Dear Elizabeth

Sarah Ruhl

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781786827265
• eBook ISBN: 9781786827272
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell were two of America's most brilliant poets. Throughout their lifetime, they wrote over 400 letters to each other; spanning decades, continents, political eras. Their connection was messy and profound, platonic yet romantic, intense and intangible. A love that resists easy definition. These are their words. Susan Smith Blackburn award winner Sarah Ruhl has crafted a stunning and quietly bold piece of theatre about what it means to love someone, and all the questions we regret never asking.

ACT TWO

Part One: Skunk

LOWELL

P.S. The last part is too heatedly written with too many ands and so forth. The record is French Renaissance Vocal Music.

She takes the record.

Love,

Cal

She puts the record on.

She picks up a pen.

She tries to write.

She stops and crumples the paper.

She tries again.

SUBTITLE: 115 East 67th Street, New York, August 28, 1957

BISHOP

Dearest Cal:

I wanted to answer your wonderful letter right away … but …

She stops.

Meanwhile he climbs a ladder.

But we’ve been so busy … And I’m apt to be interrupted at any moment by my Brazilian friends returning from Bloomingdale’s.

LOWELL

Asking you is the might have been—

BISHOP

I don’t know how Lota does it, really; I hate to shop so.

A moon appears.

LOWELL

—the other life that might have been had—

He reaches the top of the ladder and tries to grab the moon. The moon won’t budge.

BISHOP

New York is awful I think.

LOWELL

I am sure it is the will of the heavens—

BISHOP

After racking my brains I just this minute decided it is like a battered-up old alarm clock that insists on gaining five or six hours a day & has to be kept lying on its side.

LOWELL

So it is …

BISHOP

I do hope you’re feeling much, much better, Cal, and realize now that I may not have written a very cheering letter.

She is not cheerful.

With lots of love as always—

Elizabeth

She puts her head in her hands.

He jumps off the ladder.

Or appears to jump off a ladder.

But maybe he just disappears into thin air.

The record ends.

He reappears.

She looks up.

LOWELL

I want you and Lota to know that I am at last in reverse. I am taking my anti-manic pills— 75 mgs. of sparine, no more than what my doctor prescribed on the bottle but too much to drive or even see people much. The effect is something like the slowing and ache of a medium fever.

I want you to know … Oh, dear, I wanted you to know so many things …

Yesterday was mostly bed and letting my beard grow. Today I feel certain that I am not going off the deep end.

One is left strangely dumb, and talking about the past is like a cat’s trying to explain climbing down a ladder. Gracelessly, like a standing child trying to sit down, like a cat or a coon coming down a tree, I’m getting down my ladder to the moon. Ask Lota to forgive me. And forgive me yourself, dear old friend. I’ll make no solo descents on you either in New York or Brazil.

He walks to her and gives her a book.

A rare volume of George Herbert that was in his family for many years.

P.S. The George Herbert! I’ve really always wanted you to have it. I’ll be mortally hurt if you don’t keep it.

BISHOP

Thank you for the book. This is the first time I’d ever gone traveling without George Herbert so it is nice to have him again—even if I feel you really really shouldn’t have given it away. I’ve been reading him a lot—

LOWELL

Thy mouth was open, but thou couldst not sing—

BISHOP

I think we should read his “Treatise of Temperance & Sobriety” out loud to each other. It begins “Having observed in my time many of my friends, of excellent wit & noble disposition, overthrown & undone by Intemperance; who, if they had lived, could have been an ornament to the world and a comfort to their friends …”

Dear Cal, do please please take care of yourself and be an ornament to the world (you’re already that) and a comfort to your friends … There are many hopeful things, too, you know. Sobriety & gayety & patience & toughness will do the trick. Or so I hope for myself & pray for you too.

You weren’t “inconsiderate,” Cal! You were a wonderful host, and we had such a nice time with you, really. Even if Lota does think all fir trees are deliberately planted, she liked Maine very much.

I’ll write soon—

LOWELL

Dearest Elizabeth,

We are going to have a child.

She looks surprised.

Then melancholy.

Her greatest regret in the world is not having a child.

LOWELL

It will come sometime in January, and already we are exhausted. We lie about on sofas all day eating cornflakes, no-calorie ginger-ale and yogurt. Elizabeth never moves except to turn the page of an English newspaper or buy a dress. I never move except to turn on my high-fi radio or to go on expeditions for second-hand books … We hear of women who ski all through pregnancy, give birth in bomb shelters, but we don’t approve, and are timid, delicate, and ante-bellum. We are so much older than other beginning parents.

How we boast! People whom I had utterly felt cut off from: my barber, my dentist, the head of the Boston University English department, wives of friends, children … to all of them I can’t stop talking and bragging.

Elizabeth Bishop feeds her toucan.

LOWELL

Do you stop in the States on your way to Europe? I wish with all my heart that you could somehow stretch things and see us. We seem attached to each other by some stiff piece of wire, so that each time one moves, the other moves in another direction. We should call a halt to that.

A horizontal wire comes down from the ceiling, connecting them.

It is something of a pulley, or an old-fa...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• ACT ONE
• ACT TWO
• Afterword
• Acknowledgments