Characters: - Yorick (Living) – A jester, lively yet reflective. - Yorick’s Skull (Dead) – A remnant of the past, speaking only through the living Yorick’s imagination.
Setting: A dimly lit stage. A stool at center, upon which rests an old skull. A fool’s cap drapes over it, its bells still. Yorick, dressed in motley, enters, holding a torch.
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Scene
(Yorick circles the stool, eyeing the skull with the curiosity of one greeting an old friend. He crouches, peers into its hollow sockets, then straightens, arms akimbo.)
YORICK (Living): So there you sit, old bone of mine— What’s left of all my jests and japes. I wore your face; I filled your flesh, And now you grin, unburdened, bare.
(He taps the skull gently.)
YORICK (Living): Did you laugh last, I wonder? Or was the joke on us?
(A beat, as if waiting for the skull to reply.)
YORICK (as Skull, mimicking a hollow voice): The joke, dear fool, was always thus: You lived it, yet you never knew If jest was mask, or mask was you.
YORICK (Living): Ah! But a jest is light, a fleeting thing— A candle's flicker, a feather’s flight!
YORICK (as Skull): A candle burns, a feather falls. What’s light is lost. What’s lost is all.
YORICK (Living) (laughing nervously): Too grim! Too grave! A jester’s jest is meant to save, To lift, to lilt, to mock, to tease!
(He spins on his heel, arms wide, inviting laughter from an absent court.)
YORICK (as Skull): And who, dear fool, did you ever save?
(Yorick halts, the question hanging.)
YORICK (Living) (quietly): A prince… once. A child who feared the dark. A widow who forgot her grief.
(He touches the skull, as if testing its weight in his hand.)
YORICK (as Skull): And did they stay saved? Did laughter last?
YORICK (Living) (softly smiling): No jest lasts forever. But neither does sorrow.
YORICK (as Skull): Then where lies the jest?
YORICK (Living) (thoughtfully): Everywhere. In the falling and the flying, In the candle that burns and the night that follows. We jest because we die. We die—but still, we jest.
(He places the skull back on the stool, adjusting the fool’s cap atop it.)
YORICK (Living) (grinning): The punchline, old friend, is always the same— Yet still, we laugh.
(He bows, as if concluding a performance. A silence follows. Then—)
YORICK (as Skull, after a pause): Or perhaps… the jest is that we laugh at all.
(Yorick’s smile fades—not in sorrow, but in wonder. He lets out a small chuckle, then a bigger one, until he’s laughing—not in joy, not in despair, but simply because it is the only thing left to do. The skull sits in silence, grinning its eternal grin. A single bell on the fool’s cap gives a faint chime as the lights fade.)
Blackout.
This entry was posted on Monday, March 30th, 1925 at 7:01 pm and is filed under plays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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