Word: madman
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...novel about Zululand in the form of a monologue by a homicidal maniac has the makings of a rather engaging talc. Unfortunately, when much of the story consists of "Chicken Every Sunday" family incidents, the musings of a madman are hardly the appropriate narrative device. Only the excellent and perceptive writing and the author's wide knowledge of the locale rescue the book fro the awkwardness of the plot...
...hammer boys behind stage to the stature of an expression of Nature; his "Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, and then no breath at all? over the corpse of Cordelia was pure pathos. In portraying the fall of Lear from king to disillusioned father, to madman, to dying, bereaved old man, Devlin combines the grandeur of the king and the weakness of the old man. He binds the magnificent curse of his miscreant daughter Generil ("Into her womb convey sterility"), and the moving vision of life in prison with Cordelia ("So we'll live and pray...
Because the play concerns three periods of time--the historical Henry IV, the past and present of the madman--plus the involved personal relationships of each, it is difficult to follow. One becomes further confused by the difficult of the play's idea. But at no time is the play dull. Mr. Keith, as Henry IV, acts with brilliant, sometimes incredible, imagination and control. At one point in the play, he held the audience's complete attention for at least fifteen minutes. The Brattle Company, no doubt inspired by working with such an actor, was in fine form. Bryant Halliday...
...appeared to be kissing each other on the inside of his mouth, [and a] neck half a yard long and uncommonly brown," goes clear out of his mind from reading tales of knight-errantry. Renaming himself Don Quixote, and his jag-jointed nag Rocinante (translation: formerly a hack), the madman enlists a local farmer, one Sancho Panza, as his squire. Breathing the name of his ladylove, Dulcinea del Toboso (in real life a husky farm girl named Aldonza Lorenzo that he has never said two words to), Don Quixote sets out in quest of adventures...
...This is the work of [a] magician!" cries the madman, and in that moment, almost before Cervantes appears to know it, Don Quixote's comical quest becomes also the serious search for what is real behind the appearances of this world. The search leads him, at the end of Part One, to a cage in which, like a wild animal, he is shipped home...