My memories and records of who did what in this scene are patchy, but I think this was Phil’s outline notes, my execution, and some Phil dialogue tweaks on top. Nevertheless, of the characters we’ll be meeting here, Goblaurence is probably the most “Phil” of the lot.

I don’t think Phil would disagree that Goblaurence partly grew out of Phil’s years in IT. I have just enough experience in that field myself to know how it curses you with both the awareness of inefficiency and (all too often) the inability to make the really inefficient people shape up. They’re the ones paying you and deciding whether to keep employing you, and yet they just keep refusing to listen to you. Why won’t they listen? How can you make them listen?

You can’t, but you can decide you don’t care what anyone thinks of you any more.

Speaking of doing things with no regard for how much trouble they could get one into, I’ve started a new weekly series on Medium called Shakespeare’s Trump. That title, and the fact that I am not a Trump supporter, should tell you a lot of what you need to know! The first scene (which I wrote some years prior) is here, the second is here, the third is here, and the others should appear early each Tuesday, finishing up sometime after January 20. Yes, that does mean I’m writing this one with a few minor details about its ending undecided, but somehow I doubt I’ll lack for material when it comes time to flesh out Act V.