A one-minute absurdist play featuring Lenny Bruce and Yorick in a cosmic diner beyond time.
[Setting: A red-vinyl booth in “The Afterlife Café.” Neon sign flickers above: “ALL YOU CAN STAND TO EAT.” A plate piled high with Rocky Mountain oysters sits between them.] YORICK (leaning back, skull under one arm) Though I have no tongue, I’ve tasted eternity. You think I fear a plate of bovine baubles? LENNY BRUCE You don’t taste anything, bone-boy. You remember flavor like a Catholic remembers sin. Me? I digest the moment. YORICK Ah, but digestion is but the soul’s lament— for what it couldn't keep. LENNY You ever bomb at the Hungry i with a gallbladder full of bull-nuts? That’s transcendence, pal. YORICK I once out-ate Falstaff at a Tudor wake. He wept and declared me kin. LENNY You got no stomach! You’re a prop from a play with daddy issues! YORICK You’re a prophet with indigestion! [They each grab an oyster and eat in unison. Silence. Then—] LENNY How many’s that? YORICK I've lost count. And also… my dignity. LENNY I lost that in '62. Keep chewing. [Lights dim. The neon flickers once more: “ALL YOU CAN STAND TO EAT.”]
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.)
(A dimly lit room, sparse and unremarkable. A single chair, a table, and atop the table, a grinning skull. PRUFROCK sits stiffly in the chair, hands clasped, gaze distant. YORICK, ever mirthful, lounges atop the table, his voice carrying the weightless ease of someone long past the burden of choice.)
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YORICK (brightly) Well met, sir! You sit as though awaiting a verdict. Shall we dare disturb the universe?
PRUFROCK (without turning, voice flat) And you—are you my judge?
YORICK (laughing) Me? A judge? No, sir, merely a fool, and fools do not judge. We mock, we prod, we dance along the edge of consequence, but we do not judge. That is left to sterner men.
PRUFROCK (scoffing, shifting in his seat) And what would you call this? You, rattling in your grave, japing at a man who has yet to step into his?
YORICK (grinning wider, if such a thing were possible) Ah, but you say “yet” as if time has not already laid his claim. You sit, you measure, you hesitate. You are a man who has buried himself standing.
PRUFROCK (dryly, adjusting his cuff) I am J. Alfred Prufrock. A man of measured steps, polite smiles, and well-timed coughs. I have walked the dim-lit streets, whispered cautious words at cautious parties, and seen my own life dissected by idle voices.
YORICK (mocking, tilting his head) A man of half-spoken thoughts and quarter-lived moments! A man who watches the tide roll in and calls it fate.
PRUFROCK (with quiet disdain) They will say: “His hair is thinning.” They will say: “His arms and legs are thin.”
YORICK (chuckling, shaking his head) And yet, no one looks upon me and says, “What a well-shaped skull!” The world prattles, my friend, but dust is deaf.
PRUFROCK (leaning forward slightly, eyes narrowing) And what would you have me do? Swagger like a prince? Spit riddles like a jester? No. I am no Hamlet, nor do I wish to be.
YORICK (mock gasping, hand to his nonexistent heart) No Hamlet! No great soliloquy! Well then, Polonius perhaps? Fussy, full of proverbs, dying behind the curtain of his own caution?
PRUFROCK (sharp, with an edge he rarely allows himself) And what of you? A fool who thought himself beloved, only to be tossed into a grave without so much as a sigh. You were passed from hand to hand, and the prince who once clambered upon your shoulders held you aloft only to muse upon his own mortality. You—who made kings laugh—became nothing more than a memento mori.
YORICK (laughing, unbothered, almost delighted) Oh, and what a fine thing to be! At least I was held. At least I was seen! What are you, Prufrock, but a whisper in the corner of a room where no one listens?
(A silence. PRUFROCK exhales, sinking back into his chair. The sound of distant waves, curling and retreating.)
PRUFROCK (softly, almost to himself) I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.
YORICK (leaning in, voice honeyed with mischief) Then why not sing first? Roll your trousers, eat the peach, steal a kiss— or do you mean to drown without a sound?
PRUFROCK (a bitter chuckle, shaking his head) What foolishness. I am no poet. I am no prince. I am a man who hesitated—
YORICK (grinning, triumphant) And there’s the tragedy.
(A pause. The waves swell, louder now. The room seems smaller, the chair heavier.)
PRUFROCK (almost a whisper) Till human voices wake us…
YORICK (softly, as if it were the punchline to the grandest joke of all time) And we drown.
(Lights fade. The waves linger for a moment longer, then silence.)
