Exeunt From A Silver High Rise: A Gentlewoman Steps Forward

By Jeff Baker

Author’s Note: This week’s picture, a futuristic tower, made me think of a corporate high-rise and The Jetsons. And I’d been thinking of Shakespeare and wanted to combine the two. Instead, I cut to the Shakespearean epilogue. (The story is in there somewhere!) —jsb 4/1/20

Behold! Our play is ended! Our victories won, our losses lost.

Yet our players may find that all they sought is not worth all the work!

Office politics is still the same, be it in this far-off century or your own.

Young Felix sought as his reward the approv’l of his Parent

Mighty in his front office, yet Felix exiled to begin in the basement

Home of wand’ring dreams and also a stand-in for the Underworld

(In plays with a trapdoor on the stage!)

Success be Felix’s after much trial, and Romance as well

A trail of loves in every gender and broken hearts

Strewn across the corporate ladder

Title this play then, Labour’s Love Lost

Or The Cold Young Man Alone In His Tower

But it is not a tale of woe for all

For, in truth, it is we, the nameless, faceless bit players

Who fill coffee; bring mail and stock food carts

Who do survive all turmoil unscath’d, and live to live another day

And allow others to claw and scratch

And you, our audience need not fight

For this strange place with its familiar themes has closed for now

Hasten as we turn out the lights.

—end—

(With apologies to Wm Shakespeare.)