The dim rooms, ceilings low, stank of gin,
of glues and paints, together with
the singe of heat-scorched gelatin—
the scenery a monolith
of oily parts, the engine for
these Acts and Scenes a metaphor.
The playbills and the plays, a creased
ensemble salvaged from the fire
the night the theatre they leased
went up, with all the props—a pyre
of friar’s robes and wigs, and sets
of papier-mâché parapets.
What remained was here, curated
by actors old enough to play
Methuselah ex temp, or dead
on battlements by gaslight—slay
with poison, or with love’s regret
as Ophelia with Hamlet.
All this, in Henry Irving’s time—
but decades tread the rotten stair,
and needle shunts and petty crime
stalk alleyways still older, where
Ben Jonson walking there with Will
roused kings, the crown within the quill.
Estill Pollock | And Then
Contents | Mudlark No. 74 (2023)