World Literature

Doris Lessing

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 07:33:00 +0000

Biography
From the pamphlet: A Reader's Guide to The Golden Notebook & Under My Skin,
HarperPerennial, 1995
Doris Lessing was born Doris May Tayler in Persia (now Iran) on October 22, 1919. Both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Doris's mother adapted to the rough life in the settlement, energetically trying to reproduce what was, in her view, a civilized, Edwardian life among savages; but her father did not, and the thousand-odd acres of bush he had bought failed to yield the promised wealth.
Lessing has described her childhood as an uneven mix of some pleasure and much pain. The natural world, which she explored with her brother, Harry, was one retreat from an otherwise miserable existence. Her mother, obsessed with raising a proper daughter, enforced a rigid system of rules and hygiene at home, then installed Doris in a convent school, where nuns terrified their charges with stories of hell and damnation. Lessing was later sent to an all-girls high school in the capital of Salisbury, from which she soon dropped out. She was thirteen; and it was the end of her formal education.

But like other women writers from southern African who did not graduate from high school (such as Olive Schreiner and Nadine Gordimer), Lessing made herself into a self-educated intellectual. She recently commented that unhappy childhoods seem to produce fiction writers. "Yes, I think that is true. Though it wasn't apparent to me then. Of course, I wasn't thinking in terms of being a writer then - I was just thinking about how to escape, all the time." The parcels of books ordered from London fed her imagination, laying out other worlds to escape into. Lessing's early reading included Dickens, Scott, Stevenson, Kipling; later she discovered D.H. Lawrence, Stendhal, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. Bedtime stories also nurtured her youth: her mother told them to the children and Doris herself kept her younger brother awake, spinning out tales. Doris's early years were also spent absorbing her fathers bitter memories of World War I, taking them in as a kind of "poison." "We are all of us made by war," Lessing has written, "twisted and warped by war, but we seem to forget it."

In flight from her mother, Lessing left home when she was fifteen and took a job as a nursemaid. Her employer gave her books on politics and sociology to read, while his brother-in-law crept into her bed at night and gave her inept kisses. During that time she was, Lessing has written, "in a fever of erotic longing." Frustrated by her backward suitor, she indulged in elaborate romantic fantasies. She was also writing stories, and sold two to magazines in South Africa.

Lessing's life has been a challenge to her belief that people cannot resist the currents of their time, as she fought against the biological and cultural imperatives that fated her to sink without a murmur into marriage and motherhood. "There is a whole generation of women," she has said, speaking of her mother's era, "and it was as if their lives came to a stop when they had children. Most of them got pretty neurotic - because, I think, of the contrast between what they were taught at school they were capable of being and what actually happened to them." Lessing believes that she was freer than most people because she became a writer. For her, writing is a process of "setting at a distance," taking the "raw, the individual, the uncriticized, the unexamined, into the realm of the general."

In 1937 she moved to Salisbury, where she worked as a telephone operator for a year. At nineteen, she married Frank Wisdom, and had two children. A few years later, feeling trapped in a persona that she feared would destroy her, she left her family, remaining in Salisbury. Soon she was drawn to the like-minded members of the Left Book Club, a group of Communists "who read everything, and who did not think it remarkable to read." Gottfried Lessing was a central member of the group; shortly after she joined, they married and had a son.

During the postwar years, Lessing became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist movement, which she left altogether in 1954. By 1949, Lessing had moved to London with her young son. That year, she also published her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and began her career as a professional writer.

Lessing's fiction is deeply autobiographical, much of it emerging out of her experiences in Africa. Drawing upon her childhood memories and her serious engagement with politics and social concerns, Lessing has written about the clash of cultures, the gross injustices of racial inequality, the struggle among opposing elements within an individuals own personality, and the conflict between the individual conscience and the collective good. Her stories and novellas set in Africa, published during the fifties and early sixties, decry the dispossession of black Africans by white colonials, and expose the sterility of the white culture in southern Africa. In 1956, in response to Lessing's courageous outspokenness, she was declared a prohibited alien in both Southern Rhodesia and South Africa.

Over the years, Lessing has attempted to accommodate what she admires in the novels of the nineteenth century - their "climate of ethical judgement" - to the demands of twentieth-century ideas about consciousness and time. After writing the Children of Violence series (1951-1959), a formally conventional bildungsroman (novel of education) about the growth in consciousness of her heroine, Martha Quest, Lessing broke new ground with The Golden Notebook (1962), a daring narrative experiment, in which the multiple selves of a contemporary woman are rendered in astonishing depth and detail. Anna Wulf, like Lessing herself, strives for ruthless honesty as she aims to free herself from the chaos, emotional numbness, and hypocrisy afflicting her generation.

Attacked for being "unfeminine" in her depiction of female anger and aggression, Lessing responded, "Apparently what many women were thinking, feeling, experiencing came as a great surprise." As at least one early critic noticed, Anna Wulf "tries to live with the freedom of a man" - a point Lessing seems to confirm: "These attitudes in male writers were taken for granted, accepted as sound philosophical bases, as quite normal, certainly not as woman-hating, aggressive, or neurotic."

In the 1970s and 1980s, Lessing began to explore more fully the quasi-mystical insight Anna Wulf seems to reach by the end of The Golden Notebook. Her "inner-space fiction" deals with cosmic fantasies (Briefing for a Descent into Hell, 1971), dreamscapes and other dimensions (Memoirs of a Survivor, 1974), and science fiction probings of higher planes of existence (Canopus in Argos: Archives, 1979-1983). These reflect Lessing's interest, since the 1960s, in Idries Shah, whose writings on Sufi mysticism stress the evolution of consciousness and the belief that individual liberation can come about only if people understand the link between their own fates and the fate of society.

Lessing's other novels include The Good Terrorist (1985) and The Fifth Child (1988); she also published two novels under the pseudonym Jane Somers (The Diary of a Good Neighbour, 1983 and If the Old Could..., 1984). In addition, she has written several nonfiction works, including books about cats, a love since childhood. Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949 appeared in 1995 and received the James Tait Black Prize for best biography.

Addenda (by Jan Hanford)

In June 1995 she received an Honorary Degree from Harvard University. Also in 1995, she visited South Africa to see her daughter and grandchildren, and to promote her autobiography. It was her first visit since being forcibly removed in 1956 for her political views. Ironically, she is welcomed now as a writer acclaimed for the very topics for which she was banished 40 years ago.

She collaborated with illustrator Charlie Adlard to create the unique and unusual graphic novel, Playing the Game. After being out of print in the U.S. for more than 30 years, Going Home and In Pursuit of the English were republished by HarperCollins in 1996. These two fascinating and important books give rare insight into Mrs. Lessing's personality, life and views.

In 1996, her first novel in 7 years, Love Again, was published by HarperCollins. She did not make any personal appearances to promote the book. In an interview she describes the frustration she felt during a 14-week worldwide tour to promote her autobiography: "I told my publishers it would be far more useful for everyone if I stayed at home, writing another book. But they wouldn't listen. This time round I stamped my little foot and said I would not move from my house and would do only one interview." And the honors keep on coming: she was on the list of nominees for the Nobel Prize for Literature and Britain's Writer's Guild Award for Fiction in 1996.

Late in the year, HarperCollins published Play with A Tiger and Other Plays, a compilation of 3 of her plays: Play with a Tiger, The Singing Door and Each His Own Wilderness. In an unexplained move, HarperCollins only published this volume in the U.K. and it is not available in the U.S., to the disappointment of her North American readers.

In 1997 she collaborated with Philip Glass for the second time, providing the libretto for the opera "The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five" which premiered in Heidelberg, Germany in May. Walking in the Shade, the anxiously awaited second volume of her autobiography, was published in October and was nominated for the 1997 National Book Critics Circle Award in the biography/autobiography category. This volume documents her arrival in England in 1949 and takes us up to the publication of The Golden Notebook. This is the final volume of her autobiography, she will not be writing a third volume.

Her new novel, titled "Mara and Dann", was been published in the U.S in January 1999 and in the U.K. in April 1999. In an interview in the London Daily Telegraph she said, "I adore writing it. I'll be so sad when it's finished. It's freed my mind." 1999 also saw her first experience on-line, with a chat at Barnes & Noble (transcript). In May 1999 she will be presented with the XI Annual International Catalunya Award, an award by the government of Catalunya.

December 31 1999: In the U.K.'s last Honours List before the new Millennium, Doris Lessing was appointed a Companion of Honour, an exclusive order for those who have done "conspicuous national service." She revealed she had turned down the offer of becoming a Dame of the British Empire because there is no British Empire. Being a Companion of Honour, she explained, means "you're not called anything - and it's not demanding. I like that". Being a Dame was "a bit pantomimey". The list was selected by the Labor Party government to honor people in all walks of life for their contributions to their professions and to charity. It was officially bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II.

In January, 2000 the National Portrait Gallery in London unveiled Leonard McComb's portrait of Doris Lessing.

Ben, in the World, the sequel to The Fifth Child was published in Spring 2000 (U.K.) and Summer 2000 (U.S.).

In 2001 she was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature, one of Spain's most important distinctions, for her brilliant literary works in defense of freedom and Third World causes. She also received the David Cohen British Literature Prize.

She was on the shortlist for the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005. In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Her most recent novel is The Cleft.

All Nobel Laureates in Literature

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 07:21:00 +0000

All Nobel Laureates in Literature

2007 - Doris Lessing
2006 - Orhan Pamuk
2005 - Harold Pinter
2004 - Elfriede Jelinek
2003 - J. M. Coetzee
2002 - Imre Kertész
2001 - V. S. Naipaul
2000 - Gao Xingjian
1999 - Günter Grass
1998 - José Saramago
1997 - Dario Fo
1996 - Wislawa Szymborska
1995 - Seamus Heaney
1994 - Kenzaburo Oe
1993 - Toni Morrison
1992 - Derek Walcott
1991 - Nadine Gordimer
1990 - Octavio Paz
1989 - Camilo José Cela
1988 - Naguib Mahfouz
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1986 - Wole Soyinka
1985 - Claude Simon
1984 - Jaroslav Seifert
1983 - William Golding
1982 - Gabriel García Márquez
1981 - Elias Canetti
1980 - Czeslaw Milosz
1979 - Odysseus Elytis
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
1977 - Vicente Aleixandre
1976 - Saul Bellow
1975 - Eugenio Montale
1974 - Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson
1973 - Patrick White
1972 - Heinrich Böll
1971 - Pablo Neruda
1970 - Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
1969 - Samuel Beckett
1968 - Yasunari Kawabata
1967 - Miguel Angel Asturias
1966 - Shmuel Agnon, Nelly Sachs
1965 - Mikhail Sholokhov
1964 - Jean-Paul Sartre
1963 - Giorgos Seferis
1962 - John Steinbeck
1961 - Ivo Andric
1960 - Saint-John Perse
1959 - Salvatore Quasimodo
1958 - Boris Pasternak
1957 - Albert Camus
1956 - Juan Ramón Jiménez
1955 - Halldór Laxness
1954 - Ernest Hemingway
1953 - Winston Churchill
1952 - François Mauriac
1951 - Pär Lagerkvist
1950 - Bertrand Russell
1949 - William Faulkner
1948 - T.S. Eliot
1947 - André Gide
1946 - Hermann Hesse
1945 - Gabriela Mistral
1944 - Johannes V. Jensen
1943 - The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section
1942 - The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section
1941 - The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section
1940 - The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section
1939 - Frans Eemil Sillanpää
1938 - Pearl Buck
1937 - Roger Martin du Gard
1936 - Eugene O'Neill
1935 - The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section
1934 - Luigi Pirandello
1933 - Ivan Bunin
1932 - John Galsworthy
1931 - Erik Axel Karlfeldt
1930 - Sinclair Lewis
1929 - Thomas Mann
1928 - Sigrid Undset
1927 - Henri Bergson
1926 - Grazia Deledda
1925 - George Bernard Shaw
1924 - Wladyslaw Reymont
1923 - William Butler Yeats
1922 - Jacinto Benavente
1921 - Anatole France
1920 - Knut Hamsun
1919 - Carl Spitteler
1918 - The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section
1917 - Karl Gjellerup, Henrik Pontoppidan
1916 - Verner von Heidenstam
1915 - Romain Rolland
1914 - The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section
1913 - Rabindranath Tagore
1912 - Gerhart Hauptmann
1911 - Maurice Maeterlinck
1910 - Paul Heyse
1909 - Selma Lagerlöf
1908 - Rudolf Eucken
1907 - Rudyard Kipling
1906 - Giosuè Carducci
1905 - Henryk Sienkiewicz
1904 - Frédéric Mistral, José Echegaray
1903 - Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
1902 - Theodor Mommsen
1901 - Sully Prudhomme

Yasunari Kawabata

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 07:18:00 +0000

Yasunari Kawabata, son of a highly-cultivated physician, was born in 1899 in Osaka. After the early death of his parents he was raised in the country by his maternal grandfather and attended the Japanese public school. From 1920 to 1924, Kawabata studied at the Tokyo Imperial University, where he received his degree. He was one of the founders of the publication Bungei Jidai, the medium of a new movement in modern Japanese literature. Kawabata made his debut as a writer with the short story, Izu dancer, published in 1927. After several distinguished works, the novel Snow Country in 1937 secured Kawabata's position as one of the leading authors in Japan. In 1949, the publication of the serials Thousand Cranes and The Sound of the Mountain was commenced. He became a member of the Art Academy of Japan in 1953 and four years later he was appointed chairman of the P.E.N. Club of Japan. At several international congresses Kawabata was the Japanese delegate for this club. The Lake (1955), The Sleeping Beauty (1960) and The Old Capital (1962) belong to his later works, and of these novels, The Old Capital is the one that made the deepest impression in the author's native country and abroad. In 1959, Kawabata received the Goethe-medal in Frankfurt.

Yasunari Kawabata died in 1972 (suicide).

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1968/kawabata-bio.html

Gustave Flaubert

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 07:15:00 +0000

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)

French novelist of the realist school, best-known for MADAME BOVARY (1857), a story of adultery and unhappy love affair of the provincial wife Emma Bovary. As a writer Flaubert was a perfectionist, who did not make a distinction between a beautiful or ugly subject: all was in the style. The idea, he argued, only exists by virtue of its form - its elements included the perfect word, cunningly contrived and verified rhythms, and a genuine architectural structure.

"Has it ever happened to you," Leon went on, "to come across some vague idea of one's own in a book, some dim image that comes back to you from afar, and as the completest expression of your own slightest sentiment?"
"I have experienced it," she replied.
"That is why," he said, "I especially love the poets. I think verse more tender than prose, and that it moves far more easily to tears." (from Madame Bovary)
Gustave Flaubert was born in Rouen into a family of doctors. His father, Achille-Cléophas Flaubert, a chief surgeon at the Rouen municipal hospital, made money investing in land. Flaubert's mother, Anne-Justine-Caroline (née Fleuriot), was the daughter of a physician; she became the most important person in the author's life. Anne-Justine-Caroline died in 1872.

Flaubert started to write during his school years. At the age of fifteen he won a prize for an essay on mushrooms. Actually his work was a copy. A disappointment in his teens - Flaubert fell in love with Elisa Schlésinger, who was married and some 10 years his senior - inspired much of his early writing. His bourgeois background Flaubert found early burdensome, and eventually his rebel against it led to his expulsion from school. Flaubert completed his education privately in Paris.

In the 1840s Flaubert studied law at Paris, a brief episode in his life, and in 1844 he had a nervous attack. "I was cowardly in my youth," Flaubert wrote once to George Sand. "I was afraid of life." He recognized from suffering a nervous disease, although it could have been epilepsy. However, the diagnosis changed Flaubert's life. He failed his law exams and decided to devote himself to literature. In this Flaubert was helped by his father who bought him a house at Croisset, on the River Seine between Paris and Rouen.

In 1846 Flaubert met the writer Louise Colet. They corresponded regularly and she became Flaubert's mistress although they met infrequently. Colet gave in Lui (1859) her account of their relationship. After the death of both his father and his married sister, Flaubert moved at Croisset, the family's country home near Rouen. Until he was 50 years old, Flaubert lived with his mother - he was called ''hermit of Croisset.'' The household also included his niece Caroline. His maxim was: "Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work."

Although Flaubert once stated ''I am a bear and want to remain a bear in my den,'' he kept good contacts to Paris and witnessed the Revolution of 1848. Later he received honors from Napoleon III. From 1856 Flaubert spent winters in Paris.

Flaubert's relationship with Collet ended in 1855. From November 1849 to April 1851 he travelled with the writer Maxime du Camp in North Africa, Syria, Turkey, Greece, and Italy. It took several Egyptian guides to help Flaubert to the top of the Great Pyramid - the muscular, almost six feet tall author was at that time actually relatively fat. On his return Flaubert started Madame Bovary, which took five years to complete. It appeared first in the Revue (1856) and in book form next year. The realistic depiction of adultery was condemned as offensive to morality and religion. Flaubert was prosecuted, though he escaped conviction, which was not a common result during the official censorship of the Second Empire. When Baudelaire's provocative collection of verse, The Flowers of Evil, was brought before the same judge, Baudelaire was fined and 6 of the 100 poems were suppressed.

Madame Bovary was published in two volumes in 1857, but it appeared originally in the Revue de Paris, 1856-57. - Emma Bovary is married to Charles Bovary, a physician. As a girl Emma has read Walter Scott, she has romantic dreams and longs for adventure. "What exasperated her was that Charles did not seem to notice her anguish. His conviction that he was making her happy seemed to her an imbecile insult, and his sureness on this point ingratitude. For whose sake, then was she virtuous? Was it not for him, the obstacle to all felicity, the cause of all misery, and, as it were, the sharp clasp of that complex strap that bucked her in on all sides." Emma seeks release from the boredom of her marriage from love affairs with two men - with the lawyer Léon Dupuis and then with Rodolphe Boulanger. Emma wants to leave her husband with him. He rejects the idea and Emma becomes ill. After she has recovered, she starts again her relationship with Léon, who works now in Rouen. They meet regularly at a hotel. Emma is in heavy debts because of her lifestyle and she poisons herself with arsenic. Charles Bovary dies soon after her and their daughter Berthe is taken care of poor relatives. Berthe starts to earn her living by working in a factory. - The novel created an outrage. Flaubert was even tried and acquitted on charges of immorality for it. The character of Emma was important to the author - society offered her no escape and once Flaubert said: "Emma, c'est moi." Delphine Delamare, who died in 1848, is alleged to have been the original of Emma Bovary.

In the 1860s Flaubert enjoyed success as a writer and intellectual at the court of Napoleon III. Among his friends were Zola, George Sand, Hippolyte Taine, and the Russian writer Turgenev, with whom he shared similar aesthetic ideals - dedication to realism, and to the nonjudgmental representation of life. Their complete correspondence was published in English in 1985. ''The thought that I shall see you this winter quite at leisure delights me like the promise of an oasis," he wrote to Turgenev. "The comparison is the right one, if only you knew how isolated I am! Who is there to talk to now? Who is there in our wretched country who still 'cares about literature'? Perhaps one single man? Me! The wreckage of a lost world, an old fossil of romanticism! You will revive me, you'll do me good.'' (from Flaubert & Turgenev. A Friendship in Letters, edited and translated by Barbara Beaumont, 1985)

Flaubert was by nature melancholic. His perfectionism, long hours at his work table with a frog inkwell, only made his life harder. In a letter to Ernest Feydeau he wrote: "Books are made not like children but like pyramids... and are just as useless!" Flaubert's other, non-literary life was marked by his prodigious appetite for prostitutes, which occasionally led to venereal infections. "It may be a perverted taste," Flaubert said, "but I love prostitution, and for itself, too, quite apart from its carnal aspects." His last years were shadowed by financial worries - he helped with his modest fortune his niece's family after their bankruptcy. Flaubert died of a cerebral hemorrhage on May 8, in 1880.

In the 1870s Flaubert's work gained acclaim by the new school of naturalistic writers. His narrative approach, that the novelist should not judge, teach, or explain but remain neutral, was widely adopted. Flaubert himself detested the label Realist - and other labels. Among Flaubert's later major works is SALAMMBÔ (1862), a story of the siege of Carthage in 240-237 BC by mercenaries. The novel inspired in 1998 Philippe Fénélon's opera, the libretto was written by Jean-Yves Masson. Also the composers Berlioz and Mussorgsky had planned opera adaptations, but they were never realized. TROIS CONTES (1872) was a collection of three tales. The Italian writer Italo Calvino has praised it as "one of the most extraordinary spiritual journeys ever accomplished outside any religion."

L'ÉDUCATION SENTIMENTALE (1869) was a panorama of France set in the era of the Revolution of 1848. Its first version (LA PREMIÈRE ÉDUCATION SENTIMENTALE) Flaubert had finished in 1845. The story depicted the relationship between a young man and an older married woman. Fréderic Moreau, the hero, is a gifted young man, full of vague longings, but he constantly meets people who have nothing else to offer but pessimism and cynicism. The ironic title, A Sentimental Education, means the education of feeling, and refers to the failure of Flaubert's generation to achieve its ideals. LA TENTATION DE SAINT ANTOINE (1874) was a book that influenced the young Freud. Its story was based on the story of the 4th-century Christian anchorite, who lived in the Egyptian desert and experienced philosophical and physical temptations. Flaubert spent decades years with the work. Part of its fantastic mode and setting was inspired by a Brueghel painting. Flaubert's book on bourgeois stupidity, BOUVARD ET PÉCUCHET, was left unfinished at his death, and was first published in La Nouvelle Revue (1880-81), edited by Flaubert's niece Caroline Commanville. The two protagonists, two copy clerks who move to the country, have often been considered forefathers of Beckett's characters. Bouvard and Pécuchet was partly inspired by Bartlémy Maurice's story 'Les Deux greffiers' (1841), which had appeared in the magazine La Gazette fdes tribunnaux. Some of the banalities which Flaubert found unbearable, he had already collected in Dictionary of Received Ideas (1911).

For further reading: Gustave Flaubert: Sa vie, ses romans, son style by Albert Thibaudet (1922, rev. ed. 1935); Gustave Flaubert and the Art of Realism by Anthony Thorlby (1956); The Novels of Flaubert by Victor Brombert (1966); Flaubert: The Uses of Uncertainty by Jonathan Culler (1974, rev. ed. 1985); Flaubert and the Historical Novel by Anne Green (1982); Flaubert Writing: A Study in Narrative Strategies by Michal Peled Ginsburg ( 1986); Bibliographie des études sur G. Flaubert by D.J. Colwell (1988-90); Gustave Flaubert by William J. Berg, et al (1997); The King & the Adulteress: A Psychoanalytical and Literary Reinterpretation of Madame Bovary and King Lear by Roberto Speziale-Bagliacca, Colin Rice (1998); Flaubert: A Life by Geoffrey Wall (2001) - See also: Guy de Maupassant, Jean-Paul Sartre's biography of Flaubert, L'Idiot de la famille

Selected works:

MADAME BOVARY, 1857 - (trans. by Francis Steegmuller) - Rouva Bovary (suom. Eino Palola) - films: 1917 (Life Number Two), dir. by William Nigh ; 1932 (Unholy Love), dir. by Albert Ray ; 1934, dir. by Jean Renoir ; 1949, dir. by Vincente Minnelli ; 1991, dir. by Claude Chabrol, starring Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Francois Balmer, Christophe Malavoy, Jean Yanne ; BBC television series, 2000, dir. by Tim Fywell, screenplay by Heidi Thomas, starring Frances O'Connor, Hugh Bonneville. Also Dvid Lean's film Ryan's Daughter (1970), starring Sarah Miles, Robert Mitchum, Chris Jones, written by Robert Bolt, was inspired by Flaubert's book. The story was set in Ireland in the mid-1910s.
SALAMMBÔ, 1862 - Salambo (suom. Jalmari Finne, 1908; Annikki Suni) - films: 1924, dir. by Pierre Marodon; 1959, dir. by Sergio Grieco
L'ÉDUCATION SENTIMENTALE,1869 - A Sentimental Education - Sydämen oppivuodet (suom. J.A. Hollo) - film 1961, dir. by Alexandre Astruc
TROIS CONTES, 1872 - Three Tales - Kolme kertomusta (suom. Kauko Kare)
LE CANDIDAT, 1874 - The Candidate
LE TENTATION DE SAINT ANTOINE, 1874 - The Temptation of Saint Anthony (trans. by Lafcadio Hearn) - Pyhän Antoniuksen kiusaus (suom. Jorma Kapari)
BOUVARD ET PÉCUCHET, 1881 - Bouvard and Pécuchet (trans. by Alban J. Krailsheimer) - Bouvard ja Pécuchet (suom. Antti Nylén)
PAR LES CHAMPS ET PAR LES GRÉVES, 1886
LE SEXE FAIBLE, 1910 - The Feeble Sex
DICTIONNAIRE DES IDÉES RECUES, 1911 - Dictionary of Received Ideas - Valmiiden ajatusten sanakirja (suom. Mirja Halonen ja Ville Keynäs)
CORRESPONDANCE, 1926-33
LA PREMIÈRE ÉDUCATION SENTIMENTALE, 1963 - The First Sentimental Education
ŒUVRES COMPLÈTES I-II, 1964
Flaubert & Turgenev: A Friendship in Letters, 1985 (edited and translated by Barbara Beaumont)

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/flaubert.htm

Nawal El Saadawi

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 07:12:00 +0000

Nawal Saadawi

by Jennifer McBride
Nawal El Saadawi is a leading Egyptian feminist, sociologist, medical doctor and militant writer on Arab women's problems. She is one of the most widely translated contemporary Egyptian writers, with her work available in twelve languages.

Nawal El Saadawi was born in 1931 in Kafr Tahla, a small village outside of Cairo. El Saadawi was raised in a large household with eight brothers and sisters. Her family was relatively traditional, El Saadawi was "circumcised" at the age of six, and yet somewhat progressive, El Saadawi's father insisted that all of his children be educated. El Saadawi describes her mother as "a potential revolutionary whose ambition was buried in her marriage." Her mother died when she was 25, and her father shortly thereafter, both unable to witness the incredible accomplishments their daughter went on to make.

Despite limitation imposed by both religious and colonial oppression on rural women, El Saadawi attended the University of Cairo and graduated in 1955 with a degree in psychiatry. After completing her education, El Saadawi practiced psychiatry and eventually rose to become Egypt's Director of Public Health. El Saadawi met her husband, Sherif Hetata, also a doctor, while working in the Ministry of Health, where the two shared an office together. Hetata shared El Saadawi's leftist views, himself having been imprisoned for 13 years for his participation in a left-wing opposition party.

Since she began to write over 25 years ago, El Saadawi's books (27 in all) have concentrated on women, particularly Arab women, their sexuality and legal status. From the start, her writings were considered controversial and dangerous for the society, and were banished in Egypt. As a result, El Saadawi was forced to publish her works in Beirut, Lebanon. In 1972, her first work of non-fiction, Women and Sex, which as the title suggests, dealt with the highly taboo subject of women and sexuality, and also the sensitive subjects of politics and religion. This publication evoked the anger of highly placed political and theological authorities, and the Ministry of Health was pressured into dismissing her. Under similar pressures she lost her post as Chief Editor of a health journal and as Assistant General Secretary in the Medical Association in Egypt.

From 1973 to 1976 she researched women and neurosis in the Ain Shams University's Faculty of Medicine. Her results were published in Women and Neurosis in Egypt in1976, which included 20 in-depth case studies of women in prisons and hospitals. This research also inspired her novel Woman at Point Zero, which was based on a female death row inmate convicted of murdering her husband that she met while conducting the research.

In 1977, she published her most famous work, The Hidden Face of Eve, which covered a host of topics relative to Arab women such as aggression against female children and female genital mutilation, prostitution, sexual relationships, marriage and divorce and Islamic fundamentalism.

From 1979-180 El Saadawi was the United Nations Advisor for the Women's Program in Africa (ECA) and the Middle East (ECWA).

Later in 1980, as a culmination of the long war she had fought for Egyptian women's social and intellectual freedom, an activity that had closed all avenues of official jobs to her, she was imprisoned under the Sadat regime, for alleged "crimes against the state." El Saadawi stated "I was arrested because I believed Sadat. He said there is democracy and we have a multi-party system and you can criticize. So I started criticizing his policy and I landed in jail." In spite of her imprisonment, El Saadawi continued to fight against oppression. El Saadawi formed the Arab Women's Solidarity Association in 1981. The AWSA was the first legal, independent feminist organization in Egypt. The organization has 500 members locally and more than 2,000 internationally. The Association holds international conferences and seminars, publishes a magazine and has started income-generating projects for women in rural areas. The AWSA was banned in 1991 after criticizing US involvement in the Gulf War, which El Saadawi felt should have been solved among the Arabs.

Although she was denied pen and paper, El Saadawi continued to write in prison, using a "stubby black eyebrow pencil" and "a small roll of old and tattered toilet paper." She was released in 1982, and in 1983 she published Memoirs from the Women's Prison, in which she continued her bold attacks on the repressive Egyptian government. In the afterword to her memoirs, she notes the corrupt nature of her country's government, the dangers of publishing under such authoritarian conditions and her determination to continue to write the truth:

When I came out of prison there were two routes I could have taken. I could have become one of those slaves to the ruling institution, thereby acquiring security, prosperity, the state prize, and the title of "great writer"; I could have seen my picture in the newspapers and on television. Or I could continue on the difficult path, the one that had led me to prison... Danger has been a part of my life ever since I picked up a pen and wrote. Nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies. Nothing is more perilous than knowledge in a world that has considered knowledge a sin since Adam and Eve... There is no power in the world that can strip my writings from me.
Even after her release from prison, El Saadawi's life was threatened by those who opposed her work, mainly Islamic fundamentalists, and armed guards were stationed outside her house in Giza for several years until she left the country to be a visiting professor at North American universities. El Saadawi was the writer in residence at Duke University's Asian and African Languages Department from 1993-1996. She also taught at Washington State University in Seattle.

