Dinosaur

In the dark, we hear the boisterous, drunken singing voices of Edmund Spenser and Wilber MacKaye. They sing an almost forgotten folk tune.

Singers:

"Mr. Bourne and his wife once at breakfast had a strife.He wanted bread and butter with his tea, tea, tea.Says she: 'I'll rule the roost, I'll have a plate of toast,'So to loggerheads went he and she, she, she.

Now there was a Mr. More, lived on the second floor,A man very strong in the wrist, wrist, wrist.He overheard the clatter, of toast and bread and butter,And he knocked down Mr. Bourne with his fist, fist, fist."

As the lights slowly come up, we find ourselves in the modest Aberdeen cottage of Mr. and Mrs. Edmund Bourne Spenser. Edmund Spenser is an ex-patriated American who has spent the last two decades of his life in various Scottish villages. Edmund is dressed in miner's gear, with the light on his miner's hat still on.

With Edmund is his best friend and upstairs neighbor—Wilber MacKaye. Mr. MacKaye is in his mid-fifties and his hair is white and thinning. He wears a light jacket, shirt, and blue wool tie, but at the moment his pants are draped over the faded sofa. He stands in his long blue undershorts and sings, sings.

Arlene Spenser, wife to Edmund, enters. She is a transplanted Londoner, and (like her husband) in her mid-forties, with a head of long red-hair and a music-hall temperament. She once had ambitions to be an actress, but she has long ago given those ambitions up. She wears a loose-fitting print dress and has pink cotton slippers on her feet. In short, neither her dress, nor her manner show her off to the best advantage. She carries Wilber's tweed cap and flings it in frisbee style across the living room.

Arlene:

I found your bloody hat. It was in the garden where you left it.

Wilber lunges for the object. Misses it, and spills some ale onto the sofa.

Edmund:

(to Wilber) Watch what you're doing, you bloody ape.

Arlene:

I just had the cushions mended too.

Edmund:

Aye. Twenty years brand new to the day.

Arlene:

A good sturdy sofa it is. Who cares how old it is? You can't measure everything in life by age.

Edmund:

I'm sure that goes for you too, Dearie.

Wilber continues singing.

Wilber:

Said poor Mr. More, a-sneaking to the door, for sure I'm a man without brains, brains, brains.

Arlene:

It's not funny anymore.

Edmund grabs his friend by the shoulders.

Edmund:

Did you hear that, Wilber?

Wilber:

I have one bad ear and the other is not much good either.

Arlene:

I ask the solicitor up and you turn the whole thing to a drunken brawl.

Edmund:

The old lady don't think our sky-larking is funny. (turns to his wife who is fetching the tossed cap). Why, Madame, I shall have you know that the song we were rehearsing has weathered the years better than any of us. "Mr. Bourne and His Wife" is among melodies, a dinosaur. Of course we know that survival is all, and "Mr. Bourne and His Wife" has survived when other grossly over-rated tunes have dragged their quarter-notes out to some swamp to die.

Wilber:

Hear! Hear!

Edmund:

Hear! Hear!

Wilber:

No sense of humor, your old lady? Is that what you're saying?

Arlene:

I'll old lady the both of you out into the gutter, that's what I'll do. (to Edmund) Now give Wilber back his pants, so he can be presentable to our guest.

Edmund:

Your guest. Not mine.

From outside the back window, we can hear the cry of a dinosaur rummaging among leaves.

Wilber:

Pants? What pants? Did I have pants when I came down?

Edmund:

You can put pants on a monkey, but it doesn't make him a king.

Arlene:

I am a respectable married woman. I should be spared these awkward sights.

Edmund:

Exactly what she said...