CLOUDS OF GLORY: RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER: THE STRANGE STORY OF SAMUEL COLERIDGE, POET AND DRUG ADDICT {ITV SUNDAY NIGHT DRAMA} (TV)
Summary
This drama details the life and career of poet Samuel T. Coleridge, including his friendship with William and Dorothy Wordsworth and his addiction to opium. Various works by Coleridge are recited aloud throughout the story, primarily "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." The program begins as Coleridge considers his relationship with his wife Sarah, whom he sees as the "albatross" weighing down his life, and he symbolically kills her as they drift in a rowboat. In a flashback, Coleridge talks animatedly with his friends Robert Lovell and Robert Southey, who dream of creating a "pantisocracy" by the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, composed of twelve women and twelve women and existing by laws of total equality. His two friends explain that they are engaged to two of the Fricker sisters and that he, Coleridge, should pursue the third, Sarah. Sometime later, Coleridge and Sarah are wed and he recites "Frost at Midnight" as he regards their child, and as the couple ponders their future, Coleridge begins using opium to treat his various ailments. One rainy day he brings home William and Dorothy Wordsworth, explaining to Sarah that they are like-minded poets and wanting to accompany them to their country home, though Sarah is unsure.
As time goes on, Coleridge and Sarah have additional children and Coleridge sinks further into his addiction, eventually becoming suicidal. While out all together, the Wordsworth siblings compose "The Solitary Reaper" together, though Coleridge complains about his own career failings. William calls him out on his excessive drug use, but Coleridge protests that he became addicted "ignorantly" and genuinely needs the opium for his health, saying that he is dying. Later, he sells his belongings, desperate for money for more of the drug, even composing an "Epitaph on Himself." He hallucinates Death in another boat, accompanied by his mistress, Asra, William's sister-in-law. He rambles to his acquaintance Thomas De Quincey about how he hates his wife but cannot divorce her to marry Asra, wondering if even love cannot save him. When he spots her, he declares his love for her, saying she is "his Dorothy," but she says she is leaving him because of his addiction and endless "self-pity," and William urges him to let her go.
Coleridge deliriously recites "Kubla Khan" and becomes increasingly ill from his opium use, and he is taken in and cared for by Dr. and Mrs. Gillman. He muses over his most famous work, stating that he himself is the mariner and that the poem tells "the whole history of his life." He eventually spends eighteen years in the Gillmans' home and continues his writing there, pondering the themes of God and religion in "Mariner" and recalling his wedding and once-happy marriage to Sarah. Commercials deleted.
Details
- NETWORK: CBS Cable
- DATE: June 13, 1982 10:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:55:47
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: B:00544
- GENRE: Drama
- SUBJECT HEADING: Drama; Biography; Poets
- SERIES RUN: CBS Cable - TV, 1982
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Norman Swallow … Producer
- Diana Bramwell … Associate Producer
- Ken Russell … Director, Writer
- Melvyn Bragg … Writer
- David Hemmings … Cast, Samuel T. Coleridge
- Peter Dodd … Cast, Hartley Coleridge
- Patricia Garwood … Cast, Edith Southey
- Ben Aris … Cast, Robert Southey
- Kika Markham … Cast, Sarah Coleridge
- Murray Melvin … Cast, Robert Lovell
- Diana Mather … Cast, Mary Fricker
- David Warner … Cast, William Wordsworth
- Felicity Kendal … Cast, Dorothy Wordsworth
- Annette Robertson … Cast, Servant
- Imogen Claire … Cast, Spectre
- Barbara Ewing … Cast, Asra
- Ronald Letham … Cast, De Quincey
- Henry Moxon … Cast, Dr. Gillman
- Izabella Telezynska … Cast, Mrs. Gillman