28 Plays Later – Challenge #4
Adapt an existing work (poem, song, story, etc.) for the stage
Inspiration:
Sonnet #2, William Shakespeare
When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,
Thy youth’s proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter’d weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask’d where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty’s use,
If thou couldst answer ‘This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,’
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.
Excerpt:
BETTY
You should set a date and marry your doctor. You’ve got a pretty enough face now, and shiny young person’s hair, but it won’t last. Forty, fifty years from now you’ll be gray and wrinkled like me, and you won’t fill out that sweater so nicely.
I mean, look and me… I got no heinie and my tchotchkes hang almost to my navel. Trust me, a pretty face can’t last forever, and your doctor will give you lots of pretty babies.
ANNA
Well, we’re really not planning on children any time soon. My career is just taking off – I’m an architect – and I don’t want to be like my own mother, constantly having to balance work and home. I want to make my mark first, and then we’ll have a family.
BETTY
An architect? So, what when you’re old and saggy you’ll have some office building that you can point to and call yours? Mark me, young woman, you’ll look in the mirror some day and all you’ll see is your own eyes staring back at you, mocking your dead skin and fading hair. Children… children are the only real legacy there is.
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