THE ROYAL SAUNA
HAMAN and KING AHASHUERUS are wrapped in towels.
HAMAN: You know, your Majesty... There is a certain people scattered abroad
and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom; their
laws are different from those of every other people,.
KING AHASHUERUS: Hey, if everyone looked and acted the same, the world
would be just one giant network sitcom.
HAMAN: It's not just being different, your Highness. These people do not
keep the king's laws, so that it is not for the king's profit to tolerate
them.
KING AHASHUERUS: Well, you have a point there.
HAMAN: If it please the king, let it be decreed that they be destroyed, and
I will pay ten thousand talents of silver into the hands of those who have
charge of the king's business, that they may put it into the king's
treasuries.
KING AHASHUERUS: You know what, Haman? You want this to be your pet
project. I'm good with it. Do whatever you want. If they don't want to be
my peeps, they can go live somewhere else.
The King takes his signet ring from his hand and gives it to Haman.
BLACKOUT
Narrator: So, according to Haman's wishes, and with the King's approval,
etters were sent by couriers to all the king's provinces, to destroy, to
slay, and to annihilate all Jews, young and old, women and children, in one
day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar,
and to plunder their goods.
LIGHT COME UP HALFWAY
Mordecai kneels, dressed in only a sackcloth with ashes, looking up to the
heavens, his arms outstretched, and he cries a loud and a bitter cry
BLACKOUT
LIGHTS UP
Mordecai, still in sackcloth and looking ragged wanders the streets in front
of KING AHASHUERUS's PALACE. ESTHER's CHAMBERMAID comes out to him,
carrying a package.
CHAMBERMAID Queen Esther insists you accept these. If the What Not to Wear
Girls got a hold of you, you'd be in big trouble, let me tell you.
MORDECAI: It doesn't matter what I wera, I still am who I am. Deliver this
message to your Queen: Think not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the
king's house, more than anyone else. I have showed her the decree that went
out by his own hand. She must go into him to make supplication unto him, and
to make request before him for her people.
Esther Preparing to Intercede
with Assuerus
Rembrandt, c. 1633
Oil on canvas
National Gallery
of Canada, Ottawa, Canada
CHAMBERMAID: She bid me tell you this. All the king's servants, and the
people of the king's provinces, do know, that whosoever, whether man or
woman, shall come unto the king into the inner court, who is not called,
there is one law of his to put him to death, except such to whom the king
shall hold out the golden sceptre, that he may live. And the Queen has not
been called to come in unto the king these thirty days. However, she says
she is willing to risk her very life to save her people, and asks that you
all gather together, and pray for her, as we all as well. She's a much
better boss than the last one, you know.
BLACKOUT