Jerusalem
WIFE: The How’s-Your-Father.
HUSBAND: Oh. [Long pause. WIFE looks angrily away from HUSBAND, who stares bleakly at the ground in front of him.] Well, anyway, we can’t sit here all night.
WIFE: You’re right. We can’t. [Both remain seated. Behind them, BUNYAN regards the silent couple with bewilderment. He still has not noticed CLARE until the latter speaks from the dark alcove in the background.]
JOHN CLARE: Ha! I’ll bet you won’t hear me either, you great nincompoop.
JOHN BUNYAN: [Wheeling about to peer into the darkness under the portico.] What? Who goes there, skulking like a cutthroat?
JOHN CLARE: Oh, no. I’ve miscalculated. This is an embarrassment.
JOHN BUNYAN: Come out! Come out, before I draw my sword! [CLARE rises nervously out of his alcove, tottering hesitantly forward with both palms raised in placation.]
JOHN CLARE: Oh, come now. There’s no need for that. ’Twas but a jest, for which I make apology. I had not realised you were dead as well. It is, I’m sure, a common error.
JOHN BUNYAN: [Surprised.] Are we dead, then?
JOHN CLARE: I’m afraid that is my understanding of the situation, yes.
JOHN BUNYAN: [Turning to look at couple on steps in foreground.] What about them? Are they dead?
JOHN CLARE: Not yet. I expect they’re hanging on to see what happens.
JOHN BUNYAN: This indeed is a conundrum. Dead, then. I had thought that I but dreamed, and had not woken on my gaol cot to make water or turn on my side in an uncommonly long while.
JOHN CLARE: It is a plain fact you will never do these things again.
JOHN BUNYAN: Well, I am astounded. I had thought the world to come a fierier terrain than this, and now am disappointed by the writings that I made about it.
JOHN CLARE: [Interested.] Was it writings that you made? Well, here’s a pretty match. I once was in that kind of work myself, now that I think of it. I wrote all day, I’m sure of it, when I was married first to Mary Joyce and then to Patty Turner. Was I Byron then, or was I king? I can’t remember all the little details now, the way I once did. But what of yourself? Would there be any of your writings I might know of?
JOHN BUNYAN: I’d not think it likely. I once penned some words about a pilgrim, meant to show the pitfalls and the troubles that there are in worldly life. The common people liked it well enough, yet I was not the courtly crawler Dryden was, and when another Charles came to the throne I did not do so well of it. This recent news of being dead makes me suppose the greater part of what I wrote did not survive me.
JOHN CLARE: [Incredulous, with dawning realisation.] You would not be Mr. Bunyan, late of Bedford?
JOHN BUNYAN: [Cautiously flattered.] That I am, unless there is another. Is it so few years since my demise that I am still remembered? But things seem so changed. Were not the pillars of All Hallows Church here built from wood when last I passed this way? Or did that all go in the fire? It makes me pleased to think you know of me.
JOHN CLARE: Why, from the look of things I’d say it must be getting on three hundred years since you were last alive. I take it you’ll have noticed the fine calves and ankles on the woman there, for they were the first things I looked at. It’s outlandish days we’re in, you may be sure, but I would bet a shilling that the progress of your pilgrim is a thing on everybody’s lips, just as your name’s on everybody’s feet. Upon these feet of mine, most certainly, when I made my own progress out of Matthew Allen’s prison in the forest and walked eighty miles back home to Helpstone. You’ll no doubt have heard of it, and of myself. I am Lord Byron, who they call the peasant poet. Does that ring a bell?
JOHN BUNYAN: I cannot say it does. Why do they call you peasant when you are a Lord?
JOHN CLARE: It does seem queer, now that you mention it. And why does Queen Victoria insist she is my daughter? It may be, upon consideration, that I’m not entirely on the mark with the Lord Byron business. It was no doubt all the limping that confused me. It now comes to me that in the very fact of things I am John Clare, the author of Don Juan. There! That will be a name, I think, that’s more familiar to you.
JOHN BUNYAN: I’m afraid that it is not.
JOHN CLARE: [Disappointed.] What, not the Clare or the Don Juan, now?
JOHN BUNYAN: Neither of them.
JOHN CLARE: Ah, God. Am I not even John Clare? [CLARE lapses into a depressed silence, staring at the ground. BUNYAN regards him, concerned.]
HUSBAND: Look, I’m no saint.
WIFE: [Not looking at him.] You can say that again.
HUSBAND: [After a pause.] What I’m saying is I’m only flesh and blood.
WIFE: [Angrily, turning to glare at him accusingly.] Well, what sort of excuse is that? We’re all just flesh and blood! You show me somebody who’s not! [She looks away from him again, reverting to silence. Behind the pair, CLARE and BUNYAN exchange lugubrious and unconvinced glances.]