriller. Ostensibly its about a production of MACBETH, and reflects Leibers theatrical background, but people who have read THE BIG TIME will recognize the characters and realize something far darker is going on, and the choice of MACBETH is highly appropriate. I cant say anything more without spoiling the ending. <p> This is a high quality book of the original classic edition. <p> This is a freshly published edition of this culturally important work, which is now, at last, again available to you. <p> Enjoy this classic work. These few paragraphs distill the contents and give you a quick look inside: <p>
Oh, I tell you the stuff in the costumery ranges over such a sweep of space and time that you sometimes get frightened [155]youll be whirled up and spun off just anywhere, so that you have to clutch at something very real to you to keep it from happening and to remind you where you really are-as I did now at the subway token on the thin gold chain around my neck (Siddys first gift to me that I can remember) and chanted very softly to myself, like a charm or a prayer, closing my eyes and squeezing the holes in the token: Columbus Circle, Times Square, Penn Station, Christopher Street....
<p> …Its always safe, always just in the theatre, just on the stage, no matter how far it seems to plunge and roam … and the best sort of therapy for a pot-holed mind like mine, with as many gray ruts and curves and gaps as its cerebrum, that cant remember one single thing before this last year in the dressing room and that cant ever push its shaking body out of that same motherly fatherly room, except to stand in the wings for a scene or two and watch the play until the fear gets too great and the urge to take just one peek at the audience gets too strong … and I remember what happened the two times I did peek, and I have to come scuttling back. <p>
…It skills not what: a fire, a tree a-failing, Davison or een Eyes Leicester tumbled with his horse, an assassins ball clipping the cold twigs [159]by my ear, a maid crying rape, a wild boar charging with dipping tusks, news of the Spaniard at Thames mouth or, more happily, a band of strolling actors setting forth some new comedy to charm the fancy or some great unheard-of tragedy to tear the heart-though that were somewhat much to hope for at this season and place, even if Southwark be close by.
<p> …I stood back from her, and really she looked so much like Elizabeth painted by Gheeraerts or on the Great Seal of Ireland or something-though the ash-colored plush dress trimmed in silver and the little silver-edge ruff and the black-silver tinsel-cloth cloak lined with white plush hanging behind her looked most like a winter riding costume-and her face was such a pale frozen mask of Elizabeths inward tortures, that I told myself, Oh, I got to talk to Siddy again, hes made some big mistake, the lardy old lackwit. <p> …But instead of dark kilts and that bronze-studded sweat-stained leather battle harness that lets him show off his beefy shoulders and the top half of his heavily furred chest-and which really does look great on Macbeth in the first act when he comes in straight from battle-but instead of that he was wearing, so help me, red tights cross-gartered with strips of gold-blue tinsel-cloth, a green doublet gold-trimmed and to top it a ruff, and he was trying to fit onto his front a bright silvered cuirass that would have looked just dandy maybe on one of the Popes Swiss Guards.
