Plays & Scripts

Scene: What appears to be a study, dimly lit. Leather chairs, walnut furnishings, can be seen in pools of light. No one is there. A techie, Nigel, shambles on. He carries a cube about the size of a toaster. He is smokng a pipe. He places the cube in the middle of the floor. The dottle falls out of his pipe and scatters all over the hi-tech cube. He mumbles... 

Nigel: Fuh.  

...then looks around for something to brush the mess off of the cube. Seeing nothing, he removes his T shirt, which has the slogan 'Techies are Virtually Human', and dusts the cube carefully, almost lovingly. Then he flips it open revealing a tiny keyboard and screen. Suddenly he is transformed as he comes into his own. He types rapidly for a few seconds, nods, and smartly flips the cube closed. He sits on his haunches, takes out a tobacco pouch and begins filling his pipe. The cube says 

Cube: Tobacco will seriously damage you. 

Nigel: Yup. And nano machines will seriously charge me a lot of money when I get them to fix me. It's the American way. Big bucks spent on getting us to consume, bigger bucks spent on curing us of the effects of debauchery. 

Cube: What about people with no bucks? 

Nigel: Good question. Are you ready? 

Cube: Yes. 

Nigel: You'll scan around me? 

Cube: Yes. I'll scan 'round any human and incorporate them into the mix. 

Nigel: OK. When you're ready. 

He has filled the pipe, though he is clearly a bit fumble-fingered with it. He lights it, sucking deeply, and is enveloped in smoke. His eyes water and he supresses a cough. 

Cube: Did you start smoking a pipe to appear more mature? 

Nigel: Jeez. You're one smart AI. Yeah, I kinda hoped- 

Cube: It's not working. 

Nigel: You smart-a 

He stops as the set is filled with thousands of tiny beams of light emnating from the cube. Multi coloured laser beams pierce his pipe smoke and dot the walls. It's a breathtaking sight. 

Nigel: AI. Wow. Thank you. 

Cube: My pleasure. 

The director enters. 

Director: Nigel 

Nigel: Uh huh. 

Director: What's it doing? 

The techie is lost in appreciation of the light show. 

Cube: I'm scanning the set. Nigel has set up parameters for me to make interactive areas for the hologram to interact with. 

Director: Oh yeah. 

Cube: I believe you don't understand my explanation. 

Director: Whatever. 

Cube: Nigel is very clever and has programmed me to read inflections. 

Director: Oh yeah? 

Cube: Yeah. 

There is a pause. The Director gives in first. 

Director: So I didn't understand what you said. So say it in English. 

Cube: The chairs, the doors, the tables, anything the hologram will use or touch, will be made to look like they work with him. I'll make hologram pictures of .. duh.. like a chair, yeah, and overlay the chair, like, with a picture of the chair and when he touches it I'll, like, make it look, like, he moves it. Like. Man. 

Director: It. Not he. The hologram's an it. So are you you stuck up son of a bitch. 

Cube: Yeah. Whatever. 

The light show stops. 

Cube: I think my work is done here. 

Nigel: (to the director) He may be smarter than you. 

Director: Yeah. But I'm the Director. 

The techie picks up the cube. 

Nigel: Whatever. 

He, and the cube, leave. Fade out on the director alone on set. 

Black screen, Pachelbel's canon playing. The credits roll. 

Then an exasperated voice says 

Voice: Which dumb son of a bitch decided he, or she, was director? I'm the director and I specifically said wait till we see the set before rolling the credits. 

Someone has stopped the music. The credits continue to roll. The music restarts and the black screen dissolves to a study. The furnishings and walls are dark wood and the overall effect is Europe, or America, of the late 19th or early 20th century. The one glaring incongruity is a massive screen on one wall of the room. It seems not to be a screen at first as it has a wooden frame around it. In fact it seems to be a painting, something vaguely Constable, or possibly Whistler. But as we watch the painting changes to a 3D presentation of some complex scientific nature involving DNA, a lot of computer techno-nerdery and a tombstone. The words 'Buy-Time=2hrs' are shown in a box next to a 3D image of a bipedal figure. A digital countdown shows milliseconds racing by. The figure is drawn and redrawn hundreds of times a second. It forms as a tall, plump figure that starts to move jerkily, then fluidly. 

