You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
ROSEMARY (at first only faintly discernible – by herself) What a day! (A shattered ghost of a beggar woman slowly becomes apparent. Rosemary sees her and is startled.) Who are you? How did you get here? (There is no response, but the figure is increasingly menacing.) Get out! (The figure slowly raises its hands as if it might clutch her.) You won't frighten me with those tricks. Apparitions are not new to me. What do you want?
APPARITION I am glad you decided to be civil – without being terrified. It wouldn't do if you screamed.
ROSEMARY (scornfully) I am not easily terrified; not even though I thought my mind was going.
APPARITION It is. I have come to warn you. I am a friend of yours.
ROSEMARY Andromache? Lady Macbeth? Hecuba? These are friends I have seen before. I know you; you were fooled that day by the priest – at Ur. He turned up today too. I have a lot of friends.
APPARITION Dreams, apparitions, hallucinations may indeed be friends of yours – if you dare to admit the acquaintance. So far you have at least permitted yourself to admit my existence. You may be right to think that I am both the herald of impending disaster and a sign of that disaster.
ROSEMARY Aren't things bad enough without your arrival?
APPARITION I disturb your slumbers; you feel I am a symptom of a ‘mind diseased’. Freud tried to turn these dreams to good account: you are not obliged to follow his example.
ROSEMARY The only Freud I ever heard of was a psychoanalyst.
APPARITION I don't mind what you call him – or me. You have been warned. Don't let me disturb your sleep – sleep well. (Disappears.)