Art is Madness

I found this quote at another blog (About Last Night): "In any creative activity, art is madness, craft is sanity. The balance between them makes the work." Simon Callow, Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor.

Of course, I immediately logged onto Amazon and ordered the book; Laughton is one of those mythical, towering figures; he directed one movie, 'The Night of the Hunter,' a haunting masterpiece.

Just finished 'The Reckoning,' about the murder of Christopher Marlowe. Seems Marlowe was not only a talented poet/playwright, but a spy in a world of spies. Elizabethan England was a 'Police State,' where everyone was suspect: Catholics pretending to be Protestants, Protestants pretending to be Catholics, Atheists pretending to be either Catholics or Protestants. The Queen was torturing and imprisoning, hanging and quartering anyone who fell under suspicion.

Sir Walter Raleigh, the Lord of Essex; prominent men executed for 'thought crimes.' Religion = Politics = Power. Marlowe was an extraordinary artist who played a double, a triple game. Finally, there was a 'great reckoning in a small room,' just another man, meeting a violent, unhappy, untimely, death.