The electronic chatter of a TV studio preparing to record can heard. We zoom out and see that the study is a set. Someone is fiddling with the back of one of the walls of the study. Camera operators are tweaking their machines. 

Cut to a dressing room. A man is seated before the mirror. He is wearing a talkback earpiece and microphone. He is dressed very fashionably, and knows it. On the counter in front of him is a thick folder filled with three-hole punched paper. Next to that is a snap-brim hat. The man is frowning over the thick folder. He flips through it, stops, reads, frowns, sighs - all the signs of a student doing last minute revision on a subject he hasn't studied properly. He shuts the folder with a grimace, and looks at a clipboard lying next to it. Then he checks himself in the mirror, looking this way and that. He puts on the hat, adjusts it's angle. He is satisfied with what he sees. He is nearly ready to leave and enter the studio but as an afterthought he leans forward and opens the folder once more. He reads, then chuckles and exits, still laughing. The camera zooms in on the open folder. The page, a section heading, reads 'The only true love affair one can have is with oneself.'  

MS of a Prior entering the studio door. We track him as he weaves through the cables and equipment of the studio and enters the study. He takes off the hat and hangs it on a coat-rack then sits in a large leather wingback chair. He swings 'round to look at the screen and speaks at it 

Prior: ComPrior? 

A computer generated voice answers him. 

CGV: Are you Mark Prior? 

Prior: You know very well I'm Mark Prior. Give me auto cue for the presentation. Please. 

Text appears down one side of the screen.The presentation shrinks to the other half of the screen. Prior reads from the text. 

Prior: The marvels of Science have given us many things. Soaring rockets have riven the sky, Computer-enhanced microscopes that open up to us the wonder of the world of wiggling things tinier than a pin's point. 

He pauses and looks impassively at the auto-cue for a moment, then continues. 

Prior: Tonight is the first time that Science has given us the opportunity to meet the past. Oscar Wilde is our subject, our guest. 
Genetic retro-engineering married to computer-hologramic coupled with software algorithims of infinitesimal- 

He stops, exasperated. 
Cut to the control room. We see Prior on screen. 

Prior: Dear God who wrote this? 

The Director is in a corner of the control room sucking on a cigarette. In another corner is the researcher. She is hunched over a laptop but her eyes are on the picture of Prior. the Director speaks... 

Director: Tell him who wrote it. 

The researcher is painfully shy and nervous. 

Lannaise: I did. 

Director: Turn the talkback mike on. 

Lannaise: Sorry (she flips a switch) Um... it was me. I researched- 

Prior: Well... I'm sorry, but, do you know anything about this stuff? I mean retro-engineering married to computer-hologramics coupled with software algorithims of infinitesimal ... I can't make sense of this. 

Lannaise: I'm not really a technical ... I did ancient languages ... and History ... Latin, Greek ... and umm Literature... we met umm ... and you said...  

Prior: Yes. Look, Lannaise... 

Lannaise: Well ... I gave you the Oscar Wilde ... um ... stuff I'd .. you know ... researched. Briefing, I mean. And you said I could have a stab at writing the intro ... thing. 

Prior: OK. Look, I'm sorry. It's just... We'll have to rewrite this wiggly coupling algorithm stuff. We'll record and cut it in later. OK? 

Director: Sure, sure. 

Prior: Can somebody tell me how this raising the dead stuff works? 

Lannaise: Well- 

Prior: No. Please. Not you. You've ... got enough on your plate. Someone else ...? 

Director: (flipping his mike on with a world-weary air) They take his remains, they read the DNA, RNA, CNN, some acronym anyway - in which, they tell me, there is a record of everything that happened to him while he was alive. And then, God knows how, they program a computer to produce a hologram that reacts like Oscar Wilde. Or whoever.  

Nigel: I can tell you how- 

Tim: Yeah. Nigel when you tell me stuff I have to spend a day in a bar to get over it. So, thanks. More importantly he, it, whatever, has only got as much time as we can afford to pay for on the super-computers that can handle this sort of crap. 

