Margaret Edson

 

By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

Those fortunate enough to see this Pulitzer Prize-winning play on HBO or earlier on one of its stage presentations will cherish this opportunity to savor the words of Margaret Edson. The drama centers on Vivian Bearing, a literary scholar who teaches courses in seventeenth-century poetry. In one of them she observes: "The poetry of the early seventeenth century, what has been called the metaphysical school, considers an intractable mental puzzle by exercising the outstanding human faculty of the era, namely wit." Her specialty is John Donne, the great English poet who applied his wit to aspects of the human experience — mainly, life, death, and God.
Diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer, Vivian chooses to treat it with an aggressive course of chemotherapy. In the process, she puts her wit up against the harsh realities of excruciating pain, loneliness, suffering, loss, fear, and humiliation. Here is a prime example of Vivian's assessment of things: " 'Rounds' seems to signify darting around the main issue . . . which I suppose would be the struggle for life . . . my life . . . with heated discussions of side effects, other complaints, additional treatments. Grand Rounds is not Grand Opera. But compared to lying here, it is positively dramatic. Full of subservience, hierarchy, gratuitous displays, sublimated rivalries — I feel right at home. It is just like a graduate seminar. With one important difference: in Grand Rounds, they read me like a book. Once I did the teaching, now I am taught."
And what does Vivian learn as she squares off with death, the past, and the medical establishment? Much more than she expected to obtain through reason and wit. Near the end, her mentor's understanding of one of Donne's holy sonnets, "Death be not proud," looms large in her consciousness: "Nothing but a breath — a comma — separates life from life everlasting. It is very simple really."
By all means avail yourself of the opportunity to ponder the words and images in this extraordinary play about death and dying.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb9bQ-I-aV4