Excerpt: WHO KILLED ANNABEL LEE?
ACT I
The entire action of the play takes place in the
study of Edgar Poe. A writing desk, placed
somewhat diagonally, sits stage left, with a chair
behind it. The desk is covered with writing paper,
an inkwell, a wad of crumpled paper, letters, and
books piled irregularly. A wine decanter and glass
sit on one corner of the desk and an oil lamp on
the other. At stage right is a bed, no bigger than
a cot, covered with a wool army coat. A night
stand sits next to the bed, with an oil lamp and a
picture on it. A door is to the left of the desk,
with a bust of Pallus mounted above it. A trunk
sits beside the desk. A sandwich board announcing
an upcoming lecture by Poe is in front of the
desk.
As house goes to black, a shaft of light appears.
As if telling a ghost story, POE’s voice recites.
POE (V.O.)
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
The light is extinguished. In the darkness arises
a thirty-second taped cacophony of horror,
chilling to hear. It is a muted, as if somewhat
distant, succession and sometimes overlap of the
sounds associated with our worst fears of agony,
torture, and death. There are shrieks, groans,
moans, wails, whimpers, garments rendered,
strangled cries, etc. The origin of the sounds is
hard to pinpoint, free-floating.
As the gruesome sounds taper off, we hear POE.
POE
No! Make it stop!
The sounds end, and the lights come up to
illuminate the set.
It is a night in 1849. POE is kneeling beside the
bed. He is forty years old and dressed as
conventionally pictured in a shabby,
single-button, black greatcoat, white blouse, and
black ascot swaddled around his neck,
bandage-like. Despite an attempt at presenting a
meticulous appearance, there are signs of
dishevelment. He tries to tidy himself up a bit
for the audience, smoothing his hair and buttoning
the jacket crookedly.
POE (CONT'D.)
Why? Why am I haunted by sounds and visions of the dead
and dying? The phantoms of my own creations torment me
day and night. It is unbearable. Yet death is my
favorite character.
You may say that I am mad. I grant, at least, that
there are two distinct conditions of my mental
existence -- the condition of lucid reason and
belonging to the memory of events forming the first
epoch of my life.
And second, a condition of shadow and doubt,
appertaining to the present. Therefore, what I shall
tell you of the earlier period, believe; and to what I
may relate of the later time, give only such credit as
may seem due; or doubt it altogether.
Do you want to know why I invited you tonight? It is
two years to the day after my Sissy died. This bed is
where she breathed her last on January 30, 1847. With
only Muddy and my feeble presence to comfort her.
(Rising.)
My little wife Sissy is my Annabel Lee. My Eleonora. My
Lenore. My every palely doomed beloved from this day to
evermore.
Can you imagine the agony I was in when she died so
young? The agony that has stalked and haunted me for
the past two years. I have wearied heaven with prayers
for relief from relentless grief. Long suffering has
nearly annihilated all my ordinary powers of mind. I
have become a sterile poet.
Can you see the utter depression of my soul? The
atmosphere of sorrow that I breathe? Do you see it? A
species of mad hilarity in my eyes, an evidently
restrained hysteria?
I am the living corpse of a gathering suicide. Tonight
you will help me decide. Should I resign myself to
madness? Or should I accept my guilt and kill myself?
But first you need to hear my story. My story first of
sanity, before my Sissy died. And then my tale of
madness after her death. You need to know how I arrived
at this night. You need to know why I am teetering on
the brink of suicide.
My readers don’t care. They find my personal sorrows
tiresome. Right, dear public? My readers clamor for,
demand, damn them, more gruesome fates and gore. Their
genteel blood lust must be satisfied -- and soon -- or
Muddy and I will starve.
He crosses to the desk and sits. He reads from an
imaginary letter.
"Dear Mr. Poe: It has been seven months since your last
grisly tale. I beseech you to grace your slavering
public with a jolly evisceration at the very least.
Awaiting your next hideous crime. Truly yours..."
He pretends to write.
"Dear Sir: Perhaps you have read my essay, "How to
Write a Blackwood Article." If so, you know that an
addiction to truth compels me to personally experience
the sensations I write about. For example, before
writing "Loss of Breath," I bought an excellent pair of
garters and hanged myself. You can appreciate the
physical toll this method takes on the body. It
sometimes takes months to recover. An evisceration such
as you suggest could force me to abandon writing
altogether. Yours truly..."
He will probably believe me. I expect a condolence card
any day.
He picks up the decanter. He studies it. then puts
it down.
My literary enemies, Dr. English among them, comb the
papers daily for news that I have been found gloriously
intoxicated in a gutter. Then slander me with mock
concern.
(Quoting WILMER.)
"Poor Fellow! -- he is not a teetotaler by any means
and I fear he is going headlong to destruction, moral,
physical, and intellectual.”
Hacks! They want to believe my excessive genius comes
from excessive gin.
