Nevermore

Edgar Allen Poe confronts his demons.

NEVERMORE

a play by Casey Luther

CHARACTERS  

EDGAR ALLAN POE

LENORE

HOTEL ATTENDANT 

ANNABEL LEE

THE RAVEN

GRIM REAPER

GHOSTS

Scene One

Lights on to reveal a hotel room in Baltimore, Maryland. EDGAR sits at his desk. On his desk is a decanter and a whiskey glass. A storm is brewing outside. Upstage left is a bed. Upstage center is a window. Downstage left is the desk.

EDGAR: (WRITING) Hast thou no tear? Weep now or Nevermore! See on you dear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore.

(WIND BLOWS)

LENORE: (WHISPERS IN A SING SONG VOICE) Edgar. Edgar. Come to me, Edgar.

EDGAR: (CONTINUES TO WRITE) Yon heir, whose cheeks a pallid blue with tears are streaming wet, sees only through…

LENORE: Edgar. Turn your eyes toward me. Look upon my face.

EDGAR: Dreadful hallucination. You are nothing but memories of woebegone years gone by. A blemish on my mind. A reconjuring horror brought on by this glass and the liquor that dwells in it.

A LIGHT SHINES UPON THE BED. LENORE, DRESSED IN BLUE, HOLDS A BLACK CAT.

LENORE: Come away with me, Edgar. Take my hand and come with me.

EDGAR: There is nothing there.

LENORE: You still deny my presence? Why do you doubt your senses?

EDGAR: Leave me, spirit. Go up to God so mournfully that you will feel no wrong. Sweet, Lenore. You hath gone before with young hope at your side. You are wild. Death came to you, child. You should've been my bride.

LENORE: Aye. Death came to me just as he will come to you. Come with me, my love. Come forth and hold onto the hem of my garments and come with me. Escape death's sting.

EDGAR: Begone.

LENORE: Come with me!

EDGAR: I said begone! (EDGAR STANDS TO FACE HER. HE IS ANGRY) Begone with your stirring soul. Haunt me no longer! Go back to your darkness!

LIGHTS OUT.

THUNDER EFX

LIGHTS ON

LENORE IS GONE. A KNOCK AT THE DOOR. EDGAR ANSWERS.

HOTEL MANAGER: Is everything alright, sir?

EDGAR: Yes. Just a nightmare.

HOTEL MANAGER: You’re sweating, sir. Are you ill?

EDGAR: Nothing a bath can’t cure. Goodnight.

HOTEL MANAGER: Good night, sir.

EDGAR CROSSES TO THE DESK.

HE POURS HIMSELF ANOTHER DRINK.

HE DOWNS IT.

THE STORM WORSENS.

THE WINDOWS BLOW OPEN.

EDGAR STARES.

EDGAR: And this was the reason that, long ago, in the kingdom by the sea, a wind blew out a cloud by night chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. (SHAKES HIS HEAD THEN CLOSES THE WINDOWS SHUT) Dejected memories of my youth. Why must you haunt me so? Why must you stay with me as if some unrelenting specter?

ANNABEL LEE: Edgar.

EDGAR: Not another. Not another heavy-hearted recollection of my loves lost to the cold hands of death. It seems as if it teases me. Taking the breath of all who surround me. And now my doleful memories manifest themselves in drunk delusions of my melancholy state.

ANNABEL LEE: Edgar.

EDGAR: What do want from me?!

LIGHT SHINES ON ANNABEL LEE WHO IS DRESSED IN WHITE.

ANNABEL LEE: Edgar. My darling, Edgar. Dost thou remember me? Say that you do. Say that you remember me and that our love is not lost nor has it spoiled on the jagged rocks of your discontent.

EDGAR: Those who are swallowed by the greedy maw of death should stay that way. They should stay silent in their sepulcher and not visit me in their afterlife. Be gone apparition.

