Counselling Shakespeare
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You say your wife is seeing another man. |
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I serve my father and I serve my Lord |
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Think of it as a sort of martial art - |
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He comes before us on three separate counts: |
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To be or not to be – who the hell cares? |
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Oh him -- the one who calls himself The King. |
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7- Aromatherapy
Her arms once circled in my collar’s stead.
Where now her touch, her taste, her scent, her sound?
Her cushioned breast that bore my weighted head?
Her hands that scratched my ears? Where are they found?
Oh rub the oil where once she stroked my mane,
and sing. Oh please! Can you not sing?
She sang such songs as I still hear -- again
I hear the echo -- but have lost the ring.
My life was lived one night in that bright wood.
One hour I was the joy of joy’s own Queen.
Her lips caressed my passion where I stood
‘til I made bray - made bray – sublime – obscene.
Now rub -- ‘til you rub out this mania.
And yet I call her name: Titania!
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8- The Behaviourist
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Ah, Mrs M. Do take a chair. Sit still. Don’t rub your hands. I said, don’t rub your hands! Well, you were warned. It’s just a thrill, a small electric charge. The body stands far more than that – as I should know. No, no it’s nothing dangerous – but we can make you stop this rubbing, or can make you go on once again. We have control. We break your patterns, and create them new. Good news. It means that we have ways to make you sleep. We deal with what is real, not with your views. We change your acts; your so-called thoughts you keep. And we will both be spared the rigmarole of an examination of your soul. |
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Now class, you know why we are here: Sex Ed.
My bounty is as boundless as the sea, It’s not just sex. There are the things above
When he shall die You think you made the things that you discover. O I have bought the mansion of a love, For homework you can read about effects O shut the
door, and when though hast done so, |
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10- She goes
on the Jerry Springer show
I want to have my say. It isn’t fair.
The rest talk you to death - and after death
still they talk on. About me, they don’t care.
I’m choked off here - I want to spend my breath
to tell my tale.
I’m on! I hold this sign:
I’m married to my husband’s murderer, usurper of the throne, and plotter in attempted murder (didn’t quite occur) of my one son, that one, who turns around and by mistake stabs his fiancée’s Dad which sends the fiancée mad – she goes and drowns |
Ah, well. The worst is past. My son’s OK.
Tonight he’s being nice: giving a play.
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| I am immortal. Death is just a door between rooms in my many-chambered hall. Though people mourn - and pile up, more and more, the flowers to crest against the palace wall. They celebrate my death. They want to learn through me the road past life. They need to fill this road with their own tears. Through me they earn an insight, lift a corner of the veil. To work my sacrifice – I must be young, my beauty worshipped, meet a sudden end by violence, or by the serpent’s tongue. I do this work again – and yet again. They hold an inquest: ask “was this well done?” My dying thoughts are for my two lost sons. |
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The Playwright Responds
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The first rule is: make up your mind. Be clear. |
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13- The Therapists Respond
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We welcome all, the easy and the hard |
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These sonnets now are ended – creatures of one playwright’s mind now mended by such art as our times offer. We watch from above each sent as though to read for a new part. What is our part? These characters we can grow up with, we can see them on the stage. They are the very pattern of a man or woman of our own – or any – age. We laugh. They stumble into traps and pit- falls of our lives, our well-developed state. We watch and laugh to see the benefit these therapies and services create. These players subject to our modern rule – how cruel for them! For us, how very cruel. |
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