Fragment from The Passing of Flatus (1)

Long lost Elizabethan drama, attributed to Shakespeare


Act one. Scene one. A field.



TREMENS:
He is most foul. Behind our noxious general
Have I in battle marched, in discipline
Unmatched, in loyalty uncompromised;
Most honored of our Roman soldiery;
Yet liefer would I die upon a sword hilt
Than stand as his lieutenant in Valhalla.



SLAPPY:
We like two paddles wielded by an oarsmen
In sweet concordance jointly wend one way.
Here in these shadows let us like two thieves
Concur in means by which to dispossess
Our legion of this windy general.
Tremens, we must incite some mutiny,
And be it lawless and unmilitant:
Some crafty and satanic subterfuge
Wherewith to weaken Flatus and to change
Him from his armor to the less applauded
Costume of a rude civilian.
Let's have a blacksmith's apron round his paunch,
Or sullied vestment of a scullery knave.
He is too noisome and malodorous
To don the raiment of a general.



TREMENS:
Your words have weight to make the burden light
That like a stone hast lain upon my heart
Since first these machinations of revolt
Were whispered here between thy lips and mine.
Slappy, let none have wisdom of our words
Lest our ignoble and unkind designs
Bring disarray or disrepute to Rome.
For we are Rome. Our lips and tongues are Rome;
Our hearts flush with the civil blood of Rome;
Our swords are honed upon the plinths of Rome.
Flatus, albeit of prolific scents,
Of sickly smells and sour obnoxious stinks,
I say, this fuming, this effusive Flatus,
Is also Rome; his bairns, his wife, are Rome.
Therefore let caution join us. We are Roman...



SLAPPY:
Tremens, the horse you beat unmercifully
Now runs upon the sunny plains of Heaven.
Drive not thy boot against the dormant flesh
That, lifeless, draws the fly into the ditch.
Caution shall be our sole conspirator.
Upon this point we stand in such accord
As needs no poetry to give it strength.
In darkness, like two devils in Abaddon,
We whisper, making shadows lisp demonic.
The night hath sympathy, and bringeth soft winds
To mute our sibilant, serpentine connivings. (Rubs hands together)



1999