The Two Gentlemen of Vagina

Anyone You Can Do, I Can Do Better

(Based upon William Shakespeare’s “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”)

With text by Clayton Kinnelon Greiman and William Shakespeare

If you wish to perform this play, e-mail Clayton at swimrdie@gmail.com

It is free to perform, and there are no royalties of any sort to be paid.

Cast:

Jayson: a young, delicate lad in love with Peter. (Later disguised as a woman)

Lucetta: old waiting woman (think Bea Arthur) to Jayson.

(Later disguised as Luke, a Priest)

Peter: a lusty cad

Valentine: Peter’s rival in lust

Sylvania (pronounced Syl-vaun-ia): Empress of Vagina (the lustee)

Speedo: servant to Valentine.

(Wears a Speedo-style swimsuit throughout the entire play.)

Launce: boozy, lascivious servant to Peter

Crabs, the Dog (to be played by a male actor) (Hereafter, Nuts, the Dog)

Priest

Sister Pious: heat-packing lesbian nun

Lights up on Jayson and Lucetta.

Jayson: Of all the fair resort of gentlemen that every day with speech wooeth me,

In thy opinion which is worthiest of my love?

Lucetta: Please you, repeat their names;

There are so many that I dare not give counsel without a refresher course.

Jayson: What think’st thou of fair Jonathan?

Lucetta: He is well spoken, neat, and fine; but were I you, he never should be mine.

Lucetta: Why sayest thou?

Lucetta: One of his eyes favors a lad, the other a lass;

For him to see but one would make him cross-eyed and thus blind to love.

Jayson: What think’st thou of the gentle Peter?

Lucetta: Lord, how thou seekest trouble in goodly faces!

Jayson: How now? What means this passion at his name?

Lucetta: I have no other but a woman’s reason; I think him so because I think him so.

Jayson: Why, he, of all the rest, hath never moved me.

Lucetta: Yet he, of all the rest, I think best loves ye.

Jayson: His little speaking shows his love but small.

Lucetta: Fire that’s closest kept burns most of all.

Jayson: They that conceal their love cannot say they love.

Lucetta: They love least that let others know their love.

Jayson: I would I knew his mind.

Lucetta: (presenting a letter) Then peruse this, young lord. It is from he.

Slight beat during which Jayson looks at the offered letter but does not take it.

Jayson: If he cannot deliver the letter himself, then I have no wish to read it.

See it be returned, or else come no more into my sight.

Slight beat as Lucetta looks at him incredulously.

Jayson: Will you be gone?

Lucetta: Ay, until this fit of hissy be passed!

She exits.

Jayson: What a wench she is, to know I am a virgin

And yet not force the letter to my view!

Since virgins, in modesty, say ‘no’ to that

Which they would otherwise say ‘yes’.

(a beat passes)

Lucetta!

Enter Lucetta

Lucetta: How now, minion?

Jayson: (sharply) Have you not set the table? Is it not near dinner-time?

Lucetta: Your babbling shall not henceforth trouble me. Here is a coil with protestation!

She rips the letter, drops the pieces, and then kneels and starts swirling them with her fingers.

Jayson: Go, get you gone, and let the pieces lie!

You would be fingering them to anger me.

Lucetta: You would do well with a bit of fingering, young lord.

She exits.

Jayson: O hateful hands to tear such loving words!

Look, here is writ ‘kind Jayson’ and here ‘love-wounded Peter’.

Poor wounded name!

My briefs as a bed shall lodge thee till thy wounds be healed.

He begins to stuff the pieces of the letter down the front of his pants, when Lucetta re-enters, speaking the next line.

Lucetta: And let me tell you another thing, young Lord…

Seeing what he’s doing, she stops mid sentence, dumbstruck. Jayson looks at her; she looks at him. He grunts effeminately, then exits. She follows suit (exiting from the opposite end of the stage…the point of her re-entry).

Enter Peter and Valentine.

Valentine: Lend me the letter; let me see what news.

Peter: There is no news, my friend, but that my father writes

How happily he lives in the city of Vagina.
He commands me come be with him, to be partner in his fortunes.

