goodbye, farewell and amen (1983) // the invention of love (1997)

This one’s for the Robert Sean Leonard Girlies! For the past few months I have consumed every crumb of Robert Sean Leonard content I could get my hands on and I have put it all in this quiz! It’s a pretty long one lads as there are over 20 characters in this quiz but I hope you enjoy!!

Additionally inspired by https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJKoqGw8/

Happy 54th birthday, Robert Sean Leonard!!!

Happiest of birthdays, sir! You don't have any idea of how much I appreciate your existence and how much I treasure your work (be it on the theatre, tv movies, tv shows, and films). I've talked extensively before of how characters like Neil, Wilson, Housman, Barry Kempler, Danny, and many others have resonated with me; and how your work has changed my life time and time again. In honor of your birthday, I proudly present:

Robert Sean Leonard on the stage

For the full HD version on YouTube: here

If you want to know more about RSL's stage career, @samnyangie has a very good guide here

PS1: I know he probably won't see this taking into consideration that the man doesn't use social media, and it's almost impossible that he would choose to look at the hellsite, but one can dream

PS2: I chose Elvis Costello's music because he said he liked it on an interview

Tagging my fellow RSL lovers: @greenparadiseperry @deelaundry @house-and-wilson-boyfriends @aedan-mills @giolovesyousm @gustingirl @midsummerperry @scarletblakeney @arthurianarchipelago

thinking abt this bit all the time wrt love in that like. how on the one hand you've got the sophocles line abt ice that's held in the hand of a child + houseman's unrequited love for his best friend that led to him loosing that friendship, indicating live as a sort of painful impermanence of something you can't keep no matter how much you want to. but then on another hand you've also got the man (stobaeus) diligently copying out for his son this part of a text about love + how that love for his son means that but of text survived long enough for housman to read it and recognize himself in and quote back to his younger self, where otherwise it would have melted away like ice. something about how love is all of these things at once, and the text about love, the love of the text, the love of the reader, and the reader in love are tied together in it. what is and isn't lost simultaneously. idk idk

hey (with the intention to die in his arms, like a spartan, kissed once on the lips… or just run his errands in the meanwhile)

whoever recorded the invention of love with rsl on the world’s worst camera i am kissing you on the lips

when john-paul sarte said "if i've got to suffer it might as well be at your hands, your pretty hands" and holly black said "if you're the sickness you can't also be the cure" and the emily archives said "i love everything you give to me. even if it's an arrow and now i'm dead" and tom stoppard shouted "i would have died for you but i never had the luck" and emily dickinson "i would have drowned twice to save you sinking" and jean cocteau read "thank you from the bottom of my heart for having saved me. i was drowning and you threw yourself in without hesitation, without a backward look," and nightwish sang "if you be the one to cut me, i'll bleed forever" and yves olade went "say the word and i'll burn for ten days" and madeline miller wrote "a knife still. i did not care. i thought: give me the blade. some things are worth spilling blood for.”

Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

but - sed - cur heu, Ligurine, cur -

– but why, Ligurinus, alas why this unaccustomed tear trickling down my cheek? – why does my glib tongue stumble to silence as I speak? At night I hold you fast in my dreams, I run after you across the Field of Mars, I follow you into the tumbling waters, and you show no pity.

Misread "the men of old had great care for their fields" as "the men of old had great care for their friends." Prof. Housman I am the problem

Heyyyyyy question, you wouldn't happen to know where I can watch rsl in the invention of love would you?

Here you go anon! The video is missing a chunk of the performance, but it's the best we have.

Also, I'd strongly suggest following along with the book so that you don't miss any line of dialog. In the link below, you can find it and download it.

Anyway, hope you enjoy it!

this bit in the invention of love where he's begging charon to recite him some of the lost bits of the myrmidones but charon can only seem to come up with the bits from the fragments that have survived & he's already read during his life

help. deploying 'he would not stay for me and who can wonder' here has killed me. also this is a silly thing to say but this play is way more housman-y than i was expecting. directly quoted poems aside the whole text is riddled with bits i recognise drawn from poems or essays or out of laurence's aeh. (and i'm sure there's more i'm missing!)

e.m. forster, maurice / tom stoppard, the invention of love

Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

"give me a thousand kisses, and then a hundred more, and then another thousand, and add five score..."