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John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

Greetings NYCPlaywrights

 


Greetings NYCPlaywrights

*** FREE THEATER ONLINE ***

The 24 Hour Plays - Viral Monologues
New monologues written, rehearsed and recorded in 24 hours by stars of stage and screen! Round 1 through 24 now available for viewing.

*** PRIMARY STAGES ***

The Storytelling of Marginalized People & The Business of Theater Classes at Primary Stages ESPA! 

Learn the history of the art of marginalized populations to then push the boundaries of traditional theater and reimagine what the future can be in The Storytelling of Marginalized People Workshop with Chesney Snow (Boxman in In Transit on Broadway) or learn about theater as a business in order to produce your own work with John Gould Rubin (Director, Turn Me Loose Off-Broadway). Classes begin in March. 
Flexible, artist-friendly payment plans available. 

*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***

The 2021 Femme Fatale Festival will be virtual.

1. All playwrights must identify as female.
2. Script can be no longer than 60 minutes in total.
3. Script can have limited previous productions.
4. Submission limited to 1 play per playwright

***
Stonecoast Review accept Fictions, Pop Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, Poetry, Dramatic Works, Experimental, and Visual Art. We can’t wait to see your best pieces! Stonecoast Review offers feedback on 10% of declined submissions. Contributors will receive a complimentary copy of the issue in which their work appears.

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The Center at West Park Residencies
In Fall 2021, six individual artists or companies will be offered residencies at CWP to produce and perform original works of theater, dance, music, and interdisciplinary performance as part of THE INTERRUPTION: A Curated Performance Series. Each Residency will culminate in a weekend of three ticketed public performances of an evening-length work at CWP. Fall 2021 Residencies are available between August 30 and December 19, 2021.

*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***


*** SPRING AWAKENING ***

FRÜHLINGS ERWACHEN: EINE KINDERTRAGÖDIE // Spring Awakening: A Children’s Tragedy remained unperformed for 15 years following its 1891 publication. The play was banned due to its portrayal of controversial content (sex, masturbation, rape, abuse, abortion, homosexuality, suicide). Max Reinhardt directed the first production, which premiered at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin on November 20th, 1906. Subsequent productions have encountered varying critical and popular reception. Certainly the most successful iteration of Spring Awakening to date is Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik’s musical adaptation.

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Frühlings Erwachen

Script in the original German

Script in English translation

A PROEM FOR PRUDES

That it is a fatal error to bring up children, either boys or girls, in ignorance of their sexual nature is the thesis of Frank Wedekind's drama “Frühlings Erwachen.” From its title one might suppose it a peaceful little idyl of the youth of the year. No idea a could be more mistaken. It is a tragedy of frightful import, and its action is concerned with the development of natural instincts in the adolescent of both sexes.

The playwright has attacked his theme with European frankness; but of plot, in the usual acceptance of the term, there is little. Instead of the coherent drama of conventional type, Wedekind has given us a series of loosely connected scenes illuminative of character—scenes which surely have profound significance for all occupied in the training of the young. He sets before us a group of school children, lads and lassies just past the age of puberty, and shows logically that death and degradation may be their lot as the outcome of parental reticence. They are not vicious children, but little ones such as we meet every day, imaginative beings living in a world of youthful ideals and speculating about the mysteries which surround them. Wendla, sent to her grave by the abortive administered with the connivance of her affectionate but mistaken mother, is a most lovable creature, while Melchior, the father of her unborn [Pg vi] child, is a high type of boy whose downfall is due to a philosophic temperament, which leads him to inquire into the nature of life and to impart his knowledge to others; a temperament which, under proper guidance, would make him a useful, intelligent man. It is Melchior's very excellence of character which proves his undoing. That he should be imprisoned as a moral degenerate only serves to illustrate the stupidity of his parents and teachers. As for the suicide of Moritz, the imaginative youth who kills himself because he has failed in his examinations, that is another crime for which the dramatist makes false educational methods responsible.

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Emma Goldman - The Social Significance of the Modern Drama

Frank Wedekind is perhaps the most daring dramatic spirit in Germany. Coming to the fore much later than Sudermann and Hauptmann, he did not follow in their path, but set out in quest of new truths. More boldly than any other dramatist Frank Wedekind has laid bare the shams of morality in reference to sex, especially attacking the ignorance surrounding the sex life of the child and its resultant tragedies.

Wedekind became widely known through his great drama “The Awakening of Spring,” which he called a tragedy of childhood, dedicating the work to parents and teachers. Verily an appropriate dedication, because parents and teachers are, in relation to the child’s needs, the most ignorant and mentally indolent class. Needless to say, this element entirely failed to grasp the social significance of Wedekind’s work. On the contrary, they saw in it an invasion of their tradi. tional authority and an outrage on the sacred rights of parenthood.

The critics also could see naught in Wedekind, except a base, perverted, almost diabolic nature bereft of all finer feeling. But professional critics seldom see below the surface; else they would discover beneath the grin and satire of Frank Wedekind a sensitive soul, deeply stirred by the heart — rending tragedies about him. Stirred and grieved especially by the misery and torture of the child, — the helpless victim unable to explain the forces germinating in its nature, often crushed and destroyed by mock modesty, sham decencies, and the complacent morality that greet its blind gropings.

Never was a more powerful indictment hurled against society, which out of sheer hypocrisy and cowardice persists that boys and girls must grow up in ignorance of their sex functions, that they must be sacrificed on the altar of stupidity and convention which taboo the enlightenment of the child in questions of such elemental importance to health and well-being.

The most criminal phase of the indictment, however, is that it is generally the most promising children who are sacrificed to sex ignorance and to the total lack of appreciation on the part of teachers of the latent qualities and tendencies in the child: the one slaying the body and soul, the other paralyzing the function of the brain; and both conspiring to give to the world mental and physical mediocrities.