Valentine: You need not suffer this voyage sans all familiar company.

Some weeks ago I spent a fortnight in Vagina and should very much like to return.

Peter: Is it so great a city?

Valentine: The walls are not much to look after, the women, thankfully, more so.

Peter: I should have guessed. What is her name?

Valentine: Sylvania.

Peter: A mouthful.

Valentine: Indeed. When shall we depart, so that I might eat again?

Peter: I have of late courted a young lad

And duty merits I bid him adieu

Before leaving with you.

Valentine: If you are not so familiar,

And your courtship but barely born,

Then why bother?

Peter: A flame left half burning may be rekindled

And provide much heat in colder times.

Why, with such words as ‘this’ or ‘that’

I can lead the lad into such a passion

That, when next we meet,

He shall forget his virgin prudishness

And open wide his legs to my familiar counsel.

Valentine: Then go, man, and speak your lies,

So the sooner I might find delight between my lady’s thighs.

Exit Peter.

Valentine: Oh, Sylvania, Sylvania, where are you tonight, my Sylvania?

Enter Speedo

Speedo: I have not seen her.

Valentine: No, fool, you would not, as she is in Vagina.

Speedo: Whose vagina?

Valentine: No, slave; that is where she lives.

Speedo: How did she come to be so small?

Valentine: Do you not remember that we just came from there?

Speedo: I came not, lest I were drunk and have forgot.

Think, being so small, that she were drowned when I came?

Valentine: You came not!

Speedo: If I did not come, then how did I arrive?

Valentine: On a boat with me. We went to Vagina so that I could get laid.

But you clung to me every waking minute of every waking day,

And I could barely get a woman to notice me.

Speedo: (aside) I clung to him while he slept as well,

Though he were too drunk to know.

Many a night, he thought he lay with a woman of small tits,

Though what he licked instead were my large nuts.

Valentine: Well, we’re going back again, and this time things will be changed.

Speedo: (aside) O, spite, that I was ever born to set this right!

Valentine: There will be no clinging to your master,

No womanly crying spells when I leave you

To bed a blonde battalion of buxomly bimbos.

Speedo: (aside) With so many b’s, you’d think a ‘boy’ would fit right in there.

Valentine: Art thou listening to me?

Speedo: What of Sylvania? I thought she were the only woman you sought.

At the mention of her name, have a backlight on appear on Sylvania, who at this stage is Steven (already ‘in face’), putting on a dress and wig.

Valentine: What thinkest thou of her?

Speedo: Is she not hard-favoured, sir?

Valentine: Why no, her beauty is exquisite, and her favor infinite.

Speedo: That’s because the one is painted and the other more seeming than is so.

Valentine: How painted? How seeming more than so?

Speedo: Marry, sir, so painted to make her fair, that no man questions her beauty.

You would not find her so could you see her deformity.

Valentine: How long hath she been deformed?

Speedo: Why, since birth. O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible,

As a nose on a man’s face, or a weathercock on a steeple.

Valentine: What meanest thou? By heaven, I’ll know thy thoughts!
Speedo, give thy worst of thoughts the worst of words!

Speedo: Oh, that you had mine eyes to see what a thing she truly is.

Valentine: What should I see?

Speedo: Your own present folly, that she is not so fair as you.

Valentine: A pretty period! Well, I guess the sequel—

That thou art in love with me

And do conspire to keep me from the woman I would lie with

So that I would lie instead in you!

Thou false, deluding slave!

Let me beat thee, and I shall ask thee thereafter how thou lovest me.

He starts to beat Speedo, who flees offstage with Valentine pursuing him.

Enter Jayson and Peter

Peter: Have patience, gentle Jayson.

Jayson: I must, where is no remedy.

Peter: When possibly I can, I will return.

Jayson: If you do not prove unfaithful, you will return the sooner.

Peter: Why, thou knowest my heart is thine alone.

Jayson: Of all the parts you may give another,

Your heart is the one that no man may hold.

It be other parts of you that I fear to lose.

