Death

Last week a few of us went to see a production of Wit by the Liverpool University Drama Society. The play follows the last days of Vivian Bearing, a professor of John Done poetry, who has been diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic ovarian cancer. The play mixes her final hours with flash-backs to pivotal moments in her life, and also quotes heavily John Done's Holy Sonnet X (Death Be Not Proud). The play as a whole was excellent, but something that stood out to me was the comparison of two versions of the poem.



One version finished with the line: And death thou shalt be no more, death, thou shalt die.

The second finished with the line: And Death thou shalt be no more; Death, thou shalt die!


Vivian Bearing saw the second version as far preferable, with its more interesting punctuation implying that death (or Death) was a way that life finished with a bang. She held that the first version was more like sliding out of life, not a pause. She held that Death was preferable to death, and in the final scene, it appears like she is about to get her wish, with moving last words and a dramatic cardiac arrest.

However, it was not to be, and instead her death was much more subtle, drifting off whilst her old professor read to her.

It made me think.