(MUSIC – THEME!)

(SOUND OF A QUILL WRITING, IT FADES OUT)

(ITTHOBAAL SIGHS, HE IS ANNOYED)

ITTHOBAAL

Dear diary of death and diversions! Dear manual of mechanics and magic! Dear folio of philosophy and fakery! Dear pages of introspection, inventions and ideas...

The year is 1613, and today is a sad Thursday.

Today, I start over. This is not just the new chapter in my diary, it is the first chapter in existence. I have been keeping these records for so long, and yet today... I must start anew.

All of my diaries up in smoke. Notes gathered for decades, centuries, perhaps millennia? I truly cannot remember when I wrote my first one! Or what it was about. Some invention, of course, that is why I started writing these; to keep track of all my ideas. Yet now they are all gone.

I admit that some of my inventions may be better off lost for posterity, like the automatic cat-kicker. Although that cat was truly annoying! But I do believe that the scissors specifically designed for cutting nose hair could have become a commodity in every home, if I only got it into production!

William does not want us around anymore. I do not blame Mr. Shakespeare. And I am truly sorry for burning down the Globe! It was a beautiful building, and it had come to mean a lot to me. But I swear it was an accident!

It could perhaps have been averted, but... Arthur and I were so busy planning the death of Lady Liu - the Empress Dowager. Arthur and Lady Liu had agreed on her dying from an accidentally lethal disciplining by her husband the Taichang Emperor.

This left Arthur and I debating which would be more suitable, a death by spanking, or by cutting off the nose?

And that is when it... happened.

Minutes later, the whole theatre was aflame, and nothing could be saved, but lives. Costumes, set pieces, kegs of wine and crates of fruit for the punters. All lost - along with a bag full of diaries that I have brought with me from country to country, city to city, hidden from all men in ever more imaginative places. Entries charting not only what I have built or dreamed up, but telling the story of who I have been, and what I have thought and felt. Oh well.

And on this sombre day, I do not just lament the loss of my past ideas, but I also ask myself: What might be next?

Because for the first time in my life I do not know what to create! I have no ideas! I feel as dry as a week old scrap of bread!

Am I tired of inventing? Could it be so? Have I invented too many contraptions lately?

(PROUDLY)I have invented a lot, it is true. These last several years I have created the Sulphur Tipped Matches - quite the wonder! And after our trip to Murano, I had the idea that people with wanting sockets could don Glass Eyes, made to look quite real!

For our business of death faking, I have recently improved on the bolt-proof doublet, perfected the trick gallows, devised a new method of training rats - we would have had use for that in Hamelin! - and I invented a cucking-stool that lets the client escape whilst under water, and instead brings back up a replacement corpse!

Using the back stage of a theatre as a place of business does embroil you in theatrics... (CHUCKLES) I have been enticed to help out with William's productions more than once.

(SATISFIED) Brutus running at his sword in Julius Caesar! Bottom's transformation into a donkey in a Midsummer Night's Dream! The Ghost in Hamlet! King Lear stabbing his eyes out! These special effects were all created by yours truly!

So where do I go next?

Arthur is always the one afflicted by boredom... not me! What is the cause of this feeling? I have been busy! Why is my mind not buzzing with more and yet more ideas?

Now that my diaries are gone, why do I not yearn to fill new pages with new ideas?

(SIGHS)

But what does it matter. I have no time to sulk. We have been forced to seek new accommodation, after the fire... and before we move, we have to salvage what we can from the ashes.

I went to my barber yesterday. I asked him where I could purchase a barber's knife, so I could do my own shaving. Not surprisingly, he did not want to share this information. He would rather have my business. He insisted that if each man would shave themselves, the gutters would flow as much with blood in the morning, as they do with piss. I tried to convince him that I am equally as skilled with a knife as he, and that in fact I could easily take his place as a barber-surgeon. He laughed at me. I said I have been going to his parlour for comfort and meditation, not for the shave as such. A compliment, surely, to his calm and soothing service! But alas... he did not see it that way.

His chair is so impractical. I wonder if it could be improved? Perhaps I will make that my next project. If my muse returns.

And if time permits... Today we have to find a new place of business.

It is not even thirty years since last time. I must take better care.

Thankfully we managed to blame the cannons that are fired at the end of Act One of All Is True. But since I made those cannons, the blame still landed on me.

Wait - I think I do remember my first diary entry! Talking of cannons reminded me. My first entry spoke about an invention I called Angels Wings.

(HAPPY SIGHS) Still a fine idea. Though it has very few practical applications, bar aiding those wanting to know what falling off a mountain is like, without knowing the end of that experience. Unless I meet another madman, who has decided to launch himself out of a cannon, I doubt those Angels Wings will ever come in handy.

I would have liked to keep the records though. If only for sentimental reasons. Oh well. Nothing lasts forever I suppose...

(CHUCKLES)Apart from Arthur and I! 

Talking of Arthur; he says he has found a fitting place to set up shop, and wants me to go with him to inspect it. I wonder what this place may be. He has asked me to meet him by Holland's Leaguer.

If that is our new address, well... then we move from a place where people don fancy dress to a place where people undress!

(WE HEAR THE QUILL AGAIN)

I shall soon find out. Till next time, dear catalogue of creations... Till next time.

(MUSIC)

END OF MINISODE.