On Katharine Hepburn's Performance In Mary Of Scotland (1936)a Tribute Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

perhaps she was Duse, even then


budding into the role of a young queen or trying to

who would have noticed then a few from the Old School


when everything relied on the tit for the tat

witticisms in the back rooms.. so young to be crowned...

and then, to lose..



so waiting in the wings, she dreams she is Mary

and the dreaming seems to compensate for anything

irregular or like a bird half caught in the net of a scene


she knows the role what it could mean if she could branch farther



out on untried wings, brittle



imaginings



and she does so tremulously the camera almost weeps



the key light grieves in flickering cadences


but this is a clip joint hollywood that doesnt like the sentimental



anymore and pictures it fading


waiting at the stage door calla lily face; they want: ready for it's



big break certainly on the make what





wants to be modern pacing the city filled with asides

that will not see Katharine as the bride of time most rare

she envisions, she longs to be


nor Mary either though the images are there; the dear ghosts too

she longs to demonstrate her face can turn to snow to gestures

from so long ago


even if she could and even if she did

the audience wouldnt have understood

the directors would have been irritated


she is oblivious to that her face falters her eyes

and for a moment the two faces merge

both in the tower both tres sweet before dark doom


how visible how with so much pearl her soul is laden now

bent to the light and inexplicably radiant

perhaps there are lines unheard


rehearsed with angels; they certainly are cut

while the footlights are too jazzy

the raz mah taz in the next room taps its toe shoes underneath it



all bored and chewing gum


undermining the fourth wall

and swivels a hip (while Katharine is rapt)



impatient to make this show biz not the antique


curtain call where people rise from theatre seats transformed

for Katharine wanting it all to be so beautiful

as if Bernhardt rose

and rose again; or, Hepburn on her own

to the classic metier of the fate set out

set in stone with no more recourse oh Mary, Mary

losing the throne and love and life and Spring

behind the film another scene is there pristine

of Katharine striving with the air.the tempo of the time


Katharine subsumed in Mary most tragically composed

Katharine Hepburn prescient and so beyond the role now

no critic will comprehend; such transfiguration was there


such -capacity

from the very start though the coda is played unevenly

because they despise such sublimity; such art;


they are jaded;

the heart torn to achieve such ends

even in a nascent form

disgusts them.


mary angela douglas 9 may 2020a