EXAMPLES OF SONDHEIM BRILLIANCE
High in a tower--
Like yours was, but higher--
A beauty asleep.
All 'round the tower,
A thicket of briar
A hundred feet deep.
Agony! No frustration more keen,
When the one thing you want
Is a thing that you've not even seen.
RP: I've found a casket
Entirely of glass--
No, it's unbreakable.
Inside--don't ask it--
A maiden, alas,
Just as unwakeable--
Both: What unmistakable agony! Is the way always barred?
RP: She has skin white as snow--
CP: Did you learn her name?
RP: No, there's a dwarf standing guard.
Both: Agony! Such that princes must weep!
Always in thrall most
To anything almost,
Or something asleep.
CP: If it were not for the thicket--
RP: A thicket's no trick. Is it thick?
CP: It's the thickest.
RP: The quickest is pick it apart with a stick--
CP: Yes, but even one prick--
It's my thing about blood.
RP: Well, it's sick!
CP: It's no sicker than your thing with dwarves.
RP: Dwarves.
CP: Dwarves...
RP: Dwarves are very upsetting.
Both: Not forgetting the tasks unachievable,
Mountains unscalable--
If it's conceivable
But unavailable,
Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah--
Agony!
CP: Misery!
RP: Woe!
Both: Not to know what you miss.
CP: While they lie there for years--
RP: And you cry on their biers--
Both: What unbearable bliss!
Agony, that can cut like a knife!
Ah well, back to my wife...
EXAMPLE 2
Your Fault
Baker: It's because of you there's a giant in our midst, and my wife is dead!
Jack: But it isn't my fault,
I was given those beans!
You persuaded me to trade away my cow for beans!
And without those beans, there'd have been no stalk
To get up to the giant in the first place!
Baker: Wait a minute, magic beans for a cow so old
That you had to tell a lie to sell it, which you told!
Were they worthless beans? Were they oversold?
Oh, and tell us who persuaded you to steal that gold!
LRRH: (to Jack) See, it's your fault.
Jack: No!
Baker: So it's your fault..
Jack: No!
LRRH: Yes, it is!
Jack: It's not!
Baker: It's true.
Jack: Wait a minute, though--
I only stole the gold to get my cow back
From you!
LRRH: (to Baker) So it's your fault!
Jack: Yes!
Baker: No, it isn't!
I'd have kept those beans, but our house was cursed.
She made us get a cow to get the curse reversed!
Witch: It's his father's fault that the curse got placed,
And the place got cursed in the first place!
LRRH: Oh. Then it's his fault!
Witch: So.
Cinderella: It was his fault..
Jack: No.
Baker: Yes, it is, it's his.
Cinderella: I guess..
Jack: Wait a minute, though--
I chopped down the beanstalk, right? That's clear.
But without any beanstalk, then what's queer
Is how did the second giant get down here
In the first place?
..second place..
Cinderella: Yes!
LRRH: How?
Baker: Hmm..
Jack: Well, who had the other bean?
Baker: The other bean?
Cinderella: The other bean?
Jack: (to Baker) You pocketed the other bean.
Baker: I didn't!
Yes, I did.
LRRH: So it's your f--!
Baker: No, it isn't, 'cause I gave it to my wife!
LRRH: So it's her f--!
Baker: NO, IT ISN'T!
Cinderella: Then whose is it?
Baker: Wait a minute! (to Cinderella)
She exchanged that bean to obtain your shoe,
So the one who knows what happened to the bean is you!
Cinderella: You mean that old bean-- that your wife--? Oh, dear--
(as they all look at her)
But I never knew, and so I threw--
Well, don't look here!
LRRH: So it's your fault!
Cinderella: But--
Jack: See, it's her fault--
Cinderella: But--
Jack: And it isn't mine at all!
Baker: (to Cinderella) But what?
Cinderella: (to Jack) Well, if you hadn't gone back up again--
Jack: We were needy--
Cinderella: You were greedy! Did you need that hen?
Jack: But I got it for my mother--!
LRRH: So it's her fault then!
Cinderella: Yes, and what about the harp in the third place?
Baker: The harp--yes!
Jack: (referring to LRRH) She went and dared me to!
LRRH: I dared you to?
Jack: You dared me to!
(to the others) She said that I was scared--
LRRH: ME?
Jack: --to. She dared me!
LRRH: No, I didn't!
Baker, Cinderella, Jack: So it's your fault!
LRRH: Wait a minute--!
Cinderella: If you hadn't dared him to--
Baker: (to Jack) And you had left the harp alone,
We wouldn't be in trouble in the first place!
LRRH: (to Cinderella) Well, if you hadn't thrown away the bean
In the first place--!
It was your fault!
Cinderella: (referring to Witch)
Well, if she hadn't raised them in the first place--!
Jack: (to Witch) Yes, if you hadn't raised them in the first place--!
LRRH, Baker: (to Witch)
Right! It's you who raised them in the first place--!
Cinderella (simultaneously): You raised the beans in the first place!
Jack: It's YOUR fault!
Cinderella, Jack, LRRH, Baker: You're responsible!
You're the one to blame!
It's your fault!
BSoBW2: I punched Sondheim in the face after I saw Wicked and said, "Why couldn't you write like that!?"
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