Traveling in space-time with Virgil
A drama in a prologue, three
acts and forty four scenes
by ignazio salvatore basile
Characters
Virgil: a Latin
dead poet
Dante: an
Italian poet still alive
Men
from Hell
Tommaso Cosimo Caccini,
Lodovico delle
Colombe, Niccolò
Lorini,
Claudio
Acquaviva, Benedetto Mandina , Jacopo Aldobrandini
e don Pedro de Vera:
Judges Inquisitors of the Holy
Inquisition in the Galileo’s Trial
Witnesses and Guards at Galileo’s trial
Alberto Tragagliolo: a timeless Florentine
Five Devils of Loudun
Sneezy, Freezy; Slippy, Drippy, Nippy,Showery, Flowery,
Wheezy,
Bowery; Hoppy, Croppy, Poppy: Dwarves of French
revolution;
James
Morton and Lord Digheels: two damned from hell
Ferdinand
Walsin Esterhàzi, Eduard Drumont, Major du Platy de Clam
and
General Mercier and Alphonse Bertillon damned in the Devil’s Island
Harold
Frederick Shipman, Irving Roy Cohn,
Censors and Gunmen: Sinners from the Great Circle
Reverend
Jones Marshall Herff Applewhite Jr, Jim
MCelvane, Judy IJames
and Joyce Touchette: People of the Temple
David
Berg Karen Zerby and Kathleen Maddox: other guests in the Hell
Ealk : Great Beast, guardian of the Ante Hell
Waitress
Eleanor of Sardinia and Brancaleone Doria: good people from Purgatory
T.C.B., J.L., J.H., J.M., J.B., B.M.,S.B., B.J., M.D.,
E.P.,J.R.
and L.H. :
guitar players and other musicians from Purgatory
Angels from Paradise
Beatrice: a beautiful celestial lady.
Prologue
Somewhere in the space the Latin
poet Virgil and the Italian poet Dante meet again, after almost seven hundred
years, for starting a new journey on the universe of human vices and virtues.
Virgil will lead Dante Alighieri, as a guide, across the space-time, through
as many different levels of the human
vices, as many centuries have passed by from their first journey.
They will travel together through the hell of desperation up to the hope of repentance of
purgatory. At the third level Dante eventually meets Beatrice who will lead him
to the true love shore of Paradise.
Scene 1
Dante and Virgil
An aseptic room. On the left a
door communicates outside. On the right a spiral staircase leads upside where
the spaceship awaits for Virgil and Dante to go. In a total darkness the creak
of an opening door. Dante will desperately call for his master Virgil.
Dante (a frightened voice in the darkness): May I come in? Is anyone
there…? Schoolmaster!!! Are you there? Please answer me… for God’s sake…
(After a short but heavy silence’s time, a scrubbing sound of a lighting
match will be heard in the darkness. Then a candle will light an old man sit
down at a table covered by piles of books, papers and maps.
Virgil (after reawakening, he
lights the candle ): I must have fallen asleep…Who is in there???
Dante (still trembling): Is it you, master?
Virgil: (going to meet Dante, hardly recognizes his friend, lighting his
face) Dante…? My son!!! Why are you so shattered and distraught??? What
happened to you???
Dante (getting closer to his master, almost crying in a mixture of joy and relief ) Oh, Virgil, masterly
teacher of my trembling soul… if you only knew what I have gone through…
Virgil (placing his candle on the table, embracing him with protective
affection): It’s all right now, my son…
Dante (falling on his arms, starts crying and sobbing): It has been
really very hard outside there, in the darkness… I saw death in the face…
Virgil (l.b.): Please, take a sit, my son… It’s all over now…
Dante(reacquiring some trust): Thanks to God I’m with you now…
Virgil (l.b. pouring a glass of water from a jar on the table) Of
course… It will be all right now… Please have some water…
Dante (drinking with desire the water): I have escaped three horrible
beasts…
Virgil: Have you?
Dante (trembling again and looking afraid at the door): Yes… A tiger, a
serpent and a monkey persecuted me up to here…
Virgil: Be calm now… they can’t surely get inside here…
Dante (reassured he looks gratefully at Virgil): I know they can’t my
sweet master…
Virgil (with a gesture of affection): Forget about everything now…Are
you still determined to take over our journey?
