SPEED-THE-PLOW
WORKS BY DAVID MAMET PUBLISHED BY GROVE PRESS
American Buffalo
The Cherry Orchard (adapted from Anton Chekhov)
Five Television Plays
Glengarry Glen Ross
Goldberg Street: Short Plays and Monologues
Homicide
House of Games: A Screenplay
A Life in the Theatre
Reunion and Dark Pony
Sexual Perversity in Chicago and The Duck Variations
The Shawl and Prairie du Chien
Speed-the-Plow
Things Change: A Screenplay (with Shel Silverstein)
Three Children's Plays
Warm and Cold (with Donald Sultan)
We're No Angels
The Woods, Lakeboat, Edmond
SPEED-THE-PLOW
A PLAY BY
DAVID MAMET
Copyright © 1985, 1986, 1987 by David Mamet
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [email protected].
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, 26th 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, 12th floor, New York, NY 10011
Distributed by Publishers Group West
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:
| BOBBY GOULD | Joe Mantegna | |
| CHARLIE FOX | Ron Silver | |
| KAREN | Madonna |
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: