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F. Scott Fitzgerald swings a half-filled bottle of wine from the top of the stairwell and clears his throat for his most respectable
address:
"FRIENDS! Acquaintances! Uninvited guests! I hereby declare this gathering, this most festive event to have begun!"
Ernest Hemingway raises his glass politely, receives a refill from Fitzgerald.
"Hey Scotty! No no, not too much... How's the wife?"
"Expensive, my friend. Drinking me out of house and home. And yours?"
"Which one? I honestly can't keep track anymore. And your short stories, how are they coming along?"
"Up yours, Ernest."
******************************************************
*across the room William Shakespeare flirts with Emily Dickinson, who shyly remains in half-shadow beneath the curtains.*
Dickinson: "I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too?"
Shakespeare (grandly): "One half of me is yours, the other half yours- Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours,
And so all yours!"
*Dickinson blushes and hides her face in the curtains.*
*Nearby, an irritable Nathanial Hawthorne examines the couple:*
"It is an unpardonable sin, a certain ticket to the fires of Hell..."
*Edgar Allen Poe, crouching in the corner, peers up for a moment: "What's unpardonable?"
Hawthorne: "Your attire, sir."
Poe: "Oh."
*Poe buries his face in his hands and rocks back and forth, moaning now and then.*
**********************************************************
Fitzgerald: "Wine! Wine! Take it off the shelves, and drink up! This is a party, isn't it?
Hemingway: "I suppose it'll be up to me to drag your pathetic hide up to your room again?"
Fitzgerald: "I suppose the fame is getting to you? Too good to help your washed up old friend from time to time?
Or perhaps you just love mothering me."
*Charles Dickins holds up his glass: "Please, sir, I want some more!"
Fitzgerald: "Really, Charlie, that's never been funny."
(refills his glass and sends him off to torment Poe.)
*Emily and Charlotte Bronte sit primly in the adjacent corner.*
Emily: "Oh I do wish I wasn't so plain!"
Charlotte: "YOU plain! I heard Mr. Hemingway state to Mr. Faulkner that I was simply the dullest, plainest girl
at th*e party!"
"William Faulkner? I didn't realize he was here."
*Dickins appears next to them out of nowhere*
Dickins: "Well if you had not been so interested in the actions of our young Mr. Shakespeare, you would have seen
Mr. Hawthorne stow him in the closet earlier."
*Emily blushes fiercely and says nothing.*
*a loud thumping from the closet is heard throughout the room.*
Charlotte: "Whatever for?"
Dickins: "He was spouting more gibberish than usual today. He's been practicing his vernacular again, and it's past
Mr. Hawthorne's bedtime."
*the Bronte sisters grin awkwardly at his joke and stare down at the floor until a frustrated Dickins moves on.
Charlotte: "I must say it was a smart decision. If I wasn't a woman, a plain and dull woman, I might have done the
same."
**********************************************************
Fitzgerald: "Now, now, don't stare off out the window so... you remember what happened the last time you took off
for an adventure."
Hemingway: "Nothing. It was just another episode."
"As I recall you fainted like a girl."
*Dickins appears suddenly and laughs hysterically.
Hemingway frowns deeply: "Go to Hell."
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