Dante (with a sigh of relief): More than ever master! With you by my
side I can face anything fearless!!!
Virgil: (pointing out the spiral staircase) Don’t you fear to face a long and risky journey
through the Universe with that
spaceship?
Dante: Not at all, master!!! I told you: I’m ready to go anywhere with
you by my side!!!
Virgil (taking a map on his hands): Let’s talk about it then! Everything
is ready… I’ll show you…Do you know what is this?
Dante (bending on the map): Well … I see two cones turned upside down …
Virgil: Come on! It’s an astronomic figure!!!
Dante: I’m sorry…It might be a double cone diagram …
Virgil: That’s better. The bottom cone represents the past and the light cone, instead, is future! The point
where the apices meet is the present; so we are here now , can you see it?
Dante (pointing the map): Yes master, I surely can! But what is this
kind of spiral down here ?
Virgil: The Great Spiral contains all the human’s history, since our
brain can retain trace of it…Every concentric circle corresponds to a century
time… the inner you go to the center, the nearer you get closer to our
ancestral roots, do you get me?
Dante (with a thrill of excitement): That’s makes me feel a bit lost…It’s
all so stately… so magnificent…
Virgil: Of course it is! We are talking about the space-time…That’s what
the spiral really represents…
Dante (like lost in the clouds): That’s would be fantastic…
Virgil (preventing and reassuring him ): It’s out of our route to travel
the warped direction… we’ll walk the expanding
direction instead… with our spaceship we’ll intersect the space
time right here (he points up with a finger the map)… at the beginning of the
fourteenth century and from there we’ll continue towards the present;
Dante (surprised and excited): But that’s the anniversary of my exile from Florence!!!
Virgil (with an accomplishing smile): Of course! Right the 1302… Don’t
you want to know what happened after your left the town???
Dante (enthusiastically): So I’ll be able to see my beloved wife???
Virgil (beating him dear on his head): Have you forgotten we are going
to visit the Hell??? You’ll see her in Paradise!!! Or at least in the Purgatory
realms…
Dante (disappointed but thoughtful): I’m sorry master… I didn’t forget
it but for a while I thought it might me
a sort of passageway in the way to hell… ‘you know?
Virgil: Not at all, my son. Look! All along the spiral’s arms we’ll find
the different circles of Hell; in its last part we’ll be in the so called Ante
Hell; but here (he points the map again),
where the final part of the spiral almost touches the present’s point we’ll aim
the peaks of Purgatory…
Dante (with lively curiosity): so I may argue that the Hell is in the
same dimension of past life?
Virgil (complying with satisfaction): That’s right my dear learner. As a
matter of fact the right established punishment for the sinners is to stay in
the unhappy condition of human life forever, without evolving in a better life
like we’ll see for the Purgatory and, above all, for the praised of Paradise!
Dante: I see…
Virgil: Don’t be disappointed. Can’t
you imagine a worse punishment than sharing your own time only with the
evil without any good at all?
Dante (positively thoughtful): Of course you’re right…
Virgil: Put it this way: you’ll be able to see your enemies… those who
exiled you… lost forever in their thirst of power, in the vacuity of their nothingness… and those who betrayed you…
Dante: I’m not sure to want such a revenge…
Virgil: That goes to your praise and merit…Aren’t you curious about the
destiny of the big priest Boniface? Charles landless Valois? And what about
Raniero Zaccaria?
Dante: (sadly) I would prefer to forget them!
Virgil: You don’t have to stop forcedly with them…We can decide the
first stop in advance by the on board controls…
Dante: Do you mean we can land anywhere in the spiral lines of space-time?
Virgil: That’s exactly what I mean!
Dante: I fear to face events too close to my own story…
Virgil: There’s no problem, my son. We can go straight way to any of the
circles of any century!!!
Dante : As far as I know something about some good guys I could really go
further..Can I know only a few names before we go?
Virgil: Go ahead with the names please!
