Original Broadway Cast of Follies & Michael Bartlett &
Original Broadway Cast of Follies & John McMartin & Dorothy Collins
Original Broadway Cast of Follies
Original Broadway Cast of Follies & &
John McMartin
Dorothy Collins
Original Broadway Cast of Follies & Mary McCarty
Yvonne De Carlo
Original Broadway Cast of Follies & Dorothy Collins & John McMartin
Gene Nelson (Actor)
Original Broadway Cast of Follies & Justine Johnson & Victoria Mallory
Alexis Smith
Original Broadway Cast of Follies & Harvey Evans & Kurt Peterson & & & Dorothy Collins & Gene Nelson (Actor)
Original Broadway Cast of Follies & Gene Nelson (Actor) & &
Dorothy Collins
Alexis Smith
Original Broadway Cast of Follies & John McMartin
[BEN]
You're either a poet
Or you're a lover
Or you're the famous
Benjamin Stone
You take one road
You try one door
There isn't time for any more
One's life consists of either/or
One has regrets
Which one forgets
And as the years go on
The road you didn't take
Hardly comes to mind
Does it?
The door you didn't try
Where could it have led?
The choice you didn't make
Never was defined
Was it?
Dreams you didn't dare
Are dead
Were they ever there?
Who said?
I don't remember
I don't remember
At all...
The books I'll never read
Wouldn't change a thing
Would they?
The girls I'll never know
I'm too tired for
The lives I'll never lead
Couldn't make me sing
Could they?
Could they?
Could they?
Chances that you miss
Ignore
Ignorance is bliss—
What's more
You won't remember
You won't remember
At all
Not at all...
You yearn for the women
Long for the money
Envy the famous
Benjamin Stones
You take your road
The decades fly
The yearnings fade, the longings die
You learn to bid them all goodbye
And oh, the peace
The blessed peace...
At last you come to know
The roads you never take
Go through rocky ground
Don't they?
The choices that you make
Aren't all that grim
The worlds you never see
Still will be around
Won't they?
The Ben I'll never be
Who remembers him?
The Road You Didn’t Take was written by Stephen Sondheim.
The Road You Didn’t Take was produced by Dick Jones.
From Sondheim’s Finishing the Hat:
A recurrent dissonant note in the music contradicts the blitheness of what Ben is saying, which makes this a classroom example of subtextual writing.