Short Plays

By George Bernard Shaw.

Imprint

The Standard Ebooks logo.

This ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for Standard Ebooks, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain.

This particular ebook is based on transcriptions from various sources and on digital scans from various sources.

The source text and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. They may still be copyrighted in other countries, so users located outside of the United States must check their local laws before using this ebook. The creators of, and contributors to, this ebook dedicate their contributions to the worldwide public domain via the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. For full license information, see the Uncopyright at the end of this ebook.

Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that produces ebook editions of public domain literature using modern typography, technology, and editorial standards, and distributes them free of cost. You can download this and other ebooks carefully produced for true book lovers at standardebooks.org.

The Admirable Bashville

Or, Constancy Unrewarded

Being the Novel of Cashel Byron’s Profession Done Into a Stage Play in Three Acts, and in Blank Verse, with a Note on Modern Prizefighting

Preface

“The Admirable Bashville” is a product of the British law of copyright. As that law stands at present, the first person who patches up a stage version of a novel, however worthless and absurd that version may be, and has it read by himself and a few confederates to another confederate who has paid for admission in a hall licensed for theatrical performances, secures the stage rights of that novel, even as against the author himself; and the author must buy him out before he can touch his own work for the purposes of the stage.

A famous case in point is the drama of East Lynne, adapted from the late Mrs. Henry Wood’s novel of that name. It was enormously popular, and is still the surest refuge of touring companies in distress. Many authors feel that Mrs. Henry Wood was hardly used in not getting any of the money which was plentifully made in this way through her story. To my mind, since her literary copyright probably brought her a fair wage for the work of writing the book, her real grievance was, first, that her name and credit were attached to a play with which she had nothing to do, and which may quite possibly have been to her a detestable travesty and profanation of her story; and second, that the authors of that play had the legal power to prevent her from having any version of her own performed, if she had wished to make one.

There is only one way in which the author can protect himself; and that is by making a version of his own and going through the same legal farce with it. But the legal farce involves the hire of a hall and the payment of a fee of two guineas to the King’s Reader of Plays. When I wrote Cashel Byron’s Profession I had no guineas to spare, a common disability of young authors. What is equally common, I did not know the law. A reasonable man may guess a reasonable law, but no man can guess a foolish anomaly. Fortunately, by the time my book so suddenly revived in America I was aware of the danger, and in a position to protect myself by writing and performing “The Admirable Bashville.” The prudence of doing so was soon demonstrated; for rumors soon reached me of several American stage versions; and one of these has actually been played in New York, with the boxing scenes under the management (so it is stated) of the eminent pugilist Mr. James J. Corbett. The New York press, in a somewhat derisive vein, conveyed the impression that in this version Cashel Byron sought to interest the public rather as the last of the noble race of the Byrons of Dorsetshire than as his unromantic self; but in justice to a play which I never read, and an actor whom I never saw, and who honorably offered to treat me as if I had legal rights in the matter, I must not accept the newspaper evidence as conclusive.

As I write these words, I am promised by the King in his speech to Parliament a new Copyright Bill. I believe it embodies, in our British fashion, the recommendations of the book publishers as to the concerns of the authors, and the notions of the musical publishers as to the concerns of the playwrights. As author and playwright I am duly obliged to the Commission for saving me the trouble of speaking for myself, and to the witnesses for speaking for me. But unless Parliament takes the opportunity of giving the authors of all printed works of fiction, whether dramatic or narrative, both playright and copyright (as in America), such to be independent of any insertions or omissions of formulas about “all rights reserved” or the like, I am afraid the new Copyright Bill will leave me with exactly the opinion both of the copyright law and the wisdom of Parliament I at present entertain. As a good Socialist I do not at all object to the limitation of my right of property in my own works to a comparatively brief period, followed by complete Communism: in fact, I cannot see why the same salutary limitation should not be applied to all property rights whatsoever; but a system which enables any alert sharper to acquire property rights in my stories as against myself and the rest of the community would, it seems to me, justify a rebellion if authors were numerous and warlike enough to make one.

It may be asked why I have written “The Admirable Bashville” in blank verse. My answer is that I had but a week to write it in. Blank verse is so childishly easy and expeditious (hence, by the way, Shakespeare’s copious output), that by adopting it I was enabled to do within the week what would have cost me a month in prose.

Besides, I am fond of blank verse. Not nineteenth century blank verse, of course, nor indeed, with a very few exceptions, any post-Shakespearean blank verse. Nay, not Shakespearean blank verse itself later than the histories. When an author can write the prose dialogue of the first scene in As You Like It, or Hamlet’s colloquies with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, there is really no excuse for The Seven Ages and “To be or not to be,” except the excuse of a haste that made great facility indispensable. I am quite sure that anyone who is to recover the charm of blank verse must frankly go back to its beginnings and start a literary pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. I like the melodious singsong, the clear simple one-line and two-line sayings, and the occasional rhymed tags, like the half closes in an eighteenth century symphony, in Peele, Kyd, Greene, and the histories of Shakespeare. How anyone with music in him can turn from Henry VI, John, and the two Richards to such a mess of verse half developed into rhetorical prose as Cymbeline, is to me explicable only by the uncivil hypothesis that the artistic qualities in the Elizabethan drama do not exist for most of its critics; so that they hang on to its purely prosaic content, and hypnotize themselves into absurd exaggerations of the value of that content. Even poets fall under the spell. Ben Jonson described Marlowe’s line as “mighty”! As well put Michelangelo’s epitaph on the tombstone of Paolo Uccello. No wonder Jonson’s blank verse is the most horribly disagreeable product in literature, and indicates his most prosaic mood as surely as his shorter rhymed measures indicate his poetic mood. Marlowe never wrote a mighty line in his life: Cowper’s single phrase “Toll for the brave” drowns all his mightinesses as Great Tom drowns a military band. But Marlowe took that very pleasant-sounding rigmarole of Peele and Greene, and added to its sunny daylight the insane splendors of night, and the cheap tragedy of crime. Because he had only a common sort of brain, he was hopelessly beaten by Shakespeare; but he had a fine ear and a soaring spirit: in short, one does not forget “wanton Arethusa’s azure arms” and the like. But the pleasant-sounding rigmarole was the basis of the whole thing; and as long as that rigmarole was practised frankly for the sake of its pleasantness, it was readable and speakable. It lasted until Shakespeare did to it what Raphael did to Italian painting; that is, overcharged and burst it by making it the vehicle of a new order of thought, involving a mass of intellectual ferment and psychological research. The rigmarole could not stand the strain; and Shakespeare’s style ended in a chaos of half-shattered old forms, half-emancipated new ones, with occasional bursts of prose eloquence on the one hand, occasional delicious echoes of the rigmarole, mostly from Calibans and masque personages, on the other, with, alas! a great deal of filling up with formulary blank verse which had no purpose except to save the author’s time and thought.

When a great man destroys an art form in this way, its ruins make palaces for the clever would-be great. After Michelangelo and Raphael, Giulio Romano and the Carracci. After Marlowe and Shakespeare, Chapman and the Police News poet Webster. Webster’s specialty was blood: Chapman’s, balderdash. Many of us by this time find it difficult to believe that pre-Ruskinite art criticism used to prostrate itself before the works of Domenichino and Guido, and to patronize the modest little beginnings of those who came between Cimabue and Masaccio. But we have only to look at our own current criticism of Elizabethan drama to satisfy ourselves that in an art which has not yet found its Ruskin or its pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the same folly is still academically propagated. It is possible, and even usual, for men professing to have ears and a sense of poetry to snub Peele and Greene and grovel before Fletcher and Webster⁠—Fletcher! a facile blank verse penny-a-liner: Webster! a turgid paper cutthroat. The subject is one which I really cannot pursue without intemperance of language. The man who thinks The Duchess of Malfi better than David and Bethsabe is outside the pale, not merely of literature, but almost of humanity.

Yet some of the worst of these post-Shakespearean duffers, from Jonson to Heywood, suddenly became poets when they turned from the big drum of pseudo-Shakespearean drama to the pipe and tabor of the masque, exactly as Shakespeare himself recovered the old charm of the rigmarole when he turned from Prospero to Ariel and Caliban. Cyril Tourneur and Heywood could certainly have produced very pretty rigmarole plays if they had begun where Shakespeare began, instead of trying to begin where he left off. Jonson and Beaumont would very likely have done themselves credit on the same terms: Marston would have had at least a chance. Massinger was in his right place, such as it was; and one would not disturb the gentle Ford, who was never born to storm the footlights. Webster could have done no good anyhow or anywhere: the man was a fool. And Chapman would always have been a blathering unreadable pedant, like Landor, in spite of his classical amateurship and respectable strenuosity of character. But with these exceptions it may plausibly be held that if Marlowe and Shakespeare could have been kept out of their way, the rest would have done well enough on the lines of Peele and Greene. However, they thought otherwise; and now that their freethinking paganism, so dazzling to the pupils of Paley and the converts of Wesley, offers itself in vain to the disciples of Darwin and Nietzsche, there is an end of them. And a good riddance, too.

Accordingly, I have poetasted “The Admirable Bashville” in the rigmarole style. And lest the Webster worshippers should declare that there is not a single correct line in all my three acts, I have stolen or paraphrased a few from Marlowe and Shakespeare (not to mention Henry Carey); so that if any man dares quote me derisively, he shall do so in peril of inadvertently lighting on a purple patch from Hamlet or Faustus.

I have also endeavored in this little play to prove that I am not the heartless creature some of my critics take me for. I have strictly observed the established laws of stage popularity and probability. I have simplified the character of the heroine, and summed up her sweetness in the one sacred word: Love. I have given consistency to the heroism of Cashel. I have paid to Morality, in the final scene, the tribute of poetic justice. I have restored to Patriotism its usual place on the stage, and gracefully acknowledged The Throne as the fountain of social honor. I have paid particular attention to the construction of the play, which will be found equal in this respect to the best contemporary models.

And I trust the result will be found satisfactory.

Dramatis Personae

  • Lydia Carew

  • Cashel Byron

  • Bob Mellish

  • Lucian Webber

  • Bashville

  • Lord Worthington

  • Cetewayo

  • Paradise

  • The Master of the Revels

  • A Policeman

  • Adelaide Gisborne

  • Voice of a Newsboy

  • Spectators; Persions of Fashion; Zulu Chiefs; Constables; and Others

Act I

A glade in Wiltstoken Park.

Enter Lydia.
Lydia

Ye leafy breasts and warm protecting wings
Of mother trees that hatch our tender souls,
And from the well of Nature in our hearts
Thaw the intolerable inch of ice
That bears the weight of all the stamping world.
Hear ye me sing to solitude that I,
Lydia Carew, the owner of these lands,
Albeit most rich, most learned, and most wise,
Am yet most lonely. What are riches worth
When wisdom with them comes to show the purse bearer
That life remains unpurchasable? Learning
Learns but one lesson: doubt! To excel all
Is, to be lonely. Oh, ye busy birds,
Engrossed with real needs, ye shameless trees
With arms outspread in welcome of the sun,
Your minds, bent singly to enlarge your lives,
Have given you wings and raised your delicate heads
High heavens above us crawlers.

A rook sets up a great cawing; and the other birds chatter loudly as a gust of wind sets the branches swaying. She makes as though she would show them her sleeves.

Lo, the leaves
That hide my drooping boughs! Mock me⁠—poor maid!⁠—
Deride with joyous comfortable chatter
These stolen feathers. Laugh at me, the clothed one.
Laugh at the mind fed on foul air and books.
Books! Art! And Culture! Oh, I shall go mad.
Give me a mate that never heard of these,
A sylvan god, tree born in heart and sap;
Or else, eternal maidhood be my hap.

Another gust of wind and bird-chatter. She sits on the mossy root of an oak and buries her face in her hands. Cashel Byron, in a white singlet and breeches, comes through the trees.
Cashel

What’s this? Whom have we here? A woman!

Lydia

Looking up.

Yes.

Cashel

You have no business here. I have. Away!
Women distract me. Hence!

Lydia

Bid you me hence?
I am upon mine own ground. Who are you?
I take you for a god, a sylvan god.
This place is mine: I share it with the birds,
The trees, the sylvan gods, the lovely company
Of haunted solitudes.

Cashel

A sylvan god!
A goat-eared image! Do your statues speak?
Walk? heave the chest with breath? or like a feather
Lift you⁠—like this?

He sets her on her feet.
Lydia

Panting.

You take away my breath!
You’re strong. Your hands off, please. Thank you. Farewell.

Cashel

Before you go: when shall we meet again?

Lydia

Why should we meet again?

Cashel

Who knows? We shall.
That much I know by instinct. What’s your name?

Lydia

Lydia Carew.

Cashel

Lydia’s a pretty name.
Where do you live?

Lydia

I’ the castle.

Cashel

Thunderstruck.

Do not say
You are the lady of this great domain.

Lydia

I am.

Cashel

Accursed luck! I took you for
The daughter of some farmer. Well, your pardon.
I came too close: I looked too deep. Farewell.

Lydia

I pardon that. Now tell me who you are.

Cashel

Ask me not whence I come, nor what I am.
You are the lady of the castle. I
Have but this hard and blackened hand to live by.

Lydia

I have felt its strength and envied you. Your name?
I have told you mine.

Cashel

My name is Cashel Byron.

Lydia

I never heard the name; and yet you utter it
As men announce a celebrated name.
Forgive my ignorance.

Cashel

I bless it, Lydia.
I have forgot your other name.

Lydia

Carew.
Cashel’s a pretty name, too.

Mellish

Calling through the wood.

Coo-ee! Byron!

Cashel

A thousand curses! Oh, I beg you, go.
This is a man you must not meet.

Mellish

Further off.

Coo-ee!

Lydia

He’s losing us. What does he in my woods?

Cashel

He is a part of what I am. What that is
You must not know. It would end all between us.
And yet there’s no dishonor in’t: your lawyer,
Who let your lodge to me, will vouch me honest.
I am ashamed to tell you what I am⁠—
At least, as yet. Some day, perhaps.

Mellish

Nearer.

Coo-ee!

Lydia

His voice is nearer. Fare you well, my tenant.
When next your rent falls due, come to the castle.
Pay me in person. Sir: your most obedient. She curtsies and goes.

Cashel

Lives in this castle! Owns this park! A lady
Marry a prizefighter! Impossible.
And yet the prizefighter must marry her.

Enter Mellish.

Ensanguined swine, whelped by a doggish dam,
Is this thy park, that thou, with voice obscene,
Fillst it with yodeled yells, and screamst my name
For all the world to know that Cashel Byron
Is training here for combat.

Mellish

Swine you me?
I’ve caught you, have I? You have found a woman.
Let her show here again, I’ll set the dog on her.
I will. I say it. And my name’s Bob Mellish.

Cashel

Change thy initial and be truly hight
Hellish. As for thy dog, why dost thou keep one
And bark thyself? Begone.

Mellish

I’ll not begone.
You shall come back with me and do your duty⁠—
Your duty to your backers, do you hear?
You have not punched the bag this blessed day.

Cashel

The putrid bag engirdled by thy belt
Invites my fist.

Mellish

Weeping.

Ingrate! O wretched lot!
Who would a trainer be? O Mellish, Mellish,
Trainer of heroes, builder-up of brawn,
Vicarious victor, thou createst champions
That quickly turn thy tyrants. But beware:
Without me thou art nothing. Disobey me,
And all thy boasted strength shall fall from thee.
With flaccid muscles and with failing breath
Facing the fist of thy more faithful foe,
I’ll see thee on the grass cursing the day
Thou didst forswear thy training.

Cashel

Noisome quack
That canst not from thine own abhorrent visage
Take one carbuncle, thou contaminat’st
Even with thy presence my untainted blood.
Preach abstinence to rascals like thyself
Rotten with surfeiting. Leave me in peace.
This grove is sacred: thou profanest it.
Hence! I have business that concerns thee not.

Mellish

Ay, with your woman. You will lose your fight.
Have you forgot your duty to your backers?
Oh, what a sacred thing your duty is!
What makes a man but duty? Where were we
Without our duty? Think of Nelson’s words:
England expects that every man⁠—

Cashel

Shall twaddle
About his duty. Mellish: at no hour
Can I regard thee wholly without loathing;
But when thou play’st the moralist, by Heaven,
My soul flies to my fist, my fist to thee;
And never did the Cyclops’ hammer fall
On Mars’s armor⁠—but enough of that.
It does remind me of my mother.

Mellish

Ah,
Byron, let it remind thee. Once I heard
An old song: it ran thus. He clears his throat. Ahem, Ahem!

Sings.

—They say there is no other
Can take the place of mother⁠—

I am out o’ voice: forgive me; but remember:
Thy mother⁠—were that sainted woman here⁠—
Would say, Obey thy trainer.

Cashel

Now, by Heaven,
Some fate is pushing thee upon thy doom.
Canst thou not hear thy sands as they run out?
They thunder like an avalanche. Old man:
Two things I hate, my duty and my mother.
Why dost thou urge them both upon me now?
Presume not on thine age and on thy nastiness.
Vanish, and promptly.

Mellish

Can I leave thee here
Thus thinly clad, exposed to vernal dews?
Come back with me, my son, unto our lodge.

Cashel

Within this breast a fire is newly lit
Whose glow shall sun the dew away, whose radiance
Shall make the orb of night hang in the heavens
Unnoticed, like a glowworm at high noon.

Mellish

Ah me, ah me, where wilt thou spend the night?

Cashel

Wiltstoken’s windows wandering beneath,
Wiltstoken’s holy bell hearkening,
Wiltstoken’s lady loving breathlessly.

Mellish

The lady of the castle! Thou art mad.

Cashel

’Tis thou art mad to trifle in my path.
Thwart me no more. Begone.

Mellish

My boy, my son,
I’d give my heart’s blood for thy happiness.
Thwart thee, my son! Ah, no. I’ll go with thee.
I’ll brave the dews. I’ll sacrifice my sleep.
I am old⁠—no matter: ne’er shall it be said
Mellish deserted thee.

Cashel

You resolute gods
That will not spare this man, upon your knees
Take the disparity twixt his age and mine.
Now from the ring to the high judgment seat
I step at your behest. Bear you me witness
This is not Victory, but Execution.

He solemnly projects his fist with colossal force against the waistcoat of Mellish, who doubles up like a folded towel, and lies without sense or motion.

And now the night is beautiful again.

The castle clock strikes the hour in the distance.

Hark! Hark! Hark! Hark! Hark! Hark! Hark! Hark! Hark! Hark!
It strikes in poetry. ’Tis ten o’clock.
Lydia: to thee!

He steals off towards the castle. Mellish stirs and groans.

Act II

Scene I

London. A room in Lydia’s house.

Enter Lydia and Lucian.
Lydia

Welcome, dear cousin, to my London house.
Of late you have been chary of your visits.

Lucian

I have been greatly occupied of late.
The minister to whom I act as scribe
In Downing Street was born in Birmingham,
And, like a thoroughbred commercial statesman,
Splits his infinitives, which I, poor slave,
Must reunite, though all the time my heart
Yearns for my gentle coz’s company.

Lydia

Lucian: there is some other reason. Think!
Since England was a nation every mood
Her scribes have prepositionally split;
But thine avoidance dates from yestermonth.

Lucian

There is a man I like not haunts this house.

Lydia

Thou speak’st of Cashel Byron?

Lucian

Aye, of him.
Hast thou forgotten that eventful night
When as we gathered were at Hoskyn House
To hear a lecture by Herr Abendgasse,
He placed a single finger on my chest,
And I, ensorceled, would have sunk supine
Had not a chair received my falling form.

Lydia

Pooh! That was but by way of illustration.

Lucian

What right had he to illustrate his point
Upon my person? Was I his assistant
That he should try experiments on me
As Simpson did on his with chloroform?
Now, by the cannon balls of Galileo
He hath unmanned me: all my nerve is gone.
This very morning my official chief,
Tapping with friendly forefinger this button,
Levelled me like a thunderstricken elm
Flat upon the Colonial Office floor.

Lydia

Fancies, coz.

Lucian

Fancies! Fits! the chief said fits!
Delirium tremens! the chlorotic dance
Of Vitus! What could anyone have thought?
Your ruffian friend hath ruined me. By Heaven,
I tremble at a thumbnail. Give me drink.

Lydia

What ho, without there! Bashville.

Bashville

Without.

Coming, madam.

Enter Bashville.
Lydia

My cousin ails, Bashville. Procure some wet. Exit Bashville.

Lucian

Some wet!!! Where learnt you that atrocious word?
This is the language of a flower-girl.

Lydia

True. It is horrible. Said I “Some wet”?
I meant, some drink. Why did I say “Some wet”?
Am I ensorceled too? “Some wet”! Fie! fie!
I feel as though some hateful thing had stained me.
Oh, Lucian, how could I have said “Some wet”?

Lucian

The horrid conversation of this man
Hath numbed thy once unfailing sense of fitness.

Lydia

Nay, he speaks very well: he’s literate:
Shakespeare he quotes unconsciously.

Lucian

And yet
Anon he talks pure pothouse.

Enter Bashville.
Bashville

Sir: your potion.

Lucian

Thanks. He drinks. I am better.

A Newsboy

Calling without.

Extra special Star!
Result of the great fight! Name of the winner!

Lydia

Who calls so loud?

Bashville

The papers, madam.

Lydia

Why?
Hath ought momentous happened?

Bashville

Madam: yes. He produces a newspaper.
All England for these thrilling paragraphs
A week has waited breathless.

Lydia

Read them us.

Bashville

Reading.

“At noon today, unknown to the police,
Within a thousand miles of Wormwood Scrubbs,
Th’ Australian Champion and his challenger,
The Flying Dutchman, formerly engaged
I’ the mercantile marine, fought to a finish.
Lord Worthington, the well-known sporting peer
Acted as referee.”

Lydia

Lord Worthington!

Bashville

“The bold Ned Skene revisited the ropes
To hold the bottle for his quondam novice;
Whilst in the seaman’s corner were assembled
Professor Palmer and the Chelsea Snob.
Mellish, whose epigastrium has been hurt,
’Tis said, by accident at Wiltstoken,
Looked none the worse in the Australian’s corner.
The Flying Dutchman wore the Union Jack:
His colors freely sold amid the crowd;
But Cashel’s well-known spot of white on blue⁠—”

Lydia

Whose, did you say?

Bashville

Cashel’s, my lady.

Lydia

Lucian:
Your hand⁠—a chair⁠—

Bashville

Madam: you’re ill.

Lydia

Proceed.
What you have read I do not understand;
Yet I will hear it through. Proceed.

Lucian

Proceed.

Bashville

“But Cashel’s well-known spot of white on blue
Was fairly rushed for. Time was called at twelve,
When, with a smile of confidence upon
His ocean-beaten mug⁠—”

Lydia

His mug?

Lucian

Explaining.

His face.

Bashville

Continuing.

“The Dutchman came undaunted to the scratch,
But found the champion there already. Both
Most heartily shook hands, amid the cheers
Of their encouraged backers. Two to one
Was offered on the Melbourne nonpareil;
And soon, so fit the Flying Dutchman seemed,
Found takers everywhere. No time was lost
In getting to the business of the day.
The Dutchman led at once, and seemed to land
On Byron’s dicebox; but the seaman’s reach,
Too short for execution at long shots,
Did not get fairly home upon the ivory;
And Byron had the best of the exchange.”

Lydia

I do not understand. What were they doing?

Lucian

Fighting with naked fists.

Lydia

Oh, horrible!
I’ll hear no more. Or stay: how did it end?
Was Cashel hurt?

Lucian

To Bashville.

Skip to the final round.

Bashville

“Round Three: the rumors that had gone about
Of a breakdown in Byron’s recent training
Seemed quite confirmed. Upon the call of time
He rose, and, looking anything but cheerful,
Proclaimed with every breath Bellows to Mend.
At this point six to one was freely offered
Upon the Dutchman; and Lord Worthington
Plunged at this figure till he stood to lose
A fortune should the Dutchman, as seemed certain,
Take down the number of the Panley boy.
The Dutchman, glutton as we know he is,
Seemed this time likely to go hungry. Cashel
Was clearly groggy as he slipped the sailor,
Who, not to be denied, followed him up,
Forcing the fighting mid tremendous cheers.”

Lydia

Oh stop⁠—no more⁠—or tell the worst at once.
I’ll be revenged. Bashville: call the police.
This brutal sailor shall be made to know
There’s law in England.

Lucian

Do not interrupt him:
Mine ears are thirsting. Finish, man. What next?

Bashville

“Forty to one, the Dutchman’s friends exclaimed.
Done, said Lord Worthington, who showed himself
A sportsman every inch. Barely the bet
Was booked, when, at the reeling champion’s jaw
The sailor, bent on winning out of hand,
Sent in his right. The issue seemed a cert,
When Cashel, ducking smartly to his left,
Cross-countered like a hundredweight of brick⁠—”

Lucian

Death and damnation!

Lydia

Oh, what does it mean?

Bashville

“The Dutchman went to grass, a beaten man.”

Lydia

Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! Oh, well done, Cashel!

Bashville

“A scene of indescribable excitement
Ensued; for it was now quite evident
That Byron’s grogginess had all along
Been feigned to make the market for his backers.
We trust this sample of colonial smartness
Will not find imitators on this side.
The losers settled up like gentlemen;
But many felt that Byron showed bad taste
In taking old Ned Skene upon his back,
And, with Bob Mellish tucked beneath his oxter,
Sprinting a hundred yards to show the crowd
The perfect pink of his condition”⁠—A knock.

Lydia

Turning pale.

Bashville
Didst hear? A knock.

Bashville

Madam: ’tis Byron’s knock.
Shall I admit him?

Lucian

Reeking from the ring!
Oh, monstrous! Say you’re out.

Lydia

Send him away.
I will not see the wretch. How dare he keep
Secrets from me? I’ll punish him. Pray say
I’m not at home. Bashville turns to go. Yet stay. I am afraid
He will not come again.

Lucian

A consummation
Devoutly to be wished by any lady.
Pray, do you wish this man to come again?

Lydia

No, Lucian. He hath used me very ill.
He should have told me. I will ne’er forgive him.
Say, Not at home.

Bashville

Yes, madam. Exit.

Lydia

Stay⁠—

Lucian

Stopping her.

No, Lydia:
You shall not countermand that proper order.
Oh, would you cast the treasure of your mind,
The thousands at your bank, and, above all,
Your unassailable social position
Before this soulless mass of beef and brawn?

Lydia

Nay, coz: you’re prejudiced.

Cashel

Without.

Liar and slave!

Lydia

What words were those?

Lucian

The man is drunk with slaughter.

Enter Bashville running: he shuts the door and locks it.
Bashville

Save yourselves: at the staircase foot the champion
Sprawls on the mat, by trick of wrestler tripped;
But when he rises, woe betide us all!

Lydia

Who bade you treat my visitor with violence?

Bashville

He would not take my answer; thrust the door
Back in my face; gave me the lie i’ the throat;
Averred he felt your presence in his bones.
I said he should feel mine there too, and felled him;
Then fled to bar your door.

Lydia

O lover’s instinct!
He felt my presence. Well, let him come in.
We must not fail in courage with a fighter.
Unlock the door.

Lucian

Stop. Like all women, Lydia,
You have the courage of immunity.
To strike you were against his code of honor;
But me, above the belt, he may perform on
T’ th’ height of his profession. Also Bashville.

Bashville

Think not of me, sir. Let him do his worst.
Oh, if the valor of my heart could weigh
The fatal difference twixt his weight and mine,
A second battle should he do this day:
Nay, though outmatched I be, let but my mistress
Give me the word: instant I’ll take him on
Here⁠—now⁠—at catchweight. Better bite the carpet
A man, than fly, a coward.

Lucian

Bravely said:
I will assist you with the poker.

Lydia

No:
I will not have him touched. Open the door.

Bashville

Destruction knocks thereat. I smile, and open.

Bashville opens the door. Dead silence. Cashel enters, in tears. A solemn pause.
Cashel

You know my secret?

Lydia

Yes.

Cashel

And thereupon
You bade your servant fling me from your door.

Lydia

I bade my servant say I was not here.

Cashel

To Bashville.

Why didst thou better thy instruction, man?
Hadst thou but said, “She bade me tell thee this,”
Thoudst burst my heart. I thank thee for thy mercy.

Lydia

Oh, Lucian, didst thou call him “drunk with slaughter”?
Canst thou refrain from weeping at his woe?

Cashel

To Lucian.

The unwritten law that shields the amateur
Against professional resentment, saves thee.
O coward, to traduce behind their backs
Defenceless prizefighters!

Lucian

Thou dost avow
Thou art a prizefighter.

Cashel

It was my glory.
I had hoped to offer to my lady there
My belts, my championships, my heaped-up stakes,
My undefeated record; but I knew
Behind their blaze a hateful secret lurked.

Lydia

Another secret?

Lucian

Is there worse to come?

Cashel

Know ye not then my mother is an actress?

Lucian

How horrible!

Lydia

Nay, nay: how interesting!

Cashel

A thousand victories cannot wipe out
That birthstain. Oh, my speech bewrayeth it:
My earliest lesson was the player’s speech
In Hamlet; and to this day I express myself
More like a mobled queen than like a man
Of flesh and blood. Well may your cousin sneer!
What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba?

Lucian

Injurious upstart: if by Hecuba
Thou pointest darkly at my lovely cousin,
Know that she is to me, and I to her,
What never canst thou be. I do defy thee;
And maugre all the odds thy skill doth give,
Outside I will await thee.

Lydia

I forbid
Expressly any such duello. Bashville:
The door. Put Mr. Webber in a hansom,
And bid the driver hie to Downing Street.
No answer: ’tis my will.

Exeunt Lucian and Bashville.

And now, farewell.
You must not come again, unless indeed
You can some day look in my eyes and say:
Lydia: my occupation’s gone.

Cashel

Ah, no:
It would remind you of my wretched mother.
O God, let me be natural a moment!
What other occupation can I try?
What would you have me be?

Lydia

A gentleman.

Cashel

A gentleman! I, Cashel Byron, stoop
To be the thing that bets on me! the fool
I flatter at so many coins a lesson!
The screaming creature who beside the ring
Gambles with basest wretches for my blood,
And pays with money that he never earned!
Let me die brokenhearted rather!

Lydia

But
You need not be an idle gentleman.
I call you one of Nature’s gentlemen.

Cashel

That’s the collection for the loser, Lydia.
I am not wont to need it. When your friends
Contest elections, and at foot o’ th’ poll
Rue their presumption, ’tis their wont to claim
A moral victory. In a sort they are
Nature’s M.P.’s. I am not yet so threadbare
As to accept these consolation stakes.

Lydia

You are offended with me.

Cashel

Yes, I am.
I can put up with much; but⁠—“Nature’s gentleman”!
I thank your ladyship of Lyons, but
Must beg to be excused.

Lydia

But surely, surely,
To be a prizefighter, and maul poor mariners
With naked knuckles, is no work for you.

Cashel

Thou dost arraign the inattentive Fates
That weave my thread of life in ruder patterns
Than these that lie, antimacassarly,
Asprent thy drawing room. As well demand
Why I at birth chose to begin my life
A speechless babe, hairless, incontinent,
Hobbling upon all fours, a nurse’s nuisance?
Or why I do propose to lose my strength,
To blanch my hair, to let the gums recede
Far up my yellowing teeth, and finally
Lie down and moulder in a rotten grave?
Only one thing more foolish could have been,
And that was to be born, not man, but woman.
This was thy folly, why rebuk’st thou mine?

