Hunchback
Inspiring Song: Hellfire
Plot: Frollo's long lost love comes to him after hearing he has gone mad and confronts him about his failing faith. Frollo reveals his love for Esmeralda who resembles his long lost love when she was young. Frollo falls further into evil as his long lost love is reminded of why she left him in the first place and leaves him to his own destructive devices.
During the 15th Century, in Paris France, there was much unrest. A conflicted spirit filled with rage and contempt for the religion he had dedicated himself to so long ago had forged, by blood of the innocent, a contract with the Devil. His failing faith had been his ultimate demise. It consume him like a roaring fire, blazing bright upon his misery and melding away what little love for the world he had, to nothingness. Judge Claude Frollo, the Minister of Justice of Paris, France had died by his own hands. A fire had swept through the streets of Paris like a hurricane, destroying and gorging upon the innocent people's grief to feed its insatiable appetite. He sought the good favor of the Lord but when he thought himself forsaken he turned vicious and cruel. He tortured men, women and children. He ordered the death of thousands. Bodies piled high enough to reach the top of the Notre Dame towers. He instilled fear in the citizens of France, excusing his sins as acts of holy intentions. Quasimodo, the bell ringer of Notre Dame and Frollo's ward, had stood up to his master's evil schemes. Frollo fell to his death from the top of the bell tower. Rumors spread quickly of his death, yet not one person resented his death. Not even Frollo's one and only friend.
Ann Blythe was an English woman of fair skin and kind blue eyes. Her hands had never known the toils of poverty but on her heart sang the same sad melody. Born a Christian, she was a woman of God and His people. She held many charities for the poor and down trodden, and attended church regularly. Ann loved life and lived it to the fullest. Angels smiled down on her and bestowed upon her at birth a beauty many would envy and desire. Roger Blythe raised his daughter with a gentle hand and dedicated her to the church. At the age of twenty one she traveled abroad on holiday with her brother as a part of a charity she was fundraising. Having been granted a passport into the country she and her brother Daniel toured the great city of Paris. Having fallen in love with France's architectural build they remained in France for two years before traveling to home to England. Within those two years the encounter of two people set the stage for the future of Paris' great fall and might rise. Only by the grace of God had this one woman allowed herself to walk away from a love so strong that it nearly destroyed them both.
Frollo and Ann had met during the Feast of Fools. David had busied himself in a trade with a gypsy woman who wanted twice the amount a fabric of cloth was originally worth. He loved to bargain and Ann left her brother to wander the confetti streets. Surrounded by smiles and drunken humor, Ann was quickly swept into a Topsy Turvey world. Without a backbone she allowed herself to be pushed around until she stood alone in the street, just as a carriage sped in her direction. A monk of twenty three had seen the fair maiden in danger and ran from his position among the priests to push the young woman out of the street. They fell into a heap of hay, the monk scandalously landing upon the woman. Like Hellfire her eyes burned a picture of her face into the monk's memory for all time.
She was beautiful. Nay, the word did her no justice to him. She was alluring, marvelous, entirely selfless as she searched his face for any sign of harm. Her touch was delicate, her skin soft as crème as she caressed his cheek. This maiden had to have been angel, he thought as he quickly removed himself from his position and helped her to her feet. As thanks she inquired to the arch deacon that this young man by the name of Claude Frollo should be rewarded handsomely for saving her life and requested a private prayer session with him. As a spry lad Frollo was thrown into a whirlwind of emotions, experiencing love for the first time in his life.
They met since then every night at midnight. Frollo hardly cared for the strict rules of the ministry and thought only of his beloved Ann. He often snuck out of the monk's tower in disguise and would travel up to the bell tower for their rendezvous. She hid within the pews just as the prayer sessions came to an end and would hide in wait until night came over the church. Once able to she would take the stairs to the top and fallow the path of her lover. Among the giant bells stood Frollo with his arms wide open and heart bare to her and her alone. God had become second to him in his world. First would be and always be the golden haired angel whom he rescued. And Ann, her first love having blinded her eyes and clouded her mind of common sense, ran to him willingly each and every night. Their love bloomed like roses in Jun and neither could imagine a life apart from one another.
Then came a fateful day when their love was discovered and Ann was thrown out of the church. In a rage Frollo stormed the arch deacon's office and demanded Ann be let back in. The price for this was far to valuable for Frollo to bargain with, so he watched with a heavy heart as his beloved was escorted from the Notre Dame and ordered to return to England. As a consolation for the poor boy's misery, the arch deacon allowed Frollo to see to Ann's departure. Like Romeo and Juliet these star crossed lovers lost more than they ever could have imagined by falling in love. As Ann rode away in her carriage she watched as the heart of her lover shattered into millions of pieces, never to be the same again. Her own heart, which thumb painfully in her chest, cried tears of sorrow. For years they pined for one another. Letters were mailed and flowers sent every May, to keep their love alive and shine a light on what little hope they had for their desperate situation.
