Two Hundred Years Later
"This is it," the director says, pacing the boards in irritation. "The big death scene. You're Osberht, you're going onstage to face your own death, and you have to be magnificent. Did that seem magnificent to you?"
"I'll do it again," the play's very young leading man promises. "From the beginning of the scene?"
"From the beginning of the scene. Unless you'd like me to try it with the understudy?"
"No!" the actor squeaks. You're not certain of his name. There have been so many you've watched, over the years. "I've always wanted to play this role. Ever since I first saw The Tragical History of—"
"Don't say it!" a clamor of voices bursts out.
One of the other actors throws his hands up in the air. "Has no one told you that it's bad luck to speak the name of the cursed play? We're having enough trouble without an appearance from the theater ghost."
"There is no 'theater ghost,'" the director says, "and the play is not cursed. It is a play about a curse. I would like to think we are all sensible people who know the difference between the two. Now, if we might start again from the top?"
You'd like to think the play isn't cursed. After all, it's a play about you. But you could tell the director that there certainly is a theater ghost, if the director were inclined to listen to your whispers on the evening air.
This isn't the old Odeon, of course. That one burned to the ground, in a series of events that you only dimly remember, like a play you saw so long ago that the lines and business have faded to a general sense of sorrow. But it's on the site of the old theater, and the sign out front says The Odeon in bold letters, though it's printed tin rather than the old painted wood.
You've been here since the first actors stepped out on the new stage and opened their scripts. You've watched a hundred playwrights' works performed here, but there's always a certain satisfaction when the plays are yours. Only the most skeptical of the theater's company doubt that they're sharing the theater with Osberht's ghost.