Lydia

These are not things of choice.

Cashel

And did I choose
My quick divining eye, my lightning hand,
My springing muscle and untiring heart?
Did I implant the instinct in the race
That found a use for these, and said to me,
Fight for us, and be fame and fortune thine?

Lydia

But there are other callings in the world.

Cashel

Go tell thy painters to turn stockbrokers,
Thy poet friends to stoop o’er merchants’ desks
And pen prose records of the gains of greed.
Tell bishops that religion is outworn,
And that the Pampa to the horsebreaker
Opes new careers. Bid the professor quit
His fraudulent pedantries, and do i’ the world
The thing he would teach others. Then return
To me and say: Cashel: they have obeyed;
And on that pyre of sacrifice I, too,
Will throw my championship.

Lydia

But ’tis so cruel.

Cashel

Is it so? I have hardly noticed that,
So cruel are all callings. Yet this hand,
That many a two days’ bruise hath ruthless given,
Hath kept no dungeon locked for twenty years,
Hath slain no sentient creature for my sport.
I am too squeamish for your dainty world,
That cowers behind the gallows and the lash,
The world that robs the poor, and with their spoil
Does what its tradesmen tell it. Oh, your ladies!
Sealskinned and egret-feathered; all defiance
To Nature; cowering if one say to them
“What will the servants think?” Your gentlemen!
Your tailor-tyrannized visitors of whom
Flutter of wing and singing in the wood
Make chickenbutchers. And your medicine men!
Groping for cures in the tormented entrails
Of friendly dogs. Pray have you asked all these
To change their occupations? Find you mine
So grimly crueller? I cannot breathe
An air so petty and so poisonous.

Lydia

But find you not their manners very nice?

Cashel

To me, perfection. Oh, they condescend
With a rare grace. Your duke, who condescends
Almost to the whole world, might for a Man
Pass in the eyes of those who never saw
The duke capped with a prince. See then, ye gods,
The duke turn footman, and his eager dame
Sink the great lady in the obsequious housemaid!
Oh, at such moments I could wish the Court
Had but one breadbasket, that with my fist
I could make all its windy vanity
Gasp itself out on the gravel. Fare you well.
I did not choose my calling; but at least
I can refrain from being a gentleman.

Lydia

You say farewell to me without a pang.

Cashel

My calling hath apprenticed me to pangs.
This is a rib-bender; but I can bear it.
It is a lonely thing to be a champion.

Lydia

It is a lonelier thing to be a woman.

Cashel

Be lonely then. Shall it be said of thee
That for his brawn thou misalliance mad’st
Wi’ the Prince of Ruffians? Never. Go thy ways;
Or, if thou hast nostalgia of the mud,
Wed some bedoggéd wretch that on the slot
Of gilded snobbery, ventre à terre,
Will hunt through life with eager nose on earth
And hang thee thick with diamonds. I am rich;
But all my gold was fought for with my hands.

Lydia

What dost thou mean by rich?

Cashel

There is a man,
Hight Paradise, vaunted unconquerable,
Hath dared to say he will be glad to hear from me.
I have replied that none can hear from me
Until a thousand solid pounds be staked.
His friends have confidently found the money.
Ere fall of leaf that money shall be mine;
And then I shall possess ten thousand pounds.
I had hoped to tempt thee with that monstrous sum.

Lydia

Thou silly Cashel, ’tis but a week’s income.
I did propose to give thee three times that
For pocket money when we two were wed.

Cashel

Give me my hat. I have been fooling here.
Now, by the Hebrew lawgiver, I thought
That only in America such revenues
Were decent deemed. Enough. My dream is dreamed.
Your gold weighs like a mountain on my chest.
Farewell.

Lydia

The golden mountain shall be thine
The day thou quit’st thy horrible profession.

Cashel

Tempt me not, woman. It is honor calls.
Slave to the Ring I rest until the face
Of Paradise be changed.

Enter Bashville.
Bashville

Madam, your carriage,
Ordered by you at two. ’Tis now half-past.

Cashel

Sdeath! is it half-past two? The king! the king!

Lydia

The king! What mean you?

Cashel

I must meet a monarch
This very afternoon at Islington.

Lydia

At Islington! You must be mad.

Cashel

A cab!
Go call a cab; and let a cab be called;
And let the man that calls it be thy footman.

Lydia

You are not well. You shall not go alone.
My carriage waits. I must accompany you.
I go to find my hat. Exit.

Cashel

Like Paracelsus,
Who went to find his soul. To Bashville. And now, young man,
How comes it that a fellow of your inches,
So deft a wrestler and so bold a spirit,
Can stoop to be a flunkey? Call on me
On your next evening out. I’ll make a man of you.
Surely you are ambitious and aspire⁠—

Bashville

To be a butler and draw corks; wherefore,
By Heaven, I will draw yours.

He hits Cashel on the nose, and runs out.
Cashel

Thoughtfully putting the side of his forefinger to his nose, and studying the blood on it.

Too quick for me!
There’s money in this youth.

Reenter Lydia, hatted and gloved.
Lydia

O Heaven! you bleed.

Cashel

Lend me a key or other frigid object,
That I may put it down my back, and staunch
The welling life stream.

Lydia

Giving him her keys. Oh, what have you done?

Cashel

Flush on the boko napped your footman’s left.

Lydia

I do not understand.

Cashel

True. Pardon me.
I have received a blow upon the nose
In sport from Bashville. Next, ablution; else
I shall be total gules. He hurries out.

Lydia

How well he speaks!
There is a silver trumpet in his lips
That stirs me to the finger ends. His nose
Dropt lovely color: ’tis a perfect blood.
I would ’twere mingled with mine own!

Enter Bashville.

What now?

Bashville

Madam, the coachman can no longer wait:
The horses will take cold.

Lydia

I do beseech him
A moment’s grace. Oh, mockery of wealth!
The third class passenger unchidden rides
Whither and when he will: obsequious trams
Await him hourly: subterranean tubes
With tireless coursers whisk him through the town;
But we, the rich, are slaves to Houyhnhnms:
We wait upon their colds, and frowst all day
Indoors, if they but cough or spurn their hay.

Bashville

Madam, an omnibus to Euston Road,
And thence t’ th’ Angel⁠—

Enter Cashel.
Lydia

Let us haste, my love:
The coachman is impatient.

Cashel

Did he guess
He stays for Cashel Byron, he’d outwait
Pompei’s sentinel. Let us away.
This day of deeds, as yet but half begun,
Must ended be in merrie Islington.

Exeunt Lydia and Cashel.
Bashville

Gods! how she hangs on’s arm! I am alone.
Now let me lift the cover from my soul.
O wasted humbleness! Deluded diffidence!
How often have I said, Lie down, poor footman:
She’ll never stoop to thee, rear as thou wilt
Thy powder to the sky. And now, by Heaven,
She stoops below me; condescends upon
This hero of the pothouse, whose exploits,
Writ in my character from my last place,
Would damn me into ostlerdom. And yet
There’s an eternal justice in it; for
By so much as the ne’er subduèd Indian
Excels the servile Negro, doth this ruffian
Precedence take of me. “Ich dien.” Damnation!
I serve. My motto should have been, “I scalp.”
And yet I do not bear the yoke for gold.
Because I love her I have blacked her boots;
Because I love her I have cleaned her knives,
Doing in this the office of a boy,
Whilst, like the celebrated maid that milks
And does the meanest chares, I’ve shared the passions
Of Cleopatra. It has been my pride
To give her place the greater altitude
By lowering mine, and of her dignity
To be so jealous that my cheek has flamed
Even at the thought of such a deep disgrace
As love for such a one as I would be
For such a one as she; and now! and now!
A prizefighter! O irony! O bathos!
To have made way for this! Oh, Bashville, Bashville:
Why hast thou thought so lowly of thyself,
So heavenly high of her? Let what will come,
My love must speak: ’twas my respect was dumb.

Scene II

The Agricultural Hall in Islington, crowded with spectators. In the arena a throne, with a boxing ring before it. A balcony above on the right, occupied by persons of fashion: among others, Lydia and Lord Worthington.

Flourish. Enter Lucian and Cetewayo, with Chiefs in attendance.
Cetewayo

Is this the Hall of Husbandmen?

Lucian

It is.

Cetewayo

Are these anaemic dogs the English people?

Lucian

Mislike us not for our complexions,
The pallid liveries of the pall of smoke
Belched by the mighty chimneys of our factories,
And by the million patent kitchen ranges
Of happy English homes.

Cetewayo

When first I came
I deemed those chimneys the fuliginous altars
Of some infernal god. I now perceive
The English dare not look upon the sky.
They are moles and owls: they call upon the soot
To cover them.

Lucian

You cannot understand
The greatness of this people, Cetewayo.
You are a savage, reasoning like a child.
Each pallid English face conceals a brain
Whose powers are proven in the works of Newton
And in the plays of the immortal Shakespeare.
There is not one of all the thousands here
But, if you placed him naked in the desert,
Would presently construct a steam engine,
And lay a cable t’ th’ Antipodes.

Cetewayo

Have I been brought a million miles by sea
To learn how men can lie! Know, Father Webber,
Men become civilized through twin diseases,
Terror and Greed to wit: these two conjoined
Become the grisly parents of Invention.
Why does the trembling white with frantic toil
Of hand and brain produce the magic gun
That slays a mile off, whilst the manly Zulu
Dares look his foe i’ the face; fights foot to foot;
Lives in the present; drains the Here and Now;
Makes life a long reality, and death
A moment only! whilst your Englishman
Glares on his burning candle’s winding-sheets,
Counting the steps of his approaching doom,
And in the murky corners ever sees
Two horrid shadows, Death and Poverty:
In the which anguish an unnatural edge
Comes on his frighted brain, which straight devises
Strange frauds by which to filch unearnèd gold,
Mad crafts by which to slay unfacéd foes,
Until at last his agonized desire
Makes possibility its slave. And then⁠—
Horrible climax! All-undoing spite!⁠—
Th’ importunate clutching of the coward’s hand
From wearied Nature Devastation’s secrets
Doth wrest; when straight the brave black-livered man
Is blown explosively from off the globe;
And Death and Dread, with their white-livered slaves
O’er-run the earth, and through their chattering teeth
Stammer the words “Survival of the Fittest.”
Enough of this: I came not here to talk.
Thou say’st thou hast two white-faced ones who dare
Fight without guns, and spearless, to the death.
Let them be brought.

Lucian

They fight not to the death,
But under strictest rules: as, for example,
Half of their persons shall not be attacked;
Nor shall they suffer blows when they fall down,
Nor stroke of foot at any time. And, further,
That frequent opportunities of rest
With succor and refreshment be secured them.

Cetewayo

Ye gods, what cowards! Zululand, my Zululand:
Personified Pusillanimity
Hath ta’en thee from the bravest of the brave!

Lucian

Lo, the rude savage whose untutored mind
Cannot perceive self-evidence, and doubts
That Brave and English mean the selfsame thing!

Cetewayo

Well, well, produce these heroes. I surmise
They will be carried by their nurses, lest
Some barking dog or bumbling bee should scare them.

Cetewayo takes his state. Enter Paradise.
Lydia

What hateful wretch is this whose mighty thews
Presage destruction to his adversaries?

Lord Worthington

’Tis Paradise.

Lydia

He of whom Cashel spoke?
A dreadful thought ices my heart. Oh, why
Did Cashel leave us at the door?

Enter Cashel.
Lord Worthington

Behold!
The champion comes.

Lydia

Oh, I could kiss him now,
Here, before all the world. His boxing things
Render him most attractive. But I fear
Yon villain’s fists may maul him.

Lord Worthington

Have no fear.
Hark! the king speaks.

Cetewayo

Ye sons of the white queen:
Tell me your names and deeds ere ye fall to.

Paradise

Your royal highness, you beholds a bloke
What gets his living honest by his fists.
I may not have the polish of some toffs
As I could mention on; but up to now
No man has took my number down. I scale
Close on twelve stun; my age is twenty-three;
And at Bill Richardson’s Blue Anchor pub
Am to be heard of any day by such
As likes the job. I don’t know, governor,
As ennythink remains for me to say.

Cetewayo

Six wives and thirty oxen shalt thou have
If on the sand thou leave thy foeman dead.
Methinks he looks full scornfully on thee.
To Cashel. Ha! dost thou not so?

Cashel

Sir, I do beseech you
To name the bone, or limb, or special place
Where you would have me hit him with this fist.

Cetewayo

Thou hast a noble brow; but much I fear
Thine adversary will disfigure it.

Cashel

There’s a divinity that shapes our ends
Rough hew them how we will. Give me the gloves.

The Master of the Revels

Paradise, a professor.
Cashel Byron,
Also professor. Time!

They spar.
Lydia

Eternity
It seems to me until this fight be done.

Cashel

Dread monarch: this is called the upper cut,
And this a hook-hit of mine own invention.
The hollow region where I plant this blow
Is called the mark. My left, you will observe,
I chiefly use for long shots: with my right
Aiming beside the angle of the jaw
And landing with a certain delicate screw
I without violence knock my foeman out.
Mark how he falls forward upon his face!
The rules allow ten seconds to get up;
And as the man is still quite silly, I
Might safely finish him; but my respect
For your most gracious majesty’s desire
To see some further triumphs of the science
Of self-defence postpones awhile his doom.

Paradise

How can a bloke do hisself proper justice
With pillows on his fists?

He tears off his gloves and attacks Cashel with his bare knuckles.
The Crowd

Unfair! The rules!

Cetewayo

The joy of battle surges boiling up
And bids me join the melee. Isandhlana
And Victory!

He falls on the bystanders.
The Chiefs

Victory and Isandhlana!

They run amok. General panic and stampede. The ring is swept away.

Lucian

Forbear these most irregular proceedings.
Police! Police!

He engages Cetewayo with his umbrella. The balcony comes down with a crash. Screams from its occupants. Indescribable confusion.
Cashel

Dragging Lydia from the struggling heap.

My love, my love, art hurt?

Lydia

No, no; but save my sore o’ermatchéd cousin.

A Policeman

Give us a lead, sir. Save the English flag.
Africa tramples on it.

Cashel

Africa!
Not all the continents whose mighty shoulders
The dancing diamonds of the seas bedeck
Shall trample on the blue with spots of white.
Now, Lydia, mark thy lover.

He charges the Zulus.
Lydia

Hercules
Cannot withstand him. See: the king is down;
The tallest chief is up, heels over head,
Tossed corklike o’er my Cashel’s sinewy back;
And his lieutenant all deflated gasps
For breath upon the sand. The others fly
In vain: his fist o’er magic distances
Like a chameleon’s tongue shoots to its mark;
And the last African upon his knees
Sues piteously for quarter. Rushing into Cashel’s arms. Oh, my hero:
Thou’st saved us all this day.

Cashel

’Twas all for thee.

Cetewayo

Trying to rise. Have I been struck by lightning?

Lucian

Sir, your conduct
Can only be described as most ungentlemanly.

Policeman

One of the prone is white.

Cashel

’Tis Paradise.

Policeman

He’s choking: he has something in his mouth.

Lydia

To Cashel.

Oh Heaven! there is blood upon your hip.
You’re hurt.

Cashel

The morsel in yon wretch’s mouth
Was bitten out of me.

Sensation. Lydia screams and swoons in Cashel’s arms.

Act III

Wiltstoken. A room in the Warren Lodge.

Lydia at her writing table.
Lydia

O Past and Present, how ye do conflict
As here I sit writing my father’s life!
The autumn woodland woos me from without
With whispering of leaves and dainty airs
To leave this fruitless haunting of the past.
My father was a very learnèd man.
I sometimes think I shall oldmaided be
Ere I unlearn the things he taught to me.

Enter Policeman.
Policeman

Asking your ladyship to pardon me
For this intrusion, might I be so bold
As ask a question of your people here
Concerning the Queen’s peace?

Lydia

My people here
Are but a footman and a simple maid;
And both have craved a holiday to join
Some local festival. But, sir, your helmet
Proclaims the Metropolitan Police.

Policeman

Madam, it does; and I may now inform you
That what you term a local festival
Is a most hideous outrage ’gainst the law,
Which we to quell from London have come down:
In short, a prizefight. My sole purpose here
Is to inquire whether your ladyship
Any bad characters this afternoon
Has noted in the neighborhood.

Lydia

No, none, sir.
I had not let my maid go forth today
Thought I the roads unsafe.

Policeman

Fear nothing, madam:
The force protects the fair. My mission here
Is to wreak ultion for the broken law.
I wish your ladyship good afternoon.

Lydia

Good afternoon. Exit Policeman.
A prizefight! O my heart!
Cashel: hast thou deceived me? Can it be
Thou hast backslidden to the hateful calling
I asked thee to eschew?
O wretched maid,
Why didst thou flee from London to this place
To write thy father’s life, whenas in town
Thou might’st have kept a guardian eye on him⁠—
What’s that? A flying footstep⁠—

Enter Cashel.
Cashel

Sanctuary!
The law is on my track. What! Lydia here!

Lydia

Ay: Lydia here. Hast thou done murder, then,
That in so horrible a guise thou comest?

Cashel

Murder! I would I had. Yon cannibal
Hath forty thousand lives; and I have ta’en
But thousands thirty-nine. I tell thee, Lydia,
On the impenetrable sarcolobe
That holds his seedling brain these fists have pounded
By Shrewsb’ry clock an hour. This bruisèd grass
And cakèd mud adhering to my form
I have acquired in rolling on the sod
Clinched in his grip. This scanty reefer coat
For decency snatched up as fast I fled
When the police arrived, belongs to Mellish.
’Tis all too short; hence my display of rib
And forearm mother-naked. Be not wroth
Because I seem to wink at you: by Heaven,
’Twas Paradise that plugged me in the eye
Which I perforce keep closing. Pity me,
My training wasted and my blows unpaid,
Sans stakes, sans victory, sans everything
I had hoped to win. Oh, I could sit me down
And weep for bitterness.

Lydia

Thou wretch, begone.

Cashel

Begone!

Lydia

I say begone. Oh, tiger’s heart
Wrapped in a young man’s hide, canst thou not live
In love with Nature and at peace with Man?
Must thou, although thy hands were never made
To blacken others’ eyes, still batter at
The image of Divinity? I loathe thee.
Hence from my house and never see me more.

Cashel

I go. The meanest lad on thy estate
Would not betray me thus. But ’tis no matter. He opens the door.
Ha! the police. I’m lost. He shuts the door again.
Now shalt thou see
My last fight fought. Exhausted as I am,
To capture me will cost the coppers dear.
Come one, come all!

Lydia

Oh, hide thee, I implore:
I cannot see thee hunted down like this.
There is my room. Conceal thyself therein.
Quick, I command. He goes into the room.
With horror I foresee,
Lydia, that never lied, must lie for thee.

Enter Policeman, with Paradise and Mellish in custody, Bashville, constables, and others.
Policeman

Keep back your bruisèd prisoner lest he shock
This wellbred lady’s nerves. Your pardon, ma’am;
But have you seen by chance the other one?
In this direction he was seen to run.

Lydia

A man came here anon with bloody hands
And aspect that did turn my soul to snow.

Policeman

’Twas he. What said he?

Lydia

Begged for sanctuary.
I bade the man begone.

Policeman

Most properly.
Saw you which way he went?

Lydia

I cannot tell.

Paradise

He seen me coming; and he done a bunk.

Policeman

Peace, there. Excuse his damaged features, lady:
He’s Paradise; and this one’s Byron’s trainer,
Mellish.

Mellish

Injurious copper, in thy teeth
I hurl the lie. I am no trainer, I.
My father, a respected missionary,
Apprenticed me at fourteen years of age
T’ the poetry writing. To these woods I came
With Nature to commune. My revery
Was by a sound of blows rudely dispelled.
Mindful of what my sainted parent taught,
I rushed to play the peacemaker, when lo!
These minions of the law laid hands on me.

Bashville

A lovely woman, with distracted cries,
In most resplendent fashionable frock,
Approaches like a wounded antelope.

Enter Adelaide Gisborne.
Adelaide

Where is my Cashel? Hath he been arrested?

Policeman

I would I had thy Cashel by the collar:
He hath escaped me.

Adelaide

Praises be forever!

Lydia

Why dost thou call the missing man thy Cashel?

Adelaide

He is mine only son.

All

Thy son!

Adelaide

My son.

Lydia

I thought his mother hardly would have known him,
So crushed his countenance.

Adelaide

A ribald peer,
Lord Worthington by name, this morning came
With honeyed words beseeching me to mount
His four-in-hand, and to the country hie
To see some English sport. Being by nature
Frank as a child, I fell into the snare,
But took so long to dress that the design
Failed of its full effect; for not until
The final round we reached the horrid scene.
Be silent all; for now I do approach
My tragedy’s catastrophe. Know, then,
That Heaven did bless me with an only son,
A boy devoted to his doting mother⁠—

Policeman

Hark! did you hear an oath from yonder room?

Adelaide

Respect a brokenhearted mother’s grief,
And do not interrupt me in my scene.
Ten years ago my darling disappeared
(Ten dreary twelvemonths of continuous tears,
Tears that have left me prematurely aged;
For I am younger far than I appear).
Judge of my anguish when today I saw
Stripped to the waist, and fighting like a demon
With one who, whatsoe’er his humble virtues,
Was clearly not a gentleman, my son!

All

O strange event! O passing tearful tale!

Adelaide

I thank you from the bottom of my heart
For the reception you have given my woe;
And now I ask, where is my wretched son?
He must at once come home with me, and quit
A course of life that cannot be allowed.

Enter Cashel.
Cashel

Policeman: I do yield me to the law.

Lydia

Oh, no.

Adelaide

My son!

Cashel

My mother! Do not kiss me.
My visage is too sore.

Policeman

The lady hid him.
This is a regular plant. You cannot be
Up to that sex. To Cashel. You come along with me.

Lydia

Fear not, my Cashel: I will bail thee out.

Cashel

Never. I do embrace my doom with joy.
With Paradise in Pentonville or Portland
I shall feel safe: there are no mothers there.

Adelaide

Ungracious boy⁠—

Cashel

Constable: bear me hence.

Mellish

Oh, let me sweetest reconcilement make
By calling to thy mind that moving song:⁠—

Sings.

They say there is no other⁠—

Cashel

Forbear at once, or the next note of music
That falls upon thine ear shall clang in thunder
From the last trumpet.

Adelaide

A disgraceful threat
To level at this virtuous old man.

Lydia

Oh, Cashel, if thou scorn’st thy mother thus,
How wilt thou treat thy wife?

Cashel

There spake my fate:
I knew you would say that. Oh, mothers, mothers,
Would you but let your wretched sons alone
Life were worth living! Had I any choice
In this importunate relationship?
None. And until that high auspicious day
When the millennium on an orphaned world
Shall dawn, and man upon his fellow look,
Reckless of consanguinity, my mother
And I within the selfsame hemisphere
Conjointly may not dwell.

Adelaide

Ungentlemanly!

Cashel

I am no gentleman. I am a criminal,
Redhanded, baseborn⁠—

Adelaide

Baseborn! Who dares say it?
Thou art the son and heir of Bingley Bumpkin
FitzAlgernon de Courcy Cashel Byron,
Sieur of Park Lane and Overlord of Dorset,
Who after three months’ wedded happiness
Rashly fordid himself with prussic acid,
Leaving a tearstained note to testify
That having sweetly honeymooned with me,
He now could say, O Death, where is thy sting?

Policeman

Sir: had I known your quality, this cop
I had averted; but it is too late.
The law’s above us both.

Enter Lucian, with an Order in Council.
Lucian

Not so, policeman.
I bear a message from The Throne itself
Of fullest amnesty for Byron’s past.
Nay, more: of Dorset deputy lieutenant
He is proclaimed. Further, it is decreed,
In memory of his glorious victory
Over our country’s foes at Islington,
The flag of England shall forever bear
On azure field twelve swanlike spots of white;
And by an exercise of feudal right
Too long disused in this anarchic age
Our sovereign doth confer on him the hand
Of Miss Carew, Wiltstoken’s wealthy heiress. General acclamation.

Policeman

Was anything, sir, said about me?

Lucian

Thy faithful services are not forgot:
In future call thyself Inspector Smith. Renewed acclamation.

Policeman

I thank you, sir. I thank you, gentlemen.

Lucian

My former opposition, valiant champion,
Was based on the supposed discrepancy
Betwixt your rank and Lydia’s. Here’s my hand.

Bashville

And I do here unselfishly renounce
All my pretensions to my lady’s favor. Sensation.

Lydia

What, Bashville! didst thou love me?

Bashville

Madam: yes.
’Tis said: now let me leave immediately.

Lydia

In taking, Bashville, this most tasteful course
You are but acting as a gentleman
In the like case would act. I fully grant
Your perfect right to make a declaration
Which flatters me and honors your ambition.
Prior attachment bids me firmly say
That whilst my Cashel lives, and polyandry
Rests foreign to the British social scheme,
Your love is hopeless; still, your services,
Made zealous by disinterested passion,
Would greatly add to my domestic comfort;
And if⁠—

Cashel

Excuse me. I have other views.
I’ve noted in this man such aptitude
For art and exercise in his defence
That I prognosticate for him a future
More glorious than my past. Henceforth I dub him
The Admirable Bashville, Byron’s Novice;
And to the utmost of my mended fortunes
Will back him ’gainst the world at ten stone six.

All

Hail, Byron’s Novice, champion that shall be!

Bashville

Must I renounce my lovely lady’s service,
And mar the face of man?

Cashel

’Tis Fate’s decree.
For know, rash youth, that in this star crost world
Fate drives us all to find our chiefest good
In what we can, and not in what we would.

Policeman

A post-horn⁠—hark!

Cashel

What noise of wheels is this?

Lord Worthington drives upon the scene in his four-in-hand, and descends.
Adelaide

Perfidious peer!

Lord Worthington

Sweet Adelaide⁠—

Adelaide

Forbear,
Audacious one: my name is Mrs. Byron.

Lord Worthington

Oh, change that title for the sweeter one
Of Lady Worthington.

Cashel

Unhappy man,
You know not what you do.

Lydia

Nay, ’tis a match
Of most auspicious promise. Dear Lord Worthington,
You tear from us our mother-in-law⁠—

Cashel

Ha! True.

Lydia

—but we will make the sacrifice. She blushes:
At least she very prettily produces
Blushing’s effect.

Adelaide

My lord: I do accept you.

They embrace. Rejoicings.
Cashel

Aside.

It wrings my heart to see my noble backer
Lay waste his future thus. The world’s a chessboard,
And we the merest pawns in fist of Fate.
Aloud. And now, my friends, gentle and simple both,
Our scene draws to a close. In lawful course
As Dorset’s deputy lieutenant I
Do pardon all concerned this afternoon
In the late gross and brutal exhibition
Of miscalled sport.

Lydia

Throwing herself into his arms.

Your boats are burnt at last.

Cashel

This is the face that burnt a thousand boats,
And ravished Cashel Byron from the ring.
But to conclude. Let William Paradise
Devote himself to science, and acquire,
By studying the player’s speech in Hamlet,
A more refined address. You, Robert Mellish,
To the Blue Anchor hostelry attend him;
Assuage his hurts, and bid Bill Richardson
Limit his access to the fatal tap.
Now mount we on my backer’s four-in-hand,
And to St. George’s Church, whose portico
Hanover Square shuts off from Conduit Street,
Repair we all. Strike up the wedding march;
And, Mellish, let thy melodies trill forth
Broad o’er the wold as fast we bowl along.
Give me the post-horn. Loose the flowing rein;
And up to London drive with might and main.

Exeunt.

Note on Modern Prizefighting

In 1882, when this book was written, prizefighting seemed to be dying out. Sparring matches with boxing gloves, under the Queensberry rules, kept pugilism faintly alive; but it was not popular, because the public, which cares only for the excitement of a strenuous fight, believed then that the boxing glove made sparring as harmless a contest of pure skill as a fencing match with buttoned foils. This delusion was supported by the limitation of the sparring match to boxing. In the prize-ring under the old rules a combatant might trip, hold, or throw his antagonist; so that each round finished either with a knockdown blow, which, except when it is really a liedown blow, is much commoner in fiction than it was in the ring, or with a visible body-to-body struggle ending in a fall. In a sparring match all that happens is that a man with a watch in his hand cries out “Time!” whereupon the two champions prosaically stop sparring and sit down for a minute’s rest and refreshment. The unaccustomed and inexpert spectator in those days did not appreciate the severity of the exertion or the risk of getting hurt: he underrated them as ignorantly as he would have overrated the more dramatically obvious terrors of a prizefight. Consequently the interest in the annual sparrings for the Queensberry Championships was confined to the few amateurs who had some critical knowledge of the game of boxing, and to the survivors of the generation for which the fight between Sayers and Heenan had been described in The Times as solemnly as the University Boat Race. In short, pugilism was out of fashion because the police had suppressed the only form of it which fascinated the public by its undissembled pugnacity.

All that was needed to rehabilitate it was the discovery that the glove fight is a more trying and dangerous form of contest than the old knuckle fight. Nobody knew that then: everybody knows it, or ought to know it, now. And, accordingly, pugilism is more prosperous today than it has ever been before.

How far this result was foreseen by the author of the Queensberry Rules, which superseded those of the old prize-ring, will probably never be known. There is no doubt that they served their immediate turn admirably. That turn was, the keeping alive of boxing in the teeth of the law against prizefighting. Magistrates believed, as the public believed, that when men’s knuckles were muffled in padded gloves; when they were forbidden to wrestle or hold one another; when the duration of a round was fixed by the clock, and the number of rounds limited to what seems (to those who have never tried) to be easily within the limits of ordinary endurance; and when the traditional interval for rest between the rounds was doubled, that then indeed violence must be checkmated, so that the worst the boxers could do was to “spar for points” before three gentlemanly members of the Stock Exchange, who would carefully note the said points on an examination paper at the ring side, awarding marks only for skill and elegance, and sternly discountenancing the claims of brute force. It may be that both the author of the rules and the “judges” who administered them in the earlier days really believed all this; for, as far as I know, the limit of an amateur pugilist’s romantic credulity has never yet been reached and probably never will. But if so, their good intentions were upset by the operation of a single new rule. Thus.

In the old prize-ring a round had no fixed duration. It was terminated by the fall of one of the combatants (in practice usually both of them), and was followed by an interval of half a minute for recuperation. The practical effect of this was that a combatant could always get a respite of half a minute whenever he wanted it by pretending to be knocked down: “finding the earth the safest place,” as the old phrase went. For this the Marquess of Queensberry substituted a rule that a round with the gloves should last a specified time, usually three or four minutes, and that a combatant who did not stand up to his opponent continuously during that time (ten seconds being allowed for rising in the event of a knockdown) lost the battle. That unobtrusively slipped-in ten seconds limit has produced the modern glove fight. Its practical effect is that a man dazed by a blow or a fall for, say, twelve seconds, which would not have mattered in an old-fashioned fight with its thirty seconds interval,1 has under the Queensberry rules either to lose or else stagger to his feet in a helpless condition and be eagerly battered into insensibility by his opponent before he can recover his powers of self-defence. The notion that such a battery cannot be inflicted with boxing gloves is only entertained by people who have never used them or seen them used. I may say that I have myself received, in an accident, a blow in the face, involving two macadamized holes in it, more violent than the most formidable pugilist could have given me with his bare knuckles. This blow did not stun or disable me even momentarily. On the other hand, I have seen a man knocked quite silly by a tap from the most luxurious sort of boxing glove made, wielded by a quite unathletic literary man sparring for the first time in his life. The human jaw, like the human elbow, is provided, as every boxer knows, with a “funny bone”; and the pugilist who is lucky enough to jar that funny bone with a blow practically has his opponent at his mercy for at least ten seconds. Such a blow is called a “knockout.” The funny bone and the ten-seconds rule explain the development of Queensberry sparring into the modern knocking-out match or glove fight.

