Playtime

What is it that children do best above all other things? The answer came quickly to me when I thought back on my childhood. Play of course. Children live to play, have fun, eat fruit-snacks and drink juice boxes. Now, KBP makes sense in light of this idea that children are good at playing. Think about the plot of the play, it amounts to some characters running around and basically just playing, doing what they think might be fun. When I was a child I used to pretend I was a cowboy all the time, only I didn't get to do it in a play. Whereas I used to act as a cowboy, in the play at hand the equivalent is that Rafe pretends he is a knight. Having a child traipsing about the stage pretending to be a knight would not only highlight the overall silliness of what is going on and would, in my opinion, be hilarious, but also just makes sense. On page 86 Beaumont captures fantastically how children are while they play in his depiction of Rafe being a knight. Rafe says, "My trusty dwarf and friend, reach me my shield, and hold it while I swear. First by my knighthood; then by the sould of Amadis de Gaul...then by my sword..." Having a child standing on a stage doing his best to do what he thinks knights are supposed to do, that is swearing by a whole bunch of things to be chivalrous, plays to a child's innocence. A child has the innocence that adults lose in the process of growing up, and that element makes a huge difference in how Rafe would be perceived by an audience. It is just plain cute if a child does it, but would be a little different if it were an adult. It would still be funny, but in a different way. I think I am going to go have a juice box and a PB and J and play with my roommate's dog, and somehow, that seems relevent to this post and productive to my intellectual growth.