Evening under Lamplight Podcast

Here is a short drama, set aboard a ship at sea, the men on board facing certain death as the ship sinks. What do they do in such a crisis? The unexpected climax has absurd, Zen overtones.

We begin a series of podcasts featuring the Fables of Robert Louis Stevenson, odd, biting, little tales, or dramas. "The Reader" aims at narrow-minded readers who are ready to dismiss anyone whose views do not match theirs. (You can make the contemporary applications yourself.)

We come to the end of the journey through Hell, the final stage: no encounters, but a sight of the Devil himself, enormous and hideous, with no intelligence at all. And then the long climb back out to the fresh air, and the stars.

The two final encounters with damned souls, and two of the most gruesome and weird stories on the whole journey.

Here we are at the bottom of Hell, a frozen lake, only the heads of the traitors down here appearing up out of the ice. And nothing but malice, both towards themselves and towards everyone else. It's a bad way to live, but it can make for an interesting story line.

It's the transition from Fraud to Treachery, and Dante and Virgil have to pass through a ring of giants, requesting the least hostile of them to give them a lift down to the next level.

We come to the end of the Circle of Fraud, in a confused, insane, inhuman chaos of disease and rancour - deceit and malice just dumped down here.

Now we come to the final ditch of Fraud, featuring the falsifiers, and featuring diseases of various kinds. In this canto we see the alchemists who claim to be able to falsify material, turning it from one thing to another - a kind of genetic modification? The other three kinds of falsifiers will have to wait till the next canto.

The conclusion of the play, in which Prospero can be a model of gracious ageing, and we are given the power to bless and dismiss the whole show.

Further reconciliations, including Prospero and his dark side, an essential integrating healing.