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Bulls & Allusions:

Text and Performance in the play of The Killing of Arthur Sixteen

Written by Edgar Othniel Lake

"Each man kills the thing he loves; each man has to die")--The Ballad of Reading Gaol, 1898, Oscar Wilde

" A bull - honor and respect to those that dwell here"--Maine Libres (Hands Free) 1956, Rene Belance

"Arthur Sixteen lay burdened under his horns, clearly the biggest and fiercest of the day.

Deep insights grew into the burden of bearing the horns, and wearing the mask as well."--The Devil’s Bridge, 1979, Edgar O. Lake

THEME & TITLE OF THE PLAY:

In the abridged version of my play, The Killing of Arthur Sixteen, there are several hidden aspects and allusions layering the spoken, written and performance texts.

First, the Killing of Arthur Sixteen is not written to showcase the death of a masquerader. It is designed to show how a great disillusionment, or Weltschmerz, can precede Death, or Deification.

Arthur Sixteen (XVI), the namesake of our real-life mid-20^th century protagonist, has several references: 1) the mythic "Athoua", the earliest recorded horned black presence in the New World, is recorded in The Sir Francis Drake Manuscript, The History of the Antilles, 1500s.

In Antillean cultural history, Cuban authorities recognized, "In 1621, the motion was passed to build …a bull…for 150 ducats a year." Later, "on two separate occasions, there were a parade of 24 bulls…" recorded in early Cuban festivities.

Finally, implicit in the re-authoring of "Arthur", there are Caliban imperatives in post-colonial discourse – re-folklorizing King Arthur, and by extension his "knights" as my own Arthur Sixteen, and his attendant Bulls.

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