Is there no end to the stream of players who pass through this
little burgh? One after another they come and go. Thoroughly
thrashed, the hometown clown watches the itinerant actors leave
his humble hamlet at one end of the lone street while another band
is arriving at the other. Smoothing his motley so and adjusting his fool’s cap, he turns and sallies forth to greet ‘em, his bells ajingle,
a jaunty skip still left in his aching step. “Welcome! Welcome, one
and all! Come forth! Right this way to the Music Hall.”
No longer is there any real expectation that ‘this time’ things might
just turn out different, even if it is ostensibly incumbent upon the
players to hold the audience in thrall– so that they might pretend to
suspend belief (tho’ they hold none at all)– that at that last
moment they might cathartize all their dreads thru the fool who
takes their fall.
poetastrophy 