Luvvies' labours lost
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Your support makes all the difference.In a newly found manuscript of a lost Shakespeare play "Adrian IV Part II", the royal jester Adrian the Noble has shunned old Sir Jack Barbican in London. The princely jester has gone to the provinces with his strolling players, the RSC. At a cocktail party, Barbican is talking with Fluellen, the Welsh captain.
Fluellen: How now, Barbican? Where be the royal company? Is fleeting winter so soon over, that they are gone to Wales and Scotland with the Noble prince Adrian?
Barbican: Such news, my lord, as grieves me to report. Adrian spake vilely thus: "Despising the foul-smelling city, behold I turn my back: there is a world elsewhere." Ingrate fox! Why, but last year did I him tender full thrice 3 million ducats to sojourn here among the counting houses.
Flu: But whither is this Adrian fled?
Barb: He is gone to play, for all the summers' days, before rough fellows that do garb themselves in woad and furs in places vile of tongue and short of Tapas Bars, as Bede's Ford, Exe Tor, Milton at the Keynes, Hudder's Field, John O'Groats, Aber Gavenny and sweet Corby.
Flu: But, Sir Jack, why hath the king thus settled on these haystack summers?
Barb: He asked me bitterly, "Why have you suffered me to be imprisoned, fast in the foul metropolis?" 'Twas his scurvy Welsh and Scots courtiers that did urge him, "Taste your legs, sir: put them to motion". But what is he to do in North Argyll?
Flu: What said you then unto the Noble One?
Barb: At first I railed, "By cock and pie, you shall not away tonight." Then did I plead: "Nay, my good lord; banish Drury Lane, banish the Garrick, banish even Stratford her sweet self, but for brave Jack Barbican, kind Jack Barbican, true Jack Barbican, valiant Jack Barbican and therefore more valiant, being, as he is, old Jack Barbican, banish not him thy Adrian's company". Yet now I see this royal pretender is no more the city's friend.
Flu: Their plays, I do remember, pleased not the million but were caviare to the luvvies.
Barb: Ah, touch me not with Noble angst ... What knows the rabble of Rother Ham of such keen delights? Better for them the Streets of Coronation or the Blinded Date. I shall my sorrows quench with sack and here pour out my aching heart. What now shall fill these wasted days?
The phone rings. Fluellen answers.
Flu: It is, my lord, the knight Lloyd Webber. A word he doth this instant crave.
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