"The Barber and His Wife" and "Poor Thing" are "paired" numbers. Together, they tell one story. They explain the "wrong" that Sweeney will need to "right" (or avenge, or half-avenge); they give Sweeney more of his "I Want" moment. Sondheim plays with shifting perspectives. Sweeney emphasizes the "beauty" and "virtue" of Lucy; in Lovett's telling, which has the same melody, it's *Sweeney* (Benjamin Barker) who is beautiful. He's also a "proper artist with a knife." (Lovett admires craft and skill.) By contrast, Lucy is simply a "silly little nit." (Lovett's choice of title--"Poor Thing"--is subtly condescending. But, also: This is a world where people most certainly are treated like "things.")
-One thing Sweeney and Lovett can agree on: Benjamin Barker was foolish. He didn't notice the "pious vulture of the law." (That wedding of "pious" with "vulture": Sweeney's topsy-turvy world requires the use of an oxymoron. It's a world where things are not what they seem. Benjamin is really Sweeney; someone apparently pious is really a vulture; people dress in masks.) Sweeney pursues the vulture analogy: With "a gesture of his claw," the Judge removes the barber "from his plate." The powerful are portrayed as several times larger than the "vermin of the world"; for a powerful man, a barber is a mere item on a dinner plate, to be swept aside "via claw." (These lines make us think of Sweeney's earlier metaphor for the workings of the world: "At the top of the pit sit the privileged few, making mock of the vermin in the lower zoo, turning beauty into filth and greed." The Judge has indeed turned the "beautiful" Lucy into "filth"; we have just seen her, in her new form, as a randy and repellent beggar woman.)
-What's so striking and perversely wonderful about Lovett is her breezy amorality. She tells Barker's story without a hint of sorrow or rage; she doesn't stop to condemn the Judge and the Beadle. She might even sympathize with them; they know what they want, and they go after it. Lucy could have had "the moon on a string"; she could have enjoyed the favors of two powerful men, and perhaps have even held onto her marriage, if she had been a bit more compliant. (She could have been like the lusty maid in "A Little Night Music": "There are mouths to be kissed before mouths to be fed; and there's many a tryst and there's many a bed; there's a lot I'll have missed, but I'll not have been dead when I die...") Instead, Lucy sits with her needle and enrages the Judge; Benjamin is shipped off to Australia; Lucy finds herself at a masked ball. Mrs. Lovett, an intelligent woman, can deliver a message via subtext. The Judge says: "Meet me at my house; I'm contrite." And Lovett, making use of mild irony: "He was there all right, only not so contrite..."
-Lovett's horror story derives some of its power from the idea of a gang rape. The Judge could have raped Lucy in private, sure, but Sondheim's special misanthropic brain dictates that the rape must be witnessed by many. "Everyone thought it so droll." The idea of "mass evil": This feeds into Sweeney's dawning belief that "we all deserve to die." The scandal of Lucy's rape is given extra "oomph" by the fact that Lovett never spells out precisely what is happening. "All of them stood there and laughed, you see....Poor soul...." That ellipsis says everything. Some things are too terrible to name. By letting his character trail off, Sondheim gives the rape more power, more vividness, than he could if he had opted to be more explicit and concrete.
-This is a world where little is spelled out. Sweeney becomes too involved in the story; the vehemence of his reaction tells Lovett all she needs to know. "So it IS you!" And we understand that Benjamin and Sweeney are one; we understand that Lovett can make a fast deduction; we understand that Lovett, in fact, has been entertaining a suspicion for the past three minutes, and she hasn't let us in on what she secretly half-knows. Form dictates content: Sondheim doesn't *tell* us that Lovett is smart, because he can indicate this through Lovett's actions. And Lovett will continue her show of evil genius with the lie she is about to invent, w/r/t Lucy's ultimate fate. The trap is set. Sweeney is well along on his path toward self-destruction. Soon we need to reward the audience with a diversion--a change of scene. A movement toward a subplot. We'll get to that very soon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD_OrQetGJc
-One thing Sweeney and Lovett can agree on: Benjamin Barker was foolish. He didn't notice the "pious vulture of the law." (That wedding of "pious" with "vulture": Sweeney's topsy-turvy world requires the use of an oxymoron. It's a world where things are not what they seem. Benjamin is really Sweeney; someone apparently pious is really a vulture; people dress in masks.) Sweeney pursues the vulture analogy: With "a gesture of his claw," the Judge removes the barber "from his plate." The powerful are portrayed as several times larger than the "vermin of the world"; for a powerful man, a barber is a mere item on a dinner plate, to be swept aside "via claw." (These lines make us think of Sweeney's earlier metaphor for the workings of the world: "At the top of the pit sit the privileged few, making mock of the vermin in the lower zoo, turning beauty into filth and greed." The Judge has indeed turned the "beautiful" Lucy into "filth"; we have just seen her, in her new form, as a randy and repellent beggar woman.)
-What's so striking and perversely wonderful about Lovett is her breezy amorality. She tells Barker's story without a hint of sorrow or rage; she doesn't stop to condemn the Judge and the Beadle. She might even sympathize with them; they know what they want, and they go after it. Lucy could have had "the moon on a string"; she could have enjoyed the favors of two powerful men, and perhaps have even held onto her marriage, if she had been a bit more compliant. (She could have been like the lusty maid in "A Little Night Music": "There are mouths to be kissed before mouths to be fed; and there's many a tryst and there's many a bed; there's a lot I'll have missed, but I'll not have been dead when I die...") Instead, Lucy sits with her needle and enrages the Judge; Benjamin is shipped off to Australia; Lucy finds herself at a masked ball. Mrs. Lovett, an intelligent woman, can deliver a message via subtext. The Judge says: "Meet me at my house; I'm contrite." And Lovett, making use of mild irony: "He was there all right, only not so contrite..."
-Lovett's horror story derives some of its power from the idea of a gang rape. The Judge could have raped Lucy in private, sure, but Sondheim's special misanthropic brain dictates that the rape must be witnessed by many. "Everyone thought it so droll." The idea of "mass evil": This feeds into Sweeney's dawning belief that "we all deserve to die." The scandal of Lucy's rape is given extra "oomph" by the fact that Lovett never spells out precisely what is happening. "All of them stood there and laughed, you see....Poor soul...." That ellipsis says everything. Some things are too terrible to name. By letting his character trail off, Sondheim gives the rape more power, more vividness, than he could if he had opted to be more explicit and concrete.
-This is a world where little is spelled out. Sweeney becomes too involved in the story; the vehemence of his reaction tells Lovett all she needs to know. "So it IS you!" And we understand that Benjamin and Sweeney are one; we understand that Lovett can make a fast deduction; we understand that Lovett, in fact, has been entertaining a suspicion for the past three minutes, and she hasn't let us in on what she secretly half-knows. Form dictates content: Sondheim doesn't *tell* us that Lovett is smart, because he can indicate this through Lovett's actions. And Lovett will continue her show of evil genius with the lie she is about to invent, w/r/t Lucy's ultimate fate. The trap is set. Sweeney is well along on his path toward self-destruction. Soon we need to reward the audience with a diversion--a change of scene. A movement toward a subplot. We'll get to that very soon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD_OrQetGJc
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