I bear no hate to a living thing,
But I love my country beyond the king.
RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER: (Accompanied by two blackmasked assistants, advances with gladstone bag which he opens.) Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased by Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg. Knife with which Voisin dismembered the wife of a compatriot and hid remains in a sheet in the cellar, the unfortunate female’s throat being cut from ear to ear. Phial containing arsenic retrieved from body of Miss Barron which sent Seddon to the gallows.
(He jerks the rope. The assistants leap at the victim’s legs and drag him downward, grunting: the croppy boy’s tongue protrudes violently.)
THE CROPPY BOY:
Horhot ho hray hor hother’s hest.
(He gives up the ghost. A violent erection of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his deathclothes on to the cobblestones. Mrs Bellingham, Mrs Yelverton Barry and the Honourable Mrs Mervyn Talboys rush forward with their handkerchiefs to sop it up.)
RUMBOLD: I’m near it myself. (He undoes the noose.) Rope which hanged the awful rebel. Ten shillings a time. As applied to Her Royal Highness. (He plunges his head into the gaping belly of the hanged and draws out his head again clotted with coiled and smoking entrails.) My painful duty has now been done. God save the king!
EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (Dances slowly, solemnly, rattling his bucket, and sings with soft contentment.)
On coronation day, on coronation day,
O, won’t we have a merry time,
Drinking whisky, beer and wine!
PRIVATE CARR: Here. What are you saying about my king?