El Saadawi continues to devote her time to being a writer, journalist and worldwide speaker on women's issues. Her current project is writing her autobiography, laboring over it for 10 hours a day.

http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/saadawi.html

Naguib Mahfouz

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 03:22:00 +0000

Egyptian writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988, and was the first Arabic writer to be so honored. Many in the Arab world saw the prize as somewhat ironic, not least because the work for which Mahfouz received the prize had been published at least three decades earlier. In spite of millions readers in the Arab world, the author's books are still unavailable in many Middle Eastern countries on account of his support for President Sadat's Camp David peace treaty with Israel in 1978. Mahfouz wrote some 40 novels and short story collections, 30 screenplays, and many plays.
"Zaabalawi!" he said, frowning in concentration, "You need him? God be with you, for who knows, I Zaabalawi, where you are?"
"Doesn't he visit you?" I asked eagerly.
"He visited me some time ago. He might well come now; on the other hand I mightn't see him till death!"
I gave an audible sigh and asked:
"What made him like that?"
He took up his lute. "Such are saints or they would not be saints," he said laughing.
"Do those who need him suffer as I do?"
"Such suffering is part of the cure!"
(from 'Zaabalawi,' 1965)
Naguib Mahfouz was born in Gamaliya, Cairo. The family lived in two popular districts of the town, in al-Jamaliyyah, from where they moved in 1924 to al-Abbasiya, then a new Cairo suburb; both have provided the backdrop for many of the author's writings. His father, whom Mahfouz described as having been "old-fashioned", was a civil servant, and Mahfouz eventually followed in his footsteps. In his childhood Mahfouz read extensively. His mother often took him to museums and Egyptian history later became a major theme in many of his books.
The 1919 revolution in Egypt had a strong affect on Mahfouz, although he was at the time only seven years old. From the window he often saw English soldiers firing at the demostrators, men and women. "You could say," he later noted, "that the one thing which most shook the security of my childhood was the 1919 revolution." After competing his secondary education, Mahfouz entered the University of Cairo, where he studied philosophy, graduating in 1934. By 1936, having spent a year working on an M.A., he decided to become a professional writer. Mahfouz then worked as a journalist at Ar-Risala, and contributed to Al-Hilal and Al-Ahram. The major Egyptian influence on Mahfouz's thoughts of science and socialism in the 1930s was Salama Musa, the Fabian intellectual.
Before turning to the novel, Mahfouz wrote articles and short stories, 80 of which were published in magazines. His first published book was a translation of James Baikie's work on ancient Egypt. Mahfouz's first collection of stories appeared in 1938. In 1939 he entered government bureaucracy, where he was employed for the next 35 years. From 1939 until 1954, he was a civil servant at the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, and then was appointed director of the Foundation for Support of the Cinema, the State Cinema Organization. In 1969-71 he was a consultant for cinema affairs to the Ministry of Culture. After marrying Atiyyatallah Ibrahim in 1954, he moved from the family house in al-Abbasiya to an apartment overlooking the Nile in Jiza.
Most of Mahfouz's early works were set in al-Jamaliyyah. ABATH AL-AQDAR (1939), RADUBIS (1943), and KIFAH TIBAH (1944), were historical novels, written as part of a larger unfulfilled project of 30 novels. Inspired by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) Mahfouz planned to cover the whole history of Egypt in a series of books. However, following the third volume, Mahfouz shifted his interest to the present, the psychological impact of the social change on ordinary people.
Mahfouz's central work in the 1950s was The Cairo Trilogy, a monumental work of 1,500 pages, which the author completed before the July Revolution. The novels were titled with the street names Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street. Mahfouz set the story in the parts of Cairo where he grew up. They depict the life of the patriarch al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad and his family over three generations in Cairo from WW I to the 1950s, when King Farouk I was overthrown. With its rich variety of characters and psychological understanding, the work connected Mahfouz to such authors as Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy, and Galsworthy. Mahfouz ceased to write for some years after finishing the trilogy. Disappointed in the Nasser régime, which had overthrown the monarchy in 1952, he started publishing again in 1959, now prolifically pouring out novels, short stories, journalism, memoirs, essays, and screenplays.
The Children of Gebelaawi (1959) portrayed the patriarch Gebelaawi and his children, average Egyptians living the lives of Cain and Abel, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed. Gebelaawi has built a mansion in an oasis in the middle of a barren desert; his estate becomes the scene of a family feud which continues for generations. "Whenever someone is depressed, suffering or humiliated, he points to the mansion at the top of the alley at the end opening out to the desert, and says sadly, 'That is our ancestor's house, we are all his children, and we have a right to his property. Why are we starving? What have we done?' " The book was banned throughout the Arab world, except in the Lebanon. In the 1960s, Mahfouz further developed its theme that humanity is moving further away from God in his existentialist novels. In The Thief and the Dogs (1961) he depicted the fate a Marxist thief, who has been released from prison and plans revenge. Ultimately he is murdered in a cemetery.
Mahfouz left his post as the Director of Censorship and was appointed Director of the Foundation for the Support of the Cinema. He was a contributing editor for the leading newspaper Al-Ahram and in 1969 he became a consultant to the Ministry of Culture, retiring in 1972. He has been a board member of Dar al Ma'aref publishing house. Many of his novels were serialized in Al-Ahram, and his writings also appeared in his weekly column, 'Point of View'. Before the Nobel Prize only a few of his novels had appeared in the West.
In the 1960s and 1970s Mahfouz started to construct his novels more freely and use interior monologue. In Miramar (1967) he developed a form of multiple first-person narration. Four narrators, among them a Socialist and a Nasserite opportunist, represent different political views. In the center of the story is an attractive servant girl. In Arabian Nights and Days (1981) and in The Journey of Ibn Fatouma (1983) Mahfouz drew on traditional Arabic narratives as subtexts. Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth (1985) is about conflict between old and new religious truths, a theme with which Mika Waltari dealt in Finland in his historical novel Sinuhe (1945, trans. The Egyptian).
"As a geographical place and as history, Egypt for Mahfouz has no counterpart in any other part of the world. Old beyond history, geographically distinct because of the Nile and its fertile valley, Mahfouz's Egypt is an immense accumulation of history, stretching back in time for thousands of years, and despite the astounding variety of its rulers, regimes, religions, and races, nevertheless retaining its own coherent identity." (Edward W. Said in New York Review of Books, November 30, 2000)
Mahfouz, called the "Balzac of Egypt", described the development of his country in the 20th-century. He combined intellectual and cultural influences from East and West  his own exposure to the literarature of non-Arabic culture began in his youth with the enthusiastic consumption of Western detective stories, Russian classics, and such modernist writers as Proust, Kafka and Joyce. Mahfouz's stories, written in the florid classical Arabic, are almost always set in the heavily populated urban quarters of Cairo, where his characters, mostly ordinary people, try cope with the modernization of society and the temptations of Western values.
Among those people, who brought early translations of his work to the English-speaking readers was Jacqueline Onassis. In Egypt he was widely considered a spokesperson not only for Egypt but also for a number of non-Western cultures. However, Mahfouz himself almost never traveled outside of Egypt, and sent his daughters to accept the Nobel Prize on his behalf.
Like many Egyptian writers and intellectuals, Mahfouz was on a "death list" by Islamic fundamentalists. He defended Salman Rushdie after the Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini condemned him to death, but later he criticized Rushdie's Satanic Verses as "insulting" to Islam. In 1994, near his home, Mahfouz was stabbed in the neck with a kitchen knife, and two Egyptian Islamic militants were sentenced to death for attempting to kill him. Texts written after the assassination attempt for a weekly women's magazine were collected in Dreams (2000-2003). In his old age Mahfouz became nearly blind, and he though he continued to write, had difficulties in holding a pen or a pencil. He also had to abandon his daily habit of meeting his friends at coffeehouses. Mahfouz died in Cairo on August 30, 2006.
For further reading: The Changing Rhythm: A Study of Najib Mahfu's Novels by Sasson Somekh (1973); The Modern Egyptian Novel by Hilary Kilpatrick (1974); The Arabic Novel by Roger Allen (1982); Naguig Mahfouz, Nobel 1988: Egyptian Perspectives (1989) Nobel Laureates in Literature, ed. by Rado Pribic (1990); Naguib Mahfouz's Egypt by Hayim Gordon (1990); Critical Perspectives on Naguib Mahfouz, ed. by Trevor Le Gassick (1991); Naguib Mahfouz, ed. by Michael Beard and Adnan Haydar (1993); Naguib Mahfouz: The Pursuit of Meaning by Rasheed el-Enany (1993); The Early Novels of Naguib Mahfouz: Images of Modern Egypt by Matti Moosa (1994); The Cairo of Naguib Mahfouz by Gamal al-Ghitani (2000)
Selected works:
• ABATH AL-AGDAR, 1939 - Mockery of the Fates
• RADUBIS, 1943
• KIFAH TIBAH, 1944
• KHAN AL-KHALILI, 1944
• AL-QAHIRAH AL-JADIDAH, 1946 - New Cairo
• ZUQAQ AL-MIDAQQ, 1947 - Midaq Alley (trans. by Trevor le Gassick) - Midaqq-kuja (suom. Pekka Suni, Mustafa Shikeben) - film El Callejón de los milagros / Midaq Alley, dir. by Jorge Fons and starring Ernesto Gómez Cruz, Salma Hayek, and Maria Rojo, was based on Mahfouz's novel but set in Mexico City.
• IGNIS FATUUS, 1948
• AL-SARAB, 1949
• BIDAYAH WA-NIHAYAH, 1949 - The Beginning and the End (trans. by Ramses Hanna Awad)
• AL-THULATIYA, 1956-57 - The Cairo Trilogy; BAYN AL-QUASRAYN (1956) - Palace Walk (trans. by W. Hutchins and Olive Kenny) - QUAST AL-SHAWQ (1957) - Palace of Desire (trans. by W. Hutchins, Lorne Kenny and Olive Kenny) - AL-SUKKARIYAH (1957) - Sugar Street (trans. by W. Hutchins and Angele Botros Semaan) - Palatsikatu, Intohimon palatsi, Sokerikuja (suom. Pekka Suni)
• Children of Gebelaawi, 1959 - Children of the Alley (trans. by Peter Theroux)
• AL-LISS WA-AL-KILAB, 1961 - The Thief and the Dogs (trans. by Trevor Le Gassic and Mustafa Badawi)
• AL-SUMMAN WA-AL-KHARIF, 1962 - Autumn Quail (trans. by Roger Allen)
• AL-TARIQ, 1964 - The Search (trans. by Muhammed Islam)
• AL-SHAHHADH, 1965 - The Beggar (trans. by Kristin Walker Henry and Nariman Khales Naili al Warrah)
• THARTHARAH FAWQ AL NIL, 1966 - Adrift on the Nile (trans. by Frances Liardet)
• AWLAD HARITNA, 1967 - Children of Gebelawi (trans. by Philip Stewart) / Children of the Alley (trans. by Peter Theroux)
• MIRAMAR, 1967 - Miramar (trans. by Maged el-Komos and John Rodenbeck) - Miramar (suom. Pekka Suni, Mustafa Shikeben)
• AL MARAYA, 1971 - Mirrors (trans. by Roger Allen)
• AL-HUBB TAHT AL MATAR, 1973
• AL-KARNAK, 1974 - Three Contemporary Egyptian Novels
• QUAB AL-LAYL, 1975
• HIKAYAT HARITNA, 1975 - Fountain and Tomb (trans. by Soad Sobhy, Essam Fattouh, and James Kenneson)
• HADRAT AL-MUHTARAM, 1975 - Respected Sir (trans. by Rasheed el-Enany)
• MALHAMAT AL-HARAFISH, 1977 - The Harafish
• ARS AL-HUBB, 1980
• AFRAH AL-QUBBAH, 1981 - Wedding Song (trans. by Olive Kenny)
• LAYALI ALF LAYLAH, 1981 - Arabian Nights and Days (trans. by Denys Johnson-Davies)
• AL-BAQI MIN AL-ZAMAN SA'AH, 1982
• RIHLAT IBN FATTUMAH, 1983 - The Journey of Ibn Fatouma (trans. by Denys Johnson-Davies)
• AMAM AL-'ARSH, 1983
• AL-A'ISH FI AL-HAQIQAH, 1985 - Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth (translated from the Arabic by Tagreid Abu-Hassabo)
• YAWM MAQTAL AL ZA'IM, 1985 - The Day Leader Was Killed
• HADITH AL-SABAH WA-AL-MASA, 1987
• THARTHARAH ALA AL-BAHR, 1993
• ASDAA AL-SIRA AL-DHATIYYA, 1994 - Echoes from an Autobiography (trans. by Denys Johnson-Davies)
• AHLAM FATRAT AL-NAQAHA, 2000-2003 - The Dreams
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/mahfouz.htm

American drama

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:34:00 +0000

AN OLD FASHIONED GUY

(A short play for one male and one female actors and one voice-off)

(A street with shopping stores. On the grown-floor a sign says "BOOKSTORE". In the centre of the set there's SHE. Stopped as if waiting for someone. Behind her is HE, walking back and forth... seems to be very nervous.)

HE (Addressing to SHE) - Excuse me miss... good afternoon.

SHE (Rude) - I'm not interested.

HE - If you could spare me a minute...

SHE (Without looking at HE) - don't push! I've enough of public collections!

HE (With a shy smile) - I see... there are so many people collecting for so many different things.

SHE (Rude) - Exactly! Goodbye! (Turns her back to him)

HE - Wait! Just a small favour... here, in the bookstore. (Pointing at the bookstore)

SHE (Looking at the bookstore) - Bookstore?! What's wrong with it?

HE (Awkward) - Nothing's wrong. I just need a little favour... and I'm here appealing to your kindness, sure I'm bothering you, but there is a problem... a natural obstacle, which could be overcome, surpassed, in if in case you'd be willing to help me.

SHE - Do you work at the bookstore?

HE - I'm a costumer.

SHE - don't tell me you've forgotten your credit card and you want to lend you some money!

HE - I have the money! I have the money!

SHE - So... what have I got to do with this bookstore? (Looks inside through the shop window) I've never entered here.

HE - A book.

SHE (Surprised, at HE) - A book?!

HE - Yes. A small book. Here's the title... (Shows a folded paper)

SHE - I don't understand.

HE - Here's the title of the book and... (takes out some coin from his pocket and rubs them in) and there is the right amount money for it! The title... (shows the paper) and the right money. (The coins hop in his hand) So... are you on?!

SHE - Wait a minute... you want me to go to the bookstore and buy you a book?

HE (Nodding) - Exactly! Would you be so kind as to do it?

SHE - Why don't you do it yourself?

HE (Lowering his head) - Details don't allow me to...

SHE - I got it! It's a porn book!

HE (Offended) - Nothing of the kind! I'd never ask a lady such a thing!

SHE - I think... maybe you have debts in there.

HE (Hopping the coins) - I have the money!

SHE - What a strange request.

HE (Anxious) - So?!... A small favour... you deliver the paper, deliver the money, and then take the book out there! Two minutes! Please!

SHE (Grabs the paper out of the hands of HE) - What's the book's title?

HE (extremely awkward) - It doesn't matter to you. You just have to deliver the paper and the money, and they'll wrap the book...

(SHE unfolds the paper)

No, don't read it! Please, I beg you! Be sorry on me!!

SHE (Reading the paper, now unfolded. Opening wide her eyes) - "HOW TO OVERCOME SHYNESS"?!!! (SHE laughs) "HOW TO OVERCOME SHYNESS"?!!! (SHE laughs again)

(The set becomes dark)

OFF-VOICE - With the help of the book - or maybe not - they married and were shyly happy.

© Teixeira Moita - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Note:Please don't use,reproduce or stage this work without the author's permission!

American drama

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:34:00 +0000

APOLOGIES

(One only word short play)

© Teixeira Moita - All rights reserved

Characters: HE and SHE

(HE came from the left to centre of the stage. HE dresses casually. At the same time, from the right, SHE appears. They both walk in with determination. Then, HE and SHE bump into each other on the centre stage.)

HE - Sorry!...

SHE (her handbag drops on the floor)- Sorry!...

(HE and SHE bend down to pick up the handbag at the same time. Their heads clash.)

HE - Sorry!

SSHE -Sorry! (SHE scrubs her head in the aching zone. HE picks up her handbag and delivers to SHE)

HE - Sorry!

(SHE smiles and waves her head)

(HE and SHE stand side by side silently for a few moments. HE begins to look at SHE with eagerly. (Yes, this is sexual harassment... so what?!...) First HE looks at SHE from top to bottom, and then HE leans himself a little behind so as to look at her back. SHE realises what HE is doing and makes a very hungry face.

HE (straightening up immediately) - Sorry!

(Few moments of silence. Afterwards, they exchange fortuitous glances. Then HE stretches his arm and gives pinches the behind of SHE. SHE leaps.

HE (taking back his arm, and with a smile) - Sorry.

(SHE takes one step aside from him, He takes one step aside, following her. SHE takes another step aside. HE does the same thing. SHE takes two steps aside. HE takes two long steps aside and collides with SHE)

HE - Sorry!

(SHE smiles patronisingly)

(Few moments. HE pinches her behind again. Now SHE smiles at him. Fortuitous glances. Now, they smile widely to one another. HE looks to his back and, with a blink of an eye, HE invites SHE to a place in the rear of the stage. SHE looks at that place and then looks forwards, pretending that she doesn't understand the idea. HE insists. SHE... the same. HE grabs SHE by the arm, trying to drag her to that place. SHE, offended, opposes and frees her arm.)

SHE (Offended) - Sorry?!...

HE (with resignation) - Sorry...

(Few moments. SHE gently holds his hand and leads him to the place. Walk in to the spotted place and begin to embrace, making sexual healing. After a few moments of sighs and moans, they both return to the first place. Then, SHE grabs a pillow or a cushion and places it under her blouse, as if SHE were pregnant.

SHE (Holding her "belly") - Sorry...

(The Nuptial March music now is heard. HE and SHE fake a few steps, side-by-side, embraced as if they were on the way to the altar to be married.

(SHE) - Sorry...

(Stage light changes. In another place of the stage HE and SHE mime they are eating. They both look sad, bending to their dishes. HE, suddenly, spits out his food and gesticulates showing his displeasure on the cooking)

SHE (Humbly) - Sorry.

(HE proceeds with the gestures and smacks her face. Then, HE moves to another place of the stage and hides his face in his hands - he is regretful.)

HE - Sorry. (Exits the stage)

(Stage lights change)

(Now SHE goes through all over the stage, looking for HE. HE enters kissing a doll or another actress. Laughs. SHE sees them. HE is still kissing his mistress when HE realises he's been caught. HE pushes his mistress away.)

HE - Sorry!

(SHE exits the stage, running)

(Stage lights change)

(HE and SHE mime another meal, as before. HE eats with greed. SHE, absent-minded, stirs the food on the dish. Then, suddenly, HE looks suffering. His dish falls into the floor. HE points out to his dish on the floor, then puts his hands on his throat. HE coughs desperately - his wife has poisoned him. Then HE falls down abruptly on the floor.)

SHE (Laughing) - Sorry!!

(Police sirens are heard. SHE looks everywhere, feeling trapped. Runs trough the stage, one place to another, with her hands on her head. Stops on the centre-stage, facing the public.

Picks up a prop in shape of a prison bar. SHE puts the prop on front her face.

SHE (Shouting grievously) - SORRY!!!!!

(Curtain)

Note:Please don't use,reproduce or stage this work without the author's permission!

French Poetry

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:31:00 +0000

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity
by Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
[from Poems in three volumes (Boston, n.d.) Vol. 2]
_____

For centuries past this war-madness
Had laid hold of each combative race,
While our God takes but heed of the flower,
And that sun, moon, and stars keep their place.

The sight of the heavens above us,
The bird's nest and lily-like snow,
Drive not from the brain of us mortals
The war-thirst, with its feverish glow.

We love but the field with its carnage,
And the strife with turns earth into hell;
And eager for glory, the people
Would not change the fierce drum for church-bell.

The vain aspirations of glory,
With banners and cars of bright gold,
Draw tears from the widows and orphans,
As often has happened of old.

Our natures have changed to brute fierceness;
"Forward! -- die!" bursts from each angry throat,
While our lips seem to mimic the music
Of the echoing war-trumpet's note.

Steel flashes, the bivouacs are smoking,
As with pale brows we eagerly run.
The thoughtful are driven to madness
By the flash and roar of the gun.

Our lives are but spent for the glory
Of the kings who smile over our grave,
And build up a fabric of friendship
With cement from the blood of the brave;

While the beasts of the field and the vultures
Come in search of their banquet of hell,
And they strip the red flesh from the bodies
That lie stiff and stark where they fell.

Each man's hand is raised 'gainst his neighbour,
While he strives all his wrath to excite,
And trades on our natural weakness
To inveigle us into the fight.

"A Russian! Quick! cut down the villain!
Put your sword through that murderous Croat!
How dare they from our men to differ,
Or venture to wear a white coat!"

"I slay fellow-creatures, and go on
My life's path. What glory like mine?
Their crime is most black and most heinous, --
They live on the right of the Rhine."

"For Rosbach and Waterloo, vengeance!"
The cry maddens the heart and the brain;
Men long for the fierce glow of battle
And the blood that is poured forth like rain.

In peace we could drink from the fountains,
Or calmly repose in the shade,
But our brethren in battle to slaughter
Is a pleasure which never will fade.

The lust for blood-spilling incites us
To rush madly o'er valleys and plains;
The vanquished are crying in terror,
And are clasping our swift horses' manes

And yet I ask sometimes in wonder,
As I wander the meadows among,
Can brother for brother feel hatred
As he hears the lark's musical song?

French Poetry

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:31:00 +0000

Jean Chouan
by Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
[from Poems in three volumes (Boston, n.d.) Vol. 1]
_____

THE Whites fled, and the Blues fired down the glade.
A hill the plain commanded and surveyed,
And round this hill, of trees and verdure bare,
Wild forests closed th' horizon everywhere.
Safe hold and rampart were behind the mount:
There the Whites halt, and their small numbers count.
Jean Chouan rose, his long hair floating free:
"None can be dead, since here our chief we see,"
They cried. Jean Chouan listened to the shot:
"Are any missing? No! Then tarry not,
But fly!" Around him women, children stood,
In terror. "Sons, re-entering quick the wood,
Disperse yourselves!" As swallows scattering fly
On rapid wings when storms invade the sky,
They fled to thickets drowned in mist and shade,
And ran, -- e'en brave men run when they're afraid.
Dread the disorder, when in trembling flight
Old men and infants at the breast unite,
Fearing or to be killed, or captive ta'en.
Jean Chouan, last, did with slow steps remain,
And often turned him back, and made a prayer.

Sudden, a cry within the glade you hear!
A woman 'mid a storm of bullets stood.
Already the whole band was in the wood;
Jean Chouan only stays. He turns, and sees
A woman burdened. Pale and weak, she flies;
Her naked feet, torn by the brambles, bleed;
She's all alone, and cries, "To help me, speed!"
Jean Chouan mutters, "'T is Jeanne Madeleine."
In line of shot, in middle of the plain,
On her the bullets with fierce fury pour.
Ah! God himself must bend the victim o'er,
And take her hand, and shelter 'neath his wing.
Death does such numerous darts around her fling,
She must be lost. "There, help!" she loudly cries;
But fugitives are deaf, and fear denies.
The balls upon the helpless peasant ran.

Then on the hill which dominates the plain,
Jean Chouan bounded, manly, calm, and proud,
Dauntless. "I am Jean Chouan!" called he loud.
The Blues cried, "'T is the chief!" and that brave form,
Engrossing all the thunder and storm,
Made Death his target change. "Now take to flight!
He shouts; "save yourself, sister!" Mad with fright.
Jeanne sped into the wood, her life to save.
Like pine on snow, or mast upon the wave,
Jean Chouan, whom death seemed to fascinate,
Drew up. The Blues see only him. "I wait
What time your safety needs. Go, daughter, go!
Joy 'mong your kindred you again shall know,
Again sweet blossoms in your bodice place."
And he alone it was who then did face
The storm of shot which fell on his great height,
Which seemed as if e'en then would win the fight.
The balls fell thick as hail. With scornful eye
He smiled and raised his sword, when suddenly,
As a bear struck in cavern deep and wide,
He felt a ball pierce thro' and thro' his side.
He stood, and said, "'T is well. Hail, Mary, maid!"
Then staggering towards the wood, he turned his head:
"Friends! friends! has Jeanne your shelter reached?" he cried.
"She's safe!" the voices from the wood replied.
Jean Chouan murmured, "Good!" and dead he fell.

Peasant, O peasants! True, ye chose not well,
But still your memory has not lessened France.
Great were ye in your fierce, dark ignorance, --
Ye, whom your kings, wolves, priests, and savage wood
Made bandits of, were valiant knights and good.
Through all your frightful yoke and errors foul
You had mysterious flashes of the soul;
Bright rays at times from out your blindness flew.
Hail! I, the banished, am not hard on you:
Exile! -- I know the cottage roof to spare.
We are proscribed, and you but phantoms are!
Brothers, we all have battled, but we sought
The future; you, benighted lions! fought
To keep the past. We strove to climb the height;
You strove no less to sink in gulfs of night.
All warred, and martyrs were, by different course,
Without ambition and without remorse, --
We to shut hell, you to keep wide the tomb.
Yet on your brows from high does radiance come;
Fraternal love and pity can unite
The sons of day with children of the night.
And Hero of the Darkness! in this lay
For you I mourn, -- I, Soldier of the Day.

French Poetry

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:30:00 +0000

My Napoleon
by Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
[from Poems in three volumes (Boston, n.d.) Vol. 3; Portion of Lui]
_____

ABOVE all others, everywhere I see
His image cold or burning;
My brain it thrills, and many time sets free
The thoughts within me yearning.
My quivering lips pour forth the words
That cluster in his name of glory, --
The star gigantic with its ray of swords
Whose gleams irradiate all modern story.

I see his finger pointing where the shell
Should fall to slay most rabble
And save foul regicides, or strike the knell
Of weaklings 'mid the tribunes' babble.
A consul then, o'er young but proud,
With midnight poring thinned and sallow;
But dreams of empire pierce the transient cloud,
And round pale face and lank locks form the halo.

And soon the Caesar, with an eye a-flame,
Whole nations' contact urging
To gain his soldiers gold and flame!
O Sun on high emerging,
Whose dazzling lustre fired the hells
Embosomed in grim bronze, which, free, rose
To change five hundred thousand base-born Tells
Into his host of half-million heroes!

What! next a captive? Yea, and caged apart.
No weight of arms enfolded
Can crush the turmoil in that seething heart
Which Nature -- not her journeymen -- self moulded.
Let sordid jailers vex their prize;
But only bends that blow to lightning,
As gazing from the seaward rock, his sighs
Cleave through the storm and haste where France lay bright'ning.

Alone, but greater! True, the sceptre's broke,
Yet lingers still some power.
In tears of woe man's metal may revoke
In temper of high hour;
For, baiting breath, e'er list the kings, --
The pinion clipped may grow! the eagle
May burst in frantic thirst for home the rings,
And rend the Bulldog, Fox and Bear, and Beagle!

And, lastly, grandest! 'tween dark sea and here
Eternal brightness coming!
The eye so weary's freshened with a tear
As rises distant drumming
And wailing cheer -- they pass the pale:
His army mourns, though still's the end hid;
And from his war-stained cloak, he answers, "Hail!
And spurns the bed of gloom for throne aye splendid!

American drama

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:30:00 +0000

MIMES

(Short play for two male actors)

© Teixeira Moita at IGAC

Characters: MAN and MIME

(MAN dresses three piece suits. On one hand he handles a briefcase; in the other hand he has a mobile phone. He walks, dynamic, back and forth.)

MAN (Talking on the mobile phone) - Hello, Charlie?!... Yes... Will you have dinner with the client next Tuesday?... Yes?!... No! No way! That's my final offer! How much?... They are crazy people! It worths half that price! Sorry, Charlie, we're talking here about business; and in business nobody works to lose money!...

(Enters the MIME dressed up as mimes usually do and with his face full of white make up. He places himself near MAN and begins to imitate all the gestures of MAN.)

MAN - Charlie...Charlie... Hold on a minute, there's an annoying guy here. (To MIME) If you don't mind, we trying to work here... (MIME makes large gestures as if he were a victim of an unfair accusation. MAN speaks normally on the phone) Charlie?!... What? Sorry... nothing wrong, just one of those shmucks that imitate people on the street. A mime, exactly! (MIME gets very happy and points to himself thanking the imaginary applause.) Hello?! Charlie?!... Hello?!... (Shuts off the phone) Damn! 'Lost the call! (MAN puts the mobile phone back in the pocket. Then he looks to MIME. Both MIME and MAN stare each other for a few moments. To MIME) What's the problem? (MIME, suddenly, looks forward with a funny face) Don't you have anything better to do besides getting people annoyed? (MIME mimes meaning that this is his job) Oh! So is that your job? (MIME waves his head affirmatively) Nice job you have! I wish I had a job like that. (MIME waves his head negatively. MAN relaxes a little) I have a family to feed. That's why I sell estate properties. (MIME mimes he earns lots of money) I wish I were! I earn just a small fee. (Few moments. To MIME) You love your work, for sure. (Few moments. Man puts a dreaming look in his face) Do you know what I've always wanted to be some day?... A poet! MIME puts himself in a position of a thinking man with his fist under his chin) That's true! I've always wanted to be a poet! To write beautiful words as if soul really existed, and to create meaningful paradoxes. You know... a poet think a lot. To think, silence is needed (loud) that's why I hate mimes!! Their silence forces me to have thoughts!! (Normal) I haven't the time to think; I must sell real estates, do you understand? (MIME mimes he is crying) Don't feel sorry for me. Nobody feels sorry for the poets that aren't poets (With a sad look on his face, MIME, with his hand, asks for MAN's charity) No, Mime! I have no money for you. A family to feed... remember?! (MAN opens his briefcase) I have here bananas; do you want to have lunch with me? (MIME waves his head affirmatively. MAN and MIME sit on the floor. MAN picks up a banana from his briefcase and hands it to MIME. MAN pretends to picks up another banana from the suitcase. And so, sitting on the floor with synchronic gestures, MIME peels and eats his true banana, while Man mimes peeling and eats an imaginary banana. Few moments, while the light fades off)

(Curtain)

© Teixeira Moita

First published in "Águas Furtadas" magazine, Oporto/1999

Note:Please don't use,reproduce or stage this work without the author's permission!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

French Poetry

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:29:00 +0000

Napoleon
by Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
[from Poems in three volumes (Boston, n.d.) Vol. 3; Portion of Lui; part III, last 4 stanzas.]
_____

ANGEL or demon! thou, -- whether of light
The minister, or darkness -- still dost sway
This age of ours; thine eagle's soaring flight
Bears us, all breathless, after it away.
The eye that from thy presence fain would stry
Shuns thee in vain; thy mighty shadow thrown
Rests on all pictures of the living day,
And on the threshold of our time alone,
Dazzling, yet sombre, stands thy form, Napoleon!

Thus, when the admiring stranger's steps explore
The subject-lands that 'neath Vesuvius be,
Whether he wind along the enchanting shore
To Portici from fair Parthenope,
Or, lingering long in dreamy reverie,
O'er loveliest Ischia's od'rous isle he stray,
Wooed by whose breath the soft and am'rous sea
Seems like some languishing sultana's lay, --
A voice for very sweets that scarce can win its way;

Him, whether Paestum's solemn fane detain,
Shrouding his soul with meditation's power;
Or at Pozzuloil, to the sprightly strain
Of tarantella danced 'neath Tuscan tower,
Listening, he while away the evening hour;
Or wake the echoes, mournful, lone and deep,
Of that sad city, in its dreaming bower
By the volcano seized, where mansions keep
The likeness which they wore at that last fatal sleep;

Or be his bark at Posillippo laid,
While as the swarthy boatman at his side
Chants Tasso's lays to Virgil's pleased shade, --
Ever he sees, throughout that circuit wide,
From shaded nook or sunny lawn espied,
From rocky headland viewed, or flow'ry whore,
From sea and spreading mead alike descried,
The Giant Mount, tow'ring all objects o'er,
And black'ning with its breath th' horizon evermore!

French Poetry

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:29:00 +0000

To the Napoleon Column
by Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
[from Poems in three volumes (Boston, n.d.) Vol. 2]
_____

WHEN with gigantic hand he placed,
For throne on vassal Europe based.
That column's lofty height,
Pillar, in whose dread majesty,
In double immortality,
Glory and bronze unite!

Ay, when he built it that some day
Discord or war their course might stay,
Or here might break their car;
And in our streets to put to shame
Pygmies that bear the hero's name
Of Greek and Roman war, --

It was a glorious sight. The world
His hosts had trod, with flags unfurled,
In veteran array;
Kings fled before him, forced to yield;
He, conqueror on each battle-field,
Their cannon bore away.

