TEARS OF THE FOOT GUARDS

ALLEGRO - STAVE I

                                  WERE I, like N I O B E, all tears - I'd weep,

                                  And swell the Water of the mighty Deep:

                                  If chang'd like A R E T H U S A to a Stream,

                                  In Tears I'd flow - and Beauty make my Theme.

                                  Curse the Madness of the Times - and those

                                  Who made America our fellest Foes! . . .

                                                                           from

                                                                           The TEARS of the FOOT GUARDS

                                                                           upon their DEPARTURE for AMERICA

                                                                           written by an ENSIGN of the ARMY

                                                                          Nos PATRIAM FUGIMUS

                                                                         Nos DULCIA LINQUIMUS

                                                                         1776 

Narrator:

O, I must tell you this dear Reader, I am on the Page. I, the Voice, a character in this play with these Contestants. Me, invisible, in and out their heads as they strive, seek, and bend. And the Trick is which of us is speaking, for I will Insert, Intercede and Digress. And Speak and Speak and Speak, breaking Boundaries. For this is the way of it – REVOLUTION – the mighty clash! That you're flummoxed or must LOOK IT UP . . . I care not. For this, in truth, a WORLD foreign to your Conventions; I hijack a History ye do not know . . . And to ye Chroniclers, Thread-Counters, and Sabbath Day Thespians, I say – get into your Beer and OBJECT NOT – 'tis not bloody SCRIPTURE I profane. But to all, linger here, for these poor Characters are but You. Yes, you, in your Conceits, Hopes, and Vanities. A SYMPHONEY! That it prick your Discomforts . . . Non possunt placeto omnibus.

A L L E G R O

August 1776:

The British Transport Fleet at Sea

S T A V E

I

Below deck was stinking. Tar and pitch and the sour of human sweat, magnified by the heat and made more miserable by the woman weeping. A sound that came from nowhere and everywhere and mingled with the rush against the transport's hull. It hung like Death about the soldiers feigning sleep, checked by its pitiful sound. They feared it like contagion. Should it seep too long into their ears, they too may be taken down, taken quickly and without warning like the dead soldier the woman wept over. For there was nowhere to go. No long street to bend around a corner 'til the discomfort's out of sight. No fields of great space to put distance between them and the trouble. These were luxuries of land sorely missed on a crossing taken far too long. There – the ship only, and though part of a great fleet, was their island and cage, and all they had in the world. And now, in the dark, save for a single beam of moonglow through the hatch, they curled up pretending not to hear as they rocked upon the midnight waters.