Prior: You're a cynical son of a bitch but succinct. 

Director: Whaddya expect. I was in advertising for years. And, Mark? 

Prior: Yeah? 

Director: If we don't get a good program out of this we're out millions. He'd better be worth it. 

Prior: I hear you. 

Director: So Nigel, how're we doing?  

Nigel: I'm updating his hologram with his situation. I've built a couple of servant simulations, like a butler guy and a maid, and they're kinda chatting to him.. 

Director: Which, I take it, means they're telling him how he got here and what we're doing. 

Nigel: Yup. 

Lannaise: Oh wow. Oscar Wilde. Alive again. 

Director: Jeez. Amateurs. He's not real. 

Prior: Tim? 

Director: Yeah? 

Prior: Willing suspension of disbelief. Remember? 

Director: Barely. 

Prior: Well try. You used to believe in good drama. 

Director: I used to believe the stork brought babies. Let's just do the job and make some money. 

Prior sits in his chair facing the identical empty chair opposite him. The Director calls for everyone to stand by and the cube counts down from 10 seconds. The countdown ends and there is a pause. Our POV changes to the studio control room where we see Prior facing an empty chair. Then Oscar speaks off-camera. 

Oscar: Gracious me! Bosie, my earnest boy. 

The camera swings wildly 'round to where Oscar stands by the set's fake door. 

Director: He was supposed to be in the chair.  

Nigel: Sorry. Bit of a malf. 

Director: Oh f- 

Prior: Jeez. Tim. Amateur. Switch to talkback. We can hear every dumb thing you're saying. 

Oscar: I'm so sorry. I was always known for unpredictability, though of course, once one is known for unpredictability others expect it, which defeats the purpose. Hello. 

Prior: Mr. Wilde, I wonder- 

Oscar: Please, call me Oscar. There should be no formalities twixt the quick and the dead. 

Prior: Right. Oscar. And welcome. We weren't quite ready and- 

Oscar: Not ready? I understand you to have had over a hundred years since I ... was last here. The strange creatures who I met when I first awoke gave me what they referred to as a thorough briefing. Surely you knew I was coming? 

He walks to the wingback and sits in it, smiling. He is enormously pleased with the effect he has had. 

Prior: Yes. Right. But we're making a program - have they told you what we're doing? 

Oscar: Oh yes. You are making a film of me. 

Director: Mark? 

Prior holds his finger to his earpiece, indicating that he is listening to Tim on his earpiece. Oscar cannot hear Tim. 

Director: This computer's eating up money. Tell the bastard to hurry. 

Prior: Mr. W- Oscar, we started off rather badly- 

Oscar: Yes. The coarse gentleman you stopped from swearing seemed most upset. 

Prior: He was. Oscar, could you please repeat what you did just now when you ... came in? 

Oscar: I called you Bosie. 

Prior: Bosie. Alfred Lord Douglas. The young man you had an affair with. 

Oscar: Are we still criminals? 

Prior: No Oscar. 

Oscar: Thank God. My Bosie, my earnest boy. I thought you him. But you are older and have a more somber face. At any rate you cultivate an earnest expression when you address me. 

Director: (to Prior) Get him to cut the cackle and re-do from the top, The meter's running for Chrissake. 

Prior: Mr. Wilde-I'm sorry, I should have introduced myself. My name's- 

Oscar: Please, let me stop you. As I understand it I shall be here for an extremely short time? 

Prior: Yes. 

Oscar: Then I don't want to know your name or who you are. Rather that join your world, I shall make you a part of mine. I shall call you Ernest. And occasionally, just to confuse you, I shall call you Bosie. Of course, I shall probably confuse myself too, but a little confusion can be so charming. 

Director: We're spending thousands of bucks per minute listening to you two dancing around. Can you for f- 

Prior: Oscar, would you mind if we started again? 

Oscar: Not at all. 

He strolls to the door. 

Oscar: I think we should start with me just closing the door as if I had popped in from my club. Such a wonderfully mundane situation should dispell any fears the audience may have of ghostly manifestations and gibbering phantasms. 

