Dear Doctor,

I have Read your Play

D

 

Cast

John Murray II – Publisher, Tory, protean A&R man

Dr. John Polidori – Gifted medic, aspiring scribbler

Lord Byron – Ex-pat Genius

(P & B = offstage voices)

 

D

 

SCENE 1

 

Albemarle Street drawing room

​

JM(slices open a large packet of letters): Och, how I dread that seal! (rips with a flourish) – will I look? (he looks) – either I’ve scored yet another cracking poem for the ladies – or an order for toothpaste! what am I - his mother? (looking up at Portrait of B.) Oons, with all of his faults, I love my boy still!

 

Murray sits, Byron’s voice reads

 

B: My dear Moray – firstly, I cannot thank you, in truth, for the diarist with which you provided me – never have you parted with £500 so inefficiently. Do you know how many milliners you can get for that?

​

 JM (furrowed): Guineas or pounds? Guineas or pounds?

​

B: Re. Polidori - he has talents sir, and is a good-natured man at heart. Downside – his aspirations do not match his talents. Do me a favour - in lieu of the fortune I have made you – for it far exceeds my own – be a good man and read his play? It fairly purges the eyes and moves the bowels – so read it before breakfast - and write him an encouraging letter

​

 JM: What do I know about plays? Cookbooks, aye, travelling guides, aye, no not aye!! – YES - must shake that tradesman’s giveaway! - poesy, on a hunch, yes – but the STAGE!! Och

​

 B: He is currently ranging barefoot through Milan, or perchance is incarcerated. One of my travelling fellow elites will ensure its safe delivery. Addio - go on and prosper! B.

​

 JM: A letter of encouragement? - mmm, I will have to wing it (drops his pince-nez) – plagiary is my only chance – but who? Or is it whom? - what do I know? I only count the money! Och

 

Prowls office stiffens back

 

JM: Zounds!! My pulses have quicken’d! I shall refer solely to my Lord – why if a Lord can charm the Devil – be damned if an Up and Coming Gentleman shouldn't charm an unemployable medical man!

 

Pulls Polidori’s play and the ‘Collected Works of the Hon. Lord Byron to Date, 10th ed.’ onto his desk

​

D

 SCENE 2

 

Albemarle Street, Murray is reclining on a sofa, a medic attends

 

JM(pale and groaning): good God - my shatter’d nerves and quicken’d pulses, that catastrophe has me convulséd – oh! here comes another flux of grief

 

Is ill

 

P: Well, they laughed at me in Geneva – I am assured Murray will print, nay produce, my play – they will never laugh again! (muses) - unless I write a comedy, which could work – after all - I have had fantastic adventures in which I played all the lead roles really superbly

 

JM: sweet mother of divine! (adjusts pillows) What trash! – although I grant I like his moral and machinery; his plot, too, has such scope for scenery: his dialogue is apt and smart: The play’s concoction is full of art – a bit too much raving and crying between the hero and heroine though – oh wait! they stab, and die! that will save on scenery – I like it!

 

Medic departs

 

P: Come to think on it – no one will be going to the theatre in the future – a three-volume novel is more suited to my genius – (furrows and paces) ideas, ideas!

 

JM: To compose – “Dear Doctor, I have read your play. Sorry, sir, but I cannot deal, Unless ’twere acted by O’Neill” – (gasps in wonder) does that RHYME?! – “My hands so full, my head so busy, I’m almost dead and always dizzy” – Great Nelson's Ghost, I have a GIFT! – “And so, with endless truth and hurry, Dear Doctor, I am yours John Murray” - BOOM!!

 

Murray high-fives himself and lights cigar

​

 D

 SCENE 3

 

P: I wonder did his Lordship leave anything of value in the bin?  - mmm  - I’m not completely convinced by Murray’s letter – damn me if it was written by a fellow Scot - there’s an awful waste of ink – am I being quizzed?!

 

JM: It is not that I am not sensible to merits in themselves ostensible -  but damn me if I never noticed my own gifts! – why do I need authors? To afford hysterical relief? That great oaf Sotheby, with his ‘Orestes’ - has lain so very long on hand, that I despair of all demand! - (is in wonder at himself) Sink me if I’m not at it again!

 

Murray leaps around the room singing ‘I could have danced all night’

 

B: PS. I’ve sent you, folded in a letter, a sort of–it’s no more a drama than Darnley, Ivan, or Kehama: So alter’d since last year my pen is, I think I’ve lost my wits at Venice. Y’s B. -  PPS (stop asking me for letters to show at your councils – or pay me for them at least – they are quite as precious a species of posey as my other scribbles) Y’s B.xxx

 

JM: No matter Byron! – I shall leave you to your Adriatic nymphs!  - as we are now fellow warblers, I am at ease dropping the ‘my Lord’ and other salutes to rank - and I can pick up where you left off, perhaps shift focus somewhat towards the Admiralty (muses) – what rhymes with ‘admiralty’, mmm – devil of a job this – ‘skladmirality’, och I don’t think that’s a word – I’ll pick up my Byron to consult – dash it anyway!!

 

P:  I grieve to speak it, but plays are drugs, mere drugs now-a-days - 3rd module year 2 - passed deucedly well I must say – I’ll not bother with Murray's insults – to the fire with you, figlio di puttana!!! My novel is complete anyway - and it’s quite the piece for publication – now, for a title (frowns) author - (frowns harder) - forsooth, I’m probably owed back pay anyway – (swoops down from library ladder) - eternal fame is mine !!

 

JM: Perhaps, after all, I am a better hand at the trade - er  - I quite enjoy a room so full of wits and bards, Crabbes, Campbells, Crokers, Freres, and Wards, and others, neither bards nor wits, for my humble tenement admits all persons in the dress of gent, from Mr. Hammond to Dog Dent – without having to cross verbal swords with them. Aye, I’ll go no more a poesying – be damned to it! - it’s a curse!!

 

D

​

END