“The whole world is a stage, and men and women are only actors. They have their exits as their entrances, and in life everyone plays many parts, and their acts are seven ages.”
Today the theatre is closed. We wake up late, we people of show. Only at 11.30 I collected my ideas with difficulty, I defeated sleep in the morning coffee and set about rereading the script: this time I am Jacques, the melancholy Jacques in the play by W. Shakespeare “As you like it”.
We have to make our debut at the San Domenico Auditorium, here in Foligno … but since this morning I have only one sentence of the script in my mind, the one you read above, and I can’t go on. I go out, to hell with it, I take the script and, perhaps taking advantage of the beautiful day, I go to the Parco dei Canapè … “The whole world is a stage and men and women are only actors” … through Via XX Settembre, while I repeat the incipit, indeed it is the incipit that enters my head while I observe the people who, by bike or on foot, are along the way. I start to turn around Piazza del Grano but I stumble like an idiot. I get up, avoid the compassionate gaze of an old woman, take the street and bam … a piece of tile falls a few steps away from me …. “It was the wind” says a lady looking out. But what wind, I say to myself… Better to continue along the same route, I will turn later: it almost seems that something or someone, today, is showing me the way. They have their exits as their entrances, in life everyone plays many parts… “Yes, the part of a murderer” I tell myself as I walk the street dodging people on bicycles. But I understand that I am walking like a fool, jerking. I am about to arrive at Piazza della Repubblica, from where I will finally turn around the Park. The script is heavy, but I keep it firmly. A deafening sound in the ears, like a bell screaming a single note, strange. A moment, it takes a moment and the folder falls from my hands.
I collect the scattered sheets and look above me: there is an arch that connects a building to what is certainly a church: “San Feliciano” says the boy who helps me collect, … “and his acts are seven ages “. The boy says something to me but I don’t hear it: this last sentence echoes continuously. It says something else: “…. and then in the arch there are the frescoes with the seven ages of man …” I hear only the last sentence. I block myself. I smile at him and instinctively, without thinking, I ask him how I can see this fresco. And he says: “Easy, turn the corner and enter Palazzo Trinci”. Hey, calm down everyone, why do I have to go to Palazzo Trinci? It makes me laugh, but I do not hide the fact that I am a little worried as I enter the courtyard and climb the stairs two by two. A kind girl welcomes me that I overwhelm like a train when I ask, without even saying good morning: “Where are the seven ages of man?” She looks at me a little worried, but offers to accompany me. I go up the stairs, pass by the Loggia of Romulus and Remus, which I promise to admire more carefully later, and enter the Hall of Liberal Arts and Planets with her, where, she says, there are finally the ages of man. “Not here”, again that voice booming “NOT HERE!” … she looks at me amazed and takes a step back. I understand it: I don’t even recognize myself. “In the arch please” I stammer. I am entranced by the frescoes, I must have a dazed face because she lets me go alone, remaining at the entrance. I avoid with terror a closed trap door on the floor, which I see as if it were open and…. I am here: I feel a sense of peace, while I observe an old King Arthur, Romulus, David, immersed in their greatness and, finally, in the opposite wall, portrayed in the painting that represents the garden of life: a child who was perhaps playing with a dog, now gone, a boy who shoots with a bow and a young man on a stiff horse and then gradually until old age .. and writings, fluttering writings in old French. I am no longer surprised at anything: I can read them, and it doesn’t scare me now. I dwell on the last one: Old man, why are you so weak? Everything ends, except good works. What if I said it at the premiere tomorrow?
Shakespeare seems to remind us that a most intact nature, in contrast with a passionate and turbulent city, softens the feral instincts of men by turning them to loyalty and good, and certainly the beauty of the frescoes contributed to making the performance of our unknown actor a success.
The story is fictional but, if you want, the frescoes with the Ages of Man are in Palazzo Trinci where, together with these, you can immerse yourself in wonder and unexpected feelings.
Info and reservations:
0742-330585 /600
museotrinci@comune.foligno.pg.it
palazzotrinci@gmail.com
www.coopculture.it