Then, with his victors back he came:
All France with booty teemed; her name
Was writ on sculptured stone;
And Paris cried with joy, as when
The parent bird comes home again
To th' eaglets left alone.

Into the furnace flame, so fast,
Were heaps of war-won metal cast, --
The future monument!
His thought had formed the giant mould,
And piles of brass in the fire he rolled,
From hostile cannon rent.

When to the battle-field he came,
He grasped the guns spite tongues of flame,
And bore the spoil away.
This bronze to France's Rome he brought,
And to the founder said, "Is aught
Wanting for our array?"

And when, beneath a radiant sun,
That man, his noble purpose done,
With calm and tranquil mien,
Disclosed to view this glorious fane,
And did with peaceful hand contain
The warlike eagle's sheen, --

Round thee, when hundred thousands placed,
As some great Roman's triumph graced,
The little Romans all, --
We boys hung on the procession's flanks,
Seeking some father in thy ranks,
And loud thy praise did call.

Who that survey'd thee, when that day
Thou deemed that future glory ray
Would here be ever bright;
Feared that, ere long, all France thy grave
From pettifoggers vain would crave
Beneath that column's height?

French Poetry

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:29:00 +0000

French Poetry

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:29:00 +0000

French Poetry

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:29:00 +0000

French Poetry

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:28:00 +0000

The Eaglet Mourned
by Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
[from Poems in three volumes (Boston, n.d.) Vol. 2]
_____

TOO hard Napoleon's fate! if, lone,
No being he had loved, no single one,
Less dark that doom had been.
But with the heart of might doth ever dwell
The heart of love! And in his island cell
Two things there were, I ween:

Two things, -- a portrait and a map there were.
Here hung the pictured world, an infant there:
That framed his genius, this enshrined his love.
And as at eve he glanced round th'alcove,
Where jailers watched his very thoughts to spy,
What mused he then? What dreams of years gone by
Stirred 'neath that discrowned brow and fired that glistening eye?

T' was not the steps of that heroic tale
That from Arcola marched to Montmirail
On Glory's red degrees;
Nor Cairo-pashas' steel-devouring steeds,
Nor the tall shadows of the Pyramids, --
Ah, 't was not always these!

'T was not the bursting shell, the iron sleet,
The whirlwind rush of battle 'neath his feet,
Through twice ten years ago,
When at his beck, upon that sea of steel
Were launched the rustling banners, there to reel
Like masts when tempests blow.

'T was not Madrid, nor Kremlin of the Czar,
Nor Pharos on Old Egypt's coast afar,
Nor shrill réveille's camp-awakening sound,
Nor bivouac couch'd its starry fires around,
Crested dragoons, grim, veteran grenadiers,
Nor the red lancers 'mid their wood of spears
Blazing like baleful poppies 'mong the golden ears.

No; 't was an infant's image, fresh and fair,
With rosy mouth half oped, as slumbering there
It lay beneath the smile
Of her whose breast, soft-bending o'er its sleep,
Lingering upon that little lip doth keep
One pendent drop the while.

Then, his sad head upon his hands inclined,
He wept; that father-heart all unconfined,
Outpoured in love alone.
My blessing on thy clay-cold head, poor child.
Sole being for whose sake his thoughts, beguiled,
Forgot the world's lost throne.

French Poetry

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:28:00 +0000

To Laura, Duchess d'A.
by Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
[from Poems in three volumes by Victor Hugo, Vol. 1 (Boston, n.d.)]
_____

SINCE were their souls too mean to comprehend
That after so great splendours, power and pride,
Duty and honour called on France to lend
A grave, wherein thy coffin might abide;

Since they felt not that she who, dauntless still,
Dared glory, praise, and ruffian knaves confound,
Has right to sleep upon the holy hill,
Has right to sleep where heroes rest around:

Of our great battles, since the memory
Burns not within them, like a sacred flame;
Since they are void of heart and sympathy,
Who could refuse (small boon) the tomb you claim, --

'Tis mine to sing an expiatory song;
Mine, on my knees, our sorrow to rehearse;
To me to guard thy memory doth belong,
And to embalm in sweet and mournful verse.

This time,'tis mine to shelter and defend
Death 'gainst its comrade, pale Forgetfulness;
With scattered roses, mine thine urn to tend,
To crown thy name with laurels -- and redress.

Since fools heap insults, now thou 'rt sunk to rest,
Upon thy brown, by Caesar glorious made
'Tis mine, whose hand thine own in friendship prest,
To whisper, "I am near: be not afraid!"

For I my mission have. Armed with my lyre,
Full of fierce hymns which would their wrath declare,
Guarding the glories I, of the Empire,
Resolved that none these to attack shall dare.

Its memories in thy faithful heart were stored,
When adverse skies spread o'er us Sorrow's night.
On noble wrongs thy noble spirit soared,
Oft with an eagle's eye, with angel's flight.

Brave 'neath thy woes, of ours compassionate,
Woman! to storms and hostile strife a prey,
Thou never didst their baseness imitate,
Nor trod to safety's port by coward's way.

Thou glorious muse, and (though inglorious) I,
Have each our lives this mandate laid upon:
A steadfast knot which each to each doth tie
The hero's widow, and the soldier's son.

Hence in this Babel, I for evermore
Each scrap of our scorned flag shall kiss and save,
Unto the emperor I bade France restore
His column, and to thee to grant the grave

French Poetry

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:27:00 +0000

The Emperor's Return
by Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
[from Poems in three volumes by Victor Hugo, Vol. 1 (Boston, n.d.)]
_____

SIRE, to thy capital thou shalt come back,
Without the battle's tocsin and wild stir;
Beneath the arch, drawn by eight steeds coal black,
Dressed like an emperor.

Thro' this same portal, God accompanying,
Sire, thou shalt come upon the car of state;
Like Charlemagne, a high ensainted king,
Like Caesar, wondrous great.

On thy gold sceptre, to be vanquish'd never,
Thy crimson beaked bird shall shine anon;
Upon thy mantle all thy bees a-shiver
Shall twinkle in the sun.

Paris shall light up all her high and hundred
Towr's; shall speak out with all her tones sublime;
Bells, clarions, rolling drums shall all be thunder'd
In music at a time.

A mighty people, pale, with steps that falter,
Shall come to thee, by one attraction drawn,
Awe-stricken as a priest before the altar,
Glad as a child at dawn, --

A people who would lay all laws e'er sung
Or storied at thy feet; aye floating on,
Intoxicate, from Bonaparte the young
To old Napoleon.

Then a new army, burning for the advance,
In exploit terrible, round thy car shall cry
Amain, "Vive l'Empereur!" and "Vive la France!"
And seeing thee pass by,

Chief of the mighty empire, down shall fall
People and troops; but thou before their view
Shalt not be able to stoop down at all
With, "I am pleased with you."

An acclamation, tender, lofty, sweet,
A heart-song high as ecstasy can bear it,
Shall fill, O captain mine! the city's street,
But thou shalt never hear it.

Stern grenadiers, the veterans we admire,
Mute thy steed's steps shall kis; albeit
A sight pathetic, beautiful, yet, sire,
Your Majesty shall not see it.

While round thy form gigantic, like a friend,
France and the world awake in shadows deep,
Here in thy Paris ever, world without end,
Thou shalt lie fast asleep;

Ay, fast asleep with that same sullen slumber,
Those fadeless dreams, that on his stone chair fix
The Barbarossa, sitting out that number
Of centuries now six.

Thy sword beside thee, and thine eyelids close,
Thy hand yet moved by Bertrand's kiss, -- the last;
Upon the bed whence sleeper never rose,
Thou shalt be stretched full fast, --

Like to those soldiers marching bolt upright
So often after thee to field or town,
Who by the wind of battle touch'd one night
Suddenly laid them down;

Like sleepers, not like those whose race is run,
With grave, proud attitude of armed men,
But them that voice of dawn, the morning gun,
Shall never wake again;

Yea, so much like, that seeing thee all ice,
Like a mute god permitting adoration,
They who came smiling, love-drunk, in a trice
Shall raise a lamentation.

Sire, at that moment thou, for kingdom meet,
Shall have all beating hearts to be thine own.
Nations shall make thy phantom take a seat,
A universal throne.

Poets select, upon their knees in dust,
Shall hail thee far diviner than of old,
And gild thine altar, stain'd by hands unjust,
With a sublimer gold.

The clouds shall pass away from thy great glory;
Nothing to trouble it for aye shall come;
It shall expand itself o'er all our story
Like a vast azure dome.

Yea, thou shalt be to all a presence solemn,
Both good and great, -- to France an exile high
And calm; a brass Colossus on thy column
To every stranger's eye.

But thou, the while the sacred pomp shall lead
A cortége such as time hath never heard,
So that all eyes shall seem to see indeed
A vanished world upstirr'd;

The while they hear, hard by the wondrous dome
Where shadows keep the great names that men mark
In Paris still, the old guns growling home
Their master with a bark;

The while thy name without a peer shall soar,
Illustrious, beautiful to Heav'n, ah! thou
Shalt in the darkness feel for evermore
The grave-worm on thy brow.

American drama

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:27:00 +0000

Sex, Violence And Walt Disney

© Teixeira Moita - All rights reserved

(Two men, side by side, observe movie placards. One, middle-aged, wears dark clothes; the other one, a YOUNGSTER, wears aggressive urban/tribal clothes. Both observe the placards, silently for a few moments.)

YOUNGSTER (Pointing at determined billboard) - Can this be a good film?

MAN (Looking at YOUNGSTER from top to bottom) - A masterpiece!

YOUNGSTER - Hum... I don't know. I think these films are dead dull.

MAN - That's not so. I come to this particular movie theatre because there are only movie classics from all over the world.

YOUNGSTER (Pointing at a billboard) - This must be one of them.

MAN - Sure it is! A magnificent masterpiece! I've already seen it dozens of times!

YOUNGSTER (Surprised) - Really?! What's the film about?

MAN (Taking a father-like attitude) - Well... Let's see... It's about a girl in the XIXth Century who falls in love with a stable-boy and...

YOUNGSTER (Interrupting) - Are there smacks and shotguns?...

MAN - No. Nothing of the kind. It's a romantic comedy.

YOUNGSTER - You mean... there no bits of brain dripping down the walls, or guys blown out in their chest?

MAN (In increasing horror) How awful! I don't need this!

YOUNGSTER - But there are tits!

MAN - Nothing of the kind!

YOUNGSTER - What's the film for?...

MAN (Gesticulating) - Well... It's for... For sensitive people.

YOUNGSTER (Showing despise) - Pffff! If you only think that money is given to some guy who puts viewers to sleep! Tax payers' money is thrown away with movies no one even takes the time to watch!

MAN - Gosh! You must realize the director has a world-wide reputation and has won dozens of movie awards.

YOUNGSTER - That's Walt Disney as far I'm concerned.

MAN - What, what are you saying? Walt Disney?!

YOUNGSTER - Sure! A film which has no sex or violence, that's Walt Disney to me.

MAN - I don't believe this! What about Orson Welles, Alain Resnais, Manoel de Oliveira, Wim Wenders, Fellini... are they Walt Disney?!

YOUNGSTER - A bunch of vain parasites, I'm sure.

MAN - I can't believe my ears!

YOUNGSTER - Listen to me: the way I see it, if there's no sex or violence, that's Walt Disney.

(MAN now is gesticulating and walking back an' forth, struck with nervousness)

YOUNGSTER - Some broad whose hearts bleeds for a stable boy! If she is only fond of the horse, that could be fun!!

MAN (Increasingly nervous) Is that what you want, sex and violence? Is that it?

(MAN knocks YOUNGSTER down with a punch.)

YOUNGSTER - Ouchh!! (Then lies on the ground, rubbing his chin)

MAN - This is violence!!

(Now MAN takkes off his coat and starts to unbutton his pants) Let's have some sex now!!!

YOUNGSTER (Screaming) - AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!! •

© Teixeira Moita

Note:Please don't use,reproduce or stage this work without the author's permission!

French Poetry

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:26:00 +0000

The Retreat from Moscow
by Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
[Translation of the first section of L'Expiation from Les châtiments (1852)]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It snowed. A defeat was our conquest red!
For once the eagle was hanging its head.
Sad days! the Emporer turned slowly his back
On smoking Moscow, blent orange and black.
The water burst, avalanche-like, to reign
Over the endless blanched sheet of the plain.
Nor chief nor banner in order could keep,
The wolves of warfare were 'wildered like sheep.
The wings from centre could hardly be known
Through snow o'er horses and carts o'erthrown,
Where froze the wounded. In the bivouacs forlorn
Strange sights and gruesome met the breaking morn:
Mute were the bugles, while the men bestrode
Steeds turned to marble, unheeding the goad
The shells and bullets came down with the snow
As though the heavens hated these poor troops below.
Surprised at trembling, though it was with cold,
Who ne'er had trembled out of fear, the veterans bold
Marched stern; to grizzled moustache hoar-frost clung
'Neath banners that in leaden masses hung.

It snowed, -- went snowing still. And chill the breeze
Whistled upon the glassy, endless seas,
Where naked feet on, on forever went,
With naught to eat, and not a sheltering tent.
They were not living troops as seen in war,
But merely phantoms of a dream, afar
In darkness wandering, amid the vapour dim, --
A mystery; of shadows a procession grim,
Nearing a blackening sky, unto its rim.
Frightful, since boundless, solitude behold
Where only Nemesis wove, mute and cold,
A net all snowy with its soft meshes dense,
A shroud of magnitued for host immense;
Till every one felt as if left alone
In a wide wilderness where no light shone,
To die, with pity none, and none to see
That from this mournful realm none should get free.
Their foes the frozen North and Czar,--that, worst.
Cannon were broken up in haste accurst
To burn the frames and make the pale fire high,
Where those lay down who never woke, or woke to die.
Sad and commingled, groups that blindly fled
Were swallowed smoothly by the desert dread.

'Neath folds of blankness, monuments were raised.
O'er regiments; and History, amazed,
Could not record the ruin of this retreat, --
Unlike a downfall known before, or the defeat
Of Hannibal, reversed and wrapped in gloom,
Of Atilla, when nations met their doom!
Perished an army,--fled French glory then,
Though there the Emperor! He stood and gazed
At the wild havoc, like a monarch dazed
In woodland hoar, who felt the shrieking saw:
He, living oak, beheld his branches fall, with awe.
Chiefs, soldiers, comrades died. But still warm love
Kept those that rose all dastard fear above,
As on his tent they saw his shadow pass,
Backwards and forwards; for they credited, alas!
His fortune's star! It could not, could not be
That he had not his work to do -- a destiny?
To hurl him headlong from his high estate,
Would be high treason in his bondman, Fate.
But all the while he felt himself alone,
Stunned with disasters few have ever known.
Sudden, a fear came o'er his troubled soul,--
What more was written on the Future's scroll?
Was this an expiation? It must be, yea!
He turned to God for one enlightening ray.
"Is this the vengeance, Lord of Hosts?" he sighed;
But the first murmur on his parched lips died.
"Is this the vengeance? Must my glory set?"
A pause: his name was called; of flame a jet
Sprang in the darkness; a Voice answered: "No!
Not yet."

Outside still fell the smothering snow.
Was it a voice indeed, or but a dream?
It was the vulture's, but how like the sea-bird's scream.

English Drama

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:22:00 +0000

A NIGHT IN ELSINORE

by Richard Nathan

ACT I

Scene I

Scene I takes place on a platform in front of Elsinore Castle. FRANCISCO is on duty. Enter BERNARDO.

BERNARDO
Who's there?

FRANCISCO
Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.

BERNARDO
Long live the King!

FRANCISCO
Bernardo?

BERNARDO
I am he.

FRANCISCO
You come most carefully upon your hour.

BERNARDO
'Tis now struck twelve.

Off stage, there is the sound of someone approaching.

FRANCISCO
Who is there? Stand ho!

Enter HORATIO, who is dressed rather shabbily and who speaks with an unusual Italian accent. He is more an antique Roman than a Dane.

HORATIO
That's right! You guessed it.

BERNARDO
What's right? Guessed what?

HORATIO
You said, "Stand Ho!" That's me! Ho!

BERNARDO
Ho! Ho who?

HORATIO
Gezundheit!

FRANCISCO
Why, 'tis good Horatio! How dost thou, Horatio?

HORATIO
I don't do much dusting anymore. I'm a guard now.
I guard the castle gate, and I do a pretty good job
too.

FRANCISCO
Really?

HORATIO
Sure. It's still there.

BERNARDO
Has the apparition appeared again tonight?

FRANCISCO
I have seen nothing.

BERNARDO
Horatio, do you know ought of the Ghost?

HORATIO
Well, I ought to. Hey, that's some funny joke,
eh?

BERNARDO
Come, come, Horatio. Do you know anything
of ghosts?

HORATIO
Sure, I knew an old ghost once. But that was a
long, long time ago. He's probably dead by now.

FRANCISCO
Look! It comes again! The ghost of our late King
Hamlet!

Enter the GHOST, a bright-eyed imp who happens to be mute.

BERNARDO
There is the apparition!

HORATIO
I don't believe it.

The Ghost and Horatio joyously embrace.

BERNARDO
Stay illusion! If thou hast any sound or use of
voice, speak to me!

The Ghost honks a horn.

FRANCISCO
Question it, Horatio.

HORATIO
Hey, Ghost, how ya doing?

The Ghost does a melodramatic death scene.

HORATIO
You're dead, huh? Gee, that's too bad.

The Ghost sits up and nods his head "yes."

FRANCISCO
Ask him about the war!

HORATIO
What war?

FRANCISCO
Ask him if we should go to war with young
Fortinbras!

HORATIO
Hey, Ghost, should we go to war with Fortinbras?

The Ghost shakes his head "no." He hold up ten fingers, and then three fingers.

HORATIO
No. He says Fortinbras is too many. He thinks we
should go to war with thirteen-bras.

The Ghost slaps his knee and goes into fits of silent laughter.

FRANCISCO
No, no! You remember, young Fortinbras is the
son of old Fortinbras, who was King of Norway,
until our late King Hamlet killed him and took most
of the Norwegian lands.

The Ghost mocks Francisco's overly-serious manner, and makes faces at him. Suddenly he looks offstage and panics.

HORATIO
What's the matter?

The Ghost starts to run offstage, but Horatio blocks his way.

HORATIO
Where you going? What're you doing?

The Ghost whistles and points to the horizon.

HORATIO
What do you mean? I don't get it.

The Ghost decides to explain in pantomime. The Ghost points down.

HORATIO
Down?

The Ghost whistles and nods enthusiastically. Then the Ghost mimes picking up something and raising it.

HORATIO
What? Down is up? You're crazy! How can
down be up?

The Ghost shakes his head "no." He holds out a hand to signal that he wants to start again.

HORATIO
Okay. We start again.

The Ghost mimes putting a cigar into his mouth, and then loping across the stage while raising and lowering his eyebrows.

HORATIO
Wait a minute! I think I seen that guy before. Let
me think ... I know! That's the man who comes
to fix the sink!

The Ghost shakes his head "no."

HORATIO
No? Who is it?

The Ghost mimes holding a baby in his arms, acting like a father.

HORATIO
It's your son? It's Prince Hamlet? The one you
named after yourself? Funny, he looks just
like the man who comes to fix the sink.

The Ghost threatens to hit Horatio.

HORATIO
OK. Hamlet. He's your son. Your son!

The Ghost mimes proudly holding the baby in his arms. Then he mimes lifting the baby up.

HORATIO
He's going up? Hamlet's going up?

The Ghost shakes his head "no," and then holds out his hand to signal that he wants to try again.

HORATIO

OK. We try again.

The Ghost again mimes Hamlet loping across the stage. Then, as Hamlet, he starts silently weeping and crying.

HORATIO
Hamlet. He's sad. He's crying. Why's he crying?

The Ghost points to himself and does his death scene again. Then he goes back to Hamlet crying, and pointing to where he died.

HORATIO
He cries because you're dead. He's in mourning.

As soon as Horatio says, "mourning," the Ghost starts joyfully jumping up and down and nodding "yes."

HORATIO
That's it!!! Mourning! It's morning ...

The Ghost again mimes lifting the baby.

HORATIO
. . . and something's going up. The sun is coming
up! It's morning, dawn! It's dawn, and the sun is
coming up, so you've got to leave now. OK, I
understand. Good-bye, Ghost. I'll be seeing you.
Good-bye.

The Ghost exits, waving good-bye and blowing kisses.

HORATIO
Hey, he's a nice ghost.

FRANCISCO
Come. Let us impart what we have seen tonight
to young Prince Hamlet.

Exeunt.

**********************************************************

Scene II

Scene II takes place in a room in Elsinore Castle. Flourish. Enter the KING, the QUEEN, HAMLET (who has his back to the audience), POLONIUS, LAERTES, and OPHELIA. The King is a slightly overweight man with a beard and a middle-European accent. His name is Claudius. Gertrude, the Queen, is a stately dowager-type. Polonius is a foolish old man. Ophelia is an attractive blonde who is very clever and very ambitious. Laertes is a young man, excitable, but not very bright. In the original production of this play, he was played in a style resembling Daffy Duck (including the lisp), and it worked.

KING

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death
the memory be green, and it befitted us to
bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom
to be contracted in one brow of woe, it's time
we faced the fact the old king's dead, and I must
run the kingdom. I thank you all for your
condolences on the death of my brother, the
late King, as I thank you for your good wishes
on my marriage to his widow, the Queen.
Now then, on to our royal business. Young
Fortinbras has demanded that we surrender
the lands lost by his father. I have sent word
to the aged king of Norway, ordering him to
bring young Fortinbras into line! Not one
patch of land shall we give up!

The King looks around the room. Everyone except Hamlet looks pleased. The King looks at Laertes.

KING
Now, good Laertes, did you have something you
wished to ask of me?

LAERTES
Yes, Sire, your leave and favor to return to
France.

KING
Ahh, France, eh? I'm told that France is a
lovely country, and I hear they make most
excellent wines there. Go. Enjoy yourself.
And be sure to send some postcards.
Now, my nephew Hamlet, my son, how
is it the clouds still hang on you?

Hamlet turns to face the audience, and we see his face for the first time. Hamlet has a big, black mustache that looks as if it might have been painted on, and he smokes a cigar.

HAMLET
Nay, I am too much in the sun! Get it? That's a
joke. My real father just died, and now I've got
you for a father, so I'm too much in the sun! Boy,
that Shakespeare sure could write. I'd like to see
Francis Bacon pull off a joke like that.

KING
Hmmmmm. Come, Hamlet, my son, how is it the
clouds still hang on you?

HAMLET
I don't know. Maybe it's because you're reigning.

QUEEN
Good Hamlet, I know full well the love you bore
your father. But cast thy nighted color off! If he
were here today, do you think your father would
want us to mourn on and on, wearing the same
customary suit of solemn black, day in and day out?

HAMLET
Well, he'd probably ask you to change your socks.

QUEEN
Hamlet, . . .

HAMLET
In fact, that's still a pretty good idea. And while
you're at it, change your husband.

QUEEN
Hamlet, I loved your dear, departed father. No
woman could have loved him more.

HAMLET
Of course not! No other dame ever had a chance,
not with you watching him like a hawk. And a
fat lot of good it did him, ... poor old Dad.

KING
Hamlet, it's unfortunate that your father died, but
fathers have a way of doing that. My father died,
and his father died before him, and his father
died...

HAMLET
Yeah, but uncles go on forever. Don't you?

KING
Hamlet, why don't you try to think of me as
your father?

HAMLET
OK, bury yourself six feet underground, and I'll
give it a shot.

KING
Gertrude, we must do something about this son of
yours.

Exeunt all but Hamlet.

HAMLET
Oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt, or at
least that they would turn up the heat a little. To
think that it should come to this! My father but
two months dead, and my mother married to this
satyr. I recall the day they wed. It was a satyr-day.
Heaven and Earth, must I remember? My mother
has married my uncle, and turned me into my own
cousin. Frailty, thy name is woman. And woman,
thy name is Frailty. My name is Hamlet, and I'm
ashamed to meet the both of you.

Enter Horatio, Francisco and Bernardo. Horatio consults with his friends.

HORATIO
Hey, is that him?

HAMLET
Horatio, -- or I do forget myself!

HORATIO
Well, I don't know. Who do you think you are?

HAMLET
I'm Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

HORATIO
Then you don't forget yourself... not unless you're
the man who comes to fix the sink. Then you got
a problem.

HAMLET
This can't be anyone but Horatio. Don't you
remember me? We went to school together!

HORATIO
Sure, I know you! You're Hamlet!

HAMLET
And you're Horatio! But I thought you were still
going to school in Wittenberg.

HORATIO
No, I left there a long time ago. I was too smart for
them.

HAMLET
Oh really?

HORATIO
Yeah. All the professors said they'd never be able
to teach me anything.

HAMLET
Horatio, something is rotten in the state of Denmark,
and I think it's you.

HORATIO
That reminds me. I think I saw your father's ghost
last night!

HAMLET
What? Are you sure it was him? Did you speak
to him?

HORATIO
We spoke. But he wouldn't answer.

HAMLET
That sounds like Dad, all right. Listen, boys, this is
something I'm going to have to see for myself. Let's
meet at the top of the castle tonight.

Exeunt.

**********************************************************

Scene III

Scene III takes place in a room in Polonius' house. Enter Laertes and Ophelia.

LAERTES
My necessaries are embarked. Farewell. And
sister, do be wary of the affections of Prince
Hamlet. Perhaps he does love you now, but he
is subject to his birth, and therefore he must
choose a royal bride.

OPHELIA
Laertes, don't be such an ass! Use your brain for
once! Do you think for one minute that Claudius
is going to let Hamlet marry a princess?

LAERTES
Huh?

OPHELIA
Listen! Hamlet has a better claim to the throne
than his uncle Claudius does, right? If Hamlet
marries into another royal family, he'll gain
powerful allies to help him win the crown. You
think Claudius wants that? All I have to do is
convince the King that Hamlet's been toying
with my affections, and I guarantee you we'll be
married before Hamlet knows what's hit him.
Then I'll figure out some way to get rid of
Claudius, and I'll be Queen of Denmark!

LAERTES
Sister, you're brilliant! But look, here comes
our father!

Enter Polonius.

POLONIUS
Yet here, Laertes? My blessings with thee!
And take these few precepts in thy memory:
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

Enter Horatio.

HORATIO
What's he gonna do in France if he can't be vulgar?
How's he gonna fit in?

POLONIUS
Horatio, you're not supposed to be here, are you?

HORATIO
No, but I got two more hours before I'm supposed
to go to a secret meeting with Hamlet at the top of
the castle, so I got lots of time to kill.

POLONIUS
I was just giving some advice to my son.

HORATIO
That's OK. I'll add vice too. I got lots of vice.

POLONIUS
Very well. Laertes, neither a borrower nor a lender
be . . .

HORATIO
That's a good idea. But you know what? You're too
late. Laertes loaned me ten gold kroner this morning.

POLONIUS
Then give it back to him!

HORATIO
I can't. Right after he gave me the money, I put it
down, and then I lost it.

POLONIUS
You put it down and lost it???

HORATIO
Yeah, I put it down on a horse.

POLONIUS
This is terrible.

HORATIO
Yeah, now your son, he's a lender, and what are we
gonna do? Hey, I got a great idea! You loan me ten
gold kroner, and then I'll pay Laertes back, and then
he won't be a lender anymore.

POLONIUS
But if I lend you the money, then I'll be a lender, and
you'll still be a borrower.

HORATIO
OK, I got a better idea. You don't be a lender, I don't
be a borrower. You just give me the money. How's
that?

POLONIUS
I don't know about this.

HORATIO
You want your son to stay a lender all his life?

Polonius reaches into his money bag and takes out a gold coin.

POLONIUS
But all I've got is this twenty-kroner piece. Have
you got change for that?

HORATIO
No, but I'll take it, just the same.

Horatio pockets the twenty-kroner piece.

POLONIUS
At least you can now pay back to Laertes the
ten kroner you owe him.

HORATIO
Laertes, you got change for twenty kroner?

LAERTES
No, I'm afraid not.

Horatio turns to Polonius.

HORATIO
Now we got another problem. I can't give this
coin to him. If I give him the coin, he'll owe
me money. If he owes me money, then he'll be
a borrower. He can't be a borrower if you just
told him not to be a borrower!

POLONIUS
But...

HORATIO
Hey, I just got another great idea. Laertes, why
don't you just say you gave me the ten gold
kroner? Then you won't be a lender! You won't
be a borrower! You'll just be a nice guy, like
your father!

LAERTES
Sounds okay to me.

Ophelia, the only really smart one in the family, is furious with Horatio. She scolds him, while Polonius and Laertes try to figure out what's been going on.

OPHELIA
Horatio, you're nothing but a cheap, conniving
crook!

HORATIO
Yeah, that's me.

OPHELIA
How can you be so dishonest?

HORATIO
One time I tried to be honest, but then I said to
myself, "Horatio, to thine own self be true."
So if mine own self is a crook, that's what I gotta
do. Good-bye!

Horatio walks out with his twenty-kroner piece. Ophelia glares at him. Laertes and Polonius are still trying to puzzle out what happened to their money. Exeunt Ophelia, Laertes and Polonius.

**********************************************************

Scene IV

Scene IV takes place back on the platform in front of Elsinore Castle, where Scene I took place. Enter Hamlet, Horatio, Bernardo and Francisco.

HAMLET
The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold. Say, are
you fellows sure this is where dear old Dad
is going to show up?

BERNARDO
The ghost has appeared at this very spot three
nights past, my lord, then vanished before the sun
came up.

We hear the distant pounding of a kettledrum, and a flourish of trumpets.

FRANCISCO
What does this mean, my lord?

HAMLET
That's the King. He has the musicians play while
he drinks. He doesn't like to drink alone, so he
has them play eight to the bar. You see, the King
likes to take a drink before he goes to bed at night.
Then he likes to take a drink when he's in bed,
especially if the Queen is still awake. Then the
Queen throws him out of bed, so he has to take
another drink. Then he's ready to throw the Queen
out of bed, which calls for another drink. Every
time he takes a drink, he has the musicians bang
the kettledrum. As soon as the King is as tight
as the drum, he knows it's time to fall asleep.

HORATIO
Hey, that sounds like a pretty good job. You
think I could be a king?

HAMLET
Well, would you be willing to marry your brother's
wife? Do you think you could do that?

Horatio thinks this over.

HORATIO
I don't know.

HAMLET
Well, come on. Do you want to be king, or don't
you?

HORATIO
If I marry the wife, do I get his mistress too?

HAMLET
That's not strictly required. It's not really part of
the job. But I'm sure we could work something
out.

HORATIO
Is she pretty?

HAMLET
The wife or the mistress?

HORATIO
Yes!

HAMLET
You'll have to take that up with your brother.

HORATIO
Hey, I just remembered! I haven't got a brother!

HAMLET
Then you'll have to take that up with your parents.
You do have parents, don't you? Otherwise, you'll
just have to take it up with your grandparents.

HORATIO
I've got a great idea! Why don't I just take your
wife?

HAMLET
My wife? I'm not even married!

HORATIO
That's all right. I can wait.

BERNARDO
Look my lord, it comes!

The Ghost enters, and is overjoyed to see Hamlet. The Ghost claps his hands and runs to embrace his son.

HAMLET
Dad!

