Title: On The Knocking At The Gate In Macbeth
Fandom: Slings & Arrows
Pairing: past Darren Nichols/Geoffrey Tennant
Length: 300
Content notes: no warnings apply
Author note: another part of the backstory 'verse, beginning with A Looker On
Summary: Darren maintains that the Porter scene is a waste of space




Darren maintains that the Porter scene is a waste of space. And yes, thank you, he has read De Quincey’s “On The Knocking At The Gate In Macbeth”, and that sentimental claptrap about seeing your wife or daughter recovering from a faint tells you all you need to know about De Quincey’s abilities as a critic. Of course Geoffrey’s production of Macbeth leaves the Porter scene in, and his direction of it is adequate and better than most. But Darren was right to cut it in his version, a decision made entirely on artistic grounds, as Darren’s decisions always are.

The audience titter dutifully at the Porter’s speech about the effects of drinking: “Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance: therefore, much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.” Oh, Darren could a tale unfold about drink and lechery and the great Geoffrey Tennant…

Except that he couldn’t, not really. Because the last thing he remembers with any clarity from that long-ago drunken night is him biting Geoffrey’s neck and Geoffrey shoving his hand down Darren’s pants. And then waking up on that if my memory serves, rather purgatorial sofa (Darren’s Dangerous Liaisons and Marat/Sade fusion was a triumph, whatever the Toronto Star said to the contrary) with a black eye and a split lip and his back giving him hell, and Geoffrey looking at him as if he’d just woken up from a really bad dream and found he was still having it.