“The Awakening of Spring” is laid in three acts and fourteen scenes, consisting almost entirely of dialogues among the children. So close is Wedekind to the soul of the child that he succeeds in unveiling before our eyes, with a most gripping touch, its joys and sorrows, its hopes and despair, its struggles and tragedies.

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Moritz Stiefel faces expulsion due to poor marks. When he is caught with an essay titled “Shame and Lust”, he is indeed kicked out – instead of classmate Melchior Gabor, who actually penned it. Gabor was drawing on his experiences with neighbourhood girl Wendla. Then Wendla turns up pregnant. Stiefel descends into despair ... Exploitation between Eros and Thanatos in this “sexual tragedy of youth” based on Frank Wedekind’s play. That piece provided inspiration for many films of the Weimar era that anticipated later teenage movies, including Geschminkte Jugend (Painted Youth, Carl Boese), Zwischen vierzehn und siebzehn (Between Fourteen and Seventeen, E. W. Emo) or Die Halbwüchsigen (The Adolescents, Edmund Heuberger, all 1929). Setting the film in the 1920s provided a chance to explore “modern” youth culture, complete with cigarettes, jazz music, the gramophone, and a goodly bit of alcohol. Richard Oswald, a master of films of manners and young sex beginning in the 1910s, fully explores the temptations of the youthful body, even early childhood flirtatiousness. At the same time, with his target audience in mind, the film laments the bigotry and double standards of the adult world.

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As the tragically misunderstood teens of “Spring Awakening” could tell you, sometimes parents just don’t get it.

“I remember being on the phone with my mom about five years ago,” singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik recalled recently, sitting between a pair of vintage rock organs in a makeshift music studio in Manhattan.

In 2003, Sheik was touring to support what would be his last major-label album, “Daylight,” and Mom had some unsolicited staging suggestions.

“She was like, ‘Duncan, I saw Madonna on the “Today” show this morning, and they showed footage from her concert. She’s got dancers and lights, it’s a whole experience -- I don’t understand, why don’t you have that?’ ”

Sheik patiently pointed out the exponential budgetary chasm between a brand-name pop extravaganza and a solo tour by an artist with a single major chart hit (1996’s “Barely Breathing”). But if he was looking to tout his own theatrical ambitions, he could have pointed to a project he had begun with playwright Steven Sater: a pop/rock musical based on Frank Wedekind’s oft-banned 1891 play “Spring Awakening.”

At the time, of course, Sheik, a theater newbie, didn’t foresee the Broadway phenom that would emerge in 2006 from this unlikely premise -- complete with lights and dancers, Ma -- let alone the eight Tony Awards, the long Broadway run, the nearly assured place in the musical theater canon. A sit-down production in London opens next January, and the show’s U.S. tour docks at the Ahmanson this week.

For his part, playwright and lyricist Sater vividly recalls another momentous phone conversation along the show’s bumpy road.

“I still remember, I was on the phone, walking down West 57th, and Duncan was saying that what he disliked in musical theater was when people talked, then started singing -- it seemed arbitrary,” said Sater recently from L.A., where he spends most of his time. “And I said that the songs in our show could function as interior monologues. That’s where this concept was born.”

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...in 1999, Sheik, a practicing Buddhist, met Steve Sater at a Buddhist organization in New York City. Sater asked Sheik if he would write a song for a play he has been writing; Sheik took the bait, and eventually found himself inundated with lyrics from his new writing partner. “Phantom Moon” turned out to be a full collaboration between the two Sheik composing and Sater providing lyrics.

During the process of creating “Phantom Moon,” Sater gave his partner a copy of “Spring Awakening,” a German play from the late 19th century whose content ” teenage sex, suicide, criticism of the church ” made it controversial on both sides of the Atlantic. This was not merely recommended reading; Sater floated the idea that he and Sheik put songs to the play and produce a musical theater piece. Sheik resisted ” after all, he wrote songs meant to be heard on CDs and radio and in concert, not in the theater. But when Sater proposed doing that their “Spring Awakening” didn’t need to alter the approach they were already taking, Sheik began thinking about theater in a different light.

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In “Spring Awakening,” with a ravishing rock score by the playwright Steven Sater and the singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik, flesh makes only a single, charged appearance. And for all its frankness about the quest for carnal knowledge, it is blessedly free of the sniggering vulgarity that infects too many depictions of sexuality onstage and on screen.

But in exploring the tortured inner lives of a handful of adolescents in 19th-century Germany, this brave new musical, haunting and electrifying by turns, restores the mystery, the thrill and quite a bit of the terror to that shattering transformation that stirs in all our souls sometime around the age of 13, well before most of us have the intellectual apparatus in place to analyze its impact. “Spring Awakening” makes sex strange again, no mean feat in our mechanically prurient age, in which celebrity sex videos are traded on the Internet like baseball cards.

Wait a minute. Nineteenth-century Germany? Was sex even invented back then? Officially no. When the Frank Wedekind play on which the musical is firmly based was self-published by the author in 1891, Freud’s “Interpretation of Dreams” was still almost a decade away, and the subject of adolescent sexuality was so controversial that it was 15 years before the play was produced, even in a heavily censored form.

The smartest decision made by the creators of this adaptation was to retain the original setting in provincial Germany, to resist a facile attempt at updating the material. It wouldn’t have worked. The painful public silence on the subject of sex that warps the characters’ minds and in some cases destroys their lives would make no sense in a contemporary context. But the yawning gap between the force of desire and the possibilities for its release is not exactly an antique phenomenon.