As the Ghost embraces Hamlet, the Ghost sticks his hands into the pockets of Hamlet's coat, pulls out an apple, and starts to eat it.

HAMLET
Gee, it's nice to see you, Dad.

The Ghost nods happily, enjoying the apple. Then the Ghost beckons Hamlet to follow him.

HAMLET
I think you boys better go. I think he wants to be
alone with his son.

HORATIO
All right.

Exeunt Horatio, Bernardo and Francisco. Again, the Ghost beckons Hamlet to follow him.

HAMLET
OK, I'll follow you.

Exeunt the Ghost and Hamlet.

**********************************************************

Scene V

Scene V takes place on another part of the platform. Enter the Ghost and Hamlet.

HAMLET
Where wilt thou lead me? I'll go no further.

The Ghost shrugs, and stops.

HAMLET
So, Dad, what's new?

The Ghost points to the apple core, grins, and gestures that he'd like something else to eat.

HAMLET
I'm sorry, I don't have any more apples.

The Ghost makes a horrible disgusted face and turns away from Hamlet.

HAMLET
Gee, if I'd only known, I...

The Ghost makes a disparaging wave of his arms at Hamlet, and makes another horrible face.

HAMLET
Dad, isn't there something you wanted to tell me?

The Ghost suddenly remembers! He claps his hands and sits Hamlet down, and indicates that Hamlet should watch him.

HAMLET
Oh. OK. You're going to tell me a story.

The Ghost nods his head happily. Then he reaches into his coat and pulls out a little pillow. He puts the pillow down on the floor and mimes going to sleep with his head on the pillow. Hamlet waits for a minute, watching the Ghost sleep.

HAMLET
Say, I thought Ghost stories were supposed to
keep you awake.

The Ghost puts his fingers to his lips to indicate that Hamlet should be quiet, while he's sleeping.

HAMLET
OK, you're sleeping. Where are you sleeping?

The Ghost, still pretending to be asleep, holds up his hand, with the back of his hand facing the audience. Then he pushes up the apple core to the top of his fingers, and mimes plucking an apple.

HAMLET
Oh, you're asleep in the apple orchard. I remember,
you liked to sleep there!

The Ghost nods "yes."

HAMLET
What happens next?

The Ghost stands up, takes the pillow and puts it under his shirt. He pretends to be fat. Then he pulls at an imaginary beard.

HAMLET
A fat man... a fat man with a beard...

The Ghost makes an ugly face and mimes yelling and being angry.

HAMLET
A fat, nasty man with a beard! Your brother
Claudius!

The Ghost nods "yes." Then he goes back to putting on the nasty, evil face of Claudius. He stomps around the stage, pulling on his beard.

HAMLET
What does he do?

The Ghost, pretending to be Claudius, notices the apple core lying on the stage. He picks it up, sees that it's been eaten, and brutishly throws it away. He looks around the stage, and then looks in surprise at the spot where the Ghost was sleeping. The Ghost whips out the pillow, and resumes sleeping at that spot.

HAMLET
OK, Claudius found you sleeping. What
happened next?

The Ghost jumps up, puts the pillow back in under his shirt, and pretends to be Claudius. He reaches into his coat, and pulls out a bottle of poison. Then he reaches into his coat with his other hand and pulls out a funnel. He walks over to where the Ghost has been sleeping, and mimes putting the funnel into the sleeping man's ear, and he pours the contents of the bottle into the funnel. Then the Ghost whips out the pillow and becomes himself sleeping, with the funnel in his ear, and the poison being poured into it. The Ghost wakes up and dies horribly.

HAMLET
Oh no! Murder! Foul and unnatural murder!
Claudius poured poison into your ear and
killed you!!! Oh murder most foul!!!

The Ghost sits up and nods his head in agreement.

HAMLET
Oh horrible! Oh, horrible, most horrible! ...
Well, what do you want me to do about it?

The Ghost mimes hitting, kicking, choking, and jumping up and down on someone.

HAMLET
You want me to take revenge on Claudius?

The Ghost nods "yes."

HAMLET
Well, that sounds fair enough. What about Mom?

The Ghost shakes his head "no." He reaches into his coat and takes out a poster-sized picture of the Queen. He kisses the picture and looks coy.

HAMLET
Not Mom. You still love Mom. Aww, that's
sweet. It's crazy, but it's sweet. Maybe you
should have your head examined, or at least
your eyes.

The Ghost clutches the picture of the Queen to his chest, and looks threateningly at Hamlet.

HAMLET
OK! Don't worry. I won't hurt Mom. Just Claudius.

The Ghost shakes Hamlet's hand and pats him on the back. Then the Ghost proceeds to put the picture, the pillow, the bottle and the funnel back into his coat.

HAMLET
You have to go so soon?

The Ghost points to the horizon.

HAMLET

Oh, I see. The dawn is coming up. OK, Dad. It
was nice seeing you again. I'll get your revenge
for you. You can count on me.

The Ghost waves good-bye and exits.

HAMLET
Hmmmm. Now what am I going to do? I
can't just go downstairs and kill Claudius.
This is only Act I, and we've still got a
whole play to fill up. I know! I'll pretend I've
gone crazy. That won't help me get revenge,
but it should take up a few hours, and it may
liven things up around here.

Enter Horatio, Bernardo, and Francisco.

BERNARDO
Lord Hamlet!

FRANCISCO
What news, my lord?

HAMLET
Listen, boys, I don't want any of you to ever say
a word about seeing that ghost, all right?

Off stage, the Ghost honks his horn.

HAMLET
Swear!

BERNARDO
Propose the oath, my lord, and we will swear it.

HAMLET
Never to speak of what you have seen this night.

FRANCISCO
But we haven't seen anything!

HAMLET
Then never to speak of what you haven't seen!

HORATIO
I'm not sure I can remember everything I haven't
seen.

Off stage, the Ghost honks his horn.

HAMLET
Swear! Swear that you'll remember to forget
everything you haven't seen.

HORATIO
I don't know. I've got a pretty good memory.

Hamlet gives each of then a gold kroner piece.

HAMLET
Look, I'm going to lend each of you ten kroner.
Will you remember to pay back this loan?

HORATIO
What loan?

FRANCISCO
We have forgotten everything, my lord!

Off stage, the Ghost honks his horn.

HAMLET
Swear! Swear by my sword.

Hamlet isn't wearing a sword in this scene. After this scene, he does wear a sword.

HORATIO
You forgot to bring your sword!

HAMLET
Then cross your hearts and hope to die!

Off stage, the Ghost honks his horn.

HAMLET
Swear!

HORATIO, BERNARDO,
& FRANCISCO
We swear!

HAMLET
So, gentlemen, let us go in together; and still your
fingers on your lips, I pray. The time is out of joint.
Oh cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!

Exeunt.

**********************************************************

ACT II

Scene I

Scene I of Act II takes place at Polonius's house. It's one month later. Polonius enters. A moment later, Ophelia runs in.

POLONIUS
How now, Ophelia? What's the matter?

OPHELIA
Oh my lord, my lord, I have been so affrighted!

POLONIUS
With what?

OPHELIA
Have you noticed anything peculiar about Prince
Hamlet recently?

POLONIUS
Hamlet? He's always been peculiar, ... but now
that you mention it, he has been acting very
strangely late. Why do you ask?

OPHELIA
He came to my room just now. He took me by
the wrist and held me hard, then he fell to such
perusal of my face as if he would draw it, and then
he raised a sigh so piteous and profound, ... I
think he loves me.

POLONIUS
This sounds like the very ecstasy of love! Have you
given him any hard words of late?

OPHELIA
I've been refusing to see him, as you told me I must.
You ordered me to stay away from him because he
would never be permitted to marry someone of my
lowly station.

POLONIUS
I was wrong! He truly loves you, and your rejection
has driven him mad! In the morning e must go to the
King.

Polonius exits. Ophelia watches him go off.

OPHELIA
My poor foolish father. How easy it is to lead you
from the truth. If the King as readily believes these
lies of Hamlet's love, then soon shall I shall be
Queen of Denmark!

Ophelia exits after Polonius. Enter Horatio with the Ghost of Hamlet's father. They have been listening to the preceding scene.

HORATIO
Hey Ghost, did you hear that? It's a good thing we
decided to spy. That lady's gonna make trouble for
Hamlet. I got to remember to warn him!

The Ghost nods in agreement. Exeunt Horatio and the Ghost.

*********************************************************

Scene II

Scene II takes place in a room in the Castle. This room has an arras (a tapestry wall hanging.) Enter the King and Queen, followed by ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. Rosencrantz is a portly fellow with a tiny mustache, who affects very polished manners. Guildenstern is thin and speaks with an English accent.

KING
Welcome, dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Moreover, that we much did long to see you, the
need we have to use you did provoke our hasty
sending.

ROSENCRANTZ
Your Majesties!

Rosencrantz makes a very deep bow. Guildenstern taps Rosencrantz on the shoulder and points to Claudius.

GUILDENSTERN
Who's he?

ROSENCRANTZ
That's the King!

GUILDENSTERN
I thought you said the King was dead.

ROSENCRANTZ
The old King is dead. This is the new King!

Guildenstern looks at the King very carefully.

GUILDENSTERN
He doesn't look very new to me.

Rosencrantz speaks to the King.

ROSENCRANTZ
Please forgive my friend, your Majesty. We've
had a very long trip, and he's tired.

GUILDENSTERN
No I'm not. We had a nap after lunch...

Rosencrantz glares at Guildenstern, silencing him.

KING
I trust that you have heard something of Prince
Hamlet's transformation. I don't know what
may have caused this sudden change in him.
You are two of his oldest and dearest friends.
Perhaps you can tell us what is the matter.

QUEEN
Good gentlemen, Hamlet has often talked of you.
I'm sure there aren't two men living of whom he
is more fond. Please stay with us awhile, and we
will see that you are well rewarded.

ROSENCRANTZ
It will be our pleasure to obey your every command,
your Majesties.

GUILDENSTERN
That's right! After all, you are the King, even if you're
not dead yet, so if there's anything we can do to make
your job any easier, just call on us.

ROSENCRANTZ
He means we're ready to do whatever you tell us. The
most difficult task won't be too difficult for us to attempt!
Isn't that right, Guildenstern?

GUILDENSTERN
Yes, and the simplest task won't be simple enough for us
to do either. What is it you want us to do, anyway?

KING
Tell us what is wrong with Prince Hamlet!!!

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern confer privately in whispers, then Guildenstern speaks.

GUILDENSTERN
We heard he's gone screwy.

KING
We know that! Find out why he's gone screwy!!!

ROSENCRANTZ
We'll do our best, your Majesty.

QUEEN
Go, and find Prince Hamlet!

Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Enter Polonius.

POLONIUS
My good lord, the ambassador from Norway has
returned!

KING
I trust he brings good news.

POLONIUS
That reminds me, I think I have discovered the cause
of Hamlet's lunacy.

KING
Oh? That is something I long to hear!

POLONIUS
First listen to the ambassador. My news shall be the
fruit to that great feast.

KING
Go then, and bring in the ambassador.

Polonius exits. The King turns to the Queen.

KING
Did you hear that? Polonius thinks he has discovered
the source of your son's strange behavior.

QUEEN
I don't think it is anything but his father's death, and our
o'er hasty marriage, but we shall see.

Re-enter Polonius with VOLTIMAND, the ambassador from Norway.

KING
Well, what news from the King of Norway?

VOLTIMAND
The King was very surprised by your letter. He
thought young Fortinbras was preparing to invade
Poland, but when he found that Fortinbras actually
meant to attack Denmark, he rebuked him most
severely. Young Fortinbras then promised the King
he would never invade Denmark, but asked if he
might invade Poland instead. He would like your
permission to bring his army through Denmark, on
his way to attack the Poles.

KING
Well, that sounds like a reasonable request. Go back
to Norway, and give young Fortinbras my permission
| to bring his army through Denmark.

Exit Voltimand. The King turns to Polonius.

KING
Now, Polonius, tell us your news!

POLONIUS
I have a daughter. She has told me that Hamlet has
been sending her love letters. I said to her, "Lord
Hamlet is a prince, and above thy station! Avoid
him!" She has avoided him, and since that time, he
has gone mad!

KING
Could this be true?

QUEEN
It may be.

POLONIUS
My daughter has given me an idea. Prince Hamlet
often walks alone here in this part of the castle.
Tomorrow my daughter will wait to meet him here.
We shall hide behind this arras, and see what happens
then.

KING
We will try it.

Enter Hamlet, reading a book.

QUEEN
Look, how sadly the poor wretch comes reading.

POLONIUS
Leave me to talk with him alone.

Exeunt the King and Queen.

POLONIUS
How does my lord Hamlet?

HAMLET
Booga-booga-booga!

POLONIUS
Do you know me, my lord?

HAMLET
Let's see, ... Aren't you Abie the Fishman?

POLONIUS
Not I, my lord.

HAMLET
No, I guess that was another play. It's too bad.
There were a lot more laughs in that show. So,
who are you, anyway? No, wait! Let me guess!
Have you got a daughter?

POLONIUS
I have, my lord.

HAMLET
Tell me, ... does your daughter fool around?

POLONIUS
Never!

HAMLET
Good, because you know what fooling around can
lead to, don't you? Grandchildren! And grandchildren
can lead to great- grandchildren! You know, there'd
be a lot less fooling around here in Denmark if you
old people would just stop having grandchildren!
And at your age too!!! You should be ashamed
of yourself!

POLONIUS
My daughter is a modest, virtuous maiden. She
will make some man a fine wife.

HAMLET
Good, have her make one for me. In fact, I'll take
half a dozen. No, make it a dozen. Christmas
is coming up, and I need some gifts for my friends.

POLONIUS
What do you read, my lord?

HAMLET
Words, words, words. I can never remember this
scene, so I keep a copy of the script in here.

POLONIUS
Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

POLONIUS
Fare you well, my lord.

Polonius goes over to speak to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

POLONIUS
You go to seek Prince Hamlet. There he is.

ROSENCRANTZ
(to Polonius)
God save you, sir!

Exit Polonius.

ROSENCRANTZ
My most dear lord!

HAMLET
Eh?

ROSENCRANTZ
Don't you remember us? I am Rosencrantz, and
this is my good friend, Guildenstern!

HAMLET
My most excellent good friends! How do you
both?

ROSENCRANTZ
Not badly. Not badly at all!

HAMLET
Oh, really?

GUILDENSTERN
Yes, we get a big reward if we can find out why
you're screwy.

Rosencrantz takes Guildenstern aside.

ROSENCRANTZ
You weren't supposed to tell him that! That was
supposed to be a secret!

GUILDENSTERN
But he's our friend. If we can't trust him, who can we
trust?

ROSENCRANTZ
We can't trust anyone! Now whatever you do, don't tell
him the King and Queen sent for us.

GUILDENSTERN
You can count on me!

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern go back over to Hamlet.

HAMLET
Tell me, why did you two come to Elsinore?

ROSENCRANTZ
Why, to visit you, my lord. No other reason.

HAMLET
You weren't sent for?

GUILDENSTERN
Yes, we weren't.

HAMLET
I'm glad to hear it. Who didn't send for you?

GUILDENSTERN
The King and Queen.

HAMLET
That's funny, because I've been dying to tell someone
why I've been acting so crazy, but I wouldn't want
to tell anyone who wasn't sent for by the King and
Queen.

Rosencrantz takes Guildenstern aside.

ROSENCRANTZ
What do we say now?

GUILDENSTERN
Let's tell him we were sent for.

ROSENCRANTZ
That's a good idea.

They go back over to Hamlet.

GUILDENSTERN
My lord, we were sent for.

ROSENCRANTZ
Now tell us what's the matter with you.

HAMLET
I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my
mirth. Well, maybe not all my mirth, but I certainly
haven't been having a very good time lately, especially
since you boys showed up!

ROSENCRANTZ
I understand perfectly! You're depressed!

GUILDENSTERN
Does that mean we can collect the reward now?

ROSENCRANTZ
Certainly not! Hamlet's our friend! What kind of
friends would we be if we didn't do something to
cheer him up?

GUILDENSTERN
Well, if we got the reward, we could go out and buy
him a vanilla ice cream cone. That always cheers me
up when I'm decompressed.

ROSENCRANTZ
Hamlet's problems are psychological! He needs to
talk about them, and get them out into the open.

Rosencrantz turns back to Hamlet.

ROSENCRANTZ
Why don't you tell us more about how you feel?

HAMLET
Very well. I didn't want to tell you, but you forced
it out of me. Oh, I'm so ashamed. I just found out ...
I just found out my two best friends are a couple of
morons.

ROSENCRANTZ
No wonder you're depressed! I'd be depressed too
if I found out my best friends were morons. Wouldn't
you, Guildenstern?

GUILDENSTERN
I certainly would, Rosencrantz, but I'd still be your
friend anyway, in spite of it!

Rosencrantz suddenly suspects that Hamlet has insulted them.

ROSENCRANTZ
Wait just a minute! I thought we were your best
friends.

HAMLET
I hate to break it to you boys, but I don't think either
one of you could pass the aptitude test to become
court fools.

GUILDENSTERN
We could too!

ROSENCRANTZ
Come, Guildenstern. We don't have to stay here to
be insulted.

HAMLET
No, you probably don't. But wait! Don't go! I'm
sorry. It's just that I've been so insane lately.
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in
reason. How infinite in faculties! In form and
moving how express and admirable! In action how
like an angel! In apprehension how like a god!
There, if that doesn't convince you I'm crazy,
nothing will! Take a look around this castle if you
want to see what a piece of work is a man! God's
just lucky he didn't give out warranties! Oh, I'm so
depressed.

ROSENCRANTZ
We have some news that may cheer you up, my lord.
On our way into Elsinore, we passed a gentleman
who said he was going to bring back some players to
perform for you tomorrow night!

HAMLET
That's funny. I was just saying to Horatio how much
I'd like to see a really good play.

Hamlet addresses the audience directly on the next line.

HAMLET
(to audience)
And I bet you folks feel the same way.

Enter Horatio.

HORATIO
Hey, Hamlet, have I got a deal for you!!!

HAMLET
Why is it that suddenly suicide seems like a good
idea?

HORATIO
You say you want to see a play, so I go out and I
find the finest players in the land, just for you!

HAMLET
Really? When can I see them?

HORATIO
Not so fast. First you got to talk to their manager.

HAMLET
Who's their manager, as if I couldn't guess?

HORATIO
It's funny you should ask. When I found these
players, they're the finest players in the land,
but guess what? They haven't got a manager!
So what can I do? My friend Prince Hamlet
wants to see a play, but how's he going to hire
these players without a manager? Then I get a
wonderful idea!!! I'll be their manager!

GUILDENSTERN
Gee, isn't he a swell guy?

ROSENCRANTZ
He certainly is!

HAMLET
How much are you going to charge me to see these
players?

HORATIO
Twenty kroner.

HAMLET
Twenty kroner? That's not bad.

HORATIO
That's just to see them. Now if you want them to
put on a play, that's another fifty kroner.

HAMLET
What kind of play will they put on for this ... total
of seventy kroner?

HORATIO
Well, there's two kinds of plays. There's good
plays and bad plays. If you want a good play, it's
an extra fifty kroner.

HAMLET
Well then, have them put on a bad play.

HORATIO
I'm sorry, they don't do bad plays. They've got a
reputation to hold up.

HAMLET
A hundred and twenty kroner sounds right for a
hold-up. Is that the entire cost?

HORATIO
Sure, that's the whole price. One hundred and
twenty kroner for a real good play. Oh, I almost
forgot to ask, you don't want them to learn their
lines, do you?

HAMLET
No, I wouldn't think of it.

HORATIO
Cause if you did, that would be another thirty
kroner.

HAMLET
Just have them read the lines.

HORATIO
They can't read.

. HAMLET
On second thought, why be stingy? Let them
learn their lines! We've got a deal then! One
hundred and fifty kroner.

Hamlet pays the money to Horatio. Enter Polonius.

POLONIUS
My lord, there are some men at the castle gate,
who claim to be players ....

HAMLET
Then let them in! Let them in!

Polonius goes to get the players.

HAMLET
I'm really looking forward to this. It's about time
we had some good sophisticated adult drama
around here.

Polonius comes back in with the three players: the FIRST PLAYER is a grumpy, bossy man with a Prince Valiant-type haircut, the SECOND PLAYER has very frizzy hair, and the THIRD PLAYER is a fat, bald idiot.

HAMLET
So these are the finest players in the land?

HORATIO
They must be. No one else can get these prices!

HAMLET
Well, let's see what they can do. Give me a sample.
I want to hear something old and classical.

Hamlet turns to the First Player.

HAMLET
Do you know "The Death of Priam"?

FIRST PLAYER
I didn't even know he was sick!

HAMLET
Well, that's old, but it isn't classical. That's one of
the oldest jokes I've ever heard. How is it that you
don't know the famous speech about the death of
King Priam? All great actors know that speech!
Your manager here said that you were the finest
players in the land!

THIRD PLAYER
We are! We get fined in every town we play in!

The Third Player laughs. The First Player slaps the Third Player on the forehead, and the Third Player squeals.

SECOND PLAYER
Listen, we're very good at what we do!

HAMLET
And what is it you do?

SECOND PLAYER
Mostly we call each other names, make funny noises,
hit each other, and poke each other in the eye.

HAMLET
Is there much of an audience for that?

THIRD PLAYER
Certainly!!!

POLONIUS
I have heard of these players, my lord. They are
very successful.

HAMLET
I repeat: What a piece of work is a man! How noble
in reason!

FIRST PLAYER
You still want a sample? Watch what we can do!

HAMLET
Are you going to hit the fat guy again?

FIRST PLAYER
Sure, if that's what you want.

HAMLET
Only if you keep it up until you kill him. Actually,
I was hoping for something a little more refined.

THIRD PLAYER
We're very refined. Whenever we go into a town,
right after we get fined once, we always get
re-fined.

The Third Player laughs. The First Player slaps him on the forehead, and he squeals.

HAMLET
This could quickly become monotonous.

The First Player hits the Second Player on the forehead.

SECOND PLAYER
Ow!!! What did you hit me for?

FIRST PLAYER
Variety!

HAMLET
Couldn't you do something poetic, with lots of
conflict, a tragedy about man's inhumanity to
man?

HORATIO
Why didn't you say that's what you wanted?
These guys specialize in that!

PLAYERS
We do?

HORATIO
Sure! Do the show I taught you this afternoon.
You remember, the one with poetry and conflict.

HAMLET
What's this show called?

HORATIO
"Simple Simon," by Mother Goose.

ROSENCRANTZ
Say, I think I know that one.

FIRST PLAYER
Watch this!

The First Player and the Third Player run off opposite sides of the stage. The Second Player steps to center stage and clears his throat.

SECOND PLAYER
This afternoon, we bring you a classic tale of hunger
and greed, that famous poem known the world over....
"Simple Simon."

There is a long pause.

HAMLET
Well?

SECOND PLAYER
I forgot how it starts.

The First Player runs on. He wears a chef's hat and apron. He slaps the Second Player on the forehead.

FIRST PLAYER
"Simple Simon met a pie-man..."

The First Player runs back off-stage.

SECOND PLAYER
Oh yes! (Ahem.)
Simple Simon
Met a pie-man
Going to the faire!

The First Player, dressed as a pie-man, and carrying a big cream pie, enters from one side of the stage. The Third Player, singing stupidly, enters from the other side.

THIRD PLAYER
La-la-lee-la-la!

SECOND PLAYER
Said Simple Simon,
To the pie-man,

THIRD PLAYER
Let me taste your ware!

SECOND PLAYER
Said the pie-man,
To Simple Simon,

FIRST PLAYER
Show me first your penny!

SECOND PLAYER
Said Simple Simon,
To the pie-man,

THIRD PLAYER
In truth, I haven't any!

FIRST PLAYER
Oh, a deadbeat!

The First Player hits the Third Player in the face with the pie.

THIRD PLAYER
Oh! Vanilla custard! My favorite!

The Third Player laughs. The First Player slaps the Third Player on top of his head, and the Third Player squeals. All three Players bow, banging their heads together. Horatio, Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern all applaud enthusiastically. Horatio turns to Hamlet.

HORATIO
Pretty good stuff, eh?

HAMLET
Boys, I think you've captured the essence of human
existence, and now that you've captured it, I hope
you'll never let it out again. No, on second thought,
I want you to perform for Claudius tomorrow night.
He deserves to see this. Polonius, show these men
to their rooms.

Polonius leads out the Second and Third Players. Hamlet grabs the First Player by the arm to speak with him privately.

HAMLET
Wait a second, I want to talk to you. Can you play
"The Murder of Gonzago"?

FIRST PLAYER
Sorry, I never heard of it.

HAMLET
All right, can you play "The Queen of Hearts"? It's by
the same author as "Simple Simon." You remember,
"The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts..."

FIRST PLAYER
Yes, my lord, we know that one.

HAMLET
I figured you would. We'll have it tomorrow night.
But I've got a few special changes I want you to
put in. I'll come by and give them to you later.
Now go to your room!

The First Player exits.

ROSENCRANTZ
That certainly was a fine performance, wasn't it?

GUILDENSTERN
I'll say!

ROSENCRANTZ
Didn't you think the roles were particularly well cast?

GUILDENSTERN
I thought the pie was well cast. Were there rolls in it
too? I didn't see the rolls.

HAMLET
Go to your rooms!!!

ROSENCRANTZ
Good-bye, my lord.

GUILDENSTERN
So long!

Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, bowing to Hamlet.

HAMLET
Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! Is it
not monstrous that these players here can slap
each other around like that, and I can't even lay a
finger on Claudius? They hit each other, hurt each
other, and all I can come up with is clever banter!
I'm nothing but a coward, a Noel Coward! Well,
maybe not such an ol' coward, more of a young
coward. And after all, I have no real proof that
Claudius killed my father. All I've got is the word
of a ghost who can't even talk! I know what I'll
do. I'll have these players perform something like
the murder of my father. If Claudius looks guilty,
I'll know he did it! The play's the thing, wherein
I'll catch the conscience of the King!

Exit Hamlet.

*********************************************************

ACT III

Scene I

Scene I takes place in a room in the castle. This is the same room as in Act II, Scene II. Enter the King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern.

KING
And can you, by no drift of circumstance, get
from him why he puts on this confusion, grating so
harshly all his days of quiet with turbulent and
dangerous lunacy?

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern consult with each other in whispers.

GUILDENSTERN
Would you mind rephrasing the question?

KING
Have you found out yet why Hamlet's gone
screwy?

ROSENCRANTZ
We're making progress, your majesty, but he
hasn't told us the whole story yet.

QUEEN
Well, what has he told you?

GUILDENSTERN
He's oppressed because man is a piece of work,
who fills out forms with infinite reasons... and
moves like an admiral on an express, and... and
is apprehensive of god,.... and his two best friends
are a couple of morons!

ROSENCRANTZ
But we do have some good news, your majesties!
Some traveling players have arrived at the castle,
and your son is going to have them put on a play!

KING
Hmmmm, maybe this play will take his mind off of
whatever it is that is troubling him so much. The
next time you see Hamlet, do your best to keep
him in a good mood!

Exit Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

KING
Now Gertrude, I would like you to leave us alone
for awhile, while I try to discover what is the matter
with your son. I have sent for him, and Polonius
and I will hide and watch while he meets Ophelia.
We should be able to tell from his reactions if it is
really love that is causing him to act so strangely.

QUEEN
Very well. Ophelia, I hope you can do something
about all this. I do not understand what has gotten
into that boy!

Exit Queen.

POLONIUS
Ophelia, you stand here and wait for Hamlet. The
King and I shall hide behind this arras.

The King and Polonius exit behind the arras. Enter Hamlet.

HAMLET
To be, or not to be; that is the question.

Hamlet starts speaking directly to the audience.

HAMLET
If you can answer the question, you win fifty dollars,
which you'll have to split among the lot of you. To
be, or not to be? Does anyone have the answer?

Hamlet points to a member of the audience.

HAMLET
You? I'm sorry, anything you have is obviously no
good. Including your date.

Hamlet suddenly turns somber.

HAMLET
Oh, why don't I just kill myself now, and let you
folks go home early? Better yet, why don't you
folks kill yourselves now, and let me go home early?
You can take my word for it, you've seen the best
part of the show. It's all downhill from here. So
what do you say to a little mass suicide? Just think
of it, I wouldn't even have to take a curtain call,
and you folks could make theater history. Well,
come on! What are you waiting for? You're not
afraid of a little death, are you? Are you? But then,
maybe you should be afraid. Who knows what
would happen to you if you did kill yourselves?
In your next life, you might have to watch this play
rewritten for Abbott and Costello!

Ophelia, tired of waiting for Hamlet to notice her, calls to him.

OPHELIA
Hamlet!

HAMLET
What's this? The fair Ophelia!

Suddenly Horatio rushes on stage, grabs Hamlet, and pulls him over to one side of the stage, away from Ophelia. Horatio speaks privately to Hamlet.

HORATIO
Hey, Hamlet, I just remembered. You gotta watch
out for Ophelia. She wants to marry you so she
can be Queen!

HAMLET
Oh yeah? We'll just see about that!

Exit Horatio.

OPHELIA
Good day, my lord.

HAMLET
Says you!

OPHELIA
It's been many days since I've seen your honor.

HAMLET
Let's keep my honor out of this. You'd like to see
my honor, wouldn't you? Well, that's too bad,
because it's private, see? My honor's not for sale.
Not at reasonable prices, anyway. But for an
unreasonable price, maybe we could make a deal.
How much honor did you have in mind?

OPHELIA
My lord, I have some love letters to return to you.

HAMLET
I'm sorry, you'll have to come up with cash on the
line, or it's no deal. Letters!!!

OPHELIA
You told me you loved me once, and I did believe
you.

HAMLET
What? You expect me to believe that you believed me?
Isn't that just like a woman! Well, I don't believe you
believed me, so there! Now, do you believe I don't
believe that you believed me? That's a better question
than "to be or not to be?".

OPHELIA
You deceived me, my lord. You took advantage of my
poor innocence.

HAMLET
You've got the poorest innocence I've ever seen!

Ophelia starts acting girlish, trying to charm Hamlet.

OPHELIA
But... don't you ever want to be a daddy?

HAMLET
Why? You want to get adopted?

OPHELIA
Not me, Hammy! I mean, don't you want to have
your own children!

HAMLET
Listen, Ophy, I've got enough problems with the
relatives I've already got.

OPHELIA
But don't you think I'd make a good mother?

HAMLET
I think you'd make a mother superior, so why don't
you get thee to a nunnery?

OPHELIA
But...

HAMLET
Go!

Ophelia speaks loudly so that the King and Polonius can hear her.

OPHELIA
Oh, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!

She turns to Hamlet and hisses a threat at him.

OPHELIA
I'll get you for this!

Hamlet shrugs and exits. Enter the King and Polonius.

KING
That did not sound like love to me! I don't trust
that fellow one bit. I'd feel safer if he were far
from Denmark,... say in England.

POLONIUS
I still think he has gone mad from love for my
daughter. After the play tomorrow night, why
don't we have his mother speak to him privately,
and I will hide and listen to what they say. Then,
if you still think he is dangerous, you can send him
to England, or confine him where you think best.

KING
It shall be so. Madness in great ones must not
unwatched go.

Exeunt.

*********************************************************

Scene II

Scene II takes place in a hall in the castle. Enter Hamlet and the Players.

HAMLET
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to
you!

FIRST PLAYER
Don't worry, your princeship, we'll do everything
just like you said.

