Characters
Miss Prunella Vulgaris, The Duchess of Hammer-on-Dulcimer, esteemed member of the Peonage
Juan, The Earl of Valdez, less esteemed member of the Peonage
Lady Herefordshirebroke, The Marquess of Upper Silesia, esteemed member of the Peonage
Captain Single-eye, Sovereign Grand Inspector General of the Island of Heretofore Unaccounted Knavery, relation of Ivar the Boneless, who had both eyes until the day of his decease, unlike his descendant who had only one, as previously mentioned
Jack the London, noted Western wildman
Jack the Kerouac, noted Neolithic hipster
Jack the Ripper, noted English arch-slasher
Mysterious Stranger, chapeau'd
Bear, bait and loveable ursine scamp
Non-library, exterior, daytime, the hypnotizing concrete glow of the grime-ridden road is broken by the rumbling ramble of the publick carriage transporting DUCHESS and EARL to their employ at the Museum of Palimpsest Oddities.
EARL: Another day, another shilling. Knock, knock.
DUCHESS: No one's in yet, Newton.
EARL: Verily, thou art the epitomicall archetype of seri --
MARQUESS (muffled): Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
EARL: Ahem.
DUCHESS: Lady Herefordshirebroke, why are you here on thy day off?
The door flies open, revealing the villainous revelation.
CAPTAIN: Because she is my hostage!
EARL: Knave!
DUCHESS: Cur!
CAPTAIN: Yes, yes, there will be time for pleasantries later. But now, behold, in light of my dismal failure in harnessing the awesome Biblickal powers of the ostentatiously baroque Gothick castle undone brick by brick to brave the monstrously behemothicall dangers of the high seas of deep depths housing the most dread of creatures such as Leviathan only to be rebuilt brick by brick in the sultriest of tropicall & paradisaical island kingdoms as befitteth my Viking heritage in order to avenge, in the finest berserker style, my enemy upon ye, Her Majesty's foremost investigators --
DUCHESS, MARQUESS and EARL: Zzzzzz.
CAPTAIN: There will be time for a nap later! But now now, behold, the Max-O-Minimum Schell!
A piercingly grinding galvanic whir cuts the air and beats the drum of all ears within shot as a large metallic shell in the shape of a giant almond opens.
DUCHESS: Gosh that hurts!
EARL: Asshole!
MARQUESS: (something in Polish, which yr humble playwright knoweth not)
CAPTAIN: Behold, now! now! now!
Three Olympian lightning bolts strike out, striking the grime-ridden road.
JACK THE LONDON: London-town mine! My name! Me wolf! Jack crush! Crush now?
JACK THE KEROUAC: Crush now, daddy-o.
JACK THE RIPPER: Yanks, always sharp as Hemingway. If I knew who that was.
MARQUESS: Is this the part where we declare just how fucked we are?
An even more piercingly grinding galvanic whir cuts the air quickly filled with the kicked-up dusty grime of the grime-ridden road and a new, fouler stench.
DUCHESS: Oh my God, Bear is driving without horses, how can that be?
MARQUESS: And who is he with?
MYSTERIOUS STRANGER (whispering): Bspsbspsbsps.
MYSTERIOUS STRANGER hands DUCHESS a raspberry beret before BEAR drives them off in a little red corvette.
EARL: Verily, who wast that chapeau'd man?
MARQUESS: And what sayeth he? Dammit, now I'm talking like an idiot.
DUCHESS: Yeah, the Earl'll do that. Quickly, Purple Prose Powers, activate! Shape of, a Proust!
EARL: Who?
DUCHESS: Just blather on interminably within the shell --
CAPTAIN (visibly shaken): No!
DUCHESS: -- of patently undiagrammable sentences!
DUCHESS, MARQUESS and EARL blather on interminably within the shell of patently undiagrammable sentences whose violently violet purpleosity is so heinously indigo that classy society demands it not be reprinted here. Oh, the Three Jacks fizzle like candied soda fizz, and no one ever speaks of the strange mechanized horseless contraption again.
CAPTAIN: I'm taking my shell and going home.
CAPTAIN stomps off and DUCHESS throws the raspberry beret up in victory until she realizes they still have eight hours of work.
fin
12 comments:
Verily, the brewe conjured by the Earl for the benefit of the Peonage does indeed bring about much Englished absurdity. Indeed, the pigeons do cry in the shadow of the Towering Slab, having no Pyramids of Frogs under which to converge.
That's some good stuff you're on, Randal. Pass it on over!
~
LOL! Love the Mary Tyler Moore image. Sometimes I wish I could be in your head but then I realize how freakin' scary that would be and at my age I couldn't take the shock.
thatgirl, using stomack bacterials, with much thankes to our Muscovite counter-parts, the Captain's arsenick was verily evaporated out of the Kynge's Brewe, & joy was brought to the world, all the boys & girls, but not Jeremiah for I fear, greatly, that he hath become a snack.
if, this is Murka, bub, fork over some hard cash.
nunly, what was so frightening about this burlesquey romp?
My galvanometer was pegged during the entirety. Shocking, I tell you!
Ye verily, whatt is thiss princely raspberry beret and purple rainne and flying doves of which ye havve spake?
karl of the österreich, if thou hast burnt thyself, purchase some of our Electr-o-static Snake Balsam!
tom, forsooth, 'tis an auncient Englished secret, komm Calgone.
And it shall come to pass, that rayne of purple, not unlike the color of the robes of the Kynge of Araby, will fall upon Rome, washing away the blood shed by Rank Popery, and the Peonage there thereby darkthrone through many a stately cathedral and palazzo.
Egads, & wretch'dnesse I fear shalt befalleth me for coming to know, as through a wizen'd seeress, thou speaketh of the after-apocalypse as if there hath been a grimlie delightfull vision upon thy mind's globular eye-ball!
I always loved the play within the play and the bits written to amuse the untutored. Ah, Yorick, I knew him well.
Now if only the chapeaued Purple Stranger was planning a show in Halifax tomorrow instead of 'Metallica' my cultural appetite would be quenched for yet another day.
You got to figure Duchess did party like it was 1999 after work.
susan, blasphemy, if you're ignoring the time machine enabling us to see Cliff-era Metallica in a greasy, smoky club. Now that's entertainment.
BB, the library is, after all, the lovesexiest of places, Batman told us that.
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