This development got its first impulse from the discovery by sparring competitors that the only way in which a boxer, however skilful, could make sure of a verdict in his favor, was by knocking his opponent out. This will be easily understood by anyone who remembers the pugilistic Bench of those days. The “judges” at the competitions were invariably ex-champions: that is, men who had themselves won former competitions. Now the judicial faculty, if it is not altogether a legal fiction, is at all events pretty rare even among men whose ordinary pursuits tend to cultivate it, and to train them in dispassionateness. Among pugilists it is quite certainly very often nonexistent. The average pugilist is a violent partisan, who seldom witnesses a hot encounter without getting much more excited than the combatants themselves. Further, he is usually filled with a local patriotism which makes him, if a Londoner, deem it a duty to disparage a provincial, and, if a provincial, to support a provincial at all hazards against a cockney. He has, besides, personal favorites on whose success he bets wildly. On great occasions like the annual competitions, he is less judicial and more convivial after dinner (when the finals are sparred) than before it. Being seldom a fine boxer, he often regards skill and style as a reflection on his own deficiencies, and applauds all verdicts given for “game” alone. When he is a technically good boxer, he is all the less likely to be a good critic, as Providence seldom lavishes two rare gifts on the same individual. Even if we take the sanguine and patriotic view that when you appoint such a man a judge, and thus stop his betting, you may depend on his sense of honor and responsibility to neutralize all the other disqualifications, they are sure to be exhibited most extremely by the audience before which he has to deliver his verdict. Now it takes a good deal of strength of mind to give an unpopular verdict; and this strength of mind is not necessarily associated with the bodily hardihood of the champion boxer. Consequently, when the strength of mind is not forthcoming, the audience becomes the judge, and the popular competitor gets the verdict. And the shortest way to the heart of a big audience is to stick to your man; stop his blows bravely with your nose and return them with interest; cover yourself and him with your own gore; and outlast him in a hearty punching match.

It was under these circumstances that the competitors for sparring championships concluded that they had better decide the bouts themselves by knocking their opponents out, and waste no time in cultivating a skill and style for which they got little credit, and which actually set some of the judges against them. The public instantly began to take an interest in the sport. And so, by a pretty rapid evolution, the dexterities which the boxing glove and the Queensberry rules were supposed to substitute for the old brutalities of Sayers and Heenan were really abolished by them.

Let me describe the process as I saw it myself. Twenty years ago a poet friend of mine, who, like all poets, delighted in combats, insisted on my sharing his interest in pugilism, and took me about to all the boxing competitions of the day. I was nothing loth; for, my own share of original sin apart, anyone with a sense of comedy must find the arts of self-defence delightful (for a time) through their pedantry, their quackery, and their action and reaction between amateur romantic illusion and professional eye to business.

The fencing world, as Molière well knew, is perhaps a more exquisite example of a fool’s paradise than the boxing world; but it is too restricted and expensive to allow play for popular character in a non-duelling country, as the boxing world (formerly called quite appropriately “the Fancy”) does. At all events, it was the boxing world that came under my notice; and as I was amused and sceptically observant, whilst the true amateurs about me were, for the most part, merely excited and duped, my evidence may have a certain value when the question comes up again for legislative consideration, as it assuredly will some day.

The first competitions I attended were at the beginning of the eighties, at Lillie Bridge, for the Queensberry championships. There were but few competitors, including a fair number of gentlemen; and the style of boxing aimed at was the “science” bequeathed from the old prize-ring by Ned Donnelly, a pupil of Nat Langham. Langham had once defeated Sayers, and thereby taught him the tactics by which he defeated Heenan. There was as yet no special technique of glove fighting: the traditions and influence of the old ring were unquestioned and supreme; and they distinctly made for brains, skill, quickness, and mobility, as against brute violence, not at all on moral grounds, but because experience had proved that giants did not succeed in the ring under the old rules, and that crafty middleweights did.

This did not last long. The spectators did not want to see skill defeating violence: they wanted to see violence drawing blood and pounding its way to a savage and exciting victory in the shortest possible time (the old prizefight usually dragged on for hours, and was ended by exhaustion rather than by victory). So did most of the judges. And the public and the judges naturally had their wish; for the competitors, as I have already explained, soon discovered that the only way to make sure of a favorable verdict was to “knock out” their adversary. All pretence of sparring “for points”: that is, for marks on an examination paper filled up by the judges, and representing nothing but impracticable academic pedantry in its last ditch, was dropped; and the competitions became frank fights, with abundance of blood drawn, and “knockouts” always imminent. Needless to add, the glove fight soon began to pay. The select and thinly attended spars on the turf at Lillie Bridge gave way to crowded exhibitions on the hard boards of St. James’s Hall. These were organized by the Boxing Association; and to them the provinces, notably Birmingham, sent up a new race of boxers whose sole aim was to knock their opponent insensible by a right-hand blow on the jaw, knowing well that no Birmingham man could depend on a verdict before a London audience for any less undeniable achievement.

The final step was taken by an American pugilist. He threw off the last shred of the old hypocrisy of the gloved hand by challenging the whole world to produce a man who could stand before him for a specified time without being knocked out. His brief but glorious career completely reestablished pugilism by giving a worldwide advertisement to the fact that the boxing glove spares nothing but the public conscience, and that as much ferocity, bloodshed, pain, and risk of serious injury or death can be enjoyed at a glove fight as at an old-fashioned prizefight, whilst the strain on the combatants is much greater. It is true that these horrors are greatly exaggerated by the popular imagination, and that if boxing were really as dangerous as bicycling, a good many of its heroes would give it up from simple fright; but this only means that there is a maximum of damage to the spectator by demoralization, combined with the minimum of deterrent risk to the poor scrapper in the ring.

Poor scrapper, though, is hardly the word for a modern fashionable American pugilist. To him the exploits of Cashel Byron will seem ludicrously obscure and low-lived. The contests in which he engages are like Handel Festivals: they take place in huge halls before enormous audiences, with cinematographs hard at work recording the scene for reproduction in London and elsewhere. The combatants divide thousands of dollars of gate-money between them: indeed, if an impecunious English curate were to go to America and challenge the premier pugilist, the spectacle of a match between the Church and the Ring would attract a colossal crowd; and the loser’s share of the gate would be a fortune to a curate⁠—assuming that the curate would be the loser, which is by no means a foregone conclusion. At all events, it would be well worth a bruise or two. So my story of the Agricultural Hall, where William Paradise sparred for half a guinea, and Cashel Byron stood out for ten guineas, is no doubt read by the profession in America with amused contempt. In 1882 it was, like most of my conceptions, a daring anticipation of coming social developments, though today it seems as far out of date as Slender pulling Sackerson’s chain.

Of these latter-day commercial developments of glove fighting I know nothing beyond what I gather from the newspapers. The banging matches of the eighties, in which not one competitor in twenty either exhibited artistic skill, or, in his efforts to knock out his adversary, succeeded in anything but tiring and disappointing himself, were for the most part tedious beyond human endurance. When, after wading through Boxiana and the files of Bell’s Life at the British Museum, I had written Cashel Byron’s Profession, I found I had exhausted the comedy of the subject; and as a game of patience or solitaire was decidedly superior to an average spar for a championship in point of excitement, I went no more to the competitions. Since then six or seven generations of boxers have passed into peaceful pursuits; and I have no doubt that my experience is in some respects out of date. The National Sporting Club has arisen; and though I have never attended its reunions, I take its record of three pugilists slain as proving an enormous multiplication of contests, since such accidents are very rare, and in fact do not happen to reasonably healthy men. I am prepared to admit also that the disappearance of the old prize-ring technique must by this time have been compensated by the importation from America of a new glove-fighting technique; for even in a knocking-out match, brains will try conclusions with brawn, and finally establish a standard of skill; but I notice that in the leading contests in America luck seems to be on the side of brawn, and brain frequently finishes in a state of concussion, a loser after performing miracles of “science.” I use the word luck advisedly; for one of the fascinations of boxing to the gambler (who is the main pillar of the sporting world) is that it is a game of hardihood, pugnacity and skill, all at the mercy of chance. The knockout itself is a pure chance. I have seen two powerful laborers batter one another’s jaws with all their might for several rounds apparently without giving one another as much as a toothache. And I have seen a winning pugilist collapse at a trifling knock landed by a fluke at the fatal angle. I once asked an ancient prizefighter what a knockout was like when it did happen. He was a man of limited descriptive powers; so he simply pointed to the heavens and said, “Up in a balloon.” An amateur pugilist, with greater command of language, told me that “all the milk in his head suddenly boiled over.” I am aware that some modern glove fighters of the American school profess to have reduced the knockout to a science. But the results of the leading American combats conclusively discredit the pretension. When a boxer so superior to his opponent in skill as to be able practically to hit him where he pleases not only fails to knock him out, but finally gets knocked out himself, it is clear that the phenomenon is as complete a mystery pugilistically as it is physiologically, though every pugilist and every doctor may pretend to understand it. It is only fair to add that it has not been proved that any permanent injury to the brain results from it. In any case the brain, as English society is at present constituted, can hardly be considered a vital organ.

This, to the best of my knowledge, is the technical history of the modern revival of pugilism. It is only one more example of the fact that legislators, like other people, must learn their business by their own mistakes, and that the first attempts to suppress an evil by law generally intensify it. Prizefighting, though often connived at, was never legal. Even in its palmiest days prizefights were banished from certain counties by hostile magistrates, just as they have been driven from the United States and England to Belgium on certain occasions in our own time. But as the exercise of sparring, conducted by a couple of gentlemen with boxing gloves on, was regarded as part of a manly physical education, a convention grew up by which it became practically legal to make a citizen’s nose bleed by a punch from the gloved fist, and illegal to do the same thing with the naked knuckles. A code of glove-fighting rules was drawn up by a prominent patron of pugilism; and this code was practically legalized by the fact that even when a death resulted from a contest under these rules the accessories were not punished. No question was raised as to whether the principals were paid to fight for the amusement of the spectators, or whether a prize for the winner was provided in stakes, share of the gate, or a belt with the title of champion. These, the true criteria of prizefighting, were ignored; and the sole issue raised was whether the famous dictum of Dr. Watts, “Your little hands were never made, etc.,” had been duly considered by providing the said little hands with a larger hitting surface, a longer range, and four ounces extra weight.

In short, then, what has happened has been the virtual legalization of prizefighting under cover of the boxing glove. And this is exactly what public opinion desires. We do not like fighting; but we like looking on at fights: therefore we require a law which will punish the prizefighter if he hits us, and secure us the protection of the police whilst we sit in a comfortable hall and watch him hitting another prizefighter. And that is just the law we have got at present.

Thus Cashel Byron’s plea for a share of the legal toleration accorded to the vivisector has been virtually granted since he made it. The legalization of cruelty to domestic animals under cover of the anesthetic is only the extreme instance of the same social phenomenon as the legalization of prizefighting under cover of the boxing glove. The same passion explains the fascination of both practices; and in both, the professors⁠—pugilists and physiologists alike⁠—have to persuade the Home Office that their pursuits are painless and beneficial. But there is also between them the remarkable difference that the pugilist, who has to suffer as much as he inflicts, wants his work to be as painless and harmless as possible whilst persuading the public that it is thrillingly dangerous and destructive, whilst the vivisector wants to enjoy a total exemption from humane restrictions in his laboratory whilst persuading the public that pain is unknown there. Consequently the vivisector is not only crueller than the prizefighter, but, through the pressure of public opinion, a much more resolute and uncompromising liar. For this no one but a Pharisee will single him out for special blame. All public men lie, as a matter of good taste, on subjects which are considered serious (in England a serious occasion means simply an occasion on which nobody tells the truth); and however illogical or capricious the point of honor may be in man, it is too absurd to assume that the doctors who, from among innumerable methods of research, select that of tormenting animals hideously, will hesitate to come on a platform and tell a soothing fib to prevent the public from punishing them. No criminal is expected to plead guilty, or to refrain from pleading not guilty with all the plausibility at his command. In prizefighting such mendacity is not necessary: on the contrary, if a famous pugilist were to assure the public that a blow delivered with a boxing glove could do no injury and cause no pain, and the public believed him, the sport would instantly lose its following. It is the prizefighter’s interest to abolish the real cruelties of the ring and to exaggerate the imaginary cruelties of it. It is the vivisector’s interest to refine upon the cruelties of the laboratory, whilst persuading the public that his victims pass into a delicious euthanasia and leave behind them a row of bottles containing infallible cures for all the diseases. Just so, too, does the trainer of performing animals assure us that his dogs and cats and elephants and lions are taught their senseless feats by pure kindness.

The public, as Julius Caesar remarked nearly two thousand years ago, believes, on the whole, just what it wants to believe. The laboring masses do not believe the false excuses of the vivisector, because they know that the vivisector experiments on hospital patients; and the masses belong to the hospital patient class. The well-to-do people who do not go to hospitals, and who think they benefit by the experiments made there, believe the vivisectors’ excuses, and angrily abuse and denounce the anti-vivisectors. The people who “love animals,” who keep pets, and stick pins through butterflies, support the performing dog people, and are sure that kindness will teach a horse to waltz. And the people who enjoy a fight will persuade themselves that boxing gloves do not hurt, and that sparring is an exercise which teaches self-control and exercises all the muscles in the body more efficiently than any other.

My own view of prizefighting may be gathered from Cashel Byron’s Profession, and from the play written by me more than ten years later, entitled Mrs. Warren’s Profession. As long as society is so organized that the destitute athlete and the destitute beauty are forced to choose between underpaid drudgery as industrial producers, and comparative self-respect, plenty, and popularity as prizefighters and mercenary brides, licit or illicit, it is idle to affect virtuous indignation at their expense. The word prostitute should either not be used at all, or else applied impartially to all persons who do things for money that they would not do if they had any other assured means of livelihood. The evil caused by the prostitution of the Press and the Pulpit is so gigantic that the prostitution of the prize-ring, which at least makes no serious moral pretensions, is comparatively negligible by comparison. Let us not forget, however, that the throwing of a hard word such as prostitution does not help the persons thus vituperated out of their difficulty. If the soldier and gladiator fight for money, if men and women marry for money, if the journalist and novelist write for money, and the parson preaches for money, it must be remembered that it is an exceedingly difficult and doubtful thing for an individual to set up his own scruples or fancies (he cannot himself be sure which they are) against the demand of the community when it says, Do thus and thus, or starve. It was easy for Ruskin to lay down the rule of dying rather than doing unjustly; but death is a plain thing: justice a very obscure thing. How is an ordinary man to draw the line between right and wrong otherwise than by accepting public opinion on the subject; and what more conclusive expression of sincere public opinion can there be than market demand? Even when we repudiate that and fall back on our private judgment, the matter gathers doubt instead of clearness. The popular notion of morality and piety is to simply beg all the most important questions in life for other people; but when these questions come home to ourselves, we suddenly discover that the devil’s advocate has a stronger case than we thought: we remember that the way of righteousness or death was the way of the Inquisition; that hell is paved, not with bad intentions, but with good ones; that the deeper seers have suggested that the way to save your soul is perhaps to give it away, casting your spiritual bread on the waters, so to speak. No doubt, if you are a man of genius, a Ruskin or an Ibsen, you can divine your way and finally force your passage. If you have the conceit of fanaticism you can die a martyr like Charles I. If you are a criminal, or a gentleman of independent means, you can leave society out of the question and prey on it. But if you are an ordinary person you take your bread as it comes to you, doing whatever you can make most money by doing. And you are really showing yourself a disciplined citizen and acting with perfect social propriety in so doing. Society may be, and generally is, grossly wrong in its offer to you; and you may be, and generally are, grossly wrong in supporting the existing political structure; but this only means, to the successful modern prizefighter, that he must reform society before he can reform himself. A conclusion which I recommend to the consideration of those foolish misers of personal righteousness who think they can dispose of social problems by bidding reformers of society reform themselves first.

Practically, then, the question raised is whether fighting with gloves shall be brought, like cockfighting, bear-baiting, and gloveless fist fighting, explicitly under the ban of the law. I do not propose to argue that question out here. But of two things I am certain. First, that glove fighting is quite as fierce a sport as fist fighting. Second, that if an application were made to the Borough Council of which I am a member, to hire the Town Hall for a boxing competition, I should vote against the applicants.

This second point being evidently the practical one, I had better give my reason. Exhibition pugilism is essentially a branch of Art: that is to say, it acts and attracts by propagating feeling. The feeling it propagates is pugnacity. Sense of danger, dread of danger, impulse to batter and destroy what threatens and opposes, triumphant delight in succeeding: this is pugnacity, the great adversary of the social impulse to live and let live; to establish our rights by shouldering our share of the social burden; to face and examine danger instead of striking at it; to understand everything to the point of pardoning (and righting) everything; to conclude an amnesty with Nature wide enough to include even those we know the worst of: namely, ourselves. If two men quarrelled, and asked the Borough Council to lend them a room to fight it out in with their fists, on the ground that a few minutes’ hearty punching of one another’s heads would work off their bad blood and leave them better friends, each desiring, not victory, but satisfaction, I am not sure that I should not vote for compliance. But if a syndicate of showmen came and said, Here we have two men who have no quarrel, but who will, if you pay them, fight before your constituency and thereby make a great propaganda of pugnacity in it, sharing the profits with us and with you, I should indignantly oppose the proposition. And if the majority were against me, I should try to persuade them to at least impose the condition that the fight should be with naked fists under the old rules, so that the combatants should, like Sayers and Langham, depend on bunging up each other’s eyes rather than, like the modern knocker-out, giving one another concussion of the brain.

I may add, finally, that the present halting between the legal toleration and suppression of commercial pugilism is much worse than the extreme of either, because it takes away the healthy publicity and sense of responsibility which legality and respectability give, without suppressing the blackguardism which finds its opportunity in shady pursuits. I use the term commercial advisedly. Put a stop to boxing for money; and pugilism will give society no further trouble.

How He Lied to Her Husband

Preface

Like many other works of mine, this playlet is a piêce d’occasion. In 1905 it happened that Mr. Arnold Daly, who was then playing the part of Napoleon in The Man of Destiny in New York, found that whilst the play was too long to take a secondary place in the evening’s performance, it was too short to suffice by itself. I therefore took advantage of four days continuous rain during a holiday in the north of Scotland to write “How He Lied to Her Husband” for Mr. Daly. In his hands, it served its turn very effectively.

I print it here as a sample of what can be done with even the most hackneyed stage framework by filling it in with an observed touch of actual humanity instead of with doctrinaire romanticism. Nothing in the theatre is staler than the situation of husband, wife and lover, or the fun of knockabout farce. I have taken both, and got an original play out of them, as anybody else can if only he will look about him for his material instead of plagiarizing Othello and the thousand plays that have proceeded on Othello’s romantic assumptions and false point of honor.

A further experiment made by Mr. Arnold Daly with this play is worth recording. In 1905 Mr. Daly produced Mrs. Warren’s Profession in New York. The press of that city instantly raised a cry that such persons as Mrs. Warren are “ordure,” and should not be mentioned in the presence of decent people. This hideous repudiation of humanity and social conscience so took possession of the New York journalists that the few among them who kept their feet morally and intellectually could do nothing to check the epidemic of foul language, gross suggestion, and raving obscenity of word and thought that broke out. The writers abandoned all self-restraint under the impression that they were upholding virtue instead of outraging it. They infected each other with their hysteria until they were for all practical purposes indecently mad. They finally forced the police to arrest Mr. Daly and his company, and led the magistrate to express his loathing of the duty thus forced upon him of reading an unmentionable and abominable play. Of course the convulsion soon exhausted itself. The magistrate, naturally somewhat impatient when he found that what he had to read was a strenuously ethical play forming part of a book which had been in circulation unchallenged for eight years, and had been received without protest by the whole London and New York press, gave the journalists a piece of his mind as to their moral taste in plays. By consent, he passed the case on to a higher court, which declared that the play was not immoral; acquitted Mr. Daly; and made an end of the attempt to use the law to declare living women to be “ordure,” and thus enforce silence as to the far-reaching fact that you cannot cheapen women in the market for industrial purposes without cheapening them for other purposes as well. I hope Mrs. Warren’s Profession will be played everywhere, in season and out of season, until Mrs. Warren has bitten that fact into the public conscience, and shamed the newspapers which support a tariff to keep up the price of every American commodity except American manhood and womanhood.

Unfortunately, Mr. Daly had already suffered the usual fate of those who direct public attention to the profits of the sweater or the pleasures of the voluptuary. He was morally lynched side by side with me. Months elapsed before the decision of the courts vindicated him; and even then, since his vindication implied the condemnation of the press, which was by that time sober again, and ashamed of its orgy, his triumph received a rather sulky and grudging publicity. In the meantime he had hardly been able to approach an American city, including even those cities which had heaped applause on him as the defender of hearth and home when he produced Candida, without having to face articles discussing whether mothers could allow their daughters to attend such plays as You Never Can Tell, written by the infamous author of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, and acted by the monster who produced it. What made this harder to bear was that though no fact is better established in theatrical business than the financial disastrousness of moral discredit, the journalists who had done all the mischief kept paying vice the homage of assuming that it is enormously popular and lucrative, and that I and Mr. Daly, being exploiters of vice, must therefore be making colossal fortunes out of the abuse heaped on us, and had in fact provoked it and welcomed it with that express object. Ignorance of real life could hardly go further.

One consequence was that Mr. Daly could not have kept his financial engagements or maintained his hold on the public had he not accepted engagements to appear for a season in the vaudeville theatres (the American equivalent of our music halls), where he played “How He Lied to Her Husband” comparatively unhampered by the press censorship of the theatre, or by that sophistication of the audience through press suggestion from which I suffer more, perhaps, than any other author. Vaudeville authors are fortunately unknown: the audiences see what the play contains and what the actor can do, not what the papers have told them to expect. Success under such circumstances had a value both for Mr. Daly and myself which did something to console us for the very unsavory mobbing which the New York press organized for us, and which was not the less disgusting because we suffered in a good cause and in the very best company.

Mr. Daly, having weathered the storm, can perhaps shake his soul free of it as he heads for fresh successes with younger authors. But I have certain sensitive places in my soul: I do not like that word “ordure.” Apply it to my work, and I can afford to smile, since the world, on the whole, will smile with me. But to apply it to the woman in the street, whose spirit is of one substance with our own and her body no less holy: to look your women folk in the face afterwards and not go out and hang yourself: that is not on the list of pardonable sins.

Postscript. Since the above was written news has arrived from America that a leading New York newspaper, which was among the most abusively clamorous for the suppression of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, has just been fined heavily for deriving part of its revenue from advertisements of Mrs. Warren’s houses.

Many people have been puzzled by the fact that whilst stage entertainments which are frankly meant to act on the spectators as aphrodisiacs, are everywhere tolerated, plays which have an almost horrifyingly contrary effect are fiercely attacked by persons and papers notoriously indifferent to public morals on all other occasions. The explanation is very simple. The profits of Mrs. Warren’s profession are shared not only by Mrs. Warren and Sir George Crofts, but by the landlords of their houses, the newspapers which advertise them, the restaurants which cater for them, and, in short, all the trades to which they are good customers, not to mention the public officials and representatives whom they silence by complicity, corruption, or blackmail. Add to these the employers who profit by cheap female labor, and the shareholders whose dividends depend on it (you find such people everywhere, even on the judicial bench and in the highest places in Church and State), and you get a large and powerful class with a strong pecuniary incentive to protect Mrs. Warren’s profession, and a correspondingly strong incentive to conceal, from their own consciences no less than from the world, the real sources of their gain. These are the people who declare that it is feminine vice and not poverty that drives women to the streets, as if vicious women with independent incomes ever went there. These are the people who, indulgent or indifferent to aphrodisiac plays, raise the moral hue and cry against performances of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, and drag actresses to the police court to be insulted, bullied, and threatened for fulfilling their engagements. For please observe that the judicial decision in New York State in favor of the play does not end the matter. In Kansas City, for instance, the municipality, finding itself restrained by the courts from preventing the performance, fell back on a local bylaw against indecency to evade the Constitution of the United States. They summoned the actress who impersonated Mrs. Warren to the police court, and offered her and her colleagues the alternative of leaving the city or being prosecuted under this bylaw.

Now nothing is more possible than that the city councillors who suddenly displayed such concern for the morals of the theatre were either Mrs. Warren’s landlords, or employers of women at starvation wages, or restaurant keepers, or newspaper proprietors, or in some other more or less direct way sharers of the profits of her trade. No doubt it is equally possible that they were simply stupid men who thought that indecency consists, not in evil, but in mentioning it. I have, however, been myself a member of a municipal council, and have not found municipal councillors quite so simple and inexperienced as this. At all events I do not propose to give the Kansas councillors the benefit of the doubt. I therefore advise the public at large, which will finally decide the matter, to keep a vigilant eye on gentlemen who will stand anything at the theatre except a performance of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, and who assert in the same breath that (a) the play is too loathsome to be bearable by civilized people, and (b) that unless its performance is prohibited the whole town will throng to see it. They may be merely excited and foolish; but I am bound to warn the public that it is equally likely that they may be collected and knavish.

At all events, to prohibit the play is to protect the evil which the play exposes; and in view of that fact, I see no reason for assuming that the prohibitionists are disinterested moralists, and that the author, the managers, and the performers, who depend for their livelihood on their personal reputations and not on rents, advertisements, or dividends, are grossly inferior to them in moral sense and public responsibility.

It is true that in Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Society, and not any individual, is the villain of the piece; but it does not follow that the people who take offence at it are all champions of society. Their credentials cannot be too carefully examined.

Dramatis Personae

  • He (Henry Apjohn)

  • She (Aurora Bompas)

  • Her Husband (Teddy Bompas)

How He Lied to Her Husband

It is eight o’clock in the evening. The curtains are drawn and the lamps lighted in the drawing room of Her flat in Cromwell Road. Her lover, a beautiful youth of eighteen, in evening dress and cape, with a bunch of flowers and an opera hat in his hands, comes in alone. The door is near the corner; and as he appears in the doorway, he has the fireplace on the nearest wall to his right, and the grand piano along the opposite wall to his left. Near the fireplace a small ornamental table has on it a hand mirror, a fan, a pair of long white gloves, and a little white woollen cloud to wrap a woman’s head in. On the other side of the room, near the piano, is a broad, square, softly upholstered stool. The room is furnished in the most approved South Kensington fashion: that is, it is as like a show room as possible, and is intended to demonstrate the racial position and spending powers of its owners, and not in the least to make them comfortable.

He is, be it repeated, a very beautiful youth, moving as in a dream, walking as on air. He puts his flowers down carefully on the table beside the fan; takes off his cape, and, as there is no room on the table for it, takes it to the piano; puts his hat on the cape; crosses to the hearth; looks at his watch; puts it up again; notices the things on the table; lights up as if he saw heaven opening before him; goes to the table and takes the cloud in both hands, nestling his nose into its softness and kissing it; kisses the gloves one after another; kisses the fan: gasps a long shuddering sigh of ecstasy; sits down on the stool and presses his hands to his eyes to shut out reality and dream a little; takes his hands down and shakes his head with a little smile of rebuke for his folly; catches sight of a speck of dust on his shoes and hastily and carefully brushes it off with his handkerchief; rises and takes the hand mirror from the table to make sure of his tie with the gravest anxiety; and is looking at his watch again when She comes in, much flustered. As she is dressed for the theatre; has spoilt, petted ways; and wears many diamonds, she has an air of being a young and beautiful woman; but as a matter of hard fact, she is, dress and pretensions apart, a very ordinary South Kensington female of about 37, hopelessly inferior in physical and spiritual distinction to the beautiful youth, who hastily puts down the mirror as she enters.

