by Tom Stoppard
MESSENGER: Flummoxed git! [*Gracious lord!]
MACBETH: Docket! [*Speak!]
MESSENGER: Cenotaph pay Birnam fry prevailing
cakehops voluntary!
[*As I did stand my watch upon the hill
I looked toward Birnam and anon methought
The wood began to move.]
MACBETH: Quinces icepacks! [*Liar and slave!]
(MESSENGER retreats.)
(Throughout the above, EASY is calling for, and receiving, in the right order, four planks, three slabs, five blocks and nine cubes; unwittingly using the English words.
Meanwhile, MACDUFF has confronted MACBETH.)
MACDUFF: Spiral, tricycle, spiral! [*Turn, hellhound, turn!]
MACBETH: Rafters Birnam cakehops hobble Dunsinane,
fry counterpane nit crossly window-framed,
fancifully oblong! Sundry cobbles
rattling up so chamberlain. Frantic, Macduff!
Fry butter ban loss underlay—November glove!
[*Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet will I try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff;
and damned be him that first cries ‘Hold
enough!’]
INSPECTOR: (Interrupts.) All right! That’s it!
(The INSPECTOR mounts the now completed platform.)
INSPECTOR: Thank you. Thank you! Thank you! Scabs!
Stinking slobs—crooks. You’re nicked, Jock.
Punks make me puke. Kick back, I’ll break necks,
smack chops, put yobs in padlocks and fix facts.
Clamp down on poncy gits like a ton of bricks.
(CAHOOT applauds.)
CAHOOT: Gymshoes. Marmalade. Yob?
(General applause.)
EASY: Yobbo, git.
INSPECTOR: Boris! Maurice!
(Two POLICEMEN enter and stand to receive slabs thrown to them from the doorway.)
MACDUFF: Spiral, tricycle, spiral!
INSPECTOR: Slab!
(Grey slabs are now thrown in and caught by BORIS and
MAURICE who build a wall across the proscenium opening as
MACBETH and MACDUFF fight and MACBETH is slain. ’Phone
rings. EASY picks it up.)
EASY: Oh, useless gettie!
(While EASY speaks into the ’phone, the INSPECTOR directs the
building of the wall with the help of BORIS and MAURICE, the
policemen; and MALCOLM mounts the platform, taking the
crown off the dead MACBETH, and finally placing it on his own
head.)
MALCOLM: Nit laughable a cretin awful pig.
EASY: Cretinous fascist pig like one o’clock. Slab?
MALCOLM: Prefer availing avaricious moorhens et factotum after.
EASY: Rozzers. Gendarmes—filth!
MALCOLM: Centre roundabout if partly lawnmowers rosebush.
EASY: Blockhead. Brick as too planks. Slab.
MALCOLM: Gracious laxative. [*Dead butcher.]
EASY: Fishes bastard. Kick his backside so help me Dogg. See if I
don’t. Normalization.
MALCOLM: Vivay hysterical nose poultice.
EASY: Double double toil and trouble.
MALCOLM: Alabaster ominous nifty, blanket noon
Howl cinder trellis pistols owl by Scone.
[*So, thanks to all at once and to each one,
Whom we invite to see us crowned at Scone.]
(Fanfare)
EASY: (Over fanfare.) Double double. Double double toil and
trouble. No. Shakespeare.
(Silence)
Well, it’s been a funny sort of week. But I should be back by Tuesday.