Thinking also of Stewart's recollections of Peck, and of Atticus Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird, rather than of Ahab which Stewart recounts seeing as a boy.
As I recall, one can see some stage fright, or maybe it was intended rather to be anxiety, portrayed, to some extent, in Peck's Finch.
It never happened to me, but I was lucky.
As I recall, one can see some stage fright, or maybe it was intended rather to be anxiety, portrayed, to some extent, in Peck's Finch.
It never happened to me, but I was lucky.
I knew some people, in my own office, to whom it did.
They were trial lawyers too, and I mean trial lawyers (very much like stage actors, really), not the bullshit ones who advertise for cases and then never pick a jury.
And it was not just that they would forget their lines (the horror of the stage actor): they had written notes! They just froze with fear, with their own notes sitting in front of them on the podium.
See Stewart's account at Oxford of the actor on opening night at the Barbican, who came back out with his script and couldn't read the lines, holding them in front of him.
Also, Malcolm MacDowell, great stuff.
I had a fellow lawyer come into my office one day and tell me a similar story, and as he told me the story, he was shaking, red faced, and sweating profusely. He had to tell someone, and he picked me. I believed him.
Once it happens, the fear of it happening again causes them to do almost anything to settle a case rather than try it, a case which they perhaps should not settle. (Most criminal cases arguably should not be tried, but that is a separate story. Rumpole was famous for his saying "never plead guilty", but if you watch the series, he pled a whole lot of cases out, having pled guilty.)
Think of how many cases have been disposed of in such a way, or a similar way, here in America (The overwhelming majority of cases are settled without trial, and thus usually without appeal.), cases that not only should have been tried, but cases that only later were shown to have been wrongly brought or wrongly decided, through innocence projects, reversal, and such.
Anyway, enough of this.
For Boop.
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