Waiting for Godot and Saint Joan

These were two marvelous evenings in the theater because both are wonderful plays. This was the third or fourth time I've seen Godot and each time, I feel I get more out of it. I catch more of what the characters are trying to say or trying to convey. This production was by the Druid company, of Galway, in Ireland. We almost saw them there last year as they were doing O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock, a classic that holds its value, too.

The actor playing Vladimir or Didi had a beautiful West-of-Ireland accent, and as all four of the principals spoke, I felt more and more of what Beckett was doing came across. Existentialism and l'absurde as well, but it's not as cold and analytical as this play is sometimes thought to be. You do get to see people acting on their impulses rather than thinking anything out, even as they have all the time in the world to do that, but they do not choose to.

Saint Joan, which Shaw wrote in 1923, only three years after the Catholic Church got around to canonizing Jeanne d'Arc, is one of his best-written plays. There is the usual Shavian talk but it is more to the point here and he devotes much of it to making you understand all of the different motivations that made it in almost everyone's interest to burn the future saint at the stake for heresy. Political necessity was regarded highly then by both the English and the French.

This was presented at the Folger by the Bedlam company out of New York. Four players covered all the 27 parts, and the actress playing Joan only played her. They were magnificent. The play came across in all its power--its "six scenes and an epilogue" which played for about 3 1/4 hours. I always love the epilogue where Joan gets to appear in Charles VII's dream, along with the other major characters. How they all flee or run for cover when she suggests, now taking account of her status as a saint, that she should return to earth as a living being.

"When will this beautiful green earth be ready to receive its saints? How long, O Lord, how long?" is her closing line. Saint Joan was the second play I ever saw, in the '50s on Broadway with Siobhan McKenna. My first play had been Julie Harris in The Lark, by Jean Anouilh, translated by Lillian Hellman, with Boris Karloff as the Archbishop, also a play about Joan of Arc. I might have been pardoned then for assuming that all dramas featured Joan of Arc.

The 23rd Psalm

	Psalm 23.  A Psalm of David.  The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;  He leadeth me beside the still waters.
	He restoreth my soul;  He guideth me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake.
	Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me. Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me.
	Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou hast anointed my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
	Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.  That is the 23rd Psalm as it appeared the copy of the Holy Scriptures, i.e., the Old Testament, when I was growing up. It is translated from the Masoretic text, and is very similar to the King James Version. It is absolutely beautiful and yet, you rarely get to hear it read aloud in this version. You will hear one or another so-called modern translations that might indeed be more accurate but are leaden and, frankly, awful. As Dwight MacDonald said in his review of the Revised Standard Version in The New Yorker (and later, the New English Bible) many years ago, they have taken the poetry out of it. He noted that the King James was produced at a time when English was a language in which some of the greatest poetry was written--viz., Shakespeare and Milton, just to name two. Moreover, think of how many titles of all kinds of books--novels and plays especially--have been taken from these words, and not from the currently published revisions. So every time I hear this great psalm read aloud or written, usually at funerals, unveilings, or memorial services, I cringe. The poetry is gone and no one seems to care. The officiants--be they Christian or Jewish--do not question the sorry text they are intoning. They do not notice that many in the congregation did grow up with the version based on the King James, and I suspect many find the new renditions as ugly as I do.  When you get a chance, tell your pastor about this and tell him or her that it matters. Some in the Jewish world might take umbrage at adhering to something labelled the King James Version. However, the editions handed out at every bar or bat mitzvah reflected use of the translation based on the Masoretic text--the only recognized or extant version of the Old Testament--and that text was translated then in a form--around the turn of the 20th Century, I believe--that was almost entirely the same as the King James. 'Tis a glorious thing, indeed.