Peter: Here, take you this as promise of my faithfulness.

He kisses Jayson. Enter Valentine while they are kissing.

Valentine: Peter, you are stayed for.

Peter: Go. I come. I come. Alas, this parting strikes poor lovers dumb!

He exits with Valentine.

Jayson: You wish I were so dumb, gigolo.

While I may be a virgin to the acts of men,

I am not so unskilled as to the lies they speak.

Lucetta!

Lucetta: You screamed, my lord.

Jayson: Lay out my clothes; we depart for Vagina by cover of night.

Lucetta: And might I dare ask why?

Jayson: For the cause of my Peter.

Lucetta: It’s become diseased hasn’t it?

You’re going to Vagina to have it cut off.

Oh, what will your mother say?

Jayson: She’d say that thou art batty

To confuse he who lies in her son’s heart

To that which lies between his legs.

This night we go to Vagina

For the cause that Peter,

The man who hath professed to love me,

Hath abandoned his favored lad

And traded his affection

For the trade of city streets.

Lucetta: In what habit will you go along?

Jayson: Not like a lad,

For I would spy unseen if Peter favors

The loose encounters of lascivious men.

Fit me instead with such garments

As may beseem some well-reputed lady of the court.

Lucetta: Thou knowest thou canst not be alone in this.

In what habit shall I accompany thee?

Jayson: Hinder not my course.

Lucetta: What habit?

Jayson: Since thou art so resolute, thou needs must be fitted for a codpiece.

Lucetta: That would be ill-favoured!

How will the world repute me

For undertaking so unsavory a journey?

I fear it will make me scandalized.

Jayson: Then stay at home and go not.

Lucetta: Nay, that is your hope.

Jayson: Then never dream on infamy, but go.

Lucetta: If Peter learns of this, he will scarce be pleased withal.

Jayson: If he learn of this and be not pleased,

Why then he understands not the heart

Of the one he professes to love.

Lucetta: Young lord…

Jayson: Come; answer not, but to it presently.

I am impatient for what my eyes may see

When they are not accounted mine.

Exit Jayson and Lucetta.

Enter Launce with his dog.

Launce: I think my dog, Crabs, be the gayest dog that lives.

All he thinks upon is a man’s nuts.

When my master, Peter, did but speak

A breath of leaving for Vagina,

This nut-lover fled and I shot off after him.

Now, I have found my dog, and lost my boat…

And in losing my boat, I’ve lost my way,

All for the sake of a dog that’s gay.

Enter Speedo.

Speedo: I was sent to call thee.

Launce: Call me what thou dar’st; I have been called it all before.

Speedo: Oh, thou ass, thy master and mine are on ship,

And have near lost the tide on account of my having to look for thee.

Now, thy shall lose the flood;

And in losing the flood, lose thy voyage;

And, in losing thy voyage, lose thy master;

And, in losing thy master, lose thy job;

And, in losing thy job—

Launce puts his hand over Speedo’s mouth.

Speedo: Why dost thou stop my mouth?

Launce: For fear thou shouldst lose thy tongue.

Speedo: Where should I lose my tongue?

Launce: In thy tale.

Speedo: (kicking him in the ass) In thy tail!

Crabs takes offense to this and bites Speedo on the ass. Speedo cries out in pain, ad-libbing a line, and then flees offstage, with Crabs pursuing.

Launce: The ass is but pre-cursor to that backward dog;

He bites the rear but ends in front;

I should best fetch him before he ruins the man.

He exits, singing as he goes.

Launce: Off we go, off we go;

To Vagina to find a ho.

Oh, off we go, off we go,

In hope of landing

A mighty good blow.

Exit Launce.

Set to music (Xanadu, perhaps?) some bit of theatre magic occurs here to indicate the passage of time or a sea voyage. If it’s beyond the realm of theatre magic to pull off the scene change successfully, just have a vaudeville act or go-go boy to come onstage and entertain the audience while the set is being altered. When the scene recommences in Vagina (the Tit-Clit club to be more specific), everyone from the voyage is onstage. The servants are outside…and Peter, Valentine, Jayson and Lucetta (the latter two now disguised) are inside.