He Kissing her hand. At last!
She Henry: something dreadful has happened.
He What’s the matter?
She I have lost your poems.
He They were unworthy of you. I will write you some more.
She No, thank you. Never any more poems for me. Oh, how could I have been so mad! so rash! so imprudent!
He Thank Heaven for your madness, your rashness, your imprudence!
She Impatiently. Oh, be sensible, Henry. Can’t you see what a terrible thing this is for me? Suppose anybody finds these poems! what will they think?
He They will think that a man once loved a woman more devotedly than ever man loved woman before. But they will not know what man it was.
She What good is that to me if everybody will know what woman it was?
He But how will they know?
She How will they know! Why, my name is all over them: my silly, unhappy name. Oh, if I had only been christened Mary Jane, or Gladys Muriel, or Beatrice, or Francesca, or Guinevere, or something quite common! But Aurora! Aurora! I’m the only Aurora in London; and everybody knows it. I believe I’m the only Aurora in the world. And it’s so horribly easy to rhyme to it! Oh, Henry, why didn’t you try to restrain your feelings a little in common consideration for me? Why didn’t you write with some little reserve?
He Write poems to you with reserve! You ask me that!
She With perfunctory tenderness. Yes, dear, of course it was very nice of you; and I know it was my own fault as much as yours. I ought to have noticed that your verses ought never to have been addressed to a married woman.
He Ah, how I wish they had been addressed to an unmarried woman! how I wish they had!
She Indeed you have no right to wish anything of the sort. They are quite unfit for anybody but a married woman. That’s just the difficulty. What will my sisters-in-law think of them?
He Painfully jarred. Have you got sisters-in-law?
She Yes, of course I have. Do you suppose I am an angel?
He Biting his lips. I do. Heaven help me, I do⁠—or I did⁠—or He almost chokes a sob.
She Softening and putting her hand caressingly on his shoulder. Listen to me, dear. It’s very nice of you to live with me in a dream, and to love me, and so on; but I can’t help my husband having disagreeable relatives, can I?
He Brightening up. Ah, of course they are your husband’s relatives: I forgot that. Forgive me, Aurora. He takes her hand from his shoulder and kisses it. She sits down on the stool. He remains near the table, with his back to it, smiling fatuously down at her.
She The fact is, Teddy’s got nothing but relatives. He has eight sisters and six half-sisters, and ever so many brothers⁠—but I don’t mind his brothers. Now if you only knew the least little thing about the world, Henry, you’d know that in a large family, though the sisters quarrel with one another like mad all the time, yet let one of the brothers marry, and they all turn on their unfortunate sister-in-law and devote the rest of their lives with perfect unanimity to persuading him that his wife is unworthy of him. They can do it to her very face without her knowing it, because there are always a lot of stupid low family jokes that nobody understands but themselves. Half the time you can’t tell what they’re talking about: it just drives you wild. There ought to be a law against a man’s sister ever entering his house after he’s married. I’m as certain as that I’m sitting here that Georgina stole those poems out of my workbox.
He She will not understand them, I think.
She Oh, won’t she! She’ll understand them only too well. She’ll understand more harm than ever was in them: nasty vulgar-minded cat!
He Going to her. Oh don’t, don’t think of people in that way. Don’t think of her at all. He takes her hand and sits down on the carpet at her feet. Aurora: do you remember the evening when I sat here at your feet and read you those poems for the first time?
She I shouldn’t have let you: I see that now. When I think of Georgina sitting there at Teddy’s feet and reading them to him for the first time, I feel I shall just go distracted.
He Yes, you are right. It will be a profanation.
She Oh, I don’t care about the profanation; but what will Teddy think? what will he do? Suddenly throwing his head away from her knee. You don’t seem to think a bit about Teddy. She jumps up, more and more agitated.
He Supine on the floor; for she has thrown him off his balance. To me Teddy is nothing, and Georgina less than nothing.
She You’ll soon find out how much less than nothing she is. If you think a woman can’t do any harm because she’s only a scandalmongering dowdy ragbag, you’re greatly mistaken. She flounces about the room. He gets up slowly and dusts his hands. Suddenly she runs to him and throws herself into his arms. Henry: help me. Find a way out of this for me; and I’ll bless you as long as you live. Oh, how wretched I am! She sobs on his breast.
He And oh! how happy I am!
She Whisking herself abruptly away. Don’t be selfish.
He Humbly. Yes: I deserve that. I think if I were going to the stake with you, I should still be so happy with you that I could hardly feel your danger more than my own.
She Relenting and patting his hand fondly. Oh, you are a dear darling boy, Henry; but throwing his hand away fretfully you’re no use. I want somebody to tell me what to do.
He With quiet conviction. Your heart will tell you at the right time. I have thought deeply over this; and I know what we two must do, sooner or later.
She No, Henry. I will do nothing improper, nothing dishonorable. She sits down plump on the stool and looks inflexible.
He If you did, you would no longer be Aurora. Our course is perfectly simple, perfectly straightforward, perfectly stainless and true. We love one another. I am not ashamed of that: I am ready to go out and proclaim it to all London as simply as I will declare it to your husband when you see⁠—as you soon will see⁠—that this is the only way honorable enough for your feet to tread. Let us go out together to our own house, this evening, without concealment and without shame. Remember! we owe something to your husband. We are his guests here: he is an honorable man: he has been kind to us: he has perhaps loved you as well as his prosaic nature and his sordid commercial environment permitted. We owe it to him in all honor not to let him learn the truth from the lips of a scandalmonger. Let us go to him now quietly, hand in hand; bid him farewell; and walk out of the house without concealment and subterfuge, freely and honestly, in full honor and self-respect.
She Staring at him. And where shall we go to?
He We shall not depart by a hair’s breadth from the ordinary natural current of our lives. We were going to the theatre when the loss of the poems compelled us to take action at once. We shall go to the theatre still; but we shall leave your diamonds here; for we cannot afford diamonds, and do not need them.
She Fretfully. I have told you already that I hate diamonds; only Teddy insists on hanging me all over with them. You need not preach simplicity to me.
He I never thought of doing so, dearest: I know that these trivialities are nothing to you. What was I saying⁠—oh yes. Instead of coming back here from the theatre, you will come with me to my home⁠—now and henceforth our home⁠—and in due course of time, when you are divorced, we shall go through whatever idle legal ceremony you may desire. I attach no importance to the law: my love was not created in me by the law, nor can it be bound or loosed by it. That is simple enough, and sweet enough, is it not? He takes the flower from the table. Here are flowers for you: I have the tickets: we will ask your husband to lend us the carriage to show that there is no malice, no grudge, between us. Come!
She Spiritlessly, taking the flowers without looking at them, and temporizing. Teddy isn’t in yet.
He Well, let us take that calmly. Let us go to the theatre as if nothing had happened, and tell him when we come back. Now or three hours hence: today or tomorrow: what does it matter, provided all is done in honor, without shame or fear?
She What did you get tickets for? Lohengrin?
He I tried; but Lohengrin was sold out for tonight. He takes out two Court Theatre tickets.
She Then what did you get?
He Can you ask me? What is there besides Lohengrin that we two could endure, except Candida?
She Springing up. Candida! No, I won’t go to it again, Henry. Tossing the flower on the piano. It is that play that has done all the mischief. I’m very sorry I ever saw it: it ought to be stopped.
He Amazed. Aurora!
She Yes: I mean it.
He That divinest love poem! the poem that gave us courage to speak to one another! that revealed to us what we really felt for one another! that⁠—
She Just so. It put a lot of stuff into my head that I should never have dreamt of for myself. I imagined myself just like Candida.
He Catching her hands and looking earnestly at her. You were right. You are like Candida.
She Snatching her hands away. Oh, stuff! And I thought you were just like Eugene. Looking critically at him. Now that I come to look at you, you are rather like him, too. She throws herself discontentedly into the nearest seat, which happens to be the bench at the piano. He goes to her.
He Very earnestly. Aurora: if Candida had loved Eugene she would have gone out into the night with him without a moment’s hesitation.
She With equal earnestness. Henry: do you know what’s wanting in that play?
He There is nothing wanting in it.
She Yes there is. There’s a Georgina wanting in it. If Georgina had been there to make trouble, that play would have been a true-to-life tragedy. Now I’ll tell you something about it that I have never told you before.
He What is that?
She I took Teddy to it. I thought it would do him good; and so it would if I could only have kept him awake. Georgina came too; and you should have heard the way she went on about it. She said it was downright immoral, and that she knew the sort of woman that encourages boys to sit on the hearthrug and make love to her. She was just preparing Teddy’s mind to poison it about me.
He Let us be just to Georgina, dearest⁠—
She Let her deserve it first. Just to Georgina, indeed!
He She really sees the world in that way. That is her punishment.
She How can it be her punishment when she likes it? It’ll be my punishment when she brings that budget of poems to Teddy. I wish you’d have some sense, and sympathize with my position a little.
He Going away from the piano and beginning to walk about rather testily. My dear: I really don’t care about Georgina or about Teddy. All these squabbles belong to a plane on which I am, as you say, no use. I have counted the cost; and I do not fear the consequences. After all, what is there to fear? Where is the difficulty? What can Georgina do? What can your husband do? What can anybody do?
She Do you mean to say that you propose that we should walk right bang up to Teddy and tell him we’re going away together?
He Yes. What can be simpler?
She And do you think for a moment he’d stand it, like that half-baked clergyman in the play? He’d just kill you.
He Coming to a sudden stop and speaking with considerable confidence. You don’t understand these things, my darling: how could you? In one respect I am unlike the poet in the play. I have followed the Greek ideal and not neglected the culture of my body. Your husband would make a tolerable second-rate heavy weight if he were in training and ten years younger. As it is, he could, if strung up to a great effort by a burst of passion, give a good account of himself for perhaps fifteen seconds. But I am active enough to keep out of his reach for fifteen seconds; and after that I should be simply all over him.
She Rising and coming to him in consternation. What do you mean by all over him?
He Gently. Don’t ask me, dearest. At all events, I swear to you that you need not be anxious about me.
She And what about Teddy? Do you mean to tell me that you are going to beat Teddy before my face like a brutal prizefighter?
He All this alarm is needless, dearest. Believe me, nothing will happen. Your husband knows that I am capable of defending myself. Under such circumstances nothing ever does happen. And of course I shall do nothing. The man who once loved you is sacred to me.
She Suspiciously. Doesn’t he love me still? Has he told you anything?
He No, no. He takes her tenderly in his arms. Dearest, dearest: how agitated you are! how unlike yourself! All these worries belong to the lower plane. Come up with me to the higher one. The heights, the solitudes, the soul world!
She Avoiding his gaze. No: stop: it’s no use, Mr. Apjohn.
He Recoiling. Mr. Apjohn!!!
She Excuse me: I meant Henry, of course.
He How could you even think of me as Mr. Apjohn? I never think of you as Mrs. Bompas: it is always Cand⁠—I mean Aurora, Aurora, Auro⁠—
She Yes, yes: that’s all very well, Mr. Apjohn he is about to interrupt again: but she won’t have it no: it’s no use: I’ve suddenly begun to think of you as Mr. Apjohn; and it’s ridiculous to go on calling you Henry. I thought you were only a boy, a child, a dreamer. I thought you would be too much afraid to do anything. And now you want to beat Teddy and to break up my home and disgrace me and make a horrible scandal in the papers. It’s cruel, unmanly, cowardly.
He With grave wonder. Are you afraid?
She Oh, of course I’m afraid. So would you be if you had any common sense. She goes to the hearth, turning her back to him, and puts one tapping foot on the fender.
He Watching her with great gravity. Perfect love casteth out fear. That is why I am not afraid. Mrs. Bompas: you do not love me.
She Turning to him with a gasp of relief. Oh, thank you, thank you! You really can be very nice, Henry.
He Why do you thank me?
She Coming prettily to him from the fireplace. For calling me Mrs. Bompas again. I feel now that you are going to be reasonable and behave like a gentleman. He drops on the stool; covers his face with his hand; and groans. What’s the matter?
He Once or twice in my life I have dreamed that I was exquisitely happy and blessed. But oh! the misgiving at the first stir of consciousness! the stab of reality! the prison walls of the bedroom! the bitter, bitter disappointment of waking! And this time! oh, this time I thought I was awake.
She Listen to me, Henry: we really haven’t time for all that sort of flapdoodle now. He starts to his feet as if she had pulled a trigger and straightened him by the release of a powerful spring, and goes past her with set teeth to the little table. Oh, take care: you nearly hit me in the chin with the top of your head.
He With fierce politeness. I beg your pardon. What is it you want me to do? I am at your service. I am ready to behave like a gentleman if you will be kind enough to explain exactly how.
She A little frightened. Thank you, Henry: I was sure you would. You’re not angry with me, are you?
He Go on. Go on quickly. Give me something to think about, or I will⁠—I will⁠—He suddenly snatches up her fan and it about to break it in his clenched fists.
She Running forward and catching at the fan, with loud lamentation. Don’t break my fan⁠—no, don’t. He slowly relaxes his grip of it as she draws it anxiously out of his hands. No, really, that’s a stupid trick. I don’t like that. You’ve no right to do that. She opens the fan, and finds that the sticks are disconnected. Oh, how could you be so inconsiderate?
He I beg your pardon. I will buy you a new one.
She Querulously. You will never be able to match it. And it was a particular favorite of mine.
He Shortly. Then you will have to do without it: that’s all.
She That’s not a very nice thing to say after breaking my pet fan, I think.
He If you knew how near I was to breaking Teddy’s pet wife and presenting him with the pieces, you would be thankful that you are alive instead of⁠—of⁠—of howling about five shillings worth of ivory. Damn your fan!
She Oh! Don’t you dare swear in my presence. One would think you were my husband.
He Again collapsing on the stool. This is some horrible dream. What has become of you? You are not my Aurora.
She Oh, well, if you come to that, what has become of you? Do you think I would ever have encouraged you if I had known you were such a little devil?
He Don’t drag me down⁠—don’t⁠—don’t. Help me to find the way back to the heights.
She Kneeling beside him and pleading. If you would only be reasonable, Henry. If you would only remember that I am on the brink of ruin, and not go on calmly saying it’s all quite simple.
He It seems so to me.
She Jumping up distractedly. If you say that again I shall do something I’ll be sorry for. Here we are, standing on the edge of a frightful precipice. No doubt it’s quite simple to go over and have done with it. But can’t you suggest anything more agreeable?
He I can suggest nothing now. A chill black darkness has fallen: I can see nothing but the ruins of our dream. He rises with a deep sigh.
She Can’t you? Well, I can. I can see Georgina rubbing those poems into Teddy. Facing him determinedly. And I tell you, Henry Apjohn, that you got me into this mess; and you must get me out of it again.
He Polite and hopeless. All I can say is that I am entirely at your service. What do you wish me to do?
She Do you know anybody else named Aurora?
He No.
She There’s no use in saying No in that frozen pigheaded way. You must know some Aurora or other somewhere.
He You said you were the only Aurora in the world. And lifting his clasped fists with a sudden return of his emotion oh God! you were the only Aurora in the world to me. He turns away from her, hiding his face.
She Petting him. Yes, yes, dear: of course. It’s very nice of you; and I appreciate it: indeed I do; but it’s not reasonable just at present. Now just listen to me. I suppose you know all those poems by heart.
He Yes, by heart. Raising his head and looking at her, with a sudden suspicion. Don’t you?
She Well, I never can remember verses; and besides, I’ve been so busy that I’ve not had time to read them all; though I intend to the very first moment I can get: I promise you that most faithfully, Henry. But now try and remember very particularly. Does the name of Bompas occur in any of the poems?
He Indignantly. No.
She You’re quite sure?
He Of course I am quite sure. How could I use such a name in a poem?
She Well, I don’t see why not. It rhymes to rumpus, which seems appropriate enough at present, goodness knows! However, you’re a poet, and you ought to know.
He What does it matter⁠—now?
She It matters a lot, I can tell you. If there’s nothing about Bompas in the poems, we can say that they were written to some other Aurora, and that you showed them to me because my name was Aurora too. So you’ve got to invent another Aurora for the occasion.
He Very coldly. Oh, if you wish me to tell a lie⁠—
She Surely, as a man of honor⁠—as a gentleman, you wouldn’t tell the truth, would you?
He Very well. You have broken my spirit and desecrated my dreams. I will lie and protest and stand on my honor: oh, I will play the gentleman, never fear.
She Yes, put it all on me, of course. Don’t be mean, Henry.
He Rousing himself with an effort. You are quite right, Mrs. Bompas: I beg your pardon. You must excuse my temper. I have got growing pains, I think.
She Growing pains!
He The process of growing from romantic boyhood into cynical maturity usually takes fifteen years. When it is compressed into fifteen minutes, the pace is too fast; and growing pains are the result.
She Oh, is this a time for cleverness? It’s settled, isn’t it, that you’re going to be nice and good, and that you’ll brazen it out to Teddy that you have some other Aurora?
He Yes: I’m capable of anything now. I should not have told him the truth by halves; and now I will not lie by halves. I’ll wallow in the honor of a gentleman.
She Dearest boy, I knew you would. I⁠—Sh! She rushes to the door, and holds it ajar, listening breathlessly.
He What is it?
She White with apprehension. It’s Teddy: I hear him tapping the new barometer. He can’t have anything serious on his mind or he wouldn’t do that. Perhaps Georgina hasn’t said anything. She steals back to the hearth. Try and look as if there was nothing the matter. Give me my gloves, quick. He hands them to her. She pulls on one hastily and begins buttoning it with ostentatious unconcern. Go further away from me, quick. He walks doggedly away from her until the piano prevents his going farther. If I button my glove, and you were to hum a tune, don’t you think that⁠—
He The tableau would be complete in its guiltiness. For Heaven’s sake, Mrs. Bompas, let that glove alone: you look like a pickpocket.
Her Husband comes in: a robust, thicknecked, well groomed city man, with a strong chin but a blithering eye and credulous mouth. He has a momentous air, but shows no sign of displeasure: rather the contrary.
Her Husband Hallo! I thought you two were at the theatre.
She I felt anxious about you, Teddy. Why didn’t you come home to dinner?
Her Husband I got a message from Georgina. She wanted me to go to her.
She Poor dear Georgina! I’m sorry I haven’t been able to call on her this last week. I hope there’s nothing the matter with her.
Her Husband Nothing, except anxiety for my welfare and yours. She steals a terrified look at Henry. By, the way, Apjohn, I should like a word with you this evening, if Aurora can spare you for a moment.
He Formally. I am at your service.
Her Husband No hurry. After the theatre will do.
He We have decided not to go.
Her Husband Indeed! Well, then, shall we adjourn to my snuggery?
She You needn’t move. I shall go and lock up my diamonds since I’m not going to the theatre. Give me my things.
Her Husband As he hands her the cloud and the mirror. Well, we shall have more room here.
He Looking about him and shaking his shoulders loose. I think I should prefer plenty of room.
Her Husband So, if it’s not disturbing you, Rory⁠—?
She Not at all. She goes out.
When the two men are alone together, Bompas deliberately takes the poems from his breast pocket; looks at them reflectively; then looks at Henry, mutely inviting his attention. Henry refuses to understand, doing his best to look unconcerned.
Her Husband Do these manuscripts seem at all familiar to you, may I ask?
He Manuscripts?
Her Husband Yes. Would you like to look at them a little closer? He proffers them under Henry’s nose.
He As with a sudden illumination of glad surprise. Why, these are my poems.
Her Husband So I gather.
He What a shame! Mrs. Bompas has shown them to you! You must think me an utter ass. I wrote them years ago after reading Swinburne’s Songs Before Sunrise. Nothing would do me then but I must reel off a set of Songs to the Sunrise. Aurora, you know: the rosy fingered Aurora. They’re all about Aurora. When Mrs. Bompas told me her name was Aurora, I couldn’t resist the temptation to lend them to her to read. But I didn’t bargain for your unsympathetic eyes.
Her Husband Grinning. Apjohn: that’s really very ready of you. You are cut out for literature; and the day will come when Rory and I will be proud to have you about the house. I have heard far thinner stories from much older men.
He With an air of great surprise. Do you mean to imply that you don’t believe me?
Her Husband Do you expect me to believe you?
He Why not? I don’t understand.
Her Husband Come! Don’t underrate your own cleverness, Apjohn. I think you understand pretty well.
He I assure you I am quite at a loss. Can you not be a little more explicit?
Her Husband Don’t overdo it, old chap. However, I will just be so far explicit as to say that if you think these poems read as if they were addressed, not to a live woman, but to a shivering cold time of day at which you were never out of bed in your life, you hardly do justice to your own literary powers⁠—which I admire and appreciate, mind you, as much as any man. Come! own up. You wrote those poems to my wife. An internal struggle prevents Henry from answering. Of course you did. He throws the poems on the table; and goes to the hearthrug, where he plants himself solidly, chuckling a little and waiting for the next move.
He Formally and carefully. Mr. Bompas: I pledge you my word you are mistaken. I need not tell you that Mrs. Bompas is a lady of stainless honor, who has never cast an unworthy thought on me. The fact that she has shown you my poems⁠—
Her Husband That’s not a fact. I came by them without her knowledge. She didn’t show them to me.
He Does not that prove their perfect innocence? She would have shown them to you at once if she had taken your quite unfounded view of them.
Her Husband Shaken. Apjohn: play fair. Don’t abuse your intellectual gifts. Do you really mean that I am making a fool of myself?
He Earnestly. Believe me, you are. I assure you, on my honor as a gentleman, that I have never had the slightest feeling for Mrs. Bompas beyond the ordinary esteem and regard of a pleasant acquaintance.
Her Husband Shortly, showing ill humor for the first time. Oh, indeed. He leaves his hearth and begins to approach Henry slowly, looking him up and down with growing resentment.
He Hastening to improve the impression made by his mendacity. I should never have dreamt of writing poems to her. The thing is absurd.
Her Husband Reddening ominously. Why is it absurd?
He Shrugging his shoulders. Well, it happens that I do not admire Mrs. Bompas⁠—in that way.
Her Husband Breaking out in Henry’s face. Let me tell you that Mrs. Bompas has been admired by better men than you, you soapy headed little puppy, you.
He Much taken aback. There is no need to insult me like this. I assure you, on my honor as a⁠—
Her Husband Too angry to tolerate a reply, and boring Henry more and more towards the piano. You don’t admire Mrs. Bompas! You would never dream of writing poems to Mrs. Bompas! My wife’s not good enough for you, isn’t she. Fiercely. Who are you, pray, that you should be so jolly superior?
He Mr. Bompas: I can make allowances for your jealousy⁠—
Her Husband Jealousy! do you suppose I’m jealous of you? No, nor of ten like you. But if you think I’ll stand here and let you insult my wife in her own house, you’re mistaken.
He Very uncomfortable with his back against the piano and Teddy standing over him threateningly. How can I convince you? Be reasonable. I tell you my relations with Mrs. Bompas are relations of perfect coldness⁠—of indifference⁠—
Her Husband Scornfully. Say it again: say it again. You’re proud of it, aren’t you? Yah! You’re not worth kicking.
Henry suddenly executes the feat known to pugilists as dipping, and changes sides with Teddy, who is now between Henry and the piano.
He Look here: I’m not going to stand this.
Her Husband Oh, you have some blood in your body after all! Good job!
He This is ridiculous. I assure you Mrs. Bompas is quite⁠—
Her Husband What is Mrs. Bompas to you, I’d like to know. I’ll tell you what Mrs. Bompas is. She’s the smartest woman in the smartest set in South Kensington, and the handsomest, and the cleverest, and the most fetching to experienced men who know a good thing when they see it, whatever she may be to conceited penny-a-lining puppies who think nothing good enough for them. It’s admitted by the best people; and not to know it argues yourself unknown. Three of our first actor-managers have offered her a hundred a week if she’d go on the stage when they start a repertory theatre; and I think they know what they’re about as well as you. The only member of the present Cabinet that you might call a handsome man has neglected the business of the country to dance with her, though he don’t belong to our set as a regular thing. One of the first professional poets in Bedford Park wrote a sonnet to her, worth all your amateur trash. At Ascot last season the eldest son of a duke excused himself from calling on me on the ground that his feelings for Mrs. Bompas were not consistent with his duty to me as host; and it did him honor and me too. But with gathering fury she isn’t good enough for you, it seems. You regard her with coldness, with indifference; and you have the cool cheek to tell me so to my face. For two pins I’d flatten your nose in to teach you manners. Introducing a fine woman to you is casting pearls before swine yelling at him before swine! d’ye hear?
He With a deplorable lack of polish. You call me a swine again and I’ll land you one on the chin that’ll make your head sing for a week.
Her Husband Exploding. What⁠—!
He charges at Henry with bull-like fury. Henry places himself on guard in the manner of a well taught boxer, and gets away smartly, but unfortunately forgets the stool which is just behind him. He falls backwards over it, unintentionally pushing it against the shins of Bompas, who falls forward over it. Mrs. Bompas, with a scream, rushes into the room between the sprawling champions, and sits down on the floor in order to get her right arm round her husband’s neck.
She You shan’t, Teddy: you shan’t. You will be killed: he is a prizefighter.
Her Husband Vengefully. I’ll prizefight him. He struggles vainly to free himself from her embrace.
She Henry: don’t let him fight you. Promise me that you won’t.
He Ruefully. I have got a most frightful bump on the back of my head. He tries to rise.
She Reaching out her left hand to seize his coattail, and pulling him down again, whilst keeping fast hold of Teddy with the other hand. Not until you have promised: not until you both have promised. Teddy tries to rise: she pulls him back again. Teddy: you promise, don’t you? Yes, yes. Be good: you promise.
Her Husband I won’t, unless he takes it back.
She He will: he does. You take it back, Henry?⁠—yes.
He Savagely. Yes. I take it back. She lets go his coat. He gets up. So does Teddy. I take it all back, all, without reserve.
She On the carpet. Is nobody going to help me up? They each take a hand and pull her up. Now won’t you shake hands and be good?
He Recklessly. I shall do nothing of the sort. I have steeped myself in lies for your sake; and the only reward I get is a lump on the back of my head the size of an apple. Now I will go back to the straight path.
She Henry: for Heaven’s sake⁠—
He It’s no use. Your husband is a fool and a brute⁠—
Her Husband What’s that you say?
He I say you are a fool and a brute; and if you’ll step outside with me I’ll say it again. Teddy begins to take off his coat for combat. Those poems were written to your wife, every word of them, and to nobody else. The scowl clears away from Bompas’s countenance. Radiant, he replaces his coat. I wrote them because I loved her. I thought her the most beautiful woman in the world; and I told her so over and over again. I adored her: do you hear? I told her that you were a sordid commercial chump, utterly unworthy of her; and so you are.
Her Husband So gratified, he can hardly believe his ears. You don’t mean it!
He Yes, I do mean it, and a lot more too. I asked Mrs. Bompas to walk out of the house with me⁠—to leave you⁠—to get divorced from you and marry me. I begged and implored her to do it this very night. It was her refusal that ended everything between us. Looking very disparagingly at him. What she can see in you, goodness only knows!
Her Husband Beaming with remorse. My dear chap, why didn’t you say so before? I apologize. Come! Don’t bear malice: shake hands. Make him shake hands, Rory.
She For my sake, Henry. After all, he’s my husband. Forgive him. Take his hand. Henry, dazed, lets her take his hand and place it in Teddy’s.
Her Husband Shaking it heartily. You’ve got to own that none of your literary heroines can touch my Rory. He turns to her and claps her with fond pride on the shoulder. Eh, Rory? They can’t resist you: none of ’em. Never knew a man yet that could hold out three days.
She Don’t be foolish, Teddy. I hope you were not really hurt, Henry. She feels the back of his head. He flinches. Oh, poor boy, what a bump! I must get some vinegar and brown paper. She goes to the bell and rings.
Her Husband Will you do me a great favor, Apjohn. I hardly like to ask; but it would be a real kindness to us both.
He What can I do?
Her Husband Taking up the poems. Well, may I get these printed? It shall be done in the best style. The finest paper, sumptuous binding, everything first class. They’re beautiful poems. I should like to show them about a bit.
She Running back from the bell, delighted with the idea, and coming between them. Oh Henry, if you wouldn’t mind!
He Oh, I don’t mind. I am past minding anything. I have grown too fast this evening.
She How old are you, Henry?
He This morning I was eighteen. Now I am⁠—confound it! I’m quoting that beast of a play. He takes the Candida tickets out of his pocket and tears them up viciously.
Her Husband What shall we call the volume? To Aurora, or something like that, eh?
He I should call it How He Lied to Her Husband.

Passion, Poison, and Petrifaction

Or, The Fatal Gazogene

A Brief Tragedy for Barns and Booths

Preface

This tragedy was written at the request of Mr. Cyril Maude, under whose direction it was performed repeatedly, with colossal success, in a booth in Regent’s Park, for the benefit of The Actors’ Orphanage, on the 14th July 1905, by Miss Irene Vanbrugh, Miss Nancy Price, Mr. G. P. Huntley, Mr. Cyril Maude, Mr. Eric Lewis, Mr. Arthur Williams, and Mr. Lennox Pawle.

As it is extremely difficult to find an actor capable of eating a real ceiling, it will be found convenient in performance to substitute the tops of old wedding cakes for bits of plaster. There is but little difference in material between the two substances; but the taste of the wedding cake is considered more agreeable by many people.

The orchestra should consist of at least a harp, a drum, and a pair of cymbals, these instruments being the most useful in enhancing the stage effect.

The landlord may with equal propriety be a landlady, if that arrangement be better suited to the resources of the company.

As the “Bill Bailey” song has not proved immortal, any equally appropriate ditty of the moment may be substituted.

Dramatis Personae

  • Lady Magnesia Fitztollemache

  • George Fitztollemache

  • Phyllis, her maid

  • Adolphus Bastable

  • A Landlord

  • A Policeman

  • A Doctor

  • Attendants

Passion, Poison and Petrifaction

In a bed-sitting room in a fashionable quarter of London a Lady sits at her dressing table, with her maid combing her hair. It is late; and the electric lamps are glowing. Apparently the room is bedless; but there stands against the opposite wall to that at which the dressing table is placed a piece of furniture that suggests a bookcase without carrying conviction. On the same side is a chest of drawers of that disastrous kind which, recalcitrant to the opener until she is provoked to violence, then suddenly come wholly out and defy all her efforts to fit them in again. Opposite this chest of drawers, on the Lady’s side of the room, is a cupboard. The presence of a row of gentleman’s boots beside the chest of drawers proclaims that the Lady is married. Her own boots are beside the cupboard. The third wall is pierced midway by the door, above which is a cuckoo clock. Near the door a pedestal bears a portrait bust of the Lady in plaster. There is a fan on the dressing table, a hatbox and rug strap on the chest of drawers, an umbrella and a bootjack against the wall near the bed. The general impression is one of brightness, beauty, and social ambition, damped by somewhat inadequate means. A certain air of theatricality is produced by the fact that though the room is rectangular it has only three walls. Not a sound is heard except the overture and the crackling of the Lady’s hair as the maid’s brush draws electric sparks from it in the dry air of the London midsummer.

