The Bald Soprano

“SCENE: A middle-class English interior, with English armchairs. An English evening. Mr. Smith, an Englishman, seated in his English armchair and wearing English slippers, is smoking his English pipe and reading his English newspaper, near an English fire. He is wearing English spectacles and a small gray English mustache. Beside him, in another English armchair, Mrs. Smith, an Englishwoman, is darning some English socks. A long moment of English silence. The English clock strikes 17 English strokes.”

Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a perfectly normal English couple, relax by the fireside at the end of their day. Mrs. Smith reflects on the evening meal and the behavior of their three children at dinner, happily declaring all satisfactory, while Mr. Smith reads his newspaper. Mrs. Smith expresses her admiration for the next door neighbor’s doctor, who practices all treatments on himself before administering them to others, but her husband is doubtful. The neighbor’s child died under his care, the