Next to Shaw, and Richard Burton, we have a rendition from the great Orson Welles. “Record Your Rime” coincided with Irish actress Fiona Shaw’s current dramatic interpretation of the poem at BAM, which the Financial Times calls “a riveting, virtuoso performance.” Coleridge’s poem has inspired its share of modern artists, from Fleetwood Mac to Iron Maiden, but, despite its inherently dramatic nature, few actors have taken it on as a theatrical piece. It is, after all, about an ancient mariner, a key point modernizing critics seemed to miss. Much of the poem’s charm comes from its strangeness. In subsequent editions, Coleridge would edit out some of the antique language, bowing to pressure from adherents of his friend and colleague William Wordsworth, who promised the world a people’s poetry in the preface to Coleridge and Wordsworth’s seminal Romantic collection Lyrical Ballads.Įven later editions of the poem appeared with marginal glosses that over-explained the text. Samuel Taylor Coleridge-poet, critic, opium addict-wrote his Rime of the Ancient Mariner in 1798, a time when long poems still began with a short synopsis called the “Argument.” I have always loved Coleridge’s weird poem, with its archaic language recalling medieval travel stories, and its globetrotting narrative reaching back to Odysseus and the recent tales of Captain Cook, and forward to the imperial age to come. Water, water, everywhere / Nor any drop to drink.
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