dreamer_easy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dreamer_easy) wrote2004-11-18 10:17 am
dreamer_easy) wrote2004-11-18 10:17 am
Entry tags:
Licherachur
Now here is an example of where a screen adaptation makes itself useful in understanding the book. In the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice I'm just up to the bit where D'Arcy dances with Elizabeth and they trade barbs. This is Chapter 18 in the book, where we read:
Now this dialogue has been cut down a bit, naturally, for the small screen, but the words haven't been messed about with. What I had missed, in reading the dialogue for the first time, is that D'Arcy's remark This is no very striking resemblance of your own character, I am sure can be read both as a compliment and as an arch remark to match any of Elizabeth's. When I first read it I figured D'Arcy meant "No, you're not anti-social at all". In the TV version it comes across much more as "You never hold your tongue." (Another thing I hadn't really grasped from my first attack on the book, but which is clearer on screen, is that D'Arcy keeps trying to be nice to Elizabeth and keeps falling on his face.)
[This is D'Arcy] "Do you talk by rule then, while you are dancing?''
"Sometimes. One must speak a little, you know. It would look odd to be entirely silent for half an hour together, and yet for the advantage of some, conversation ought to be so arranged as that they may have the trouble of saying as little as as possible.''
"Are you consulting your own feelings in the present case, or do you imagine that you are gratifying mine?''
"Both,'' replied Elizabeth archly; "for I have always seen a great similarity in the turn of our minds. -- We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb.''
"This is no very striking resemblance of your own character, I am sure,'' said he. "How near it may be to mine, I cannot pretend to say. -- You think it a faithful portrait undoubtedly.''
"I must not decide on my own performance.''
Now this dialogue has been cut down a bit, naturally, for the small screen, but the words haven't been messed about with. What I had missed, in reading the dialogue for the first time, is that D'Arcy's remark This is no very striking resemblance of your own character, I am sure can be read both as a compliment and as an arch remark to match any of Elizabeth's. When I first read it I figured D'Arcy meant "No, you're not anti-social at all". In the TV version it comes across much more as "You never hold your tongue." (Another thing I hadn't really grasped from my first attack on the book, but which is clearer on screen, is that D'Arcy keeps trying to be nice to Elizabeth and keeps falling on his face.)
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
To think he used to write "Educating Marmalade". There's an old favorite I'd love to see again.