Squalor
Character
Also appears as: SQUALOR
Can-festooned chorus, prologue, epilogue and ambulant civic condition. Personifies Bristol degenerate and putrefied, then wanders through the action to prove the metaphor unnecessarily literal.
Appears in
Connections
Meets
- Slime introduces (1 passage)
Attends
- Bristol personifies (1 passage)
- Picton Street appears at (1 passage)
- Picton St squat appears outside (1 passage)
- The Old Disgrace present at (1 passage)
Uses
- cans is festooned with (1 passage)
From the books (5 passages)
Bristol’s resident deity is personified in the form of Squalor. This gentleman is theorised in some academically not unrespectable quarters as a (grossly) decadent descendant of the ur-deity Skǖǚllǚǖ, which functions as the chaotic antithesis of the organising principle Llog. Whatever the truth of the matter, Squalor is by comparison to his peers an easygoing fellow. There is no permanent shrine to him as such, for his church is to…
…slime, its inhabitants engaged in an endless danse macabre of self-interest and moral disintegration. At its heart is Squalor—one of the least repentant prologue-speakers in recent dramatic literature—a man so rank in thought and attire that one suspects the very pages of the script should be handled with gloves.
(Outside the Picton St squat, enter SQUALOR, festooned with rags, bags and cans, whereof betimes he drinks. This knave now delivereth the Prologue)
(The back terrace of The Old Disgrace. At a table, SQUALOR covered with blood, and festooned as before with cans from which betimes he drinks. Enter MR LUVVERTORY. Enter also SHEHEREZADE & CHLAMYDIA, who conceal themselves from MR LUVVERTORY.)
(Enter SQUALOR arrayed as GUSTAV, & SHEHEREZADE as POMPINAR)