It Is Easy to Be Dead by McPherson Neil;

Author:McPherson, Neil;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oberon Books

And now the fancy passes by,

And nothing will remain,

And miles around they’ll say that I

Am quite myself again.

WILLIAM reenters, dressed. There is silence between them for a moment, and then JANET passes WILLIAM a letter.

WILLIAM:I have got to know quite a crowd of other students.

Music: ‘Gaudeamus Igitur’ (Traditional). The music plays under the following speech.

CHARLIE:Of course I don’t ‘sociate with the military corps students who lead their drinking, fighting, duelling, singing, idle, picturesque life quite by themselves. They certainly drink plenty, but not enough to justify the amount of kissing that goes on: kissing themselves and each other, I mean, not their young women, which would have been understandable. Compulsory drunkenness, and a peculiarly sickening anti-Semitism are their chief features.

But I begin to see that one must be kind to Germany, for it is very young and getting on nicely with its lessons and just got into its private school cricket eleven. But I like their lack of self-consciousness. They all write poetry and recite it with gusto to any three hours’ old acquaintance. We all write poetry too in England, but we write it on the bedroom wash-stand and lock the door, and disclaim it vehemently in public.

JANET: Why did he have to die?

WILLIAM:For our freedom. To maintain the balance of power in Europe. To…

He breaks off. Beat.

I don’t know why, Janet. I don’t know.

WILLIAM puts his hand over hers. They continue with the letters as the lights fade on the study.

CHARLIE:The heat here is, as the Germans say, ‘to shoot.’ Summer makes me lazy, but I’ll buck up the first week in August.

SINGER: Excerpt from ‘On The Idle Hill of Summer’ (George Butterworth / A. E. Housman).

On the idle hill of summer,

Sleepy with the flow of streams,

Far I hear the steady drummer

Drumming like a noise in dreams.

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