Free Alice by Laura Wade Page B

suitcase.
    ALICE: And what are toves?
    HUMPTY DUMPTY: Toves are a little like badgers, something like lizards and quite a lot like corkscrews.
    ALICE: OK, gyre and gimble.
    HUMPTY DUMPTY: Gyre is to go round and round like a gyroscope, gimble is to make holes like a gimlet.
    ALICE: That doesn’t make sense.
    HUMPTY DUMPTY: It’s not a very good poem.
    ALICE: Mimsy?
    HUMPTY DUMPTY: Flimsy and miserable.
    ALICE: Borogoves?
    HUMPTY DUMPTY: Thin, shabby looking birds with feathers that stick out all round.
    ALICE: Mome raths?
    HUMPTY DUMPTY: Raaths! To rhyme with baaths! Speak properly.
    ALICE: Where I come from we say bath.
    HUMPTY DUMPTY: A rath is a sort of a pig.
    ALICE: Oh, ok, I saw a pig earlier.
    HUMPTY DUMPTY: Mome means from home – as in someone who’d lost their way.
    ALICE: Oh, that’s me! I’ve lost my way home.
    HUMPTY DUMPTY: One can only go so far with a conservative structure like that. Most poets of any worth these days have abandoned the rhyme entirely. We
like to let our words roam free.
    ALICE: Yes, so the next bit says –
    HUMPTY DUMPTY: I said, WE like to let our words roam free.
    ALICE: Right. You’re a poet, are you?
    HUMPTY DUMPTY: Oh no, I couldn’t possibly.
    ALICE: Sorry?
    HUMPTY DUMPTY: It’s so exposing to read one’s work aloud – it’s a very delicate process.
    ALICE: OK, we could just carry on / with this then –
    HUMPTY DUMPTY: Well, if you insist.
    HUMPTY takes a piece of paper from his breast pocket .
    ALICE: No, I don’t insist, really.
    HUMPTY DUMPTY: I can’t bear to disappoint people, you see. But I’m still tinkering with this one, so –
    ALICE: OK.
    HUMPTY DUMPTY: It is called ‘Sleeping With The Fishes’.
    HUMPTY clears his throat .
    Ahem.
    I have slept with the fishes
    Oh I oh I
    Down in the murkiest depths
    On a dark dark dark dark dark dark dark dark dark
    Night
    Repetition there, I don’t know if you spotted it.
    ALICE: Just about.
    HUMPTY DUMPTY:
    Sing us a story! Oh! Cry the fishes
    For we are so scared that the spectre will come.
    Up on the beach, the beach that is breadcrumbs
    The prawns are a-dancing
    And laugh with the waves
    Anthropomorphism there, of course, since we know that waves don’t laugh.
    ALICE: Neither do prawns.
    HUMPTY DUMPTY:
    Then out of the shadows, a-shuffling, a-groaning
    Shuffling, stumpy
    Slow and moaning
    Assonance. Slow and moaning.
    I’ll sing you a song! Says the terrible spectre
    Of earths that have worms in and things that eat eyes
    The life underground is not fit to keep rats in
    I AM NOT AT PEACE! the spectre cries
    The rat, of course, a classical symbol for survival of the human spirit.
    Did you catch the reference to Finnegans Wake back there?
    ALICE: Absolutely. Just I’ve really got to –
    HUMPTY DUMPTY:
    Take thou my hand, and the hands of the fishes
    Come with me dancing to infinite death
    Oh oh oh oh
    Do not let them burn me he cries
    ALICE: Thank you, I’ve really got to –
    HUMPTY DUMPTY: I haven’t finished.
    Nails clawing at the lid of the coffin
    ALICE: I think I’ve had enough poetry now.
    HUMPTY DUMPTY:
    I AM NOT AT PEACE! he cries
    DO NOT BURN ME, I AM NOT AT PEACE!
    ALICE: Stop it!
    HUMPTY DUMPTY:
    Deep. Deep. Deep. Deep.
    Sleeping with the fishes
    I AM NOT AT PEACE.
    ALICE: Stop it now! I mean it.
    ALICE shakes a little .
    HUMPTY DUMPTY: I have never been spoken to like that.
    ALICE: Sorry. Sorry, just –
    HUMPTY DUMPTY: You can interpret your own poem, and good luck to you, I say.
    ALICE: No I’m sorry. Please can you –
    HUMPTY DUMPTY: THE BELL IS FOR ME NOT FOR YOU!
    Homework in by Friday please, or there’ll be no jam for anyone. It’s your own life you’re wasting, you know...
    Some WONDERLANDERS come and wheel HUMPTY off .
    ALICE: Yeah, well done, Alice, that’s excellent. He could have explained that whole thing to you, but now you’ve pissed him off and he’s
pissed off, gone away. Fat lot of good you turned out to be.
    ALICE sees the POSTMAN approaching. She pulls herself