Launce: I think it ridiculous to be drug all this way and then be left out of doors.

Speedo: No doubt for cause of your smell.

Launce: I thought it be for the cause of your madcap garb.

Crabs starts to sniff Speedo’s package, but is shoved away in very short order.

Valentine: I do hope she will show herself soon.

Peter: Though I have never seen her, something in me stirs.

Valentine: (looking down at his package) So, I see, my friend, so I see.

Suddenly, music is heard (think Cher) and some wildly dramatic lighting changes occur. Sylvania appears in an outlandish costume.

Sylvania: I am Sylvania!

The music, as well as the dramatic lighting, continues for about 10 seconds, while Peter and Valentine stare in awestruck wonder. Sylvania just stands in some absurdly dramatic pose.

Jayson (to Lucetta): Look you how they fawn upon her;

Oh, tis a shame that a man could use a boy so!

Ay, smile upon her, do;

I will bind thee in thy courtship…

And when I am through,

Thou should’st wish not to have kissed

Thine three testicles so oft.

Lucetta: How comest thou, young lord, to know he has three testicles?

Jayson: For once I asked him why he acted so nuts, and he did show me.

That age old drumbeat is heard offstage, which signifies a very bad joke has just been told.

Lights go down on Sylvania, and she exits. Peter and Valentine break out into enthusiastic applause.

Launce: They just went in and the show be done already?
My first wife did divorce me for the same cause.

Speedo: Damn Tit-Clit Club to steal the souls of men!

Launce: Sir, Speedo, you frown. Be it for love?

Speedo: Not for you…or your damn ass-biting dog

Launce: What, angry, Sir Speedo? Do you change color?

Speedo: Ay, my ass from white to black and blue.

Launce: From pounding? Why man, thank the giver.

Speedo: Nay, it was that mongrel. And thanks he shall receive none.

Launce: ‘Twere your fault for sleeping on your belly;

Why fault a dumb creature for acting upon its nature?

Speedo: What speakest thou of? Thy dog did bite my ass.

Launce: Bite, as well as pound? Why he gave thee the works!

Speedo: O, thou senseless cur, I have done with thee!

He exits.

Launce: I bet could Crabs have spoken,

He would have said the same of thee,

Ungrateful cur to be laid and to show no thanks.

I shall set thee loose, so thou may’st bite him upon the ass again.

Launce takes Crabs off his leash, and the dog leaves in the direction of Speedo’s exit.

Peter: That were astounding! What a paragon of virtue she was.

Valentine: And to think, we are engaged, our marriage hour determined.

Good Peter…

Jayson: (aside) There’s a vile phrase.

Valentine: Come with me to my chamber;

This is my final night of freedom,

And I would it were spent with a woman of goodly skill.

Thou was ever the best at choosing such a stale.

Peter: My third leg be the chooser;

It walks of its own accord

And trips those it deems need a good lie down.

In that way, it is a friend to the weary,

The wanton, and the winsome.

They couch upon it, are served a stiff drink,

And sent home before their betrothed

Knows they are missing.

Friend, go on before me while I let it out to inquire about,

And I’ll presently attend thee with its spoils.

Jayson (aside): Oh, to have seen what I have seen, to see what I see!

What luck I came this night a woman

To witness how poorly God could fashion a man.

Come, Lucetta, let us take our leave.

They rise and begin to exit.

Valentine: Will you make haste?

Peter: I will.

Valentine is exiting, when he runs into Jayson.

Valentine: Fate is sweet to have me run into one so fair as you.

Jayson: I say it is cruel that I should be run upon by one so crude.

Valentine: I love my lasses with a bit of sauce.

Lucetta: Ruffian, canst thou not see she is taken by your better?

Valentine: One so ancient cannot speak of taking, unless he be the one receiving.

Lucetta: Then from one who receives, here be a gift.

Lucetta cracks Valentine over the head with a beer bottle and knocks him unconscious.

Lucetta: (to Peter) Defend him not, unless thou like’st to lie beside him.

