Act 2, Scene 3

ELIZABETH on her chaise. ROBERT returns. Silence.

ROBERT:

Your cousin was a shy man. I never appreciated just how… shy he was.

(turns to ELIZABETH) He’s made us very wealthy.

ELIZABETH:

He has. He introduced us.

ROBERT:

I was referring to his will. He’s left the bulk of his estate to us. We shall want for nothing, ever again.

ELIZABETH:

Why did you come back?

ROBERT:

I think I owe it to you, to see you safe and—

ELIZABETH:

I don’t want your honour!—your duty toward me, I don’t want to go at it and at it, peeling back the layers to discover, what? At the heart of an onion there is nothing but tears.

He goes to the window.

ROBERT:

This is the house we built ourselves, fashioned to our design, brick by brick, deception, intrigue, denial and a mortar to cement us to the grave that we called love.

Is this love? This hunger that surpasses every word we ever flung,

this longing for a day, a moment, that brings us back with timeless speed to our first beginnings,

this sadness now, that is the sweetness of completion, come full circle into knowing, we have never been together, because we have never been apart.

I came to you to find the other half of my most incomplete self, and what have I done but diminish us both?

If heaven is different for each of us and hell is its own reward then love, I begin to wonder, if love is not forgiveness,

and forgiveness, and forgiveness yet again,

is that not the fortune that we seek? And is not forgiveness of one’s own self the greatest love of all?

Maybe love is nothing more than to choose this life in death but,

I’m not going.

We’ll start over again, Parma, Bologna, maybe winter in Venice, I’ll find some place, with the ‘riches’ we now have.

Fresh air, exercise and you’re going to eat properly, too.

He looks down at her.

I’ll get you some soup.

ROBERT goes. ELIZABETH pours her entire supply of laudanum into her brandy, gradually drinking it all.

ELIZABETH:

Maybe love is its own belonging, alone and incomplete, a little raft that floats across the oceans of our lives—or maybe, a message in a bottle. Teacups, and Timbuktu, directionless, but for the heartache.

What a compass. What a destination.

She drinks.

With all my hypocrisies traced like a finger over your face, this map of our lives, not these shores, not this sunrise, not this sober rain. Some women can love wheresoever they will, and still sit in the midst of god’s eye. But not me. The only paradise on earth is in the heart. And I gave you mine.

I’d always hoped I would die in your arms before I died in your eyes. I wanted this to be another morn, I wanted it to be a gentle rain, I wanted it said I did my best, on paper.

She finishes the entire glass. ROBERT comes with soup on a tray.

Do you remember the first words you ever said to me?

ROBERT:

I didn’t say them, I wrote them.

ELIZABETH:

On your heart, and mine. “I love you, Dear Miss Barrett…” And there have been no words to compare ever since.

She touches his face.

ROBERT:

Ba, you’re cold as ice, let me bring you your blanket—

She moves away from him.

ELIZABETH:

You… determined to have a parade of activities at my death march.

ROBERT:

Wh-what do you mean…

ELIZABETH:

Love is the betrayal, but only of time…

ROBERT:

(picks up the empty vial) Ba—Ba, what have you done?

ELIZABETH:

I know all of life because I’ve lived it in your heart.

There is no more to write.

ROBERT:

The doctor, Ba, I’m sending for the doctor—

ELIZABETH:

No. I only have a moment, and I want it with you. Before I go sailing, for silver fishes past the moon—

ROBERT:

No, Ba—

ELIZABETH:

I can’t stay on shore, not tonight, not tonight… You’re going to England, you’re going to write!…

Red letters begin to fall from the sky.

It will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done, and the softest too. Because England will reclaim her own, you’ll stand with the poets of our time, looking back on all our years, such a kaleidoscope, Robert, such an affair, such a tumult to be written.

ROBERT:

Ba, listen, no—

ELIZABETH begins to turn in circles, her nightdress bells out like a flower unfolding. She is euphoric in her vision, pressing on with happy determination.

ELIZABETH:

And there we’ll be, pressed between the pages of a book, shelved and forgotten till someone comes along and out we drop—a yellow rose, your hand on mine, and tears, all the tears of our existence. They’ll hold us to their hearts and they’ll remember, in some small echo of their lives,

it was love, and only love, that never begged forgiveness, when surrender was the nobler of the two.

ROBERT:

Ba…

ELIZABETH’s breathing becomes laboured. ROBERT catches her as she falls towards the chaise. He holds her in his arms and throws open the casement window. The tree has become a constellation of stars in the night sky.

ELIZABETH:

The best of us is in the work, we’re always lovers there. And you will write, lost in yourself, and so not lost at all, you will write such things to fill the sky. You will write the two of us, and in that space, oh, Robert, I can see…

ROBERT:

What is it? What do you see?

ELIZABETH:

Beautiful. So beautiful!

It is raining red letters. ELIZABETH reaches for them, and dies. As ROBERT circles with ELIZABETH in his arms, his words of love, and love of words, begin to flow.