You must get your magical co-ruler to stop tormenting humanity and grow up.
Matt's note: This one was sourced from Titania's quarrel with Oberon in Act 2, scene 1 of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The original text follows this monologue.
NOT YOURS (any gender, mid twenties on up)
No, you’re not taking him and yes, you are too being a royal ass- yes you are- your tantrums have turned the city into a giant garbage disposal that considers itself a modern artist.
The streetlights are now flickering like disco strobes.
The trees have exploded into wood chips.
The sewer grates are gushing garbage water up into the streets in elegant spiral patterns.
It’s not cute and if you don’t calm down, it’s going to cost people their livelihoods and some of them their lives. You are a warrior. You know honor. You do not terrorize the innocent. Especially if your excuse is that you want a puppy.
And no, I’m not trying to belittle you, he would make a great leader of pack. He’s bred perfectly. But I’m keeping him and not because I found him first. I was training his mother as a service- no- I wasn’t doing it behind your back, you’ve just been too long in the cloud wars to notice. The puppy’s mother died when she gave birth and she transferred her magic to him.
So he’s not a stray. He’s my responsibility. He will be trained as a service dog to the fairies. And there will be another one like him in the city. Some time some day. But there has to be a city remaining. Now I want to you to take a deep breath.
Copyright 2016 by Matt Haynes
If you would like to use this piece, please credit: "Courtesy of Matt Haynes and The Pulp Stage"
SOURCE TEXT
But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport.
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which falling in the land
Have every pelting river made so proud 460
That they have overborne their continents:
The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard;
The fold stands empty in the drowned field, 465
And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;
The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud,
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
For lack of tread are undistinguishable:
***
The fairy land buys not the child of me.
His mother was a votaress of my order:
And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,
Full often hath she gossip'd by my side, 495
And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands,
Marking the embarked traders on the flood,
When we have laugh'd to see the sails conceive
And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;
Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait 500
Following,—her womb then rich with my young squire,--
Would imitate, and sail upon the land,
To fetch me trifles, and return again,
As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.
But she, being mortal, of that boy did die; 505
And for her sake do I rear up her boy,
And for her sake I will not part with him.