HAMLET TO HAMILTON
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      • 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
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S2 E2
Verse Drama Meets Opera:
John Dryden's
King Arthur, or The British Worthy
(1691)

"Hamlet to Hamilton" on Anchor.FM
S2 E2 Verse Drama Meets Opera: John Dryden's "THe British Worthy"
h2h_s2_e2_transcript.pdf
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Texts

King Arthur, or The British Worthy (Act I, Scene 2) by John Dryden (1691)

David Garrick's edits (1770) in Red

EMMELINE.           
O father, father, I am sure you’re here;
Because I see your voice.
 
ARTHUR.                 
No, thou mistak’st thy hearing for thy sight:
He’s gone, my Emmeline;
And I but stay to gaze on those air eyes,
Which cannot view the conquest they have made.
Oh star-like night, dark only to thyself,
But full of glory, as those lamps of heaven
That see not, when they shine.
 
EMMELINE.           
What is this heav’n, and stars, and night, and day,
To which you thus compare my eyes and me?
I understand you when you say you love:
For, when my father clasps my hand in his,
That’s cold, and I can feel it hard and wrinkled;
But when you grasp it, then I sign, and pant,
And something smarts and tickles to my heart.
 
ARTHUR.                 
Oh, artless love!  Where the soul moves the tongue.
And only nature speaks what nature thinks!
Had she but eyes!
 
EMMELINE.                                               
Just now you said I had.
I see ‘hem, I have two.
 
ARTHUR.                                                     
But neither see.
 
EMMELINE.           
I’m sure they hear you then:
What can your eyes do more?
 
ARTHUR.                                                                 
They view your beauties.
 
EMMELINE.           
Do not I see?  You have a face, like mine.
Two hands, and two round, pretty rising breasts,
That heave like mine.
 
ARTHUR.                                                     
But you describe a woman.

Nor is it sight, but touching with your hands.
 
EMMELINE.           
Then ‘tis my hand that sees, and that’s all one:
For is not seeing, touching with your eyes?
 
ARTHUR.                 
No, for I see at distance, where I touch not.
 
EMMELINE.           
If you can see so far, and yet not touch,
I fear you see my naked legs and feet
Quite through my clothes; pray do not see so well.
 
ARTHUR.                 
Fear not, sweet innocence;
I view the lovely features of your face;
Your lips’ carnation, your dark shaded eyebrows,
Black eyes and snow-white forehead: all the colours
That make your beauty and produce my love.
 
EMMELINE.           
Nay, then, you do not love on equal terms.
I love you dearly without these helps.
I cannot see your lips’ carnation,
Your shaded eyebrows, nor your milk-white eyes.
 
ARTHUR.                 
You still mistake.
 
EMMELINE.           
Indeed, I thought you had a nose and eyes,
And such a face as mine; have not men faces?
 
ARTHUR.                 
Oh, none like yours, so excellently fair.
 
EMMELINE.           
Then would I had no face; for I would be
 Just such a one as you.

 
ARTHUR.                 
Alas, ‘tis vain to instruct your innocence,
You have no notion of light or colours.
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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