Title: Shooting Gallery and Play For Germs
First published: 1973
Description: Shooting gallery -- The scene is a carnival shooting gallery, where a young man has (for several months) been shooting at a "mechanical bear," obstinately determined to win his wife a goldfish. He has spent all their money, his wife is exhausted from being sent to fetch hot dogs and orange drinks, and their children have been virtually abandoned. Still he persits, firing away demoniacally and excoriating his long-suffering wife until an unexpected and ironic happening brings a sudden, shattering calm to the scene.

In Play for the germs, having become comfortably ensconced in his victim's body, Socrates (a gonorrhea germ) resents the sudden intrusion of Aristotle (a syphilis germ). Their confrontation becomes a boasting match as they trade the names of their many famous conquests, but an ominous note is sounded when they realize how many of their fellow germs have fallen prey to modern medicine. And, while Aristotle launches a frenzied attack on his latest would-be conquest, so do they, as clouds of lethal "penicillin" billow in, making them choke their last breath.
Subjects: American drama
LC classification: PS3558.O69 S5