What if…Dinner With a Bunch of Brits

Your possible enjoyment of the following dialogue will be enhanced a thousand fold if you are actually familiar with the works, styles and historical contexts of the authors.

CHARACTERS:
William Shakespeare, Elizabethan poet
Oscar Wilde, Aestheticist author
Jane Austen, Romantic novelista
Salman Rushdie, Man on the run/Anglo-Pakistani writer of fiction

SCENE: Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde head down to a posh English restaurant for a spot o’ good eats. They then fall into the following conversation about time.

SHAKESPEARE: What thinkest thou of time, goodfellow Wilde? I find her a tyrant, and a robber as well.
WILDE: My good man, I can sympathize with your view, certainly. Time strips the most beautiful maiden of her youth and glory, and turns dreams to dust. And yet, it is comforting as well.
SHAKESPEARE: How can time invoke comfort? Methinks it just the opposite. Time puts jowls in my jaw, creates aches where once there were none. Time is death’s own cohort.
WILDE: Exactly my point. And isn’t death the great equalizer? Time shall have us all, and it is out of vanity and in vain that any maid or youth should seek otherwise.

At this point the duo is joined by a third countryman…or woman. Jane Austen takes the seat that Wilde pulls out for her, and the conversation resumes hence.

AUSTEN: I can’t say that I find time such a terrible thing to bear, as long as one does not bear it alone.
SHAKESPEARE: Solitude is, indeed, time’s most wicked conspirator. But if thou art so lucky as to evade the one, then time dost appear invisible.
Wilde: Love, then is the only true escape from time?
While the question hangs in the air, the company of authors is joined by their final dinner mate at last. Salman Rushdie takes a seat, slightly out of breath from running for nearly a decade, and they continue.

RUSHDIE: Love, even if it’s true, might weave a dazzling spell round the heart of a man, but even these enchantments fall prey to time at last. Even lovers aren’t safe from death. In fact, I would think they suffer even harder for it, and then find some less noble thing to fill the void that their deceased lover once filled.
AUSTEN: This is the way of the world, then. But in the memory of love, lovers can find comfort, and in its fruits they will have their lovers yet.
SHAKESPEARE: Thou speakest well, fair friend! Not even time can defeat progeny’s power.
WILDE: But time can turn love sour, and children grow fickle.
RUSHDIE: What a point, Wilde. The clock’s steady hand will erode every mask, and—a lover’s falseness, a child’s selfish will and lusty greed—prove all these things.
WILDE: In time. [laughs]
AUSTEN: Goodness, what an attitude to take.
SHAKESPEARE: Hast thou found thyself exposed to a mistress’ fickle ways?
RUSHDIE: Perhaps. But that’s a story for another day.