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Spring Awakening 2007 Tony Awards Performance

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The Nightingale and the Rose

 

Oscar Wilde

The Nightingale and the Rose

 

'She said that she would dance with me if I brought her red roses,' cried the young Student; 'but in all my garden there is no red rose.'

From her nest in the holm-oak tree the Nightingale heard him, and she looked out through the leaves, and wondered.

'No red rose in all my garden!' he cried, and his beautiful eyes filled with tears. 'Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched.'

'Here at last is a true lover,' said the Nightingale. 'Night after night have I sung of him, though I knew him not: night after night have I told his story to the stars, and now I see him. His hair is dark as the hyacinth-blossom, and his lips are red as the rose of his desire; but passion has made his lace like pale Ivory, and sorrow has set her seal upon his brow.'

'The Prince gives a ball to-morrow night,' murmured the young Student, 'and my love will be of the company. If I bring her a red rose she will dance with me till dawn. If I bring her a red rose, I shall hold her in my arms, and she will lean her head upon my shoulder, and her hand will be clasped in mine. But there is no red rose in my garden, so I shall sit lonely, and she will pass me by. She will have no heed of me, and my heart will break.'

'Here indeed is the true lover,' said the Nightingale. 'What I sing of he suffers: what is joy to me, to him is pain. Surely Love is a wonderful thing. It is more precious than emeralds, and dearer than fine opals. Pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the market-place. it may not be purchased of the merchants, 'or can it be weighed out in the balance for gold.'

'The musicians will sit in their gallery,' said the young Student, 'and play upon their stringed instruments, and my love will dance to the sound of the harp and the violin. She will dance so lightly that her feet will not touch the floor, and the courtiers in their gay dresses will throng round her. But with me she will not dance, for I have no red rose to give her;' and he flung himself down on the grass, and buried his face in his hands, and wept.

'Why is he weeping?' asked a little Green Lizard, as he ran past him with his tail in the air.

'Why, indeed?' said a Butterfly, who was fluttering about after a sunbeam.

'Why, indeed?' whispered a Daisy to his neighbour, in a soft, low voice.

'He is weeping for a red rose,' said the Nightingale.

'For a red rose!' they cried; 'how very ridiculous!' and the little Lizard, who was something of a cynic, laughed outright.

But the Nightingale understood the secret of the Student's sorrow, and she sat silent in the oak-tree, and thought about the mystery of Love.

Suddenly she spread her brown wings for flight, and soared into the air. She passed through the grove like a shadow, and like a shadow she sailed across the garden.

In the centre of the grass-plot was standing a beautiful Rose-tree, and when she saw it, she flew over to it, and lit upon a spray.

'Give me a red rose,' she cried, 'and I will sing you my sweetest song.'

But the Tree shook its head.

'My roses are white,' it answered; 'as white as the foam of the sea, and whiter than the snow upon the mountain. But go to my brother who grows round the old sun-dial, and perhaps he will give you what you want.'

So the Nightingale flew over to the Rose-tree that was growing round the old sun-dial.

'Give me a red rose,' she cried, 'and I will sing you my sweetest song.'

But the Tree shook its head.

'My roses are yellow,' it answered; 'as yellow as the hair of the mermaiden who sits upon an amber throne, and yellower than the daffodil that blooms in the meadow before the mower comes with his scythe. But go to my brother who grows beneath the Student's window, and perhaps he will give you what you want.'

So the Nightingale flew over to the Rose-tree that was growing beneath the Student's window.

'Give me a red rose,' she cried, 'and I will sing you my sweetest song.'

But the Tree shook its head.

'My roses are red,' it answered, 'as red as the feet of the dove, and redder than the great fans of coral that wave and wave in the ocean-cavern. But the winter has chilled my veins, and the frost has nipped my buds, and the storm has broken my branches, and I shall have no roses at all this year.'

'One red rose is all I want,' cried the Nightingale, 'only one red rose! Is there no way by which I can get it?'

'There is a way,' answered the Tree; 'but it is so terrible that I dare not tell it to you.'

'Tell it to me,' said the Nightingale, 'I am not afraid.'

'If you want a red rose,' said the Tree, 'you must build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with your own heart's-blood. You must sing to me with your breast against a thorn. All night long you must sing to me, and the thorn must pierce your heart, and your life-blood must flow into my veins, and become mine.'

'Death is a great price to pay for a red rose,' cried the Nightingale, 'and Life is very dear to all. It is pleasant to sit in the green wood, and to watch the Sun in his chariot of gold, and the Moon in her chariot of pearl. Sweet is the scent of the hawthorn, and sweet are the bluebells that hide in the valley, and the heather that blows on the hill. Yet Love is better than Life, and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?'

So she spread her brown wings for flight, and soared into the air. She swept over the garden like a shadow, and like a shadow she sailed through the grove.

The young Student was still lying on the grass, where she had left him, and the tears were not yet dry in his beautiful eyes.

'Be happy,' cried the Nightingale, 'be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart's-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty. Flame-coloured are his wings, and coloured like flame is his body. His lips are sweet as honey, and his breath is like frankincense.'

The Student looked up from the grass, and listened, but he could not understand what the Nightingale was saying to him, for he only knew the things that are written down in books.

But the Oak-tree understood, and felt sad, for he was very fond of the little Nightingale who had built her nest in his branches.

'Sing me one last song,' he whispered; 'I shall feel very lonely when you are gone.'

So the Nightingale sang to the Oak-tree, and her voice was like water bubbling from a silver jar.

When she had finished her song the Student got lip, and pulled a note-book and a lead-pencil out of his pocket.