Dante: (thirstily) Giovanni
Boccaccio, Cino da Pistoia, Pieraccio
Tebaldi, Bosone da Gubbio, Geoffrey Chaucer, Johannes Gutenberg and his pupil Johann
Numeister!
Virgil: You’ll find them all in the Purgatory or maybe in the eternal joy of Paradise!
Dante (with a sigh of relief): I think they deserve it, don’t you
master?
Virgil: It’s not up to me to decide, not even to discuss such matters…
Dante: I’m sorry master…
Virgil (overflying any argument): Have you got any other name?
Dante: Can you just tell me something about a certain Francesco, the son
of my friend, the notary Ser Petracco?
Virgil: Despite everything he has deserved to play another chance to
reach Paradise..at least for literary merits… Don’t you think so?
Dante (bewildered,
pedantly listing ): Well, I surely prefer
Rinaldo Cavalchini, Menghino Mezzani, Manuello Romano, Giovanni Quirini,
Angelo Poliziano, Luigi Pulci, Lorenzo di Pietro, Giovanni di Paolo, Cristoforo
Landino, Franco Sacchetti, Leonardo Bruni, Francesco da Barberino and …
Virgil: (cutting him straight) That’s ok, my son! I have got your point
of view!!! May be you would like to make our first stop further in the fifteenth or in the sixteenth
century…
Dante (changing attitude, almost apologizing): Oh, the sixteenth is my favorite one..so full of
art…discoveries…new ideas…
Virgil: I’m with you… you can start from there our journey… if you want
to…
Dante: Well, it depends from the people we might find over there…in the
lines of the infernal spiral I mean…
Virgil: You can make some names, if you want…
Dante: I have a great number in mind…
Virgil: Make ten of them… just to start…
Dante: Let me see… I would start with… Martin Luther, Nicolaus Copernicus, Leonardo Da Vinci, Niccolò
Machiavelli, Michelangelo Buonarroti, William Barker, John Calvin, Sandro Botticcelli,
Tintoretto, Luca Marenzio…
Virgil: All in Paradise!!!
Dante: That’s good!!!
Virgil: Any more names?
Dante: Oh, I’ve a great copy… Why don’t you tell me, master, some names worth to be heard? I would
be so grateful…
Virgil: (surprised): Well, there are really plenty. What do you think of
Hernan Cortes?
Dante: Do you mean the Spanish conquistador?
Virgil: That’s him, my son…
Dante (a bit upset): Speaking about Spanish people I would prefer to talk
with Diego Guillén de Avila, Pedro
Fernandes de Villegas or with Pedro de Padilla, ‘you see?
Virgil: Well, of course I see, but they are all guys of Paradise…
Dante (quite mortified): I’m really sorry, master…
Virgil (with resolution): Never mind! Do you have any other names?
Dante: if I were assured about some other figures I would ask you to
start straight to the beginning of the seventeenth century…
Virgil: Whom would you like to know of?
Dante: Raffaello Sanzio, Giorgio Vasari, Sir Francis Drake, Amerigo
Vespucci, Giovanni Bellini, Adriano Bancheri, Anne Boleyn, John Calvin,
Catherine de Medici, Mary Queen of Scots, Charles the Fifth, Nostradamus, Ivan
the Terrible, GianPierLuigi da Palestrina, Michel de Montaigne…
Virgil: All of them out of the Great Spiral except for Francis Drake,
Nostradamus and Ivan the Terrible!!!
Dante: (very thoughtful) I’m in two minds… I’m not sure I want to stop
just for three names…May I ask for any others?
Virgil: Come on with your last names then!!!
Dante (in one breath): Oliver Cromwell, Johannes Keplero, William
Shakespeare, Cervantes, John Donne,
Francis Bacon, Renè Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Walter Releigh, Mazarino and
Richelieu…
Virgil: Only Richelieu and Mazarino have got trapped on the Infernal
spiral! But all these names lead us straight to the seventeenth century!!!!
Dante: Very well! I’m ready for the 17th century now!!!
Virgil: Let’s go then!!!
(while they go towards to the staircase which leads to the spaceship the
lights will be off)
