This monologue is from my full-length play entitled Clarissa Buys The Flowers Herself, which is an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. In it, Clarissa remembers and laments the 1918 Pandemic.
CLARISSA
How did he kill himself? Why did he do it? (writes in journal) Death is defiance? Death is an attempt to communicate? Is there an embrace in death?
SHE parts the curtain and notices an old woman in a nearby window. THEY stare at one another for many beats. THEY both put a hand up to the glass as if to connect.
What is this fervent insistence to move forward as if nothing ever happened? How can everyone forget about all the illness, death, and destruction? Where is the human regard for everything we lost? I never met you, young man, but we’re so much alike. Fear no more the heat o’ the sun / Nor the furious winter’s rages / Thou thy worldly task has done / Home art gone, and taken thy wages / No exociser harm thee! / Nor no witchcraft charm thee / Nothing ill come near thee / Quiet consummation have / And renowned be thy grave. (pause) Four exact rhymes and one slant rhyme. Is life just one epic contradiction? (pacing) What is it about tonight that makes me question everything? Who am I to be the wife to an upper-class man? Why did I chase social success? I compromised my passion and my soul when I married Richard. (wiping away tears)
That young man preserved his soul by choosing death. I must come to terms with my life. I must come to terms with who I am today … pale … thin … weak … tired … I’ll come to terms with all of this and endure. I am Mrs. Richard Dalloway. Maybe life isn’t something to be celebrated. Maybe it’s something to be endured.
POETRY FESTIVAL. Submit to site for FREE. Submit for actor performance. Submit poem to be made into film. 