'She has form,' he said to himself, as he walked away through the grove - 'that cannot be denied to her; but has she got feeling? I am afraid not. In fact, she is like most artists; she is all style, without any sincerity. She would not sacrifice herself for others. She thinks merely of music, and everybody knows that the arts are selfish. Still, it must be admitted that she has some beautiful notes in her voice. What a pity it is that they do not mean anything, or do any practical good.' And he went into his room, and lay down on his little pallet-bed, and began to think of his love; and, after a time, he fell asleep.

And when the Moon shone in the heavens the Nightingale flew to the Rose-tree, and set her breast against the thorn. All night long she sang with her breast against the thorn, and the cold crystal Moon leaned down and listened. All night long she sang, and the thorn went deeper and deeper into her breast, and her life-blood ebbed away from her.

She sang first of the birth of love in the heart of a boy and a girl. And on the topmost spray of the Rose-tree there blossomed a marvellous rose, petal following petal, as song followed song. Yale was it, at first, as the mist that hangs over the river - pale as the feet of the morning, and silver as the wings of the dawn. As the shadow of a rose in a mirror of silver, as the shadow of a rose in a water-pool, so was the rose that blossomed on the topmost spray of the Tree.

But the Tree cried to the Nightingale to press closer against the thorn. 'Press closer, little Nightingale,' cried the Tree, 'or the Day will come before the rose is finished.'

So the Nightingale pressed closer against the thorn, and louder and louder grew her song, for she sang of the birth of passion in the soul of a man and a maid.

And a delicate flush of pink came into the leaves of the rose, like the flush in the face of the bridegroom when he kisses the lips of the bride. But the thorn had not yet reached her heart, so the rose's heart remained white, for only a Nightingale's heart's-blood can crimson the heart of a rose.

And the Tree cried to the Nightingale to press closer against the thorn. 'Press closer, little Nightingale,' cried the Tree, 'or the Day will come before the rose is finished.'

So the Nightingale pressed closer against the thorn, and the thorn touched her heart, and a fierce pang of pain shot through her. Bitter, bitter was the pain, and wilder and wilder grew her song, for she sang of the Love that is perfected by Death, of the Love that dies not in the tomb.

And the marvellous rose became crimson, like the rose of the eastern sky. Crimson was the girdle of petals, and crimson as a ruby was the heart.

But the Nightingale's voice grew fainter, and her little wings began to beat, and a film came over her eyes. Fainter and fainter grew her song, and she felt something choking her in her throat.

Then she gave one last burst of music. The white Moon heard it, and she forgot the dawn, and lingered on in the sky. The red rose heard it, and it trembled all over with ecstasy, and opened its petals to the cold morning air. Echo bore it to her purple cavern in the hills, and woke the sleeping shepherds from their dreams. It floated through the reeds of the river, and they carried its message to the sea.

'Look, look!' cried the Tree, 'the rose is finished now;' but the Nightingale made no answer, for she was lying dead in the long grass, with the thorn in her heart.

And at noon the Student opened his window and looked out.

'Why, what a wonderful piece of luck! he cried; 'here is a red rose! I have never seen any rose like it in all my life. It is so beautiful that I am sure it has a long Latin name;' and he leaned down and plucked it.

Then he put on his hat, and ran up to the Professor's house with the rose in his hand.

The daughter of the Professor was sitting in the doorway winding blue silk on a reel, and her little dog was lying at her feet.

'You said that you would dance with me if I brought you a red rose,' cried the Student. Here is the reddest rose in all the world. You will wear it to-night next your heart, and as we dance together it will tell you how I love you.'

But the girl frowned.

'I am afraid it will not go with my dress,' she answered; 'and, besides, the Chamberlain's nephew has sent me some real jewels, and everybody knows that jewels cost far more than flowers.'

'Well, upon my word, you are very ungrateful,' said the Student angrily; and he threw the rose into the street, where it fell into the gutter, and a cart-wheel went over it.

'Ungrateful!' said the girl. 'I tell you what, you are very rude; and, after all, who are you? Only a Student. Why, I don't believe you have even got silver buckles to your shoes as the Chamberlain's nephew has;' and she got up from her chair and went into the house.

'What a silly thing Love is,' said the Student as he walked away. 'It is not half as useful as Logic, for it does not prove anything, and it is always telling one of things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true. In fact, it is quite unpractical, and, as in this age to be practical is everything, I shall go back to Philosophy and study Metaphysics.'

So he returned to his room and pulled out a great dusty book, and began to read.

 

I am




 

Here's what Amazon does for writers

 

 The article below fails to mention that Amazon Bookseller is great for writers.

 Amazon delivers a book fast.

 Every writer on the Amazon book sellers page is given equal space, so that the first time author who is self-publishing sits on equal footing with writers who sell in the millions.

 Amazon offers writers the space to introduce themselves to the world in writing or in a video.

 Because some of the middle men are no longer in the picture, writers make more money on Amazon than they would with a standard publisher.

 Books can cost less on Amazon because the buyer has a choice between buying a brand new book, a used book, or an audible book or an eBook and because of Audible and Ebooks, writers can make more money.

 

Amazon has opened up hundreds and hundreds of specialty books outlets that standard publisher refused to publish thinking these specialty books won’t sell. But they do sell, millions of them.

 Amazon pays writers on time and in full and offers explanation of where every penny went. No matter what they say, most publishers don’t do that.

 Anyway………..

 The American Booksellers Association yesterday released a white paper outlining Amazon’s anticompetitive behavior and urging the breakup of the company. The letter was sent to the attorneys general in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., as well as the National Association of Attorneys General, Bookselling This Week reported.

