Justin - Childhood

About the writing

In order to aid to the weight of the soliloquy, I placed my own childhood memory of being attacked by a peacock on a family trip to Florida into the mind a feudal military captain. Shakespearean soliloquies do not have a prescribed form or necessary meter and so the challenge is tone. I tried at first to write in more Elizabethan English, but I could not do it without it sounding forced.

To place the piece, my captain in the proceeding scene has been frightened by a goose while he led his troops through a village bringing up the torment of attempting to reconcile his image as a warrior with his irrational fear of large birds.

Font doesn’t matter, this should be memorized and dramatically recited at the end of fancy dinner parties with overdone angst and a proper British accent.

The Peacock

How then should I return the man’s insult? How could one explain to these men that their captain, who has led them into battle, who ne’er balked in the face of death, is cowed by an errant goose waddling in a village road? Would I find liberty from the shame of my fear by baring its source to my soldiers?

Should I tell them that as a boy, my father took the family to a distant and magical land where we saw fantastic beasts to rival the king’s own menagerie; where we observed mermaids frolicking in azure pool and peacocks walking freely among the people with less fear of man than, well, than a village goose? That I, being youthful and foolishly trusting, walked too near one of the colorful fowls and was assaulted, spurred and left bleeding in that enchanted garden? My father and mother quickly ushered me to a nearby physician who bound my wounds, but alas the damage was done. That bright, chromatic minion of Satan had forever scarred my spirit with cowardly fear. No, I should not blame the peacock; jackanapes had roiled him by taunting him and pulling his tail feathers. ‘Twas not the fault of bird painted by God’s own hand, but the depravity of man that caused the wound. Nevertheless, here am I, a fool, stumbling back and grasping for my blade’s hilt to defend myself from next Christmas’s dinner and my sergeant now has one of the men bound for a lashing at morn.

I cannot let the man be punished for laughing at my ridiculous display of cowardice, but what should I say to diminish my shame? I could say that my eyes were tired and the dust of the road had affected my perception so that I saw a threat, but what then if a chicken or turkey comes at me in the next village? No I will be proven false and my honor diminished along with my pride. If I reveal my weakness, then my loyal men would be guarding their captain from poultry rather than looking for traitors and outlaws. I would do better to resign my commission.

A joke perhaps. Yes a joke. Forgive the man’s insult, find a friar to bless our mission and as he concludes his benediction add my own prayer “and Lord protect us from any more errant geese.”

And perhaps requisition a mount.