HAMLET
And no melodramatic gestures! Don't saw the air
with your hands.

THIRD PLAYER
Relax! I never saw the air with my hands! I saw the
air with my eyes!

The Third Player laughs, the First Player slaps him on the forehead, and the Third Player squeals.

FIRST PLAYER
That's not what he means! He means don't do this!

The First Player saws the air upward with his hand, as the other Players watch him, and then he suddenly jerks his hand down, giving the other Players whiplash.

HAMLET
What I mean is, don't overact. Be natural! Try to
behave like normal human beings.

SECOND PLAYER
I thought you wanted us to be natural.

The First Player pounds the Second Player on the head.

HAMLET
Go! Make ready for the play.

Exeunt the Players. Enter Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

HAMLET
The play's about to start. Go get the King and
Queen.

ROSENCRANTZ
We will, my lord.

Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Enter Horatio. Hamlet goes to Horatio and speaks to him privately.

HAMLET
Horatio! Watch my uncle during the play. Let
me know if he does anything funny.

HORATIO
Don't worry. No one does anything funny in any
play while I'm around!

HAMLET
Well, that explains a lot.

Enter the King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

HAMLET
All right, everyone sit down. The play's about
to start.

Everyone except Hamlet sits on the floor.

QUEEN
Come hither, my dear Hamlet. Sit by me.

HAMLET
No thanks, Mom. I want to annoy Ophelia.

Hamlet goes over to Ophelia, who treats him very coldly.

HAMLET
Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

OPHELIA
No, my lord.

HAMLET
I mean, my head in your lap.

He lies down with his head in her lap. She remains cold to him.

OPHELIA
Aye, my lord.

HAMLET
Did you think I meant country matters?

OPHELIA
I think nothing, my lord.

HAMLET
That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.

OPHELIA
What is, my lord?

HAMLET
Nothing.

Hamlet waggishly raises and lowers his eyebrows. Then he turns to the audience.

HAMLET
Shakespeare wrote that one.

The Second Player steps out and waits for everyone to quiet down.

HAMLET
Quiet everyone! The play's starting.

The Second Player declaims the prologue to the play.

SECOND PLAYER
The Queen of Hearts
She made some tarts,
All on a summer's day;
The Knave of Hearts
He stole the tarts,
And took them clean away.
The King of Hearts
Called for the tarts,
And beat the Knave full sore;
The Knave of Hearts
Brought back the tarts,
And vowed he'd steal no more.

The Second Player bows to applause and exits.

HAMLET
That was just the prologue. Now the real play
begins!

The First Player enters. He is dressed as the King of Hearts. He speaks bombastically.

FIRST PLAYER
I am the noble King of Hearts!
I want my Queen to bake some tarts.
The finest pastries in the land
Are made by her own dainty hands.
Where is the Queen! I want her here!

The Third Player, affecting a high, shrill voice answers from off stage.

THIRD PLAYER
(off stage)
Hold your horses! I'm coming, dear!

FIRST PLAYER
My own dear wife! I know that I
Will always love her till I die!

The Third Player enters in drag, dressed as the Queen of Hearts. The First Player is horrified by her frightful appearance.

THIRD PLAYER
Sorry I'm late. I'd lost my wig.
How do I look?

FIRST PLAYER
Just like a ... fig-
Ure of beauty, your teeth like pearls!

THIRD PLAYER
Aw, you say that to all the girls.

The Third Player gives the First Player a playful shove, nearly knocking him over.

FIRST PLAYER
Say you'll be forever true!

THIRD PLAYER
Certainly, Kingsie! Who else do you
Think I'd go for?

FIRST PLAYER
For a start,
My brother, the evil Knave of Hearts!
If I catch you two together,
Ever again, I don't care whether
He has a knife, an ax or spear,
I'll kill him first, then you, my dear!

THIRD PLAYER
Take it easy! Please, calm down!
I'm not the type who'd play around!

FIRST PLAYER
Ever since that time I caught
Him with your tarts I've been distraught!

THIRD PLAYER
You can trust me. Wait and see!
I'll behave so faithfully,
I'll bake my tarts for only you!
Cross my heart! It's true! It's true!

Hamlet turns to his mother, as the First Player and Third Player exit, arm in arm, from the stage.

HAMLET
What do you think, Mom?

QUEEN
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Enter the Second Player, dressed as the Knave of Hearts.

SECOND PLAYER
I'm the wicked Knave of Hearts!
I'd love to grab the fair Queen's tarts,
Filled with apples, pears, or plums!
Why speak of the devil, here she comes!

Enter the Third Player, singing and carrying a table. On the table are a number of small cream pies, and at least one large cream pie.

THIRD PLAYER
La la lee la la.

Suddenly the Third Player spots the Second Player, and puts down the table.

THIRD PLAYER
Hey! You! What are you doing here?

SECOND PLAYER
I came to taste your tarts, my dear!

THIRD PLAYER
Have you got rocks inside your head?
If the King finds us here, we're dead!

SECOND PLAYER
You think I'm frightened of that bum?
That stupid fool! That twerp! That crumb!
Hey! I'll tell you what I'll do,
I'll kill the King and marry you!

As the Second Player continues telling his plans, the real King, seated in the audience, becomes visibly upset.

SECOND PLAYER
I'll wait until he's fast asleep
Out in his orchard. There I'll creep.
I'll bring a jar of poison, dear,
And I will pour it in his ear!

The King stands, horrified. At this point, the First Player enters, unnoticed by the Second Player or the Third Player.

SECOND PLAYER
As soon as that poor slob is dead,
I'll arrange that we'll be wed!
And you will bake the pies I crave,
While he is rotting in his grave.

The Second Player picks up a small cream pie.

KING
Stop the play!

The Players are so intent on their play that they ignore the King. Suddenly, the Third Player (still in his role as the Queen of Hearts) spots the First Player.

THIRD PLAYER
I think it's high time that I went!

The Third Player starts to walk off stage. The First Player grabs the Second Player and spins him around. The Second Player accidentally hits the First Player in the face with the pie.

SECOND PLAYER
I didn't mean it! It was an accident!

FIRST PLAYER
Why, you...

KING
Stop the play!

The First Player picks up a pie, and throws it at the Second Player. The Second Player ducks, and the pie hits the Third Player. The King walks over to the Players to stop the play.

KING
Stop the play!

The Third Player picks up a large cream pie and starts to smash it into the face of the First Player.

KING
Give me some light!!!

The First Player ducks and the Third Player hits the real King in the face with the pie. The real King rushes off stage. The Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern follow the King.

FIRST PLAYER
I think we'd better beat it, boys.

The Players exit. Only Hamlet and Horatio are left on stage.

HAMLET
Did you see that? Did you? Did you see what the
King did?

HORATIO
Yeah, he got the pie I wanted.

HAMLET
And he stopped the play before the best part!
Right before the big musical number!

Re-enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They walk hesitantly up to Hamlet.

GUILDENSTERN
We have a message for you from your mother.

HAMLET
Yes?

ROSENCRANTZ
She wants to speak to you in her room before
you go to bed.

HAMLET
All right.

He looks at Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who obviously have something else on their minds, but who are reluctant to speak up.

HAMLET
Do you boys have anything else on your minds?

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern remain silent.

HAMLET
Do you have anything on your minds? Do you
have minds?

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern look at each other, and then Guildenstern summons up the courage to speak to Hamlet.

GUILDENSTERN
We still don't know why you're screwy.

At this point the Players walk in playing recorders. They do not play very well.

FIRST PLAYER
Since the King didn't seem to like our play, we
thought he might enjoy some music. Where
is the King?

HAMLET
Let me see that.

Hamlet snatches one of the recorders. He looks at it, then hands it to Guildenstern.

HAMLET
Here. Play upon this pipe.

GUILDENSTERN
My lord, I cannot.

HAMLET
I pray you.

GUILDENSTERN
Believe me, I cannot.

HAMLET
Please. I beseech you.

Suddenly Hamlet's voice turns threatening.

HAMLET
Play it!!!

Guildenstern is near tears.

GUILDENSTERN
I don't know how to play the pipe.

HAMLET
You don't, eh? Then you must think I'm simpler
than this pipe! You think you can get all my
secrets out of me just by asking, but you can't get
anything out of this pipe! You're willing to play on
me, aren't you? You think it's easier to play on me
than this pipe! You thought you could play me, so
surely you can play a simple pipe! Go ahead!
Play it!!!

GUILDENSTERN
(weeping)
But I don't ... I . . .

HAMLET
Play it!

Guildenstern tearfully tries to play the pipe. To his surprise, beautiful music comes out. Guildenstern takes the pipe away from his lips to examine it. He can't figure out how he managed to play it. He gives up trying to figure it out, shrugs his shoulders, and happily begins to play again. Guildenstern continues to play very complicated, rich, classical music. He plays like an expert, even though he doesn't know how. Guildenstern stops playing and smiles happily at Hamlet.

HAMLET
Excuse me, I think I hear my mother calling.

Exit Hamlet. Exeunt all.

*********************************************************

Scene III

Scene III takes place in a room in the castle. Enter the King, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

KING
I like him not, nor stands it safe with us to let his
madness range. Therefore prepare you. I shall
execute a commission for you to take him with
you to England. Go! Get ready!

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern bow and exit. Enter Polonius.

POLONIUS
My lord, he's going to his mother's room. I'll
get there first and hide behind the arras and
listen to what they say. I'll tell you everything.

KING
Thank you, my good friend.

Exit Polonius.

KING
Oh my offense is rank, it smells to heaven.
I have murdered my own brother. Prince
Hamlet knows what I have done; I'm sure
of it. He puts on a mask of madness, while
he plots against me, and I deserve to be
plotted against. I've killed my brother! I
should pray for forgiveness, but how can I?
I still have my crown and my queen, and I
will not give them up. I will not show
repentance. Alas, there can be no
forgiveness without repentance, can there?

The King kneels, sorrowfully, as if in prayer. Enter Hamlet. He is startled to see the King. Hamlet muses to himself. The King is unaware of Hamlet's presence.

HAMLET
What's this? The King! I could kill him now,
while he's alone. It would be easy. I could
run him through while he's praying and send
him straight to heaven, which is better than
he deserves ... much better. He's praying,
which means if I killed him now, he'd go
straight to heaven, ... and I'd be left down
here in Denmark. He'd like that, I'll bet!
I can just see him up there, laughing at me!
Why shouldn't he laugh? He gets heavenly
bliss, and I'm stuck here with Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern! He'd think that was pretty
funny, the lout! Well, I'll show him.

Hamlet strides over to the King.

HAMLET
I wouldn't kill you now if you begged me! So
there!

Exit Hamlet. The King is bewildered.

KING
Maybe he really is crazy after all.

Exit the King.

*********************************************************

Scene IV

Scene IV takes place in the Queen's bedroom. Enter the Queen and Polonius.

POLONIUS
He will come straight. Pray you, be round with him.

HAMLET
(off stage)
Mother! Mother!

QUEEN
Withdraw! I hear him coming.

Polonius hides behind the arras. The Queen sits in a chair. Enter Hamlet.

HAMLET
Now, Mother, what's the matter?

QUEEN
Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

HAMLET
Mother, thou hast my father much offended.

QUEEN
Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue

HAMLET
Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
And thou hast my father much offended!

QUEEN
Have you forgotten who I am?

HAMLET
No! You are the Queen, your husband's
brother's wife; and -- would it were not so --
you are my mother! And thou hast my father
much offended! Let's see you top that!

QUEEN
I don't understand a word you're saying.

HAMLET
No, you wouldn't, would you? All you did was
marry your own brother-in-law, my uncle.
That's all you did, relatively speaking. Did you
ever stop to think where we'd be if everyone
married my uncle? Why, we'd be up to our ears
in aunts, for one thing, and that's no picnic.

QUEEN
I give up! I can't talk to you.

The Queen starts to stand. Hamlet pushes her back down into her chair.

HAMLET
Oh no, you're going to take a good hard look at
yourself and face the ugly truth.

The Queen panics.

QUEEN
What are you going to do? You won't murder me?
Help! Help me!

POLONIUS
(behind the arras)
What? Help! Help!

HAMLET
How now! A rat!

Hamlet stabs Polonius through the arras.

POLONIUS
(behind the arras)
Oh, I am slain!

Polonius falls and dies, still behind the arras.

HAMLET
Is that the King?

Hamlet pulls aside the arras and discovers Polonius.

HAMLET
Oops. Well, I guess the joke's on me. I just
killed the wrong man! I'll tell you what, Mom,
you keep quiet about this to Claudius, and I won't
tell him about the strange man hiding in your
bedroom.

QUEEN
Oh what a rash and bloody deed is this!

HAMLET
Oh, so now you're going to blame all this on me!
Some mother you are! If you hadn't married my
uncle, none of this would have happened, and we
could all be performing "The Merry Wives of
Windsor" somewhere. Why couldn't you have
stayed married to my father? My father! Now
there's an ideal husband!

QUEEN
But your father is dead.

HAMLET
That's what I mean. He's quiet, undemanding, and
you don't have to cook for him. But you preferred
to marry a pig like Claudius and make him the new
Danish King. Claudius! He's the cheesiest Danish
I've ever seen. Aren't you ashamed?

QUEEN
Stop! I refuse to listen to another word!

Enter the Ghost.

HAMLET
Now here's a King who knows how to rule!

The Ghost takes out a yardstick and starts measuring things.

HAMLET
Hey, this is "Hamlet," not "Measure For Measure!"

QUEEN
Hamlet, what are you talking about?

HAMLET
I'm talking to him! Don't you see him?

QUEEN
Who?

HAMLET
She can't see you!

The Ghost delights in the fact that the Queen can't see him. He goes over to her and makes a horrible face right in front of her. He's having a great time.

HAMLET
Yeah, you might as well enjoy yourself.

QUEEN
I'm not enjoying this one bit!

The Ghost mimes an imitation of the Queen.

HAMLET
What a couple you two make!

QUEEN
What couple? There's only one of me.

HAMLET
Yeah, but you're shaped like a pear.

The Ghost suddenly notices the corpse of Polonius. The Ghost is shocked. He turns to Hamlet for an explanation.

HAMLET
Yeah, I know. Say, it's too bad he didn't put the
poison in your ear. Then everything would be
fine. Are you sure Polonius didn't kill you? You're
positive?

The Ghost nods his head "yes."

HAMLET
That's too bad. I guess we owe him one. Maybe I
could get Ophelia to pour some poison in Horatio's
ear. That would even things up.

The Ghost shakes his head "no," and mimes violence to Claudius.

HAMLET
Yeah, I guess I've still got to avenge your death.
But after this you owe me a favor. Fair is fair.

The Ghost nods "yes" and exits.

QUEEN
Hamlet, what are you talking about?

HAMLET
It's very simple, Mom. All I want is for you to
behave yourself. Be a decent woman, the kind
of mother a guy can be proud to take home to his
girlfriend. That's all I'm asking. And stay away from
Claudius!

QUEEN
But Claudius and I are married.

HAMLET
Exactly! He's a married man! Do you know how
that looks? Do you? You and Claudius? Do you
have any idea how that looks?

QUEEN
No, I do not!

HAMLET
Well, do you remember the two baboons we saw
at the circus last year? Look, Mom, I know you
don't mean to be bad. It's not your fault; you're just
naturally rotten.

Enter Horatio.

HORATIO
Hey, Hamlet, the King say you gotta pack. He's
sending you to England with Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern.

HAMLET
Tell him I'd rather go to the French Riviera with
Ophelia.

HORATIO
No, he says you've got to go to England.

HAMLET
Well, why not? I might as well get out of Denmark
until this business with Polonius blows over.

Horatio notices the corpse of Polonius for the first time.

HORATIO
Hey, he doesn't look so good.

HAMLET
Don't worry about him. It's just a slight case of
death, that's all. There's a lot of it going around
these days.

HORATIO
I hope it isn't catching.

HAMLET
Come on, help me drag this body out of here.

Hamlet and Horatio begin to drag out the body of Polonius.

HAMLET
Indeed this counselor is now most still, most secret,
and most grave, who was in life a foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you. Good
night, mother.

Exeunt Hamlet and Horatio, dragging Polonius. Exit the Queen.

*********************************************************

ACT IV

Scene I

Scene I takes place in a room in the castle. Enter the King and Queen. The Queen is obviously very upset.

KING
There's matter in these sighs. You must translate;
'tis fit we understand them.

QUEEN
My good lord, Hamlet in his madness has slain
Polonius.

KING
He would have killed me, had I been there.
Where has he gone?

QUEEN
To hide the body.

KING
Rosencrantz! Guildenstern!

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern enter.

KING
Hamlet's killed Polonius. Find him, and bring the
body to the chapel.

ROSENCRANTZ
But your majesty, don't you think it would be better
if some armed guards or ...

KING
Find him and be quick about it!

ROSENCRANTZ
Yes, your majesty.

Rosencrantz turns to Guildenstern as they start to leave.

ROSENCRANTZ
This is all your fault! If you hadn't played upon the
pipe ...

GUILDENSTERN
(weeping)
But I didn't want to play the pipe!

Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, nervously stumbling and bumping into each other.

KING
Gertrude, we must discuss this matter further.
Oh, come away. My soul is filled with discord
and dismay.

Exeunt.

*********************************************************

Scene II

Scene II takes place in a passage in the castle. Enter Hamlet, who has just hidden the body of Polonius.

HAMLET
Safely stowed!

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern call from off stage.

ROSENCRANTZ
(off stage)
Hamlet!

GUILDENSTERN
(off stage)
Lord Hamlet!

HAMLET
Who calls on Hamlet? Oh, here they come.

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, hesitantly. They are afraid of Hamlet. Rosencrantz speaks to Guildenstern.

ROSENCRANTZ
Now whatever you do, don't upset him! You know
how irritable he's been lately.

HAMLET
Well? What do you two want?

GUILDENSTERN
Rosencrantz wants to ask you a question.

ROSENCRANTZ
Pardon us, your lordship, but we happened to
overhear a certain rumor that a slight accident
might have befallen Polonius, and we thought
perhaps we might offer you our humble assistance
to help you dispose of the ... earthly remains. If
you have no objections, of course.

HAMLET
Sorry, boys, the body stays hidden.

GUILDENSTERN
Why don't you tell us where you hid it, so we can
make sure we don't look for it there?

HAMLET
Bring me to the King.

Exeunt.

********************************************************

Scene III

Scene III takes place in a room in the castle. Enter the King with ATTENDANTS.

KING
I have sent to seek him and to find the body.
How dangerous is it that this man goes loose!

Enter Rosencrantz.

KING
Well? Did you find the body?

ROSENCRANTZ
No, your majesty. He wouldn't tell us where it is.

KING
Then where is Hamlet?

ROSENCRANTZ
Guildenstern! Bring in Hamlet.

Enter Guildenstern and Hamlet.

KING
Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?

HAMLET
At supper.

KING
Supper? Where?

HAMLET
Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. By
maggots. Do you e\realize that we fatten chickens
and cows to fatten ourselves, and we fatten
ourselves to fatten maggots. But who do the
maggots fatten? It's time the maggots learned that
there's no free lunch. So here's your bill for
Polonius. Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were a
maggot.

KING
Hamlet!!! Where is Polonius?

HAMLET
In heaven. You can send a messenger to find him.
If he's not there, seek him in the other place
yourself. If you don't find him in a month, you
should be able to nose him out as you go up the
stairs into the lobby.

KING
(to the Attendants)
Go seek him there.

HAMLET
He will stay till you come.

Exeunt the Attendants.

KING
Hamlet, I've arranged for you to go to England.
I want you to leave at once!

HAMLET
Anything you say. To England! Farewell,
Mother.

KING
I'm your uncle, Hamlet, and your step-father.

HAMLET
Well, why not take another step and be a mother.
After all, father and mother are man and wife;
man and wife are one flesh. You are one flesh aren't
you? You look more like a flush. A royal flush, if
you prefer.

Hamlet turns to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and gestures for them to follow him.

HAMLET
Come, for England!

Exit Hamlet.

KING
Follow him! And do not forget the commission I
gave you! Deliver it to the English King!

ROSENCRANTZ
Don't worry, your majesty. We'll take care of
everything. Come, Guildenstern.

Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

KING
My commission orders the present death of Hamlet.
The King of England owes me a favor. Do it,
England! Until I know my step son is dead, I cannot
rest easy.

Exit the King.

*********************************************************

Scene IV

Scene IV takes place on a plain in Denmark. Enter a CAPTAIN and several SOLDIERS from Fortinbras's army. Enter Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

HAMLET
Good sir, whose powers are these?

CAPTAIN
They are of Norway, sir, led by young Fortinbras.
We await permission from the Danish King for
our army to pass through his lands on the way to
Poland.

HAMLET
What's in Poland?

CAPTAIN
The King of Norway would not permit young
Fortinbras to attack Denmark, so we are
attacking Poland instead.

HAMLET
What for?

CAPTAIN
Young Fortinbras hopes to gain a little patch of
ground, that has no worth for farming or any
other value, save as an excuse for the shedding of
blood.

HAMLET
I see.

CAPTAIN
God be with you, sir.

Exeunt the Captain and soldiers.

ROSENCRANTZ
Will you come, my lord? We have almost
reached the harbor from whence we sail to
England.

HAMLET
I'll be with you in a minute. I feel another
soliloquy coming on.

Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

HAMLET
Twenty thousand men march to their graves for a
worthless plot of land. Why can't I do anything
that violent, or that funny? Everyone thinks young
Fortinbras is a great prince because he's going
to kill all those people, and all I've killed is old
Polonius. Some leader I am! Of course,
Young Fortinbras has an advantage -- he's got
an entire army to sacrifice for a useless cause.
Whose lives have I got to throw away?

Re-enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

ROSENCRANTZ
The boat awaits you, my lord.

HAMLET
Tell me, boys, how would you two like to serve
your country?

Exeunt.

*********************************************************

Scene V

Scene V takes place in a room in the castle at Elsinore. Enter the King, the Queen and Horatio.

QUEEN
I will not see her.

HORATIO
I don't blame you. She's crazy. All she does is sing
crazy songs all the time, and she's always telling
everyone about her father's death, and how it's all
your fault.

KING
What? You mean she is sewing discord among
the people?

HORATIO
What cord?

KING
Discord!

HORATIO
What cord?

KING
Discord!

HORATIO
You keep saying, "dis cord," but I don't see any
cord.

KING
I said she sews discord.

HORATIO
No, she doesn't sew any cords, but she plays
some chords when she sings her crazy songs.
She keeps acting crazy all the time. I've never
seen anyone act so crazy.

QUEEN
Let her come in. We had better find out if she is
stirring up trouble among the rabble.

Horatio exits, and comes back with Ophelia, who seems to be doing an imitation of Hamlet, loping across the stage with a cigar in her mouth. She carries a lute, or a banjo, or some other stringed instrument.

OPHELIA
Where's the beauteous Queen of Denmark? There,
if that doesn't convince you I'm crazy, nothing
will!

QUEEN
Ophelia!

OPHELIA
Oh, feel - yaself! What kind of a name is Ophelia,
anyway?? Is it any wonder the boys all think I'm
easy? Oh well, easy come, easy go.

She starts to strum on the musical instrument she carries.

OPHELIA
My first number is, "He Is Dead And Gone."

She sings:

OPHELIA
He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone.
We did not want him dead and here,
So he is dead and gone.

KING
She is distracted by her father's death.

OPHELIA
Let's not talk about that! My second number is
called "Saint Valentine's Day."

She sings:

OPHELIA
Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's Day,
And as the sun did shine,
I came, a maid, at your window,
To be your valentine.
Then up he rose, and donned his clothes,
And opened wide the door,
Let in the maid, and made the maid,
So she was a maiden no more.
By gosh, and by Saint Charity,
Alack, and cry for shame!
Young men will do it, if they can do it.
By cock, they are to blame!
Quoth she, "Before you tumbled me,
You promised me to wed."
He answers:
"So would I have done, by yonder sun,
If thou hadst not come to my bed."

QUEEN
Oh, poor Ophelia.

OPHELIA
I'm not finished yet!

Ophelia continues her song:

OPHELIA
Quoth she, "That is hypocrisy,
For you begged me into your bed!
So marry me quick, or I'll cut off thy wick-
Ed tongue!" And so they were wed!

HORATIO
Say, does she remind you of the man who
comes to fix the sink?

KING
How long has she been like this?

OPHELIA
Tell me, do you think it's all right for a girl to
marry a guy who's killed her father, or is
that considered a breach of social etiquette?
The guy who did it is a real son of a breach.
I don't think my brother is going to like this.
Maybe you should do something to make
it up to him, like name him as your heir.
Heir today, and gone tomorrow!

Exit Ophelia. The King orders Horatio to follow her.

KING
Guard her closely! Keep a careful watch, I
pray you. Her grief has driven her mad.

HORATIO
Don't worry. I'll guard her.

Exit Horatio.

KING
This is all Hamlet's fault! First he went mad
and spurned her love; then he killed her
father; and now we have had to bury Polonius
quietly and without ceremony. Worst of all,
I have heard that Laertes has secretly returned
from France, and the people have fed him
vicious rumors about his father's death!

Loud noises come from off stage.

QUEEN
What is this noise?

Enter a MESSENGER.

KING
What's the matter?

MESSENGER
Laertes has returned. The people have welcomed
him and they cry that they choose him for their
king! I fear they will break down the doors!

A crash of doors being broken open is heard off stage. Enter Laertes.

LAERTES
What has happened to my father?

QUEEN
Calm down, good Laertes!

LAERTES
First tell me what has happened to my father!
If he was murdered, I must be revenged!
That is my duty as his son!

KING
Believe me, Laertes, I am guiltless of thy father's
death, And I grieve for him. When I tell you the
whole story, you will see that you have no cause
to blame me.

Enter Ophelia, still doing a mad impersonation of Hamlet. This time, in addition to her musical instrument, she carries several large bunches of flowers.

LAERTES
Ophelia!!! Have you gone mad?

Ophelia sings.

OPHELIA
And will he not come again?
And will he not come again?
They laid him deep in his grave,
'Cause his flesh was decayed,
So he'd better not come again!

She hits the King and Queen in their faces with flowers.

OPHELIA
Here, have some flowers! You too!
Well, aren't you going to put them in water?
Do you want them to rot, like my father?
Go put them in water!

The King and Queen exit with their flowers. Ophelia drops her feigned madness, and speaks quickly to her startled brother.

OPHELIA
Hush! I'm only feigning madness, and while I
pretend, I stir up the angry populace, and
prepare your path to the throne of Denmark!

LAERTES
My path??? But, Hamlet. . .

OPHELIA
Hamlet doesn't stand a chance anymore! It
would surprise me if Claudius hasn't already
arranged for his death. My only chance for
power is to have you crowned King.

LAERTES
What are you going to do?

OPHELIA
I have arranged with my handmaidens to fake
my own death. I will appear to have drowned,
and the people will be so angered, and Claudius
will feel so guilty, he must name you as heir to the
throne. Once that is done, and they lay me in
the ground for burial, you must leap into my grave
and pray for me. I will revive as if it were by a
miracle.

LAERTES
It may work!

OPHELIA
It is bound to work, if you play your part. Just
make certain you claim my body as soon as you
hear that I have drowned, and don't let anyone
examine me too closely.

The King re-enters, and Ophelia immediately goes back into her act of madness.

OPHELIA
I thought I'd marry Hamlet and be a Queen
someday, but then my father died and he left
me a poor orphaned waif. I was hoping he'd
leave me some money. Oh well, where there's
a will, there's a waif. Time for me to waif good-
bye. Waif not, want not! Good night! Good
night! Good-bye.

Exit Ophelia.

KING
Laertes, you must come with me, and I will explain
to you everything about your father's death, and
when I am done you will understand it was no
fault of mine. I pray you, come with me.

Exeunt.

*********************************************************

Scene VI

Scene VI takes place in another room in the castle. Enter Horatio. A SAILOR follows him in.

HORATIO
What?

The SAILOR hands a letter to Horatio.

SAILOR
Good Horatio, I have a letter for you from
Prince Hamlet.

Horatio takes the letter, and studies it intently without saying a word. Then he hands it back to the sailor.

HORATIO
What's it say?

SAILOR
Can't you read? I thought you were a great
scholar at the university at Wittenberg.

HORATIO
Sure, at Wittenberg, but this is Denmark!

SAILOR
All right, the letter says, "Dear Horatio, It's great
to be in England. Unfortunately, I'm in Denmark.
Two days out at sea, we were savagely attacked
by a band of pirates, freebooters, and a dozen
Shakespearean scholars. The fighting was fierce,
and we were badly outnumbered, so I drew my
sword and joined the other side. Before I knew it,
the boats had split up again, and I was stuck
with the scholars. After making me promise never
to perform "King Lear," they let me off on the
shore of Denmark. Please have this sailor bring
you to me. I have much to tell you, including the
fates of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and
King Lear. No, just kidding. Nothing about
King Lear. Your friend, Hamlet."

HORATIO
OK, take me to Hamlet.

Exeunt.

*********************************************************

Scene VII

Scene VII takes place in another room in the castle. Enter the King and Laertes.

KING
Now must your conscience my acquaintance
seal, and you must put me in your heart as
friend.

LAERTES
But why haven't you done anything to Hamlet?

KING
I have, Laertes, but craftily, so that I will not be
blamed for his death by the Queen, or by the
Danish people, who for some reason unknown
to me, like the Prince. But set your mind to
rest; even as we speak, Hamlet has surely
met his death, executed by the King of
England.

Enter a MESSENGER.

KING
How now? What news?

MESSENGER
A sailor has brought a letter to you from
Hamlet.

KING
What????

The King takes the letter from the Messenger and reads it.

KING
He's back in Denmark, I know not how!

LAERTES
Then is he to go unpunished, and someday
follow you to the throne?

KING
Laertes, how would you like to follow me?
Help me to be rid of Hamlet, and the succession
is thine.

LAERTES
Say on, good King.

KING
We must plan his death carefully. I know
that Hamlet is most jealous of your skill as a
swordsman. You shall have a sporting match
with him. We will arrange that Hamlet's sword
shall be blunted, as befits a friendly duel, but
your sword shall be unbated so that you may,
as if it were by accident, run him through.

LAERTES
I'll do it. And what is more, to make certain his
death, I'll anoint my sword with a deadly
poison, so that even if I do but scratch him, he
must die.

KING
And I'll prepare a chalice of poisoned wine for him
to drink, so that if he should escape your envenomed
blade, our purpose will hold.

LAERTES
And should that fail, I will arrange a chandelier to
fall upon him!

KING
And I will build a trap door above a pit of hungry
crocodiles so that... No, on second thought,
let's just stick with the envenomed sword and
the poisoned wine. That should be sufficient
to ensure his death. There's no point in overdoing
it.

They shake hands. Enter the Queen. She is very upset.

KING
How now, sweet Queen!

QUEEN
Your sister's drowned, Laertes!

LAERTES
Drowned!

QUEEN
There is a willow which grows beside a brook.
Ophelia went there to pick flowers. She was
holding onto a branch which broke, and sent
her tumbling into the brook. In her madness
she did not even try to save herself, but sang
snatches of old tunes as she sank beneath
the surface of the brook. When her handmaidens
pulled her out, they said she was dead.

Laertes pretends to be overcome with grief.

LAERTES
Drowned!

Abruptly, Laertes ends his act and says good-bye to the King.

LAERTES
Adieu, my lord.

