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Cast

Lord Byron

Mary Shelley

PB Shelley

Fletcher

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​​Scene 1

 

1816 -Villa Diodati, Geneva

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​F: Miss - er - Mrs - erm, (rattles brainbox) - Mary - is outside, my Lord

B: Ah, good! - while you're there Fletcher, empty my bins - ah, no - don't mind that schlock - just my writing desk - no, not the one with the broken lock!! - and throw everything into my.. (looks for trunk)

F: Your portmanteau?

B: Sure - that'll do

F: What about this stuff you've stuck up on t'walls?

B: Stuff ?! (guffaws) - ah, Fletcher, how little ye know that your humble Saxon name - and lumbering, inelastic frame - not to say your rudimentary grasp of orthography - forgivable in a Notts ploughboy - shall live through centuries - and if you're prompt with this particular task, for certes thou shalt feature in numerous documentaries (F is daydreaming of future fame) - Well? - quick as you can! - and show Miss, er - ah - Mary in

F: Pfft (grumbles)

 

Mary enters, curtseys

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B: Why, how now, saucy Mary (bows)

M: What?

B: How well you look - the bairn sleeping through? Shelley busy stirring lentil stew?

M: Nay, my Lord - I've left the whole house sleeping like the morning dew

B: Heigh ho! (growls sarcastically) - just so?

M(unpeels basket): I have bought pens, a magnifying glass - and several quarts of fine Chablis - to aid my fair copying at our little Villa Chapuis

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B challengingly flourishes a scrawl at M

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​My hair is grey, but not with years,

Nor grew it white

In a single night,

As men's have grown from sudden fears​

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M: You mean to quiz me, Byron! I can see these lines were copied out by Fletcher, or that Dr. Pollydolly - only a peasant late of the Transvaal, or a medical man, could produce such a childish scrawl

B(archly): And what of these, my dear?​​

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My hair is grey, but not with years,

Nor grew it white

 In a single night,

As men's have grown from sudden fears

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​​M: Ha! - your spider-in-his-death-throes scribble holds no fear for me! I copied all my father's works, and Shelley's, and Hunt's - nay, yet, my own! - congealed as they were with puréed turnip and swatted midges from the Rhône

B: My dear woman (is charmingly irritated) - this ‘ scribble' was pronounced satisfactory by the finest educational establishments in our land (finds a legible copy)

M: “My hair is grey, but not with years.." (resists the urge to touch, purely for research purposes, same glowing locks)

B: Marvellous! I knew I could rely on you, Fletcher!!! - bring in that portmanteu (ponders) - Mary, be warned, the third canto of Childe Harold is finished - it is the longest of the three - being one hundred and eleven Stanzas - no! - one hundred and seventeen, plus various other paeans and whatnot (rummages)

M: 'Twil be good to have a distraction on hand - other than the bairn's squawks - whilst Shelley and Claire are on their long, exhausting, educational walks

B(mutters): Ah, Mary - Now! - here we have Prometheus - er, The Dream, Darkness - oh! - and something re. the Castle over in Chillon yonder and the poor fellow once trapped therein

M(pales at the wobbling stack of MS's): What! You've been here but two months! Do you consult a magician? - a druggist? - an occultist? - Why, Shelley has yet to complete a single shopping list!

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Mary, aided by Fletcher, trots off with the portmanteau - Byron watches the Swiss maids hang out their unmentionables

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​​Scene 2

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M returns in an hour, exhausted and exasperated

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​B(is woken by Fletcher): What the devil, Fletcher?! - Oh, why, Mary! (yawns) - You prodigy! What is your Canto count?

M: Count? - my Lord - it cannot be done! - entire words are impossible to read, what with the circular spellings, syntactical shortfalls, underlinings - single understrokes, double understrokes, blotted splurges - and the decorative linings! - notes seemingly only to yourself - in red! - curses upon the ‘ superb' Mr. Murray's ‘ shuffling' head!

B: I own copying is tedious, dull, and laboriously impudent work - but I am overwhelm’d with affairs and have not an instant to myself (intently chooses cigars) - perchance Miss Clairmont may assist?

M: I already have Claire fair-copying your fair copies, my Lord (hesitates) - If you would trust her to call, she would be happy to finish Chillon for you, truly take the greatest possible care, and finish it in an hour or two​

B (ponders uncoquettish Swiss maids): Sink me, that will have to do!

M: Oh! (dabs eyes with hanky) - I copied your ‘ Stanzas to Augusta' (hands B same) - I was moved to my very bowels - which - in a vegetarian household - is quite the tribute

B(reads): Yes, well, perhaps there 'twas better I were mute - how'n'ever - the stanzas beginning  “Though the day of my destiny’s over” - without insulting the literary abilities of yourself or your parentage, Mary - “Though the day of my dentistry’s over” - will not stand

M: That was Claire! - her parentage was vastly inferior - I swear!

B: Very well - but ye must have every piece copied - neat, and prettily! - and ready for Murray's postbag ‘ ere Hobhouse and myself leave for Italy (throws up hands in despair) - as my luggage is already up to my oxters, your better-read roadside bandit will pounce on my MS's before my Napoleonic snuffboxes

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M​ary and Claire complete their monumental tasks before reluctantly returning to their foggy Isle

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Scene 3

​1818, Venice

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F: Mr. Shelley is in t'hall to see you, my lord - and Miss Mary - as was

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Bows, curtseys, and formalities ensue

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B: Welcome, my friends - are the bugs biting at Este? What brings you here at the break of day?

PBS: In truth, our relaxation has been somewhat compromised by interminably inspiring sunsets and Mary's exhaustive fair-copying - indeed, your letterless scrawl is briskly approaching senility

B(is mildly offended): I myself  have fair-copied the first 5 cantos of my Donny Johnny - although the bore of copying is intolerable, dear Shelley, my penmanship once - around my eighth year - shewed great ability!

