Customer Reviews

The Lion in Winter: A Play

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This play about the famously disfunctional family of England's Henry II is perhaps the most devestating family drama this side of "Long Day's Journey into Night".

For those who want a real epic, it can - but doesn't have to - be read as a sequel to Jean Anoilh's "Becket". Personally I found that this adds to the tragedy.

It opens during a fictional family Christmas get together that is combined with a historical meeting between Henry and France's young King Phillip. Henry's persistent humiliation of his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, through his string of mistresses has prompted her to hurt him in the only way available to her - by systematically destroying his relationships with their sons. Now Henry - although not old yet - is no longer a young man. The fact that a potentially dangerous Phillip - who has a legitimate axe to grind with Henry - is no longer a child forces them to realize that their familial intrigues have set their boys up for both internal and external disaster upon Henry's death. They make a real effort to save both their shattered marriage and their shattered children, but it may already be too late ...

The main tragedy, of course, is what Henry and Eleanor have done to their children. Richard is admirably brave but has had much of his compassion beaten out of him and replaced with brutality. Geoffrey's great sense of humor has been blasted in the bud, and his fustrated capability of love makes a weapon of an intelligence that would have been an asset to anyone who would have shown him the slightest affection in return (it's worth noting for those who don't know the family's subsequent history that given the condensed time of the play, Geoffrey would presumably have died in a fatal tournament accident soon after the action of the play - making him even more poignant). John, the youngest son of Robin Hood fame, is somewhat mishandled - his failure had much to do with Richard's prior mismanagement and lousy historical timing rather than his own faults, and the ruthless streak that doomed Geoffrey's son Arthur (who isn't in the play) as well as his general competence in many instances (he would later rescue Eleanor from a siege in a manner that would have done Richard proud) doesn't really come across - but in an otherwise excellent play Goldman can be forgiven for bowing to popular opinion in one case.

An accurate depiction of the dynamics of the Plantagenet family, "The Lion in Winter" is also a timeless study of what constitutes a healthy family.

King Henry the Second releashes his jailed wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, for the Xmas holidays. The two come together with their three sons, the King's mistress and her brother, Philip of France, to discuss the succession to the throne, the marriage of the mistress to the King's successor and the annexation of a rich French province to the English Crown. The thrill of the play is entirely in the words - marvellous in their scope and cutting in their execution. Scenes of sex or violence would have been superfluous - the verbal assassinations, particularly between the King and his estranged queen, take you to the grit of life itself. Do yourself a favour and rent the video - Katherine Hepburn and Peter O"Toole, and a very young Anthony Hopkins as the sexually confused Richard the Lion Heart, make for incredibly fine viewing. My all-time favourite play.

The Lion in Winter is by far my favorite play. It is jammed packed full of dry humor and funny lines. Every person that I have introduced to the Lion in Winter has also loved it, so buy your copy today! "I know, I know you know, I know you know I know, we know Henry knows, and Henry knows we know it. We're a knowledgeable family."

I just bought a new copy of this play and I am so very, very happy that I did. I dashed through it and then reread my favorite parts. I hadn't read it in many years, but my respect has really grown for the playwright's wit and imagination. What an absolutely wonderful play. Of course, I love the film, but it was great fun to see how the play moves rapidly and the dialog is so biting and bitter at times. I agree with all the reviewers. Buy this play because it is a classic play with ripping dialog.

I just spent my 9th year seeing plays at the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City and we saw this play there. It was WONDERFUL! It was extremely funny and also a little sad. It gave new meaning to the phrase "disfunctional family". I can't wait to rent the movie...I love Hepburn.

I very much enjoy Lion in Winter and wanted to read the play for myself; I found it to be a complex delight, telling a tale of family strife, of love lost and sought, of relationships sundered, fixed, and sundered again - all in the late-12th century England of Henry Plantagenet. At only 103 pages, it is a brisk read (I read it in about 90 minutes) but in those pages is a host of wonderfully wrought language, excellent quips and postmodern fun; the play is a classic, by turns witty, humorous, and heartbreaking.

The reason I gave Lion in Winter three stars, therefore, is not because there is anything wrong with the play, but because of this particular edition of it. Random House, unfortunately, saw fit to print this book on very flimsy paper stock (flimsier than the run-of-the-mill paperback stock you see), and the cover is little better. I'm rather concerned that this book is going to deteriorate long before its time - it is very flimsy and floppy, and not quite worth the price I paid for it. If you have a desire to read Lion in Winter, I recommend you seek out a sturdier edition of the play to enjoy.

I have to say Iam in love with this book. I know every line by heart. I saw the movie frist. Also a A+++++ movie. I don't know, something about it.It somehow just gets under your skin. Anyone who loves history. Or just just great works of writing should have this little book.

The picture on the cover of this edition is just WRONG! It bears no relation to the play at all. Publishers, what on earth were you thinking?

The Lion in Winter was written by James Goodman in 1966 as a play that was later made into a film starring Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn as Henry and Eleanor.

Henry is Henry II the first Plantagenet King. Eleanor, Eleanor of Aquitaine, his queen who was before queen of France when she married Louis, the French king at age fifteen. Her first marriage was annulled when, at twenty-seven, she left her boorish husband for an eighteen year old boy who only three years later became king of England by the sword.

In 1183 when the play takes place, Henry is fifty years old, "an age at which in this time," the author reminds us, "men were either old or dead." Henry may be 50 but he is either. He is in love once more and, for the first time, he wants peace.

Alas, this love will bring him no peace as the lady he loves is Alais, half sister to Philip, the young French king. Alais was brought to Henry's court sixteen years ago, when she was a child ("You were seven," Henry tells her. "Two big knees and two big eyes and that's all.") as the future bride to Henry's son Richard. The marriage never happened, and now Philip has come to see Henry and ask of him either the marriage or the dowry, a piece of land North of Paris of strategic significance.

But Henry fights his demands. He has survived too many battles to give in now. Among them, the one his own sons staged against him encouraged by Eleanor who wanted revenge on her husband for falling in love with Rosemund. Now Rosemund is long dead and Eleanor has spent the last ten years a prisoner in one of their castles. Allowed to join the court this Christmas, she once again will plot against Henry, as will their sons to get the king's favor and be the next king.

"You can't all three be king," Henry tells them.

"All three of us can try," Richard says.

And as they try alliances are made and broken, and words fly like arrows, barbed arrows of steel and fire, in this powerful play about a king, a lion indeed, still undefeated, facing his winter.

If you thought dysfunctional families was a thing of our times, this delicious play will prove you wrong.

If you have ever seen the movie with Hepburn and O'Toole, you want this play! It is great to read this and picture the actors as you do. Eleanor is a role I would love to play. I have read a lot of history of this time period as well as many novels about this time period, and, while Goldman doesn't have the history exactly right, he has caught the flavor of the love between the protagonists. Eleanor and Henry were larger than life when they lived and they still are.