It was Henry, not me, who drowned his gifts.
(Reciting.)
"Or art thou with the lover?
When hope itself is over --
--what shriek is there?
It is despair --
That wildly, -- madly cries, "I’m there."
I am not the only poet in the family. Did you know
that? Henry wrote those lines. My brother. William
Henry Leonard Poe. We would start and finish each
other’s poems. He helped me get my first poems
published.
(To Henry.)
We would have made a rollicking pair of sailors if we
had shipped out together, right, brother?
He was a charmer, Henry, a dashing gay cavalier.
Beloved by Greek nymphs and mademoiselles in Haiti. On
shore, he made friends easily. The only trait we had in
common was melancholy.
(Listening.)
What’s that sound? Hail? No. Just wind scattering what
remains of winter’s withered leaves. Will these bleak,
frozen days never end? I am going out of my mind in
this forsaken cottage. Not a friendly hearth for miles
around.
You would never find Henry shut away in the country. He
could summon his Muse on the deck of a ship or in
Mistress Foy’s Tavern. Rum punch and pirate stories,
that was Henry.
But his poetry was sweetly sentimental.
We were orphans, you know. Let me show you.
He stands and searches his coat pockets.
It has to be here.
He rummages on the desk, becoming increasingly
frantic.
I saw it this morning. Or was it last week? "Stay calm,
Eddy. Stay calm." That’s what Sissy would say to me.
He opens a desk drawer.
Ah!
He pulls out a small picture and kisses it.
I would sooner cut out my heart than lose this.
One of my readers wanted to know why my stories are so
obsessed with death. Is it any wonder? It’s because
death is obsessed with me.
He displays the picture to the audience.
My mother. Her name was Elizabeth, but Muddy says
everyone called her Eliza. This and a painting are all
I have of her. The only other possession she had in the
world went to Henry. A locket.
(Reciting.)
"My Mother’s, too! -- then let me press
This gift of her i loved so well, --"
A little maudlin, even for Henry. Still, the sentiment
is sound.
I think Henry felt our loss more keenly. He was four. I
was only two. He would sing her favorite song to me.
(Singing.)
"There is not in this wide world a valley so sweet
As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet,"
(Breaking off.)
Don’t judge by my singing. It really is lovely. Henry
inherited mother’s sweet voice, not I.
There is a light tapping sound. POE is momentarily
distracted.
A tree branch, nothing more.
POE returns the picture to his desk. He toys
briefly with the decanter.
Yes, Henry was gifted. A gifted writer and an even more
gifted drinker.
It must be almost midnight.
POE sits and takes up a pen.
This poem is cursed.
(Vigorously crossing out.)
Every word balks at being born.
(Reciting as he writes.)
Cherish this kiss upon thy brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Da-Dum-da-dum-da-dum allow, no, avow, no. bough, plow,
cow. No!
POE crumples the paper.
The literary societies demand an original poem. No one
will pay 25 cents to hear Mr. Edgar Poe unless he can
deliver a new work of art. Hang every one of them.
Maybe I’ll read them one of Henry’s. He would laugh at
that. The pranks we played in Baltimore. Francis Scott
Key was livid.
(Laughs.)
Oh, lad. How close we might have been as orphans if we
hadn’t been ripped apart. But that was long, long ago.
POE walks over to the bed.
Sleep -- those little interludes of death. How I fear
them.
He sits.
But what I wouldn’t give to slip into an hour or two of
deadly sleep tonight. I’m so tired. I’ve barely closed
my eyes in weeks. And when I do, I hear my Sissy crying
out to me from her burial vault. As if she is alive
behind those marbled walls.
POE puts his hands over his ears.
Stop! Sissy, please! I can’t bear thinking I buried you
alive!
POE returns to the desk.
How is it possible to work? Black thoughts rumble and
crash inside my brain. Days ago...yes, days ago, I
started a poem that had promise. What did I do with it?
He unfolds and scans wadded sheets of paper and
tosses them aside, until finding the one he wants.
Here it is. Maybe it can save me.
(Reading.)
"Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,"
That’s all I have. This scrap of thought. Is it good? I
can’t tell anymore. What’s the next line? The words
used to spill across the page. What is it even about? A
quest, maybe? A quest for what? How does it end?
(Laughs.)
Death. Always death.
POE pulls a stoppered bottle of reddish-brown
liquid from his pocket. He looks around furtively.
I’ve been hiding this from Muddy. She would panic if
she found out I bought it. Tincture of opium. Laudanum.
He raises the bottle as if making a toast.
To Laudanum.
(Quoting.)
"With soul-corroding thought oppress’d
Whilst keen affliction fills my breast,
And swells the tide of grief;
Thou laudanum, cans't quickly steep
My burning eyes in balmy sleep,
(To audience.)
Or welcome death.
He holds the bottle up to the light.