Opening of Linhaishu - A Tragedy

 

[The boards are bare save for a heavy red velvet curtain drawn tight across the rear wall. A single footlight pools upon the planks. Enter a dapper, bearded gentleman in doublet and hose, his garb stitched with silver like storm-clouds caught in gold. He steps forward, brushes dust from his cuffs with deliberate care, adjusts the fall of his collar, sets his wide-brimmed hat square upon his brow, and peers myopically into the gathered dark.]

"Hark, gentle guests, ye who have braved the chill

To sit beneath these rafters’ watchful eye—

Ye shall not hear of fields where barley swells,

Nor kings that carve their names in honest stone.

We step now into a city wrought of glass,

Where harmony is bought with human breath,

And mirrors wear the faces of our kin

To flatter sovereign pride until it cracks."

"There lives an old storm-crowned and blind king;

He asks for love as if ’twere coin to spend.

When one daughter speaks in polished lies—

“I am thy shield!” cries she with diamond glance—

While another weaves a garden soft as sleep

To drown the conscience ere it learn its name…

The truth-teller, who bears no honeyed tongue,

Is cast beyond his gates like chaff to wind."

"Mark well this tale: of how perfection’s spell

Turns tender flesh to clockwork; how flattery

Curdles to chains unseen; how exile walks

Through rust and rot where honest hearts take root.

For in the mud, beneath the spire’s cold glare,

There beats a rhythm that no math may tame—

A jagged breath, an unaligned step,

The revulsion that warns when gods pretend."

"Ye shall watch towers fracture like struck glass;

See loyalty betrayed by gilded lies;

And know that what the proud call “flawless grace,”

Is often but a hollow, hungry shape.

Let not your eyes grow soft for polished stone.

Trust rather to the shiver in your blood

When all things gleam too clean, when none may doubt."

"Now draw the veil aside from gilded dreams.

The storm is stirring… Listen—and hold fast."

[He gives a slow, sweeping bow; doffs his hat with a sharp salute to your keeping; turns upon his heel and glides stage left as the red velvet curtain rises behind him.]