Copyright © 1985, 1986, 1987 by David Mamet

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      CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that Speed-the-Plow is subject to a royalty. It is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and all British Commonwealth countries, and all countries covered by the International Copyright Union, the Pan-American Copyright Convention, and the Universal Copyright Convention. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound taping, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved.

      First-class professional, stock, and amateur applications for permission to perform it, and those other rights stated above, must be made in advance, before rehearsals begin, to the author’s agent: Ronald Gwiazda, Abrams Artists Agency, 275 Seventh Avenue, 26^th floor, New York, NY 10001.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Mamet, David.

      Speed-the-plow.

      I. Title.

      PS3563.A4345S64 1988 812’.54 87-37252

      eISBN: 978-0-8021-9181-6

      Cover design by Royce M. Becker

      Grove Press an imprint of Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, 12^th floor, New York, NY 10011

      Distributed by Publishers Group West

       www.groveatlantic.com

      THIS PLAY IS DEDICATED

      TO HOWARD ROSENSTONE

      Which is the most reasonable, and does his duty best: he who stands aloof from the struggle of life, calmly contemplating it, or he who descends to the ground, and takes his part in the contest? “That philosopher,” Pen said, “had held a great place amongst the leaders of the world, and enjoyed to the full what it had to give of rank and riches, renown and pleasure, who came, weary-hearted, out of it, and said that all was vanity and vexation of spirit. Many a teacher of those whom we reverence, and who steps out of his carriage up to his carved cathedral place, shakes his lawn ruffles over the velvet cushion, and cries out that the whole struggle is an accursed one, and the works of the world are evil. Many a conscience-stricken mystic flies from it altogether, and shuts himself out from it within convent walls (real or spiritual), whence he can only look up to the sky, and contemplate the heaven out of which there is no rest, and no good.

      “But the earth, where our feet are, is the work of the same Power as the immeasurable blue yonder, in which the future lies into which we would peer. Who ordered sickness, ordered poverty, failure, success—to this man a foremost place, to the other a nameless struggle with the crowd—to that a shameful fall, or paralyzed limb or sudden accident—to each some work upon the ground he stands on, until he is laid beneath it.”

      THACKERAY,

      Pendennis

      Speed-the-Plow was first presented in a New York Broadway production by Lincoln Center Theater at the Royale Theater, opening on May 3, 1988, with the following cast:

      Directed by Gregory Mosher; sets by Michael Merritt; costumes by Nan Cibula; lighting by Kevin Rigdon.

      SPEED-THE-PLOW

      CHARACTERS

      BOBBY GOULD, CHARLIE FOX, two men around forty

      KAREN, a woman in her twenties

      SCENES

      ONE: Gould's office, morning

      TWO: His home, that evening

      THREE: His office, the next morning

      ONE

      Gould's office. Morning. Boxes and painting materials all around. Gould is sitting, reading, Fox enters.

      GOULD: When the gods would make us mad, they answer our prayers.

      FOX: Bob. . .

      GOULD: I'm in the midst of the wilderness.

      FOX: Bob . . .

      GOULD: If it's not quite “Art” and it's not quite “Entertainment,” it's here on my desk. I have inherited a monster.

      FOX: . . . Bob . . .

      GOULD: Listen to this . . . (Reads:) “How are things made round? Was there one thing which, originally, was round . . .?”

      FOX: . . . Bob . . .

      GOULD (leafing through the book he is reading, reads): “A certain frankness came to it. . .” (He leafs.) “The man,

      downcast, then met the priest, under the bridge, beneath that bridge which stood for so much, where so much had transpired since the radiation.”

      FOX: . . . yeah, Bob, that's great. . .

      GOULD: Listen to this: “and with it brought grace. But still the questions persisted . . . that of the Radiation. That of the growth of animalism, the decay of the soil. And it said ‘Beyond terror. Beyond grace’ . . . and caused a throbbing . . . machines in the void . . .” (He offers the book to Fox.) Here: take a page.

      FOX: I have to talk to you.

      GOULD: Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Charles: you get too old, too busy to have ‘fun’ this business; to have ‘fun,’ then what are you . . .?

      FOX: . . . Bob . . .

      GOULD: What are you?

      FOX: