The Libertine (NHB Modern Plays) by Stephen Jeffreys

Author:Stephen Jeffreys
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: epub, ebook, QuarkXPress
ISBN: 111-1-11-111111-1
Publisher: Nick Hern Books

Scene Seven – Sundial

Midnight. Whitehall Gardens. To one side of the stage is CHARLES’s favourite sundial, an expensive, phallic object. Some drunken cavorting off, then CHARLES, ROCHESTER, SACKVILLE, ETHEREGE and DOWNS come on.

CHARLES. So I said to her, ‘I don’t care which duchess you are, you’re not bringing my horse into your bedchamber.’

They all laugh.

Thus far will I go with you, gentlemen, and no further.

ROCHESTER. The fresh air begins to dander up his cods.

CHARLES. My wits, my sparks, we have caroused, have we not!

DOWNS. We have.

ROCHESTER. Poor Nelly, just drifting off and the great royal nudger shoves you from the arms of Morphius.

CHARLES. But you know the difference between us. At seven I’ll be on the tennis court and by eight I’ll be running the country again. Where will you all be? Goodnight, gentlemen.

CHARLES goes.

ETHEREGE. Goodnight, Your Majesty.

ROCHESTER. Give Nelly one from all of us.

DOWNS. The King! I took wine with the King!

SACKVILLE. You talk of Nelly, but you don’t know. I had her. And before he did.

ROCHESTER. Anon it starts.

DOWNS. He called me Billy and talked to me on the subject of fob watches.

SACKVILLE. Seventeen years old!

DOWNS. And he listened to what I said. How I always wind mine up using the thumb and third finger. Nodded as if I had spluttered something sage.

SACKVILLE. Such hair!

ROCHESTER. The skin, lactescent in all probability.

SACKVILLE. Her skin… how was it… lactescent!!

ROCHESTER. Someone do something with him.

SACKVILLE. I suckled there, like a hog at a trough!

ROCHESTER. He’s turning my stomach.

ETHEREGE. Come on, Charlie, let’s go to Dog and Bitch Yard. That nice Dolly Mossop’ll snatch frig you, you’ll just about manage that.

SACKVILLE. I don’t want Dolly Mossop, I want my Nell.

DOWNS. I’ll have Dolly Mossop. Has anyone got any money?

ROCHESTER. George’ll pay, George makes money out of writing. Not exactly something a real gentleman should do, of course –

SACKVILLE. It’s too late to go and fuck Dolly Mossop.

DOWNS. How can it be too late?

SACKVILLE. By now she’ll be into double figures. I hate it when they smell more of man than they do of woman.

DOWNS. Late? It’s not late.

SACKVILLE. It is late.

ETHEREGE. Johnny!! What time is it?

SACKVILLE. You’re standing next to the most sophisticated timepiece in Europe, you tell me.

ROCHESTER. It’s a sundial, shufflehead, we’re in the dark.

ETHEREGE. M’Lord Buckhurst does a good impression of the sun. Go on, Chas, spread your little beams.

SACKVILLE imitates the sun. He improvises verse.

SACKVILLE. ‘Behold I am Phoebus, light’s speedy chariot:

Harbinger of day, I put dark night to rout:

My silver beams that speed through night’s thick cloak

Do something something in that realm of smoke.’

ROCHESTER. And he thinks Dryden’s bad.

SACKVILLE. ‘Creatures of earth, I bring thee heat and light

I make the milkmaid and the king alike seem bright – ’

DOWNS. Brighter, brighter.

ETHEREGE. Still can’t tell the time.

SACKVILLE. ‘Great though thou art, pale moon – ’

ROCHESTER. Chas!

ETHEREGE. It’s not working, Chas. You did well, but –

ROCHESTER (approaching the sundial). Let me peruse this device, I am not so much in addled alley as the rest of you… quarter past, five and twenty… I can’t read it…

ETHEREGE.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.