King Henry IX - The War of the Noses
An introduction
I’ll turn 58 tomorrow: fully mature (surely), serious-minded (well…), and grandfatherly (really). And yet somehow I find it great fun to write and publish a play that not only won’t be staged, but will be read only by a handful of puzzled friends and family members. Most of whom will then hesitate to admit having done so.
Some perceptive reader, one with exceptional intelligence and good taste, will chuckle. Possibly even chortle or guffaw. That reader might be you!
If you are fearless, dive in without hesitation. If you would prefer a short explanatory, cautionary, and apologetic description before committing yourself, read beyond the link below.
Explanatory, cautionary, and apologetic description
This play is meant to be read, but it isn’t worth killing a tree to do so. It’s awfully long for a blog post, and if you use a phone to browse you are likely to strain your eyes, your thumb, or both. It is written in mock Shakesperian prose with the inclusion of only a smattering of the Bard’s blank verse (mangled almost beyond recognition). Which necessitates this first warning: do not allow the Prologue to scare you off! Skip it if you will. The rest of the play is easier to digest and almost certainly funnier.
A host of cheap, quasi-Shakesperian grammatical and lexigraphical tricks are used as a thin patina of Elizabethan literary-ish cover. Even in prose, such -ed words as “Crook’d” (as if to rhyme with “booked”), and “Crownéd” (as rhyming “Brown Ed”) are introduced for supposéd comedic effect. Words are invented and/or mangled. Authentically, the King, almost alone, feels entitled to use the informal “thou” and “thee” with inferiors.
As another warning or insincere apology, let me say that I have reproduced as faithfully as I dare Elizabethan and Shakespearian bawdy humor. Though perhaps not so artfully.
Lastly, this is a work/play of satirical and absurd farce. In short, fiction. Any resemblances to real persons, living or dead, are entirely incoincidental. Nevertheless, events and words and actions and the existence of of King Henry IX of England are imagined, not real. Surely. Shirley?
Click here to read the whoreson play.
This piece of theatrical imagination or imaginary theater is dedicated to my friend Bob Lundegaard, whose interests, intellect, sense of humor, and politics make me believe he is the perfect audience for it. He’ll even understand why the name “Rogers Hornsby” pops up in Act 2, Scene 4. If he doesn’t get a chuckle out of it, no one will.
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