HAMLET TO HAMILTON
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  • Episode Guide
    • Seasons >
      • Season One >
        • S1 E1: Defining Verse Drama
        • S1 E2: Content Dictates Form
        • S1 E3: Schwumpf, There It Is
        • S1 E4: Heresy!
        • S1 E5: So You Think You Know Scansion?
        • S1 E6: Whose Line (Ending) Is It Anyway?
        • S1 E7: What's My Line (Ending)?
        • S1 E8: First Folio and Emotive Formatting
        • S1 E9: The Rules of Emotive Formatting
        • S1 E10: Silences, Spacing, Stage Directions & Shared Lines
      • Season Two >
        • S2 E1: The Earliest Arthur: Thomas Hughes
        • S2 E2: Verse Drama Meets Opera: John Dryden
        • S2 E3: Burlesque and Verse Drama: Henry Fielding's "Tom Thumb"
        • S2 E4: Defenestrating Lancelot!
        • S2 E5: Empowering Guinevere
        • S2 E6: More Hovey, More Honey
        • S2 E7: Melodrama!
        • S2 E8: Gilbert and Sullivan Do King Arthur...Kinda
        • S2 E9: King Arthur and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Play
        • S2 E10: New Arthur, New Millennia
        • S2 E11: A Philosophical "King Arthur" by Lucy Nordberg
        • S2 E12: The First Folio in the 21st Century: Daniel James Roth's "The Tragedy of King Arthur"
        • S2 E13: Stage Violence and Verse: "The Table Round" & "The Siege Perilous" by Emily C. A. Snyder (2019)
      • Season Three >
        • S3 E1: So You Think You Know Soliloquies?
        • S3 E2: Redefining Verse Drama, Pt. 1 - Four Types of Verse
        • S3 E3: Deep Dive: Exploring Hamlet's Seven Soliloquies
        • S3 E4: Deep Dive: Exploring Macbeth's Soliloquies
        • S3 E5: The Villain Soliloquies: Richard III, Iago, Edmund Don John...and Petruchio?
        • S3 E6: "Madness" in Soliloquy:- Re-examining King Lear, Lady Macbeth and Ophelia
        • S3 15: Discovering Character Through Line Breaks - Part 3
    • Bonus Episodes >
      • Interviews >
        • Interview: Tim Carroll
        • Interview: Peter Oswald
        • Interview: Glyn Maxwell
        • Interview: Kasia Lech
        • Interview: Caeden Musser
        • Interview: Deb Victoroff
      • Round Tables >
        • Round Table of the Round Table: Lucy Nordberg, Daniel James Roth, Emily C. A. Snyder
        • Round Table: Daniel James Roth, Grace Bardsley, Benedetto Robinson
      • BAR(D) TALKS
      • Unhinged Rants
  • Additional Resources
    • Types of Verse >
      • What is Verse?
      • Prose vs. Poetry
    • Meter and Scansion >
      • What is Meter?
      • Rhythm and Prosody
      • Stressed and Unstressed Syllables
      • Prosody (Wikipedia)
    • Contemporary Verse Dramatists >
      • 18th Century
      • 19th Century
      • 20th Century
      • 21st Century
    • Timeline of Arthurian Verse Drama
  • Patreon
    • Fractured Atlas

S2 E1
The Earliest King Arthur:
Thomas Hughes'
The Misfortunes of Arthur
(1587)

"Hamlet to Hamilton" on Anchor.FM
S2 E1 The Earliest King Arthur: Thomas Hughes' "The MISFORTUNES of Arthur"
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The Misfortunes of Arthur (Act I, Scene 4) by Sir Thomas Hughes (1587)

MORDRED.                  
I see mine end draws on, I feel my plagues.

GUENEVERA.              
No plague for one ill-born to die as ill.

MORDRED.                  
O Queen! my sweet associate in this plunge
And desperate plight, behold, the time is come,
That either justifies our former faults,
Or shortly sets us free from every fear.

GUENEVERA.              
My fear is past, and wedlock love hath won.
Retire we thither yet, whence first we ought
Not to have stirr'd. Call back chaste faith again.
The way that leads to good is ne'er too late:
Who so repents is guiltless of his crimes.

MORDRED.                  
What means this course? Is Arthur's wedlock safe,
Or can he love, that hath just cause to hate?
That nothing else were to be fear'd:
Is most apparent, that he hates at home,
Whate'er he be whose fancy strays abroad.
Think, then, our love is not unknown to him,
Whereof what patience can be safely hop'd?
Nor love nor sovereignty can bear a peer.

GUENEVERA.              
Why dost thou still stir up my flames delay'd?
His strays and errors must not move my mind:
A law for private men binds not the king.
What, that I ought not to condemn my liege,
Nor can, thus guilty to mine own offence!
Where both have done amiss, both will relent:
He will forgive that needs must be forgiven.

MORDRED.                  
A likely thing, your faults must make you friends;
What sets you both at odds must join you both.
Think well, he casts already for revenge,
And how to plague us both. I know his law;
A judge severe to us, mild to himself.
What then avails you to return too late,
When you have passed too far? You feed vain hopes.