Peter: I would not lie beside him were his cock made of gold.

Jayson: And what if his heart should be made of gold? Woulds’t thou lie with him then?

Peter: Dear lass, my heart upon a lady is set. Lads are a flavor I would have none of.

Jayson: I thank God and my clit-loving lips that I shall never be made to taste one.

Peter: ‘Tis a pity that such beauty is wasted on a lass who loves the ladies.

Jayson: More pity that a penis can find itself attached to such a prick.

Peter: I should love to trade quips all through the night,

But there are more favored things I would do with my mouth by cover of darkness.

Jayson: If I had but known…

Lucetta: (aside) Young man, you forget yourself and would speak of things in the past

That would not be known in this lady’s present.

Let us away before, in playing a jaded mistress,

You reveal yourself a jealous man.

Jayson: May God be with you, sir.

He and Lucetta start to exit.

Peter: And may a man be in you, lady.

Lucetta and Jayson exit.

Peter: (kneeling beside Valentine) This bit of misfortune benefits my cause.

(calling out) Launce!

Enter Launce.

Launce: What is your will, sir?

Peter: Take this drunkard to bed.

Launce: You pay me not enough for that, sir.

Peter: I mean to his bed.

Launce: It matters not whose bed it may be, I shall not be made to lie with him.

Peter: I mean that you put him to bed and then be on your way.

Luance: It is certain I would not stay.

That damn Crabs has run loose after Speedo,

And I fear that sissy, mad in love with his master,

May do some harm to my dog.

Peter: Slave, speak more of this love Speedo bears his master.

Luance: Why, he is sick in love with him…

And talketh ever of his hope the love be returned.

I should feel sorry for him did I not hate him so.

Peter: Then let not your hate be unacted upon.

Take this sap, undress him, and lay him in his bed.

Then, seeketh out his slave and tell the simpleton his master waits for him.

Nature will then instruct him in his course.

Launce: How devilish! I knew there was a reason

I stayed to be beaten and cursed by you.

Peter: Are you still not gone?

Launce: Off to the treachery now, sir.

Launce exits, dragging Valentine (or carrying him over his shoulder, whichever the actor playing Launce has the strength to do).

Peter: Heaven made Sylvania fair;

She shows my former love but a shadow.

I will forget the boy is alive,

And Valentine, once my dearest friend,

I shall account an enemy.

Sylvania, Sylvania, I come for you, my Sylvania.

He exits. Enter Speedo.

Speedo: Oh, this be the most miserable night of all the years,

For the man I love is in the morn to marry,

And mourn I shall for the loss of so fine an ass

To so rotten a city as Vagina.

Speedo sits. Enter Dog

Speedo: When sorrows come, they come not in single spies, but in battalions.

Dog lays his head in Speedo’s lap.

Speedo: If only there were some way I could tell my master

The woman he loves is not a woman, but instead a man,

Without speaking the words to wound his heart.

Oh, you gods, can you not send me a means

By which to deliver my master from this manly marriage?

Dog takes a big sniff of Speedo’s package.

Speedo: Oh, if my master could love my nuts

Half so much as this damn dog, how happy I should be.

But no…my master must love a man he thinks a woman,

When all the while he could love a real man

Who has no dreams of claiming to be a woman.

What a wedding night that shall be,

When I awake to my master’s screams of

“What is this dagger I see before me?”

Would that I could unsheath it before that time had come.

Dog gets more comfortable in his lap…and makes some kind of happy, horny dog sound.

Speedo: (standing) That’s it! O, thou horny hound, we shall put thee to good use yet!

Dog gets excited, thinking Speedo means the time has come for the two of them to get cozy. He starts pulling on the side of Speedo’s Speedo with his teeth…as though he were trying to pull it down.

Speedo: Not in that fashion! We must at once go to this fiend of man who hides

Beneath a whore of a woman…and have you reveal her nuts for all to see.

If you, a nut-sniffing dog, swears that she is no woman in public view,

Why then, my lord will not marry her, or him, or whatever it may be