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Lord Byron

John Pigot

Elizabeth Pigot

Reverend Becher

Henry Brougham

Dr. Quack

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Scene 1

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Southwell Parochial House, 1807

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​Rev(looking out window): Here comes his Lordship! - why, his footstep is as light as air, you'd scare credit the tempestuous heart which beateth there

E: ​Ah, God bless him as we ought! - like a child, he's whistling for want of thought

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JP shuffles The Morning Post and scowls

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JP: Hmm, one hopes he is free of that wretched Muse - now that his little book of poesy has been published, and adoringly received, he can return to fixing potholes and giving the harvest schedules a thorough peruse

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​B is heard singing as he enters - “Oh, she whisperest, as our hearts were beating, didn't she though, didn't she though  -“What oft we’ve done, we’re still repeating” - hup! didn't she though!

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B: Hallo, Becher! my, your divine countenance would convert a synagogue of disoriented Catholics (bows) - Elizabeth - my good Queen Bess - for you (produces bunch of violets tied by a lock of his hair) - Pigot - just in from Beefy's Best Bowlers & Co. - a new skull-cruncher - look at the shine on that! (displays said cricket ball)

JP: A monster of speed, I dare say it should split my bat! (is enraptured)

Rev: Welcome back to our seat of Archiepiscopal Grandeur (reads)  ye “young man of cultivated taste and feeling”

E(sniffs violets): How I do love these shy heralds of the coming Spring, my dear Byron - verily, you exhibit “strong proofs of genius, a lively but chastened imagination, a classical taste, and a benevolent heart”

B(is not mortified): The Anti-Jacobin and - er - The ​Beau Monde? - just so? I hope you shall wrap the very best of your partridge pies in these reviews, my friends, for there shall be many more to come - heigh-ho! (twirls walking stick)

Rev: Mrs. Becher has just put a pot of green tea on ice for you, Byron - now - what of these fictions of flimsy romance, those tissues of falsehood which folly has wove?

JP(interrupts): Aye, Becher (frowns) - Byron, give me the mild beam of the soul-breathing glance, or the rapture which dwells on the first kiss of love 

B: Rapture, Pigot? pshaw, thou love-starved lothario! such braggadocio! - 'tis praise ye all should be heaping, like coals, upon my head (spins cricket ball, somewhat dangerously) That I have plucked poesy out of my amatory turmoils, that in the teeth - or lack thereof - of animadversion from Ladies Advanced in Years, that of my being pronounced a most profligate Sinner...

EP(is impatient): Oh, ye rhymers, whose bosoms with phantasy glow, whose pastoral passions are made for the grove! - from what blest inspiration your sonnets would flow, could you ever have tasted the first kiss of love!

JP: Elizabeth!!

B: No, Miss Pigot is quite right - for despite kissing quite recklessly - and without purpose - during my sojourn in Southwell, I fear if any were kisses of love - despite racking up something of a surplus

Rev(musters courage): 'Twould appear, my friends, that frankness is the latest craze to come down from the Capital - therefore, I'll make bold and venture to suggest that if Apollo (B acknowledges the compliment) should e’er his assistance refuse, or the Nine be desposed from your service to rove, my Lord - invoke them no more, bid adieu to the muse, and try the effect of the first kiss of love

B(smirks): Upon your sage directive, Becher, I shall endeavour to fall violently in love! One hopes in a further volume such notions will propagate - of course, it cannot be so vastly correct and miraculously chaste as the first - as the fire of love would naturally dictate​

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Reverend Becher moves too late to correct his advice - Elizabeth is already on the green helping the village maidens wreath garlands for B's expanding skull - Pigot & Byron try out the remarkable new cricket ball on a stoic Elm

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Scene 2

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Brainshambles Lane, office of Dr. Quack, a specialist in nervous disorders

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Q: What seems to be the problem, Mr. Brougham?

HB: You can't diagnose on sight, Dr. Quack? - are you qualified at all? 'Tis apparent you had not the talent necessary to obtain your qualifications in my home city - the Athens of the North - Edinburgh (sneers)

Q (makes patient notes: arrogant, marred by unprincipled, execrable judgement and ill-maintained apparel): One wonders if Diogenes would have been quite so productive at 10 below and a wind speed of 130 whistling through his barrel (coughs) - now Mr. Brougham, I have one of your carriages - remarkable vehicle, perfectly dainty for city parking

HB: A mere waste product of my genius, invented on such a wet Sunday that my landau was prevented from embarking (paces) As things stand, Dr. Quack - my impatience at getting near the Woolsack has become overwhelming - how I tire of the green of the Commons - it does nothing for my complexion - and damned if I wouldn't look fabulous in ermine! What more can I do? (sighs) - I spoke in the House non-stop for six hours - which must be a record, check - I share a reasonably priced mistress with Wellington, a Miss Harriette Wilson, check - the Edinburgh Review is a profitable power-broker in the literary world, check...

