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CAST

Lord Byron

PB Shelley

John Keats

Fletcher

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Scene 1

 

1819, the Palazzo Guiccioli, Ravenna 

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B: God's socks, Fletcher! - this beastly sirocco, it kills me!  The wind, the snow, the police spy's teeth clattering outside my front door! (kicks the fire dogs) My horses cannot navigate the mud-sleigh - and my Teresa weeps alone by her pianoforte

F: You have an Italian officer riddled with bullets and half dead in the guest room, my lord 

B: Aye - that is true

F: The gunpowder in the basement could explode at any minute - and the roof could fall through

B: Humph! - that would be but mildly diverting, Fletcher (paces) - perhaps I shall return to Marino Faliero (flips through latest MS) - now, how to go about his decapitation? How do you imagine a head would roll down marble stairs, my rustic minion? - blood and brains and whatnot? - your people were proprietors of pig abattoirs - come, give me your opinion

F: My lord! (sulks) Why don't you write summat about spring and love and t'other - not headless clergymen!

B: Bah! - 'tis violence the readers want Fletcher - who cares a whit for buzzing flies, or the twighlight cooings of a moorhen

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A sharp yell and a thump are heard outside the palazzo doors

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B: Halloo! Perhaps it is another assassinated dragoon! 

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B gallantly scoffs a decanter of brandy - F is heard grunting on the stairs

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F: My lord - is it a small, muddy cow? (pokes)

B: Devil if I can tell, besides I left all my ‘ cows' back in Venice (inspects the parcel) - What does it mean? - is it a threat? - a culinary tribute from the Americani - a prank from Hoppner - a warning from a roaming Neopolitan?

F: The Pope?  - the Contessa's husband, so dangerously metropolitan?

B(frowns): Agreed, Fletcher - I do indeed possess a fair passel of enemies (searches for pistols)

F: Damn! - I can't hold it! (drops livestock) 

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The livestock groans - F approaches with a poker

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F: My lord! - it's alive and wriggling! (peels back layers of mud)​

​B: Why - it's a little stable boy! Fletcher - you poltroon! - this is not a side of beef - you have quite disappointed my appetite! To whom does the fellow belong - check his pockets - here, use this toasting prong!

F(rummages): There's a notebook, and coins - why, I'd guess 'tis English by its quivering loins

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The Englishman leans on his elbow, parts his hair to reveal lustrous hazel eyes

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K: Aye me! - my heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk

B: Well, mad he certainly is - what imperturbable drivelling idiocy

K(coughs): I am done to a cow's thumb (shivers), where am I?
B: There, there, my good fellow - you just tripped in the mud in front of my palazzo (discreetly checks for bullet holes) - my man Fletcher rescued you in the hope of attaining a tenderloined repast

​F: My lord, I'll dunk him in t'bath

B: Do, Fletcher - and dress him in some more palazzo-worthy habilments of mine 

K: I thank you, Mr..?

B: We shall attend to the formals once you have been doused and re-cravatted

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Scene 2

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An hour passes, the visitor emerges bathed and arrayed in an 1812 ensemble of Byrons

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B: Welcome back (pours brandy) - my, the suit quite becomes you - despite being approx 8 1/2 inches too long in the leg - for you have quite the strong swimmer's shoulder as I, Mr..?

K: I must have gotten a knocken on the noggin, for I can't quite remember my name

B: Hah! - what a precious little rhyme (to self: hmm, that would do for a handy piece of flash) Here - a flask of warm brandy, your essentials shall revive in jig-time

K: I am most grateful - I was on my way to stay with a somewhat patronising friend of mine, who suggested I venture to Italy, where he assured me the sun always shone (thunder cracks) - er, to aid my recovery from an unfortunate lung predicament 

B: And where would be your usual residence, my friend?

K: Why, I've quite forgotten that as well - strange, innit?

F: Holy fires! - he's a cockney!! (recoils)

B: And YOU, Fletcher, are a Notts yeoman, one remove from a porcine slaughterhouse! (sits on sofa) - Come, sit - and don't mind that haughty peasant - why, oft I - and my comrades - would go in disguise to the taverns of the East End and warble merrily with varied bawds, boxers and barmaids

K: I'm unsure if my origins are so humble, Mr...?