Exit Laertes.

KING
Let's follow, Gertrude! How much I had to
do to calm his rage! Now fear I this will give it
start again; therefore let's follow.

Exeunt.

**********************************************************************************

Act V

Scene I

Scene I takes place in a cemetery in a churchyard in Elsinore. There is a deep grave which is almost completed. Enter a GRAVEDIGGER who starts to finish digging the grave. Enter Hamlet and Horatio.

HAMLET
I will speak to this fellow. Whose grave's this,
sirrah?

GRAVEDIGGER
Mine, sir.

HAMLET
I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in it.

Hamlet turns and speaks to the audience.

HAMLET
Well, what do you want from a joke that's over
400 years old?

Actually, Shakespeare's Hamlet was probably written in 1601. So until the year 2002, Hamlet's line about should be "Well, what do you want from a joke that's almost 400 years old?" Then in 2002, the line should be "Well, what do you want from a joke that's over 400 years old."

GRAVEDIGGER
I don't lie. I have dug the grave, and so therefore
it is mine.

HAMLET
What man do you dig it for?

GRAVEDIGGER
For no man, sir.

HAMLET
What woman then?

GRAVEDIGGER
For none neither.

HAMLET
Then who is to be buried in it?

GRAVEDIGGER
One that was a woman, sir; but rest her soul,
she's dead.

HAMLET
I think you'd better dig some graves for these
jokes. How long have you been a gravedigger?

GRAVEDIGGER
I started this occupation the day our late King
Hamlet overcame old Fortinbras. That was the
day Prince Hamlet was born.

The Gravedigger continues digging the grave. He comes upon a skull, and tosses it out of the grave.

GRAVEDIGGER
This graveyard's getting crowded. This skull has
been in the earth a long time.

HAMLET
Whose was it?

GRAVEDIGGER
That was Yorick's skull, the King's jester.

Hamlet picks up the skull and looks at it sadly. He speaks somberly. In fact, this is the only time in the entire play when Hamlet is completely and genuinely serious.

HAMLET
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio. A
funny little man with a derby hat and a bamboo
cane. He wore a jacket that was too small and
shoes that were too large. He used to walk a
splayfooted walk, all the while twirling his cane.
And he had a tiny little mustache which he used
to twitch back and forth when he was upset.
He was a funny little man. And the last time
I saw him, he was a pink-faced, white-haired
old man who kept patting my hand and saying,
"Keep warm. Keep warm." It doesn't seem
fair that the comedians should have to die,
just like everyone else.

Suddenly Hamlet is no longer serious.

HAMLET
Oh well.

He casually tosses the skull over his shoulder and kicks it away (just as Yorick would have done). Hamlet hears people approaching from off stage.

HAMLET
But soft! Here comes the King, the Queen, and
the courtiers. Let's hide and see what's going on.

Hamlet and Horatio hide behind some gravestones. Enter the King, Queen, Laertes and COURTIERS. They carry the body of Ophelia wrapped in a shroud. The body remains covered by the shroud throughout the entire scene, so we never actually see the body of Ophelia.

LAERTES
Lay my sister's body in the earth, and from her
fair and unpolluted flesh may violets spring!

The body of Ophelia is gently placed in the grave.

HAMLET
What? Is that Ophelia?

QUEEN
Farewell, Ophelia. I had hoped you would have
been my Hamlet's bride. I thought to have
decked your bridal bed with flowers, instead of
thy grave.

LAERTES
Speak not the hated name of Hamlet! His wicked
deed has caused her death!

The Gravedigger prepares to shovel dirt into the grave.

LAERTES
Wait! Hold off the earth awhile, till I have caught
her once more in my arms.

Laertes climbs down into the grave.

LAERTES
Oh heaven, I would give up my newly-granted
claim of succession to the throne, to be buried
with her now.

Hamlet springs up from his hiding place.

HAMLET
Hey! Get out of that grave! If anyone has a right
to give up the throne to be buried with her, it is I,
Hamlet the Dane!

Hamlet leaps into the grave. There is a horrible crunching sound as he lands, and perhaps a moan from Ophelia.

LAERTES
Get off my sister! You just jumped onto my sister!

Laertes pushes Hamlet off of the body of Ophelia.

LAERTES
Ophelia!

Laertes grabs the body. Hamlet tries to pull it away, banging the body against the sides of the grave. There are faint muffled cries coming from the shroud, but no one notices them.

HAMLET
Give her back!

Laertes and Hamlet have a vicious tug-of-war with the body. Suddenly, Hamlet lets go, and the body slams into the side of the grave with a sickening thud.

HAMLET
OK! OK, I can tell when I'm not welcome.

Hamlet climbs out of the grave and exits. Laertes peeks inside the shroud and shudders. He angrily turns to the gravedigger.

LAERTES
You might as well go ahead and bury her now!
She's dead.

Laertes exits sadly.

KING
Gertrude, we must set some watch over your
son!

Exeunt.

*********************************************************

Scene II

Scene II takes place in a hall in the castle. Enter Hamlet and Horatio.

HAMLET
So much for this. You do remember all the
circumstance?

HORATIO
Sure. Your father, he's a ghost, so you go crazy.
Then you put on a play, but your uncle doesn't like
it, so you kill Polonius. His daughter Ophelia
wants to marry you, but you go to England with
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, so she drowns
herself.

HAMLET
Is that what's been happening? I certainly am lucky
to have you around to explain these things to me.
Anyway, let me tell you what happened to me on
the voyage to England. The first night on the ship
I couldn't sleep, so I decided to get something to
read. What I decided to get was the commission
which Claudius had given to Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern. I snuck into their cabin and took
the commission. It wasn't very interesting until
I got to the part that said that for the good of
England and of Denmark, and for the peace
that stands between them, without delay, Prince
Hamlet's head should be cut off!!!

HORATIO
Was that the most interesting part?

HAMLET
I thought so. Didn't you think it was interesting?

Horatio is undecided.

HORATIO
Well ...

HAMLET
I know the writing was a little flat, so I decided to
make a few revisions. I rewrote the commission
so that it said that for the good of England and
of Denmark, and for the peace that stands between
them, without delay, Hamlet should be given lots
of money and beautiful naked women.

Hamlet smiles proudly at Horatio.

HAMLET
Don't you think that's better?

HORATIO
Why didn't you say Horatio should get the money
and women? Then you'd have something!

HAMLET
You mean you'd have something! I put the commission
back in Rosencrantz's and Guildenstern's cabin.
Unfortunately, the next day we were attacked by
pirates, and I never got to England. Oh, I almost
forgot, ... I did make one other small change in the
commission, it's hardly worth mentioning, really.

HORATIO
What was that?

HAMLET
I told the English King to have Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern put to death.

Horatio looks accusingly at Hamlet, who looks a little embarrassed.

HAMLET
Well, they deserved it, spying on me for Claudius!
Anyway, this kind of thing suits them. I can just
imagine their reaction when they find out what the
commission says. I can see them in my mind's
eye....

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with the English EXECUTIONER.

ROSENCRANTZ
Well, Guildenstern, here's another fine mess you've
gotten me into.

Guildenstern starts weeping. He tries to speak through his tears.

GUILDENSTERN
But I didn't do anything! I....

The English Executioner leads them off stage.

HORATIO
Hey, who's that coming?

HAMLET
Oh, that's just Osric, the courtier.

Enter OSRIC, a young courtier.

OSRIC
Your lordship is welcome back to Denmark.
I bring word from the King. He proposes to
place a wager on a friendly, sporting duel
between yourself and young Laertes. The
King shall wager that in a dozen passes of the
sword, Laertes shall not exceed you by three
hits.

HORATIO
Hey, that's good! That sounds like fun.

HAMLET
You think so? All right, tell the King I'll do it, any
time he's ready.

OSRIC
I shall tell him, my lord.

Exit Osric. Horatio also exits, and Hamlet calls out after him.

HAMLET
Hey, where are you going?

HORATIO
To place a bet against you.

Exit Horatio.

HAMLET
It's nice to have the confidence of your friends.
There's something that bothers me about this
duel. My stepfather, who's already tried to kill
me once, has set up a fencing match with Laertes,
who also hates me. But Horatio seems to think
the match is a good idea, which means I must
be crazy to agree to it! But what will come will
come. The readiness is all. And I don't think
I'm ready yet!!!

Enter the King, Queen, Laertes, Osric and various other Courtiers and Attendants. A moment later Horatio enters, having placed his bet.

KING
Come, Hamlet, come and take this hand from
me.

The King gives Laertes' hand to Hamlet. They shake hands.

HAMLET
Laertes, I want you to know that I'm sorry I
killed your father and caused the death of your
sister, but I'll forgive and forget if you will.

LAERTES
(coldly)
I am satisfied.

HAMLET
Then let's play the match. Give us the foils.

KING
Give them the foils, young Osric.

Osric brings Hamlet and Laertes two identical, bated fencing foils. Laertes and Hamlet each take one.

LAERTES
This is too heavy for me. Let me see another.

Osric takes Laertes' foil, and goes off stage to get another one.

HAMLET
This one seems OK.

Osric re-enters with a huge unbated sword for Laertes. It is much larger than Hamlet's sword. Laertes takes the giant, deadly sword and takes a practice lunge.

LAERTES
Yes, that's better.

HAMLET
Say, are these weapons all of the same length?

OSRIC
Of course, my lord.

HAMLET
I just wanted to make sure mine wasn't longer.
I'd hate to have an unfair advantage.

KING
Very well. Let the match begin!

Hamlet and Laertes fence. Hamlet is fairly fast and agile, and his footwork is unique. He manages to avoid being hit by Laertes' sword.

HAMLET
You know, Laertes, you should play Horatio
sometime. He's an expert on fencing. He'll fence
anything he can get his hands on.

Hamlet manages to hit Laertes.

HAMLET
One!

LAERTES
No.

HAMLET
Judgment?

OSRIC
A hit, a very palpable hit.

The King offers Hamlet the poisoned chalice of wine.

KING
Congratulations, Hamlet. Here is a chalice
of wine for your refreshment.

HAMLET
Nice try, Claudius, but it won't work.

KING
What do you mean, Hamlet?

HAMLET
I know what you're up to, trying to get me
drunk! I'm staying sober for this match!

Hamlet and Laertes fence. Hamlet scores another hit.

HAMLET
Another hit! What say you?

LAERTES
A touch, a touch, I do confess it.

The Queen takes the poisoned chalice.

QUEEN
I drink to thy good fortune, Hamlet.

KING
Gertrude, do not drink!

QUEEN
I will, my lord; I pray you pardon me.

She drinks. The King speaks quietly to himself.

KING
It is the poisoned cup; it is too late.

HAMLET
Come, Laertes.

They fence for a while, but no one is hit. They pause.

OSRIC
Nothing either way.

LAERTES
Have at you now!

Suddenly, Laertes stabs at Hamlet before the match has started again. Hamlet is scratched by the envenomed sword.

HAMLET
That was an unthrustworthy attack!

They start to fence again in earnest. Laertes drops his sword. Hamlet exchanges swords with him. Hamlet wounds Laertes. Suddenly, the Queen falls.

OSRIC
Look to the Queen!

KING
She swoons to see them bleed.

QUEEN
No, no, the drink, the drink, -- Oh, my dear
Hamlet, -- the drink, the drink --

Hamlet picks up the chalice and offers it to her.

HAMLET
You want a drink?

QUEEN
I am poisoned!

She dies.

HAMLET
What???

Laertes falls.

LAERTES
Hamlet, thou art slain.

HAMLET
Don't be ridiculous! This is a comedy!

LAERTES
Thou art slain! The treacherous instrument is in
thy hand, unbated and envenomed. Thy mother's
poisoned. The King, the King's to blame!

Hamlet is furious. He turns to face Claudius.

HAMLET
Thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane,
I'll kill you now!!!

However, before Hamlet can act, he starts thinking again.

HAMLET
But which shall I use, the envenomed sword
or the poisoned drink? The sword would be
more bloody and more certain, but it would
seem too like an honorable soldier's death.
The poison is a more ignominious end, but
there is little left, and how can I be sure he'd
drink it down. On the other hand, maybe
I shouldn't kill him at all, now that his treachery
is known to all, but let him live on in disgrace,
until the people do....

Everyone who is still alive yells at Hamlet.

ALL
Kill him already! Make up your mind and kill
him!!!

HAMLET

Oh, what the hell!

Hamlet stabs Claudius with the envenomed sword, and at the same time pours the poisoned drink down his throat. Claudius dies.

LAERTES
He is justly served. Exchange forgiveness with me,
noble Hamlet! I blame you not for mine and my
father's death. Blame me not for thine!

Laertes dies. Hamlet collapses, and Horatio goes to him.

HAMLET
I am dying, Horatio. I'd hoped the ending would
be funnier than this.

HORATIO
You want me to tell some jokes?

HAMLET
I didn't think I'd die, as long as I kept this a comedy.
Maybe killing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern wasn't
such a funny idea after all. Horatio, how is it that
you're the only major character to survive? The
only one in the entire play?

HORATIO
It's funny you should ask. I didn't think I was gonna
live. In fact, I was so sure I was gonna die, I bet
this guy named Will Shakespeare 200 kroner that
I'd die before the play was over, and what do you
think happens? I lose the bet! Just my luck, huh?

HAMLET
The rest is silence.

Hamlet dies. The sound of military drums comes from off stage.

HORATIO
Hey, what's that noise?

Osric runs off stage to find out. He returns.

OSRIC
Young Fortinbras, with conquest comes from
Poland.

Enter YOUNG FORTINBRAS and some of his soldiers. Young Fortinbras has a ski-slope shaped nose, and speaks with rapid-fire delivery.

FORTINBRAS
Hi, this is Young "Happy To Be Back In Denmark"
Fortinbras, and I gotta tell you, I thought I'd seen
bloodshed in Poland, but this is ridiculous. I was
going to give the Danish court a twenty-one gun
salute, but it looks like someone beat me to it.
You know, a funny thing happened on the way
to the castle. I ran into the English Ambassador,
and he told me that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
are dead. I said, "Who isn't?" But I love Elsinore,
it's gotta be the only place on Earth where they
built a moat to protect the people outside from the
violence inside the castle. But seriously, folks,
such a sight as this becomes the field, but here
shows much amiss. Go bid the soldiers shoot.

Exeunt, bearing off the dead bodies; after which a peal of ordinance is shot off.

********************************************************

THE END

© 2000 by Richard Nathan. All rights reserved

American drama

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:05:00 +0000

Glastonbury Archive UK and Studio Editions USA present

A Twentieth Century Trilogy
The Chalice
by

Martha Keltz

Characters:
Scott Forbes, archaeologist
Emlynn Bourne, illustrator
John Jay Durham, journalist
Wellesley Tudor Pole
Three Men and Three Women
Three Japanese Women
Two Indian Men and Two Indian Women
The First Herald
Two Angels
The New King Cepheus
The Atlantean Initiate

Time:
Spring, 1975; winter, 1998; spring, 2000.

Place:
Chaco Canyon, New Mexico; the Pajarito Plateau; the Spiritual World; the Garden of Gethsemane, Tucson, Arisona; the Southwest Temple.

Scene:
The set is the same as for the first two dramas, but the opening scene is at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, and the stage colours are warm gold, sandy ochre, red, brown and violet.

At Rise:
Scott Forbes, Lynn Bourne and Jay Durham enter from the left. They are dressed for hiking and are wearing backpacks. Lynn has a reflex camera on a leather strap. They are all in their early thirties.

SCOTT
Let’s take a break here before looking at Casa Rinconada.

LYNN
We can still see the moon, though it looks transparent. And those colossal rocks, like massive golden giants, watching us, waiting.

They remove their packs and sit down on the left platform, Jay in the centre.

JAY
What are they waiting for, Lynn?

LYNN
Just as we’ve been saying - they’re waiting for humanity to wake up.

JAY
Patient entities, all.

SCOTT
Let’s see that map you were talking about, Jay.

Jay removes a paper from his pack and unfolds it.

JAY
It’s not the best photocopy, but clear enough. This is called the Piri Reis Map, after Admiral Piri Reis who copied it in 1513. As we know, Antarctica was not discovered until 1818, and yet it’s depicted accurately on this map – except – the coastline was mapped before it was covered by the ice-cap.

LYNN
How could it be?

JAY
That’s the mystery, and it goes deeper. It’s believed the Admiral copied his map from an earlier source, at the Imperial Library of Constantinople. So your question is, how could the sub-glacial topography of the Antarctica be accurately depicted, whether 1513 or far earlier?

SCOTT
It’s against the academic consensus.

JAY
Scott can tell us all about his own special farewell to academia.

SCOTT
Never mind that. You were telling us a bit about the circumstances of your remarkable discovery. Please continue.

LYNN
I would like to hear more also; my interest was piqued even as we were exploring the rooms of Pueblo Bonito.

JAY
Can I keep going back to that time, with the wind blowing through the canyon and the sun intensifying every second by degrees?

Scott and Lynn nod. Jay rises and crosses to centre.

What is it about Casa Rinconada and the grandeur of the canyon that makes me want to pray? To the sun, for the earth, for humanity... This great canyon is sacred. It must have been abandoned with unspeakable sorrow... Well, I told you I was in Mexico City, in the fall of 1968, and had bought some paperbacks, one about an old map. I was twenty-three at the time, covering the Olympic games for the Arizona Republic, and on cloud nine. Taking a stroll just before the games opened, I noticed that some demonstrations had started up at the Plaza of the Three Cultures, so I stayed to watch. The aim of the students was to attract the attention of the many international correspondents in the city, myself included. The rest is history. The police and soldiers arrived and the conflict became combative, then violent. The students were shot down – right before my eyes. I got away and I was lucky, but there was no escaping the memory, the sorrow that remained with me for months afterwards.

LYNN
So many protests started in the late sixties – students and other groups – against wars and weapons, against government corruptions.

JAY
I know, it wasn’t just Mexico, it wasn’t endemic, and it continues today. I stayed for the games but am best remembered for my reporting of what became known as The Night of Tlatelolco. Somehow the tragic spectacle and the message of the book melded in my soul. Could the students really have been demonstrating for a political concept, such as democracy, or had something much deeper been stirring in their collective soul? If I recognised the book as true and factual, then our entire educational system was teaching the wrong view of ancient civilisations. I believe the students sensed they had been misled and were crying for change, hope and enlightenment. I set out on the quest...

SCOTT
Let's see... he started at Teotihuacan and Monte Alban, visited Chichen Itza and Palenque; there was a brief but overwhelming trip to Egypt, then a lengthy one to South America. Finally, he began to consider the United States, where I’ve joined him as a guide –

LYNN
And I as an illustrator.

JAY
And the familiar United States are not so familiar after all. Scott can tell us.

SCOTT
I’m grateful to get work.

JAY
And speaking of work, back to the agenda, which is?...

SCOTT
(He stands and Lynn follows) Casa Rinconada first, right where we are, then we’ll retrace our steps a bit in a northerly direction, all the way to Peñasco Blanco, where we’ll take a look at the petroglyph thought to represent the 1050 supernova.

JAY
Fajada Butte tomorrow morning?

SCOTT
We’ll climb that tomorrow, yes, in time to see the equinoctial sun pierce the two spiral carvings with daggers of light.

JAY
One of the most important and dramatic discoveries ever!

SCOTT
It changed my life... The butte won’t be an easy climb – we’ll have to brave rattlers on the way – but it will be well worth it.

LYNN
I’ll want pictures of the sun daggers.

SCOTT
I suspect Fajada will be off-limits soon, so we’d better climb while we can. Now, Casa Rinconada...

They cross downstage, left of centre, and gaze downwards.

We know this kiva is aligned precisely with celestial north, but I believe there’s also an east-west alignment in one pair of those niches. I also have some ideas about the hole in the floor – called a sipapu – and believe it can be compared to the Hindu garbha griha, a dark centre, a sort of neutral or silent centre which by its neutrality balances the whole edifice. This garbha griha was always at the heart of every temple. If we could go inside the sipapu in imagination, where would we be? With God, at a crossing point? Also at the point of birth and death? The Pueblos believed that souls at birth rose up out of the sipapu. Perhaps there were burial ceremonies here, too. Now, it’s believed the roof or dome of the kiva represented the celestial sphere. In this area of the country, the constellation Cepheus has great significance.

There is a pause as Jay and Lynn absorb all the new information. At the opening at upstage-centre, Wellesley Tudor Pole enters. He appears to be about fifty years old, is dressed as a hiker and is using the Guide’s hooked stick as a walking stick. He pauses on the upstage platform.

LYNN
What can be the meaning of the t-shaped doorways? I first noticed them at Pueblo Bonito and they’re quite remarkable here, too.

SCOTT
No one knows, and I haven’t given it much thought either.

LYNN
T... Perhaps it refers to Tao.

JAY
Tao? Meaning?

LYNN
I am.

JAY
I am?... Wherever did you get such an idea?

LYNN
Long ago I was reading a book, but don't recall the title or author. Tao was understood simply as "I am." It stayed with me for some reason – I never forgot it.

SCOTT
It’s new to me.

LYNN
As I don’t recall the source book, perhaps my memory doesn’t serve me very well.

TUDOR POLE
Your memory doesn’t serve you well, but your essential Self does.

All turn to see who has spoken and Tudor Pole descends from the platform.

Excuse me, I hope I’m not intruding, but I’ve overheard some of your conversation. It may be that the Pueblos who built these doorways had forgotten the meaning of the symbol T – it dated to a much earlier time – but they knew it was important. I daresay some remembered. The Egyptians placed a small circle or disk at the top of this T, and it represented a fourth and higher factor emerging from the three. Indeed it was the "I am," and men in prehistoric times heard the "I am" spoken everywhere in the world around them. They heard it in the wind and in the sunbeams and from the small white flowers and massive ochre rocks of this canyon. I was recently discussing this with a friend – it was, in fact, during the winter solstice. The T is connected with wintertime, with the hearth, with drawing inward, and so it came to be used in doorways.

Scott, Jay and Lynn exchange glances.

SCOTT
What an extraordinary meeting this is... You are connecting the Pueblo cultures, then, with those of the ancient Egyptians?

TUDOR POLE
Yes, but very ancient. And not only Egypt, but China, India, Africa and Europe, to name a few. Now our modern "Indians" don't like to hear this, yet will admit that some of their habitats were built on much older sites, the origins and purposes of which were completely unknown to them.

SCOTT
Such as the Aztalan and Cahokian pyramids in Wisconsin and Illinois.

TUDOR POLE
Yes, those pyramids originated in Atlantean times, and they are still marking sacred sites today, places of special Earth energies. Ah, Earth, she suffers here in this country so greatly, suffers for the materialistic destiny of America. Do you know that if you align certain ancient sites in the United States, a vast square will emerge? A bit off due to precession and the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, but a square nonetheless. Here, Earth needs the Triad, the Trinity again, and the fourth factor, the Cup, but all in a higher form than that of the past, the Tao. The lower "I am," which manifested horribly for the Indian peoples in the European incursion – this will pass away.

He glances upwards and listens.

I must be on my way now.

He turns and ascends the upstage platform.

They do not wish me to reveal too much, to make matters too easy. Far be it from me... My advice to you is this: take care of the Earth, and cleanse and re-light her sacred centres. Overcome the lower ego, otherwise there can be no working together....

He exits through the centre opening.

JAY
Who was that?

Scott and Lynn are likewise stunned.

SCOTT
Let’s get our gear and start to explore Casa Rinconada.

They gather their packs, and at the same time their selves, the triad, together.

They exit left and the lights fade out.

After an interval, the lights fade up to depict the deepening shadows of early evening. Jay (without the backpack) emerges by climbing over the left platform and descending to centre, where he gazes out toward the front. A few days have passed since the first scene.

JAY
Tao... over the mountaintops and through the forests, deflected from the red-tinged clouds, then bounding along on the cascading river. The promise of the future, though still in imperfect form, and bringing agonies for those who cannot fully understand or receive.

Scott also emerges, climbing and descending the left platform.

SCOTT
Here you are, and you’ve found a beautiful spot. Look at that view of the river!

JAY
And listen... The Rio Grande is singing... (A pause) Where’s Lynn?

SCOTT
Back at camp, exhausted. No more hiking for her today, thank you.

JAY
We’re all tired, but as the expression goes, it’s a nice tired.

SCOTT
Chaco and Fajada Butte, the Aztec Ruins, the Jemez Mountains, the upper Rio Grande Valley, and now the Pajarito Plateau and Bandelier.

JAY
There is something magical about this country; it does seem enchanted... by enchanted I mean as though held in a spell, unable to free itself. Yet, nature is not enchanted, we are, so long as we see and experience with our outer senses alone. Imagine, the splendour that we see is but a slither of the whole, like the small slither of a new moon. Even a full moon is but a globe; what if we could see the entire moon...

SCOTT
Or the entire Earth.

Scott crosses and rests on the right platform.

JAY
Who was that hiker we met at Chaco? He was certainly British.

SCOTT
I searched for him later, after lunch. He should have been easy to spot, with that strange walking stick he carried. Not a sign of him, though.

JAY
I’ve been thinking about the Egyptian ansate cross he mentioned, and another symbol keeps floating before me, that of the alate, or winged circle. This symbol was not only Egyptian, it was universal. Did you know the Druids made earth mounds in the form of the winged circle?

SCOTT
From William Stukely, yes.

JAY
And I’m recalling medieval paintings of saints being glorified, with winged angels placing halos on their heads.

SCOTT
What do you believe the symbol represents?

JAY
Well, I believe it must represent the head, to which something new is being brought, something of cosmic origin. This would first have been the lower "I am," which, as the stranger implied, disrupted the harmony of the prehistoric civilisations. Later – in our time – the winged disk reappears as a higher form of the "I am."

SCOTT
I suppose he did say all that.

JAY
He was answering the question: "Why did the Puebloan peoples abandon the canyon – why did so many other peoples abandon or forget their homes and sacred sites?" There were numerous material reasons, droughts and so forth, and the archaeologists have determined all of these quite accurately. But they’ve missed the real reasons, though reluctantly admit to many mysteries.

SCOTT
You refer to the academic archaeologists, of course, to whom the "I am" – and Atlantis! – are anathema.

Lynn has quietly entered onto the left platform and sits down upon it, listening to Jay and Scott.

JAY
Still, the Atlantean initiates left their huge monuments as reminders of the former glory, and they knew that when the time came – when humankind could read them accurately again – they knew that would signal another golden age, even more glorious than the first, for the individualised higher Self would manifest then, whereas in the past, this higher Self was a collective possession. But the point is, while the original "I am" was given, this new winged circle must be developed from its lower form by each individual; it is not guaranteed. Certainly it exists as model or archetype.

SCOTT
(To Lynn) He’s heard the silences as well as the words of the stranger, a sort of mental garbha griha.

JAY
Yes... How to awaken and nurture the new winged disk...

LYNN
Earth wakens and nurtures, but she has been wounded and poisoned. How does the river keep rushing by, bringing life to the valleys?

JAY
I can see a writing, read a cosmic script... Golden rays of myriad sunrises and deep, cooling thunderclouds have carved out the mountains, valleys and riverbeds; brilliant feather pens of the gods have dipped into rainbows, drawn out the hundreds of colours and painted the landscapes; small but mighty elemental creatures have created the vast meadows, plains and forests; giants have moulded the monolithic stones and monuments – all guided by gods and god-like men of old. I can see far... and I can see pyramids and other ancient megaliths all over the Earth; marking areas of special energies, places where the cosmos and the Earth unite. Temples were built on these sites, modelled after the temples above, those in the spiritual world. The old roads, the old straight tracks always led to these centres, where the temples were... Now Earth, as Lynn says, is wounded and poisoned by modern consciousness, and it can only be hoped that enough of her monuments of old are still standing. We must tend to these monuments – her need is so great!

LYNN
Jay...

Both Scott and Lynn rise and descend to where Jay is standing, Scott just behind him to the right, and Lynn to the left.

JAY
The Piri Reis Map, yes, but such a small fragment of the whole truth; just a crumbling paper in my hand. My travels, yes, and the sights that came before my eyes, but these are nothing as compared to the inner, imaginative visions... The river, the Rio Grande... it sings a sad song to me; it tells of harm to Earth and men by elements of darkness – darkness within the cosmos and so within us... There are powers who will destroy humanity, shoot him down, just as the police and soldiers shot down the students in Mexico City... They will deny the Chalice exists – with distortions and lies. They will try to forcibly remove it from the hands and hearts of the worthy; they will try to thrust it from the evolutionary stream....

From the three upstage entrances, three men and three women enter, moving to right and left respectively. The three Japanese women then enter, and lastly the Indian men and women. They stand on all three platforms.

FIRST WOMAN
I was dragged to the town square, stripped of my clothes and raped – how many soldiers were there? The people of the town stood about and watched... Then I was killed, to prevent my telling, for it was believed the war would soon be over. Oh no, war wages on in my heart! How can I alleviate my anger and humiliation? Give me a Chalice that I may sip from; that will heal the wounds of my soul.

FIRST MAN
I was but a fifteen-year-old boy, but my father put a noose about my neck and hung me and then himself, for we were in the concentration camp. When I came here I looked back and saw the life that might have been, the life to which I was entitled. My soul was filled with sorrow and longing.

SECOND WOMAN
I tried to run away from the soldiers, but was caught and killed by their dogs. I once had a dog, but he was shot. When I came here he ran to greet me.

SECOND MAN
I was in a barrack in Viet Nam, and that’s all I remember. Next thing I knew I was here.

THIRD WOMAN
My children and I were taken to a place in the woods. We dug our graves and then we were shot. I have been trying to tell them what happened, but they cannot understand.

THIRD MAN
I was in a camp, and starving and in total despair I threw myself into an electrified fence. Despite the weakness of my constitution, I did not die quickly, my death was prolonged and painful.

SCHOOLGIRL
We three Japanese women died in the atomic holocaust. Oh, give us the Chalice, give us the draught of forgetfulness. Thirty years, and we still cannot forget.

THIRD MAN
May we never forget!

BRIDE
Four children would have been born to me and my new husband. I met them here, and my groom also. Now we do not know if there shall be another opportunity for us to be together as a family.

MOTHER
My children grew up here, but look with longing to the fields, streams and villages of Earth – Earth, where they might have further developed their still young souls; where they might have found the Chalice.

FIRST INDIAN WOMAN
I died in 1838, on the Trail of Tears, when promises were broken and the Cherokees were removed from their ancestral homes.

SECOND INDIAN WOMAN
I died of the white man's disease – tuberculosis.

FIRST INDIAN MAN
I was shot down while pleading for peace.

SECOND INDIAN MAN
I was killed in battle, for we were outnumbered twenty to one.

FIRST WOMAN
If we but had the opportunity to find the Chalice, while still in our bodies on the Earth! But our bodies lie buried in fields, or blow through the air as ashes or merge with the salt of the sea.

FIRST MAN
I have seen glory above, and a great Prince with a face like the most radiant of suns, but can I partake of what I see? Was not my life and my death shameful? Could the trumpet be blowing for the shattered debris that we became?

SECOND WOMAN
We have not a chance to find the Chalice, and the young and the spoiled walk on our graves with all their thoughts and goals given over to pleasures and riches.

SECOND MAN
Why couldn’t the dead of the first and second world wars have saved me? My father who survived two wars now weeps for me.

THIRD WOMAN
We still have many relatives below. Can my wishes and their dreams lead them to the Chalice?