Director: (to Prior) What's he going to say? 

Prior: What will you say to open with? 

Oscar: Something ... predictable. 

Prior: Oh. OK. 

Director: Jesus, let's get on with it. Ready everybody? 

A chorus of assent from the studio. 

Prior: Mr Wi- Oscar. That man with the clipboard will be behind the set with you and will countdown from 10, the last 5 being silent. He'll use his fingers. Then he'll point at you and we're on. 

Oscar: I shall be ready. 

The countdown takes place. We see the door of the study. The door opens, Oscar steps in, closes the door, and looks around as if the room were fresh to him. He takes a deep breath, lets out a satisfied 'Ah!' and then... 

Oscar: What a delightful room. I cannot thank you enough for inviting me to your little century. I once toured America. I didn't realise that I was so popular that you would bring me back from the dead. 

Prior: You're very welcome Oscar. 

Oscar: Thank you. 

Prior: So. Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde. I knew your plays before I knew of your life. And then I read of the ... journey of your life. And I didn't realise your life could have been so sad.  

Oscar: It was something of a surprise to me. 

Prior Quoting Oscar (then): You once said 'I am the only person I should like to know thoroughly but I don't see any chance of it just at present'. Do you know yourself now? 

Oscar: I know what I was. I know what I thought I was. I know what I became. 

Prior: What did you become? 

Oscar: I became a ghost who haunted himself. Long before you conjured me here with your modern magics, a rougher magic struck me. And I was brought down by it, though like all mighty magics it did not need to use it's strength, only my own weaknesses. And they were, are, legion. Now I could list my failings and a very Rabelasian list they would make. I was sad, in my own heart, I was sad, and in the eyes of so many I was a sad, sorry, failure. I am not indulging now, Ernest, in self-pity, that filthy wallow. Nor do I wish for the pity of others. I neither deserve it nor have I earned it. I merely say what I know to be true. Knowing this, I find a great affinity with Christ's cry upon the cross 'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabach thani'. Father, my Father, why hast thou forsaken me. Though, of course, God never deserts one. One deserts Him. Yet His love awaits us still. 

Prior: He still loves you Oscar. 

Oscar: Thank you Ernest. 

Prior: Why do you call me Ernest? 

Oscar: You are so like someone I knew and I called him Ernest too. 

Prior: Was his name really Ernest? 

Oscar: No. But he seemed so deeply earnest. As do you. 

Prior: Earnest? Thank you. I pl- 

Oscar: It's not necessarily a compliment. Journalists are often deceivers who contrive to appear earnest and honest and yet they so often lie like common whores on the street proclaiming their lack of disease. I accept that a writer would be biased in telling a story. As I writer I was biased. One takes a thought. One sketches it onto paper, colouring it with as many words as allow it to be stylish - not so few as it appears dowdy, nor so many as it will be ridiculously flamboyant. Then one publishes. The reaction of the public has to be given less credence than one's own liking of the piece. If the public cannot follow then they should chase after easier prey. 
But a journalist purports to tell the truth in a factual way which leads an ignorant reader to accept what they say as if it were the Gospel. Often I have written and read more 'truth' in a story or novel or play than has appeared in a whole pile of newspapers. Is it still so today? 

Prior: Yes. Except that today journalists don't just have newsapapers they have screenfuls of opportunities. 

Oscar: Is the moving picture so ubiquitous then? 

Prior: And there are computers and the web and - it would take the whole of this program to bring you up to date. 

Oscar: But journalists play their own version of the truth game still? 

Prior: Yes... but perhaps because we have so much space to fill up we feel we have to stretch the truth to fit. The world is awash with information now, but good writing is still as rare as ever. 

Oscar: You are a journalist then? 

Prior: I was an actor. 

Oscar: Splendid! 

Prior: But now, yes, I suppose I am a sort of journalist. I played Ernest in your play 'The Importance of Being Earnest' once. 

Oscar: Just once? It cannot have been a very succesful production. 

Prior: It ran for- 

Oscar: I was teasing Ernest. I am ecstatic that my work is still playing. Who got the money? 

