Queen Mab's speech in Romeo and Juliet

Charles Gounod's opera Romeo and Juliet included a version of Shakespeare's Queen Mab speech. In the summer of 2020, the Met Opera Global summer camp created a marvellous writing prompt - what does the Queen Mab speech inspire you to create? Here's what I found.

When You Dream

When you dream, don't imagine

You're quite alone

Expect the Night Queen, in her starry wrap and gaunt face,

Swaying like cobwebs, dusty, shimmering

Over night-time lids and liquid skin,

And then you dream, of warm summers

And warm butter,

Of butterflies waltzing in creeks of light,

Perhaps of witches, hair sweeping and reaching

Towards the moon in ancient song.

Broomsticks and cat fur brushing your hands

Perhaps you see James Watson and Francis Crick

Walking by the rushes of another pond,

Daisies floating in the summer sun,

When those two dreamed, with eyes intent,

Of gypsy horns and twisted cells.

Sometimes it's anger behind your eyes,

Swirling and swelling in rhythms intense,

Soon to be cooled by the morning blues,

Blacks fading to rainbow, the gleaming dews.

Beware the Queen!

Since Life first was birthed,

She only changed,

So that we might dream in another dawn.

Comments

Opera and the Rhythms of Nature

You feel us when the sun is hidden in the daytime by the rain falling in drenching sheets. We are in the rocks that tower above your tiny winding road, in the convulsions of the deep earth that raze your cities, in the winds that howl around a lonely coast. I, the Earth provide the fuel that lights your Fire, yet poisons the Air. The Water in the seas is rising with the melting ice. All that we know is slowly disappearing, together with the giant bears that still haunt the ice under the lonely northern skies. A great storm is coming. And yet…. Ours are the rhythms that end all things, only to begin once more. You are with us when you meet with the Oneness. We are the five ‘elements’ conceived in ancient Hindu thought – Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Sky. Ours are the rhythms that brought life into being. Ours are the rhythms that pulse through opera, from Julie Taymor’s airy ‘Magic Flute’ to Rusalka’s watery home, to her eyes raised to the sky, singing to a radiant moon. To the fiery r

The Ghost Ship and the Wounded Bird: Lucia di Lammermoor

‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ got the young boys in the class of Met Opera educator, Dr Emily Saenz, singing ‘The Ghost Ship’ – a sea shanty by Don Besig and Nancy Price. Here is the refrain – ‘And the cold wind blew…..’. The winds that blew over Lammermoor were indeed cold on the forehead of Edgar, the Master of Ravenswood, protagonist of Sir Walter Scott’s novel ‘Bride of Lammermoor’. A dashing gentleman, Ravenswood, fierce, alone in the world, temporarily overshadowed by family misfortune, yet with all his life ahead of him. Time and the political fortunes have brought his old and noble family to its knees and Ravenswood swears vengeance on those who displaced them. Instead, he falls in love with Lucy, the daughter of his family’s enemy. Ravenswood now wants to reconcile, and the reader may fully expect him to be lucky, especially as the politics in London turn is his favour. Yet, this young man appears to be the ghost ship of that sea shanty, rudderless in the wild ocean. Where did those

Hansel and Gretel and a Walk in Calcutta

St James Church, Calcutta (PC Team Walk Calcutta Walk)) With our hemisphere hurrying towards the dark Solstice, family traditions around food are uppermost in everyone’s minds and the season brings with it Humperdinck’s opera ‘Hansel and Gretel’. The setting in the meagerly provisioned kitchen of the children’s family home, in the haunted woods with its dream feast and in the risky kitchen of the witch, blends seamlessly with our everyday lives of hunger, desire and hope. In Calcutta, where I live, two of my friends, Deep and Ayon, have thought up a new tradition of food around the Solstice. On the first Sunday of December this year, we were on a trail that was strongly reminiscent of Hansel and Gretel’s forest walk. Throughout the year, Ayon and Deep take their friends out to explore cultural and historical traditions in the city. Because they walk everywhere, their group is named ‘Walk Calcutta Walk’. This was our first time exploring old bakeries. And because it was close to C

Art Inspired by Opera

Search This Blog