Enter the Playwright holding the masques of tragedy and comedy.

Playwright:            Are these false masques?  Surly emblems of naught

Except a deceit that spurs men to work?

May I never forget the tedium,

The patient effort that needs bear the yoke –

Not the quick flashes of inspiration,

Swiftly spelled across the page, as the mind

Races, like a soul leaping from the Mount

Of Purgatory to embrace . . . one God.

No!  The theatre of my life has involved

Hundreds of little labors, and thousands!

Thousands of stitches to make the robe seem

Seamless; and where is the fruitive reward?

Surely not in the brief, welcome applause,

The occasional tear, the loud laughter,

In emotion begetting emotion?

Not in mocking coins that jingle man’s dust

And cast all man’s labor in futile hope.

Thank God there is a bigger stage to life,

The noble pageantry of religion,

Daily renewing its eternal hope

Beneath the immutable, merciful

Words and parables of Christ the Savior;

Yet in his seamless robe he walks too far

From the paupered stage of this foolish clown.

No, not yet, can I sacrifice my pearl

And fold my wings in a nightingale’s song

With only his hope to sustain my heart:

I, too, have a stage and one last drama

Where my children, his children, wait with hope.

I will raise my voice in a peal of prayer

When I have stripped clean away every masque’s veil

From my heart – I must not live in darkness.

                        Two or three notes sound from a guitar

Else I shall be undone by the future.

                        Loud electric guitar music plays:

                        Master Shakespeare listens.

Weird music, weird dreams, a darkness too fast.

 

                        Exit the Playwright

 

 

                        END ACT I