Triptych and Iphigenia Read Online Free PDF Page A

speaking to Daddy or me.
    WIFE    You’re getting too big for your britches … you need your butt kicked.
    Mistress, swashing male attire as Rosalind, is by her mirror.
    MISTRESS    He said we were swans, because swans mate for life. (
her hands on her waist
) When I tell him … will I lose him … Will it send him running … It couldn’t, it can’t. (
pause
) One word he said that keeps haunting me—
entrapment
. He dreaded entrapment.
    STAGE MANAGER    (v.o.) As You Like It company: Please take your places for the top of the show. Places, please, for the top of the show.
    Mistress goes toward stairs.
    Wife walks past Daughter with scorn.
    DAUGHTER    Off to get sloshed again?
    WIFE    (
oversweet smile
) Noo.
    Wife goes out.
    Daughter looks after her, wrinkles her nose in mockery, then looks puzzled, goes out.
    S CENE F OURTEEN
    Mistress is onstage as Rosalind, relishing her role.
    MISTRESS    (
as Rosalind, playful
) And in this manner … He was to imagine me his love, his mistress; and I set him every day to woo me.
    Wife comes down the auditorium aisle, shouting.
    WIFE    Whore … English whore.
    Mistress continues as if she has not heard it.
    MISTRESS    (
as Rosalind
) At which time would I, being but a moonish youth, grieve.
    WIFE    Grieve and give him up … He’s mine, mine.
    MISTRESS    (
as Rosalind, her voice getting rapider
) … Be effeminate, changeable, longing and liking, proud, fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles.
    WIFE    … full of treachery and deceit (
to audience
). Be not misled by these dulcet tones … she strews in her path desolation.
    VOICES    Sssh … sssh. … sssh … sssh.
    WIFE    We were a happy close-knit family until this well-bred whore entered our lives, broke us up … ruined us.
    MISTRESS    (
as Rosalind
) For every passion something … something.
    WIFE    (
cutting in
) Yes lady, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, every second of happiness you have stolen from me.
    MISTRESS    (
as Rosalind, misses a line
) … would now like him, now loathe him, then entertain him, their forswear him, now weep for him, then spit at him.
    Wife has climbed onto the stage.
    Mistress endeavors to keep within her role.
    MISTRESS    (
as Rosalind, faltering
) That I drave my suitor from his, from his mad humor of …
    Daughter comes on stage and drags her Mother off.
    DAUGHTER    You’re so goddam dumb … so fucking stupid.
    MISTRESS    (
as Rosalind
) … his mad humor of love to a living humor of madness … that I, that I drove my suitor from his mad humor of love to a living humor of that I, that I … that I …
    She stops suddenly.
    Her face freezes.
    Lights go dark.
    Lights come up on, wife in living room.
    S CENE F IFTEEN
    The next day.
    Light up on Daughter reading a newspaper.
    DAUGHTER    “Disturbance in theater brings giggles.”
    Wife takes the paper and tears it methodically and violently.
    Conversation over her action.
    DAUGHTER    He’ll know.
    WIFE    You can’t tell him.
    DAUGHTER    She’ll tell him.
    WIFE    She won’t.
    DAUGHTER    Why did you do it? Why did you make such an ass of yourself?
    WIFE    I’ll do anything.
    Daughter goes to her own area, pulls up her skirt, tries on saucy garters, singing “It’s a Man’s World.”
    DAUGHTER    I slept over at Judy’s house and we would all lie on her big bed and watch TV—Nancy, Venus, Betsy, and Kim, and me. That’s how I met Nathan … He was really cute, except for his armpits. Judy’s parents were so rich that they were never in any one place for more than twenty-four hours. Nathan would take turns sitting between the girls in his boxer shorts, said it was good for us to