B: In truth, I am currently composing some versicles employing cockney flash, how vastly picturesque it is! Such verve - such flair! My fustian friends - and pusillanimous publisher - are quite dashing their petticoats in despair

K: You compose verses? (frowns) - do you know ‘ Here's to you Tom Browne' (sings same)

B: Indeed, I have sung it at the Dog & Duck - in Rattlebrain Lane - do you know it?

K: Hmm, be damned if I do - know you the Swan and Hoop in Moorgate? (coughs violently)

B: Drink your brandy, my dear fellow - don't let yourself be knocked out by that fiery particle of phlegm - Fletcher, what shall we administer to the little chap for an oncoming tertian? 

K: Oh, it's not a terian! A tincture of ginger mixed with honey and served on a cloth of fine muslin warmed with camphor oil will see me right (to F) - look to it, if you would, me old duck (F fumes)

B: Progress! - a medical man - or a veterinary?

K(glares at B's crow): er, I feel no particular draw(slurps brandy) - now, as thanks, ready money is not in my wheelhouse (grinds teeth) - the fault, I believe, of a corrupt family man at law..

B: Och! - are we not all tormented by those rogues! (grinds teeth) - if you require a few bob, I welcome an Englishman of any breed into my employ; the stables are somewhat deshabillé - do you know anything about horses, bridles, etc?

K: Horses? Why, I believe my father was an ostler - or was that a wrestler? - nay, horses make me nervous - perhaps would you accept a gift of (rummages through his muddy jacket) - thruppence, or here - heyday! - my poesy? ​

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Scene 3

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B reads the notebook of musings, K trembles, and requests a refill of brandy, F grunts

 

B: If you'll take my advice - write for the ladies, they're morbidly fond of nightingales and suchlike - we have so very few poets inspired by suburban gardens - and leave off  Tooke’s Pantheon and Lempriere’s Dictionary

K(reads poems): Perhaps when I am older, I shall subside into reality - for now, I seem content to play the poet of mists and..

B: Very well! - what do I know? - when I was a stripling, I wrote travelogues and passionate paeans to village maids

K: Village maids? - Let's drink their health!​​​

B: To fairy ankles and fluttering bosoms!

 

A knock on the door startles the two men, who are well into their cups

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F: Your proper guest is here, my Lord

K: My Lord?

B: Ah! - Mr. Shelley, excellent

K: Mr. Shelley?

PBS: A very good evening t'ye, Byron

K: Byron? Lord Byron?!

PBS: Mr. Keats!

B: Keats? John Keats?

K(jumps up): Keats! - ah, yes, now I have it! - late of Hampstead - but, you can't be Lord Byron - why, he is six feet tall!

B: And you most certainly do not strike me as an onanist of any great order, Mr. Keats​

PBS: How did you find yourself in this palazzo, Johnny?

K: By the great kindness of my old china, Mr. Fletcher here (F sneers) who rescued me from a muddy grave (paces and thinks) - I believe I enquired of a well-tailored beggar where I may find an exiled, eccentric Englishman, a participant in a somewhat outré domestic arrangement, and he directed me to his Lordship's house - whereupon - I believe - a cloaked, masked gentleman knocked me on the head

B: The idiotic ape! - that would be Inspector Testaspessa, my police spy

PBS: Byron, Mr. Keats is a protégé of mine and is in Italy at my invitation

K(is irked): This is not quite the weather you promised, Mr. Shelley, I feel my lung colliding with my gallstones

PBS: Humph! - we should all be so lucky to expire within twenty feet of the divine Dante's bones!

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B and K quietly survey each other 

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Scene 4

 

​F hovers with the decanters, PBS attempts to gain ground

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​PBS: Mr. Keats has been reviewed in several of our better journals, my Lord (fetches K's notebook, reads) Ah! - the loveliest and the last, the bloom, whose petals nipped before they blew, died on the promise of the fruit..

K: er, I'm not dead yet

B: I do believe I glaumed ​‘ Sleep and Poetry' - the one most effectively activated the other

K: And I have read several cantos of your latest flash poem, my Lord

B: Did ye now! - gazooks! - C'mere to me Mr. Keats - your misjudged metre and low diction would suggest you are no great admirer of Mr. Pope?

