Tickets for The Popinjay Cavalier, billed as “a swashbuckling comedy written by Quentin Tarantino” and now confirmed to be starring Sacha Baron Cohen, will go on sale soon before its West End opening in 2027. The following pages are from a leaked manuscript, signed “QT” with a quill. Whether this is a genuine version of the play he is supposed to be presenting on the West End stage in early 2027 or not is yet to be seen.
Act One/Scene I
Two fops ride in a carriage one foggy night, without London town. Music plays from a lute player aloft the carriage.
Lute Player: And that was Kit and the Marlowes with My Love Knows Where My Hey-Nonnie Goes as super sounds of the 1670s just keep on truckin’.
Sir Vincent: Dost thou know what they call roast chicken in France?
Sir Jules: No, sir. Enlighten me!
Sir Vincent: Coq au vin.
(They laugh.)
Sir Jules: Verily that is droll, sir, for coq ’tis also a word for the male member. Wilt thou join me in some Red Apple tobacco?
Sir Vincent: Most willingly. But soft, what alarums be these?
A shot is heard in the distance. The carriage pulls to a halt. Sir Jules and Sir Vincent alight to confront two men on horseback. They dismount and level their muskets at them.
Signor Rouge: Stand and deliver, your money or your life!
Sir Jules: Prithee, sirrahs, might we know your names and your quality?
Signor Brown: Quality have we none, but I am Signor Brown and this is Signor Rouge, our noms de plume.
Sir Vincent: Signor Rouge? Isn’t that a bit like Signor Sodomite?
Signor Rouge: Cease thou mithering, thou foul blabber-lipped knave, and surrender thy purses and jewels.
They toss their purses to the ground, but as Signors Brown and Rouge stoop to pick them up, Sirs Jules and Vincent draw their rapiers and hold them to the throats of their assailants.
Sir Vincent: Now sirrah, thou wilt drop thine pistoleros and return to us our property.
Signor Brown: I beg you, sirs, we meant no harm.
Sir Vincent: The hangman shall stretch thy necks like Charles Bronson in that obscure western from 1973 directed by Michael Winner and which is, alas, yet to be made, but verily is worth watching. On 35mm.
Sir Jules: Mine purse hath writ upon it “Mother Cuckolder.”
Another shot sounds, and a woman in a wedding dress enters the scene.
The Bride: Drop your mistempered weapons to the ground.
They do so.
Signor Brown: Who is the wench?
Sir Vincent: That wench, sirrah, hath been scorned by our master.
Sir Jules: And Hell hath no fury…
The Bride: Peace, do not waste thy breath in idle pleadings. The blade is keen and merely awaits the neck of my foe. Prithee, I must kill Will.
Exeunt.
Suggested Reading
How Kyle MacLachlan became the king of uncool
Act Two/Scene I
INT. Night. A playwright sits at a desk, quill in hand.
William Shakespeare: My Mistress’s feet are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her toenails red…
Enter the Bride.
The Bride: Dear Will, here you are. And yet methinks thou shouldst be elsewhere.
William: Ist that o’clock already?
The Bride: We were to be married a full month ago.
William: My dear Anne, hath a way been invented that canst stop the stars in their diurnal spin, then I should’ve been with you at the time appointed, but verily I was writing and hath forgot.
The Bride: This injury I shall not endure. I mean to stab thee in the arras, Will, with this Hattori Hanzo sword.
William: Pray first… a goblet of wine.
The Bride: One. And then of the sweet wine of oblivion wilt thou sup.
William pours a vial of poison into a goblet and then fills it with wine and offers it to the Bride. She is about to drink when Sir Vincent and Sir Jules break into the room.
William: What is the meaning of this unholy eruption?
Sir Vincent: Forgive me, master, but thy mistress Anne hath stolen from me.
The Bride: What did I steal?
Sir Vincent: My heart.
Sir Jules: Listen not to the prattler, dame, for ’tis I who am lost in thy eyes.
Sir Vincent: Villain, dare thou beard me in so foul a manner?
Sir Jules: Thou hast always been a fop, and I despise thee and so die.
They draw; they fight; they die.
William: Sweet heavens, what madness is this?
The Bride: Verily sir, I know not but mine own beauty hath enraged one with the other.
William: Didst thou show them your feet?
The Bride: Feet! Feet! Always feet! This obsession of thine is an insult to my love which soars like a falcon while yours treads as low as a bunion; myself a flower is, while your breath smells of onion.
She stabs Will.
William: I am killed.
He dies.
The Bride: And so end all who doth their loved ones anatomise, and look down there when up here are their eyes.
She drinks the wine, chokes and dies. The cast take their bows as Coconut by Harry Nilsson is played on a krummhorn