​M(thumps PBS's arm, flutters fairy hands):  My dear Byron, you will see by my copying Mazeppa so quickly that there is more of pleasure than labour in my task (hands over MS) - with, I hope, not very many errors

PBS: Errors? - humph! - only a mountain-bound mystic could interpret your erratic underlinings, Byron - sometimes they're under a whole word, sometimes single syllables - ne'er mind the double hyphens and anaphoric terrors!

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B is distracted by La Fornarina polishing the chandelier

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M(jumps in front of B, waves arms): It will give me great pleasure - if the Fornaretta will permit - if you will let me copy the remainder of your most estimable Don Juan

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B hesitates, attempts diplomacy

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B: Ah, well now - (retrieves book from night-stand) - erm, Childe Harold 3, Mary? Geneva was but two years ago and my writing was dashed less four-in-the-morn than it is now (flashes opened book) - here, this line - you appear to have substituted “midst a contentious world, striving where none are wrong” for “striving where none hear the dinner gong”

M: Oh! - I assumed the contentious world were striving for a good seat at the table (frowns) - wrangling that stanza made me quite peckish

B: Some such process - equally hellish - seems to be at work in the next stanza - “to teach all men true sovereignty” rather than “to teach all kings” 

M: Indeed - I corrected your transcription to suggest that it’s not just kings who need to be taught how to govern, but “all men"​

PBS(puffs out concave chest): We believe illiterate peasants with no education in law, commerce or the arts should have power over hereditary peers, for we are (gulps) - democratic socialists!

M(is equally brave): In fact, we are considering naming Shelley's next sailing yacht ‘ Potere al Popolo'

​B: ‘ Power to the People' would not - I wager - inspire my faithful yeoman to leave my collars for the Commons any time soon, dear friends

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PBS hands Fletcher a shiny small coin as recompense for the insult

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B: To proceed (reads) - Mary, you seem to have confused your own creation with mine own; “Tis to create, and in creating live, A being more intense.." you changed “in creating live” to “in creating life" - I very much avoid creating life, as expensive as such pharmaceuticals may be, whenever possible  

PBS: If I may, Byron - that would be what we term, in our household, “fast influencings” (forgets he is not lecturing teenaged ladies) - Mary has eliminated various vulgarities in your MS - albeit with no intent to thoroughly despoil - and cooled some of your evident creative turmoil 

M(smiles indulgently at B): That's right - Shelley considers our little arrangement a “unique aesthetic event" - my Lord - a comingling of your ideas with my corrections

B: Such obtuse nomenclature - such provoking interjections! (twists jaw, almost dislodging several teeth) - and in my poesy yet? I wonder what the superb Murray shall make of such editorship? Your succeeding where all my acquaintances, my sister, my critics, my ex-wife, my tailor and the hacks of Grub Street did not?

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La Fornarina has had enough of such literary presumptuousness and throws PBS and M into a gondola - B, however, entrusts Mary with the precious Canto 6 of DJ

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Scene 4

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1823, Genoa - Byron - laden with MS's - calls on Mary at the Villa Negrotto

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B: What now, Mary - my Manuscriptorial Chatelaine! (bows)

M: Buongiorno, milord of the Overheated Fertile Brain (curtseys)

B: To proceed! (thumps MS on table) - I have completed the 10th. and 11th. cantos of even more glorious Juans - making in all - six new ones

M: 10th. and 11th? But I have nearly finished copying your savage canto 18 of (checks cover)  Don Juan XI?

B: 18? of XI? or 16 of XIV? 

M(checks cover): Nay, 'tis 18 of XI (grimaces) - your Lordship's MS's have become even more difficult to decypher - if you'll permit - since you lost your wits in Venice! (rubs eyes) - and I shall not sue for pardon re. any blunders, omissions - and inadvertent variants - I am but an amanuensis! (waves papers, pointing distractedly) - look! - there's great bundles of text in different places at different angles - curses and blasphemies roaming freely, delightedly - and with menace!

B(paces and frets): You are right, of course, Mary - how lost we are without dear Shelley as our literary medium (both sniff) - Who shall decypher my scribbling when I return to Greece and you to London? - perhaps can I frank? - despatch idle infantrymen to your father's in Skinner Street? - hire a charabanc?

M: Perchance Murray's Attic Admiralty shall put a temporary halt to your verse - epic, free - or blank

B: ​Doubtful, Mary - for that spineless, shuffling rogue well knows the worth of my poesy - he just passed on a love letter from a lady - in Pimlico, I believe - whom I never saw in my life, but who hath fallen in love with me for having written Don Juan

M: I don't doubt 'twas my censoring of the passages disagreeable to ladies that caused such an illogical infatuation

B(discretely manages irritation): Lastly - before we part (both sniffle and avert eyes) - to my drama, “The Deformed Transformed" - have you read it?

M: Oh, my yes! - and you could not have sent me a more agreeable task than to copy it! I fear the Critics - as they sued to make you a Childe Harold, Giaour, and Lara all in one - will now make you - like Arnold -  a compound of Cæsar and Satan and shall not credit you an iota of literary or military bravery

B: Be damned if they do! Greece was the only place I was ever contented in - and I no longer care a whit for their sub-suburban knavery

M: Good luck, dear Byron, I shall send your DJ's - XIV- XIX inclusive - to Fletcher - I so wish to spare myself the pain of taking leave​

B: Likewise, Mary - our collaboration has been - as our dear Shelley once quipped - a “unique aesthetic event" indeed​​​

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B kisses M's hand as they part, Byron to a voiceless shore - Mary to - not much more

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​End​​​

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