CAST

Lord Byron

Lord Sligo

Nicolo Giraud

A Band of Mainnotes

The Academy:

Cockerell - an Architect

Graham - a Marble-Hunter

Baron Haller  - ditto

Lusieri - a Painter

sundry servants, medics, dragomen etc.

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​Scene 1

 

Byron's Franciscan monastery, Athens, 1810 - Lord Sligo calls

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S: Hullo the house! - good lord, Byron - the dining room is massacred! Have you no washerwomen?

B: Dio Benedetto, Sligo (yawns) - this? (scans room) - oh - last eve I hosted an Attic feast, which went off with great eclât - the Waywode and the Mufti of Thebes supped and made themselves beastly with raw Rum

S: And the Padre of this convent? 

B: Damned if he wasn't as drunk as we! sink me, Sligo(scowls) - if Athens is not at present infested with English people - had a devil of a time dissuading some dull fellows from joining our repast - claimed the clap is contagious via unpeeled grapes

S: Ha! The rogues will undoubtedly carry that tale home to St. James! I too noticed a preponderance of dullards - hence, I shall be leaving for Constantinople presently - would you care to join me?

B: Constantinople is it now, Sligo?! - you have been sailing so long you are quite the tarpaulin! - no, I have some idea of purchasing the Island of Ithaca and auditioning a harem - what think you?

​S: Admirable - perhaps you shall be greeted by one of the seven Pleiades

B: Nay - I hear they are wintering in the Cyclades 

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A loud clank is heard on the stairs

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B: Nicolo? why lurk you there? what in God's teeth are you dragging?

N: Milord - I have packed your tronchi che nuotano and cleaned your pistole

B: My swimming trowsers? Why?

N: You have forgotten your tour, milord?

B(jumps up): Ah yes! - och, my head (sits down) - perhaps you shall join me Sligo, I have a touring expedition planned with the French Consul, an Italian painter, five Teutones and Cimbri, Danes and Germans, we be a merry, travelling lot - an Academy, in truth - and are to leave Athens to set off  for Cape Colonna in great force

N: La tua memoria è pessima, milord!

B: Prepara il mio olio di macassar - e vai!! shoo!

S: Your Italian is coming along impressively, Byron - your man Nicolo is quite the preceptor (N blushes)

B: Verily, I had no choice left between pantomime or silence! Besides, my timber-headed Fletcher has returned home to Newstead - and I don't miss him at all! (attempts to tie cravat) Viscillie and Dervise (claps hands) - are admirable waiters (are in a drunken heap under the table) - I have a bandy-legged Turkish cook, and Nicolo is my Dragoman and Major Domo

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N beams proudly

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S: You are well set up domestically Byron - but beware! - I suspect you will soon feel the want of another Englishman - any news, or a tattered newspaper from the gutters of Grub Street, will be a very grateful present 'ere long - but for now, anon - enjoy your tour of bandit country - and I do hope your Academicians are not teetotal!

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The friends part - B scowls at the disturbing notion

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​​​Scene 2

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The Academy - Cockerell, Graham, Baron Haller, Lusieri, and Byron - hits the road in an impressive caravan

 

B: Cockerell, I must say, I am much taken with your Skye terrier (offers a lump of tobacco)

C: Fop? - aye, 'tis but great fortune he sits upon my saddle at all - but two months ago, he fell into a well and was rescued with great difficulty (Fop yowls) - for one of the peasants - who had never seen anything like a Skye terrier before - took him for a fiend or a goblin, crossed himself with violent devotion and ran screaming to the parish priest

B: I well credit it - my stout ex-valet was oft mistaken for a debilitated bear 

G: I've been put on notice that we shall meet with brigands along our way

B: Don't mind that - it is in the power of our British minister to protect the subjects of his Sovereign from foreign Insult

C: I conceive that brutality will not be countenanced even by the Turks, as we are taught that hospitality is a Barbarian’s virtue

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​The forward party are heard singing one of Byron's favourite songs, 'The Jug of Punch'

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B: fine lungs the Baron Haller and Graham have 

C: They should perhaps tone it down a bit - this coast is notorious for pirates and bounty hunters - Nicolo, race ahead and tell him to keep it down

B: Velocemente, Nicolo!

G(has stopped singing): We are in a very advantageous position among the columns - and they are ignorant of our vast numbers of attendants, medics and cooks  guns and pistols, the rest side arms and pistols

B: How we should have carried on the war is very doubtful, I rather think we should have been ta'en like Billy Taylor and carried off to Sea

 

 

 

Scene 3

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Muttering is heard in the caves at Cape Colonna

 

BH: Nicolo

N: 

BH: There are five and twenty Mainnotes were in the caves at the foot of the cliff with some Greek boatmen their prisoners

N: They demanded of these who were the Franks above 

L: One of the Greeks knows you, and they were preparing to attack us, when seeing my Albanians and conjecturing there were others in the vicinity, they were seized with a panic and marched off

BH: We were all armed! as are our attendants-some with fusils and all with pistols and ataghans

C: We shall run them through?

B: Though we are prepared for resistance, I am inclined to think we are rather better without a battle

BH: Some of the Greeks saw you with my double barrel mounted on a chestnut horse..

B: ..a present - a stallion from the Pacha of the Morea

BH: yes,  and described the rest of our party very accurately-  two of them arrived yesterday and were stripped of every thing by the Mainnotes

C: Bring them some brandy - laced with hemlock

L: Socrates’s Hemlock? it don't poison people nowadays

, and alarmed by some balls which whizzed over their heads by accident, they kept m the shore, and permitted us to depart in peace

B: nicolo!? - why is my powder wet?

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C: We are all snug in our winter quarters after the same tour we made last year

Graham and myself got drunk at Keratia, the former in his Bacchanism decapitated a large pig with a Highland Broadsword to the horror of Lusieri, and after all we could not eat him

- I suppose you will add me to the Levant Lunatics

B: My domestic affairs are considerably deranged, my appetite for travelling pretty well satiated - what with my current peregrinations, my various hopes in this world almost extinct, and not very brilliant in the next

S: 

B: I trust I shall go through the process with a creditable “sang froid” and not disgrace a line of cut-throat ancestors

S:

B: My works are likely to have a powerful effect with a vengeance, as I hear of divers angry people, whom it is proper I should shoot at, by way of satisfaction -

 

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END

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