The Scholars
Translated and adapted from an unfinished poem written by my great-great-great-great-grandfather, the Archbishop Guillermo Guadalupe del Toledo.
Whether the fragments I have been able to locate were intended to make up a literary or a dramatic work, I cannot say. The text is set mainly in unrhymed verse, but references to stage direction pop up sporadically in some fragments. What is clear is that the text is meant to represent the voices of many different characters, with their stories woven together in a manner similar to the Canterbury Tales.
I have included a brief description of each character and their plotline along with the song intended to represent them. Appearing in several songs is the "Chanticleer", a mysterious figure who, in the original text, seems to be responsible for conveying the whole tale to the audience.
Act 1: The Companions
Chapter One: CCF (I'm Gonna Stay With You)
Beolco is a student of Parnassus University, a college founded in ages past by a famed playwright known as the Scop. Beolco is deeply fond of both the college and the Scop, believing himself to be spiritually connected or reincarnated from the playwright. He yearns for confirmation of this secret belief.
Chapter Two: Devereaux
The son of a backwaters religious conservative, Devereaux struggles with his sexuality and sets off to seek his own fortunes at the nearby Clown College, which borders Parnassus University and has been its longtime rival. In a moment of desperation, he prays to his grandfather and namesake for guidance.
Chapter Three: Lady Gay Approximately
Malory joins the “birds of paradise”, a community based on beautification through the feather-and-fur modification, extensive costumery, prosthetics, and the like. After a year without contact with his parents, he shows up on Christmas night unadorned and silent, for a tense dinner with his mother.
Chapter Four: The Catastrophe (Good Luck With That, Man)
A group of clown troubadours, led by the Chanticleer, tour the locales surrounding the college, with some success.
Chapter Five: Equals
After an investigation into the missing skull of the college bard, Perimones is accused of stealing it and disappears. Later, they call Beolco and have a frantic late-night conversation.
Act 2: The Ransom
Chapter Six: Gethsemane
Rosa studies at the medical school of Parnassus University. After an experience bringing a medically deceased patient back to life, she begins to regain powers suppressed since childhood, of healing others by absorbing their pain. Each night, instead of dreams, she encounters the raw pain and stories of the souls she touches throughout the day. Reality blurs, and she finds herself taken deep into secret facilities buried beneath the medical school, where ancient beings that covertly reign over the college bring forth their dark plans.
Chapter Seven: Reality
The Chanticleer, apparently the victim of madness or an early death, has vanished from the environs. His fellow troubadours soldier on without him, mourning his loss.
Chapter Eight: Planet Desperation
Hyacinth, the dean of Parnassus’s Liberal Arts school, is poisoned on the eve of a clown raid on the campus grounds. As the poison slowly begins to take effect, he wanders through the campus, watching scenes of destruction as he heads outside its gates towards the river that defines the college’s western border.
Act 3: Epilogue
Chapter Nine: True/False Lover
The Chanticleer is discovered to be neither mad nor dead, but alive and quietly working at the campus library.