Called “American Monopoly: Amazon’s Anti-Competitive Behavior Is in Violation of Antitrust Laws,” the white paper was written by the ABA’s advocacy team and follows the release last October of the Congressional report on Big Tech and antitrust by the House Justice antitrust subcommittee, chaired by Rep. David Cicilline (D.-R.I.), and the introduction last week of related legislation by Senator Amy Klobuchar (D.-Minn.), chair of the Senate Justice antitrust subcommittee.

“Piles of Amazon boxes sitting on porches and in lobbies is becoming the norm, but there are costs and consequences to our communities,” ABA CEO Allison Hill commented. “Amazon’s overreaching dominance over multiple markets has squelched competition and new businesses. If Amazon were broken up today, we firmly believe the many markets in which they dominate would quickly diversify and grow and our communities would be the beneficiaries.”

In the 21-page white paper, the ABA called the company’s bookselling record “a case study as to how Amazon dominates entire categories of retail and poses a threat to the competitive process. Amazon controls 42% of all sales of physical books, and an estimated 75% of online sales of physical books. Further, Amazon controls 83% of e-book sales, more than 40% of new book sales, and about 85% of sales by self-published e-book authors. For comparison, Amazon’s share of the online bookselling submarket is as large as Standard Oil’s market share before it was dismantled into 34 companies in 1911.

"Nowhere is Amazon’s conduct more of a threat to the competitive process than in the online bookselling submarket. Amazon has engaged exclusionary tactics, including predatory pricing, to gain market power and has leveraged its substantial market power against publishers unfairly.”

The paper continues, “Amazon’s anti-competitive conduct extends to the pricing of its proprietary e-book reader and tablet, the Kindle and Fire, which are ‘loss leaders,’ meaning products priced at or below cost to stimulate the sale of more profitable goods or services. Amazon’s intent is to leave consumers with no alternative but to purchase e-books and other products from Amazon, rather than its competitors, regardless of price.”

The paper goes into detail, too, about Amazon’s practices in other markets and in other ways. The paper concludes that “when Amazon’s behavior is taken as a whole, it is clear that Amazon is unlawfully restraining trade, is engaging in exclusionary, anti-competitive pricing schemes, and is using both its horizontal and vertical integration to create barriers to entry, increase Amazon’s market power, and unfairly manipulate marketplaces. Amazon has used exclusionary, anti-competitive pricing schemes to gain market power and illegally monopolize the e-commerce retail market, specifically, the first-party online retail market, the third-party e-commerce marketplace market, the web services market, and the third-party logistics services market.”

It also notes the company’s “power to assert dominance over creators, workers, and local communities,” which includes poor working conditions for warehouse employees and brutal effects on bricks-and-mortar retailers around the country.

The ABA recommends that Amazon “be broken up into at least four autonomous companies: retail, e-commerce marketplace platform, web services, and logistics. Additionally, given how Amazon uses systemic below-cost pricing on books in particular, we urge consideration that Amazon’s retail operations be divided into book retail and other retail.”

In my case this is easy to read but difficult to put into action...but I'm working on it.

 Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and failure to listen, I am committed to cultivating loving speech and compassionate listening to relieve suffering and promote reconciliation and peace in myself and among other people, ethnic and religious groups, and nations. Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I am committed to speaking truthfully using words that inspire confidence, joy, and hope. I am determined not to speak when anger manifests in me. I will practice mindful breathing and walking to recognize and look deeply into my anger. I know that the roots of anger can be found in my wrong perceptions and lack of understanding of the suffering in myself and the other person. I will speak and listen in such a way as to help myself and the other person to transform suffering and see the way out of difficult situations. I am determined not to spread news that I do not know to be certain and not to utter words that can cause division or discord. I will practice diligently with joy and skillfulness so as to nourish my capacity for understanding, love, and inclusiveness, gradually transforming the anger, violence, and fear that lie deep in my consciousness. Thích Nhất Hạnh, Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the

Storm




"I take much pleasure in being alone but there is also a strange warm grace in not being alone." Charles Bukowski


 

Ouy Vay......my medical tale woe

Hamlet and Horatio with the Grave Diggers, Eugène Delacroix, 1843, Cleveland Museum



HAMLET

Let me see.

Takes the skull

Act V, scene i

In the churchyard, two gravediggers shovel out a grave for Ophelia. They argue whether Ophelia should be buried in the churchyard, since her death looks like a suicide. According to religious doctrine, suicides may not receive Christian burial. The first gravedigger, who speaks cleverly and mischievously, asks the second gravedigger a riddle: “What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?” (V.i.46–47). The second gravedigger answers that it must be the gallows-maker, for his frame outlasts a thousand tenants. The first gravedigger corrects him, saying that it is the gravedigger, for his “houses” will last until Doomsday.

Hamlet and Horatio enter at a distance and watch the gravediggers work. Hamlet looks with wonder at the skulls they excavate to make room for the fresh grave and speculates darkly about what occupations the owners of these skulls served in life: “Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now . . . ?” (V.i.90–91). Hamlet asks the gravedigger whose grave he digs, and the gravedigger spars with him verbally, first claiming that the grave is his own, since he is digging it, then that the grave belongs to no man and no woman, because men and women are living things and the occupant of the grave will be dead. At last he admits that it belongs to one “that was a woman sir; but, rest her soul, she’s dead” (V.i.146). The gravedigger, who does not recognize Hamlet as the prince, tells him that he has been a gravedigger since King Hamlet defeated the elder Fortinbras in battle, the very day on which young Prince Hamlet was born. Hamlet picks up a skull, and the gravedigger tells him that the skull belonged to Yorick, King Hamlet’s jester. Hamlet tells Horatio that as a child he knew Yorick and is appalled at the sight of the skull. He realizes forcefully that all men will eventually become dust, even great men like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. Hamlet imagines that Julius Caesar has disintegrated and is now part of the dust used to patch up a wall.

