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39.

They wouldn’t let me out of Eton until I acted. That was what they said: I needed to take part inone of their formal dramas before they’d punch my ticket and release me into the wild.

It sounded ridiculous, but theater was deadly serious at Eton. The drama department stagedseveral productions each year, and the year-end production was always the most major of them all.

In the late spring of 2003 it was Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.

I was cast as Conrade. Minor¹ character. He was, perhaps, a drinker, perhaps a drunkard, whichgave the press all sorts of clever openings for calling me a drunkard too.

What’s this? Bit of typecasting, is it?

Stories wrote themselves.

Eton’s drama teacher said nothing about typecasting when he gave me the role. He just told meI was Conrade—Have fun with it, Harry—and I didn’t question his motives². I wouldn’t havequestioned them even if I’d suspected he was taking the piss, because I wanted to get out of Eton,and to get out of Eton you had to act.

Among other things, I learned from studying the play that it was wrongheaded, and reductive,to focus on Conrade’s alcohol consumption. He was a fascinating guy, really. Loyal, but alsoimmoral. Full of advice, but essentially³ a follower⁴. Above all, he was a henchman, a sidekick,whose main function, seemingly, was to give the audience a laugh or two. I found it easy to throwmyself into such a role, and discovered during dress rehearsals⁵ that I had a hidden talent. Beingroyal, it turned out, wasn’t all that far from being onstage. Acting⁶ was acting, no matter thecontext.

Opening night, my father sat dead center in a packed Farrer Theatre and no one had a bettertime. Here it was, his dream come true, a son performing Shakespeare, and he was getting hismoney’s worth. He roared, he howled, he applauded. But, inexplicably⁷, at all the wrong moments.

His timing⁸ was bizarrely off. He sat mute when everyone else was laughing. He laughed wheneveryone else was silent. More than noticeable, it was bloody⁹ distracting. The audience thought Pawas a plant, part of the performance. Who’s that over there, laughing at nothing? Oh—is that thePrince of Wales?

Later, backstage, Pa was all compliments. You were wonderful, darling boy.

But I couldn’t help looking cross.

What’s the matter, darling boy?

Pa, you laughed at all the wrong times!

He was baffled. I was too. How could he have no idea what I was talking about?

Slowly it became clear. He’d told me once that, when he was my age, acting in his own schoolperformance of Shakespeare, Grandpa turned up and did exactly the same thing. Laughed at all thewrong times. Made a complete spectacle. Was Pa modeling his own father? Because he knew noother way to parent? Or was it more subliminal¹⁰, some recessive¹¹ gene¹² expressing itself? Is eachgeneration doomed¹³ to unwittingly repeat the sins of the last? I wanted to know, and I might’veasked, but that wasn’t the sort of thing you could ever raise with Pa. Or Grandpa. So I put it out ofmy mind and tried to focus on the good.

Pa is here, I told myself, and he’s proud, and that’s not nothing.

That was more than a lot of kids had.

I thanked him for coming, gave him a kiss on each cheek.

As Conrade says: Can you make no use of your discontent?

 

1 minor   

adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修

参考例句：

• The young actor was given a minor part in the new play.年轻的男演员在这出新戏里被分派担任一个小角色。
• I gave him a minor share of my wealth.我把小部分财产给了他。

2 motives   

n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• to impeach sb's motives 怀疑某人的动机
• His motives are unclear. 他的用意不明。

3 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

4 follower   

n.跟随者；随员；门徒；信徒

参考例句：

• He is a faithful follower of his home football team.他是他家乡足球队的忠实拥护者。
• Alexander is a pious follower of the faith.亚历山大是个虔诚的信徒。

5 rehearsals   

n.练习( rehearsal的名词复数 )；排练；复述；重复

参考例句：

• The earlier protests had just been dress rehearsals for full-scale revolution. 早期的抗议仅仅是大革命开始前的预演。
• She worked like a demon all through rehearsals. 她每次排演时始终精力过人。 来自《简明英汉词典》

6 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

7 inexplicably   

adv.无法说明地，难以理解地，令人难以理解的是

参考例句：

• Inexplicably, Mary said she loved John. 真是不可思议，玛丽说她爱约翰。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Inexplicably, she never turned up. 令人不解的是，她从未露面。 来自辞典例句

8 timing   

n.时间安排，时间选择

参考例句：

• The timing of the meeting is not convenient.会议的时间安排不合适。
• The timing of our statement is very opportune.我们发表声明选择的时机很恰当。

9 bloody   

adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染

参考例句：

• He got a bloody nose in the fight.他在打斗中被打得鼻子流血。
• He is a bloody fool.他是一个十足的笨蛋。

10 subliminal   

adj.下意识的，潜意识的；太弱或太快以至于难以觉察的

参考例句：

• Maybe they're getting it on a subliminal level.也许他们会在潜意识里这么以为。
• The soft sell approach gets to consumers in a subliminal way.软广告通过潜意识的作用来影响消费者。

11 recessive   

adj.退行的，逆行的，后退的，隐性的

参考例句：

• Blue eyes are recessive and brown eyes are dominant.蓝眼睛是隐性的；而褐色眼睛是显性的。
• Sickle-cell anaemia is passed on through a recessive gene.镰状细胞贫血通过隐性基因遗传给后代。

12 gene   

n.遗传因子，基因

参考例句：

• A single gene may have many effects.单一基因可能具有很多种效应。
• The targeting of gene therapy has been paid close attention.其中基因治疗的靶向性是值得密切关注的问题之一。

13 doomed   

命定的

参考例句：

• The court doomed the accused to a long term of imprisonment. 法庭判处被告长期监禁。
• A country ruled by an iron hand is doomed to suffer. 被铁腕人物统治的国家定会遭受不幸的。