The cuckoo clock strikes sixteen.
The Lady How much did the clock strike, Phyllis?
Phyllis Sixteen, my lady.
The Lady That means eleven o’clock, does it not?
Phyllis Eleven at night, my lady. In the morning it means half-past two; so if you hear it strike sixteen during your slumbers, do not rise.
The Lady I will not, Phyllis. Phyllis: I am weary. I will go to bed. Prepare my couch.
Phyllis crosses the room to the bookcase and touches a button. The front of the bookcase falls out with a crash and becomes a bed. A roll of distant thunder echoes the crash.
Phyllis Shuddering. It is a terrible night. Heaven help all poor mariners at sea! My master is late. I trust nothing has happened to him. Your bed is ready, my lady.
The Lady Thank you, Phyllis. She rises and approaches the bed. Goodnight.
Phyllis Will your ladyship not undress?
The Lady Not tonight, Phyllis. Glancing through where the fourth wall is missing. Not under the circumstances.
Phyllis Impulsively throwing herself on her knees by her mistress’s side, and clasping her round the waist. Oh, my beloved mistress, I know not why or how; but I feel that I shall never see you alive again. There is murder in the air. Thunder. Hark!
The Lady Strange! As I sat there methought I heard angels singing, “Oh, won’t you come home, Bill Bailey?” Why should angels call me Bill Bailey? My name is Magnesia Fitztollemache.
Phyllis Emphasizing the title. Lady Magnesia Fitztollemache.
Lady Magnesia In case we should never again meet in this world, let us take a last farewell.
Phyllis Embracing her with tears. My poor murdered angel mistress!
Lady Magnesia In case we should meet again, call me at half-past eleven.
Phyllis I will, I will.
Phyllis withdraws, overcome by emotion. Lady Magnesia switches off the electric light, and immediately hears the angels quite distinctly. They sing “Bill Bailey” so sweetly that she can attend to nothing else, and forgets to remove even her boots as she draws the coverlet over herself and sinks to sleep, lulled by celestial harmony. A white radiance plays on her pillow, and lights up her beautiful face. But the thunder growls again; and a lurid red glow concentrates itself on the door, which is presently flung open, revealing a saturnine figure in evening dress, partially concealed by a crimson cloak. As he steals towards the bed the unnatural glare in his eyes and the broad-bladed dagger nervously gripped in his right hand bode ill for the sleeping lady. Providentially she sneezes on the very brink of eternity; and the tension of the Murderer’s nerves is such that he bolts precipitately under the bed at the sudden and startling Atscha! A dull, heavy, rhythmic thumping⁠—the beating of his heart⁠—betrays his whereabouts. Soon he emerges cautiously and raises his head above the bed coverlet level.
The Murderer I can no longer cower here listening to the agonized thumpings of my own heart. She but snoze in her sleep. I’ll do’t. He again raises the dagger. The angels sing again. He cowers. What is this? Has that tune reached Heaven?
Lady Magnesia Waking and sitting up. My husband! All the colors of the rainbow chase one another up his face with ghastly brilliancy. Why do you change color? And what on earth are you doing with that dagger?
Fitz Affecting unconcern, hut unhinged. It is a present for you: a present from mother. Pretty, isn’t it? He displays it fatuously.
Lady Magnesia But she promised me a fish slice.
Fitz This is a combination fish slice and dagger. One day you have salmon for dinner. The next you have a murder to commit. See?
Lady Magnesia My sweet mother-in-law! Someone knocks at the door. That is Adolphus’s knock. Fitz’s face turns a dazzling green. What has happened to your complexion? You have turned green. Now I think of it, you always do when Adolphus is mentioned. Aren’t you going to let him in?
Fitz Certainly not. He goes to the door. Adolphus: you cannot enter. My wife is undressed and in bed.
Lady Magnesia Rising. I am not. Come in, Adolphus. She switches on the electric light.
Adolphus Without. Something most important has happened. I must come in for a moment.
Fitz Calling to Adolphus. Something important happened? What is it?
Adolphus Without. My new clothes have come home.
Fitz He says his new clothes have come home.
Lady Magnesia Running to the door and opening it. Oh, come in, come in. Let me see.
Adolphus Bastable enters. He is in evening dress, made in the latest fashion, with the right half of the coat and the left half of the trousers yellow and the other halves black. His silver-spangled waistcoat has a crimson handkerchief stuck between it and his shirt front.
Adolphus What do you think of it?
Lady Magnesia It is a dream! a creation! She turns him about to admire him.
Adolphus Proudly. I shall never be mistaken for a waiter again.
Fitz A drink, Adolphus?
Adolphus Thanks.
Fitztollemache goes to the cupboard and takes out a tray with tumblers and a bottle of whisky. He puts them on the dressing table.
Fitz Is the gazogene full?
Lady Magnesia Yes: you put in the powders yourself today.
Fitz Sardonically. So I did. The special powders! Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! His face Is again strangely variegated.
Lady Magnesia Your complexion is really going to pieces. Why do you laugh in that silly way at nothing?
Fitz Nothing! Ha, ha! Nothing! Ha, ha, ha!
Adolphus I hope, Mr. Fitztollemache, you are not laughing at my clothes. I warn you that I am an Englishman. You may laugh at my manners, at my brains, at my national institutions; but if you laugh at my clothes, one of us must die.
Thunder.
Fitz I laughed but at the irony of Fate. He takes a gazogene from the cupboard.
Adolphus Satisfied. Oh, that! Oh, yes, of course!
Fitz Let us drown all unkindness in a loving cup. He puts the gazogene on the floor in the middle of the room. Pardon the absence of a table: we found it in the way and pawned it. He takes the whisky bottle from the dressing table.
Lady Magnesia We picnic at home now. It is delightful.
She takes three tumblers from the dressing table and sits on the floor, presiding over the gazogene, with Fitz and Adolphus squatting on her left and right respectively. Fitz pours whisky into the tumblers.
Fitz As Magnesia is about to squirt soda into his tumbler. Stay! No soda for me. Let Adolphus have it all⁠—all. I will take mine neat.
Lady Magnesia Proffering tumbler to Adolphus. Pledge me, Adolphus.
Fitz Kiss the cup, Magnesia. Pledge her, man. Drink deep.
Adolphus To Magnesia!
Fitz To Magnesia! The two men drink. It is done. Scrambling to his feet. Adolphus: you have but ten minutes to live⁠—if so long.
Adolphus What mean you?
Magnesia Rising. My mind misgives me. I have a strange feeling here. Touching her heart.
Adolphus So have I, but lower down. Touching his stomach. That gazogene is disagreeing with me.
Fitz It was poisoned!
Sensation.
Adolphus Rising. Help! Police!
Fitz Dastard! you would appeal to the law! Can you not die like a gentleman?
Adolphus But so young! when I have only worn my new clothes once.
Magnesia It is too horrible. To Fitz. Fiend! what drove you to this wicked deed?
Fitz Jealousy. You admired his clothes: you did not admire mine.
Adolphus My clothes! His face lights up with heavenly radiance. Have I indeed been found worthy to be the first clothes-martyr? Welcome, death! Hark! angels call me. The celestial choir again raises its favorite chant. He listens with a rapt expression. Suddenly the angels sing out of tune; and the radiance on the poisoned man’s face turns a sickly green. Yah⁠—ah! Oh⁠—ahoo! The gazogene is disagreeing extremely. Oh! He throws himself on the bed, writhing.
Magnesia To Fitz. Monster: what have you done? She points to the distorted figure on the bed. That was once a Man, beautiful and glorious. What have you made of it? A writhing, agonized, miserable, moribund worm.
Adolphus In a tone of the strongest remonstrance. Oh, I say! Oh, come! No: look here, Magnesia! Really!
Magnesia Oh, is this a time for petty vanity? Think of your misspent life⁠—
Adolphus Much injured. Whose misspent life?
Magnesia Continuing relentlessly. Look into your conscience: look into your stomach. Adolphus collapses in hideous spasms. She turns to Fitz. And this is your handiwork!
Fitz Mine is a passionate nature, Magnesia. I must have your undivided love. I must have your love: do you hear? Love! Love!! Love!!! Love!!!! Love!!!!!
He raves, accompanied by a fresh paroxysm from the victim on the bed.
Magnesia With sudden resolution. You shall have it.
Fitz Enraptured. Magnesia! I have recovered your love! Oh, how slight appears the sacrifice of this man compared to so glorious a reward! I would poison ten men without a thought of self to gain one smile from you.
Adolphus In a broken voice. Farewell, Magnesia: my last hour is at hand. Farewell, farewell, farewell!
Magnesia At this supreme moment, George Fitztollemache, I solemnly dedicate to you all that I formerly dedicated to poor Adolphus.
Adolphus Oh, please not poor Adolphus yet. I still live, you know.
Magnesia The vital spark but flashes before it vanishes. Adolphus groans. And now, Adolphus, take this last comfort from the unhappy Magnesia Fitztollemache. As I have dedicated to George all that I gave to you, so I will bury in your grave⁠—or in your urn if you are cremated⁠—all that I gave to him.
Fitz I hardly follow this.
Magnesia I will explain. George: hitherto I have given Adolphus all the romance of my nature⁠—all my love⁠—all my dreams⁠—all my caresses. Henceforth they are yours!
Fitz Angel!
Magnesia Adolphus: forgive me if this pains you.
Adolphus Don’t mention it. I hardly feel it. The gazogene is so much worse. Taken bad again. Oh!
Magnesia Peace, poor sufferer: there is still some balm. You are about to hear what I am going to dedicate to you.
Adolphus All I ask is a peppermint lozenge, for mercy’s sake.
Magnesia I have something far better than any lozenge: the devotion of a lifetime. Formerly it was George’s. I kept his house, or rather, his lodgings. I mended his clothes. I darned his socks. I bought his food. I interviewed his creditors. I stood between him and the servants. I administered his domestic finances. When his hair needed cutting or his countenance was imperfectly washed, I pointed it out to him. The trouble that all this gave me made him prosaic in my eyes. Familiarity bred contempt. Now all that shall end. My husband shall be my hero, my lover, my perfect knight. He shall shield me from all care and trouble. He shall ask nothing in return but love⁠—boundless, priceless, rapturous, soul-enthralling love, Love! Love!! Love!!! She raves and flings her arms about Fitz. And the duties I formerly discharged shall be replaced by the one supreme duty of duties: the duty of weeping at Adolphus’s tomb.
Fitz Reflectively. My ownest, this sacrifice makes me feel that I have perhaps been a little selfish. I cannot help feeling that there is much to be said for the old arrangement. Why should Adolphus die for my sake?
Adolphus I am not dying for your sake, Fitz. I am dying because you poisoned me.
Magnesia You do not fear to die, Adolphus, do you?
Adolphus N‑n‑no, I don’t exactly fear to die. Still⁠—
Fitz Still, if an antidote⁠—
Adolphus Bounding from the bed. Antidote!
Magnesia With wild hope. Antidote!
Fitz If an antidote would not be too much of an anticlimax.
Adolphus Anticlimax be blowed! Do you think I am going to die to please the critics? Out with your antidote. Quick!
Fitz The best antidote to the poison I have given you is lime, plenty of lime.
Adolphus Lime! You mock me! Do you think I carry lime about in my pockets?
Fitz There is the plaster ceiling.
Magnesia Yes, the ceiling. Saved, saved, saved!
All three frantically shy boots at the ceiling. Flakes of plaster rain down which Adolphus devours, at first ravenously, then with a marked falling off in relish.
Magnesia Picking up a huge slice. Take this, Adolphus: it is the largest. She crams it into his mouth.
Fitz Ha! a lump off the cornice! Try this.
Adolphus Desperately. Stop! stop!
Magnesia Do not stop. You will die. She tries to stuff him again.
Adolphus Resolutely. I prefer death.
Magnesia
Fitz
Throwing themselves on their knees on either side of him. For our sakes, Adolphus, persevere.
Adolphus No: unless you can supply lime in liquid form, I must perish. Finish that ceiling I cannot and will not.
Magnesia I have a thought⁠—an inspiration. My bust. She snatches it from its pedestal and brings it to him.
Adolphus Gazing fondly at it. Can I resist it?
Fitz Try the bun.
Adolphus Gnawing the knot of hair at the back of the bust’s head: it makes him ill. Yah, I cannot. I cannot. Not even your bust, Magnesia. Do not ask me. Let me die.
Fitz Pressing the bust on him. Force yourself to take a mouthful. Down with it, Adolphus!
Adolphus Useless. It would not stay down. Water! Some fluid! Ring for something to drink. He chokes.
Magnesia I will save you. She rushes to the bell and rings.
Phyllis, in her nightgown, with her hair prettily made up into a chevaux defrise of crocuses with pink and yellow curlpapers, rushes in straight to Magnesia.
Phyllis Hysterically. My beloved mistress, once more we meet. She sees Fitztollemache and screams. Ah! ah! ah! A Man! She sees Adolphus. Men!! She flies; but Fitztollemache seizes her by the nightgown just as she is escaping. Unhand me, villain!
Fitz This is no time for prudery, girl. Mr. Bastable is dying.
Phyllis With concern. Indeed, sir? I hope he will not think it unfeeling of me to appear at his deathbed in curlpapers.
Magnesia We know you have a good heart, Phyllis. Take this giving her the bust; dissolve it in a jug of hot water; and bring it back instantly. Mr. Bastable’s life depends on your haste.
Phyllis Hesitating. It do seem a pity, don’t it, my lady, to spoil your lovely bust?
Adolphus Tush! This craze for fine art is beyond all bounds. Off with you. He pushes her out. Drink, drink, drink! My entrails are parched. Drink! He rushes deliriously to the gazogene.
Fitz Rushing after him. Madman, you forget! It is poisoned!
Adolphus I don’t care. Drink, drink! They wrestle madly for the gazogene. In the struggle they squirt all its contents away, mostly into one another’s face. Adolphus at last flings Fitztollemache to the floor, and puts the spout into his mouth. Empty! empty! With a shriek of despair he collapses on the bed, clasping the gazogene like a baby, and weeping over it.
Fitz Aside to Magnesia. Magnesia: I have always pretended not to notice it; but you keep a siphon for your private use in my hatbox.
Magnesia I use it for washing old lace; but no matter: he shall have it. She produces a siphon from the hatbox, and offers a tumbler of soda-water to Adolphus.
Adolphus Thanks, thanks, oh, thanks! He drinks. A terrific fizzing is heard. He starts up screaming. Help! help! The ceiling is effervescing! I am bursting! He wallows convulsively on the bed.
Fitz Quick! the rug strap! They pack him with blankets and strap him. Is that tight enough?
Magnesia Anxiously. Will you hold, do you think?
Adolphus The peril is past. The soda-water has gone flat.
Magnesia
Fitz
Thank heaven!
Phyllis returns with a washstand ewer, in which she has dissolved the bust.
Magnesia Snatching it. At last!
Fitz You are saved. Drain it to the dregs.
Fitztollemache holds the lip of the ewer to Adolphus’s mouth and gradually raises it until it stands upside down. Adolphus’s efforts to swallow it are fearful, Phyllis thumping his back when he chokes, and Magnesia loosening the straps when he moans. At last, with a sigh of relief, he sinks back in the women’s arms. Fitz shakes the empty ewer upside down like a potman shaking the froth out of a flagon.
Adolphus How inexpressibly soothing to the chest! A delicious numbness steals through all my members. I would sleep.
Magnesia
Fitz
Phyllis
Whispering together. Let him sleep.
He sleeps. Celestial harps are heard, but their chords cease on the abrupt entrance of the Landlord, a vulgar person in pyjamas.
The Landlord Eah! Eah! Wots this? Wots all this noise? Ah kin ennybody sleep through it? Looking at the floor and ceiling. Ellow! wot you bin doin te maw ceilin?
Fitz Silence, or leave the room. If you wake that man he dies.
The Landlord If e kin sleep through the noise you three mikes e kin sleep through ennythink.
Magnesia Detestable vulgarian: your pronunciation jars on the finest chords of my nature. Begone!
The Landlord Looking at Adolphus. Aw downt blieve eze esleep. Aw blieve eze dead. Calling. Pleece! Pleece! Merder! A blue halo plays mysteriously on the door, which opens and reveals a Policeman. Thunder. Eah, pleecmin: these three’s bin an merdered this gent between em, an naw tore moy ahse dahn.
The Policeman Offended. Policeman, indeed! Where’s your manners?
Fitz Officer⁠—
The Policeman With distinguished consideration. Sir?
Fitz As between gentlemen⁠—
The Policeman Bowing. Sir: to you.
Fitz Bowing. I may inform you that my friend had an acute attack of indigestion. No carbonate of soda being available, he swallowed a portion of this man’s ceiling. Pointing to Adolphus. Behold the result!
The Policeman The ceiling was poisoned! Well, of all the artful⁠—He collars the Landlord. I arrest you for wilful murder.
The Landlord Appealing to the heavens. Ow, is this jestice! Ah could aw tell e wiz gowin te eat moy ceilin?
The Policeman Releasing him. True. The case is more complicated than I thought. He tries to lift Adolphus’s arm but cannot. Stiff already.
The Landlord Trying to lift Adolphus’s leg. An’ precious evvy. Feeling the calf. Woy, eze gorn ez awd ez niles.
Fitz Rushing to the bed. What is this?
Magnesia Oh, say not he is dead. Phyllis: fetch a doctor. Phyllis runs out. They all try to lift Adolphus, but he is perfectly stiff, and as heavy as lead. Rouse him. Shake him.
The Policeman Exhausted. Whew! Is he a man or a statue? Magnesia utters a piercing scream. What’s wrong, Miss?
Magnesia To Fitz. Do you not see what has happened?
Fitz Striking his forehead. Horror on horror’s head!
The Landlord Wotjemean?
Magnesia The plaster has set inside him. The officer was right: he is indeed a living statue.
Magnesia flings herself on the stony breast of Adolphus. Fitztollemache buries his head in his hands; and his chest heaves convulsively. The Policeman takes a small volume from his pocket and consults it.
The Policeman This case is not provided for in my book of instructions. It don’t seem no use trying artificial respiration, do it? To the Landlord. Here! lend a hand, you. We’d best take him and set him up in Trafalgar Square.
The Landlord Aushd pat im in the cestern an worsh it aht of im.
Phyllis comes back with a Doctor.
Phyllis The medical man, my lady.
The Policeman A poison case, sir.
The Doctor Do you mean to say that an unqualified person! a layman! has dared to administer poison in my district?
The Policeman Raising Magnesia tenderly. It looks like it. Hold up, my lady.
The Doctor Not a moment must be lost The patient must be kept awake at all costs. Constant and violent motion is necessary.
He snatches Magnesia from the Policeman, and rushes her about the room.
Fitz Stop! That is not the poisoned person!
The Doctor It is you, then. Why did you not say so before?
He seizes Fitztollemache and rushes him about.
The Landlord Naow, naow, thet ynt im.
The Doctor What, you!
He pounces on the Landlord and rushes him round.
The Landlord Eah! chack it He trips the Doctor up. Both fall. Jest owld this leoonatic, will you. Mister Horficer?
The Policeman Dragging both of them to their feet. Come out of it, will you. You must all come with me to the station.
Thunder.
Magnesia What! In this frightful storm!
The hail patters noisily on the window.
Phyllis I think it’s raining.
The wind howls.
The Landlord It’s thanderin and lawtnin.
Fitz It’s dangerous.
The Policeman Drawing his baton and whistle. If you won’t come quietly, then⁠—
He whistles. A fearful flash is followed by an appalling explosion of heaven’s artillery. A thunderbolt enters the room, and strikes the helmet of the devoted constable, whence it is attracted to the waistcoat of the Doctor by the lancet in his pocket. Finally it leaps with fearful force on the Landlord, who, being of a gross and spongy nature, absorbs the electric fluid at the cost of his life. The others look on horror-stricken as the three victims, after reeling, jostling, cannoning through a ghastly quadrille, at last sink inanimate on the carpet.
Magnesia Listening at the Doctor’s chest. Dead!
Fitz Kneeling by the Landlord, and raising his hand, which drops with a thud. Dead!
Phyllis Seizing the looking glass and holding it to the Policeman’s lips. Dead!
Fitz Solemnly rising. The copper attracted the lightning.
Magnesia Rising. After life’s fitful fever they sleep well. Phyllis: sweep them up.
Phyllis replaces the looking glass on the dressing table; takes up the fan; and fans the Policeman, who rolls away like a leaf before the wind to the wall. She disposes similarly of the Landlord and Doctor.
Phyllis Will they be in your way if I leave them there until morning, my lady? Or shall I bring up the ashpan and take them away?
Magnesia They will not disturb us. Goodnight, Phyllis.
Phyllis Goodnight, my lady. Goodnight, sir.
She retires.
Magnesia And now, husband, let us perform our last sad duty to our friend. He has become his own monument. Let us erect him. He is heavy; but love can do much.
Fitz A litte leverage will get him on his feet. Give me my umbrella.
Magnesia True.
She hands him the umbrella, and takes up the bootjack. They get them under Adolphus’s back, and prize him up on his feet.
Fitz That’s done it! Whew!
Magnesia Kneeling at the left hand of the statue. Forever and forever, Adolphus.
Fitz Kneeling at the right hand of the statue. The rest is silence.
The Angels sing “Bill Bailey.” The statue raises its hands in an attitude of blessing, and turns its limelit face to heaven as the curtain falls. National Anthem.
Attendants In front. All out for the next performance. Pass along, please, ladies and gentlemen: pass along.

The Interlude at the Playhouse

Dramatis Personae

  • The Manager’s Wife

  • The Manager

  • The Conductor

  • A Carpenter

  • The Stage Manager

The Interlude at the Playhouse

Opening night. Brilliant first-night audience assembled. Conclusion of overture. In each programme a slip has been distributed stating that before the play begins the Manager will address a few words to the audience.

The float is turned up. Lights down in auditorium.
Expectancy. Silence.
The act drop is swung back. Evidently somebody is coming forward to make a speech.
Enter before the curtain the Manager’s Wife, with one of the programme slips in her hand.
The Manager’s Wife Ladies and gentlemen. She hesitates, overcome with nervousness: then plunges ahead. About this speech⁠—you know⁠—this little slip in your programme⁠—it says Cyril⁠—I mean Mr. Maude⁠—I am so frightfully nervous⁠—I⁠—she begins tearing up the slip carefully into very small pieces⁠—I have to get this finished before he comes up from his dressing room, because he doesn’t know what I’m doing. If he did⁠—! Well, what I want to say is⁠—of course I am saying it very badly because I never could speak in public; but the fact is, neither can Cyril. Excuse my calling him Cyril; I know I should speak of him as Mr. Maude, but⁠—but⁠—perhaps I had better explain that we are married; and the force of habit is so strong⁠—er⁠—yes, isn’t it? You see, it’s like this. At least, what I wanted to say is⁠—is⁠—is⁠—er⁠—. A little applause would encourage me perhaps, if you don’t mind. Thank you. Of course, it’s so ridiculous to be nervous like this, among friends, isn’t it? But I have had such a dreadful week at home over this speech of Cyril’s. He gets so angry with me when I tell him that he can’t make speeches, and that nobody wants him to make one! I only wanted to encourage him; but he is so irritable when he has to build a theatre! Of course, you wouldn’t think so, seeing him act, but you don’t know what he is at home. Well, dear ladies and gentlemen, will you be very nice and kind to him when he is speaking, and if he is nervous, don’t notice it? And please don’t make any noise; the least sound upsets him and puts his speech out of his head. It is really a very good speech; he has not let me see the manuscript, and he thinks I know nothing about it, but I have heard him make it four times in his sleep. He does it very well when he is asleep⁠—quite like an orator; but unfortunately he is awake now and in a fearful state of nerves. I felt I must come out and ask you to be kind to him⁠—after all, we are old friends, aren’t we? Applause. Oh, thank you, thank you; that is your promise to me to be kind to him. Now I will run away. Please don’t tell him I dared to do this. Going. And, please, please, not the least noise. If a hairpin drops, all is lost. Coming back to centre. Oh, and Mr. Conductor, would you be so good, when he comes to the pathetic part, to give him a little slow music? Something affecting, you know.
Conductor Certainly, Mrs. Maude, certainly.
The Manager’s Wife Thank you. You know, it is one of the great sorrows of his life that the managers will not give him an engagement in melodrama. Not that he likes melodrama, but he says that the slow music is such a support on the stage; and he needs all the support he can get tonight, poor fellow! The⁠—
A Carpenter From the side, putting his head round the edge of the curtain. Tsst! ma’am, tsst!
The Manager’s Wife Eh? What’s the matter?
The Carpenter The governor’s dressed and coming up, ma’am.
The Manager’s Wife Oh! To the audience. Not a word. She hurries off, with her finger on her lips.
The warning for the band sounds. “Auld Lang Syne” is softly played. The curtain rises, and discovers a reading table, with an elaborate triple-decked folding desk on it. A thick manuscript of unbound sheets is on the desk. A tumbler and decanter, with water, and two candles shaded from the audience are on the table. Right of table, a chair, in which the Manager’s Wife is seated. Another chair, empty, left on table. At the desk stands the Manager, ghastly pale. (Applause.) When silence is restored he makes two or three visible efforts to speak.
The Manager’s Wife Aside. Courage, dear.
The Manager Smiling with effort. Oh, quite so, quite so. Don’t be frightened, dearest. I am quite self-possessed. It would be very silly for me to⁠—er⁠—there is no occasion for nervousness⁠—I⁠—er⁠—quite accustomed to public life⁠—er⁠—ahem! He opens the manuscript, raises his head, and takes breath. Er⁠—He flattens the manuscript out with his hand, affecting the ease and large gesture of an orator. The desk collapses with an appalling clatter. He collapses, shaking with nervousness, into the chair.
The Manager’s Wife Running to him solicitously. Never mind, dear, it was only the desk. Come, come now. You’re better now, aren’t you? The audience is waiting.
The Manager I thought it was the station.
The Manager’s Wife There’s no station there now, dear; it’s quite safe. Replacing the MS. on the desk. There! That’s right. She sits down and composes herself to listen.
The Manager Beginning his speech. Dear friends⁠—I wish I could call you ladies and gentlemen⁠—
The Manager’s Wife Hm! Hm! Hm!
The Manager What’s the matter?
The Manager’s Wife Prompting him. Ladies and gentlemen⁠—I wish I could call you dear friends.
The Manager Well, what did I say?
The Manager’s Wife You said it the other way about. No matter. Go on. They will understand.
The Manager Well, what difference does it make? Testily. How am I to make a speech if I am to be interrupted in this way? To the audience. Excuse my poor wife, ladies and gentlemen. She is naturally a little nervous tonight. You will overlook a woman’s weakness. To his wife. Compose yourself, my dear. Ahem! He returns to the MS. The piece of land on which our theatre is built is mentioned in Domesday Book, and you will be glad to hear that I have succeeded in tracing its history almost year by year for the eight hundred years that have elapsed since that book⁠—perhaps the most interesting of all English books⁠—was written. That history I now propose to impart to you. Winifred, I really cannot make a speech if you look at your watch. If you think I am going on too long, say so.
The Manager’s Wife Not at all, dear. But our friends may not be so fond of history as you are.
The Manager Why not? I am surprised at you, Winifred. Do you suppose that this is an ordinary frivolous audience of mere playgoers? You are behind the times. Look at our friend Tree, making a fortune out of Roman history! Look at the Court Theatre; they listen to this sort of thing for three hours at a stretch there. Look at the Royal Institution, the Statistical Society, the House of Commons! Are we less scholarly, less cultured, less serious than the audiences there? I say nothing of my own humble powers, but am I less entertaining than an average Cabinet Minister? You show great ignorance of the times we live in, Winifred, and if my speech bores you, that only shows that you are not in the movement. I am determined that this theatre shall be in the movement.
The Manager’s Wife Well, all I can tell you is that if you don’t get a little more movement into your speech, there won’t be time for Toddles.
The Manager That does not matter. We can omit Toddles if necessary. I have played Toddles before. If you suppose I am burning to play Toddles again you are very much mistaken. If the true nature of my talent were understood I should be playing Hamlet. Ask the audience whether they would not like to see me play Hamlet. Enthusiastic assent. There! You ask me why I don’t play Hamlet instead of Toddles.
The Manager’s Wife I never asked you anything of the kind.
The Manager Please don’t contradict me, Winifred⁠—at least, not in public. I say you ask me why I don’t play Hamlet instead of Toddles. Well, the reason is that anybody can play Hamlet, but it takes me to play Toddles. I leave Hamlet to those who can provide no livelier form of entertainment. Resolutely returning to the MS. I am now going back to the year eleven hundred.
The Stage Manager Coming on in desperation. No, sir, you can’t go back all that way; you promised me you would be done in ten minutes. I’ve got to set for the first act.
The Manager Well, is it my fault? My wife won’t let me speak. I have not been able to get in a word edgeways. Coaxing. Come, there’s a dear, good chap. Just let me have another twenty minutes or so. The audience wants to hear my speech. You wouldn’t disappoint them, would you?
The Stage Manager Going. Well, it’s as you please, sir; not as I please. Only don’t blame me if the audience loses its last train and comes back to sleep in the theatre, that’s all. He goes off with the air of a man who is prepared for the worst.
During the conversation with the Stage Manager, the Manager’s Wife, unobserved by her husband, steals the manuscript; replaces the last two leaves of it on the desk; puts the rest on her chair and sits down on it.
The Manager That man is hopelessly frivolous; I really must get a more cultured staff. To the audience. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m extremely sorry for these unfortunate interruptions and delays; you can see that they are not my fault. Returning to the desk. Ahem! Er⁠—hallo! I am getting along faster than I thought. I shall not keep you much longer now. Resuming his oration. Ladies and gentlemen, I have dealt with our little Playhouse in its historical aspect. I have dealt with it in its political aspect, in its financial aspect, in its artistic aspect, in its social aspect, in its County Council aspect, in its biological and psychological aspects. You have listened to me with patience and sympathy. You have followed my arguments with intelligence, and accepted my conclusions with indulgence. I have explained to you why I have given our new theatre its pleasant old name; why I selected Toddles as the opening piece. I have told you of our future plans, of the engagements we have made, the pieces we intend to produce, the policy we are resolved to pursue. With graver emphasis. There remains only one word more. With pathos. If that word has a personal note in it you will forgive me. With deeper pathos. If the note is a deeper and tenderer one than I usually venture to sound on the stage, I hope you will not think it out of what I believe is called my line. With emotion. Ladies and gentlemen, it is now more than twenty years since I and my dear wife⁠—Violins tremolando; flute solo, “Auld Lang Syne.” What’s that noise? Stop! What do you mean by this?
The band is silent.
The Manager’s Wife They are only supporting you, Cyril. Nothing could be more appropriate.
The Manager Supporting me! They have emptied my soul of all its welling pathos. I never heard anything so ridiculous. Just as I was going to pile it on about you, too.
The Manager’s Wife Go on, dear. The audience was just getting interested.
The Manager So was I. And then the band starts on me. Is this Drury Lane or is it the Playhouse? Now I haven’t the heart to go on.
The Manager’s Wife Oh, please do. You were getting on so nicely.
The Manager Of course I was. I had just got everybody into a thoroughly serious frame of mind, and then the silly band sets everybody laughing⁠—just like the latest fashion in tragedy. All my trouble gone for nothing! There’s nothing left of my speech now; it might as well be the Education Bill.
The Manager’s Wife But you must finish it, dear.
The Manager I won’t. Finish it yourself.
Exit in high dudgeon.
The Manager’s Wife

Rising and coming center. Ladies and gentlemen, perhaps I had better finish it. You see, what my husband and I have been trying to do is a very difficult thing. We have some friends here⁠—some old and valued friends⁠—some young ones, too, we hope, but we also have for the first time in this house of ours the great public. We dare not call ourselves the friends of the public. We are only its servants and like all servants we are very much afraid of seeming disrespectful if we allow ourselves to be too familiar, and we are most at our ease when we are doing our work. We rather dread occasions like these, when we are allowed, and even expected, to step out of our place, and speak in our own persons of our own affairs⁠—even for a moment, perhaps, very discreetly, of our own feelings. Well, what can we do? We recite a little verse; we make a little speech; we are shy; in the end we put ourselves out of countenance, put you out of countenance, and strain your attitude of kindness and welcome until it becomes an attitude of wishing that it was all over. Well, we resolved not to do that tonight if we could help it. After all, you know how glad we are to see you, for you have the advantage of us: you can do without us; we cannot do without you. I will not say that

The drama’s laws the drama’s patrons give,
And we who live to please must please to live,

because that is not true; and it never has been true. The drama’s laws have a higher source than your caprice or ours; and in in this Playhouse of ours we will not please you except on terms honourable to ourselves and to you. But on those terms we hope that you may spend many pleasant hours here, and we as many hardworking ones as at our old home in the Haymarket. And now may I run away and tell Cyril that his speech has been a great success after all, and that you are quite ready for Toddles? Assent and applause. Thank you. Exit.

The Fascinating Foundling

A Disgrace to the Author

Dramatis Personae

  • Horace Brabazon

  • Mercer, an elderly clerk

  • Cardonius Boshington, the Lord Chancellor

  • Anastasia Vulliamy

The Fascinating Foundling

Morning. Office of the Lord Chancellor. Door on the right leading to his private room, near the fireplace. Door on the left leading to the public staircase.

