SEMINAL DIFFERENCES:

the Sorry History 

of

 

LORD BYRON & DRY BOB SOUTHEY

part 2 of 3

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Cast

Lord Byron

Robert Southey

Dr. Quack

W. Wordsworth

Richard Hoppner

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SCENE 1

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1816, Dr.Quack - a specialist in nervous disorders - is treating an illustrious patient

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DQ: What seems to be the problem, Mr. Sotheby?

S: Southey, you quack - Southey

DQ: Oh, right - anyway - what seems to be the problem?

S: I am tormented - tormented - by sleeplessness of a most unusual kind

DQ: Do go on - I am taking notes - an innovation in the medical field

S: I sleep - and wake - and sleep - and wake - to the sound of (somewhat embarrassed) Bob -  bob - bobby  - BOB!! - bobbobbob - BOB you Dog - bobby bob bobby, etc - I can't sleep for it - and I fear I'm losing my mind

DQ: An understandable diagnosis Mr. Southey - do you know a person yclept “BOB”?

S: That's me you idiot - ROBERT Southey!!!

DQ: Ah! - in that case - it is clearly a troubled conscience which ails thee - have you slandered and/or libelled anyone - unfairly - of late?

S: Certainly not - I am not in the business of  vulgarly abusing those fit only for the brothel and the gallows - retailers of obscenity, sedition, and blasphemy - I am a poet, the Poet Laureate - a representative of all the race- as a man of science you are undoubtedly unacquainted with creative types

DQ: A poet - you could have saved yourself (looking at his mantle clock) - five guineas as yet (paces) - a rhymester is it? (paces more) - well, 'tis plain Mr. Southey - your torment lies in seeking a rhyme for the word “Bob” - may I venture to suggest sob, knob, fob, mob, rob, thingamabob.

S: You madman!! I am not deficient in the ability to rhyme

DQ: The creative bit of your brain musts be suffering from a temporary closure - the same oft happens to my wife, dear Mrs. Quack

S; She, too, is a poetaster?
DQ: Oft at her embroidery she sighs - “Ah me! more rosebuds, ferns, and laurel wreaths - Dr. Quack - I am bereft of ideas"

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S gets up to leave - DQ shakes his hand

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DQ: Mr. Southey - I can assure you - a voice of great beauty - nay perchance from across the seas and the Alps - is whispering into your brain and calling you to account - I am not a religious man per se - there's a chance it's The Almighty

S: I know exactly who it is - and it's far from the Almighty he was reared

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A long-term plan of action is fomenting in Southey's roomy brain - leaves Dr. Quack

 

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SCENE 2

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1818, Venice - Byron has completed the first Canto of Don Juan

 

B: Evening Hoppner - here, read this - I have finished the first Canto - a long one, of about 180 octaves - of a poem in the style and manner of  ‘Beppo’ - it is called ‘Don Juan,’ and is meant to be a little quietly facetious upon everything 

H(peruses): A Spaniard? - are you aware the country is currently in revolt?

B: 'Tis immaterial - I have as yet made no mention of war - other than of an “agitato” domestic nature. It is dedicated to ​Sir Laureate Southey in good, simple, savage verse, upon the rogue's politics, and the way he got them

H: You need an amanuensis - your writing is so difficult to decipher - hold on! DRY BOB?!!- it won't stand!

B: Well done Hoppner (grins) -  the dirty, lying, pond-rascal has been trying to goad me into satisfaction since he calumniated myself and Shelley during our Geneva sojourn of 1816. To think I once thought him mild, and not a man of the world - and his talents of the first order (sighs)

H(reading): You will receive a challenge if you call him a “shabby fellow”- are his brows really bald?

B: humph! - during the French Revolution, this scribbler of skimble scamble stuff was a member of a republican revolutionary society - openly avowing himself to be a republican and a revolutionist - now - now - has he not denounced all republicans and all regicides as monsters of infamy and as imps of the Devil?!

H: To be sure - his is only a pedestrian muse - and his Blackbird pie is paid for by the King

B: Damned if it's not! - this must go to press - although my boneless editors assure me the dry bob must go - they're all for cutting and slashing - the insects!! - they roar like thunder and run like lightning

H: My lord, if  it weren't for your perversity to the honour & glory of your Country - and your controversial domestica facta - I am assur'd 'tis you would be the Laureate 

B(laughing): Oh Hoppner! - what are ye on! 

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B continues to work on The Don - H hurriedly spreads the story all over Venice of B having shot Southey and run off with his wife

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SCENE 3

 

1820, the King - George III - is dead - Southey is called upon to paeanise same

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S and Wordsworth are confabing at Greta Hall

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S(has been at the cider): Now - if never before - and as a result of being first the climb the Immortal Hill - immortality lies down there in the valley of my genius - somewhere, or is it up there? - unless a mountain goat has ate it pfft! ha ha - an ode to the afterlife of a King! - I shall shake the mortal spurs from my boots, imitate the judgment of God and - in retribution for daring to mock me with a somewhat outré dedication - decimate that odious hellhound Lord Byron into the bargain

WW: Our Noble King will like that - (sighs) - how much we owe much to the House of Brunswick!

S: Thanks be to God we have a monarchy 

WW: Get to work Bob - he is impatient for praise

S: Don't call me Bob - you know it traumatizes me!! Is his Majesty - you suppose - the kind of man who'd read a preface? 

WW: If he read at all I'd be taken aback - no - let fly at whatever target you wish- no matter how irrelevant to the task at hand - and make sure to give the public a lecture - d'you know, some readers, who have never practiced metrical composition in their own language, suppose that such words as twilight and evening are spondaic (both guffaw immoderately)

S: The English measure in imitation, rather than upon the model of the ancient hexameter, the trochee has been substituted for the spondee - vide the Germans

WW: You, Bob! are rather insolent, you know

S: Don't call me Bob!!

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S runs into his study - commences - and is distracted by a copy of  The Courier 

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B: That venomous villain! That Satanist! That whore-monger - I believe that expression is in the Book of Ruth - sales of 3000 for the latest tales of the Spanish dog-eater!!  “Works” at £2. 2. 0 a pop -  3,500 sales!! (chews quill in frustration) - I will supersede all warblers here below!!

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S works furiously on “A Vision of Judgement” - A year passes

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S(to Wordsworth): 'Tis done - my showstopper - nay - my lacerating preface - will shame into silence the degenerates of our modern age

WW: mmm - it looks very similar to something I have written - perhaps twelve years ago - although Bob (S winces) - I would have taken greater pains to explain my Explanation.

S: Oh shut up! (rings bell for maid)

M: Yes your Laureateship

S: Take this without delay to Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, Paternoster Row, London - and tell them to bind it in Buff and Blue

M: Yes your Laureateship

S(breathes with great satisfaction): My dear Wordsworth, I feel at ease - I will no more be troubled by that morally incontinent raccoon across the water

WW: I can only hope you haven't overstrained yourself so - and tumble downward like the flying fish - gasping on deck, because you soar too high

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S sinks into the smugness of his chair - and muses on a peaceful, unchallenged career dedicated to the moral purity of ten-syllable lines of rhythmic romance

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END 

Part 2 of 3