These days, the sun shows no mercy. And Shakespeare in the Park is on.
He fiddles with a straw, crying in his beer, Billy, the actor.
I deserved to play Hamlet. They even gave the beef-witted, clay brained horn-beast part to someone else, he says.
He's down on his luck with getting parts. Stabbed in the back by so-called friends in his Shakespeare troupe. They tell him one thing and do the other. He's not that much liked by the local critics either. Ham, said one, in his only review. That hurt. He threatened to kill the pig who wrote it. I'll show those bastards, he says. It's a good thing he does not have a wife who could drive him to murder.
George hates him.
Maybe you should play golf instead? he thrusts, his face twisted like a bawdy, frosted-spirit codpiece.
Pat hates him.
Maybe you should work in a shop? he spits like a sheep biting, ill-faced nut-hook.
Mary hates him.
Maybe you should move to another country and try acting there? she sluices like a saucy, muddy-melted wagtail.
For me, Billy can always drink himself into the ground right here. I'll take his money, the clot! And why not? All the great Shakespearean actors -- Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole -- to name a couple, they were all drunks to the core. And then I can wander past Billy's grave one night, and have the gravediggers hand me his skull.
Alas! Poor Billy, I knew him well. When he was a failed actor spreading misery in a bar like a surly, impudent pizzle.