Queen Marguerite

Queen Marguerite is Berenger the First’s first wife and a commanding presence in the scenes surrounding his approach to death. Crowned but visibly worn, she challenges his attachment to authority and uses theatrical gestures to show him the burdens weighing him down.

Identity and Appearance

Identified as the King’s first wife, Queen Marguerite re-enters through an upstage door wearing a crown and a deep crimson cloak described as somewhat shabby. Her severe appearance and direct bearing contrast with the neglected room she surveys, where she notices dust and cigarette butts on the floor. Juliette follows her onto the stage, and the guard announces her arrival with a cry of loyalty.

Her Confrontation with Berenger the First

Queen Marguerite explains why Berenger the First has not been allowed to choose his own time of death: those around him expected him to have chosen long ago, but he acquired a taste for authority and became stuck in the comforts of life. Now, she tells him, he must choose. When he protests that he has been trapped and should have been warned, she answers that he was often warned. Her account turns his sense of victimhood back on his earlier choices, presenting the authority he enjoyed as part of what has brought him to this reckoning.

Theatrical Guide to Letting Go

As Berenger the First repeats the word me, Queen Marguerite distinguishes his supposed self from an accumulation of attachments and burdens. She compares these to mistletoe growing on a branch and ivy climbing a wall: things that cling to something without being that thing. Moving around him, she mimes cutting invisible cords, then removes an imaginary ball and chain from his feet and throws it toward the audience. She continues by pretending to lift a sack and a heavy pack from his shoulders, along with a spare pair of army boots. These stage actions give physical form to the weight she says has bent him and made walking difficult. Queen Marguerite thus acts not only as the voice confronting his past dependence on power, but also as a practical guide in the play’s theatrical image of release.