11
« on: March 19, 2005, 06:27:07 pm »
Anyone remember this?
Constitutional Peasants
Arthur: Old woman!
Dennis: Man!
Arthur: Man. Sorry. What knight lives in that castle over there?
Dennis: I’m thirty-seven.
Arthur: What?
Dennis: I’m thirty-seven… I’m not old.
Arthur: Well I can’t just call you “Man”.
Dennis: Well you could say “Dennis”.
Arthur: I didn’t know you were called Dennis.
Dennis: You didn’t bother to find out, did you?
Arthur: I did say sorry about the old woman, but from the behind you looked…
Dennis: What I object to is that you automatically treat me like an inferior…
Arthur: Well… I am King.
Dennis: Oh, King, eh? Very nice. And how d’you get that eh? By exploiting the workers! By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society! If there’s ever going to be any progress…
(An old woman appears)
Old Woman: Dennis! There’s some lovely filth down here… Oh! How d’you do?
Arthur: How d’you do, good lady… I am Arthur, King of the Britons… Whose castle is that?
Old Woman: King of the who?
Arthur: The Britons.
Old Woman: Who are the Britons?
Arthur: We all are… we’re all Britons. And I am your King…
Old Woman: Didn’t know we had a King. I thought we were an autonomous collective…
Dennis: You’re fooling yourself. We’re living in a dictatorship, a self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes…
Old Woman: Oh, there you go bringing class into it again…
Dennis: That’s what it’s all about… If only people would…
Arthur: Please, please good people. I am in haste. Who lives in that castle?
Old Woman: No one lives there.
Arthur: Then, who is your lord?
Old Woman: We don’t have a lord.
Arthur: What?
Dennis: I told you, we’re an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.
Arthur: Yes.
Dennis: But all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting…
Arthur: Yes, I see.
Dennis: …by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs…
Arthur: Be quiet!
Dennis: …but a two-thirds majority in the case of a more major…
Arthur: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet.
Old Woman: Order, eh. Who does he think he is?
Arthur: I am your King!
Old Woman: Well, I didn’t vote for you.
Arthur: You don’t vote for Kings.
Old Woman: Well, how did you become King, then?
Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur… That is why I’m your King!
Dennis: Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Arthur: Be quiet!
Dennis: You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you!
Arthur: Shut up!
Dennis: I mean, if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!
Arthur: (grabbing him by the collar) Shut up, will you? Shut up!
Dennis: Ah! Now we see the violence inherent in the system.
Arthur: Shut up!
Dennis: (calling) Ooh… Come and see the violence inherent in the system. Help, help, I’m being repressed!
Arthur: Bloody peasant!
Dennis: Oh, what a give-away. Did you hear that, eh? That’s what I’m on about. Did you see him repressing me? You saw it, didn’t you?