Back To Catalog Back To Main
 
Suni

Scripts For Sale 

"Ligeia"

by Edgar allen Poe

Adaptation for theatre by D. Chapelle

An Excerpt:

(LIGEIA: (Ligeia takes Vincent’s hand.) O God. O God. O Divine Father ... shall these things be undeviatingly so?
VINCENT: Calm yourself, my darling, please. Please. You … you mustn’t excite yourself.
LIGEIA: The conqueror … the conqueror! Shall this Conqueror never be conquered?
VINCENT: Ligeia that must be a question for another day. Rest ... You must rest.
LIGEIA: What … what does your poet Glanvill say? ‘Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.
VINCENT: Rest my darling. Save your strength.
LIGEIA: (He strength failing.) His ‘will’ … his feeble will. Our … our feeble will. My feeble will.
VINCENT: Please rest, Ligeia. Sleep.
LIGEIA: (Weakly. Almost a whisper.) ‘Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, ... save only through the weakness of his feeble ...’ (Ligeia’s strength is gone. She releases her grasp on Vincent’s hand as her own slowly slides down his arm.)
VINCENT: Ligeia? Ligeia!
(The lights fade to black. From the darkness Ligeia’s voice, seemingly from everywhere, is heard.)
LIGEIA: ‘Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.
(A pool of light comes up down right. Vincent enters the light.)
VINCENT: And then … then she was gone. Without Ligeia I was a child groping for light in the darkness. I could not endure the desolation of that castle by the Rhine. I spent months aimlessly wandering through Europe. During these days I attempted to escape the pain of my loss with drink. And … and there were other methods. None of them successful. At the end of this period I purchased a very old abbey in one of the most desolate areas of fair England. At the end of those lost days I also led from the altar, as my bride, the fair haired and blue eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion, of Tremaine.
(The lights come up on the downstage area as Rowena enters. Her speech is cultured but her tonality has a biting shrillness to it.)