Ezra (Masterplots II: Drama, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Bernard Kops
- First Published: 1980
- Type of Plot: Expressionist
- Time of Work: 1945, with flashbacks to 1943 and 1898 and intimations of the late 1950’s
- Setting: Italy and Washington, D.C.
- Principal Characters: Ezra Pound, Antonio Vivaldi, Benito Mussolini “Il Duce,”, Clara, Olga, Dorothy
- Genres: Drama, War drama, Expressionist literature, Tragicomedy
- Subjects: History, Values, 1940’s, Poetry or poets, Washington, D.C., Anti-Semitism, Good and evil, Imagination, Ethics, Italy or Italians, Fascism
- Locales: Washington, D.C., Italy
The Play
As the ninety-minute, one-act Ezra opens, Ezra Pound paces the six-by-six-foot gorilla cage in which American troops have imprisoned him. It is May, 1945, somewhere between Pisa and Viareggio. Under arrest for treason, narrating his own situation, the poet moves from self-pity to a joke about Walt Disney; Ezra then sings a song from the Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) just as his pants fall down. He soon stops mourning the confiscation of his belt and shoelaces as he conjures up visions of two men he admires, composer Antonio Vivaldi...
[The entire page is 2320 words long]
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