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Tom Fool: (babbles nonsense)

Tie cheese in a bag, pack pudding in a lantern.

If you go where I’ve been, you’ll never be wanted.

Blind Man: (removes blindfold; addresses audience)

Tom’s back from the dead and more a Fool.

Next time I’ll hit harder. He’s thick as a mule.

Exits, stomping mightily.

Tom Fool rises, picks up a drum and plays it. To the delight of the crowd, there clambers onto the stage Dancing Bear who proceeds to stand on her back legs and shimmy. Eezum Squeezum and Polly join hands.

All dance and sing:

As we said to the man on the tree top,

Make more haste coming down than when you went up.

Nothing is certain. Life happens by chance.

When devils play pipes, you better well dance.

Dancing Bear sits with a grunt and a sigh. Players face audience and toss to each other one-liners.

 
 

Tom Fool:

Polly is so pretty. Why did not her lovers stay?

Pretty Polly:

This bastard in my belly caused three men to run away.

Eezum Squeezum:

She tried a trick to marry one, but all the men beat it.

Tom Fool: (pantomimes eating as he pats Polly’s fat stomach)

If a man got you a babe, Polly, why did you eat it?

Pretty Polly: (throws up her hands)

Witless and raw, a greater Fool I never saw.

Eezum Squeezum: (lifts hem of Polly’s tunic and removes a rude pillow that serves as her pregnant belly)

So no more need, my dear, of this sack of straw.

 

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Lively’s Way - Bear Boy c: GB0190