THIRD MAN
No one witnessed the moment of my death, nor cared. I was but one of hundreds who threw themselves against the fence. How to look ahead, with such an ignoble death behind me? Speak not of a Chalice – how far away it is, how impossible to attain.

SCHOOLGIRL
We have seen Michael, we have heard his trumpet; he will bring changes upon Earth.

BRIDE
Michael, Prince of Heaven.

MOTHER
We were in the Southwest Temple of America. There is hope!

FIRST INDIAN WOMAN
The white people must recognise the wisdom of the old ways.

SECOND INDIAN WOMAN
They must place the corn and wheat upon new altars.

FIRST INDIAN MAN
The young are frequently seen visiting the Hopi elders.

SECOND INDIAN MAN
They are asking – can Earth survive?

FIRST WOMAN
Who will find the Chalice? None save those who can remember us and ask why we suffered, why we still suffer. But who can hear us? Who can see us? Who can know that we still live?

Slowly, the dead exit back through the upstage entrances.

LYNN
Jay, can we hear the voices of the dead whispering through this plateau – this plateau that was once a home – whispering of wrongs and injustices? Whispering of terrible darknesses?

SCOTT
We walk on ruins, but never forget, on countless graves and tombs.

LYNN
Where is the humanity that once lived here? Or that lived in Chaco, or Egypt, or in Central America, or in Mexico?

SCOTT
And how many today, like yourself, are asking about the Chalice?

JAY
You ask, too, Scott, and Lynn.

LYNN
Perhaps we’re the only ones... perhaps everything is resting on our shoulders.

JAY
It seems so, but let’s hope not.

SCOTT
Here, Earth needs the Triad, the Trinity, and from this must emerge a new or fourth factor, the Cup or Chalice. Overcome the lower ego, or there can be no working together.

JAY
Tell me about it – do you know how many friends and colleagues I started with on this project – on our book? There were nine or ten. Remember, Scott?

SCOTT
They wanted to contribute whole chapters! Then the arguments started. The most controversial subject: Atlantis.

JAY
And the Messiah.

SCOTT
Oh god, yes.

JAY
We had what I like to refer to as "the night of the phone calls," and then we were down to two, until Lynn joined us.

SCOTT
Shall we stay together and get the book done?

JAY
Can we be the Cup Bearers otherwise?

LYNN
You know I have no problem with Atlantis. Well, I have none with the Messiah either.

JAY
On this encouraging note, I believe we'd better get back to camp. Tomorrow’s itinerary?

SCOTT
We head south, through part of the desert known as the Jornada del Muerto or "dead man’s route." If we get our timing and/or our politics right, we may get to visit the Trinity site.

JAY
Trinity?...

SCOTT
Site of the first atomic test, and J. Robert Oppenheimer named it Trinity.

JAY
Just what the country needs, the Trinity.

SCOTT
I don’t know if we want to be around the radioactivity... we’ll see.

JAY
Let’s get some rest - we’ll need it.

They exit over the left platform, and the lights fade out.

In the intervening darkness, a base to hold the hooked stick upright is placed at about the centre of the stage. This base has a natural, imbricated form. Wellesley Tudor Pole enters and stands to the right of the base.

Full, warm lights of the spiritual world fade up. Tudor Pole's head is bowed in deep meditation.

The First Herald enters from the centre upstage opening. He is carrying the hooked stick. After a pause during which he observes Tudor Pole, he descends from the platform and stands to the left of the base. Slowly Tudor Pole opens his eyes and becomes aware of the First Herald.

HERALD
You are absorbed in aspects of the past; from your recent life on earth.

TUDOR POLE
Yes... I am re-visioning important events not long before my death. It appears that one of my last efforts was the turning point for my physical body, which would endure no more. I had been involved in what I called the establishment of a clear channel through which instruction and illumination could be safely conveyed to human consciousness. In the course of that work I lost a certain ring, and the ring was used as a sort of lightning conductor to divert an immense complex of uncontrolled energy; hence my bodily life was preserved. But how useful could I continue to be? I had but a brief measure remaining in the world of time.

HERALD
Ah, but here that allotment was immeasurable. And here you remain... near the Borderland where earthly human form continues to manifest, when you could be expanding your being; exploring the higher cosmic spheres.

TUDOR POLE
There is vastly more to be derived still, from my work with effects – more "to report to the causative regions," as I expressed it, rather in British business terms. Effects – even the lowliest and most horrible – still concern me greatly.

HERALD
Look down then, to see how effects have altered causes! Look to where we find ourselves!

Following the gesture of the Herald, Tudor Pole gazes down.

We are at the top of that familiar form which has staked itself eternally into the ground of our very being – the form of the fountain that spirals up from below – the fountain of human blood and tears – a visible measure of the suffering of those millions upon millions who died violent deaths, unprepared for their lives above. We see the top as a living seed, a living flame of the spirit, ever growing, ever spiralling upwards. Upon this stake, the Christos placed Himself and descended... We cannot now find Him above, in your solar home, but below, in the very pit....

The Herald holds the stick, with both hands, over the base.

My Brother, take the rod once again.

Tudor Pole takes the hooked stick from the Herald. The Herald ascends the upstage platform and stands before the centre entrance. He raises both hands up, then crosses his arms over his chest. From the right and left upstage entrances, the dead re-enter: the six men and women, the three Japanese women, and the four Indian men and women. They descend to the centre stage and place themselves in a semi-circle at centre and left, behind the base. At the same time, the Herald exits slowly back through the centre entrance. After a pause, Tudor Pole speaks.

TUDOR POLE
I would ask what this rod might symbolise for you. It is the measure of man's control over the mineral world. A walking stick with which he maintains his balance in gravity; a weapon he hurls to kill; a staff he uses to rule the earthly kingdoms; a piece of wood with which he builds his home; a crutch he uses to hobble from the battlefield. We live in the age of the mastery over the mineral or physical world, and have been its victims. What deprived you of your lives – and myself of mine? Fire and weapons, combustibles, passions, war, egoism, brutality; all over a measure of land or to dominate peoples, yet all divided by the condition of polarisation, or the cross, so wars to no avail, ignoble, useless wars. As with the rod of Moses, the plagues of humanity are inscribed on this stick. My Guide once used this very stick to point to the pit wherein dwelled the inspirers of atomic weaponry. It was not so long ago. What do we do now? In perfect freedom, freedom from the lower ego, we build the new from the ashes of the old. We become the new free masons, the bearers of the Chalice, which may be filled with the precious Holy Grail of the higher existence.

He places the stick upright in the base.

We will be scientists of the living, but only through an unseen measure: that of selfless Love. Only this Love can effect the living; increase the living fount of the spirit. The higher Self is the universal humanity – the point of unity amongst all the division – symbolised by the Chalice. We will remember this in our essential Selves, no matter the circumstances we find ourselves placed in shadowland. Here is the power of the future...

He moves his hands up and alongside the stick, and small branches, leaves and buds sprout from it.

Power over the living. The new emerges from the old – the physical kingdom, or the triad, or the cross of polarisation and division – it emerges from the silent or neutral centre in the form of a receptacle, which God may fill with a new and higher spiritual substance. This substance must be earned through development of the lower into the higher Self. Now you know the meaning of the Great Work we must begin. In the hereafter we are limited. On Earth we may learn or suffer to learn.

FIRST INDIAN (SINGING CREEK)
And Earth is imperilled.

TUDOR POLE
Let us tear down the walls between the living and the dead and build open pathways in their place. We are the new free masons! Let us inspire those upon Earth! Let our voices be heard!

THIRD MAN
Let us not exclude from our love those of different faiths or races.

FIRST WOMAN
Let us fill the void of evil with understanding, bringing a light, however faint, to the darkness.

SECOND INDIAN MAN
Let us not exclude from our love those who are flawed and act out of error and weakness. May we, by our love and mercy, transform those distortions to health and uprightness, that from this perfect uprightness, yet more perfect living forms may grow.

SECOND INDIAN WOMAN
Let us cure illnesses by our sacrifices and our love.

SINGING CREEK
Let us lay down the arms of killing and take up the spiritual weapons.

SECOND WOMAN
May we love without waiting to be loved.

FIRST INDIAN WOMAN
May we never forget our promises.

SCHOOLGIRL
We will breathe these thoughts and ideas into the minds of those on Earth.

MOTHER
May they search for the healing liquid of the Chalice.

FIRST MAN
May they save the Earth.

BRIDE
We will invite those on Earth to sup from the festive meal of the Chalice, and they in turn will nourish us.

SECOND MAN
We will be the new free masons.

THIRD WOMAN
And unlike the masons of old, we will exclude none from our circle, none.

SECOND INDIAN MAN
The higher Self will lovingly bind the schisms of the strong and weak, of those advanced on the path and those still behind.

TUDOR POLE
All have equality in essential being.

From the right and left upstage openings, the two Angels in white (from Golden River) enter, and are soon followed by the New King Cepheus, who emerges from the centre entrance. All remain on the upstage platform.

KING CEPHEUS
In deed, He followed the gleaming
Tears and the unquenchable blood
To the vales of horror below,
And there He sought one man
Whose countenance He perceived
With the compassionate flame
Of the all-seeing "I" of the Son.

One man – but one – who was yet,
To Him, all men and all women
Confined in dark oblivion.
He walked by the wire fence,
Barbed with vicious spikes,
And saw the imprisoned man.
No flame of the in-dwelling spirit
Rose within the soul –
This had been diminished
To an imperceptible spark.

There was no hope for warmth
Or charity or even pity
Within the man's strong,
Firmly-beating heart;
No half-gesture of appeal
For life from the cold hands
That held the cover about him.

The youthful hair,
Raven black and full,
Had grown long and unkempt –
Once he had been vain,
But now was all unconscious
Of the wind-blown strands
That still graced the dark,
Deeply-frowning brow.

His mouth was turned severely
Downward, an expression
Of grimmest despair.
His dark eyes looked intensely
Through the fence, to the other side,
Yet saw nothing but the abyss,
The unbridgeable chasm
Between his world
And the world of those
Whom he believed were free.

Beside this man
A youthful friend
Was staring vacantly ahead,
The soul as though
Already departed
From the unbearable
Existence...

They were the strong
And the weak together,
The strength unbroken in the one,
The weakness a fading image
Of beauty and frailty
In the other.

He caused the picture of these two
To be emblazed forever
In the material world
And in the sphere of infinity.
Their image shall never be lost,
Even when the stars
Can no longer be seen
Glimmering in the depths
Of the known universe...

Soon they ascended
To my constellation,
These two, and sat
For a brief duration
Upon my great throne.
Now they are fully
With God, the Father,
In whom they had placed
Their faith.

FIRST ANGEL (RIGHT)
The two, the weak and the strong,
Are but two aspects of the One.

SECOND ANGEL
The nations, the races and the sexes
Are but multiple divisions of the One.

KING CEPHEUS
May the peace, harmony and stillness of the One
Bring fulfilment to our eternal questing.

All lights fade out slowly.

The lights fade up on an outdoor setting. As in the first two dramas, effects of moving foliage are created through the lighting. The time is February, 1998, and the place is a park and path overlooking the dry Santa Cruz riverbed in Tucson, Arizona. A bench (which appears to be stone) is placed to the right of the centre. At rise, Jay, now in his fifties (as are Lynn and Scott) is seated on the bench, writing in a small notebook. Lynn, carrying a velvet bag, enters from the left and sits on the centre platform.

JAY
Did you see the Garden of Gethsemane?

LYNN
Yes, and it’s very touching.

JAY
Now I’ll test my notes: "Felix Lucero was a soldier in World War I, and was wounded in battle. Lying upon the battlefield in great pain, he said a prayer to God that if his life was spared he would develop his talent for sculpture, and he promised God that he would create statues depicting the Life of Christ. Miraculously, Felix Lucero was rescued from the battlefield. The larger-than-life figures, made of common materials, even debris, depict the important events of Christ's life: Mary and Joseph with the Child, the Last Supper, Christ standing before Pilate, the Crucifixion, and Christ in the Tomb. The Resurrection is not depicted, perhaps because only the events of His physical life are sculpted... The Garden of Gethsemane has been permanently placed in a small park situated by the Santa Cruz River."

LYNN
Except there’s no river, no water; there’s nothing but dry red dirt and sand.

JAY
Dry in the wintertime, yes, but in the summer, during the monsoon, this same dry riverbed is nearly flooded.

LYNN
Difficult to imagine now.

JAY
What I especially like about this Garden is that its creator was no one of any importance or significance – that is, insofar as his contemporaries were concerned – and yet his work survives. Granted, by a river that has its troubles, but even these troubles serve as a constant reminder, for it was human abuse and corruption that destroyed this river.

LYNN
You’ve picked what I would call a very appropriate locale for meeting Scott. I wouldn’t say symbolic as it’s... well, literal.

JAY
It’s also a good outdoor meeting place; easy to find in Tucson. There’s a car driving up now – that's Scott.

LYNN
If the two of you can’t come to agreement at this meeting, I’m sure Scott will pull out of the book.

JAY
And of far greater harm, out of our triad – what we have called the sacred three.

LYNN
Can’t you compromise, Jay?

JAY
No... that’s the trouble, there’s been too much compromising.

LYNN
He’s walking by the Garden now, and looking....

After a pause, Scott enters from the left. He remains at left, by the platform, his arms folded across his chest.

JAY
Remember our summer in the San Juans, when we placed the shrine near the origins of the Rio Grande? When you found the bowl buried in the rubble, near the cave and the spring?

SCOTT
It’s best not to place too much importance on the bowl.

JAY
Not one authority could identify it, nor explain its unusual alloy. It is clearly Christian in origin – the sun face, the flowing water, the Christ figure, the square mound with its hollow or neutral centre.

SCOTT
I know.

JAY
It seems you’ve forgotten.

SCOTT
There were some possible explanations for it.

JAY
Nothing definite or final.

SCOTT
Look, Jay, if I publish this book with you and Lynn, I’ll be ruined. It was hard enough for me to get my footing again in my field, and I do want to remain in archaeology. Right now I'm involved in some important digs for which I'm being well-paid. What about my family?

JAY
I don’t believe this book can harm you.

SCOTT
Come on, you know the field of archaeology better than that.

JAY
(Rising from the bench) It’s time to write the truth! We’ve put out two books and both skirt around what we really want to say. How much more time do we have, especially to work together?

SCOTT
Don’t involve me in it; don’t use my name, that’s all.

JAY
You found the bowl - and you believe it’s miraculous.

SCOTT
I don’t necessarily believe it’s miraculous. You want to get to the truth, outer and inner. Well, your inner truth isn’t my inner truth. Your convictions aren’t my convictions. And what about Lynn?

LYNN
I agree with Jay. But if these aren’t your convictions, tell us what you honestly believe, Scott.

Scott remains silent.

JAY
When we placed our triangular shrine, we knew there was a Temple – a new Temple – all of us saw and experienced it, even though briefly. We resolved to build a temple on Earth, as a sort of copy of its spiritual archetype. Not an old temple littered by the centuries of corruption, but a new temple on the cleansed site. And we would offer this human contribution, however humble, in our Chalice, or the bowl.

LYNN
Our humble efforts to begin building the New Jerusalem. Three people who can work together!

SCOTT
The world isn’t ready for anything like this.

JAY
There are similar books already on the market.

SCOTT
None about some temple in the sky – co-authored by an archaeologist.

JAY
Someone has to take the first steps. We know the Temple exists.

SCOTT
Why do you need me? Your book can succeed without me.

LYNN
True, it probably will, but we’re splitting, you see, we’re splitting over disagreements.

SCOTT
Fundamental disagreements.

LYNN
But don’t you remember, Scott –

SCOTT
I have a good memory, thanks.

LYNN
No... The higher "I am." No matter even the fundamental differences among the lower egos. The higher Self must rise above and resolve these differences – for the good of all. That is the Chalice.

JAY
Who is more conscious of the importance of working together than the three of us? If we fail to function as a group in accordance with the higher Self, what then?

SCOTT
Christ is not that much of a reality for me, not as much as for you and Lynn. Not as much as for Felix Lucero.

JAY
Yes, but the higher Self is, name it what you will.

SCOTT
I can’t, Jay... Maybe it’s the influence of my wife, my family. Maybe it’s the years of hardship, overcoming my early reputation. Also, our first two books weren’t well-accepted by my colleagues. They humored me a bit. Not this third, I can’t... Why don’t you and Lynn just finish it, finish it without me.

LYNN
The Chalice?

Suddenly angry, Scott abruptly exits left.

So much for the meeting.

JAY
There was no meeting.

There is a distressed pause, then Jay sits resignedly on the centre platform next to Lynn.

LYNN
I suppose you noticed I brought it... It has never failed to inspire you.

Lynn removes the small gleaming bowl from its velvet bag. It shines in hues of copper and gold. Jay takes it from her and examines it once again.

JAY
I’ve meditated on the images on this bowl or cup, and it seems I am in the Temple, although only for fleeting moments. Lynn, I believe this sun face represents Michael.

LYNN
Have you seen Michael in the Temple?

JAY
No, the Temple is so very human in character; I don't believe Michael can so contract his Being. But he’s always a powerful presence there. I once saw him in a series of images, a radiant sun face with – nevertheless – delicate human hands. He pointed to flowing water – perhaps to the Aquarian age or the future – and to the neutral centres of square and rectangular-shaped mounds, such as those carved on this cup. He then touched my thigh, as though affirming: the work with the Earth is good and correct, and you are mine; you belong to me. What is puzzling is that Scott is always part of this work; it is just understood. Yet, look what has happened to his third of our triad.

LYNN
We must continue without him – someone may take his place.

JAY
How could that be? Haven’t we tried over and over to interest others?

LYNN
If matters have progressed this far with us, I don’t think there can be any steps backward. And two are better than one. "Where two or more are gathered in My Name...."

JAY
I agree, we absolutely must finish the book.

LYNN
Oh, wait till you see the colour photos of the bowl! There’s a very good one of the sun face. These can be at the centre with the other illustrations, but somehow so surpassing them! Perhaps the other illustrations should be in black and white... well, a few can be in colour, the mountains especially.

JAY
(Looking carefully at the bowl) What is this line? Not a mere line, but some sort of design. I hadn’t noticed it before.

Lynn looks at the bowl.

LYNN
I noticed it, but didn’t think it had any special meaning. It shows up clearly in some of the photos.

JAY
What does it remind me of?...

LYNN
It looks like... truly, like some sort of stick or branch.

JAY
The walking stick! The hiker at Chaco Canyon, all those years ago, remember?

LYNN
Oh, yes!... But, seriously?

JAY
I’m certain there’s a connection. This is no mere abstract design; it’s a stick or a branch or a rod or a sword.

LYNN
Michael’s sword.

JAY
Perhaps that, too....

Slowly he returns the bowl to its velvet bag. Then he slowly rises from the platform, and Lynn follows.

Let’s walk a bit, shall we?

LYNN
In the Garden of Gethsemane.

They exit, left, and the lights fade out.

The lights fade up again on the Southwest Temple. The colours of the Temple are the same as in Golden River. From the centre upstage entrance the Atlantean Initiate enters, followed by Wellesley Tudor Pole and the First Herald from the left upstage entrance. The three remain at centre and left on the upstage platform.

INITIATE
The past echoes in my Temple,
The past we worked with
And healed...
It echoes with ringing clarity
And is almost painfully glaring,
With too many coloured facets
For the eye to fully see,
Or the soul to fully absorb –
Like a too-bright gem.

Of late all activity –
Save these echoes of the past –
Have ceased in my Temple.
And whilst the doors are opened wide,
Nary a soul from below steps softly in...

FIRST HERALD
Some have climbed the rainbow, peered in the door, and even passed by your ferocious guardians without half blinking, but none have tread the crystal floors of the Temple in full consciousness.

INITIATE
What shall happen to us and the heavenly world if no human beings, through their own efforts, can now enter the Temple? How is our heavenly existence to know its renewal; its continued life? The angels can no longer generously pour the golden blessings from their vials when the liquid but singes the ground and turns to flame. Are we to have no Golden Age?

TUDOR POLE
We have not seen great changes in the early twenty-first century, but some ought to find their way here.

FIRST HERALD
If only a few...

INITIATE
A few would be enough.

FIRST HERALD
Ah, but no one enters....

TUDOR POLE
Are we to have a future? Come, however full of darkness, however laden with error or flaw, come, you shall be most welcome.

INITIATE
None enter...

For a few moments they wait, looking toward the right. The First Herald begins to withdraw. Then they hear something and look eagerly to the right.

From the right, Lynn and Jay enter. They are dressed in pale garments with touches of rainbow colour. Jay carries the cup and stands at the centre of the stage, with Lynn to his left. After a pause, Scott also enters from the right and stands to the right of Jay. Jay and Lynn greet him with great joy, then Jay raises the cup.

JAY
I am!

The lights fade slowly, and lastly on Jay, Lynn, Scott and the cup.

American drama

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:02:00 +0000

Glastonbury Archive UK and Studio Editions USA present

A Twentieth Century Trilogy
Golden River
by

Martha Keltz

Characters:
Wellesley Tudor Pole
The Guide
J. Robert Oppenheimer
A Young Scientist
The First Herald
A Man-Lion Creature
An Angel
Three Young Japanese Women:
A Schoolgirl
A Bride
A Mother
Two Angels
Two Young Indian Men
Two Young Indian Women
The Initiate
The New King Cepheus
Grace, a Child, daughter of the Young Scientist

Time:
July and August, 1945; September, 1966.

Place:
The spiritual World; the Los Alamos Mesa; the Southwest Temple; a park near the home of Oppenheimer in Princeton, New Jersey.

Scene:
The set is the same as for The Triad and, at the opening, warm gold and glimmering rainbow colours are diffused throughout the entire stage.

At Rise:
From the upstage-right entrance, the Guide and Wellesley Tudor Pole enter. They wear the same costumes as in the second and fourth scenes of The Triad, and the Guide still carries the strong, hooked stick. They remain on the upstage-right platform, the Guide frowning and looking intensely down-left, and Tudor Pole transfixed by the scenes around them.

WELLESLEY TUDOR POLE
Ah, wondrous journey on the rainbow arch! Our Herald but pointed the way and we ascended... ascended above the green, fathomless ocean, moving, breathing; expanding into a purple horizon. The calm, eternal bounty of the stars dipped down onto the plains and mountains of the vast continent below. I had but to glimpse this continent and my limbs seemed to turned to iron, drawn to the land as to a magnet.

GUIDE
America exerts a strong pull on the limbs, yes.

TUDOR POLE
We’ve descended now onto a flat, though elevated area; the ancient mountains around us are sacred. We saw sheep grazing on the mountain slopes, and antelope running free. Here the sun shines with great power and beams rainbows through the thunderclouds. The clouds disperse rapidly, yet are still flecked through and through with powerful lightning.

The colours on the stage begin to change, first to red, and then to violet and blue.

The sun begins to set – its fiery redness is almost palpable...

GUIDE
The very soil is red; the mountains are called Sangre de Cristo, the blood of Christ.

TUDOR POLE
The sacrificial blood?... Do you hear that sound in the distance, as though a music echoing?

GUIDE
That is the song of the river, a few miles away, yet spiritually near. Its music echoes off the ancient cliffs. The river is called the Rio Grande.

TUDOR POLE
Rio Grande... I should be delighted to meet your Grande Elemental!

GUIDE
He is presently removed from the body of water itself. Radioactive pollution...

TUDOR POLE
Not too much at once, I beg you... So, we are in the Southwest United States?

GUIDE
Indeed we are, in northern New Mexico. As our Herald explained, this area is full of significance for the future. From our vantage, it would not be too difficult to glimpse this future in the cosmic archetypes. But on Earth, the future is enchanted, held as though in countless infinitesimal seeds – also called atoms, as you know.

TUDOR POLE
Destiny awaits free will. The seeds must be enlivened by the touch of the awakened true self of humanity.

GUIDE
But mankind sleeps soundly!

TUDOR POLE
And so long as human beings sleep to the spirit whilst remaining fully engrossed in matter, they shall be manipulated by dark forces....

GUIDE
The future of Earth and humanity are imperilled as never before.

TUDOR POLE
My soul is uplifted by our journey, and by the glory and beauty of the land, but you did not lead me here for my own upliftment.

GUIDE
Take strength in what you have seen; the rainbow colours of the arch will surround and protect you. Yet even this would not be enough –

TUDOR POLE
Let no fear enter.

GUIDE
You were prepared, like many present-day generals, on the battlefield of World War I.

TUDOR POLE
And by the bombing last year of my Duke Street offices? Curious that every attempt to destroy me has failed. I suppose my usefulness is what matters, and so the miracles continue.

GUIDE
Even the London bombings could hardly have prepared you for what we are about to witness.

TUDOR POLE
You permit a fearful darkness, a deadly fog, to curl into the outer edges of our light.

GUIDE
Far enough.

He lifts up the hooked stick firmly in his left hand, then points it toward the down-left area of the stage. Gradually the colours of the stage change from blue to an eerie green.

Slowly, at the left, a huge, black void, a pit opens to our vision, a pit of enormous diameter and depth. It tunnels down into the earth – a hellish vortex, and with unbalanced power, for the massive tension of its centripetal force is hardly ever relieved. That would indeed be too harmonious; that would be within the sphere of our true heavenly world.

TUDOR POLE
What is it?...

Repelled, he steps back slightly on the platform.

GUIDE
The pit wherein dwell the inspirers of atomic weaponry, and I would not say what else dwells there... It is not physically visible, of course. I have said the tension of its contracting force is unbalanced, but there was a certain release two weeks ago, when the atomic bomb was successfully tested.

TUDOR POLE
The atomic bomb?... Here?

GUIDE
No, in southern New Mexico, in the desert, where, it is claimed, there is no life.

TUDOR POLE
Then why is this here?

GUIDE
We’re on a mesa called Los Alamos, where the government has established a guarded community of scientists and their families.

TUDOR POLE
Those scientists who are responsible, from Europe and America.

GUIDE
Yes, just beyond those rocks and crevices – and the pit – are residences and great laboratories. This is where the atomic bomb has been developed. The scientists believe they have created something new under the sun.

TUDOR POLE
They are deceived.

GUIDE
Certainly... When the bomb was exploded as a test, the flash could be seen in three of these United States. This occurred a few seconds before dawn, on July 16th, a Monday. It was said, "The sun came up in the west, and in a few minutes went down again in the west." Of course the people do not know what is happening; they have been told that an ammunition dump exploded. Do you comprehend the import of this? The American people know nothing of what is occurring here.

TUDOR POLE
What must we do to amend this?

GUIDE
Think not of amends now, worse is to come....

He draws the stick back and the lights slowly change again to blue.

TUDOR POLE
Mercifully, we can no longer see the pit.

GUIDE
Follow me...

The Guide steps down from the upstage platform.

TUDOR POLE
Where?

GUIDE
Where we can find a more comfortable vantage.

The Guide sits down on the right platform and gestures for Tudor Pole to sit beside him.

TUDOR POLE
Well, I’ve little doubt I should be sitting down for what we’re about to witness.

GUIDE
Two scientists are coming this way; soon they will be in sight.

TUDOR POLE
We shall see and hear them?

GUIDE
An exception can be permitted because many occurrences of the present day are unprecedented. You shall need to undergo special purification before returning to your physical body. Even so, I fear we shall not be able to prevent a severe headache upon your awakening. It will pass. Here are the scientists now....

J. Robert Oppenheimer enters from the left, followed by a young scientist. They are dressed lightly and casually for the warm summer evening and the young scientist carries a large flashlight, still unlit. Oppenheimer wears his "pork pie" hat and fidgets with a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket. He is tall, and very thin and agile, but with occasional disjointed movements. The lights fade up gradually on the two scientists and dim on Tudor Pole and the Guide.

OPPENHEIMER
This is the spot. You can see the remains of our campfires. It won’t be pitch-black for a while; besides, I know this area like the back of my hand. There’s a certain privacy here, a sense that you’re removed from it all. I tell you, we came out here last week and those who had had a bit too much to drink formed a circle around our campfire and were soon engaged in a fire dance. No one knows how it started precisely. It was bizarre.

He removes his hat and reveals a high forehead and dark, curling hair. The intense blue eyes in the thin face mark him as a great tragedian. His charisma is obvious in every glance, gesture and movement, and this is aided greatly by his eloquent manner of speaking.

SCIENTIST
Fire dance?

OPPENHEIMER
I suppose they needed to express what we all felt – a sense of relief, a sense of release, when the test proved successful beyond our wildest imaginings. We felt the awesome power, the magnitude of what we had achieved.

SCIENTIST
I cannot comprehend how an atomic explosion, even a test, could be a cause for celebration, but of course I’m newly arrived. I can understand the satisfaction of good results from years of hard work.

OPPENHEIMER
Hard work, yes, but the challenge, the stimulus, the support! Everything we need comes to us in abundant measure, for our work as well as personally. However, believe me, your misgivings about the aim of our work has my total sympathy, and we are here for honest discussion of your concerns.

He sits on the left platform in a casual attitude, partially reclined.

What troubles you the most? Don’t hesitate to tell me; come right out with it.

SCIENTIST
I spoke with Lawrence yesterday; he would only say that he was the last to give up hope for a demonstration of the bomb, which would obviate military use and terrible loss of life. He would not discuss the decision to use the bomb as a weapon of war.

OPPENHEIMER
You believe a demonstration would be effective?

SCIENTIST
Wasn’t your test effective? And the decision to use the bomb was made before Trinity; before the effects were fully understood.

OPPENHEIMER
I can assure you, all breath on behalf of a demonstration has been wasted breath from the beginning. Whether before or after the test makes no difference. General Groves and those whom he calls "the upper crust" were determined to use the weapons from the onset of the Manhattan Project. We are without power in this regard; we are merely scientists. We began our work in fear that Germany would develop nuclear weapons first; we end our work assured of American superiority. We are proud in that sense; we are patriots.

SCIENTIST
I heard that you yourself recommended use of the bomb. Is that true?

OPPENHEIMER
I have advised restraint.

He removes the pack of cigarettes from his pocket, starts to remove a cigarette, then changes his mind.

I’ve already smoked two packs today. My wife wants me to cut down, though she smokes more than I do....

He rises from the platform and crosses to centre.

The rationale for use is so totally reasonable no one could argue with it. You must believe me when I say there are limits to my influence... You probably already know most of the reasons: the Japanese generals will not be impressed with a display of fireworks over some deserted island. Even if convinced the weapon is horribly lethal, they will deny so; they will not tell the people; they will not give up their determination to fight to the bitter end. Moreover, demonstration of the weapon means the shock value is pre-empted and a bomb is wasted. We haven’t many. Use of the weapon – and more than once – is militarily sound and will end the war immediately. It will save many American lives. You’re about to ask me, why more than once? The Japanese generals will not inform their people of the range of destruction of the first bomb. The military controls the press. They will also assert that we have no more than one bomb...

A pause.

This recipe of reasons, however, lacks one item: a secret ingredient. Something’s missing.

SCIENTIST
The secret ingredient has clearly to do with the fact that the people do not know, neither the American nor the Japanese people.

OPPENHEIMER
You are right... And nothing bothers my conscience more than this. The people should know; the nations should know.

SCIENTIST
As a recent report stated, "Nuclear power is fraught with infinitely greater dangers than were all the weapons of the past."

OPPENHEIMER
I’m sure you’re aware there are petitions circulating, as Leo Szilard and others are taking a moral stand against use of the bomb. You might still be able to sign it and participate, though Groves has taken action against Szilard, so it will ruin your chance of remaining here; it could ruin your career.

