Bartholomew Quill

Bartholomew Quill is Bridgeport's most celebrated playwright. His comedies fill the Opera House season after season, his lines get quoted in taverns whose patrons own not a single book, and he has never once appeared to collect an award, give an interview, or confirm he exists.

"I have wept with laughter at his plays, and I have seen all of them. Several times!" -- Overheard at a coffee table at Marwick's Place.

Detailed Description

Quill's manuscripts arrive at the Opera House by courier from Tentacle Press, never delivered by the author himself. Tentacle Press in Perelline holds sole printing rights and refuses all requests for a meeting, citing Quill's "well-documented reclusiveness". No two published portraits of him look the same, as illustrators invent a face because none exists to copy from. Quill is mostly pictured as a human man in his fifties, with a beard, a monocle and a top hat.

His plays share a signature the LIPA comedy curriculum could have written itself: mistaken identity, mundane disasters that escalating past reason, and characters that are being undone by a small, specific detail. Three of his scripts are currently running in Bridgeport at once, an unmatched count for any living playwright, and they mostly draw the lower classes of Bridgeport to the Opera House.

"The bride doth insist too firmly that she recognises her own husband, methinks." -- Ottoline, A Ball of Borrowed Faces

History / Origin

Flora Puddington teaches Improv and Comedy, and Juggling and Object Manipulation, at the Luminary Institute of Performing Arts under the stage name "The Quip". She wrote scripts privately for years, work she took more seriously than the improv routines that made her name, and had no wish to publish it under her comedian identity. She contacted Margo Weedlebeam, having heard from friends, who are avid fans of the Geertruud Smallbottom novelas, that her Tentacle Press business could produce printed works of good quality.

Margo recognised the arrangement immediately: an invented author, tight control over distribution, and a real product good enough to sell itself. It was her third time building almost exactly this. Bartholomew Quill got his name, and a first small production started within a season. And the Opera House staged his second play within the year. The first play is still being performed several times a year, and people keep revisiting it.

"We asked Tentacle Press for an introduction to the author. They sent us a very polite letter declining on the author's behalf. We have never had a playwright decline his own introduction before." -- anonymous member of the Guild of Actors and Entertainers

Role in the World

Quill's plays are Bridgeport's dominant comedic export, staged constantly, and studied at LIPA by students who have no idea their improv instructor supplied the source material second-hand through her own curriculum. The Opera House now wants Quill to appear in person for an anniversary production, a request Margo has stalled for a full season with excuses about his health, his travel, or him just being way too busy.

Separately, LIPA staff have taken to guessing Quill's identity as a running joke in the staff room, unaware they are doing it in front of the answer. Flora has learned to laugh along without laughing too hard.

Quill's Plays

A Midsummer Night's Scream
Two different weddings, same names, same location. What could possibly go wrong?
Omelette, King of Yolkenmark
A cook's ruined breakfast leaves the kinf too ill to appear at court, and by the time anyone thinks to mention it was
just a bad egg, the household has already hired mourners and invited a rival kingdom to the funeral.
The Comedy of Terrors
Identical twins separated at a travelling fair's haunted tent spend the whole night convinced the other one is a ghost.
All's Well That Mends Well
A tailor's disastrous first commission becomes the season's must-have look once everyone assumes the ruin was deliberate.
The Tempest in a Teapot
A minor argument about brewing time nearly cancels a wedding, a treaty, and a tea house's licence in one afternoon.
Twelfth Knight
A squire mistaken for his own knight has to keep the act up through an entire tournament.
The Taming of the Shrewd
A notoriously difficult negotiator meets his match in a bride arranged entirely for her business sense, not her temperament.
A Ball of Borrowed Faces
A masquerade where every rented mask turns out to be almost identical leaves half the guests declaring undying love to entirely the wrong person.

opera poster by Tillerz using MJ

"An egg! An egg! My kingdom for a proper breakfast!" -- the King, Omelette, King of Yolkenmark

"Something is rotten in this kitchen, and I have narrowed it down to one very specific egg." -- the Cook, Omelette, King of Yolkenmark

"Et tu, cook? I trusted you with my breakfast." -- the King, Omelette, King of Yolkenmark

This is GM information

Secrets

Flora Puddington is Bartholomew Quill. Only Margo Weedlebeam knows for certain.
Margo is claiming a larger share of Quill's earnings than Flora ever verified; on terms she originally used to fund Geertruud Smallbottom's first print runs.
A representative of the Royal Conservatory of the Arts in Queenshaven, suspecting LIPA is sheltering Quill among its own staff, has begun investigating individual instructors.

Plot Hooks

• The Opera House's demand for a public appearance forces Margo toward a solution before the anniversary show, and she has not told Flora what she intends to do.
• The Conservatory's investigator approaches the party to identify Quill, seeking professional embarrassment for LIPA rather than any harm to the author.
• Someone contacts Flora directly, having worked out the truth, and the terms of their silence are not yet clear even to them.
• A LIPA student finds a working draft in Flora's own classroom and must decide what to do with it before anyone else notices it is missing.