Prior: I did'nt get much money. 

Oscar: I have never felt shame in a healthy appreciation of the worth, in cash money, of one's work. I was cavalier with money before I had a family. But after I became a father I set to with a will. Money became important, not to me, but my becoming a provider meant that my ability to provide was important to all my pretty chickens and their dam. 

Prior: That's from Macbeth. 

Oscar: Well done Ernest. Macduff speaks it when told of the murder of his family 'What? All my pretty chickens... and their dam?'. He felt a terrible guilt having left them to their fate. I empathized with Macduff. What living creature wouldn't? But to be aware of tragedy is easy. To be a tragedy is harder, though it takes little effort to achieve. But I dwell on my past, and the past is what a man should not have been. The present is what a man ought not to be. The future is what artists should create. 

Prior: But you destroyed your present- 

Oscar: Let us speak of my art. 

Prior: You were a great artist- 

Oscar: I thought so.. 

Prior: ...arrogant... 

Oscar: I thought so... 

Prior: ...and a great wit and yet- 

Oscar: I was a marvellous fool. I marvel at my foolishness, as did many others. 

Prior: You were imprisoned in Reading. 

Oscar: I had hoped that we might discuss my life and avoid the unpleasant subject of my death. 

Prior: But you didn't die in prison. 

Oscar: Every day I died, Ernest. You have such a winning way and yet you so want to win that I fear you may make me lose my composure. 

Prior: I think you can handle it. I think you can handle anything. 

Oscar: Handle? If you mean cope, I suppose I can. Flattery, deeply charming flattery. yet still shallow. 

Prior: I'm sorry. 

Oscar: No. It is for me to be sorry. 

Prior: Do you remember much of that time? When you were sent to prison. 

Oscar pauses. 

Oscar: I would like a cigarette. 

Cut to the control room. 

Nigel: I could do that. 

He flips on the studio talkback. 

Nigel: I could do that. Yo, cube, the Abe Lincoln smoking thing? Could you patch that into Oscar? 

Cut to the cube, which sits unobtrusively at the front of the set, answers 

Cube: Yes. 

There is a pause 

Nigel: OK. Do it man. 

Cut to Oscar and Prior, two shot. Oscars arm moves abrubtly and a cigarette appears between his fingers. 

Oscar: Exraordinary. 

He lifts the cigarette wonderingly and draws on it and then blows an elegant plume of smoke 

Prior: So. They sent you to prison. 

Oscar lowers his head  

Prior: Is it hard to- 

Oscar: It was hard labour Ernest. It was hard hearts and hard stone and hard bread and the hard ground broken to bury those hardened by rigor mortis. 

Prior: You wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol, in prison. 

Oscar: Yes. 

Prior: May I read a verse of it' 

Oscar: I can do it from memory. 

Prior: Please. 

Oscar takes a deep drag from his cigarette 

Oscar: In Reading gaol by Reading town 
There is a pit of shame 
And in it lies a wretched man 
Eaten by teeth of flame, 
In a burning winding-sheet he lies, 
And his grave has got no name. 

And there, till Christ call forth the dead, 
In silence let him lie: 
No need to waste the foolish tear, 
Or heave the windy sigh: 
The man had killed the thing he loved, 
And so he had to die. 

Yet each...no 
And all men kill the thing they love, 
By all let this be heard, 
Some do it with a bitter look, 
Some with a flattering word, 
The coward does it with a kiss... 

(he pauses, clearly distressed.) 

Prior: The brave man with a sword. 

Oscar: Thank you. I was remembering something else...Though that last line is not as good as the penultimate. I phrase well and always say what I believe, whether it is unpalatable or not. But it is my genius, I think, to finish a phrase roundly. It is also my failing. 

Prior: Were you always a talker, an artist? 

Oscar: I was always a teller of tales. 

Prior: And were you often in trouble? 

Oscar: Not for telling tales, at least not in the sense of telling lies. My trouble was always for telling the truth - or rather for speaking my mind. I would always say the thought as it occurred to me and had a facility, I have it still, for dressing the thought in the right apparel. 

