From: LouisFors@aol.com
Message-Id: <95b47a7.34e51540@aol.com>
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 1998 22:53:34 EST
To: emweb@fmgmt.mgmt.utoronto.ca
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Subject: Belle of Amherst
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I'm curious about how emwebbers (scholars of ED, and lovers of ED, like me)
react to Belle of Amherst, the play--one woman show.  I saw it twice Broadway
and then
got the video which I watched several times and finally lent it to somebody
who liberated it.  Recently I have come to wonder how, if at all, the play is
used in
schools and colleges, and whether it presents a good opening for further study
or
whether teachers avoid it because of the diluted impression it gives of both
ED as a person and of her poetry.  

Do teachers use The Belle of Amherst today, and, if so, how does it work as a
motivator?  Is the play presented on stage in high schools or colleges today?
And, finally, how is the work regarded by serious students of ED ? (I might
similarly ask of music teachers how Amaedus is regarded among Mozart scholars;
they seem to me to be similar cases.)

A tangential  footnote.  Before writing this post I checked in at Amazon, the
online bookstore (www.amazon.com), just to see if they had Belle of Amherst.
They did, both the written play, and the Julie Harris video.  But they also
had a boxed two video set, one The Belle of Amherst (artist not listed), the
other simply described as Paul Robeson (performance not noted).  No further
information was give about this tandem, so I'm pondering a reason for the
joining.  I've seldom seen a stranger coupling, expert perhaps for the time as
a youth when I read in a magazine about a combination fish skinner and shoe
shiner. That image lingers.

Louis Forsdale