The Performance-a short story by Charles Roberts

 

             The Performance. 

 A short story by Charles Roberts

 

“How did tonight’s performance go?  Was it a good?  Did the audience enjoy it?  Did you get a standing ovation?”

          “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages. At first the infant, mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.  And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to school. And then the lover, sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, seeking the bubble reputation
even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, in fair round belly with good capon lin'd, with eyes severe, and beard of formal cut, full of wise saws and modern instances; and so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon, with spectacles on nose and pouch on side, his youthful hose well sav'd, a world too wide for his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
turning again toward childish treble, pipes and whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, that ends this strange eventful history, is second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”

“My god! Are you at it again?  I thought that you hated Shakespeare?”

“Was that Shakespeare?”

“Bloody hell!  You quote the bleeding Bard and don’t even know it.”

“I have to learn my lines”

“But tonight was your last night.  You can forget your lines and prepare yourself for the next play.”

“I have to keep my mind agile.  To try to remember lines I have to……”

“You, dear, since you joined that drama group, have become a pain in the arse.”

“Meaning?”

“All you do is learn your lines.  ‘Can’t go to the club tonight, I have to learn my lines.  Can’t go to your parents this weekend I have a rehearsal.”

“Well I do have to be word perfect you know?”

“The way you’re acting anyone would think that you’re that Oliver fellow.”

“Do you mean Olivier.”

“That’s what I said Lawrence Oliver.”

“Sir Lawrence Olivier is not some, so called celebrity chef.  He is, was a world famous actor.  Although I’m sure that he could have produced a perfect omelette, whereas I doubt very much if Jamie Oliver could perform Henry the fifth with the same power and professionalism of Sir Lawrence.  How come you know so much about the Bard anyway?”

“Because my dear, we were forced to study the boring bastard at school.  A whole two years of nothing but William bloody Shakespeare.  I swore that when I left school I would never read, look at or listen to another word from that man, then you join a theatre group and come home spouting the rubbish he wrote, and you’re not even doing a Shakespeare play.”

“Well I found a book on the shelf in the living room and started to read it.”

“Oh my god!  You found my complete works of William Shakespeare?”

“Is it your book?”

“I thought that I’d thrown it out.”

“Is it?  Is it your book?”

“Yes!  It is my bloody book.”

“I thought that you hated Shakespeare?”

“I do!  They gave me that book at school when I came top of the bloody class in English literature.  Is that where you’ve picked all these sayings up from?”

“What sayings?”

“Like the one you quoted just before we had sex on Saturday night.”

“Don’t remember!”

“Lier!  You said, just before you entered me.  ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; or close the wall up with our English dead.  In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility; but when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinues, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage; then lend the eye a terrible aspect; let pry through the portage of the head like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it as fearfully as doth a galled rock o’erhang and jutty his confounded base, swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.’”

“That’s Shakespeare is it?  It just came into my head.”

“And last night, after you’d given me that blow job…..”

“Must you be so crude?”

“After you’d given me that blow job, you sat at my side with my limp prick in your hand, looking down at it, then suddenly you spouted. ‘Alas, poor  Yorick! I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times. And now how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kiss'd I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning?’”

“I’m going to ignore that. The thing is darling!  And the reason I am late, is that after the show we all went to the pub across the street.  I was nervous at going in, being the last one to arrive…”

“That would be a novelty for you, you’re usually the first.  Leaving me to finish myself, I’m sure the muscles on my right arm are more developed than the left.”

“Well I reached the door and….  Well…. It was all so surreal….  As soon as they saw me.  ‘The eyes and the faces all turned themselves towards me, and guiding myself by them, as by a magical thread, I stepped into the room.’”

With thanks to William Shakespeare and Sylvia Plath.