Cover

Acclaim for
SAM SHEPARD

“Sam Shepard is phenomenal…the best practicing American playwright.”

—The New Republic

“The greatest American playwright of his generation…the most inventive in language and revolutionary in craft.”

—New York magazine

“His plays are a form of exorcism: magical, sometimes surreal rituals that grapple with demonic forces in the American landscape.”

—Newsweek

“His plays are stunning in their originality, defiant and inscrutable.”

—Esquire

“With the exception of David Mamet, no American playwright of his generation matches Mr. Shepard in the creation of characters that are immediately so accessible and so mysterious.”

—The New York Times

“One of the most original, prolific and gifted dramatists at work today.”

—The New Yorker

SAM SHEPARD
Simpatico

Sam Shepard was the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of more than fifty-five plays and three story collections. As an actor, he appeared in more than sixty films and received an Oscar nomination in 1984 for The Right Stuff. He was a finalist for the W. H. Smith Literary Award for his story collection Great Dream of Heaven. In 2012 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, received the Gold Medal for Drama from the Academy, and was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. He died in 2017.

ALSO BY SAM SHEPARD

The One Inside
A Particle of Dread
Heartless
Fifteen One-Act Plays
Day out of Days
Kicking a Dead Horse
Buried Child
Tooth of Crime (Second Dance)
The God of Hell
Great Dream of Heaven
The Late Henry Moss, Eyes for Consuela, When the World Was Green
Cruising Paradise
States of Shock, Far North, Silent Tongue
The Unseen Hand
A Lie of the Mind
The Unseen Hand and Other Plays
Fool for Love and Other Plays
Paris, Texas
Seven Plays
Motel Chronicles
Rolling Thunder Logbook
Hawk Moon

Title Page

Copyright

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, MAY 1996

Copyright © 1995 by Sam Shepard

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in Great Britain in paperback in the Royal Court Writers series by Methuen Drama, an imprint of Reed Books Ltd., London, in 1995.

CAUTION: This play is fully protected, in whole, in part, or in any form under the copyright laws of the United States of America, the British Empire including the Dominion of Canada, and all other countries of the copyright union, and are subject to royalty. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, radio, television, recitation, and public reading, are strictly reserved. All inquires for performance rights should be addressed to the author’s agent, Berman, Boals, and Flynn, 225 Lafayette Street, Suite 1207, New York, NY 10012.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shepard, Sam, 1943–2017
Simpatico: a play in three acts / Sam Shepard. — 1st Vintage Books ed.
p. cm.
I. Title.
PS3569.H394S56 1996
812′.54—dc20 95-43451
CIP

Vintage Books Trade Paperback ISBN 9780679763178
Ebook ISBN 9780307559722

v3.1_r2