(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.)