Mercer, an elderly clerk, seated at work. Enter, to him, through the public door, Horace Brabazon, a smart and beautiful young man of nineteen, dressed in the extremity of fashion, with a walking stick.
Brabazon I want to see the Lord Chancellor.
Mercer Have you an appointment?
Brabazon No.
Mercer Then you can’t see the Lord Chancellor.
Brabazon I tell you I must see him.
Mercer I tell you you cant. Look here: do you think the Lord Chancellor’s a palmist or a hair doctor that people can rush in out of the street and see him whenever they want to?
Brabazon That speech was meant to insult and humiliate me. I make it a rule to fight people who attempt to insult and humiliate me. Throwing away his stick. Put up your hands. He puts up his own.
Mercer Here: you let me alone. You leave this office, d’ye hear; or I’ll have the police in on you.
Brabazon You are face to face with your destiny; and your destiny is to fight me. Be quick: I’m going to begin. Don’t look pale: I scorn to take you by surprise. I shall lead off with my left on your right eye. Put them up.
Mercer I ain’t going to fight you. Let me alone, will you? I said nothing to you.
Brabazon Liar and slave. Fight, I tell you: fight.
Mercer Oh, was there ever the like of this? Don’t make such a noise.
Brabazon I’m making it on purpose. I want you to fight because it’ll make more noise than anything else. The Lord Chancellor will come to see what the noise is about if only it’s loud enough. Time! He spars.
Mercer Retreating to the fireplace and snatching up the poker. Ah, would you? You come near me, and I’ll split your head open, I will.
Brabazon Snatching up the tongs, and engaging him in a stage fight of the noisiest. Lay on, Macduff; and damned be he that first cries Hold! Enough!
The Lord Chancellor enters indignantly.
The Lord Chancellor What’s this? Who is this gentleman?
Brabazon The Lord Chancellor. Good. To Mercer. Hence, horrible shadow: unreal mockery, hence. My lord, I have called on professional business. In the matter of Brabazon, an infant.
The Lord Chancellor If you are a solicitor, sir, you must be aware that this is not the proper way to approach the Court.
Brabazon I approach you as the father of all the orphans in Chancery.
The Lord Chancellor Sir⁠—
Brabazon Don’t fly out: I’ll explain everything. You remember the matter of Brabazon, an infant. Come, now! frankly as man to man you do remember the matter of Brabazon, an infant.
The Lord Chancellor There is such a case, I believe.
Brabazon Of course there is. Well, I’m the infant. I’m Brabazon. I’ll call thee Hamlet! King! father! Royal Dane: wilt thou not answer me? Prosaically. Now you see, don’t you?
The Lord Chancellor You are young Horace Brabazon, are you?
Brabazon I am, my lord. Such is life!
The Lord Chancellor You are a ward of the Court; and you have systematically disobeyed every order made in your case.
Brabazon The orders were unreasonable. Fatuous, in fact.
The Lord Chancellor Sir⁠—
Brabazon Let me explain. One of the orders was that I was to go into the Church.
The Lord Chancellor At your own desire.
Brabazon Exactly. But I should not have been indulged. I was too young. How did I know what was good for me? I put it to you as one man to another: do I look like an archbishop?
The Lord Chancellor Stuff, sir.
Brabazon As you say, nothing could have been more idiotic. You ought to have known better. No: the Church is not in my line. Nature intended me for the stage. The Unreal Mockery here was practising Macduff with me when you came in. Now what I want to know is, can you get me an engagement. As your ward, I have a right to expect that of you. You must know lots of people who could give me a start. And there’s another thing: very important. I⁠—Oh, by the way, won’t you sit down? Excuse me keeping you standing all this time. Macduff: a chair.
The Lord Chancellor With ironic politeness. You are too good. He sits down.
Brabazon Don’t mention it. Well, you know: I want some good home influence to steady me. You see you can’t steady me: you’re too much occupied here with your shop: besides, you may shake a loose leg yourself occasionally for all the public knows, eh? Even if you are virtuous, I should probably lead you astray. No: what I want is a wife. Not a young woman, you know. Someone old enough to be my mother: say thirty or so. I adore a mature woman. Not old enough to be your mother, you understand: old enough to be my mother. I attach some importance to that distinction; so be good enough to bear it in mind. One mustn’t overdo these notions.
The Lord Chancellor Mr. Mercer, will you be good enough to make a careful note of this gentleman’s requirements: an engagement at a leading theatre to play Macbeth, and a wife of quiet habits and grave disposition. Anything else, Mr. Brabazon?
Brabazon Nothing today, thank you. And now, I know better than to take up the time of a busy man. Happy to have made your acquaintance. So long! Ta, ta, Macduff.
He goes out.
The Lord Chancellor What do you mean by letting this lunatic in, Mr. Mercer? I’m extremely annoyed.
Mercer I didn’t let him in, my lord. He came in. I was keeping him from you at the risk of my life when you came in to ask what the noise was.
The Lord Chancellor With emotion. My faithful Mercer.
Mercer My honored master. They shake hands, weeping.
The Lord Chancellor We were happy together until this man came between us.
Mercer Let us try to forget him, my lord. Turns to his desk and sees Brabazon’s walking stick on the floor. My lord, he has left his walking stick behind. He will return for it. Let us fly. He picks it up and puts it on the desk.
The Lord Chancellor Nonsense, Mercer: we have no aeroplane; and if we had we shouldn’t know how to use it. Hark! A visitor at the door. They both rush to it. The handle is turned. Tell him we have both gone out.
Mercer Useless, my lord: he is a man of strong reasoning powers: he would conclude, on hearing our voices, that we were both within.
A Woman’s Voice Is anybody there? Let me in. She rattles the door.
The Lord Chancellor That is the voice of a young and probably beautiful woman.
Mercer It is, my lord.
The Lord Chancellor Then why the dickens don’t you open the door instead of striking melodramatic attitudes? How dare you keep the lady waiting? I’m very much annoyed.
Mercer I’m sorry, my lord. He opens the door.
Anastasia Vulliamy enters.
Anastasia To Mercer. Is this the Lord Chancellor’s?
Mercer Yes.
Anastasia Sir Cardonius Boshington’s?
Mercer Yes, ma’am.
Anastasia Are you the Lord Chancellor?
Mercer No, ma’am. Leastways, not yet.
Anastasia What are you?
Mercer I’m the Lord Chancellor’s⁠—
Anastasia Secretary?
Mercer Well, hardly that, ma’am. If you ask me, I should say I was a sort of what you might call a clerk-valet to his lordship.
Anastasia Are you a gentleman?
Mercer Staggered. Well, that’s a poser, Miss, really. I’m in a manner of speaking a gentleman.
Anastasia In what manner of speaking are you a gentleman?
Mercer Well, Miss, I’m a gentleman to my tobacconist. Every man is a gentleman to his tobacconist. The parliamentary candidate for Hornsey always addresses me as a gentleman. But then he ain’t particular: leastways, not at election times. You see, Miss, there are three classes of gentry in this country.
Anastasia Only three?
Mercer Only three, ma’am.
Anastasia How do you tell one from the other?
Mercer You tell by the railway porters, Miss. The real upper class gives them a shilling; the upper middle class sixpence; and the lower middle, tuppence. I give tuppence myself.
Anastasia And which particular class of gentleman is it, pray, that gives a lady a chair?
Mercer Oh, I’m sure I beg your pardon, Miss. He places a chair for her.
Anastasia Thanks. And now will you be good enough to tell Sir Cardonius Boshington that Miss Anastasia Vulliamy wishes to see him?
Mercer To the Lord Chancellor. Miss Anaesthesia Vulliamy, my lord, to see you.
Anastasia Springing up. Do you mean to tell me that this old man in livery is the great Chancellor?
The Lord Chancellor At your service, Miss Vulliamy.
Anastasia Producing a newspaper. Quite impossible. I have here an article on Sir Cardonius, headed Our Great Chancellor; and the description does not correspond in the least. Reading. “No man of our time has succeeded in tempering the awe inspired by a commanding stature and majestic presence with a love and confidence which even the youngest and most timid ward of the Court feels at the sound of his kindly voice and the encouraging beam, twinkling with humor, of his tender grey eyes.” Do you mean to tell me that that’s you?
The Lord Chancellor It is not for me to say how far the description is an accurate or a happy one, madam; but I believe I am the person intended by the writer.
Mercer Producing another paper. Perhaps you’d recognize this better, Miss. Sir Cardonius and me is on opposite sides in politics.
Anastasia Taking the paper and reading at the place he indicates. “How much longer will the nation allow this despicable pantaloon to occupy the woolsack⁠—” What’s the woolsack?
Mercer What the Lord Chancellor sits on in the House of Lords, Miss.
Anastasia Continuing her reading. “whose contents only too strongly resemble those of his own head.” That’s a nasty one, you know: isn’t it? It means that your brains are woolly, doesn’t it?
The Lord Chancellor Its meaning is entirely beneath my notice. I’m surprised, Mercer, to find you in possession of a scurrilous rag of this character. We may differ in our opinions; but if any paper taken in by me were to speak of you in such unbecoming terms, I should never open it again.
Mercer Well, my lord; politics is politics; and after all, what is politics if it isn’t showing up the other side? When I pay a penny for a paper I’ve a right to get value for my money the same as any other man.
Anastasia But I don’t understand. To the Chancellor. Are you a despicable pantaloon? The other paper says your name will be cherished by the warm hearts of the English people when Eldon and Sir Thomas More are forgotten. I thought that whatever is in the papers must be true. How do you explain being a great Chancellor and a despicable pantaloon at the same time?
The Lord Chancellor I take it that the excellent journal from which you first quoted has put all considerations of party aside, and simply endeavored to place before you a dispassionate estimate of such modest services as I have been able to render to my country. The other paper gives you nothing but the vituperative ravings of an illiterate penny-a-liner blinded by party passion.
Mercer You should never read more than one paper, Miss. It unsettles the mind, let alone the waste of a penny.
Anastasia Well, it’s a great relief to me to hear that the Great Chancellor paper is the right one. To the Lord Chancellor. You think I may believe everything it says?
The Lord Chancellor I trust I shall not disappoint any favorable opinion you may have founded on it.
Anastasia It says here that though you are stern with the worthless and merciless to the impostor, yet your mature wisdom and unparalleled legal knowledge are freely at the service of all deserving persons, and that no distressed suitor has ever been turned empty away from your door.
The Lord Chancellor That refers to my private house, madam. I don’t keep food here.
Mercer I have a sandwich for my lunch, Miss. Sooner than send you empty away, I would give it to you, Miss, most joyfully.
Anastasia I ask, not charity, but justice.
The Lord Chancellor Madam: I must request you to speak like a lady and not like a procession of the unemployed. The House of Lords always gives charity and never gives justice.
Mercer The House of Lords will find itself unemployed one of these days, if you ask me.
The Lord Chancellor Silence, Mercer. Have the goodness to keep your Radicalism to yourself in the presence of this lady.
Anastasia Why do you allow your clerk to be a Radical?
The Lord Chancellor Well, madam, to make him a Conservative and an Imperialist I should have to raise his salary very considerably; and I prefer to save money and put up with a Radical.
Anastasia You’ll excuse me asking you all these questions; but as I’ve decided, after what the paper says, that you are the man to advise me and be a father to me, it’s very important that you should be quite all right, isn’t it?
The Lord Chancellor But it’s not my business to be a father to every young lady who walks into my office.
Anastasia Not your business! Why, Whitaker’s Almanac says you get £5,000 a year. You don’t get that for nothing, I suppose. To Mercer. By the way, Whitaker doesn’t say how much you get.
Mercer I get one-fifty.
Anastasia One-fifty into £5,000 goes about thirty-three times. Why does he get thirty-three times as much as you? Is he thirty-three times as good?
Mercer He thinks so.
The Lord Chancellor I set up no such ridiculous pretension, Mercer.
Anastasia To the Lord Chancellor. Perhaps you’re thirty-three times as sober. How much do you drink every day?
The Lord Chancellor I am almost a teetotaller. A single bottle of burgundy is quite sufficient for me.
Anastasia To Mercer. Then I suppose you drink thirty-three bottles of burgundy a day.
Mercer Thirty-three bottles of burgundy a day on one-fifty a year! Not me. It hardly runs to beer on Sundays.
Anastasia Well, there must be something awfully wrong about you, you know, if you get only the thirty-third of what he gets.
The Lord Chancellor No, madam, Mercer is an excellent man in his proper place.
Anastasia Then there must be something awfully right about you.
The Lord Chancellor I hope so.
Anastasia I don’t see the difference myself.
Mercer He’s better fed.
Anastasia Is he? I should have thought he was too red about the nose to be quite healthy. It’s the burgundy, I expect. However, I didn’t come here to talk about you two. Call it selfish if you will; but I came to talk about myself. The fact is, I’m an orphan. At least, I think I am.
The Lord Chancellor Don’t you know?
Anastasia No. I was brought up in what you might politely call a sort of public institution. They found me on the doorstep, you know. Might have happened to anybody, mightnt it?
Mercer Scandalized. And you have the audacity to come here and talk up to us as if you was a lady. Be off with you; and be ashamed of yourself, you hussy.
The Lord Chancellor Gently, Mercer, gently. It is not the poor girl’s fault.
Mercer Not her fault! Why, she ain’t anybody’s daughter: she’s only an offspring.
Anastasia Perhaps I’m his daughter, my lord.
Mercer Oh, you wicked girl! Oh, you naughty story, you! Oh, that I should have lived to have this accusation brought against me: me! a respectable man!
Anastasia I had a feeling the moment I saw you.
The Lord Chancellor The voice of Nature! Oh, Mercer, Mercer!
Mercer I’ll have the law of you for this, I will. Oh, say you don’t believe her, my lord. Don’t drive me mad. Say you don’t believe her.
The Lord Chancellor I can’t disregard the voice of Nature, Mercer. The evidence against you is very black.
Mercer Me the father of a common girl found on a workhouse doorstep!
Anastasia Rising most indignantly. How dare you presume to say such a thing? A workhouse doorstep indeed! I was found on the doorstep of one of the very best houses in Park Lane.
The Lord Chancellor Overwhelmed. My dear young lady, how can I apologize⁠—
Mercer Crushed. I’m sure I beg your pardon most humbly, Miss.
The Lord Chancellor Forget the rudeness of my clerk: he knows no better. Resume your seat, I beg.
Mercer If I had only known, Miss! Park Lane! I could bite my tongue out for my bad manners, I do assure you.
Anastasia Say no more. Of course you could not know my social position.
Mercer Don’t say that, Miss. You have Park Lane in every feature.
The Lord Chancellor Effusively. In your manners.
Mercer In your accent.
The Lord Chancellor In your tone⁠—
Mercer Address⁠—
The Lord Chancellor A je ne sais quoi⁠—
Mercer A tout ensemble⁠—
Anastasia You speak French?
Mercer Not a word, Miss; but at the sight of that hat of yours the French fairly burst out of me.
Anastasia You are very good⁠—
The Lord Chancellor Oh, not at all.
Mercer Don’t mention it.
Anastasia Don’t begin again. I forgive you both. Now, attention! I’m a good-hearted but somewhat flighty girl; and I require some serious interest in life to steady me. As I had an ungovernable appetite, and was naturally rather inclined to be stout, I tried politics. For you, a man, politics meant the House of Lords. For me, a woman, politics meant Holloway Gaol and the hunger strike. I refused to take food until I was so frightfully hungry that when the Governor⁠—who was a plump, chubby, tempting sort of man, you know⁠—came into my cell and remonstrated with me, I attempted to devour him.
The Lord Chancellor Pardon me. I thought you Suffragist lambs prided yourselves on acting always on principle. On what principle, may I ask, do you justify an attempt to devour an estimable public official?
Anastasia On the Cat and Mouse principle, my lord. That is a part of the law of England.
Mercer Never. Not when the woman is the cat.
The Lord Chancellor May I ask, madam, what the unfortunate mouse did on this occasion?
Anastasia He got quite angry, and said he wouldn’t have me in his prison another minute⁠—not if I went down on my knees and begged him to let me stay. Of course I refused to go; but I had to let the poor man have his way at last, though it took ten wardresses to persuade me to do it. I left them simply in ribbons, poor things. Prison made a great change in me. Before I went in I felt a great want of something to love; but when I came out I felt nothing but a great want of something to eat. There were two public houses near the prison. One had a placard up “Sausage and Mashed,” the other “Sandwich and Small Lloyd George.” I visited both in succession, and had two goes of each delicacy. I then drove to the Holborn Restaurant and had a five shilling lunch, stopping at three Pearce and Plentys on the way to sustain exhausted nature. At the Holborn they refused to serve me with a second lunch; so I went on to the Carlton. Of my subsequent experiences at the Savoy, Pagani’s, Frascati’s, Gatti’s, five baked potato men, and a coffee stall, I shall say nothing. Suffice it that when at last the craving for food was stilled, the craving for love returned in all its original force. I felt I must have something to cherish, to sacrifice myself for. You no doubt hold that self-sacrifice is a woman’s chief amusement.
The Lord Chancellor Certainly I do.
Anastasia Any man would. Well, what was I to love? My friends recommended marriage: a man, in fact. But I hesitated to rush at once to so expensive and troublesome an extreme. I tried a pet dog; but when it had been stolen for the sixth time by the man I bought it from, I refused to pay any more rewards, and we were parted forever. I tried a cat; but its conduct was so disreputable that I really could not live in the same house with it. I adopted the orphan child of a crossing sweeper who was run over; but when its aunt learnt that I had no parents she would not permit it to stay. Glad as I must confess I was to get rid of the little beast, my starved heart still ached, my empty arms still longed to gather some beloved object to my breast.
The Lord Chancellor If I can be of any service to you, madam⁠—
Anastasia You? You are married, are you not?
The Lord Chancellor Well, er, yes I er⁠—am married.
Mercer Catching her eye. I’m sorry, miss; but so am I. Still, a divorce would be a matter of only eighty pound or so if we made it a fairly straight case.
Anastasia

Never shall it be said that Anastasia Vulliamy built her happiness on the ruin of another woman’s home. There are younger and handsomer men than you, my lord: there are more genteel characters than Mercer. Neither of you, if I may be allowed the expression, is precisely what I should call a peach. And I want⁠—oh, I want a peach. He must be a young peach. Not that I am to be seduced by the fleeting charms of a smooth cheek and a slim figure. But it’s a necessity of my position as a woman that I should marry someone whom I can bully, because if a woman can’t bully her husband, her husband generally bullies her.

You, my lord, you will, you can,
Find me a young and foolish man.
Into my arms: under my thumb
Let him come, let him come.

I fear I am almost dropping into poetry; but the tumult of my emotions carries me away. I implore you not to keep me waiting. My soul, my soul is thrilling as it never thrilled before. My arms, my arms are longing as they never longed before. My heart, my heart is beating as it never bet before. Every nerve in my body, every fibre in my heart⁠—

Brabazon enters.
Brabazon Excuse me: I left my stick, I think⁠—
Anastasia Throwing herself into his arms. He has come: he has come: the very thing I want.
Brabazon Quite out of the question, my dear lady. Sir Cardonius will tell you that you are too young, too irresponsible, too impulsive to be anything more to me than an extremely agreeable object of contemplation, and a charming hostess. With that object may I venture to propose a marriage to you?
Anastasia Silly! that is exactly what I am proposing to you.
Brabazon Not marriage to the same person, I think. You, as I understand it, propose to marry me. I propose that you should marry one of my friends. You can then invite me to your house, and put on your best company manners for my benefit. He will have the privilege of paying for your hats, and enjoying your no-company manners.
Mercer My lord: this man has a giant intellect.
The Lord Chancellor It will avail him as little as if he were the biggest fool in creation. Young man: you are lost. I argued as you do. I tried to get out of it.
Mercer I moved all the way from Gospel Oak to Islington to escape; but it was no use.
The Lord Chancellor Beware how you anger her by showing any reluctance. Remember: “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
Mercer What’s the good of that nowadays? When that was written a woman would take no for an answer. She won’t now.
Anastasia You will begin walking out with me at once. You are only on approval, of course; but if you suit, you may consider next Friday three weeks named as the day.
Brabazon But where does the merit come in for me? Where is the moral discipline? Where is the self-sacrifice? You are an agreeable person: to marry you would be an act of pure selfishness.
Anastasia So you think now, dearest. You won’t think that a year hence. I’ll take care of that for my own boy.
Brabazon Yes, but look here, you know. Have you got any money?
Anastasia Not a rap.
Brabazon And you expect to get a slave for nothing. What cheek!
Anastasia I’m richer than you think, darling. It’s true that I’m a poor penniless orphan. Doesn’t that touch you?
Brabazon Not in the least.
Anastasia Thoughtless boy. Have you forgotten that the women who have money always belong to some family or other?
Brabazon Well?
Anastasia Well, a family means relations. You can’t call your house your own. The brothers borrow money. The sisters come and stay for months. The mother quarrels with your mother.
Mercer Gospel truth, every word of it.
The Lord Chancellor Undeniable. He sighs deeply.
Anastasia I, my love, am not perfect. I am a weak woman: I have nothing to cling to but your love, nor any place to rest except your very becoming fancy waistcoat. But at least I’m a foundling.
Brabazon Excited and hopeful. A foundling?
Anastasia I haven’t a relation in the world.
Brabazon Clasping her. Mine! mine!! Mine!!!

The Glimpse of Reality

A Tragedietta

Dramatis Personae

  • Count Ferruccio

  • Giulia

  • Squarcio

  • Sandro

The Glimpse of Reality

In the fifteenth century AD. Gloaming. An inn on the edge of an Italian lake. A stone cross with a pedestal of steps. A very old Friar sitting on the steps.