Suddenly, the funeral procession for Ophelia enters the churchyard, including Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, and many mourning courtiers. Hamlet, wondering who has died, notices that the funeral rites seem “maimed,” indicating that the dead man or woman took his or her own life (V.i.242). He and Horatio hide as the procession approaches the grave. As Ophelia is laid in the earth, Hamlet realizes it is she who has died. At the same moment, Laertes becomes infuriated with the priest, who says that to give Ophelia a proper Christian burial would profane the dead. Laertes leaps into Ophelia’s grave to hold her once again in his arms. Grief-stricken and outraged, Hamlet bursts upon the company, declaring in agonized fury his own love for Ophelia. He leaps into the grave and fights with Laertes, saying that “forty thousand brothers / Could not, with all their quantity of love, / make up my sum” (V.i.254–256). Hamlet cries that he would do things for Ophelia that Laertes could not dream of—he would eat a crocodile for her, he would be buried alive with her. The combatants are pulled apart by the funeral company. Gertrude and Claudius declare that Hamlet is mad. Hamlet storms off, and Horatio follows. The king urges Laertes to be patient, and to remember their plan for revenge.

Analysis

The gravediggers are designated as “clowns” in the stage directions and prompts, and it is important to note that in Shakespeare’s time the word clown referred to a rustic or peasant, and did not mean that the person in question was funny or wore a costume.

The gravediggers represent a humorous type commonly found in Shakespeare’s plays: the clever commoner who gets the better of his social superior through wit. At the Globe Theater, this type of character may have particularly appealed to the “groundlings,” the members of the audience who could not afford seats and thus stood on the ground. Though they are usually figures of merriment, in this scene the gravediggers assume a rather macabre tone, since their jests and jibes are all made in a cemetery, among bones of the dead. Their conversation about Ophelia, however, furthers an important theme in the play: the question of the moral legitimacy of suicide under theological law. By giving this serious subject a darkly comic interpretation, Shakespeare essentially makes a grotesque parody of Hamlet’s earlier “To be, or not to be” soliloquy (III.i), indicating the collapse of every lasting value in the play into uncertainty and absurdity.

 

Hamlet’s confrontation with death, manifested primarily in his discovery of Yorick’s skull, is, like Ophelia’s drowning, an enduring image from the play. However, his solemn theorizing explodes in grief and rage when he sees Ophelia’s funeral procession, and his assault on Laertes offers a glimpse of what his true feelings for Ophelia might once have been. Laertes’ passionate embrace of the dead Ophelia again advances the subtle motif of incest that hangs over their brother-sister relationship. Interestingly, Hamlet never expresses a sense of guilt over Ophelia’s death, which he indirectly caused through his murder of Polonius. In fact, the only time he even comes close to taking responsibility for Polonius’s death at all comes in the next and last scene, when he apologizes to Laertes before the duel, blaming his “madness” for Polonius’s death. This seems wholly inadequate, given that Hamlet has previously claimed repeatedly only to be feigning madness. But by the same token, to expect moral completeness from a character as troubled as Hamlet might be unrealistic. After all, Hamlet’s defining characteristics are his pain, his fear, and his self-conflict. Were he to take full responsibility for the consequences of Polonius’s death, he would probably not be able to withstand the psychological torment of the resulting guilt.



Modern English

First Gravedigger

She’s getting a Christian burial, the one who sought her own salvation?


Second Gravedigger

I’m telling you that she is. Therefore, make her grave right away. The coroner examined the case and decided that she should have a Christian burial.


First Gravedigger

How can that be, unless she drowned herself in self-defense?


Second Gravedigger

Well, that was found to be the case.


First Gravedigger

It must have been in "so offendendo" it couldn’t have been anything else. Here’s my point: if I drown myself on purpose, it means there’s an act. And an act has three parts: to act, to do, and to perform. Therefore, she drowned herself on purpose.


Second Gravedigger

No, you listen to me, Mr. Gravedigger.


First Gravedigger

Hear me out first. Here lies the water – good. Here stands the man –good. If the man goes to the water and drowns himself, willingly or not, he goes. Do you follow that? But if the water comes to him, and drowns him, then he doesn’t drown himself. Therefore, he that is not guilty of his own death doesn’t shorten his own life.


Second Gravedigger

But is that the law?


First Gravedigger

Yes, it is. It’s the coroner’s law.


Second Gravedigger

If you want to know the truth of the matter, if this hadn’t been a woman of noble birth, she wouldn’t be getting a Christian burial.


First Gravedigger

You’re right. It’s a pity that powerful folks have more freedom to drown or hang themselves than the rest of us. Give me my spade. In ancient times, all the noblemen were either gardeners, ditch diggers, or grave makers. They were continuing Adam’s profession.


Second Gravedigger

Was Adam a nobleman?


First Gravedigger

He was the first man to bear arms.


Second Gravedigger

But, he didn’t have a family coat of arms.


First Gravedigger

Are you an ignorant heathen who doesn’t know his Bible? The Scripture says that Adam dug. How could he dig without arms? Let me ask you another question. If you don’t get it right, then go be hanged.


Second Gravedigger

Go ahead.


First Gravedigger

Who can build something stronger than either a stone mason, a shipwright, or a carpenter?


Second Gravedigger

The gallows maker, because his structure outlives a thousand tenants.


First Gravedigger

I like your wit. A gallows does good. But how does it do good? It does good to those who do bad. Now you’re bad when you say that a gallows is stronger than a church. Therefore, a gallows might do you some good. Go ahead, try it again.


Second Gravedigger

Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or a carpenter?


First Gravedigger

Answer correctly and you can rest your overworked brain.


Second Gravedigger

Hell, I don’t know.