SCIENTIST
Be that as it may...

OPPENHEIMER
So you’ve decided.

SCIENTIST
I am sickened by all this, literally sickened.

OPPENHEIMER
I’m sorry.

SCIENTIST
I appreciate your taking time with me; I appreciate your interest.

OPPENHEIMER
I myself plan to leave here as soon as the war is over. That won’t be long now, yes?

He begins to pace.

You must understand my circumstances. I am a theoretical physicist and was teaching at Berkeley when the news about nuclear fission reached myself and my colleagues – it was Niels Bohr who told us. We began thinking about the practical uses of nuclear energy. I recall there was a conference, and it was Edward Teller who suggested the possibility of a nuclear bomb – he’s already talking about bigger and better bombs. So even before I was approached by Groves and the government, development of the bomb was inevitable. Science was ready, we saw that... When I was appointed director here, I had an opportunity to exert a good influence. We focused entirely on beating Germany to the trigger, to put it crudely. When Germany was defeated there could be no turning back, and Japan became the immediate target, with American post-war dominance running a close second.

He begins to talk more to himself than to the young scientist.

Is it possible for me to oppose any use of the bomb?... I alone am not responsible for it, and yet I will always be the personality most closely associated with it – a mere figurehead in many ways. You are not the first to approach me about the moral implications and you will not be the last. I ask myself over and over, where is the true moral wrong in all of this, and the answer is always as we have discussed: that the people do not know. Thus my response will always be: tell the people, tell the nations; grant complete access to nuclear knowledge; permit international control of nuclear weapons.

He removes a cigarette from the pack, but does not light it.

Perhaps we’ll have an end to all war, for we have a state of affairs in which two great powers – Russia and America – will each be in a position to put an end to the civilisation and life of the other, though not without risking its own.

There is a pause and Oppenheimer crosses to right of centre and stoops down.

Have you heard you should be careful about looking under rocks in this country?... Turn your flashlight on and bring it over here.

This the young scientist does.

You see them? Scorpions. Suppose I put two of them inside a bottle. Each is capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of its own life.

Another pause and Oppenheimer rises.

It’s getting darker.

SCIENTIST
Could you please tell me... I mean, I hope you don’t mind my asking... Do you have any religious beliefs?

OPPENHEIMER
Another frequent question; difficult to answer. I will say I’m free of convictions; of blind, compelling beliefs. Of course, there has been no leisure time for any of us, but all the work around Neddermeyer’s idea of implosion or compression has led me to thoughts about complementarities, and hence dualities or opposites. Contraction and expansion, time and eternity, light and shadow, the wave and the particle; objective, subjective; the known and the unknown... It appears we exist in a world of endless dualities, so our human experience is endless conflict and war. The two scorpions in the bottle are of the same nature, and so are we, and like them we kill one another. And there you have it: two at odds. It has been thought for some centuries now that reason or knowledge would be the cure for conflict, but as I pointed out, the rationale for using the atomic bomb is exemplary... If knowledge of the other side cannot connect the two, what will? Just as we determined there was a reason missing for the use of the bomb, something is missing in this concept of a world of dualities, a third factor. And this is lately what I’ve been preoccupied with, the unknown factor. Do you know the seventeenth-century poet John Donne?

SCIENTIST
Let’s see... the seventeenth century was the age of reason.

OPPENHEIMER
And his reasonable verse has always spoken profoundly to me:

Batter my heart, three person’d God, for, you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend.
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn and make me new.

Three-personed God... It’s from the ancient Hindu faith, and clearly the poem speaks to Shiva, who is not death in the sense of annihilation, but transforming death. The others are Brahma, God of Life, and Vishnu, God of Conservations. So we have a trinity. In our work we are most identified with Shiva, and I can only find solace in Shiva as transformer. But there are not two here, there are three. A missing link is referred to, and surely we can find an analogy in physics. So I named our site Trinity, some will say as a mockery, but no, as a reminder from the past to look to the future. In nuclear fission and atomic explosion duality has reached the limit, and this sundrance could become permanent unless... Do physicists have the answers? Where does hope lie now? In these lines:

... As West and East
In all flatt Maps – and I am one – are one,
So death doth touch the Resurrection.

What we must do is flatten the maps and make West and East and all the nations one, and from the doubt and darkness, this will bring the atomic age – and man – into the light. From duality to trinity to unity.

A pause.

So your question about my beliefs has led to these meanderings. As I said, I’m a physicist – and one for hire – not a philosopher... We should be getting back. I’ve a meeting. You won’t change your mind – about leaving here? You’ve so much to offer.

SCIENTIST
I don’t think so, but you’re quite a compelling person.

OPPENHEIMER
No one knows this better than Groves. He missed his call as a Hollywood casting director.

Oppenheimer puts on his pork pie hat and takes the flashlight from the young scientist.

Seriously, while we’ve still time, is there anything else troubling you?

SCIENTIST
Are the bombs to be dropped on military targets?

OPPENHEIMER
Absolutely, and that is what the public will be told. But the key targets are all in urban areas, and that is what the public will learn much later.

SCIENTIST
I can’t live with this.

OPPENHEIMER
Neither can I, so we’ll try to destroy or render ineffectual what we have created, in our own time, in our own way...

SCIENTIST
Not soon enough.

OPPENHEIMER
No... Perhaps the generals are right and more lives will be saved than lost. No, we cannot stop the course of events now, but we can hope to influence the future, with openness... openness.

They exit left and the lights slowly fade up on Tudor Pole and the Guide, who rise and cross to centre.

TUDOR POLE
The course of events cannot be stopped? There must be a way we can stop this horror, or at least warn the people.

GUIDE
These are deeds of free will. As to warnings, most of the people have not developed the ears to hear.

TUDOR POLE
I did not witness this to do nothing!

GUIDE
Let your spirit be calmed; only then can you help. What we have learned must be conveyed to spiritual councils of the people, and to the Atlantean Initiate who dwells now in the Southwest Temple. When you have rested, you shall enter the Temple.

TUDOR POLE
The older scientist spoke of a missing factor in the concept of duality, and yet named it: Vishnu, the Conservator God, the link, the neutral centre between Brahma and Shiva.

GUIDE
Both also referred to a missing ingredient in the recipe of reasons. They are a hair’s breadth from the truth. But we cannot discuss these matters now; you must confer with the Heralds. Come, it is time for your purification and your return to the earthly body. Remaining here longer could cause irreversible damage....

Tudor Pole follows the Guide up the platform and through the upstage-right entrance. The lights fade out.

Lights fade up on the Southwest Temple of the Atlantean Initiate. Background colours of blue, violet and magenta are at left; red, orange and gold are at right. However, the red colours predominate, even touching the magenta at left.

Shortly, the First Herald and Wellesley Tudor Pole enter from and stop at the right.

FIRST HERALD
The entrance to the interior of the Temple... I hardly need tell you that you are to be challenged here because you are still incarnate. Inviolable law. What the nature of your test shall be I cannot say. We have not long to wait – look!

A ferocious creature bounds toward them from the left. This is a man-lion creature, but distinctly mountain lion, or cougar. The man aspect of this creature threatens Tudor Pole with a spear – he threatens to draw blood with the tip of the spear.

CREATURE
If the forces of your blood are not pure you are dead! Let us have a drop of your blood!

TUDOR POLE
I wouldn’t take that sort of extreme measure if I were you. Rather test me with questions, and if I fail to answer correctly, allow me to leave unharmed.

CREATURE
Why are you here?

TUDOR POLE
The Herald and myself are here to commune with the one who has returned to his home. I alone seek another who has lost his home.

The creature softens somewhat.

CREATURE
What is my name?

TUDOR POLE
(After an emotional hesitation) Tearful Heart, Wounded Heart.

A tense pause, then the creature steps aside.

CREATURE
You may pass.

The creature exits right and the Herald and Tudor Pole cross to right of centre.

HERALD
How did you know his name?

TUDOR POLE
I didn’t. I named him as a ray of compassion flooded my heart with light. No man can enter this Temple who is without compassion for the Earth’s Elementals during this dark period of history. In addition, he knows full well which of his compadres I am seeking.

HERALD
Good for you.

They gaze about the Temple.

Solemn stillness.

TUDOR POLE
The stillness that reveals infinitely greater depth than any spoken word.

They concentrate, listening.

HERALD
The potent silence will absorb the traces of our thoughts and speech, and outer forms will be changed forever.

TUDOR POLE
We are at the very crossroad of the malleable future.

An Angel enters from the upstage-left entrance and remains on the platform. The Angel’s garment, from top to bottom, is blue, violet and magenta. There is a moment of silence as the Angel reads from the Being of Tudor Pole.

ANGEL
‘Twas known of old
That men would fissure
The confines of the abyss
With atomic force.
Fallen Gods and corrupted Priests
Have moulded the lower man,
In some measure,
To their own likeness.
Thus was the scientist led
Through special destiny
To the beloved land
Of his youth,
A fiery land of radiant,
Swiftly dissolving force,
With power to dispel effects
Of radioactivity.
In the red rock,
Saturn bears the heavy burden
And dissolves it....

Yet radiation cannot reverse
To further dissolution,
As is the evil intent
Of the annihilators.
Therefore seed-atoms
Are generated here
From the purest source;
Their copies dispersed
Throughout the Southwest.
From a point
Of exhausted radial force,
Jupiter ensures
Further evolution
For the higher man:
He who chooses to climb
From the abyss,
Who chooses to tread
The true and selfless
Path of God.

Just as in the time
Of the Atlantean destruction,
When the Initiate
Led righteous men
From the atomic chaos,
So he helps them today,
Yet in new ways....

Beware! Deeper admittance
To the Southwest Temple
And its manifold secrets
Will be dangerous and painful,
Especially for one incarnate.
Grail Knight, beseech your Herald
Protect you, that you may survive
And return to physical life
Laden with fruits and gifts
For the nurturing of mankind....

The Angel withdraws. Tudor Pole is about to speak, but the Herald places a hand upon his arm.

HERALD
The past and the future cross in humanity... You will now witness results of recent atomic catastrophes on Earth.

TUDOR POLE
How can I bear this after all the war suffering I’ve already experienced?

HERALD
Take strength – God has fructified our work. Many victims have come unconsciously to the Southwest Temple in search of answers – and they have found the doors open! Listen....

The colours of the stage dim and three Japanese women enter from the three upstage entrances. They are: a Schoolgirl, a Bride and a Mother. The Mother is in the centre. They are dressed as on the last day of their lives.

SCHOOLGIRL
We were at work that morn by eight
To help defend our city.
We laid our barricades out straight –
Invaders have no pity.

We laughed to be away from school
On a lovely summer morn,
Yet now would cherish every rule
Had our lives not been so shorn.

I recall a blast followed light
And I wandered with a group.
A water trough soon came in sight
And the others bid me stoop

To drink of the cooling water.
I submerged my face and freed
My soul from the evil slaughter;
Then followed my school friend’s lead.

She was pointing to a river,
Though she said it led not back.
At the gate a ticket-giver
Was forgiving us our lack,

And He showed us a new dwelling
Across the glorious stream,
A school brilliant and compelling,
Of which schoolgirls only dream.

BRIDE
I went to the river, my arms
Full of flowers from my maids.
I tossed the blooms to the wind’s charms
And the water’s foamy braids.

My soldier-groom, I saw his face
In a light that dazzled me,
And he reached as though across space,
But he could no longer see....

I wandered in a hellish land.
How could I have lost my way?
I saw my flowers in the sand;
They formed a cross where they lay.

A little dove alighted there;
Then she rose toward the East.
I heard her sing, "Oh, do you dare
To come to this Wedding Feast?"

I ran as I had never run;
Ran as though from an abyss.
Below it seemed the world had spun
Inside out; all was amiss.

Then I came to sanctuary.
There was a banquet beside
The Lord’s cosmic estuary;
There He held me as His Bride.

MOTHER
Down the rocky path of the hill
To the singing creek we went.
My children jumped and climbed until
Their thin little limbs were spent.

There was a flash and booming sound;
I woke, as from a black dream,
And strode upon the blazing ground –
My children could not be seen.

Though weak, I called each one by name –
They should find me if they could.
And one by one my babies came
And hugged me tight where I stood.

"Mama! Mama! We are so hot!
Let us wade in the water!"
Had Nature placed me in this spot?
Did She so love Her Daughter?

I took my youngest on my hip
and led the others along,
And when the water touched my lip –
It was then I heard the song.

Singing creek was Golden River;
My children ran where He led.
By nightfall we had come hither;
My babies are safe in bed.

Slowly the stage lights brighten and the women gradually lapse into more ordinary consciousness, looking around them.

SCHOOLGIRL
Where are we?

BRIDE
This is a wondrous place... over a strange and powerful land.

MOTHER
Our soul’s questing brought us here.

SCHOOLGIRL
Who are they?

The women look at the Herald and Tudor Pole; then they descend slowly from the platform and cross to the left. Tudor Pole crosses to them and silently greets each in turn.

MOTHER
Thousands and thousands crossed the river suddenly, as did we... I heard it said often that we dead were to be envied, and the survivors pitied.

BRIDE
I heard someone say an atom bomb was dropped on our homeland.

SCHOOLGIRL
Why? Why has this happened?

MOTHER
How long have we been here? Who are you, and....

She looks at the Herald. Tudor Pole also turns and waits for the Herald to speak to the women. After a pause, the Herald crosses to centre and speaks.

HERALD
We have been engaged in a leavening process which can only have the most detrimental effects upon those who will not develope spiritually. Just as the so-called atom itself has been split, resulting in the immense destruction you have experienced, mankind has likewise sundered himself into two halves, lower and higher. The wars and atomic explosions upon Earth reflect this.

BRIDE
Two halves....

HERALD
Only consciousness of the "I am" – which exists in neutrality between the higher and lower selves – only this can hold the two selves together in balance and harmony. Neither the majority upon Earth nor the millions who have tragically crossed to Borderland have developed sufficient consciousness. Universal Laws of the Father God require the essential balance of the three, and the present sunderance would be permanent, except...

He looks at Tudor Pole.

TUDOR POLE
Except for the Son.

A pause.

It is all passing through my consciousness now... the horrors below on Earth; the expanding radiance here. The hellish flames of blood-filled rivers below; the Golden River here.

SCHOOLGIRL
So there is not permanent sundrance?

TUDOR POLE
No... for there are streams of blood and tears ascending, like a bridge, and a pitiable humanity is crossing. They are like ghosts, in shredded garments, shades of their former selves... But they are crossing, for there is the bridge... Who is greeting and embracing them on this side? The disciples and followers of Christ; warriors of Michael emulating Christ’s Deed of Sacrifice.

HERALD
Thereby is Christ’s own descent deepened, and our leavening work fructified. The doors of the Temple are open and our three ladies – albeit chosen – have entered a holy dwelling that would have been closed to them.

TUDOR POLE
The mystery of what dwells in the darkness, in the pit... The mystery of evil....

Momentarily, Tudor Pole remains staring as though transfixed, then he collapses to his knees and covers his eyes.

I can’t bear anymore – I can’t bear the sight of it anymore!

MOTHER
Let us help!

BRIDE
Would we have developed? Would our spiritual eyes have been opened?

SCHOOLGIRL
No! But now – now we can see!

MOTHER
We must help! Can we rest here while strife and war continue?

BRIDE
Why do the people permit the governments to lead them into wars? Why have the people permitted the building of atomic bombs?

SCHOOLGIRL
Give us guidance and instruction – please!

Tudor Pole rises slowly from his knees.

TUDOR POLE
You must join ranks with the mighty unseen armies here. Armageddon is upon us in a way I would never have comprehended, despite the warnings of my dear comrade who died in the first world war. When I return to my limited existence, I must continue to do what I can... Momentarily I am at a loss, overwhelmed by the magnitude of the suffering I have just witnessed, and a glimpse of what is yet to come. In order for you to help us effectively upon Earth, the silent minute must grow in strength and numbers. Should it take my last breath!....

HERALD
Let us look upward now, and draw strength and courage from the Light that descends deeper and deeper into the darkness on Earth, carrying with it the Blended Ray.

TUDOR POLE
Child of the union of Love and Wisdom. Nevermore shall man’s heart and intellect be separated. Nevermore shall the scientist we witnessed be able to act solely from the intellect, without the heart’s warmth and compassion.

HERALD
Look now to the Temple wherein we dwell.

The Herald and Tudor Pole cross to the right and the three women to the left, clearing the centre stage.

As at the opening scene, the stage is again diffused with warm gold and glimmering rainbow colours. Above the upstage-centre entrance, a brilliant, radiating white triangle gradually becomes visible. From the right and left upstage entrances, two Angels in white appear. Each carries one-half of a white semi-transparent cube. They stand at right and left.

Two young Indian men, dressed simply, enter behind each Angel. One carries a small earthen bowl with water and the other a flat red rock. They descend from the platform and place the rock at centre and the bowl upon it. They then cross to the right. Next, two young Indian women enter behind each Angel. One carries corn and the other wheat. They descend, place these next to the altar, then cross and stand to the left.

From the upstage-centre entrance, the Atlantean Initiate enters. He wears the same white robe and head-dress as in The Triad.

FIRST ANGEL (RIGHT)
Two aspects of the One,
Two sides of the indivisible,
Sanctified before time began.

SECOND ANGEL
Preserved and protected
From deep within
The sacred mountaintop.

FIRST ANGEL
From this highest source,
Seed-atoms are generated
And dispersed throughout the land.

SECOND ANGEL
In the centre of the eternal now,
In the sanctum of humanity,
The past meets the future.

FIRST ANGEL
And from the mountaintop,
Angels may receive the seed-atoms
And pour them upon the Earth –

SECOND ANGEL
Upon the Earth and mankind
Where the wounds are deepest.
May the wounds be cleansed and closed.

INITIATE
Sacred stones of old lie ruined on the Earth,
Reminders of a distant past
When high priests summoned Gods
To their Temples –
Summoned Gods along the serpentine paths
Of starry forces on Earth –
That their circles and communities
Be blessed and renewed.

Atlantean Temples rose again
After atomic corruptions and floods.
The preserved thoughts in purest form –
Seed-atoms of electrical matter –
Were dispersed from the sanctuaries,
For Hope of Worlds would come again.

The Indian peoples, Atlantean descendants,
Built earthly models of the great cosmic Temple here,
Ruled by the constellation Cepheus,
For it was known that men of free will
Would not hold the rock sacred
And hence would be bound to it,
Like Prometheus...

The newly-crowned King Cepheus
And Sophia, Queen of Earth,
Have absorbed many wounds
That belong rightfully to Amfortas, below.
Through the regency of Michael
They instruct their servants – all of us –
In deeds long anticipated
In the silent, majestic centres –
Deeds for the present salvation.

(To Tudor Pole)
Knight of the Grail,
Europe has collapsed
As centre of material power,
But may radiate harmoniously
As muted balance
Between forces of East and West.

A new nation of Israel
Emerges from the Shoah...
She shall strengthen the East
As America dominates the West.

(To the Japanese Women)
Japan was led into a war
She could not win...
She has broken vices of the past
But must safeguard herself –
And all of Asia –
From further war
And extreme westernisation.
So be it with her ill-suited comrade,
Russia....
(To the Indians)
America must lead her people
In the quest for spiritual gold.
The eyes of Americans,
Unable to bear the horrors
Of wars, atomic destruction
And material disintegration,
Will at last turn inward,
In search of the spiritual.

My people wander in dreams
To the ancient Indian ruins,
Recalling an earlier existence
In harmony with Earth
And the starry worlds...
Yet America’s physical strengths
Shall dominate for long ages,
For as greater light descends to Earth
Through the leavening,
Greater forces of evil
Shall be released from the darkness.
Against these evils,
All we have recently witnessed
Shall fade by comparison....

After a pause, the Initiate descends from the platform and crosses to the Herald and Tudor Pole, greeting them warmly as friends.

My Brothers... I wish especially to tell this noble Knight of the centre that we are aware of his concern for the Elemental of the Golden River, who has sought refuge in the sacred mountaintop.

He gestures to one of the Indian men, who steps slightly down-right.

Here is someone who chooses to serve me, but his present youthfulness belies a courageous and wizzened chief of the past.

INDIAN
(To the Mother) And I have just chosen my new name: it is Singing Creek.

INITIATE
When the waters have been replenished with the seed-atoms, Singing Creek will guide you to a spring of Shamballa, which is the true source of the Rio Grande. There, in the rainbow aura of the San Juan Mountains, you may place a shrine which cannot fail to attract the Elemental.

INDIAN
This will be the time when Cepheus will be seen in the northern sky – in September. The Mountain King believes the River Elemental should not be at the mountaintop in winter, for he will try to melt all of the snow, and this will cause flooding.

TUDOR POLE
I can see the shrine....

HERALD
Cepheus, celestial symbol of the fourfold lower nature of man and the threefold higher nature – a square and a triangle.

INITIATE
The new King Cepheus sits on His throne, on the fulcrum between the two, assuring the universal balance. He searches in the darkness below for any glimmer of emerging light – worlds – universes – depend upon it. (To the Japanese women) When the work here is completed, you must go with Singing Creek to the spiritual councils of your people. Placement of shrines must begin for the sacred waters and mountains of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which have borne a horrible destiny.

He crosses to the centre and stands behind the altar.

The deeds of Shamballa must be followed by deeds upon Earth. The spiritual warriors of Michael and the millions of war dead will descend again into incarnation. They will engage in the battle for the survival of Earth... They will protest against war, and against corruption in governments. They will fiercely oppose nuclear weaponry. They will cry for restoration of nations, yet with increased consciousness of global and universal humanity. They will struggle for restoration of ecology. We will see the emergence of archaeo-astronomy... the unification of diverse spiritual disciplines... awareness of what is called the Second Coming... awareness of the Antichrist and new evils, yet with increasing effort to transform the deeper darkness into the greater light and harmony...

He descends to his knees before the altar, and all follow.

We will see the unfoldment and upliftment of the Holy Grail on Earth...

He picks up the bowl from the altar and raises it upwards.

I am.

From the centre entrance the New King Cepheus enters. He is clothed in white garments. He raises His arms in greetings then folds them across His chest. Slowly all lights fade on the stage, then on the Initiate, who continues to hold the bowl aloft, and lastly and very slowly on the New King Cepheus, the two Angels with the white cubes, and the white triangle.

After an interval during which the stage is in darkness, the lights again fade up. As in the last scene of The Triad, the setting is outdoors, although in a park. A park bench has been placed to the right of centre and lighting suggests the shadows of trees. The time is September, 1966, and the park is near the home of J. Robert Oppenheimer in Princeton, New Jersey.

Oppenheimer, 63 years old, is aged, with white hair, and obviously ill with a somewhat enfeebled walk. He carries a manuscript. Slowly he crosses to the bench at right and sits down. He glances at his wrist watch.

OPPENHEIMER
I’m early for our meeting. Good.

He opens the manuscript and a folded letter falls to the ground. With difficulty he rises, retrieves the letter from the ground and opens it.

So here is Edith Warner’s letter... What it’s doing in this manuscript, I can’t imagine. I thought it was lost, but here it presents itself to me at a propitious time... Now why should I say that? Propitious time... There’s nothing propitious about an old physicist making his way to the park for a meeting with his younger colleague – aside from his good fortune at being able to walk at all. Edith Warner... Yes, well I remember her peaceful house "Down by the Rio Grande," and the simple meals she would prepare for her Los Alamos guests, those "illustrious" scientists. And there was her husband Tilano, the Indian. She was a Quaker... Why did she write? Oh, yes, she had read my farewell speech when it was published in the local paper. That was when we told the world what we had done at Los Alamos.

He reads the letter.

"Dear Mr. Opp... As I read your speech, it seemed almost as though you were pacing my kitchen, talking half to yourself and half to me. And from it came the conviction of what I’ve felt a number of times... I think of you, hopefully, as the song of the river comes from the canyon and the need of the world reaches even this quiet spot. May you have strength and courage and wisdom... Edith Warner."

My dear friend, you, like so many, were naively trusting, and you were deceived. Well...

He sits down on the bench.

I shall put your letter with the other documents I’ve been asked to send to the Library of Congress. They shall have a hideously complete archive.

He re-folds the letter and sets it on the bench, then opens the manuscript.

On the abuses of secrecy... The Consequences of Action, 1951... The Open Mind, 1955... I believe I understand now why this letter was in this manuscript.

He locates a certain passage and reads.

"Nowhere has there been a more eloquent and more general account of this ideal of an open world, an ideal in which secrecy would not be used for national purposes, in which everything of relevance to the common security and common welfare would be accessible, than in the efforts, and the writings of the beloved and eminent physicist, Niels Bohr. If we ever hope to see the world put peacefully together again, it will have to involve, as one of its essential ingredients, an openness with regard to those parts of life which, if held secret, can be a menace to all mankind....". The song of the river....

The young scientist, now in his 40s, enters from the left. Oppenheimer rises to greet him and they shake hands.

SCIENTIST
Dr. Oppenheimer –

OPPENHEIMER
Oppie to you.

SCIENTIST
(Laughing) I was never comfortable calling you Oppie.

OPPENHEIMER
We’ve bonded in a very special way. Recall our meeting one evening on the mesa – you had decided to leave and consulted with me.

SCIENTIST
I’ll never regret my decision.

OPPENHEIMER
It wasn’t long after that I left. Sit down then, tell me how your life has gone.

They both sit down on the bench, the scientist looking with concern toward the left.

SCIENTIST
I just need to keep an eye on my daughter. She’s playing on the hill, over by the marigolds.

OPPENHEIMER
What is her name?

SCIENTIST
Grace, and she’s a smart little girl – perhaps I should say wise. She’s very different from her mother and myself in many ways.

OPPENHEIMER
For example?

SCIENTIST
It’s subtle – very difficult to describe... But yourself – how are you?

OPPENHEIMER
Shockingly changed. Surely you noticed.

SCIENTIST
I shall be honest. Your visage presents an image of a tortured, though noble soul. What tortuous paths have you walked? Every step is showing in your face, your frame. You’ve always been a striking figure, but now... What have you been through?

OPPENHEIMER
I have cancer, which is tortuous path enough. But that’s not all....

SCIENTIST
I followed the unfortunate events of the last decade, when the Atomic Energy Commission suspended your security clearance.

OPPENHEIMER
J. Edgar Hoover went after me, you know, on pretence of so-called communist affiliation. Yes, I dabbled in communism when I was young. But it wasn’t that. He was against my very public platform of openness and international control of nuclear science. As I was just reviewing, many of us wanted the ideal of the open world, for when the world itself is at stake, there must be no secrets kept from the people. You can be sure that is not the aim of certain highly-placed figures in government. Hoover tried to stop us. Somehow – I believe it was my fame – I escaped the clutches of his power and eventually my reputation was restored.

SCIENTIST
I know you received the Enrico Fermi award a few years ago.

OPPENHEIMER
That was no small compensation... But would you believe me if I told you that the farcical drama with the AEC, in addition to my cancer, are not the primary contributors to the precarious state of my body and soul? After all, public processes and private illnesses are transient. What then, you might ask, has brought me to my present condition?

He rises, and with the energy acquired from deep insight, speaks and paces with renewed strength.

It was after I arrived at Princeton and began teaching – well, it must have been a year or two – that I began to have a recurring dream. It was a long, long time before this dream filtered up into my consciousness – with the result of course that I began to think about it and to analyze it. Now you’ll not find my experience pleasant... You see I had been cut in half – or perhaps torn in half would be more apt – and had somehow lost the lower part of myself. So I had to use my arms to walk about; very often I had to get about very fast and it was quite a strain on my arms. Pull, pull, pull along; get where you must go; hurry now; quickly. In time I was able to ask myself in my dream: where is the lower part of me? And I would seek to find it. Imagine the nightmare of not being able to find it... Such nightmares were mine... But then, a certain dim light began to penetrate this nightmare, out of which a figure or a person would emerge. He would say, "I have restored your self to you; you are whole." Then I would feel a certain shame, and ask "Why have you done this for me? Do I deserve such?" He would then say something to the effect that he had a good heart – something about his heart – or my heart. Then I would wake up – in a sweat, you may believe.

SCIENTIST
And you no longer have these dreams?

OPPENHEIMER
No. But dream or reality? As I said, I am but precariously held together. It is as though I literally had been torn apart and put back together, not as in a dream, but in actuality, in life.

SCIENTIST
It is what your work has done.

OPPENHEIMER
(After a pause) So be it. Now, you my friend – what of your life? Yes, you have a wife and child – the girl, Grace.

The young scientist rises from the bench and calls at the left.

SCIENTIST
Stay where I can see you, Grace! (Turning back to Oppenheimer) Sit down, I insist.

Oppenheimer slowly sits down on the bench.

My life has not been nearly as dramatic as when I walked out of Los Alamos. Because I walked out with no notice I had little hope of finding further work in physics, and of course my security clearances were revoked and the FBI had me under investigation for quite some time. Soon I was just another forgotten number and I went back to graduate school and studied botany. This is what I now teach, and in any time I can spare away from my family, I’m involved with preservation of the environment.

OPPENHEIMER
Physics will never recover the loss of your great talents, but your subsequent career in botany is splendid. You are here in Princeton for a conference, you have informed me, and how long will that be?

SCIENTIST
Only a few days.

OPPENHEIMER
You and your family must find an evening to join Kitty and myself for supper.

SCIENTIST
We would be honored and delighted.

Grace, a child of about ten years of age, enters from the left. She carries marigolds.

GRACE
Daddy –

SCIENTIST
Did you pick these flowers? You should not have.

GRACE
Marigolds: any of various plants of the genus Tagetes.

SCIENTIST
Now how could I possibly scold her?

GRACE
Daddy, I found a fountain, on the other side of the hill –

SCIENTIST
Where I could barely see you.

GRACE
An old lion-head fountain, all crumbling and overgrown with ivy. There was once a spring coming out of the hill, and the water came out of the lion’s mouth. It’s dry now. Couldn’t it be restored, Daddy? Couldn’t it? Not a spring should ever be lost – not one, not ever.

SCIENTIST
What did I tell you? There’s a subtle difference....

OPPENHEIMER
I see, yes.

SCIENTIST
We had best be getting back to our hotel, young lady. We’ll still need to get some lunch before I return to the afternoon sessions.

OPPENHEIMER
Give Kitty a call as soon as you find time.

SCIENTIST
I certainly will. Good day then.

OPPENHEIMER
Good day....

Oppenheimer rises from the bench slowly and embraces the young scientist with deep feeling.

GRACE
I would like you to have my marigolds.

OPPENHEIMER
Why, thank you.

Taking the marigolds from Grace, Oppenheimer again sits down on the bench. The young scientist and his daughter exit. Oppenheimer gazes at the marigolds for a few moments, then sets them down on the bench with trembling hand. He picks up the manuscript, opens it and finds another passage. He reads aloud.

The Open Mind... "This cannot be an easy life. We shall have a rugged time of it to keep our minds open and to keep them deep, to keep our sense of beauty and our ability to make it, and our occasional ability to see it in places remote and strange and unfamiliar; we shall have a rugged time of it, all of us, in keeping these gardens in our villages, in keeping open the manifold, intricate, casual paths, to keep these flourishing in a great, open, windy world; but this, as I see it, is the condition of man; and in this condition we can help, because we can love, one another."

Lights fade on the stage and very slowly on Oppenheimer.