brush up your shakespeare

Strolling down Kilcullen Main Street in bright November weather.
Who should I espy coming towards me but the noble Colers.
He who played the Scottish vampire hunter Jock Stroggart in the famous 1996 production of my play Vampires Of Dublin.
The very one.
And none other.
Today I did not want to meet the noble Colers.
Nothing to do with the play.
The play debuted on the Dublin stage over a decade ago.
The scar tissue over its commercial failure has all but healed.
I harbour no further recriminations about Colers' hopeless over acting nor his congenital incapacity to emote.
It wasn't his fault.
I should never have cast him.
But I digress.
Today I didn't want to meet him for reasons wholly unrelated to the finest piece of theatrical drama ever to go down with the loss of all hands on the Dublin stage.
(And the loss of three grand. - Ian O'Doherty note.)
In his other life, John Q Coleman is a pharmacist.
Recently I ordered a hundred quid's worth of electric tooth brush from him
A month went by and no tooth brush arrived.
So I bought one somewhere else.
Then he rang the house to say my order had come in.
I've been avoiding all contact since then.
You all know I have come down in the world.
(Come up in the world surely. - Ed note)
Money is not exactly plentiful.
Let me put it this way.
Two electric tooth brushes is an indulgence even I cannot contemplate at the moment.
I looked about hurriedly for an escape route.
Too late.
He'd seen me.
"Heelers!" he cried.
I allowed myself a sort of anguished cry in response.
My cry went:
"Ah Colers. Thou canst not say I did it, nor shake thy gory tooth brush at me."
Witty what!
It's based on a line from Macbeth.
Macbeth says it to the ghost of Banquo who has burst in on one of his banquets and is waving a tooth brush about the place.
Very droll.
I'm telling you heads turned in the street when I used the line this morning.
People looked kind of confused.
Kind of scared.
Colers just nodded grimly.
He knew.
"You bought another one, didn't you?" he said.
I grinned.
"Ain't it the tooth," I answered with all the zest and vigour of a young Oscar Wilde.
Colers looked pained.
People like me are not good for the electric tooth brush dealing business.
Even allowing for our entertaining Shakespearian and Wildean allusions.
A thought struck me.
"Colers," sez I. "I was thinking of getting one of the plays back on the road. Maybe Lady Windermere's Fanny. Would you take a part?"
The second greatest actor of a generation favoured me with a luck of almost pure disbelief.
Almost pure disbelief.
There was a smidgen of opprobrium mixed in there.
"Noooooooo waaayyy," he proclaimed. "You think I'll ever make that mistake again? After the last time, no ephin way."
"Why not?" I persisted. "Another tilt at the windmill of fame. It'll be great."
Colers stared.
"Never again," he expostulated with strange high vehemence. "After the last time I swore that I would never again work with you in a theatre. You have a messiah complex. Directing plays makes it worse. Never ever again. You're egomaniacal enough at ordinary times. When you're directing a play you think you're God."
And he strode triumphantly away leaving me standing on Main Street, open mouthed in amazement at his effrontery.
Of course I forgave him gentle travellers of the internet.
For he knew not what he did.