First Gravedigger

Try.


Second Gravedigger

I swear, I don’t know.


[Hamlet and Horatio enter, on the far side of the stage.]

First Gravedigger

Stop beating your brains out over it. After all, beating a stupid mule won’t make it go any faster. The next time you’re asked this question, answer “a grave-maker.”  The houses he makes last until Judgement Day. Now, go to Yaughan’s pub and get me a pint of beer.


[Second Gravedigger exits. First Gravedigger sings while digging.]

In youth when I did love, did love,


I thought it was very sweet


To arrange...uh...the time for...uh...my beloved


Oh, I thought there...uh...was nothing...appropriate.


Hamlet

[Aside to Horatio] This fellow must not have any feelings, to sing while digging a grave.


Horatio

Long practice has made him insensitive.


Hamlet

That must be it. The idle rich have a daintier sensitivity.


First Gravedigger

[Sings.]

But age with his quiet steps


Has caught me in his grasp


And has shipped me into the ground


As if I had never existed.


[He tosses up a skull he has unearthed.]

Hamlet

Once, that skull had a tongue in it and could sing. This fool throws it on the ground as if it were no more than the jawbone of an ass, like the one used by Cain to murder his brother, Abel. It might be the head of a once powerful politician who could sidestep God’s rulings, but now he’s ruled over by this jackass.


Horatio

It might be so, my lord.


Hamlet

Or the head of a courtier who once said, “Good morning, sweet lord. How are you, sweet lord?” It might be Lord So-and-So who praised Lord Such-and-Such’s horse, hoping that it would be given to him as a gift.


Horatio

Yes, my lord.


Hamlet

This could be the noblewoman, Lady Worm, who no longer has any cheeks and is knocked about the head by this workman’s shovel. Why, that’s a fine reversal in fortune – if only we had the ability to see it. Did all her fine upbringing lead to nothing more than having her bones tossed around like horseshoes? I hate to think about it.


First Gravedigger

[Sings.]

A pickax and a spade, a spade


And more, a burial sheet.


Oh, a pit of clay to be made


For such a guest is just right.


[He throws up another skull.]

Hamlet

There’s another. Might this not be the skull of a lawyer? Where are his subtle legal arguments now? His closing statements? His cases? His property titles and legal tricks? Why does he let himself be knocked about the head with a dirty shovel by this rascal, and not file a charge of assault and battery? Huh! This lawyer, in his day, was a big property owner, with numerous mortgages, loans, deeds, and rents. All that remains from those assets is his noble skull full of dirt. Will those deeds yield him a plot of land no larger than a legal contract? You could barely fit all his documents inside the box in which he lies. Is that all the property he has? Ha.


Horatio

Not a bit more, my lord.


Hamlet

Isn’t writing parchment made from sheep skins?


Horatio

Yes, my lord, and also from calf skins.


Hamlet

You’d be as stupid as sheep and calves to think that security in life can be obtained through pieces of parchment. I’ll speak to this fellow. [To First Gravedigger] Whose grave is this, sir?


First Gravedigger

Mine, sir.


[Sings.]

Oh, a pit of clay for to be made


For such a guest is meet.


Hamlet

I think it’s yours indeed, since you lie in it.


First Gravedigger

You lie outside of it, sir, and therefore it’s not yours. As for me, I don’t lie down in it, and yet it’s mine.


Hamlet

Ah, but you do tell a lie in it – to be in it and say it’s yours. It belongs to the dead, not the quick (the living). Therefore, you lie.


First Gravedigger

It’s a “quick” lie, sir. It went quickly from me to you.


Hamlet

For what man do you dig it?


First Gravedigger

For no man, sir.


Hamlet

For what woman, then?


First Gravedigger

For no woman, either.


Hamlet

Who’s to be buried in it?


First Gravedigger

Someone who was a woman, sir, but, rest her soul, now she’s dead.


Hamlet

[To Horatio] How precise this rascal is! We’ll have to speak by the book, or he’ll seize on every ambiguity in our words. I swear, Horatio, it seems to me that in recent years everyone has become so meticulous in their language, that you can’t tell the peasants from the courtiers. [To Gravedigger] How long have you been a gravedigger?


First Gravedigger

I started the very day our deceased King Hamlet defeated King Fortinbras of Norway.


Hamlet

How long has that been?


First Gravedigger

Don’t you know? Every fool knows when that was. It was the very day that young Prince Hamlet was born, the one who’s gone crazy and has been sent to England.


Hamlet

Yes, but why England?


First Gravedigger

Why? Because he’s mad. He’ll recover his wits there. Or if he doesn’t, it’s no big deal.


Hamlet

Why’s that?


First Gravedigger

They won’t notice. In England, all the men are as crazy as he is.


Hamlet

How did he become crazy?


First Gravedigger

Very strangely, they say.


Hamlet

What do you mean, strangely?


First Gravedigger

His madness is very strange.


Hamlet

Upon what grounds did they determine this?


First Gravedigger

Why, right here in Denmark. I’ve been the sexton here at this church since I was a boy, thirty years ago.


Hamlet

How long will a man lie in the earth before he rots?


First Gravedigger

Well, if he’s not rotten before he dies – and we have a lot of pus-filled corpses that’ll hardly hold together long enough to be buried, given all the syphilis going around – he’ll last about eight years, nine if he’s a leather tanner.


Hamlet

Why will the tanner last longer?


First Gravedigger

Why, sir, his skin is so tanned from his work that it’ll keep water out for some time, and water is a horrible decayer of the damn body.


[He picks up a skull.]

Here’s another skull. This one has lain in the ground for twenty-three years.


Hamlet

Whose was it?


