The stage is as bare as my lady’s ass
In his lordship’s bedchamber.
Rough-hewn in the most knockabout way,
Leaving splinters in the palace lawns
Of the imagination.
There’s many a dip
‘twixt the trap and the lip.
It fares little better than hastily strewn boards
Covering parched ground,
With barely enough elevation
To keep the understanding masses at bay.
Were one fool enough
To come from out the wings,
And at centre front begin a soliloquy
About the beauty of the wretched arena
On which he stands,
To fight the resulting and justified spontaneous combustion,
There would not be found one drop of piss
From any a Thespian’s hose.
For who could allow this sacrilege to be spoken?
Even the flag atop the pole
Knows that the magic is not yet arrived.
A stage without commercial trappings:
Without solid doors and thick drapes,
Uncluttered by pillars,
And arches,
Tables and chairs,
Windows and fireplaces;
Sans orchestra, sans balcony, sans pit.
A stage revealing all its secrets.
Profound as emptiness.
A stage in wait.
For in this world writ small
(As in the globe around)
The audience
Has nothing to know/ nothing to learn,
Until the actor makes an entrance
And prepares
To fight through our eyes and ears
To battle with those thoughts and fears
that lurk in sheltered halls.
What’s Hecuba to him?
Why – nothing!
Merely a name on a page of script.
A cue at which to turn his profile thus.
It is what Hecuba becomes
To we who wait,
That turns the key
Upon the heavy gate.
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