Phaedra

About the Author: Robert P. Arthur is an award winning playwright, poet, and novelist. His works include novels (Crazy Horse in Heaven); poem plays with music and for dance (Hymn to the Chesapeake; A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Onley) , musicals (Dreams of Bonnie Prince Charlie) plays (Floyd Collins and the White Angels of Sand), among others. In Phaedra, he has created a contemporary retelling of the classic play in a compelling and lyrical modern verse format. Also included is Vija’s War, a touching verse drama told from the points of view of an older and younger Vija as she experiences the encroaching onslaught of the German military in her native Latvia.

Robert P. Arthur has created a contemporary retelling of Phaedra in a compelling and lyrical modern verse format. Also included is Vija’s War, a touching verse drama told from the points of view of an older and younger Vija as she experiences the encroaching onslaught of the German military in her native Latvia.

Book Excerpt (Copyrighted Material) :

Tony: My father brought her from over that rippling shadow, Uncle
From that savage place…in a primal dark
Listen, Uncle, to the bellowing of Poseidon’s bull
The sea snorts and storms, tosses it head in the
capework of wind
Will Phaedra come up here?

Jerry: Bad dreams again?

Tony: (Mutters, composing, testing the words as he composes a poem)
It's one o'clock
Darkness seeps into muscle and bone
The wild sea surges in paddocks of rock

Jerry: You are disturbed, Tony
By your stepmother's walks?

Tony: Night after night. She is predatory, Uncle. (Lightning flashes) Have you seen how she looks at me? Eyes boring, black as death, and grave?

Jerry: She longs for her own country. Who wouldn't? Left alone here, in the compound...with you and me...and her lying nursemaid, a terrible woman.

Tony: Often, Phaedra pauses beneath this window, listening. What does she mean by it?

Jerry: How should I know? I'm a bachelor, and do your father's books.

Tony: Sometimes I dream of my father and Phaedra in their bedroom by the sea...in failing light, she combing and braiding her long black hair...(Tony shuts eyes.) Roses with thorns are affixed to her mirror, as if by faith. My father, quiet, appears, suddenly, behind her, his rough hands wet and slick with a rabbit's blood.

Jerry: Dreams mean nothing. Oh, what's this...an error here...in the bill of lading. Sixteen times fourteen...one sixty-eight! (Jerry erases entry)

Tony: Between my father and me, Uncle, there are depths, unfathomed. When I was a child, I watched him strip for a swim. I loved his scars... wrapping around his body like snakes and winding down his legs. How unearthly in the light streaking through the morning clouds. What a mystery he's always been...with his uncountable women and bullet holes Only a man like him dares deal with such dangerous women. How could I compete? Should I sleep with every woman on the island, each one a knife to my too soft skin?

Jerry: You're twenty and published. That's enough.

Tony: When I was a boy, who put me on a knee and pumped me full of his global exploits?

Jerry: Me, I know.

Tony: Listen, Uncle. (Sound of sea accompanying recitation) Darkness oozes from the sea into muscle and bone. What swelling of loin and brain now shoulders its way into paddocks of rock?

Jerry: Interesting, Tony. Stick with poetry. For better or worse.

Tony: (To Teddy, unseen) Teddy, my father. Poseidon’s bull bellows from the lungs of the sea.