K(straightens): Yes, I own it - but we do share a fondness for Mr. Coleridge, do we not? - why, one fresh morn we two strolled around about on Hampstead Heath and spoke on a thousand things; nightingales, poetry, poetical sensation, metaphysics..

PBS: We were quite the School of Athens down there in Hampstead, my dear Byron - me, Hunt, Keats, some other types..

B: The devil you were (snorts)

K: There is a great difference between myself and Lord Byron (to B) - you describe what you see - I describe what I imagine

B: Ah, but mine is the hardest task - would you fancy a change to port?

K: Didn't ought! (both roar)

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PBS is becoming miffed at the budding rapport between the two tipsy poets

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PBS: I do recall a noble poet decrying in the Edinburgh“ that little dirty blackguard, Keates" - who was that now, Byron?

B: Damned if I know - could be any upstart, I can barely get my post past Inspector Testaspessa

K: If I make so bold, my Lord - I did, and shall not gainsay it, compose a paean to you: (stands wobbily)

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Byron! how sweetly sad thy melody! 

Attuning still the soul to tenderness,

As if soft Pity, with unusual stress,

Had touch'd her plaintive lute, and thou, being by,

Hadst caught the tones, nor suffer'd them to die

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B: Charming, charming! - Here's a cracker I got from Cheeks Chester:

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There was a young lady of Norway
Who hung by her toes in a doorway.
She said to her beau..

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PBS: I believe you both had other things to say about each other - er, who was a “ sniveling little mannekin", Byron?

B: Pfft! - One must defend one's turf by any means, Shelley - 'tis but my commonplace competitive nature - you understand of course, Mr. Keats?  

PBS: “ Overrated, slavish and unoriginal" - tell me, Keats - to whom were you referring?  

K: Why, indeed, to Lord Byron (splutters) - my horns are yet velvety, and I must make my way through the herd somehow, mustn't I?

B: Bedad, you must! And there's a health to you, and your fine frigging imagination, Mr. Keats

K: And a life of joyous Scotch Mist to ye! (both start singing Tom Browne)

​PBS(in a rage): “ Solomon’s Guide to Health has better sense - and as much poetry as piss-a-bed Johnny Keates"

K: What a remarkable memory for libel you have, Mr. Shelley - anyway to continue my Ode to his Lordship:

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O'ershadowing sorrow doth not make thee less
Delightful: thou thy griefs dost dress
With a bright halo, shining beamily..

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B: ‘ Beamily', Mr. Keats?

K: Agreed - it smacks of raw pork and opium

B: Downstreamily? Och - I could hardly fare better! - I rhymed “ intellectual" with..

K: “ henpecked you all" (rolls around laughing)

PBS: Do not tease Mr. Keats, Byron - why, he is too fragile, fair, and does not belong to this world of cruelt...

B: Tell me, did you encounter Mr. Turdsworth on the Heath?
PBS: Byron!!

K: Mr. Wordswords?

B(roars uncontrollably): Stop! - oh, ’sdeath! 

PBS: Keats! - really, Byron, you are the worst possible influence on this ailing bard!

K: Mr. Shelley, I demand you pay for my return passage to Hampstead - I shall ail further still if I remain in this mucky Arcadian grove - his Lordships excellent cellar notwithstanding

PBS: Most certainly, this incongruous little party is well past disbanding (huffs)

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F miraculously appears with K's clean clothes and boots neatly packed in a trunk

 

F: 'ere - you're ready for road, me old china

B: Fletcher, you pudding-head! - cockney slang ill-becomes you! - Mr. Keats, here's a letter of introduction to Kitty and Nancy at the Dog & Duck - they'll warm up that lung better than an Italian summer ever could

PBS: I shall hoist you to the post-chaise - er, Byron? (B discreetly hands PBS a tenner)

K: Thank you, my Lord - for your enchanting tales, such tales of pleasing woe

​​​​​​​​​B(shakes hands): Godspeed with the bardship, young man - keep three bottles of claret on hand to guard against critics - and thank you for distracting me from the glooms of the sirocco!

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