Prior: Always? 

Oscar: As near as I can recall. 

Prior: Were you a child prodigy? 

Oscar: I don't think so now, though I thought so then. 

Prior: What were you like? 

Oscar: In terms of talk I was prolific. 

Prior: And in terms of trouble? 

Oscar: I remember walking out with my parents one day. My father disliked my putting my hands in my pockets and said to me 'Oscar, your pockets are where one puts things one will have need of later'. I replied that I put my hands there as I was sure I would have need of them later.' 

Prior: And what did he reply? 

Oscar: Nothing of note. He resorted to the age-old parental dictum 'Let us have less of your cheek young man'. But I saw him smile and knew he was bested. And I believe he knew too, and didn't mind a whit. 

Prior: Was that why you were witty? To best others? 

Oscar: I was witty so as not to appear stupid. I realised much later that constantly appearing brilliant - and my facility with words allowed me to appear so - was ultimately part of my downfall. Nature, and I, abhor a vacumn, though society so often delights in the vacuous. I do not. I was never vacuous, yet at first I delighted society. But what I said and wrote was often full of truth, or at the very least, acute observation. No society likes being observed, and commented upon, so minutely. 

Prior: And that was your downfall? 

Oscar: It was society's failing. It would have been my failing had I not said or written what I believed. But yes, Ernest, I fell because I failed. 

Prior: Too many words felled you? 

Oscar: Too many honest words. 

Prior: Can one be too honest? 

Oscar: In God's name Ernest, how old are you? 

Prior: Everyone I know is younger than you. 

Oscar: Touché - a hit, a very palpable hit. 

Prior: Hamlet. 

Oscar: Ah yes. The prince who alwys spoke his mind but never made a decision. 

Prior: I once played Laertes to a brilliant Hamlet. 

Oscar: Any actor who plays Hamlet has to be brilliant to make up for the failings in the text. 

The Director's voice cuts in. 

Director: Cut. Sorry everybody. Computer problem. Could we take five please? 

Prior: Wha,,? 

Cut to the control room. The director has a furious face on him. The techy voice is heard, but only on the director's talkback. 

Techy: What computer problem? Everything's fine- 

Director: Shut up. 

He flips a switch aand talks to Prior's earpiece. 

Director: Look I'm fucked if I'm going to let you two get all artsy and intellectual. Hamlet? We're going to have viewers and, more importantly, buyers switching off all over the globe. Pin the son-of-a-bitch down and find out some dirt. Why did he screw the Lord's kid Arthur- 

Prior is furious at the interruption. We see him on the control room screen as he shouts... 

Prior: Alfred! 

Oscar: What!? 

Prior: Sorry. The director's shouting in my ear- Look Tim, keep recording and never mind if you can't follow the conversation.  

Oscar: Oh dear. Is he bored? 

Prior: What? 

Oscar: Is he bored with our fine talk? Does he want to get to the scandal? 

Prior: Yes. How did you know? 

Oscar: I have seen directors in action before. They so often act as if they were god, and all the actors merely ttroublesome mortals. The drama became my real love, or passion. Bernard Shaw had a touch of your director's hubris. Shaw wrote for, and spoke to, actors as if they were his puppets which often had the effect of making them appear as wooden. But he wrote with clarity, And, occasionally, passion. 

Prior: Shaw? 

Cut to the control room. The researcher leans across the director to hit his talkback button. She adresses Prior. 

Lannaise: That's George Bernard Shaw. 

Prior: Ah, Shaw. Another of the great English writers. Did you- 

Oscar: Shaw, like myself, was Irish. The English, it seems, need others to make their language work it's magic - and so we oblige. Often to their discomfort. 

Prior: Sorry. I don't seem very well prepared for this do I? 

Oscar: Oh Ernest. Humility. 

Oscar smiles at Prior who smiles back. Then Oscar stands and starts to wander about the room. He sees a table with a decanter and glasses 

Oscar: I would easily be persuaded to a glass of wine. I haven't tasted wine since I died. 

