ANNE:  Thy pillow, sir, let me turn it.  There.

WILL:  What need I of a priest?  Have I not been a good husband to thee?

ANNE:  No worse  than I expected, knowing thou had’st actors’ ambitions.  But yet a jealous wife.

WILL:  Without thy jealousy, whence the fury’d Cleopatra?  Without thy scolding, whence the fiery Katherina?

ANNE:  Thou woulds’t have me Juliet, her breasts still at the budding.

WILL:  O ay.  And well hast thou taught me those other woman things, wry Beatrice, sweet teasing Rosalind, skittish Lady Percy -

ANNE:  Go, ye giddy goose.

WILL:  Believe me then.

ANNE:  Oh!  Set me quick in the earth and bowl me to death with turnips.

WILL:  Believe, sweet Mistress Page.

ANNE:  Enough.  Or I’ll call up the woman coloured ill.

WILL:  A dalliance.

ANNE:  No dalliance.

WILL:   More than a dalliance, then, less than a love.

ANNE:  Enough of poets’ oily ways.  Let’s talk of things.  What is it that gnaws at thee?
========================================

FROM:  "Guardian"
CONTEXT:  Norman contemplates the challenges of celibacy as a foreign aid worker

NORMAN:  Anyway that's what it boils down to.  I'm just not sure what I would do, away from home so long, all on my own.

JEAN-PAUL:  If that becomes a problem, do what everyone else does.

NORMAN:  What's that?

(long pause, then Norman looks shocked)

NORMAN:  You’re not suggesting that Globalcare are a bunch of wankers.

JEAN-PAUL:  (pointedly)  We have been called worse.

NORMAN:  Um.  But seriously - taking the problem in hand?  Tossing the caber?  Is that what you call self restraint?

JEAN-PAUL:  Call it anything you like, as long as it doesn't make you late for breakfast.

NORMAN:  Jokes aside, you say you're a Christian.  Isn't it a sin?

JEAN-PAUL:  Who is in charge of your life, Monsieur Tate?  When you stand before your Maker, which would you rather say:  "I fed a thousand starving children", or "I didn't ever - what you call it - jerk off".  It is ludicrous, surely.

NORMAN:  Um.

JEAN-PAUL:  It is not compulsory of course.

NORMAN:  And you don't have to attend group sessions?

JEAN-PAUL:  I assure you I would not be participating.
=========================================

FROM:  The Treadmill
CONTEXT:  The HonourableWilliam Willowhite shows his public and private faces.

SCENE:  Spot on a coffin (stage right) draped with the Australian flag.
Enter a female funeral director.  This is her biggest gig yet - before Prime Ministers, Premiers, Generals, Archbishops, billionaires and all.  She strains to meet the occasion with all the compassion professionalism can muster.

FUNERAL DIRECTOR:
Thank you Archbishop.  And now, upon this most sad and solemn occasion, to deliver the eulogy, we call upon - the Honourable William Willowhite.  (exit)

Enter Willowhite.  He is dressed formally, with decorations.  He moves to the front of the coffin, pauses a moment for reflection, then advances and in solemn tones addresses the audience in an “educated Australian” accent.

WILLOWHITE:  Though rarely out of the public gaze, a household name, indeed, Charles Haigh Brayshaw was an intensely private man.  A simple man at heart, a man whose greatest joy was an evening stroll along the beach with his wife and children.  A man devoted to his family, who would excuse himself from a meeting of princes and lords to hear the story of his tiny son’s first day at school.

This, then, was the man most Australians knew only as Lieutenant General Brayshaw, GC, AC, CGM, DSM.  I am privileged to be able to say that I knew him, both the public man and the private.

In peaceful times, a man of peace, satisfied in tending his garden;  but when the bugles called, at once the mighty warrior.  It might have been for Charles Brayshaw that Shakespeare penned those immortal lines:
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger.

