THOMAS PAINE’S CORNER |•

By Gary Corseri and William Shakespeare5/3/07

ACT 1
Scene 1: Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches.Condoleeza: When shall we three meet again?

Hillary: When the hurlyburly’s done. When the battle’s lost and won.

Coulter: Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.

Enter McBush and Pax.

McBush: So foul and fair a day I have not seen!

Pax: (Noticing the Witches–)
What are these, so withered and so wild in their attire,
That look not like the inhabitants of the earth?
You should be women, and yet your beards
Forbid me to interpret that you are.

Coulter: All hail McBush, that shalt be Prez hereafter!

McBush: If the Court will have me Prez why, the Court may crown me!
Stars, hide your fires! Let not light see
My black and deep desires!

Exeunt

Scene 2: Enter McBush’s Wife alone, with a letter.

Lady Cheney: (reading–) “They met me in the day of success; and I have learned … they have more in them than mortal knowledge … my dearest partner … what greatness is promised thee! Lay it to thy heart, and farewell.” (to herself–) Hie thee hither! That I may pour my spirits in thine ear! Come to my woman’s breasts—and take my milk for gall!

Exeunt

Scene 3: Enter Liberty.

Liberty: This White House hath a pleasant seat; the air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses.

Enter Lady Cheney

Lady Cheney: (bowiing–) Great Constitution’s noblest guardian,
Most honored Liberty, most welcome guest!

Liberty: God eyld us for your pains, and thank us for your trouble.

Exeunt

Scene 4: Enter McBush and Lady Cheney.

McBush: If it were done, when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well
It were done quickly. If the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease, success …

Lady Cheney: Screw your courage to the sticking place,
And we’ll not fail. When Liberty is sleeping,
What cannot you and I perform upon
Unguarded Liberty—

McBush: Bring forth men-children only!

Lady Cheney: We shall make our griefs and clamor roar upon her death!

ExeuntScene 5: Enter McBush.

McBush: Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand?
Come, let me clutch thee!
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
Enter Lady Cheney

Lady Cheney: Had she not resembled my mother as she slept, I had done it.

McBush: Methought I heard a voice cry “Sleep no more!
McBush does murder Sleep,” the innocent Sleep,
Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care—

Lady McBush: Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers.
If she do bleed, I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal,
For it must seem their guilt.
She exits … Knocking within.

McBush: Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand?

Knocking.

McBush: To know my deed, ‘twere best not know myself.
Wake Liberty with thy knocking!

ACT II
Scene 1: Fire Hydrant is planted firmly at the gate.

Fire Hydrant: Here’s a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should have old turning the key. (Knock.) Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there? (Knock.) Faith, here’s an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God’s sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven.

Enter Justice and his Rottweilers. One Rottweilers trots over to Fire Hydrant and relieves itself with hot, hissing piss.

Fire Hydrant: (squinching his face–) Drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.

Justice: What three things does drink especially provoke?

Fire Hydrant: Merry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine.

2nd Rottweiler trots over and copiously relieves itself.

Justice: I believe drink gave thee the lie last night.

Fire Hydrant: (squinching harder–) That it did, sir, in the very throat of me.

Enter McBush

McBush: Good morrow.

Justice: Good morrow, sir. Has Lady Liberty awakened?

McBush: Not yet.

Justice: She did command me to call timely on her; I’ll make so bold to call.
Exit Justice

Fire Hydrant: The night has been unruly—lamentings heard in the air.
Strange screams of death, and prophesying
With accents terrible of confused events,
New hatched to the woeful time.

Rottweilers hump Fire Hydrant.McBush: ‘Twas a rough night.
Enter Justice

Justice: O horror! Horror! Horror!
Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!
Awake! Awake! Ring the alarm bell! Murder and treason!

Bell rings. Enter Lady Cheney, PaxLady Cheney: What’s the business?

Justice: O gentle lady, “Tis not for you to hear what I can speak.
Lady Liberty is murdered.

McBush: Had I but died an hour before this chance,
I had lived a blessed time.
All is but toys. Renown and grace is dead.

Pax: There’s daggers in men’s smiles!

Exeunt

Scene 2: Enter Pax

Pax: Thou hast it now, as the weird women promised.

Enter McBush, as Commander-in-Chief; Lady CheneyMcBush: Here’s our chief guest!

Lady Cheney: If he had been forgotten, it had been as a gap in our great feast.

McBush: Fail not our feast.

Pax: My lord, I will not.
Exit Pax

McBush: To be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus.
Our fears in Pax stick deep.
He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valor.

Lady Cheney: Nought’s had, all’s spent,
Where our desire is got without content.
‘Tis safer to be that which we destroy
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.

Exeunt

Scene 3: Banquet prepared. Enter McBush, Lady Cheney, AttendantsLady Cheney: How now, my lord? Why do you keep alone?
Things without all remedy should be without regard.

McBush: We have scotched the snake, not killed it.
Liberty is in her grave.
After life’s fitful fever, she sleeps well.
Treason has done his worst.

Enter Pax’s ghost.

McBush: Which of you have done this?

Attendants: What, my good Lord?

McBush: Thou canst not say I did it.
Never shake thy gory locks at me.