The Angelus rings. The Friar prays and crosses himself. A girl ferries a boat to the shore and comes up the bank to the cross.
The Girl Father: were you sent here by a boy from⁠—
The Friar In a high, piping, but clear voice. I’m a very old man. Oh, very old. Old enough to be your great grandfather, my daughter. Oh, very very old.
The Girl But were you sent here by a boy from⁠—
The Friar Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Quite a boy, he was. Very young. And I’m very old. Oh, very very old, dear daughter.
The Girl Are you a holy man?
The Friar Ecstatically. Oh, very holy. Very, very, very, very holy.
The Girl But have you your wits still about you, father? Can you absolve me from a great sin?
The Friar Oh yes, yes, yes. A very great sin. I’m very old; but I’ve my wits about me. I’m one hundred and thirteen years old, by the grace of Our Lady; but I still remember all my Latin; and I can bind and loose; and I’m very very wise; for I’m old and have left far behind me the world, the flesh, and the devil. You see I am blind, daughter; but when a boy told me that there was a duty for me to do here, I came without a guide, straight to this spot, led by St. Barbara. She led me to this stone, daughter. It’s a comfortable stone to me: she has blessed it for me.
The Girl It’s a cross, father.
The Friar Piping rapturously. Oh blessed, blessed, ever blessed be my holy patroness for leading me to this sacred spot. Is there any building near this, daughter? The boy mentioned an inn.
The Girl There is an inn, father, not twenty yards away. It’s kept by my father, Squarcio.
The Friar And is there a barn where a very very old man may sleep and have a handful of peas for his supper?
The Girl There is bed and board both for holy men who will take the guilt of our sins from us. Swear to me on the cross that you are a very holy man.
The Friar I’ll do better than that, daughter. I’ll prove my holiness to you by a miracle.
The Girl A miracle!
The Friar A most miraculous miracle. A wonderful miracle! When I was only eighteen years of age I was already famous for my devoutness. When the hand of the blessed Saint Barbara, which was chopped off in the days when the church was persecuted, was found at Viterbo, I was selected by the Pope himself to carry it to Rome for that blessed lady’s festival there; and since that my hand has never grown old. It remains young and warm and plump whilst the rest of my body is withered almost to dust, and my voice is cracked and become the whistling you now hear.
The Girl Is that true? Let me see. He takes her hand in his. She kneels and kisses it fervently. Oh, it’s true. You are a saint. Heaven has sent you in answer to my prayer.
The Friar As soft as your neck, is it not? He caresses her neck.
The Girl It thrills me: it is wonderful.
The Friar It thrills me also, daughter. That, too, is a miracle at my age.
The Girl Father⁠—
The Friar Come closer, daughter. I’m very very old and very very very deaf: you must speak quite close to my ear if you speak low. She kneels with her breast against his arm and her chin on his shoulder. Good. Good. That’s better. Oh, I’m very very old.
The Girl Father: I am about to commit a deadly sin.
The Friar Do, my daughter. Do, do, do, do, do.
The Girl Discouraged. Oh, you do not hear what I say.
The Friar Not hear! Then come closer, daughter. Oh, much, much closer. Put your arm round my shoulders, and speak in my ear. Do not be ashamed, my daughter: I’m only a sack of old bones. You can hear them rattle. He shakes his shoulders and makes the beads of his rosary rattle at the same time. Listen to the old man’s bones rattling. Oh, take the old old man to heaven, Blessed Barbara.
The Girl Your wits are wandering. Listen to me. Are you listening?
The Friar Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes. Remember: whether I hear or not, I can absolve. All the better for you perhaps if I do not hear the worst. He! He! He! Well well. When my wits wander, squeeze my young hand; and the blessed Barbara will restore my faculties. She squeezes his hand vigorously. That’s right. Tha‑a‑a‑a‑ats right. Now I remember what I am and who you are. Proceed, my child.
The Girl Father, I am to be married this year to a young fisherman.
The Friar The devil you are, my dear.
The Girl Squeezing his hand. Oh listen, listen; you are wandering again.
The Friar That’s right: hold my hand tightly. I understand, I understand. This young fisherman is neither very beautiful nor very brave; but he is honest and devoted to you; and there is something about him different to all the other young men.
The Girl You know him, then!
The Friar No no no no no. I’m too old to remember people. But Saint Barbara tells me everything.
The Girl Then you know why we can’t marry yet.
The Friar He is too poor. His mother will not let him unless his bride has a dowry⁠—
The Girl Interrupting him impetuously. Yes, yes: oh blessed be Saint Barbara for sending you to me! Thirty crowns⁠—thirty crowns from a poor girl like me: it is wicked⁠—monstrous. I must sin to earn it.
The Friar That will not be your sin, but his mother’s.
The Girl Oh, that is true: I never thought of that. But will she suffer for it?
The Friar Thousands of years in purgatory for it, my daughter. The worse the sin, the longer she will suffer. So let her have it as hot as possible. The Girl recoils. Do not let go my hand: I’m wandering. She squeezes his hand. That’s right, darling. Sin is a very wicked thing, my daughter. Even a mother-in-law’s sin is very expensive; for your husband would stint you to pay for masses for her soul.
The Girl That is true. You are very wise, father.
The Friar Let it be a venial sin: an amiable sin. What sin were you thinking of, for instance?
The Girl There is a young Count Ferruccio the Friar starts at the name, son of the tyrant of Parma⁠—
The Friar An excellent young man, daughter. You could not sin with a more excellent young man. But thirty crowns is too much to ask from him. He can’t afford it. He is a beggar: an outcast. He made love to Madonna Brigita, the sister of Cardinal Poldi, a Cardinal eighteen years of age, a nephew of the Holy Father. The Cardinal surprised Ferruccio with his sister; and Ferruccio’s temper got the better of him. He threw that holy young Cardinal out of the window and broke his arm.
The Girl You know everything.
The Friar Saint Barbara, my daughter, Saint Barbara. I know nothing. But where have you seen Ferruccio? Saint Barbara says that he never saw you in his life, and has not thirty crowns in the world.
The Girl Oh, why does not Saint Barbara tell you that I am an honest girl who would not sell herself for a thousand crowns.
The Friar Do not give way to pride, daughter. Pride is one of the seven deadly sins.
The Girl I know that, father; and believe me, I’m humble and good. I swear to you by Our Lady that it is not Ferruccio’s love that I must take, but his life. The Friar, startled, turns powerfully on her. Do not be angry, dear father: do not cast me off. What is a poor girl to do? We are very poor, my father and I. And I am not to kill him. I am only to decoy him here; for he is a devil for women; and once he is in the inn, my father will do the rest.
The Friar In a rich baritone voice. Will he, by thunder and lightning and the flood and all the saints, will he? He flings off his gown and beard, revealing himself as a handsome youth, a nobleman by his dress, as he springs up and rushes to the door of the inn, which he batters with a stone. Ho there, Squarcio, rascal, assassin, son of a pig: come out that I may break every bone in your carcass.
The Girl You are a young man!
The Friar Another miracle of Saint Barbara. Kicking the door. Come out, whelp: come out, rat. Come out and be killed. Come out and be beaten to a jelly. Come out, dog, swine, animal, mangy hound, lousy⁠—Squarcio comes out, sword in hand. Do you know who I am, dog?
Squarcio Impressed. No, your Excellency.
The Friar I am Ferruccio, Count Ferruccio, the man you are to kill, the man your devil of a daughter is to decoy, the man who is now going to cut you into forty thousand pieces and throw you into the lake.
Squarcio Keep your temper, Signor Count.
Ferruccio I’ll not keep my temper. I’ve an uncontrollable temper. I get blinding splitting headaches if I do not relieve my temper by acts of violence. I’ll relieve it now by pounding you to jelly, assassin that you are.
Squarcio Shrugging his shoulders. As you please, Signor Count. I may as well earn my money now as another time. He handles his sword.
Ferruccio Ass: do you suppose I have trusted myself in this territory without precautions? My father has made a wager with your feudal lord here about me.
Squarcio What wager, may it please your Excellency?
Ferruccio What wager, blockhead! Why, that if I am assassinated, the murderer will not be brought to justice.
Squarcio So that if I kill you⁠—
Ferruccio Your Baron will lose ten crowns unless you are broken on the wheel for it.
Squarcio Only ten crowns, Excellency! Your father does not value your life very highly.
Ferruccio Dolt. Can you not reason? If the sum were larger your Baron would win it by killing me himself and breaking somebody else on the wheel for it: you, most likely. Ten crowns is just enough to make him break you on the wheel if you kill me, but not enough to pay for all the masses that would have to be said for him if the guilt were his.
Squarcio That is very clever, Excellency. Sheathing his sword. You shall not be slain: I will take care of that. If anything happens, it will be an accident.
Ferruccio Body of Bacchus! I forgot that trick. I should have killed you when my blood was hot.
Squarcio Will your Excellency please to step in? My best room and my best cooking are at your Excellency’s disposal.
Ferruccio To the devil with your mangy kennel! You want to tell every traveller that Count Ferruccio slept in your best bed and was eaten by your army of fleas. Take yourself out of my sight when you have told me where the next inn is.
Squarcio I’m sorry to thwart your Excellency; but I have not forgotten your father’s wager; and until you leave this territory I shall stick to you like your shadow.
Ferruccio And why, pray?
Squarcio Someone else might kill your Excellency; and, as you say, my illustrious Baron might break me on the wheel for your father’s ten crowns. I must protect your Excellency, whether your Excellency is willing or not.
Ferruccio If you dare to annoy me, I’ll handle your bones so that there will be nothing left for the hangman to break. Now what do you say?
Squarcio I say that your Excellency overrates your Excellency’s strength. You would have no more chance against me than a grasshopper. Ferruccio makes a demonstration. Oh, I know that your Excellency has been taught by fencers and wrestlers and the like; but I can take all you can give me without turning a hair, and settle the account when you are out of breath. That is why common men are dangerous, your Excellency: they are inured to toil and endurance. Besides, I know all the tricks.
The Girl Do not attempt to quarrel with my father, Count. It must be as he says. It is his profession to kill. What could you do against him? If you want to beat somebody, you must beat me. She goes into the inn.
Squarcio I advise you not to try that, Excellency. She also is very strong.
Ferruccio Then I shall have a headache: that’s all. He throws himself ill-humoredly on a bench at the table outside the inn. Giulia returns with a tablecloth and begins preparing the table for a meal.
Squarcio A good supper, Excellency, will prevent that. And Giulia will sing for you.
Ferruccio Not while there’s a broomstick in the house to break her ugly head with. Do you suppose I’m going to listen to the howling of a she-wolf who wanted me to absolve her for getting me killed?
Squarcio The poor must live as well as the rich, sir. Giulia is a good girl. He goes into the inn.
Ferruccio Shouting after him. Must the rich die that the poor may live?
Giulia The poor often die that the rich may live.
Ferruccio What an honor for them! But it would have been no honor for me to die merely that you might marry your clod of a fisherman.
Giulia You are spiteful, Signor.
Ferruccio I am no troubadour, Giuliaccia, if that is what you mean.
Giulia How did you know about my Sandro and his mother? How were you so wise when you pretended to be an old friar? you that are so childish now that you are yourself?
Ferruccio I take it that either Saint Barbara inspired me, or else that you are a great fool.
Giulia Saint Barbara will surely punish you for that wicked lie you told about her hand.
Ferruccio The hand that thrilled you?
Giulia That was blasphemy. You should not have done it. You made me feel as if I had had a taste of heaven; and then you poisoned it in my heart as a taste of hell. That was wicked and cruel. You nobles are cruel.
Ferruccio Well! do you expect us to nurse your babies for you? Our work is to rule and to fight. Ruling is nothing but inflicting cruelties on wrongdoers: fighting is nothing but being cruel to one’s enemies. You poor people leave us all the cruel work, and then wonder that we are cruel. Where would you be if we left it undone? Outside the life I lead all to myself⁠—the life of thought and poetry⁠—I know only two pleasures: cruelty and lust. I desire revenge: I desire women. And both of them disappoint me when I get them.
Giulia It would have been a good deed to kill you, I think.
Ferruccio Killing is always sport, my Giuliaccia.
Sandro’s Voice On the lake. Giulietta! Giulietta!
Ferruccio Calling to him. Stop that noise. Your Giulietta is here with a young nobleman. Come up and amuse him. To Giulietta. What will you give me if I tempt him to defy his mother and marry you without a dowry?
Giulia You are tempting me. A poor girl can give no more than she has. I should think you were a devil if you were not a noble, which is worse. She goes out to meet Sandro.
Ferruccio Calling after her. The devil does evil for pure love of it: he does not ask a price: he offers it. Squarcio returns. Prepare supper for four, bandit.
Squarcio Is your appetite so great in this heat, Signor?
Ferruccio There will be four to supper. You, I, your daughter, and Sandro. Do not stint yourselves: I pay for all. Go and prepare more food.
Squarcio Your order is already obeyed, Excellency.
Ferruccio How?
Squarcio I prepared for four, having you here to pay. The only difference your graciousness makes is that we shall have the honor to eat with you instead of after you.
Ferruccio Dog of a bandit: you should have been born a nobleman.
Squarcio I was born noble, Signor; but as we had no money to maintain our pretensions, I dropped them. He goes back into the inn.
Giulia returns with Sandro.
Giulia This is the lad, Excellency. Sandro: this is his lordship Count Ferruccio.
Sandro At your lordship’s service.
Ferruccio Sit down, Sandro. You, Giulia, and Squarcio are my guests. They sit.
Giulia I’ve told Sandro everything, Excellency.
Ferruccio And what does Sandro say? Squarcio returns with a tray.
Giulia He says that if you have ten crowns in your purse, and we kill you, we can give them to the Baron. It would be the same to him as if he got it from your illustrious father.
Squarcio Stupid: the Count is cleverer than you think. No matter how much money you give the Baron he can always get ten crowns more by breaking me on the wheel if the Count is killed.
Giulia That is true. Sandro did not think of that.
Sandro With cheerful politeness. Oh! what a head I have! I am not clever, Excellency. At the same time you must know that I did not mean my Giulietta to tell you. I know my duty to your Excellency better than that.
Ferruccio Come! You are dear people: charming people. Let us get to work at the supper. You shall be the mother of the family and give us our portions, Giulietta. They take their places. That’s right. Serve me last, Giulietta. Sandro is hungry.
Squarcio To the girl. Come come! do you not see that his Excellency will touch nothing until we have had some first. He eats. See, Excellency! I have tasted everything. To tell you the truth, poisoning is an art I do not understand.
Ferruccio Very few professional poisoners do, Squarcio. One of the best professionals in Rome poisoned my uncle and aunt. They are alive still. The poison cured my uncle’s gout, and only made my aunt thin, which was exactly what she desired, poor lady, as she was losing her figure terribly.
Squarcio There is nothing like the sword, Excellency.
Sandro Except the water, Father Squarcio. Trust a fisherman to know that. Nobody can tell that drowning was not an accident.
Ferruccio What does Giulietta say?
Giulia I should not kill a man if I hated him. You cannot torment a man when he is dead. Men kill because they think it is what they call a satisfaction. But that is only fancy.
Ferruccio And if you loved him? Would you kill him then?
Giulia Perhaps. If you love a man you are his slave: everything he says⁠—everything he does⁠—is a stab to your heart: every day is a long dread of losing him. Better kill him if there be no other escape.
Ferruccio How well you have brought up your family, Squarcio! Some more omelette, Sandro?
Sandro Very cheerfully. I thank your Excellency. He accepts and eats with an appetite.
Ferruccio I pledge you all. To the sword and the fisherman’s net: to love and hate! He drinks: they drink with him.
Squarcio To the sword!
Sandro To the net, Excellency, with thanks for the honor.
Giulia To love, Signor.
Ferruccio To hate: the noble’s portion!
Squarcio The meal has done you good, Excellency. How do you feel now?
Ferruccio I feel that there is nothing but a bait of ten crowns between me and death, Squarcio.
Squarcio It is enough, Excellency. And enough is always enough.
Sandro Do not think of that, Excellency. It is only that we are poor folk, and have to consider how to make both ends meet as one may say. Looking at the dish. Excellency⁠—?
Ferruccio Finish it, Sandro. I’ve done.
Sandro Father Squarcio?
Squarcio Finish it, finish it.
Sandro Giulietta?
Giulia Surprised. Me? Oh no. Finish it, Sandro: it will only go to the pig.
Sandro Then, with your Excellency’s permission⁠—He helps himself.
Squarcio Sing for his Excellency, my daughter.
Giulia turns to the door to fetch her mandoline.
Ferruccio I shall jump into the lake, Squarcio, if your cat begins to meowl.
Sandro Always cheerful and reassuring. No, no, Excellency: Giulietta sings very sweetly: have no fear.
Ferruccio I do not care for singing: at least not the singing of peasants. There is only one thing for which one woman will do as well as another, and that is lovemaking. Come, Father Squarcio: I will buy Giulietta from you: you can have her back for nothing when I am tired of her. How much?
Squarcio In ready money, or in promises?
Ferruccio Old fox. Ready money.
Squarcio Fifty crowns, Excellency.
Ferruccio Fifty crowns! Fifty crowns for that black-faced devil! I would not give fifty crowns for one of my mother’s ladies-in-waiting. Fifty pence, you must mean.
Squarcio Doubtless your Excellency, being a younger son, is poor. Shall we say five and twenty crowns?
Ferruccio I tell you she is not worth five.
Squarcio Oh, if you come to what she is worth, Excellency, what are any of us worth? I take it that you are a gentleman, not a merchant.
Giulia What are you worth, Signorino?
Ferruccio I am accustomed to be asked for favors, Giuliaccia, not to be asked impertinent questions.
Giulia What would you do if a strong man took you by the scruff of your neck, or his daughter thrust a knife in your throat, Signor?
Ferruccio It would be many a year, my gentle Giuliaccia, before any baseborn man or woman would dare threaten a nobleman again. The whole village would be flayed alive.
Sandro Oh no, Signor. These things often have a great air of being accidents. And the great families are well content that they should appear so. It is such a great trouble to flay a whole village alive. Here by the water, accidents are so common.
Squarcio We of the nobility, Signor, are not strict enough. I learnt that when I took to breeding horses. The horses you breed from thoroughbreds are not all worth the trouble: most of them are screws. Well, the horsebreeder gets rid of his screws for what they will fetch: they go to labor like any peasant’s beast. But our nobility does not study its business so carefully. If you are a screw, and the son of a baron, you are brought up to think yourself a little god, though you are nothing, and cannot rule yourself, much less a province. And you presume, and presume, and presume⁠—
Giulia And insult, and insult, and insult.
Squarcio Until one day you find yourself in a strange place with nothing to help you but your own hands and your own wits⁠—
Giulia And you perish⁠—
Sandro Accidentally⁠—
Giulia And your soul goes crying to your father for vengeance⁠—
Squarcio If indeed, my daughter, there be any soul left when the body is slain.
Ferruccio Crossing himself hastily. Dog of a bandit: do you dare doubt the existence of God and the soul?
Squarcio I think, Excellency, that the soul is so precious a gift that God will not give it to a man for nothing. He must earn it by being something and doing something. I should not like to kill a man with a good soul. I’ve had a dog that had, I’m persuaded, made itself something of a soul; and if anyone had murdered that dog, I would have slain him. But show me a man with no soul: one who has never done anything or been anything; and I will kill him for ten crowns with as little remorse as I would stick a pig.
Sandro Unless he be a nobleman, of course⁠—
Squarcio In which case the price is fifty crowns.
Ferruccio Soul or no soul?
Squarcio When it comes to a matter of fifty crowns, Excellency, business is business. The man who pays me must square the account with the devil. It is for my employer to consider whether the action be a good one or no: it is for me to earn his money honestly. When I said I should not like to kill a man with a good soul, I meant killing on my own account: not professionally.
Ferruccio Are you such a fool then as to spoil your own trade by sometimes killing people for nothing?
Squarcio One kills a snake for nothing, Excellency. One kills a dog for nothing sometimes.
Sandro Apologetically. Only a mad dog, Excellency, of course.
Squarcio A pet dog, too. One that eats and eats and is useless, and makes an honest man’s house dirty. He rises. Come Sandro, and help me to clean up. You, Giulia, stay and entertain his Excellency.
He and Sandro make a hammock of the cloth, in which they carry the wooden platters and fragments of the meal indoors. Ferruccio is left alone with Giulia. The gloaming deepens.
Ferruccio Does your father do the house work with a great girl like you idling about? Squarcio is a fool, after all.
Giulia No, Signor: he has left me here to prevent you from escaping.
Ferruccio There is nothing to be gained by killing me, Giuliaccia.
Giulia Perhaps; but I do not know. I saw Sandro make a sign to my father: that is why they went in. Sandro has something in his head.
Ferruccio Brutally. Lice, no doubt.
Giulia Unmoved. That would only make him scratch his head, Signor, not make signs with it to my father. You did wrong to throw the Cardinal out of the window.
Ferruccio Indeed: and pray why?
Giulia He will pay thirty crowns for your dead body. Then Sandro could marry me.
Ferruccio And be broken on the wheel for it.
Giulia It would look like an accident, Signor. Sandro is very clever; and he is so humble and cheerful and good-tempered that people do not suspect him as they suspect my father.
Ferruccio Giulietta: if I reach Sacromonte in safety, I swear to send you thirty crowns by a sure messenger within ten days. Then you can marry your Sandro. How does that appeal to you?
Giulia Your oath is not worth twenty pence, Signor.
Ferruccio Do you think I will die here like a rat in a trap⁠—His breath fails him.
Giulia Rats have to wait in their traps for death, Signor. Why not you?
Ferruccio I’ll fight.
Giulia You are welcome, Signor. The blood flows freeest when it is hot.
Ferruccio She devil! Listen to me, Giulietta⁠—
Giulia It is useless, Signor. Giulietta or Giuliaccia: it makes no difference. If they two in there kill you it will be no more to me⁠—except for the money⁠—than if my father trod on a snail.
Ferruccio Oh, it is not possible that I, a nobleman, should die by such filthy hands.
Giulia You have lived by them, Signor. I see no sign of any work on your own hands. We can bring death as well as life, we poor people, Signor.
Ferruccio Mother of God, what shall I do?
Giulia Pray, Signor.
Ferruccio Pray! With the taste of death in my mouth? I can think of nothing.
Giulia It is only that you have forgotten your beads, Signor. She picks up the Friar’s rosary. You remember the old man’s bones rattling. Here they are. She rattles them before him.
Ferruccio That reminds me. I know of a painter in the north that can paint such beautiful saints that the heart goes out of one’s body to look at them. If I get out of this alive I’ll make him paint St. Barbara so that everyone can see that she is lovelier than St. Cecilia, who looks like my washerwoman’s mother in her Chapel in our cathedral. Can you give St. Cecilia a picture if she lets me be killed?
Giulia No; but I can give her many prayers.
Ferruccio Prayers cost nothing. She will prefer the picture unless she is a greater fool than I take her to be.
Giulia She will thank the painter for it, not you, Signor. And I’ll tell her in my prayers to appear to the painter in a vision, and order him to paint her just as he sees her if she really wishes to be painted.
Ferruccio You are devilishly ready with your answers. Tell me, Giulietta: is what your father told me true? Is your blood really noble?
Giulia It is red, Signor, like the blood of the Christ in the picture in Church. I do not know if yours is different. I shall see when my father kills you.
Ferruccio Do you know what I am thinking, Giulietta?
Giulia No, Signor.
Ferruccio I am thinking that if the good God would oblige me by taking my fool of an elder brother up to heaven, and his silly doll of a wife with him before she has time to give him a son, you would make a rare duchess for me. Come! Will you help me to outwit your father and Sandro if I marry you afterwards?
Giulia No, Signor: I’ll help them to kill you.
Ferruccio My back is to the wall, then?
Giulia To the precipice, I think, Signor.
Ferruccio No matter, so my face is to the danger. Did you notice, Giulia, a minute ago? I was frightened.
Giulia Yes, Signor. I saw it in your face.
Ferruccio The terror of terrors.
Giulia The terror of death.
Ferruccio No: death is nothing. I can face a stab just as I faced having my tooth pulled out at Faenza.
Giulia Shuddering with sincere sympathy. Poor Signorino! That must have hurt horribly.
Ferruccio What! You pity me for the tooth affair, and you did not pity me in that hideous agony of terror that is not the terror of death nor of anything else, but pure grim terror in itself.
Giulia It was the terror of the soul, Signor. And I do not pity your soul: you have a wicked soul. But you have pretty teeth.
Ferruccio The toothache lasted a week; but the agony of my soul was too dreadful to last five minutes: I should have died of it if it could have kept its grip of me. But you helped me out of it.
Giulia I, Signor!
Ferruccio Yes: you. If you had pitied me: if you had been less inexorable than death itself, I should have broken down and cried and begged for mercy. But now I have come up against something hard: something real: something that does not care for me. I see now the truth of my excellent uncle’s opinion that I was a spoilt cub. When I wanted anything I threatened men or ran crying to women; and they gave it to me. I dreamed and romanced: imagining things as I wanted them, not as they really are. There is nothing like a good look into the face of death: close up: right on you: for showing you how little you really believe and how little you really are. A priest said to me once, “In your last hour everything will fall away from you except your religion.” But I have lived through my last hour; and my religion was the first thing that fell away from me. When I was forced at last to believe in grim death I knew at last what belief was, and that I had never believed in anything before: I had only flattered myself with pretty stories, and sheltered myself behind Mumbo Jumbo, as a soldier will shelter himself from arrows behind a clump of thistles that only hide the shooters from him. When I believe in everything that is real as I believed for that moment in death, then I shall be a man at last. I have tasted the water of life from the cup of death; and it may be now that my real life began with this he holds up the rosary and will end with the triple crown or the heretic’s fire: I care not which. Springing to his feet. Come out, then, dog of a bandit, and fight a man who has found his soul. Squarcio appears at the door, sword in hand. Ferruccio leaps at him and strikes him full in the chest with his dagger. Squarcio puts back his left foot to brace himself against the shock. The dagger snaps as if it had struck a stone wall.
Giulia Quick, Sandro.
Sandro, who has come stealing round the corner of the inn with a fishing net, casts it over Ferruccio, and draws it tight.
Squarcio Your Excellency will excuse my shirt of mail. A good home blow, nevertheless, Excellency.
Sandro Your Excellency will excuse my net: it is a little damp.
Ferruccio Well, what now? Accidental drowning, I suppose.
Sandro Eh, Excellency, it is such a pity to throw a good fish back into the water when once you have got him safe in your net. My Giulietta: hold the net for me.
Giulia Taking the net and twisting it in her hands to draw it tighter round him. I have you very fast now, Signorino, like a little bird in a cage.
Ferruccio You have my body, Giulia. My soul is free.
Giulia Is it, Signor? I think Saint Barbara has got that in her net too. She has turned your jest into earnest.
Sandro It is indeed true, sir, that those who come under the special protection of God and the Saints are always a little mad; and this makes us think it very unlucky to kill a madman. And since from what Father Squarcio and I overheard, it is clear that your Excellency, though a very wise and reasonable young gentleman in a general way, is somewhat cracked on the subject of the soul and so forth, we have resolved to see that no harm comes to your Excellency.
Ferruccio As you please. My life is only a drop falling from the vanishing clouds to the everlasting sea, from finite to infinite, and itself part of the infinite.
Sandro Impressed. Your Excellency speaks like a crazy but very holy book. Heaven forbid that we should raise a hand against you! But your Excellency will notice that this good action will cost us thirty crowns.
Ferruccio Is it not worth it?
Sandro Doubtless, doubtless. It will in fact save us the price of certain masses which we should otherwise have had said for the souls of certain persons who⁠—ahem! Well, no matter. But we think it dangerous and unbecoming that a nobleman like your Excellency should travel without a retinue, and unarmed; for your dagger is unfortunately broken, Excellency. If you would therefore have the condescension to accept Father Squarcio as your man-at-arms⁠—your servant in all but the name, to save his nobility⁠—he will go with you to any town in which you will feel safe from His Eminence the Cardinal, and will leave it to your Excellency’s graciousness as to whether his magnanimous conduct will not then deserve some trifling present: say a wedding gift for my Giulietta.
Ferruccio Good: the man I tried to slay will save me from being slain. Who would have thought Saint Barbara so full of irony!
Sandro And if the offer your Excellency was good enough to make in respect of Giulietta still stands⁠—
Squarcio Rascal: have you then no soul?
Sandro I am a poor man, Excellency: I cannot afford these luxuries of the rich.
Ferruccio There is a certain painter will presently make a great picture of St. Barbara; and Giulia will be his model. He will pay her well. Giulia: release the bird. It is time for it to fly.
She takes the net from his shoulders.

The Showing-Up of Blanco Posnet

A Sermon in Crude Melodrama

Preface

The Censorship

This little play is really a religious tract in dramatic form. If our silly censorship would permit its performance, it might possibly help to set right-side-up the perverted conscience and reinvigorate the starved self-respect of our considerable class of loose-lived playgoers whose point of honor is to deride all official and conventional sermons. As it is, it only gives me an opportunity of telling the story of the Select Committee of both Houses of Parliament which sat last year to enquire into the working of the censorship, against which it was alleged by myself and others that as its imbecility and mischievousness could not be fully illustrated within the limits of decorum imposed on the press, it could only be dealt with by a parliamentary body subject to no such limits.

A Readable Bluebook

Few books of the year 1909 can have been cheaper and more entertaining than the report of this Committee. Its full title is Report from the Joint Select Committee of the House of Lords and the House of Commons on the Stage Plays (Censorship) Together with the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence, and Appendices. What the phrase “the Stage Plays” means in this title I do not know; nor does anyone else. The number of the Bluebook is 214. How interesting it is may be judged from the fact that it contains verbatim reports of long and animated interviews between the Committee and such witnesses as Mr. William Archer, Mr. Granville Barker, Mr. J. M. Barrie, Mr. Forbes Robertson, Mr. Cecil Raleigh, Mr. John Galsworthy, Mr. Laurence Housman, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Mr. W. L. Courtney, Sir William Gilbert, Mr. A. B. Walkley, Miss Lena Ashwell, Professor Gilbert Murray, Mr. George Alexander, Mr. George Edwardes, Mr. Comyns Carr, the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Bishop of Southwark, Mr. Hall Caine, Mr. Israel Zangwill, Sir Squire Bancroft, Sir Arthur Pinero, and Mr. Gilbert Chesterton, not to mention myself and a number of gentlemen less well known to the general public, but important in the world of the theatre. The publication of a book by so many famous contributors would be beyond the means of any commercial publishing firm. His Majesty’s Stationery Office sells it to all comers by weight at the very reasonable price of three-and-threepence a copy.

How Not to Do It

It was pointed out by Charles Dickens in Little Dorrit, which remains the most accurate and penetrating study of the genteel littleness of our class governments in the English language, that whenever an abuse becomes oppressive enough to persuade our party parliamentarians that something must be done, they immediately set to work to face the situation and discover How Not To Do It. Since Dickens’s day the exposures effected by the Socialists have so shattered the self-satisfaction of modern commercial civilization that it is no longer difficult to convince our governments that something must be done, even to the extent of attempts at a reconstruction of civilization on a thoroughly uncommercial basis. Consequently, the first part of the process described by Dickens: that in which the reformers were snubbed by front bench demonstrations that the administrative departments were consuming miles of red tape in the correctest forms of activity, and that everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds, is out of fashion; and we are in that other phase, familiarized by the history of the French Revolution, in which the primary assumption is that the country is in danger, and that the first duty of all parties, politicians, and governments is to save it. But as the effect of this is to give governments a great many more things to do, it also gives a powerful stimulus to the art of How Not To Do Them: that is to say, the art of contriving methods of reform which will leave matters exactly as they are.

The report of the Joint Select Committee is a capital illustration of this tendency. The case against the censorship was overwhelming; and the defence was more damaging to it than no defence at all could have been. Even had this not been so, the mere caprice of opinion had turned against the institution; and a reform was expected, evidence or no evidence. Therefore the Committee was unanimous as to the necessity of reforming the censorship; only, unfortunately, the majority attached to this unanimity the usual condition that nothing should be done to disturb the existing state of things. How this was effected may be gathered from the recommendations finally agreed on, which are as follows.

1. The drama is to be set entirely free by the abolition of the existing obligation to procure a licence from the Censor before performing a play; but every theatre lease is in future to be construed as if it contained a clause giving the landlord power to break it and evict the lessee if he produces a play without first obtaining the usual licence from the Lord Chamberlain.

2. Some of the plays licensed by the Lord Chamberlain are so vicious that their present practical immunity from prosecution must be put an end to; but no manager who procures the Lord Chamberlain’s licence for a play can be punished in any way for producing it, though a special tribunal may order him to discontinue the performance; and even this order must not be recorded to his disadvantage on the licence of his theatre, nor may it be given as a judicial reason for cancelling that licence.

3. Authors and managers producing plays without first obtaining the usual licence from the Lord Chamberlain shall be perfectly free to do so, and shall be at no disadvantage compared to those who follow the existing practice, except that they may be punished, have the licences of their theatres endorsed and cancelled, and have the performance stopped pending the proceedings without compensation in the event of the proceedings ending in their acquittal.

4. Authors are to be rescued from their present subjection to an irresponsible secret tribunal which can condemn their plays without giving reasons, by the substitution for that tribunal of a Committee of the Privy Council, which is to be the final authority on the fitness of a play for representation; and this Committee is to sit in camera if and when it pleases.

5. The power to impose a veto on the production of plays is to be abolished because it may hinder the growth of a great national drama; but the Office of Examiner of Plays shall be continued; and the Lord Chamberlain shall retain his present powers to license plays, but shall be made responsible to Parliament to the extent of making it possible to ask questions there concerning his proceedings, especially now that members have discovered a method of doing this indirectly.

And so on, and so forth. The thing is to be done; and it is not to be done. Everything is to be changed and nothing is to be changed. The problem is to be faced and the solution to be shirked. And the word of Dickens is to be justified.

The Story of the Joint Select Committee

Let me now tell the story of the Committee in greater detail, partly as a contribution to history; partly because, like most true stories, it is more amusing than the official story.

All commissions of public enquiry are more or less intimidated both by the interests on which they have to sit in judgment and, when their members are party politicians, by the votes at the back of those interests; but this unfortunate Committee sat under a quite exceptional cross fire. First, there was the king. The Censor is a member of his household retinue; and as a king’s retinue has to be jealously guarded to avoid curtailment of the royal state no matter what may be the function of the particular retainer threatened, nothing but an express royal intimation to the contrary, which is a constitutional impossibility, could have relieved the Committee from the fear of displeasing the king by any proposal to abolish the censorship of the Lord Chamberlain. Now all the lords on the Committee and some of the commoners could have been wiped out of society (in their sense of the word) by the slightest intimation that the king would prefer not to meet them; and this was a heavy risk to run on the chance of “a great and serious national drama” ensuing on the removal of the Lord Chamberlain’s veto on Mrs. Warren’s Profession. Second, there was the Nonconformist conscience, holding the Liberal Government responsible for the Committee it had appointed, and holding also, to the extent of votes enough to turn the scale in some constituencies, that the theatre is the gate of hell, to be tolerated, as vice is tolerated, only because the power to suppress it could not be given to any public body without too serious an interference with certain Liberal traditions of liberty which are still useful to Nonconformists in other directions. Third, there was the commercial interest of the theatrical managers and their syndicates of backers in the City, to whom, as I shall show later on, the censorship affords a cheap insurance of enormous value. Fourth, there was the powerful interest of the trade in intoxicating liquors, fiercely determined to resist any extension of the authority of teetotaller-led local governing bodies over theatres. Fifth, there were the playwrights, without political power, but with a very close natural monopoly of a talent not only for play-writing but for satirical polemics. And since every interest has its opposition, all these influences had created hostile bodies by the operation of the mere impulse to contradict them, always strong in English human nature.

Why the Managers Love the Censorship

The only one of these influences which seems to be generally misunderstood is that of the managers. It has been assumed repeatedly that managers and authors are affected in the same way by the censorship. When a prominent author protests against the censorship, his opinion is supposed to be balanced by that of some prominent manager who declares that the censorship is the mainstay of the theatre, and his relations with the Lord Chamberlain and the Examiner of Plays a cherished privilege and an inexhaustible joy. This error was not removed by the evidence given before the Joint Select Committee. The managers did not make their case clear there, partly because they did not understand it, and partly because their most eminent witnesses were not personally affected by it, and would not condescend to plead it, feeling themselves, on the contrary, compelled by their self-respect to admit and even emphasize the fact that the Lord Chamberlain in the exercise of his duties as licenser had done those things which he ought not to have done, and left undone those things which he ought to have done. Mr. Forbes Robertson and Sir Herbert Tree, for instance, had never felt the real disadvantage of which managers have to complain. This disadvantage was not put directly to the Committee; and though the managers are against me on the question of the censorship, I will now put their case for them as they should have put it themselves, and as it can be read between the lines of their evidence when once the reader has the clue.

The manager of a theatre is a man of business. He is not an expert in politics, religion, art, literature, philosophy, or law. He calls in a playwright just as he calls in a doctor, or consults a lawyer, or engages an architect, depending on the playwright’s reputation and past achievements for a satisfactory result. A play by an unknown man may attract him sufficiently to induce him to give that unknown man a trial; but this does not occur often enough to be taken into account: his normal course is to resort to a well-known author and take (mostly with misgiving) what he gets from him. Now this does not cause any anxiety to Mr. Forbes Robertson and Sir Herbert Tree, because they are only incidentally managers and men of business: primarily they are highly cultivated artists, quite capable of judging for themselves anything that the most abstruse playwright is likely to put before them. But the plain-sailing tradesman who must be taken as the typical manager (for the west end of London is not the whole theatrical world) is by no means equally qualified to judge whether a play is safe from prosecution or not. He may not understand it, may not like it, may not know what the author is driving at, may have no knowledge of the ethical, political, and sectarian controversies which may form the intellectual fabric of the play, and may honestly see nothing but an ordinary “character part” in a stage figure which may be a libellous and unmistakeable caricature of some eminent living person of whom he has never heard. Yet if he produces the play he is legally responsible just as if he had written it himself. Without protection he may find himself in the dock answering a charge of blasphemous libel, seditious libel, obscene libel, or all three together, not to mention the possibility of a private action for defamatory libel. His sole refuge is the opinion of the Examiner of Plays, his sole protection the licence of the Lord Chamberlain. A refusal to license does not hurt him, because he can produce another play: it is the author who suffers. The granting of the licence practically places him above the law; for though it may be legally possible to prosecute a licensed play, nobody ever dreams of doing it. The really responsible person, the Lord Chamberlain, could not be put into the dock; and the manager could not decently be convicted when he could procure in his defence a certificate from the chief officer of the King’s household that the play was a proper one.

A Two Guinea Insurance Policy

The censorship, then, provides the manager, at the negligible premium of two guineas per play, with an effective insurance against the author getting him into trouble, and a complete relief from all conscientious responsibility for the character of the entertainment at his theatre. Under such circumstances, managers would be more than human if they did not regard the censorship as their most valuable privilege. This is the simple explanation of the rally of the managers and their Associations to the defence of the censorship, of their reiterated resolutions of confidence in the Lord Chamberlain, of their presentations of plate, and, generally, of their enthusiastic contentment with the present system, all in such startling contrast to the denunciations of the censorship by the authors. It also explains why the managerial witnesses who had least to fear from the Censor were the most reluctant in his defence, whilst those whose practice it is to strain his indulgence to the utmost were almost rapturous in his praise. There would be absolute unanimity among the managers in favor of the censorship if they were all simply tradesmen. Even those actor-managers who made no secret before the Committee of their contempt for the present operation of the censorship, and their indignation at being handed over to a domestic official as casual servants of a specially disorderly kind, demanded, not the abolition of the institution, but such a reform as might make it consistent with their dignity and unobstructive to their higher artistic aims. Feeling no personal need for protection against the author, they perhaps forgot the plight of many a manager to whom the modern advanced drama is so much Greek; but they did feel very strongly the need of being protected against Vigilance Societies and Municipalities and common informers in a country where a large section of the community still believes that art of all kinds is inherently sinful.

Why the Government Interfered

It may now be asked how a Liberal government had been persuaded to meddle at all with a question in which so many conflicting interests were involved, and which had probably no electoral value whatever. Many simple simple souls believed that it was because certain severely virtuous plays by Ibsen, by M. Brieux, by Mr. Granville Barker, and by me, were suppressed by the censorship, whilst plays of a scandalous character were licensed without demur. No doubt this influenced public opinion; but those who imagine that it could influence British governments little know how remote from public opinion and how full of their own little family and party affairs British governments, both Liberal and Unionist, still are. The censorship scandal had existed for years without any parliamentary action being taken in the matter, and might have existed for as many more had it not happened in 1906 that Mr. Robert Vernon Harcourt entered parliament as a member of the Liberal Party, of which his father had been one of the leaders during the Gladstone era. Mr. Harcourt was thus a young man marked out for office both by his parentage and his unquestionable social position as one of the governing class. Also, and this was much less usual, he was brilliantly clever, and was the author of a couple of plays of remarkable promise. Mr. Harcourt informed his leaders that he was going to take up the subject of the censorship. The leaders, recognizing his hereditary right to a parliamentary canter of some sort as a prelude to his public career, and finding that all the clever people seemed to be agreed that the censorship was an anti-Liberal institution and an abominable nuisance to boot, indulged him by appointing a Select Committee of both Houses to investigate the subject. The then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Mr. Herbert Samuel (now Postmaster-General), who had made his way into the Cabinet twenty years ahead of the usual age, was made Chairman. Mr. Robert Harcourt himself was of course a member. With him, representing the Commons, were Mr. Alfred Mason, a man of letters who had won a seat in parliament as offhandedly as he has since discarded it, or as he once appeared on the stage to help me out of a difficulty in casting Arms and the Man when that piece was the newest thing in the advanced drama. There was Mr. Hugh Law, an Irish member, son of an Irish Chancellor, presenting a keen and joyous front to English intellectual sloth. Above all, there was Colonel Lockwood to represent at one stroke the Opposition and the average popular man. This he did by standing up gallantly for the Censor, to whose support the Opposition was in no way committed, and by visibly defying the most cherished conventions of the average man with a bunch of carnations in his buttonhole as large as a dinner-plate, which would have made a Bunthorne blench, and which very nearly did make Mr. Granville Barker (who has an antipathy to the scent of carnations) faint.