GUENEVERA.              
The further past, the more this fault is yours.
It served your turn t' usurp your father's crown:
His is the crime, whom crime stands most in stead.

MORDRED.                  
They that conspire in faults offend alike:
Crime makes them equal, whom it jointly stains.
If for my sake you then pertook my guilt,
You cannot guiltless seem: the crime was joint.

GUENEVERA.              
Well should she seem most guiltless unto thee,
Whate'er she be, that's guilty for thy sake.
The remnant of that sober mind, which thou
Had'st heretofore ne'er vanquish'd, yet resists.
Suppress, for shame, that impious mouth so taught,
And so much skill'd t' abuse the wedded bed.
Look back to former fates: Troy still had stood,
Had not her prince made light of wedlock's lore.
The vice that threw down Troy doth threat thy throne.
Take heed: there Mordred stands, whence Paris fell. (Exits.)

Examples of Writing Smooth & Fast Patter

Stephen Sondheim, Finishing the Hat, on writing "Not Getting Married" from Company

SONDHEIM. I wrote this song just before the show began its tryout in Boston and never had the chance to polish it properly. The patter sections may seem difficult to sing in one breath as they ought to be sung, but in fact, they’re calculated to alternate vowel and consonant sounds in such a way as to make them easy for the tongue, teeth, and breath to articulate.

SONG LYRICS.
Listen everybody, I'm afraid you didn't hear
Or do you want to see a crazy lady fall apart in front of you?
It isn't only Paul who would be ruining his life
You know, we'll both of us be losing our identities
I telephoned my analyst about it, and he said to see him Monday
But by Monday I'll be floating in the Hudson with the other garbage.

"Modern Major General" from The Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert & Sullivan


"Look at Me Now" by Chris Brown, ft. Lil Wayne, Busta Rhymes

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  • Home
    • Team
    • Turn to Flesh Productions
    • DM Me Podcast
  • Episode Guide
    • Seasons >
      • Season One >
        • S1 E1: Defining Verse Drama
        • S1 E2: Content Dictates Form
        • S1 E3: Schwumpf, There It Is
        • S1 E4: Heresy!
        • S1 E5: So You Think You Know Scansion?
        • S1 E6: Whose Line (Ending) Is It Anyway?
        • S1 E7: What's My Line (Ending)?
        • S1 E8: First Folio and Emotive Formatting
        • S1 E9: The Rules of Emotive Formatting
        • S1 E10: Silences, Spacing, Stage Directions & Shared Lines
      • Season Two >
        • S2 E1: The Earliest Arthur: Thomas Hughes
        • S2 E2: Verse Drama Meets Opera: John Dryden
        • S2 E3: Burlesque and Verse Drama: Henry Fielding's "Tom Thumb"
        • S2 E4: Defenestrating Lancelot!
        • S2 E5: Empowering Guinevere
        • S2 E6: More Hovey, More Honey
        • S2 E7: Melodrama!
        • S2 E8: Gilbert and Sullivan Do King Arthur...Kinda
        • S2 E9: King Arthur and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Play
        • S2 E10: New Arthur, New Millennia
        • S2 E11: A Philosophical "King Arthur" by Lucy Nordberg
        • S2 E12: The First Folio in the 21st Century: Daniel James Roth's "The Tragedy of King Arthur"
        • S2 E13: Stage Violence and Verse: "The Table Round" & "The Siege Perilous" by Emily C. A. Snyder (2019)
      • Season Three >
        • S3 E1: So You Think You Know Soliloquies?
        • S3 E2: Redefining Verse Drama, Pt. 1 - Four Types of Verse
        • S3 E3: Deep Dive: Exploring Hamlet's Seven Soliloquies
        • S3 E4: Deep Dive: Exploring Macbeth's Soliloquies
        • S3 E5: The Villain Soliloquies: Richard III, Iago, Edmund Don John...and Petruchio?
        • S3 E6: "Madness" in Soliloquy:- Re-examining King Lear, Lady Macbeth and Ophelia
        • S3 15: Discovering Character Through Line Breaks - Part 3
    • Bonus Episodes >
      • Interviews >
        • Interview: Tim Carroll
        • Interview: Peter Oswald
        • Interview: Glyn Maxwell
        • Interview: Kasia Lech
        • Interview: Caeden Musser
        • Interview: Deb Victoroff
      • Round Tables >
        • Round Table of the Round Table: Lucy Nordberg, Daniel James Roth, Emily C. A. Snyder
        • Round Table: Daniel James Roth, Grace Bardsley, Benedetto Robinson
      • BAR(D) TALKS
      • Unhinged Rants
  • Additional Resources
    • Types of Verse >
      • What is Verse?
      • Prose vs. Poetry
    • Meter and Scansion >
      • What is Meter?
      • Rhythm and Prosody
      • Stressed and Unstressed Syllables
      • Prosody (Wikipedia)
    • Contemporary Verse Dramatists >
      • 18th Century
      • 19th Century
      • 20th Century
      • 21st Century
    • Timeline of Arthurian Verse Drama
  • Patreon
    • Fractured Atlas