Good times with the merry monarch....

Last night we went to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada to see one of the less well-known Shaw plays, "In Good King Charles's Golden Days". To my knowledge there has never been a bad production at Niagara-on-the-Lake's Shaw Festival, and this one didn't change things....although it is the earliest in the season we have ever gone, and there were a few rough spots (several stumbles in the overall elegantly delivered lines, plus a prop falling distractingly at the edge of the stage - the first time I've ever even noticed a flaw).

I had to explain a few things to my wife, as this play in particular is deeply steeped in history - it was meant to be quite obvious that "Rowley" was King Charles II incognito (to the extent that George Fox, founder of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), actually addressed him as "Charles Stuart" once), but Jocelyn did not pick up on that at first - even though the first act ended in an angry wrestling match between Isaac Newton and prince James (later to briefly be James II before being replaced, as Charles II had warned him in the play if he insisted on his Catholicism, by the Protestant William and Mary).

Before the play we had dinner at the pleasant (but pricy) Shaw Cafe - can't beat the convenience of eating right across the street, and food and wine were good. Just before the play we went to a wine ship and shared a flight ($10 canadian) of icewine...Jocelyn particularly liked the Cabernet Franc (a red).

Speaking of royalty, but not of stalking them, this little item here deals with the latter part, or the people who do it (HT MR).

Interestingly, one of the first cases of what we now call erotomania or de Clérambault's syndrome, the delusional belief that another person - usually of higher status - is in love with you, featured the British Royal Family.

de Clérambault described the case of a 53 year old French woman who believed King George V was in love with her and would interpret twitches in the curtains of Buckingham Palace as secret love signals from the monarch.