by Bob Mayberry
Two women stand on stage, complaining to the audience about the males who have just exited.
LUCINDA: Theatre is the playground of boys. Little boys, pretending they’re big men. Why, half the male roles in this play are performed by women. You know it, tell them.
DOROTEA: It’s true, there are females playing the roles of—
LUCINDA: But will the boys who make decisions let one woman have a goddamn canopy for her big speech? Not a chance. Decisions around here are made by dead white males. That scene, with the mad man and the sword fight, that was written by some Spanish writer.
DOROTEA : Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra de la Alcala de Henares, en Toledo, España!
LUCINDA: Right, that guy. How’d you know?
DOROTEA: I’m also the publicist.
LUCINDA: (To audience) See what I mean? We not only take their roles, we have to do their jobs for them too. But who makes the decisions? Guys like that … what was his name?
DOROTEA: Miguel de Cer—
LUCINDA: That guy. A man, of course, and very very dead. Shakespeare stole that guy’s scene for the stage. Stole it! The great Shakespeare! Apparently he stole most of his scenes. And characters too. Why I heard—
Enter Shakey with huge phallic pen.
SHAKEY: Wait a minute there, little lady. You just can’t stand up here and malign the most famous writer in all of English.
LUCINDA: Are you ‘spozed to be …
SHAKEY : The pen is mightier than the sword!
LUCINDA: (To Dorotea) That’s Shakespeare?
DOROTEA: I guess so.
Enter Don Quixote, with a huge lance-like sword.
QUIXOTE : A knight lives or dies by his sword, not some ink-dripping pen!
SHAKEY : Care to prove that?
LUCINDA: Wait, wait, if he’s … then you must be … Cervantes?
QUIXOTE : No, no, señorita, rather … That Inglorious Gentleman Himself, Don Quixote de la Mancha, a sus ordenes.
SHAKEY : Nix with the foreign jargon, Windmill Tilter. This is an English speaking play.
QUIXOTE : Only because you stole it, Master Plagiarist.
SHAKEY : My plays are quoted more often than the Bible. Yours are utterly forgotten.
QUIXOTE: You confuse me with my creator, that master craftsman of narrative, inventor of the first modern novel and heart and soul of the Spanish Golden Age, el señor Miguel de Cervantes.
SHAKEY: Oh, so you are no more than a figment of Cervantes’ imagination!
QUIXOTE: Just as the human race is but a figment of God’s.
SHAKEY: I hesitate to compare my ephemeral characters to God’s handiwork.
QUIXOTE: Perhaps because they are not yours.
SHAKEY: What!?!
QUIXOTE : Your plays are littered with your many thefts.
SHAKEY : I borrow only to reinvent.
QUIXOTE : You “borrow” because you cannot invent.
SHAKEY : My sources are remembered because I improved them.
QUIXOTE : You stole them!
SHAKEY: But Cervantes’ prosaic blather is hardly worth the effort to steal.
QUIXOTE: Prosaic?!? His prose ushered in the Golden Age of Spanish Literature.
SHAKEY : His novel ushered in the era of books too fat to carry …
QUIXOTE : Blasphemer!
SHAKEY : … too wordy to read …
QUIXOTE : Ignoramus!
SHAKEY : … too boring to stay awake to the end of.
QUIXOTE : En garde! You sack of clichés.
SHAKEY : You call that an insult? Heap them upon me, oh Man of la Mancha, and I’ll bury your corpusculent corpse beneath them.
QUIXOTE: Draw, infidel!
LUCINDA: Wait!
SHAKEY : Don’t interrupt now, little lady, this is our dueling scene.
QUIXOTE : En garde, I say!
LUCINDA: There is no dueling scene.
SHAKEY : No dueling scene?
QUIXOTE: No dueling scene?
LUCINDA: Cervantes didn’t write one.
QUIXOTE : He didn’t?
LUCINDA: You didn’t.
QUIXOTE : I’m not Cervantes, I’m that most ingenuous gentleman Don —
SHAKEY : Wait! A man interrupts the wedding of the woman he loves when he discovers his best friend has betrayed him and courted her for his own, right?
LUCINDA: That’s the scene, yes.
SHAKEY : It begs for a duel to finish it off. Am I right?
QUIXOTE : Draw, you upstart crow!
SHAKEY: Upstart … (Laughs) You stole that one yourself, didn’t you?
LUCINDA: No dueling scene, boys.
QUIXOTE : I’m sure there was a dueling scene. We rehearsed a dueling scene. Didn’t we rehearse a dueling scene?
SHAKEY : If we had, good knight, I would have sliced you into a zillion pieces.
QUIXOTE : A zillion? You couldn’t slice a cucumber.
LUCINDA: (To Shakey) You wrote a dueling scene.
SHAKEY : Say what?
LUCINDA: You’re the one who wrote the dueling scene.
SHAKEY : I did? Ah, yes, I did. Of course I did. Therefore, en garde!
LUCINDA: But there is no dueling scene.
SHAKEY : You just said—
LUCINDA: In Cervantes’ novel. You added it for your play.
SHAKEY : Stroke of genius, if I do say so myself. The stage requires action, drama, conflict and …dueling scenes! En garde, you miserable excuse for a dramatist!
QUIXOTE : Don’t insult me with your literary titles. I am a knight of the —
Dorotea bashes Shakey’s oversized pen.
SHAKEY : What’d you do that for?
DOROTEA: No dueling scene, got it?
SHAKEY : You broke it.
DOROTEA: Dented it.
SHAKEY : What are we gonna do tomorrow night, smarty pants? Mime?
LUCINDA: Duct tape.
QUIXOTE : What?
LUCINDA: Duct tape. It’ll be fine.
SHAKEY : It’ll look … I don’t know …
QUIXOTE : … broken.
LUCINDA: It’s theatre.
SHAKEY : Cheap theatre.
LUCINDA: Use your imagination.
SHAKEY : Easy for me to do, but … (Indicating the audience) what about them?
LUCINDA: What about ‘em?
SHAKEY : They can’t possibly follow this story unless we act it out with believable, recognizable, and real swords!
LUCINDA: We don’t have believable, recognizable, real characters, so why should the swords suddenly be so real?
SHAKEY : What did you say? What’d she say?
QUIXOTE : Ignore her. Grab your weapon, you plot-pilfering, character-cribbing, story-stealing fake!
SHAKEY : Mad man!
QUIXOTE: Thief!
SHAKEY: Two-bit hack!
QUIXOTE : Plagiarist!
SHAKEY : Figmentation!
QUIXOTE : PLAYWRIGHT!
SHAKEY : Oooh, I am slain.
Shakey falls to the stage.
LUCINDA: I quit. (Exiting) I will not work with amateurs!
DOROTEA: (To audience) What a piece of work are men! The beauty of the world? The paragon of animals? Why they appear to me to be no better than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. Man pleases me not.
Looks upstage where Lucinda exited.
Woman, now, that’s another story altogether, a horse of a different color, a whole new ball of wax, if you catch my drift. I’d like to get tied up in her twine any old time. But none of that … until act two.
Dorotea exits.