The tiger now lies quiet, the noble heart stilled, not by some triumphant foe, for none there was to match him, but by Time - yet by Time, I think, unwillingly, not before allowing a full measure.  How can he be replaced, our nation’s supreme strategist; our most nimble tactician?  Resting, resting in peace, fulfilled, his task accomplished.  We mourn, we fortunate ones who knew him personally, but beyond these heavy walls, a nation mourns.
For the benefits he bestowed upon us so bountifully, he was much honoured in his lifetime, and rightly.  But above honour stands virtue, which, Aristotle assures us, is the higher condition, since it cannot be bestowed by one person upon another, and exists only of itself.  And surely, beyond all honouring, Charles Brayshaw was a virtuous man.

(breaks mood, looks at audience and smiles)

Well, somebody has to say these things.
(sounds of mourners chatting earnestly over morning tea)

A good sendoff, eh?  (indicates a rival, off)  Beat that, Froggy.  Bugger only gave me a day’s notice - to catch me out.  Huh!  I’d been working on it for years.  Why go through life perpetually being taken by surprise?

All in all, I was feeling rather pleased with myself as I withdrew from the throng and walked back, all alone, to pay my last respects.  And give the real eulogy.

(Spot on coffin.  Willowhite walks to the coffin, peers in)

 
Just checking that you’re still there, you slippery old slug.  You look better than I’ve seen you for years - a tribute to the cosmetician’s art - not a hair out of place, not a blemish.  All dressed up like a prize poonce, and nowhere to go but on the nose.  Anyway, decompose away, do your bit for the environment.  It’s a far, far better thing …  Tell me, Brayshaw old chap, do those medals and honours make you rest any the easier?  Ironic, isn’t it - in a few hundred years when they dig you up and see all those medals, they’ll suppose they’ve stumbled across the burial place of a valiant warrior.  Yes.  So how do you feel about those thousands you sacrificed - soldiers and civilians.  Remember?  Commandeered the last available aircraft, the one being kept for the women and children.  Urgent meeting with the War Cabinet indeed.  Thus, in the one stroke, depriving your charges of leader, liberty and life.  Well, if there’s any trace of a soul in you, maybe you’re up there in the great beyond right now, meeting some of your cannon fodder.  I expect they’ll want an explanation.  What are you going to tell them?  You won’t be able to lock yourself away - I’m damned sure there’s no Officers’ Mess in Heaven.  And if you’re in hell - I think you’ll settle in all right.

Comparisons are odious, aren’t they Brayshaw?  You, who sent so many wretches to their death, are dead.  While I, who have made life more abundant for so many, am abundantly alive.  You were hated;  I am loved.  If we are to be judged by our fruits, face it old chap, you’re one thing and I’m another, eh?  (exit)

Music - Mozart’s Requiem.  Enter the funeral director, who wheels off the coffin with a satisfied air as lights fade.
=========================================

FROM "Holiday in Elsinore"
CONTEXT:  Rosie and Goldie, Hamlet's school chums, get nostalgic, sing the old school song.

ROSIE:  The Whitewashed Walls of Wittenberg, eh.  (sings:)
Oh Wittenberg, source of our power
Fount of our destiny
Thou hold’st within thy hallowed walls
All that we need to be.
Whatever heights we may attain
Whatever fame we know,
Oh whitewashed wall-ed Wittenberg
‘tis all to thee we owe.
(He is about to sing a second verse when, to his delight:)

GOLDIE:  (sings)
Though we may grow in worldly goods
And walk the royal halls,
Yet may our souls remain as white
As thy stout hallowed walls.
Oh stately towers of Wittenberg
That lift our thoughts above -

ROSIE AND GOLDIE:  (sing)
Remind us ever all is vain
Save work that’s built on love.
(both chant the war-cry, do a lively stepping routine)
Walla walla Wittenberg
Luther, ruther roo
Aristotle had a bottle
Hid it in his shoe
Walla walla Wittenberg
Plato, rato, ram,
Diogenes had dodgy knees
But we don’t give a damn.