Scene: Flat cart on four wheels and extending out from it, a platform supported by barrels. This serves as stage.
Bear Boy, costumed, stands on high and shouts to the crowd. People look. He addresses them as the stock character Tom Fool, in a manner brave and sure for such a spindly young fellow.
In comes I, Tom Fool’s the name.
Gather round, good man and dame.
Come, father graybeard, whiskered crone,
Crippled Dick and jumping Joan,
Gladsome child and fretful nurse,
All hear our story told in verse.
See here our Comp’ny of Buffoons
Arrived to sing you merry tunes.
By your consent we shall begin,
Hokum-pokum, jiggedy-jin.
Squats, holds up one finger to gesture for attention, then points.
Tom Fool:
Driddlety drum, driddlety drum,
Into your midst a beggar does come!
Hobbling through the crowd is an actor, suited in red and playing a Blind Man. Rude, ridiculous, he thrusts his begging bowl at this person and that as they laugh and push him away. He wears tied over his eyes a ragged cloth and carries lodged under one arm a flat stick.
Blind Man: (piteous)
In comes I, a beggar blind,
Scorned by Fate and humankind.
Four and twenty — My stomach is empty.
Pray, a penny that I might dine.
The man feels his way, climbs onto the stage.
Tom Fool: (to audience)
Boy and Blind Man is our play.
I, the boy, must obey,
For when I was a wee young sprat
Ma sold me to him. Tit-for-Tat.
He gives me bread. I am his eyes.
We go together like shit and flies.
