Inside the Wall

April 19, 2012 | David Bendezou

Performed by David and Kenny, this piece, was inspired by Claudio’s imprisonment in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. In it, Claudio is afraid of the death sentence passed upon him and ruminates on death. Kenny wrote his piece in response to David’s choosing the Claudio soliloquy. The two were woven together for performance.

CLAUDIO : Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;

KENNY: What should one do while enclosed with three walls of steel?
As sunlight flickers across the front gate, one is reminded that there is life beyond the wall.

CLAUDIO: This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;

KENNY: Frozen by time in a youthful body as the soul grows old.
A Maturity seen through the catacomb of the mind.
Restricting the human nature within ones heart.

CLAUDIO: To be imprison’d in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world;

KENNY: Transfixed as if caught in a hurricane
While your living quarter represents its Eye.
The threat of pain is a constant reality.

CLAUDIO: or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and uncertain thought
Imagine howling: ’tis too horrible

KENNY: To lose the ability to choose
To lose the ones you love
To lose ones self in a distance from the world

CLAUDIO: The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.