Two Gentlemen of Lebowski: A Most Excellent Comedie and Tragical Romance by Adam Bertocci

Author:Adam Bertocci
Language: eng
Format: azw
Tags: Performing Arts, Humor, Screenplays, General, Drama, Shakespeare
ISBN: 9781451605815
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2010-10-25T23:00:00+00:00

3.1

[An artist’s studio. Enter THE KNAVE and MAUDE]

MAUDE

If by my art, my curious friend, I have

Put the wild notions in a roar, so be’t.

What think you on the female form, O Knave?

The woman’s part in me so gallantly

Manifests itself within in mine art

Commended by the wise as country work;

I paint only those of my own sex.

The very word is said to bother men,

Discomfort them, encircled in their ring.

It is the very painting of discomfort,

Two legs without a head. I say no thing.

THE KNAVE

I take no awkward pause, nor balk nor stare,

But only ask, askance, what art this is.

I see no ring to mar if I would kiss’t,

But only oily painting I might stain.

The Knave deciphers nothing in its image;

Thy work has made a nihilist of me.

MAUDE

In faith, the art is only what you will,

And if the word can poison not your ear

Then you’re in luck; some men of lesser stuff

Dislike to hear it, dare not speak its name.

Whereas without a flicker of his eye

A man might speak of King Richard the Third,

Or pose an idle sonnet on his rod,

Or praise the wit of his selfsame Johnson.

THE KNAVE

As Benjamin Jonson, lady?

MAUDE

Let us speak plain and to the purpose. My father bade you take the rug, but that you chose was, in faith, a gift of me to my departed mother, the happiest gift that ever marquess gave, and thus not his to make a rich and precious gift of. But trifles, trifles; let us speak of this supposed kidnapping. It hath the rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril.

THE KNAVE

Permit me to explain about the rug—

MAUDE

What cares have you, Lebowski, upon love?

THE KNAVE

Alack, lady, thy question does me vex.

MAUDE

The physicality of making love;

I’d have you tell me if you like it well.

A myth persists on women of my stripe,

That our body politic renders us in hate

Of acts of love; a most injurious lie.

The enterprise can have in it much zest.

But men who walk with satyrs in the morn

And women swimming nightly ‘twixt the nymphs

Are punished by Oberon for sin

And do the deed compulsively engaged,

Sans joy, sans love, sans everything.

THE KNAVE

Prithee nay!

MAUDE

So damn’d a soul is Bonnie; I have heard

That lustful creatures sitting at a play

Have by the cunning language of the scene

Been struck so to the soul that presently

They have proclaim’d their infatuations.

I’ve had these players make their show for you;

Suiting the action to the word indeed.

It shall be called “Log Jamming”, because

It hath bared bottom; but hark—the players.

So please your grace, the Prologue is addressed.

[Enter OLIVER as the PLAYER KARL HUNGUS, BONNIE as the PLAYER WHORE and a PLAYER QUEEN]

PLAYER QUEEN

Two women, both alike in beauty,

In fair Verona where we lay our scene,

From broken cable break to new nudity,

Where civil breasts touch civil hands unclean.

The which if you Jaques Treehorn’s play attend,

What this fine miss and whore shall strive to mend.

THE KNAVE

She hath rid her prologue like a rough colt.

MAUDE

Such riding you will see the like of, so as to form the beast with two backs. But hark; here is the poor player that struts and frets to play Karl Hungus upon the stage.

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