- Edition: King Leir
King Leir
- Introduction
- Texts of this edition
- Contextual materials
- Facsimiles
182King Leir, Scene 28
Cast
Mumford: Alon Nashman
Gallia: Paul Hopkins
Queen's Men Stage Directions (Sc. 28)
183Read about Queen's Men stage directions in Scene 26
For the SQM staging of this scene I completely missed the significance of "with a still march" (TLN 2464). My mistake was partly due to the fact that we did not have any actors available to represent the soldiers marching. The stage direction is informing us that the French army should creep onto the stage, maintaining the element of surprise until they rush off the stage to attack the town following Gallia's battle cry "God and our right for us!" (TLN 2475). It would have been strange to have the King of Gallia and Mumford stage the "still march" alone - in fact the scene was strange anyway without an army. The exit should have been accompanied with battle cries from the army that set off the "Alarum" with which the next scene begins. Although this sequence is divided into separate scenes marked by the exit of one group of characters and the entrance of another, on stage it plays out as an extended battle sequence with the action flowing from one scene into the next.
Read more about Queen's Men stage directions
Watch video of Scene 28 on the Performing the Queen's Men website. (The video footage is password protected. Click on "Cancel" in the pop-up window to obtain password.)