Q: Halt! In common with all frenzied over-achievers of the middling to lower classes, Mr. Brougham - you require fresh meat to rail against - the clergy, parliamentarians, or lovers - regardless of the alarm, the torments, the destruction which you may bring upon others

HB: Fresh meat to rail against? Aye - is that not life? Is it not the very thing? At all hazards - and as a man of honour - it is my first and only duty!

Q  (more patient notes: I think I shall name this condition a ‘Napoleon Complex' - why, the man belongs in a military hospital): You have it - train your legal eye on a prominent slave trader, currency manipulator, debaucher of nunneries - you must surely earn a coronet if you persist

HB(is inspired): Yes - or - an unreasonable persecution of a fatherless, sensitive minor on his first literary outing - ooh! and if he's a nobleman - how could I resist?

Q: Er - no, a minor? Not a fair legal fight, Mr. Brougham - even for a man-at-law - quite, quite beastly!

HB: In Law, every person is an infant who has not attained the great age of 21 - goodbye Quack - you shall become a better doctor after the privilege I've permitted in your interviewing me

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Q observes that Brougham's shadow proceeds him by a good half mile as he walks towards his dainty carriage

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Scene 3

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The Pigot Pavilion, Southwell

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E: John! (waves paper) by the blessèd St. Dominic! - “His effusions are spread over a dead flat, and can no more get above or below the level, than if they were so much stagnant water" - oh, poor Byron - 'tis a knell! (looks out window)

 JP(sighs): He - for certes - would be expecting a gentler review from his Motherland of flood and fell 

​​​E: Oh! (stamps foot) - I hate you, ye cold compositions of art! Though prudes may condemn him, and bigots reprove - he courted only the effusions that spring from the heart, which throbs with delight to the first kiss of love - but shall break at the violence of such unreasonable literary analysis

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Reverend Becher bursts through the door, wielding the Edinburgh Review

 

Rev(spluttering): “It happens in the life of nine men in ten who are educated in England; and that the tenth man writes better verse than Lord Byron” - Oh, my friends! (B enters quietly, taps his shoulder) - argggh!! sit, Byron - wouldst thou care for some green tea? - or perhaps one of the stronger blends?

B(airily): Becher - your shepherds, your flocks, those fantastical themes perhaps may amuse - yet they never can move - Arcadia displays but a region of dreams - humph! after a hammering by The Edinburgh, visions like these are not worth a hill of beans

Rev(gingerly): Byron? Are you quite well? 

B: Me? Nothing that three bottles of claret at three in the morning couldn't fix 

JP: And right too - 'tis but one review amongst many - and a Scots reviewer is not only chippy beyond parallel - but too mean to cross the Styx!

B: Good one Pigot - (turns to E) Elizabeth, your little violets have wilted, Pigot's bouncer has become unstitched, Becher is as grey as a hangman - and I - betrayed by my kinfolk! How far our hearts have sunk 'ere two days have passed (assumes the reliable cover of sarcasm) Although, in truth, I did find the arithmetic most instructive - “We must beg leave to assure him that the mere rhyming of the final syllable, even when accompanied by a certain number of feet, and have been all counted accurately upon the fingers - is not the whole art of poetry" - how could I not count accurately with my tapered fingers so superb?

E: Look - dear Byron - made by Mary, and Caroline, another Mary, Sally, and myself - in your honor as the laureate of our village - an acrostic diadem of wildflowers and your favourite herb

Rev(makes offering): Basil, Yarrow, Red-hot poker, Oxlip and Narcissus - the maidens shall be so pleased you've returned

B: Humph - you wear it Becher - I have been fooled by flattery, and none but the Narcissus have I earned

JP: “He never lived in a garret, like thorough-bred poets"- it reeks of that son of a typesetting body-snatcher, Francis Jeffrey - I swear it from my soul!

​B: Enough, Pigot! I have already actualised my revenge, as, by four in the morning - after my head flew to my heart and back again - I penned some haughty savagery of my own, which attacks all in the hope of scalping one (bites nails) I own, 'tis devilishly droll 

Rev: Mind not their cruelty, Byron, for when age chills the blood, when our pleasures are past..

JP: And the years fleet away with the wings of the dove - the dearest remembrance will still be the last..

E(puckers up): Our sweetest memorial shall be the first kiss of love?

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Boatswain jumps in the Pigot's window and gleefully slobbers all over B's visage, startling him into the questionable truth of his poetic exhortations

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