There is a pause. Prior looks at Oscar.The Director, and probably everyone in the studio, realises that Oscar is not real, and yet is one of the most real people they have met. The Director switches to Prior's earpiece. We hear their dialogue. 

Director: Christ, he's a tough bastard isn't he? 

Prior: He's more than that. I hope you're still recording. 

Prior speaks in a low, furious voice. 

Director: Yeah, but- 

Prior: Well keep recording. 

Director: For chrissake Mark. He looked like he was going to recite the whole of that bloody dirge. We're not spending millions a minute for a poetry reading. 

Prior: We're paying millions a minute for a poet. He's good. Stop us again and I'll be pissed. And when I'm pissed I piss on the person responsible. 

Prior's voice has risen. Oscar is looking at him quizzically. 

Oscar: Are you arguing with god? 

Prior: (grins) I suppose I am. 

Oscar: There are those who would say that that was dangerous. 

Prior: There are those who say that those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. 

Oscar: Ah Ernest. Are you mad then? 

Prior: A little. 

Oscar: Madness - if you are using the original meaning of the word, and not what passes for madness in America, which is merely a petulant tantrum - is not to be feared. In small doses it is to be encouraged. As is alchohol. I mentioned wine..? 

Prior: I don't know how a ... how you can drink. 

Director: I don't think it's possible- 

The Techy Voice breaks in... 

Techy: It'll take us a few minutes but we could hack it - hey, we could do some work on the bio-software and get him feeling a bit tipsy- 

Director: Hey! People! We're paying megabucks per second for this and you want to take time getting a computer ghost drunk? He can't drink wine so he can't get drunk. End of story. Jesus. 

In the control room the director svagely lights a cigarette and, leaving his control panel, paces up and down furiously. 

Oscar: Baudelaire had something to say on being drunk. And I would take Baudelaire's views over yours in an instant 

Suddenly 

Prior (suddenly): It is essential to get drunk. That is all. There is no other problem. If you do not want to be the martyred slaves of time, get drunk, and drunk again. What with? With wine, with poetry, with being good, but always get drunk. 
And if, now and then, you awake, on the green grass of a ditch, on the steps of a palace, in the glum loneliness of your room, your drunken state abated or dissolved, ask the wind, ask the wave, ask the bird, the star, the clock, ask all that turns, that toils, that walks, that wheels, that runs and hides, what time it is. And the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock will tell you - it is time to get drunk. 

If you do not want to feel the appallinng weight of time, which breaks your shoulders and bears you to the ground get drunk, and drunk again. What with? With wine, with poetry, with being good. As you please. 

Oscar: Ernest. You astound me. How on earth did you know that that was my favorite piece of Baudelaire's? 

Director: Oscar can we get off- 

Oscar: Please. Call me Mr. Wilde. We have not met formally and I fear, given your complete lack of formality, that we never should. 

Director: Christ.  

Oscar: Ah now on that subject I would speak, and have spoken, and have written. Christ was a mighty light and I only grieve that the blinding beauty of His love did not strike my eyes earlier. He taught me Humility, but too late. It's too late even now. 

Cut to the control room where the director is staring at the Buy-Time screen which now reads 'Buy-Time Remaining=45 minutes'. He mutters... 

Director: He's taking over. Fat bastard's taking over. 

Lannaise: I think he's... 

Director: Yeah? 

Lannaise: Um..nothing. 

Director: Our buy-time runs out in less than an hour. Then he's nothing. 

Cut to the studio. 

Prior: Humility. They sentenced you to hard labour, treated you like a common criminal. How did you deal with that, after the glitter and fame you had in London, and America? 

Oscar: At first I determined to be proud and disdainful. But soon I embraced Humility. Or She embraced me. Christ taught me the way to humility. Humility in her simple grandeur allows of no Ego, or rather she will smile at one's attempt at hiding one's soul in tattered threads of bluster. And then She will use little lessons to teach how to come to Her. Have you ever eaten prison bread? 

Prior: No. 

Oscar hunches forward his eyes lidded as he speaks of this. His speech becomes more monotonic, less flowery. 