The relationship could not be recognized by the church. Frollo was a monk after all, studying the works of the judiciary system in connection with the church. He had much promise and the priest had declared that Frollo's place was not along side the woman he loved, but within the cold stony walls of the church. Though deeply in love, the young monk could not throw away his dedicated works to the wind. He had to place God above everything. Even Ann.
For years they remained in contact. Always the same ever year, he sent her a bouquet of dazzling daffodils and she would send him a stack of letters pertaining to her charity works. When she heard received word that Frollo had now obtain a position as Minister of Justice, Ann's heart soared. Finally the two could be together. Twenty years had passed since then but now at long last Ann could stand beside her love and marry him if she so chose to… But as the years grew so did the gap that interrupted their love and in time the letters stopped coming. Ann grew worried.
In Froll's letters they spoke heavily of darkness. He feared for his eternal soul. She praised him for his works and ensured him that the heavenly Lord would smile down on him come time of his judgment, but her words alone had not been enough. Contact between the two were lost and ten more years passed before Ann heard any news of the Judge of France. Rumors had quickly spread of his madness and the torture he administered to the gypsy people. Had this truly been the young monk she knew so many years ago? She could not believe it and turned a deaf ear to it all. It wasn't until she received a letter from the arch deacon.
She traveled to France at once, nearly tearing down the doors of the church in search of Frollo.
She found him leaning against the mantel of his fireplace staring intently at the fire, as if watching a story played out by the flickering flames. Ann's heart tore in two as she approached him for the first time in forty years untouched his shoulder. Surprised, he turned to face her and then she knew for sure that this was no longer the man she knew and adored. The lines of his face were etched deep within his skin, his arms and legs bony from constant fasting. It was clear he had not seen a proper night's sleep in days, but his racing mind would not allow it.
"Ann…" He spoke softly, the word rolling awkwardly off his tongue. Even with her graying hair and wrinkled skin, he could not forget those eyes. The bluest eyes he had ever seen in all of Paris.
"Hello Claude." She said at last, folding her hands modestly on her lap. "It's been a while."
Frollo's eyes widened. He could not tell fact from fiction at the point and turned away from this supposed ghostly apparition. "Be gone with you vile harpy."
Those words stung like the lash of a whip and she collapsed to her knees. "Oh Claude, the rumors are true then!"
He then turned to face her once more, his eyes softening as she cried such bitter tears. Tears for him, tears for his failing faith. Then he began to pray.
"Beata Maria, you know I am a righteous man. Of my virtue I am justly proud."
Ann turned from his word in disgust."Beata Maria, you know I'm so much purer than the common, vulgar, weak, licentious crowd." What on earth could have possibly driven this once holy and dedicated man into a life of such horrid misery and contentment? "Then tell me, Maria, why I see her dancing there. Why her smoldering eyes still scorch my soul…" So it had been a lover. How this did break Ann's fragile heart. "I feel her, I see her. The sun caught in raven hair is blazing in me, out of all control!""Like fire…. Hellfire. This fire in your skin…." She said.
"This burning desire is turning me to sin…" Frollo wept, falling to his knees in despair. Her heart sang a morbid melody for him, hoping against hope that he may still be saved. Then he cried out, "It's not my fault! I'm not to blame. It is the gypsy girl! The witch who sent this flame!"
Ann's eyes grew wide as he turned to her and ran about the room in a wild frenzy, speaking to the walls and gesturing to the invisible flame of the fireplace."It's not her fault." She said in a whisper. "If in God's plan….""He made the devil so much stronger than a man!" He screamed reaching his arms up high as if to tear the clouds away from the sky to reach the unreachable answers he was seeking.
Ann sighed and wiped the tears from her face. There was no saving him. Frollo was beyond that point. She forced her legs to stiffen beneath her and hold her as tall as they could. She lifted her chin and stared Frollo in his insane eyes. "You cannot continue to justify your sins . What wrongs could this one woman possibly committed to drive your already tainted soul even further into darkness?"If he did hear her, he made no notion that he did. "Protect me, Maria. Don't let this siren cast her spell. Don't let her fire sear my flesh and bone. Destroy Esmeralda, and let her taste the fires of hell!"
"Why have you allowed yourself to fall so low?" She made the sign of the cross above her heart. "Oh dearest Claude my love, I have lost you. I came to see to your salvation, to pull you back from the devil's grasp but you do not wish it." She backed away, her eyes crying out in earnest what her mouth could not.
During the 15th Century, in Paris France, there was much unrest. A single man had lost his mind and ordered the death of thousands of gypsies. The woman he once loved so long ago departed from him forever, never to return to France again. Each and every night, after the death of the Judge of Paris, Ann would pray, always ending and always thinking of the one man she lost forever.
"May God have mercy on your wretched soul."