Lady Cheney: This is the very painting of your fear—Shame itself!
Why do you make such faces? You look but on a stool.

McBush: Behold! Look! Lo! How say you?

Lady Cheney: Fie, for shame!

McBush: It will have blood, they say: blood will have blood.
Stones have been known to move and trees to speak.
I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er.

Lady Cheney: You lack the season of all natures, sleep.

McBush: Come, we’ll to sleep. We are yet but young in deed.

Exeunt

Scene 4: Enter the 3 Witches

All: Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Condoleeza: Round about the cauldron go;
In the poisoned entrails throw.

Hillary: Eye of Newt, and toe of frog.

Coulter: By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.

Enter McBush
McBush: What ist you do?

All: A deed without a name.

McBush: I conjure you, by that which you profess—

Condoleeza: Speak.

Hillary: Demand.

Coulter: We’ll answer.

McBush: Tell me, thou unknown power—

All: We know your thought. Hear our speech, but say nought.

Condoleeza: McBush, McBush, McBush, beware Justice.

McBush: For thy good caution, thanks.

Hillary: McBush, McBush, McBush,
Be bloody, bold and resolute;
For none of woman born shall harm McBush.

McBush: Then live Justice; what need I fear of him?

Coulter: Be lion-mettled, proud, and take no care
Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are.
McBush shall never vanquished be until
Great Courage come to Capital Hill.

McBush: That will never be.

The witches dance and vanish.

ACT 3
Scene 1: The East Lawn of the White House. Two rottweilers and Fire Hydrant.

1st Rott: It’s a dog’s life that has such people in it!

2nd Rott: And here comes Lady Cheney in her gown!

Enter Lady Cheney
1st Rott: They say her heart is made of metal–

2nd Rott: And cannonball grease. She’s predatory—

1st Rott: And renowned for missing what she aims at.

2nd Rott: Be sure her weapons be not aimed at you.

1st Rott: No fear of that … But list, she speaks …

Lady Cheney: Out, damned spot! Out, I say! One; two. Why, then, ‘tis time to do it. Hell is murky. What need we fear who knows it when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old dame to have had so much blood in her?

1st Rott: Do you mark that?

2nd Rott: She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of that. Heaven knows what she has known.

Lady Cheney: Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!

1st Rott: Foul whisperings are abroad. Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles.

2nd Rott: Revenge must burn them both. As for McBush,
Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love. Now does he feel his title
Hang loose upon him, like a giant’s robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.

Fire Hydrant: None serve with him but constrained things
Whose hearts are absent too.

Rottweilers piss on Fire Hydrant. Exit Lady Cheney. After a moment, enter McBush.McBush: I have lived long enough. My way of life
Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age,
As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor …

A cry within of women. Enter Attendants.McBush: What is that noise?

1st Attendant: The queen, my lord, is dead.

McBush: She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

2nd Attendant: There’s more unruly news—

McBush: Out with it.

2nd Attendant: As I did stand my watch upon the Hill,
I looked, and anon, methought, Courage
Had begun to stir.

McBush: Liar and slave!

2nd Attendant: Let me endure your wrath if it be not so.
McBush: I gin to be aweary of the sun.
Ring the alarum bell! Blow, wind! Come, wrack!

Enter Justice

Justice: Turn, hell-hound, turn!

McBush: Of all men else have I avoided thee.
But get thee back, my soul is too much charged
With blood of thine already.

Justice: I have no words;
My voice is in my sword, thou bloodier villain
Than terms can give thee out!

McBush: Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;
I bear a charmed life, which must not yield
To one of woman born.

Justice: Despair thy charm.
And let the angel whom thou still hast served
Tell thee: Justice is eternal as the sun;
A principle, beyond the human realm;
Not born of men and women, but, perchance won
By hearts most valorous and true, attuned
To universal law. Villain, meet thy doom!

McBush: Accursed be that tongue that tells me so,
For it hath cowed my better part of man!
I’ll not fight with thee.

Justice: Then yield thee, coward,
And live to be the show and gaze of the time.
We’ll have thee, as our rarest monsters are,
Painted upn a pole, and underwrit,
“Here may you see the tyrant.”

McBush: I will not yield
To be baited with the rabble’s curse!

Exeunt fighting. Alarums.

Enter fighting, and McBush is slain.

1st Rott: We shall not spend a large expense of tears
To tally up his crimes of awful folly.

2nd Rott: Justice wins in the end; and yet, methinks
‘Twere wiser to avoid such troubles.

1st Rott: If men had insight, or could sniff out woes—

2nd Rott: If they were blessed with noses like our own—

1st Rott: Who knows
What creatures for the Earth’s sweet sake they’d make?

2nd Rott: The gentle air itself would tell their story.

Rottweilers relieve themselves on Fire Hydrant.
William Shakespeare was a polemicist for Queen Elizabeth, and a spot-on poet and playwright. Recent DNA tests have confirmed he was not the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby. Gary Corseri’s work has appeared at Cyrano’s Journal Online, DissidentVoice, ThomasPaine’sCorner, CommonDreams, CounterPunch, The New York Times, Village Voice, Redbook, PBS-Atlanta, Telesurtv.net and elsewhere. His books include Manifestations and A Fine Excess. His e-dress is corseri@verizon.net.