Posted Monday morning, October 16, 2017.
Deborah Kerr as Princess Flavia and Stewart Granger as Rassendyll masquerading as the missing king in the 1952 version of The Prisoner of Zenda.
Richard Wilbur’s gone. He was not one of my favorite poets, but I’ve enjoyed most everything by him I’ve read. Here’s one of his poems I always get a kick out of:
At the end a
"The Prisoner of Zenda,"
The King being out of danger,
Stewart Granger
(As Rudolph Rassendyll)
Must swallow a bitter pill
By renouncing his co-star,
Deborah Kerr.It would be poor behavia
In him and in Princess Flavia
Were they to put their own
Concerns before those of the Throne.
Deborah Kerr must wed
The King instead.Rassendyll turns to go.
Must it be so?
Why can’t they have their cake
And eat it, for heaven’s sake?
Please let them have it both ways,
The audience prays.
And yet it is hard to quarrel
With a plot so moral.One redeeming factor,
However, is that the actor
Who plays the once-dissolute King
(Who has learned through suffering
Not to drink or be mean
To his future Queen),
Far from being a stranger,
Is also Stewart Granger.--- “The Prisoner of Zenda” by Richard Wilbur.
Here's Wilbur’s New York Times obituary. And here’s his page at the Poetry Foundation. His Collected Poems is available at Amazon.
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