Day 21 - Writer's Block, Day 2

Image by Incessant Flux via Flickr

Last night we watched Cinderella. And for the first time, I spent time observing the bit players instead of the usual ones. I paid attention to the king, his duke, even the prince, instead of Cinderella, her step-mother and step-sisters, even her fairy godmother.

I didn't recall, for example, that the king was so unhappy with his son's frittering away his time instead of looking for an appropriate wife. I didn't recall that the king gave his duke only one day to arrange the ball. And I didn't recall that Cinderella wasn't aware that the handsome man she danced with all night was the prince.

Watching the king reminded me of some ambassadors whose expectations of what can be done run right up against the boundary of the impossible. The duke reminded me of management officers who are usually the ones expected to pull off the near impossible.

The night before we watched Arthur, not the 1980's version with Dudley Moore, the later version with Russell Brand. Arthur's mother's disappointment in her son's activities and choices resonated in the king of Cinderella's statements about the prince's frittering away his time.

So it got me thinking about a play I saw in New York in 1968 by Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, a play written from the perspective of two minor characters in Hamlet. And I also started wondering just how the prince frittered away his time. In the Disney version, it is hard to imagine what he did - or didn't do - between becoming an adult and the ball. Those are ideas I'll explore later.