Through the years they mangled those lines! How cold to hear them backstage! How cold to hear them now, here, in my room, echoing from varnished beams, off-stage in my oriel of yesterday.
But I should not have gotten sick: I should have stayed in London to the end, fought the Puritans, fought the King, the tax collectors, the players of the shrew’s men!
Pain shut me out: the body must have its moments of solace—the mind its soothsayer!
I would give you violets...but they are planted around a gravestone.
I was a young man when I wrote those lines; like Ophelia I ride on bawdy repetitions, error on error.
The table of my memory is dusted with crumbs.
Off-stage, the wind gushes; on-stage, there’s a frenzied pitch of “no!”
Chorus, players!
This love, this royalty by jackanapes brought to earth, the stage to my back: what can a man affirm in such a position: flight? I speak to her and she puts her fingers on my lips and holds her beauty like a whip over me. The curtain came down quickly: fie, the curtain often comes down swiftly, manipulated by fury, a last sound snapped out, muffling resolution, covering courage...