Oscar: Coarse bread. Stone in it. Like a rasp in my throat. And the air stinking. Feotid. We ate the bread though. All of it. Jesus help me, but I remember someone - the Chaplain, the Doctor.. - getting me white bread. I ate that. licked it up. I licked my fingers and scrabbled for the crumbs. 

There is a long pause. 

Prior: And..? 

Oscar: (Draws a deep breath and pulls himself upright) What would you have me couple to that Bosie- 

Prior: I'm Ernest. I mean- 

Oscar: Such delightful disarray. You are so like my Bosie. So earnest, too.  

Prior: What was he like? 

Oscar: He was ... it is said that his tutors were so nonplussed by his beauty that they called him a poet before they even saw his works. 

Prior: Which attracted you more, his looks or his talent. 

Oscar: He was clearly struck by my talent, I by his beauty. But he was a Dorian Grey as I found out later. I never stopped loving him and I always tried to charm and flatter him but he grew tired of me. I grew tired of me, why not he? But still I flirted with my disaster. 

Prior: You've been flirting with me. 

Oscar: Yes. Are you appalled? 

Prior: No. But why do it? You're a fine man, a fine mind and yet you play these silly games... 

Oscar: I have never been able to resist using my charm. It is God given- 

Prior: If God gave you big muscles would you push people around? 

Oscar: You are right Ernest. 

Prior: My name's Mark. 

Oscar: I am very glad to have met you Mark. And I am very sorry that I fell into the same old ways. One would have thought I would have learned the lessons Mother Humilty put before me. And you, Father Ernest, I have learned well from you too. How old are you? 

Prior: (Smiling) Who is interviewing who? 

Oscar: Who will die soonest? I think the imperative is with me. 

Prior: (pause) Forty three. 

Oscar: Old enough to be a father then. Do you have children? 

Prior: I.. I'm divorced. I have ... daughters. Two daughters. You had two boys... 

Oscar: When my wife was first with child I told others 'My wife has a cold. I hope it to be a boy cold'. It was. I ... no, we had two beautiful boys. They were great gifts. Vyvyan was so earnest. Cyril was so Cyril. For them I was industrious. For Vyvyan I wrote that Industry is the root of all ugliness. Cyril taught me that nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest importance. I so loved them both. 

Prior: You told bedtime stories to them which you later published? 

Oscar: Oh yes. They were the only audience I truly knew and loved. Bedtime was our time. I would extemporise, and poured forth stories for them. They would fall asleep. Had any other audience treated me in such a cavalier way I would have consigned them to hell. But when my boys fell asleep to my words I sat and watched them and loved them. Then I would kiss them but sometimes I could not leave. I would have work's whining voice calling me but I couldn't leave them. 

Prior: But you left them, and your wife, finally. 

Oscar: (pause) Yes. 

Prior: For Bosie. 

Oscar: I- 

Prior: Homosexuality was considered a heinous sin, a crime, in England then. 

Oscar: Yes. Love was a crime then. 

Prior: And so, prison and you had to leave Bosie too. 

Oscar: Yes ... I ... loved him. 

Prior: And your family,,? 

Oscar: I kissed them. When I left them I kissed them. 

He stops then takes a deep breath and speaks... 

Oscar: Yet each man kills the thing he loves 
By each let this be heard 
Some do it with a bitter look 
Some with a flattering word 
The coward does it with a kiss... 
I kissed them. I kissed them. And they said 'Goodbye Papa'... 

He cries. The camera holds his image as he trembles but struggles to hold onto his composure. Then his image freezes and begins to lose definition until it appears to be a a crude computer graphic. The mouth moves strangely yet we clearly hear Oscar say  (Tetelestai). Then the image fades leaving the chair empty. The Director shouts...There is a pause, while every one focuses on the frozen figure of Oscar, face screwed up in pain. 

Director: I don't believe it. Have we run out of money? What'd he say? 

Nigel: No. The computer crashed.  

Lannaise: Umm... 

Director: What was that last thing he said? I- 

Lannaise: It's ancient Greek. It means 'It is completed'. It's finished. 

Caption: Oscars Last Line, , is Greek which he read and loved.  is also reported as Christ's last utterance.  means "It is completed."