ANNABEL LEE: Our love has conditions? You wish me living in order to continue to love me?

EDGAR: I have loved you. Presently I cannot love something that exists only in the trappings of my mind. And here. Now. I speak with a drunken tongue conversing with a phantom only seen by me. A vision produced by my own insanity.

ANNABEL LEE: Why must you doubt your senses?

EDGAR: For they are unreliable when touched by the devil’s nectar. The drink upon my tongue inebriates me so that I see visions of the monsters I have created upon my parchment. Leave me be, Annabel. Leave me be.

ANNABEL LEE: Dost thou remember me? Say that you do.

EDGAR: I shall forget you when I am sober. Now go.

LIGHTS OUT

THUNDER EFX

LIGHTS ON.

ANNABEL LEE IS GONE.

EDGAR: Why must I dream so that all of my dreams that I once wished to come true come from nothing but nightmares? What have I done in life to merit this? What have I accomplished in life so that death does not take me but sits at my table and dines with me night after night staring at me with those empty eyes? When will you stop your visits death?! Why must you toy with my emotions? Why must you play with my senses? I now doubt things that lie beneath common sense. Where are you death? Where are you?

THERE IS A TAPPING AT THE WINDOW.

EDGAR: Is that you death? Do you fear man so much that you will not show your face when beseeched?

THERE IS A TAPPING AT THE WINDOW.

THE WINDOW OPENS.

A RAVEN SITS ON THE SEAL.

EDGAR: So. You are the visitor? Tapping as once before. Are you death in fowl form? Have you come for me bird? Was it you who sent Annabel Lee? Do you know of my mourning of my sweet Lenore?

RAVEN: Nevermore.

EDGAR: What speaks you, Blackbird? Who has sent you to my chambers? Tell me of the darkness from which you come from? Please. I implore.

RAVEN: Nevermore.

EDGAR: You dare speak just one word as I plead with you, bird? Why do you tease me? Answer my questions. Tell me more.

RAVEN: Nevermore.

EDGAR: Then away with you, putrid creature. Back to Hell with you and your gossamer wings. Back to the underworld with your dreadful tidings that you bring! I send you away like the two before. My Annabel Lee and my beloved Lenore.

RAVEN: Nevermore.

THUNDER AND LIGHTNING

LIGHTS OUT

LIGHTS ON.

THE RAVEN IS GONE.

THE REAPER IS THERE.

EDGAR: Reaper, bringer of death and specter hidden by shadow and cloak, have you finally come for me or have you only come to dangle my sorrows before me, thrilled at my despair?

THE REAPER SAYS NOTHING

EDGAR: No words from you? You are silent. As cold as a tomb. Do not allow me to bask in your deafening silence. Speak to me!

MIDNIGHT HITS.

THE BELLS BEGIN TO RING.

THE REAPER POINTS HIS FINGERS AT EDGAR.

EDGAR HITS THE FLOOR.

EDGAR:   Hear the loud alarum bells -- Brazen bells!

What tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! In the startled ear of the night how they scream out their affright! Too much horrified to speak, they can only shriek, shriek, out of tune, in a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, in a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, leaping higher, higher, higher, with a desperate desire, and a resolute endeavor.

GHOSTS ENTER ON STAGE SWAYING BACK AND FORTH.

THE SURROUND EDGAR.

EDGAR: Now -- now to sit or never, by the side of the pale-faced moon. Oh, the bells, bells, bells!  What a tale their terror tells of despair! How they clang, and clash, and roar! Haunt me nevermore!

THE GHOSTS HIDE EDGAR FROM THE AUDIENCE.

LIGHTS OUT.

THUNDER EFFECTS

LIGHTS ON

A GRAVE WITH A RAVEN ON TOP.

ANNABEL LEE & LENORE: (IN A SING SONG VOICE) Edgar.

ONE TOLL OF THE BELL

THE RAVEN: Nevermore.

END OF SCENE