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Nine
Characters in Search of a Wake |
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The
Panel Play |
[song "Finnegan's Wake" loud, then fading and continuing softly in the background as EITHER players heads popping in and out of their holes saying various lines softly OR party sound-effect.] Humpty Here's to James Joyce! His birth proved accidental which shows his death its grave mistake. [134.20-21] Narrator [pointing at Joyce mummy on panel] Let him rest, thou wayfarre, and take no gravespoil from him! Neither mar his mound! The bane of Tut is on it. Ware! [102.20-24] HCE [drunkenly] James Joyce? if reams stood to reason and his lankalivline lasted he would wipe alley english spooker, multaphoniaksically spuking, off the face of the erse. [178.5-7] Tristan Well, ladies upon gentlermen and toastmaster general, let us, brindising brandisong, woo and win womenlong with health to rich vineyards, Erin go Dry! [462.1-4] Isolde Hear, O hear me, Iseult la belle, [398.29] I'm the vivid girl, deaf with love, one of romance's fadeless wonderwomen, and, sure now, we all know you dote on me even unto date! [395.29-396.2] ALP I've lapped so long. Once it happened, so it may again. I'll begin again in a jiffey. The nik of a nad. How glad you'll be I waked you! [625.27-33] Eve Pastimes are past times. Now let bygones be bei Gunne's, since primal made alter in garden of Idem. The tasks above are as the flasks below. We told, on excellent inkbottle authority, solarsystemised, in a more and more almightily expandinguniverse under one, there is rhymeless reason to believe, original sun. [263.17-27] Issy Wonderlawn's lost us for ever. Alis, alas, she broke the glass! Liddell lokker through the leafery, ours is mistery of pain. [270.19-22] Humpty And even if Humpty shell fall frumpty times as awkward again in the beardsboosoloom of all our grand remonstrancers there'll be iggs for the brekkers come to mournhim, sunny side up with care. [12.12-15] Russian General We may come, touch and go, from atoms and ifs but we're presurely destined to be odd's without ends. [455.16-18] Shaun This explains the litany of lettertrumpets honorific, highpitched, erudite, neoclassical, which James Joyce so loved. Turning over three sheets at a wind, telling himself delightedly, no espellor mor so, that every splurge on the vellum he blundered over was an aisling vision more gorgeous that the one before. [179.17-32] Narrator Then all that was was fair. Teems of times and happy returns. The seim anew. Ordovico or viricordo. Anna was, Livia is, Plurabelle's to be. [215.21-24] Shaun little oldfashioned mummy, little wonderful mummy, ducking under bridges, bellhopping the weirs, dodging by a bit of bog, rapid shooting round the bends, as happy as the day is wet, babbling, bubbling, chattering to herself, deloothering the fields on their elbows leaning with the sloothering slide of her, giddygaddy, grannyma, gossipaceous Anna Livia. [194.12-195.6] HCE Joyce lifts the lifewand and the dumb speak. Quoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoiq! [194.12-195.6] ALP [midway through this speech the lights start dimming, going dark by its end] And it's old and old it's sad and old it's sad and weary I go back to you, my cold father, my coldmad father, my cold mad feary father, and I rush, my only, into your arms. I see them rising! So. Avelaval. My leaves have drifted from me. All. But one clings still. I'll bear it on me. To remind me of. Lff! So soft this morning, ours. Yes. Carry me along, taddy, like you done through the toy fair! If I seen him bearing down on me now under whitespread wings like he'd come from Arkangels, I sink I'd die down over his feet, humbly dumbly, only to washup. First. We pass through grass behush the bush to. Whish! A gull. Gulls. Far calls. Coming, far! End here. Us then. Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thousendsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the [625-628] [lights off; pause, then honkey-tonk music starts, all heads through the panel and lights on.] Narrator [stepping in front of the Panel, speaking in side-show barker style] Step right up, Ladies and Gentlemen. The show is about to begin again. Bring your sixth sense, only six cents. The whole show, the real show is about to begin again, begin again, Finnegan, begin again . . . . THE END |
