The Queens

by Normand Chaurette, Linda Gaboriau (Translator)

London, 1483. From the aged Duchess of York, who is 99 years old and will never sit on the throne, to the young Lady Anne who will marry Richard III in order to reign, Chaurette traces the shifting passions and ambitions of six women drawn from Shakespeare’s theatre and portray them here in the timelessness of their quest. As Ernst Kantorowicz has said so clearly in The King’s Two Bodies , all royal personae exist in two the private world of their needs and desires; and the public world where they become the emblematic icon of the realm. It is on the ritualized ground between these two worlds where the human drama is seen most clearly in all of its comic and tragic, visceral and political, temporal and metaphysical astonishments. Yet this traditionally male ground has rarely been explored with women characters, and has even less frequently been presented in the context of the primal mystery it ultimately is―the vision of public majesty in the instant before the death of the private body.

The Queens , first published in an English translation by Coach House Press in 1992, is presented here in a new edition, containing the latest revisions by the author and the translator.

Cast of six women.

Genres: Plays, Fiction, Theatre

96 pages, Paperback

Published February 17, 1998

Reviews

[Marie-Sophie Péclard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pièce lue pour la préparation d'une interview de Zoé Reverdin qui monte la pièce au Grütli pour avril 2016. Inspiré par "Richard III" qu'il est en train de traduire, le québécois Chaurette imagine les reines de cette pièce plus d'autres personnage de Shakespeare. En donnant la parole aux femmes, c'est avant tout le pouvoir que Chaurette met en jeu car toutes l'ont eue et l'ont perdue ou rêvent de l'obtenir. De ce point de vue là, la pièce est très moderne car le pouvoir prend aujourd'hui énormément de place dans nos sociétés. Il y a chez ces femmes une détresse à tout tenter pour le garder alors qu'elles n'ont finalement que peu de prises sur les événements. Elles ont du d'une certaine manière renoncer à leur vie de femmes (maternité - reine Elizabeth, duchesse d'york, amour- Anne Dexter)

Thématiques intéressante mais la pièce reste difficile d'accès au premier abord, de par la complexité des liens qui lient les personnages, il est parfois difficile de s'y retrouver. Belle langue et jeux habiles des métaphores (climat et animaux) qui décrivent les sentiments des personnages.

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his 1991 verse play, Normand Chaurette looks at the women behind the action of Shakespeare's "Richard III." Although there is a sense of sisterhood here, however, this is far from a lesson in female empowerment. Rather, he matches his ongoing consideration of the inability to know anything with certainty with the psychological depths of Shakespeare's characterization. Is Margaret ally or enemy or some combination of both? Is Anne Richard willing, ambitious accomplice or a helpless victim? He even adds new characters -- Anne's sister, wife of Clarence, and Anne Dexter, who may or may not be Richard's sister. As with all his plays, the beauty is more in the contemplation of an unknowable universe than in finding solutions.