Such is Life: A Play in Five Acts

by Frank Wedekind

I am your dream! Your dæmon!
Awake to higher efforts from my ban,
I call on you to rise above yourself!

THE KING.

(Rises and runs anxiously up and down.)

And if Methuselah I should outlive
That frightful error I shall ne'er forget!
Under the cover of the shamed night
The torch flares out: Blazing in wild array,
Consuming flames run through the heated limbs;
Vice sings its victory; lecherous hell
Is jubilant; the rising flood of crime
O'erflows its banks; and deeds the gray-haired wastrel,
Tortured by flames of lust, could not achieve,
Stagger in kinship to the drunken thought!
——Oh, take my praise, thou golden light of day!

ALMA.

(To the public.)

With this I make an ending to our play.
Your pardon, if its setting troubled you.
My sole desire was merely to exploit
That ancient, well-liked acrobatic trick (gesture)
By which a man climbs up on his own head.

KING PIETRO.

(To the King.) And you call that a farce, my dear friend?! See, you have brought the tears to my eyes!

THE KING.