Characters: LINCOLN, SECRETARY SEWARD, REPRESENTATIVE BIRD, REPRESENTATIVE LOGAN.
Setting: Around a table in a conference room.
REPRESENTATIVE BIRD: Congratulations, Mr. Lincoln on your senate nomination. The Republican party loves your chances for winning Illinois.
LINCOLN: Thank you. I’m excited about my chances too. I can’t rest on my laurels though–my acceptance speech for the nomination had better be very good. I was thinking of calling it “A House Divided.”
REPRESENTATIVE LOGAN: A house divided?
REPRESENTATIVE BIRD: That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.
REPRESENTATIVE LOGAN: That’s–um, a little biblical. Let us see the speech.
(Lincoln hands them his draft)
REPRESENTATIVE BIRD: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” That’s ridiculous. Why would a house divided not be able to stand? What happened to the foundation?
REPRESENTATIVE LOGAN: But we can fix it. How about, “This nation is like a PB&J sandwich, you like when the flavors mix, but they don’t without you putting your fingers in the filling a little bit.”
REPRESENTATIVE BIRD: Great! Or like, “This nation is like a failing union…like a marriage… Like mine.”
REPRESENTATIVE LOGAN: Hm…maybe something more general? “This nation is like…a penny. There’s two sides to it and they’re different.”
LINCOLN: I think I’m trying for subtle. A house divided is great, right? Subtle, metaphorical, snappy. Thomas Paine talked about it in Common Sense.
REPRESENTATIVE LOGAN: That is so derivative.
REPRESENTATIVE BIRD: Please, just plagiarize. Have no sense of integrity.
Seward enters in a frenzy, unaware that Lincoln is already in the room.
SEWARD: Hey! There’s an emergency! Lincoln’s just sent me his latest draft of the speech and it’s awful! He says (reading from paper; says this next line at the same time as Logan) “A house divided cannot sta–” (starting to look up from paper in confusion) How did you kno-oh (sees Lincoln, is shocked). I am so sorry.
LINCOLN: Is it really bad?
SEWARD: (Inhales deeply) Yeaah.
REPRESENTATIVE BIRD: Worse than my marriage.
LINCOLN: That bad?
ALL: Yeah.
SEWARD: I’ve got it! What if it’s about an apartment?
LOGAN: Yea! And it’s on the sixth floor!
BIRD: No, 7th floor!
SEWARD: Yeah!
LINCOLN: What?
LOGAN: And it’s split in two!
BIRD: And it has windows!
LINCOLN: How is this better than a house?
SEWARD: Way catchier!
BIRD: It’s for the middle-class!
LOGAN: Perfect - this nation is like a seventh floor windowed middle-class apartment split into two! (people applause.)
LINCOLN: Okay, well, let’s table this for now and go to our other speech -
BIRD: Oh right, the preliminary draft of the liberation declaration!
LINCOLN: What if we called it the emancipation procla–
BIRD and SEWARD: No one knows what emancipation means.