First Gravedigger

A detestable, crazy fellow, he was. Whose skull do you think it was?


Hamlet

I don’t know.


First Gravedigger

A plague on him, the mad rogue! Once, he poured a pitcher of wine on my head. This skull, sir, this very skull was Yorick’s, the King’s jester.


Hamlet

This?


First Gravedigger

That very one.


Hamlet

Let me see it. Oh, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio. He had a million jokes and an excellent imagination. He let me ride on his back a thousand times. It’s horrible to imagine what his back looks like now; it makes me gag. Here’s where his lips hung that kissed me countless times. Where are your taunts, your games, your songs, that sense of humor that used to make the table roar with laughter? There’s no one now to mock that grinning face. You look quite down in the mouth. You should go visit some noble Lady, and tell her that, even with an inch of make-up, this is how she’s going to end up. That’ll make her laugh. Horatio, tell me one thing.


Horatio

What's that, my lord?


Hamlet

Do you think that Alexander the Great looked like this in the ground?


Horatio

Very much so.


Hamlet

And smelled this bad? Yuck!


Horatio

Afraid so, my lord.


Hamlet

What ordinary purposes we end up serving, Horatio! With just a little imagination, we could trace the noble dust of Alexander until we find him plugging a beer keg.


Horatio

You’re thinking about it too much.


Hamlet

No, not a bit. To follow Alexander’s path – with proper modesty – the likelihood is as follows: Alexander died, he was buried, he returned to dust. Dust is earth; we make clay of earth; and why couldn’t the clay from his dust be used as a stopper for a keg? The Emperor Julius Caesar, dead and turned to clay, might be filling a hole to block the wind. Wow, that bit of clay which once kept the entire world in awe might be patching a wall to keep out the winter chill!


Quiet! Come over here! Here come the King, Queen, and some courtiers. Who’s that fellow? And why this shoddy funeral procession? This indicates that whoever’s in that coffin took their own life. Yet it must be someone of high social rank. Let’s crouch down over here and watch.


[Hamlet and Horatio conceal themselves. Ophelia's body is taken to the grave.]

Laertes

What additional ceremony is to be performed?


Hamlet

[To Horatio] That’s Laertes, a very noble youth. Watch.


Laertes

What additional ceremony is to be performed?


Priest

Her funeral service has been enlarged as far as authorized. The cause of her death was questionable. If the King hadn’t overruled the normal procedures, she’d be buried in a common graveyard. Instead of religious prayers, she’d just have dirt and pebbles thrown on her coffin. Yet she’s being allowed holy rites and a funeral procession, with her flower draped coffin accompanied by a bell ringer.


Laertes

Can’t any more be done?


Priest

Nothing more can be done. We’d be degrading the holy funeral service if we sang the same solemn hymns for her as for virtuous, departed souls.


Laertes

Put her in the ground, and let violets grow from her beautiful and unblemished flesh. I’m telling you, you mean-spirited priest, that she’ll be a benevolent angel in Heaven when you’re howling in Hell.


Hamlet

[To Horatio] What, is that Ophelia?


Gertrude

[Scattering flowers]

Sweets to the sweet. Farewell. I had hoped that you would be Hamlet’s wife. I wanted to spread flowers on your bridal bed, not your grave.


Laertes

Oh, Ophelia, I wish that misery ten times worse than what I feel would fall on the damned head of him whose wicked deed caused you to lose your wonderful mind. Don’t throw dirt on her yet! I want to hold her once more in my arms.


[He leaps into the grave.]  

Now shovel the dirt on both of us, the living and the dead, until this flat ground becomes a mountain so high it overlooks Mount Olympus, home of the gods.


Hamlet

[Stepping forward.]

Who is this whose grief is so intense and speech so sorrowful that the passing stars stand still in amazement. I’m Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.


[Hamlet leaps into the grave and starts grappling with Laertes.]

Laertes

Go to Hell!


Hamlet

You don’t pray very well, do you? Now I’m begging you; take your hands off my throat. Sir, though I’m not quick-tempered or rash, I can be dangerous, and you should beware of this. Take your hand away!


Claudius

Pull them apart.


Gertrude

Hamlet, Hamlet!


Horatio

My lord, stop it.


Hamlet

Why, I’ll fight him over this until I die.


Gertrude

My son, why are you fighting?


Hamlet

I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers’ love couldn’t add up to mine. [To Laertes] What would you do for her?


Claudius

Hamlet’s mad, Laertes.


Gertrude

[To Claudius] For God’s sake, give him a break.


Hamlet

Come on, show me what you'd do. Would you cry, fight, tear yourself apart. Would you drink vinegar, eat a crocodile? I’d do all of that. Did you come here to wail in order to show me up at her grave? So you’d be buried alive with her. Well, so would I. You boast of mountains. Let them throw millions of acres of earth on Ophelia and me, until this mound burns its scalp against the sun and makes the the largest mountain in Greece look like a wart. If you shriek, I’ll howl as well as you.


Claudius

This is just a fit of madness. The attack will only last for a while. Then, as patient as a female dove sitting on her eggs, he’ll be quiet.


Hamlet

[To Laertes] Listen to me, sir. Why do you abuse me like this? I’ve always liked you. But... never mind. Hercules can do whatever he pleases – but even a cat can mew if he wants, and every dog will have his day.


Claudius

Please, Horatio, see to him.


[Exit Horatio]

[Aside to Laertes] Be patient and remember our talk last night. We’ll execute our plan soon. My dear Gertrude, keep an eye on your son. I’ll have a permanent monument placed here, near Ophelia’s grave.  [Aside to Laertes] We’ll get rid of this nuisance, but until then we need to be patient.




 

Groan at will


 

"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."— E.B. White


 

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