The Peers on the Joint Select Committee

The House of Lords then proceeded to its selection. As fashionable drama in Paris and London concerns itself almost exclusively with adultery, the first choice fell on Lord Gorell, who had for many years presided over the Divorce Court. Lord Plymouth, who had been Chairman to the Shakespeare Memorial project (now merged in the Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre) was obviously marked out for selection; and it was generally expected that the Lords Lytton and Esher, who had taken a prominent part in the same movement, would have been added. This expectation was not fulfilled. Instead, Lord Willoughby de Broke, who had distinguished himself as an amateur actor, was selected along with Lord Newton, whose special qualifications for the Committee, if he had any, were unknown to the public. Finally Lord Ribblesdale, the argute son of a Scotch mother, was thrown in to make up for any shortcoming in intellectual subtlety that might arise in the case of his younger colleagues; and this completed the two teams.

The Committee’s Attitude Toward the Theatre

In England, thanks chiefly to the censorship, the theatre is not respected. It is indulged and despised as a department of what is politely called gaiety. It is therefore not surprising that the majority of the Committee began by taking its work uppishly and carelessly. When it discovered that the contemporary drama, licensed by the Lord Chamberlain, included plays which could be described only behind closed doors, and in the discomfort which attends discussions of very nasty subjects between men of widely different ages, it calmly put its own convenience before its public duty by ruling that there should be no discussion of particular plays, much as if a committee on temperance were to rule that drunkenness was not a proper subject of conversation among gentlemen.

A Bad Beginning

This was a bad beginning. Everybody knew that in England the censorship would not be crushed by the weight of the constitutional argument against it, heavy as that was, unless it were also brought home to the Committee and to the public that it had sanctioned and protected the very worst practicable examples of the kind of play it professed to extirpate. For it must be remembered that the other half of the practical side of the case, dealing with the merits of the plays it had suppressed, could never secure a unanimous assent. If the Censor had suppressed Hamlet, as he most certainly would have done had it been submitted to him as a new play, he would have been supported by a large body of people to whom incest is a tabooed subject which must not be mentioned on the stage or anywhere else outside a criminal court. Hamlet, Oedipus, and The Cenci, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Brieux’s Maternité, and Les Avariés, Maeterlinck’s Monna Vanna and Mr. Granville Barker’s Waste may or may not be great poems, or edifying sermons, or important documents, or charming romances: our tribal citizens know nothing about that and do not want to know anything: all that they do know is that incest, prostitution, abortion, contagious diseases, and nudity are improper, and that all conversations, or books, or plays in which they are discussed are improper conversations, improper books, improper plays, and should not be allowed. The Censor may prohibit all such plays with complete certainty that there will be a chorus of “Quite right too” sufficient to drown the protests of the few who know better. The Achilles heel of the censorship is therefore not the fine plays it has suppressed, but the abominable plays it has licensed: plays which the Committee itself had to turn the public out of the room and close the doors before it could discuss, and which I myself have found it impossible to expose in the press because no editor of a paper or magazine intended for general family reading could admit into his columns the baldest narration of the stories which the Censor has not only tolerated but expressly certified as fitting for presentation on the stage. When the Committee ruled out this part of the case it shook the confidence of the authors in its impartiality and its seriousness. Of course it was not able to enforce its ruling thoroughly. Plays which were merely lightminded and irresponsible in their viciousness were repeatedly mentioned by Mr. Harcourt and others. But the really detestable plays, which would have damned the censorship beyond all apology or salvation, were never referred to; and the moment Mr. Harcourt or anyone else made the Committee uncomfortable by a move in their direction, the ruling was appealed to at once, and the censorship saved.

A Comic Interlude

It was part of this nervous dislike of the unpleasant part of its business that led to the comic incident of the Committee’s sudden discovery that I had insulted it, and its suspension of its investigation for the purpose of elaborately insulting me back again. Comic to the lookers-on, that is; for the majority of the Committee made no attempt to conceal the fact that they were wildly angry with me; and I, though my public experience and skill in acting enabled me to maintain an appearance of imperturbable good humor, was equally furious. The friction began as follows.

The precedents for the conduct of the Committee were to be found in the proceedings of the Committee of 1892. That Committee, no doubt recognizing the absurdity of calling on distinguished artists to give their views before it, and then refusing to allow them to state their views except in nervous replies to such questions as it might suit members to put to them, allowed Sir Henry Irving and Sir John Hare to prepare and read written statements, and formally invited them to read them to the Committee before being questioned. I accordingly prepared such a statement. For the greater convenience of the Committee, I offered to have this statement printed at my own expense, and to supply the members with copies. The offer was accepted; and the copies supplied. I also offered to provide the Committee with copies of those plays of mine which had been refused a licence by the Lord Chamberlain. That offer also was accepted; and the books duly supplied.

An Anti-Shavian Panic

As far as I can guess, the next thing that happened was that some timid or unawakened member of the Committee read my statement and was frightened or scandalized out of his wits by it. At all events it is certain that the majority of the Committee allowed themselves to be persuaded to refuse to allow any statement to be read; but to avoid the appearance of pointing this expressly at me, the form adopted was a resolution to adhere strictly to precedent, the Committee being then unaware that the precedents were on my side. Accordingly, when I appeared before the Committee, and proposed to read my statement “according to precedent,” the Committee was visibly taken aback. The Chairman was bound by the letter of the decision arrived at to allow me to read my statement, since that course was according to precedent; but as this was exactly what the decision was meant to prevent, the majority of the Committee would have regarded this hoisting of them with their own petard as a breach of faith on the part of the Chairman, who, I infer, was not in agreement with the suppressive majority. There was nothing for it, after a somewhat awkward pause, but to clear me and the public out of the room and reconsider the situation in camera. When the doors were opened again I was informed simply that the Committee would not hear my statement, but as the Committee could not very decently refuse my evidence altogether, the Chairman, with a printed copy of my statement in his hand as “proof,” was able to come to the rescue to some extent by putting to me a series of questions to which no doubt I might have replied by taking another copy out of my pocket, and quoting my statement paragraph by paragraph, as some of the later witnesses did. But as in offering the Committee my statement for burial in their bluebook I had made a considerable sacrifice, being able to secure greater publicity for it by independent publication on my own account; and as, further, the circumstances of the refusal made it offensive enough to take all heart out of the scrupulous consideration with which I had so far treated the Committee, I was not disposed to give its majority a second chance, or to lose the opportunity offered me by the questions to fire an additional broadside into the censorship. I pocketed my statement, and answered the questions viva voce. At the conclusion of this, my examination-in-chief, the Committee adjourned, asking me to present myself again for (virtually) cross-examination. But this cross-examination never came off, as the sequel will show.

A Rare and Curious First Edition

The refusal of the Committee to admit my statement had not unnaturally created the impression that it must be a scandalous document; and a lively demand for copies at once set in. And among the very first applicants were members of the majority which had carried the decision to exclude the document. They had given so little attention to the business that they did not know, or had forgotten, that they had already been supplied with copies at their own request. At all events, they came to me publicly and cleaned me out of the handful of copies I had provided for distribution to the press. And after the sitting it was intimated to me that yet more copies were desired for the use of the Committee: a demand, under the circumstances, of breath-bereaving coolness. At the same time, a brisk demand arose outside the Committee, not only among people who were anxious to read what I had to say on the subject, but among victims of the craze for collecting first editions, copies of privately circulated pamphlets, and other real or imaginary rarities, and who will cheerfully pay five guineas for any piece of discarded old rubbish of mine when they will not pay four-and-sixpence for this book because everyone else can get it for four-and-sixpence too.

The Times to the Rescue

The day after the refusal of the Committee to face my statement, I transferred the scene of action to the columns of The Times, which did yeoman’s service to the public on this, as on many other occasions, by treating the question as a public one without the least regard to the supposed susceptibilities of the Court on the one side, or the avowed prejudices of the Free Churches or the interests of the managers or theatrical speculators on the other. The Times published the summarized conclusions of my statement, and gave me an opportunity of saying as much as it was then advisable to say of what had occurred. For it must be remembered that, however impatient and contemptuous I might feel of the intellectual cowardice shown by the majority of the Committee face to face with myself, it was nonetheless necessary to keep up its prestige in every possible way, not only for the sake of the dignity and importance of the matter with which it had to deal, and in the hope that the treatment of subsequent witnesses and the final report might make amends for a feeble beginning, but also out of respect and consideration for the minority. For it is fair to say that the majority was never more than a bare majority, and that the worst thing the Committee did⁠—the exclusion of references to particular plays⁠—was perpetrated in the absence of the Chairman.

I, therefore, had to treat the Committee in The Times very much better than its majority deserved, an injustice for which I now apologize. I did not, however, resist the temptation to hint, quite good-humoredly, that my politeness to the Committee had cost me quite enough already, and that I was not prepared to supply the members of the Committee, or anyone else, with extra copies merely as collectors’ curiosities.

The Council of Ten

Then the fat was in the fire. The majority, chaffed for its eagerness to obtain copies of scarce pamphlets retailable at five guineas, went dancing mad. When I presented myself, as requested, for cross-examination, I found the doors of the Committee room shut, and the corridors of the House of Lords filled by a wondering crowd, to whom it had somehow leaked out that something terrible was happening inside. It could not be another licensed play too scandalous to be discussed in public, because the Committee had decided to discuss no more of these examples of the Censor’s notions of purifying the stage; and what else the Committee might have to discuss that might not be heard by all the world was not easily guessable.

Without suggesting that the confidence of the Committee was in any way violated by any of its members further than was absolutely necessary to clear them from suspicion of complicity in the scene which followed, I think I may venture to conjecture what was happening. It was felt by the majority, first, that it must be cleared at all costs of the imputation of having procured more than one copy each of my statement, and that one not from any interest in an undesirable document by an irreverent author, but in the reluctant discharge of its solemn public duty; second, that a terrible example must be made of me by the most crushing public snub in the power of the Committee to administer. To throw my wretched little pamphlet at my head and to kick me out of the room was the passionate impulse which prevailed in spite of all the remonstrances of the Commoners, seasoned to the give-and-take of public life, and of the single peer who kept his head. The others, for the moment, had no heads to keep. And the fashion in which they proposed to wreak their vengeance was as follows.

The Sentence

I was to be admitted, as a lamb to the slaughter, and allowed to take my place as if for further examination. The Chairman was then to inform me coldly that the Committee did not desire to have anything more to say to me. The members were thereupon solemnly to hand me back the copies of my statement as so much waste paper, and I was to be suffered to slink away with what countenance I could maintain in such disgrace.

But this plan required the active cooperation of every member of the Committee; and whilst the majority regarded it as an august and impressive vindication of the majesty of parliament, the minority regarded it with equal conviction as a puerile tomfoolery, and declined altogether to act their allotted parts in it. Besides, they did not all want to part with the books. For instance, Mr. Hugh Law, being an Irishman, with an Irishman’s sense of how to behave like a gallant gentleman on occasion, was determined to be able to assure me that nothing should induce him to give up my statement or prevent him from obtaining and cherishing as many copies as possible. (I quote this as an example to the House of Lords of the right thing to say in such emergencies). So the program had to be modified. The minority could not prevent the enraged majority from refusing to examine me further; nor could the Chairman refuse to communicate that decision to me. Neither could the minority object to the secretary handing me back such copies as he could collect from the majority. And at that the matter was left. The doors were opened; the audience trooped in; I was called to my place in the dock (so to speak); and all was ready for the sacrifice.

The Execution

Alas! the majority reckoned without Colonel Lockwood. That hardy and undaunted veteran refused to shirk his share in the scene merely because the minority was recalcitrant and the majority perhaps subject to stage fright. When Mr. Samuel had informed me that the Committee had no further questions to ask me with an urbanity which gave the public no clue as to the temper of the majority; when I had jumped up with the proper air of relief and gratitude; when the secretary had handed me his little packet of books with an affability which effectually concealed his dramatic function as executioner; when the audience was simply disappointed at being baulked of the entertainment of hearing Mr. Robert Harcourt cross-examine me; in short, when the situation was all but saved by the tact of the Chairman and secretary, Colonel Lockwood rose, with all his carnations blazing, and gave away the whole case by handing me, with impressive simplicity and courtesy, his two copies of the precious statement. And I believe that if he had succeeded in securing ten, he would have handed them all back to me with the most sincere conviction that every one of the ten must prove a crushing addition to the weight of my discomfiture. I still cherish that second copy, a little blue-bound pamphlet, methodically autographed “Lockwood B” among my most valued literary trophies.

An innocent lady told me afterwards that she never knew that I could smile so beautifully, and that she thought it showed very good taste on my part. I was not conscious of smiling; but I should have embraced the Colonel had I dared. As it was, I turned expectantly to his colleagues, mutely inviting them to follow his example. But there was only one Colonel Lockwood on that Committee. No eye met mine except minority eyes, dancing with mischief. There was nothing more to be said. I went home to my morning’s work, and returned in the afternoon to receive the apologies of the minority for the conduct of the majority, and to see Mr. Granville Barker, overwhelmed by the conscience-stricken politeness of the now almost abject Committee, and by a powerful smell of carnations, heading the long list of playwrights who came there to testify against the censorship, and whose treatment, I am happy to say, was everything they could have desired.

After all, ridiculous as the scene was, Colonel Lockwood’s simplicity and courage were much more serviceable to his colleagues than their own inept coup de théâtre would have been if he had not spoiled it. It was plain to everyone that he had acted in entire good faith, without a thought as to these apparently insignificant little books being of any importance or having caused me or anybody else any trouble, and that he was wounded in his most sensitive spot by the construction my Times letter had put on his action. And in Colonel Lockwood’s case one saw the case of his party on the Committee. They had simply been thoughtless in the matter.

I hope nobody will suppose that this in any way exonerates them. When people accept public service for one of the most vital duties that can arise in our society, they have no right to be thoughtless. In spite of the fun of the scene on the surface, my public sense was, and still is, very deeply offended by it. It made an end for me of the claim of the majority to be taken seriously. When the Government comes to deal with the question, as it presumably will before long, I invite it to be guided by the Chairman, the minority, and by the witnesses according to their weight, and to pay no attention whatever to those recommendations which were obviously inserted solely to conciliate the majority and get the report through and the Committee done with.

My evidence will be found in the Bluebook, pp. 46⁠–⁠53. And here is the terrible statement which the Committee went through so much to suppress.

The Rejected Statement⁠—Part I

The Witness’s Qualifications

I am by profession a playwright. I have been in practice since 1892. I am a member of the Managing Committee of the Society of Authors and of the Dramatic Subcommittee of that body. I have written nineteen plays, some of which have been translated and performed in all European countries except Turkey, Greece, and Portugal. They have been performed extensively in America. Three of them have been refused licences by the Lord Chamberlain. In one case a licence has since been granted. The other two are still unlicensed. I have suffered both in pocket and reputation by the action of the Lord Chamberlain. In other countries I have not come into conflict with the censorship except in Austria, where the production of a comedy of mine was postponed for a year because it alluded to the part taken by Austria in the Serbo-Bulgarian war. This comedy was not one of the plays suppressed in England by the Lord Chamberlain. One of the plays so suppressed was prosecuted in America by the police in consequence of an immense crowd of disorderly persons having been attracted to the first performance by the Lord Chamberlain’s condemnation of it; but on appeal to a higher court it was decided that the representation was lawful and the intention innocent, since when it has been repeatedly performed.

I am not an ordinary playwright in general practice. I am a specialist in immoral and heretical plays. My reputation has been gained by my persistent struggle to force the public to reconsider its morals. In particular, I regard much current morality as to economic and sexual relations as disastrously wrong; and I regard certain doctrines of the Christian religion as understood in England today with abhorrence. I write plays with the deliberate object of converting the nation to my opinions in these matters. I have no other effectual incentive to write plays, as I am not dependent on the theatre for my livelihood. If I were prevented from producing immoral and heretical plays, I should cease to write for the theatre, and propagate my views from the platform and through books. I mention these facts to show that I have a special interest in the achievement by my profession of those rights of liberty of speech and conscience which are matters of course in other professions. I object to censorship not merely because the existing form of it grievously injures and hinders me individually, but on public grounds.

The Definition of Immorality

In dealing with the question of the censorship, everything depends on the correct use of the word immorality, and a careful discrimination between the powers of a magistrate or judge to administer a code, and those of a censor to please himself.

Whatever is contrary to established manners and customs is immoral. An immoral act or doctrine is not necessarily a sinful one: on the contrary, every advance in thought and conduct is by definition immoral until it has converted the majority. For this reason it is of the most enormous importance that immorality should be protected jealously against the attacks of those who have no standard except the standard of custom, and who regard any attack on custom⁠—that is, on morals⁠—as an attack on society, on religion, and on virtue.

A censor is never intentionally a protector of immorality. He always aims at the protection of morality. Now morality is extremely valuable to society. It imposes conventional conduct on the great mass of persons who are incapable of original ethical judgment, and who would be quite lost if they were not in leading-strings devised by lawgivers, philosophers, prophets and poets for their guidance. But morality is not dependent on censorship for protection. It is already powerfully fortified by the magistracy and the whole body of law. Blasphemy, indecency, libel, treason, sedition, obscenity, profanity, and all the other evils which a censorship is supposed to avert, are punishable by the civil magistrate with all the severity of vehement prejudice. Morality has not only every engine that lawgivers can devise in full operation for its protection, but also that enormous weight of public opinion enforced by social ostracism which is stronger than all the statutes. A censor pretending to protect morality is like a child pushing the cushions of a railway carriage to give itself the sensation of making the train travel at sixty miles an hour. It is immorality, not morality, that needs protection: it is morality, not immorality, that needs restraint; for morality, with all the dead weight of human inertia and superstition to hang on the back of the pioneer, and all the malice of vulgarity and prejudice to threaten him, is responsible for many persecutions and many martyrdoms.

Persecutions and martyrdoms, however, are trifles compared to the mischief done by censorships in delaying the general march of enlightenment. This can be brought home to us by imagining what would have been the effect of applying to all literature the censorship we still apply to the stage. The works of Linnaeus and the evolutionists of 1790⁠–⁠1830, of Darwin, Wallace, Huxley, Helmholtz, Tyndall, Spencer, Carlyle, Ruskin, and Samuel Butler, would not have been published, as they were all immoral and heretical in the very highest degree, and gave pain to many worthy and pious people. They are at present condemned by the Greek and Roman Catholic censorships as unfit for general reading. A censorship of conduct would have been equally disastrous. The disloyalty of Hampden and of Washington; the revolting immorality of Luther in not only marrying when he was a priest, but actually marrying a nun; the heterodoxy of Galileo; the shocking blasphemies and sacrileges of Mohammed against the idols whom he dethroned to make way for his conception of one god; the still more startling blasphemy of Jesus when he declared God to be the son of man and himself to be the son of God, are all examples of shocking immoralities (every immorality shocks somebody), the suppression and extinction of which would have been more disastrous than the utmost mischief that can be conceived as ensuing from the toleration of vice.

These facts, glaring as they are, are disguised by the promotion of immoralities into moralities which is constantly going on. Christianity and Mohammedanism, once thought of and dealt with exactly as Anarchism is thought of and dealt with today, have become established religions; and fresh immoralities are prosecuted in their name. The truth is that the vast majority of persons professing these religions have never been anything but simple moralists. The respectable Englishman who is a Christian because he was born in Clapham would be a Mohammedan for the cognate reason if he had been born in Constantinople. He has never willingly tolerated immorality. He did not adopt any innovation until it had become moral; and then he adopted it, not on its merits, but solely because it had become moral. In doing so he never realized that it had ever been immoral: consequently its early struggles taught him no lesson; and he has opposed the next step in human progress as indignantly as if neither manners, customs, nor thought had ever changed since the beginning of the world. Toleration must be imposed on him as a mystic and painful duty by his spiritual and political leaders, or he will condemn the world to stagnation, which is the penalty of an inflexible morality.

What Toleration Means

This must be done all the more arbitrarily because it is not possible to make the ordinary moral man understand what toleration and liberty really mean. He will accept them verbally with alacrity, even with enthusiasm, because the word toleration has been moralized by eminent Whigs; but what he means by toleration is toleration of doctrines that he considers enlightened, and, by liberty, liberty to do what he considers right: that is, he does not mean toleration or liberty at all; for there is no need to tolerate what appears enlightened or to claim liberty to do what most people consider right. Toleration and liberty have no sense or use except as toleration of opinions that are considered damnable, and liberty to do what seems wrong. Setting Englishmen free to marry their deceased wife’s sisters is not tolerated by the people who approve of it, but by the people who regard it as incestuous. Catholic Emancipation and the admission of Jews to parliament needed no toleration from Catholics and Jews: the toleration they needed was that of the people who regarded the one measure as a facilitation of idolatry, and the other as a condonation of the crucifixion. Clearly such toleration is not clamored for by the multitude or by the press which reflects its prejudices. It is essentially one of those abnegations of passion and prejudice which the common man submits to because uncommon men whom he respects as wiser than himself assure him that it must be so, or the higher affairs of human destiny will suffer.

Such admission is the more difficult because the arguments against tolerating immorality are the same as the arguments against tolerating murder and theft; and this is why the Censor seems to the inconsiderate as obviously desirable a functionary as the police magistrate. But there is this simple and tremendous difference between the cases: that whereas no evil can conceivably result from the total suppression of murder and theft, and all communities prosper in direct proportion to such suppression, the total suppression of immorality, especially in matters of religion and sex, would stop enlightenment, and produce what used to be called a Chinese civilization until the Chinese lately took to immoral courses by permitting railway contractors to desecrate the graves of their ancestors, and their soldiers to wear clothes which indecently revealed the fact that they had legs and waists and even posteriors. At about the same moment a few bold Englishwomen ventured on the immorality of riding astride their horses, a practice that has since established itself so successfully that before another generation has passed away there may not be a new sidesaddle in England or a woman who could use it if there was.

The Case for Toleration

Accordingly, there has risen among wise and farsighted men a perception of the need for setting certain departments of human activity entirely free from legal interference. This has nothing to do with any sympathy these liberators may themselves have with immoral views. A man with the strongest conviction of the Divine ordering of the universe and of the superiority of monarchy to all forms of government may nevertheless quite consistently and conscientiously be ready to lay down his life for the right of every man to advocate Atheism or Republicanism if he believes in them. An attack on morals may turn out to be the salvation of the race. A hundred years ago nobody foresaw that Tom Paine’s centenary would be the subject of a laudatory special article in The Times; and only a few understood that the persecution of his works and the transportation of men for the felony of reading them was a mischievous mistake. Even less, perhaps, could they have guessed that Proudhon, who became notorious by his essay entitled “What is Property? It is Theft” would have received, on the like occasion and in the same paper, a respectful consideration which nobody would now dream of according to Lord Liverpool or Lord Brougham. Nevertheless there was a mass of evidence to show that such a development was not only possible but fairly probable, and that the risks of suppressing liberty of propaganda were far greater than the risk of Paine’s or Proudhon’s writings wrecking civilization. Now there was no such evidence in favor of tolerating the cutting of throats and the robbing of tills. No case whatever can be made out for the statement that a nation cannot do without common thieves and homicidal ruffians. But an overwhelming case can be made out for the statement that no nation can prosper or even continue to exist without heretics and advocates of shockingly immoral doctrines. The Inquisition and the Star Chamber, which were nothing but censorships, made ruthless war on impiety and immorality. The result was once familiar to Englishmen, though of late years it seems to have been forgotten. It cost England a revolution to get rid of the Star Chamber. Spain did not get rid of the Inquisition, and paid for that omission by becoming a barely third-rate power politically, and intellectually no power at all, in the Europe she had once dominated as the mightiest of the Christian empires.

The Limits to Toleration

But the large toleration these considerations dictate has limits. For example, though we tolerate, and rightly tolerate, the propaganda of Anarchism as a political theory which embraces all that is valuable in the doctrine of Laisser-Faire and the method of Free Trade as well as all that is shocking in the views of Bakounine, we clearly cannot, or at all events will not, tolerate assassination of rulers on the ground that it is “propaganda by deed” or sociological experiment. A play inciting to such an assassination cannot claim the privileges of heresy or immorality, because no case can be made out in support of assassination as an indispensable instrument of progress. Now it happens that we have in the Julius Caesar of Shakespeare a play which the Tsar of Russia or the Governor-General of India would hardly care to see performed in their capitals just now. It is an artistic treasure; but it glorifies a murder which Goethe described as the silliest crime ever committed. It may quite possibly have helped the regicides of 1649 to see themselves, as it certainly helped generations of Whig statesmen to see them, in a heroic light; and it unquestionably vindicates and ennobles a conspirator who assassinated the head of the Roman State not because he abused his position but solely because he occupied it, thus affirming the extreme republican principle that all kings, good or bad, should be killed because kingship and freedom cannot live together. Under certain circumstances this vindication and ennoblement might act as an incitement to an actual assassination as well as to Plutarchian republicanism; for it is one thing to advocate republicanism or royalism: it is quite another to make a hero of Brutus or Ravaillac, or a heroine of Charlotte Corday. Assassination is the extreme form of censorship; and it seems hard to justify an incitement to it on anti-censorial principles. The very people who would have scouted the notion of prohibiting the performances of Julius Caesar at His Majesty’s Theatre in London last year, might now entertain very seriously a proposal to exclude Indians from them, and to suppress the play completely in Calcutta and Dublin; for if the assassin of Caesar was a hero, why not the assassins of Lord Frederick Cavendish, Presidents Lincoln and McKinley, and Sir Curzon Wyllie? Here is a strong case for some constitutional means of preventing the performance of a play. True, it is an equally strong case for preventing the circulation of the Bible, which was always in the hands of our regicides; but as the Roman Catholic Church does not hesitate to accept that consequence of the censorial principle, it does not invalidate the argument.

Take another actual case. A modern comedy, Arms and the Man, though not a comedy of politics, is nevertheless so far historical that it reveals the unacknowledged fact that as the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885 was much more than a struggle between the Serbians and Bulgarians, the troops engaged were officered by two European Powers of the first magnitude. In consequence, the performance of the play was for some time forbidden in Vienna, and more recently it gave offence in Rome at a moment when popular feeling was excited as to the relations of Austria with the Balkan States. Now if a comedy so remote from political passion as Arms and the Man can, merely because it refers to political facts, become so inconvenient and inopportune that Foreign Offices take the trouble to have its production postponed, what may not be the effect of what is called a patriotic drama produced at a moment when the balance is quivering between peace and war? Is there not something to be said for a political censorship, if not for a moral one? May not those continental governments who leave the stage practically free in every other respect, but muzzle it politically, be justified by the practical exigencies of the situation?

The Difference Between Law and Censorship

The answer is that a pamphlet, a newspaper article, or a resolution moved at a political meeting can do all the mischief that a play can, and often more; yet we do not set up a permanent censorship of the press or of political meetings. Any journalist may publish an article, any demagogue may deliver a speech without giving notice to the government or obtaining its licence. The risk of such freedom is great; but as it is the price of our political liberty, we think it worth paying. We may abrogate it in emergencies by a Coercion Act, a suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, or a proclamation of martial law, just as we stop the traffic in a street during a fire, or shoot thieves at sight if they loot after an earthquake. But when the emergency is past, liberty is restored everywhere except in the theatre. The Act of 1843 is a permanent Coercion Act for the theatre, a permanent suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act as far as plays are concerned, a permanent proclamation of martial law with a single official substituted for a court martial. It is, in fact, assumed that actors, playwrights, and theatre managers are dangerous and dissolute characters whose existence creates a chronic state of emergency, and who must be treated as earthquake looters are treated. It is not necessary now to discredit this assumption. It was broken down by the late Sir Henry Irving when he finally shamed the Government into extending to his profession the official recognition enjoyed by the other branches of fine art. Today we have on the roll of knighthood actors, authors, and managers. The rogue and vagabond theory of the depravity of the theatre is as dead officially as it is in general society; and with it has perished the sole excuse for the Act of 1843 and for the denial to the theatre of the liberties secured, at far greater social risk, to the press and the platform.

There is no question here of giving the theatre any larger liberties than the press and the platform, or of claiming larger powers for Shakespeare to eulogize Brutus than Lord Rosebery has to eulogize Cromwell. The abolition of the censorship does not involve the abolition of the magistrate and of the whole civil and criminal code. On the contrary it would make the theatre more effectually subject to them than it is at present; for once a play now runs the gauntlet of the censorship, it is practically placed above the law. It is almost humiliating to have to demonstrate the essential difference between a censor and a magistrate or a sanitary inspector; but it is impossible to ignore the carelessness with which even distinguished critics of the theatre assume that all the arguments proper to the support of a magistracy and body of jurisprudence apply equally to a censorship.

A magistrate has laws to administer: a censor has nothing but his own opinion. A judge leaves the question of guilt to the jury: the Censor is jury and judge as well as lawgiver. A magistrate may be strongly prejudiced against an atheist or an anti-vaccinator, just as a sanitary inspector may have formed a careful opinion that drains are less healthy than cesspools; but the magistrate must allow the atheist to affirm instead of to swear, and must grant the anti-vaccinator an exemption certificate, when their demands are lawfully made; and in cities the inspector must compel the builder to make drains and must prosecute him if he makes cesspools. The law may be only the intolerance of the community; but it is a defined and limited intolerance. The limitation is sometimes carried so far that a judge cannot inflict the penalty for housebreaking on a burglar who can prove that he found the door open and therefore made only an unlawful entry. On the other hand, it is sometimes so vague, as for example in the case of the American law against obscenity, that it makes the magistrate virtually a censor. But in the main a citizen can ascertain what he may do and what he may not do; and, though no one knows better than a magistrate that a single ill-conducted family may demoralize a whole street, no magistrate can imprison or otherwise restrain its members on the ground that their immorality may corrupt their neighbors. He can prevent any citizen from carrying certain specified weapons, but not from handling pokers, table-knives, bricks or bottles of corrosive fluid, on the ground that he might use them to commit murder or inflict malicious injury. He has no general power to prevent citizens from selling unhealthy or poisonous substances, or judging for themselves what substances are unhealthy and what wholesome, what poisonous and what innocuous: what he can do is to prevent anybody who has not a specific qualification from selling certain specified poisons of which a schedule is kept. Nobody is forbidden to sell minerals without a licence; but everybody is forbidden to sell silver without a licence. When the law has forgotten some atrocious sin⁠—for instance, contracting marriage whilst suffering from contagious disease⁠—the magistrate cannot arrest or punish the wrongdoer, however he may abhor his wickedness. In short, no man is lawfully at the mercy of the magistrate’s personal caprice, prejudice, ignorance, superstition, temper, stupidity, resentment, timidity, ambition, or private conviction. But a playwright’s livelihood, his reputation, and his inspiration and mission are at the personal mercy of the Censor. The two do not stand, as the criminal and the judge stand, in the presence of a law that binds them both equally, and was made by neither of them, but by the deliberative collective wisdom of the community. The only law that affects them is the Act of 1843, which empowers one of them to do absolutely and finally what he likes with the other’s work. And when it is remembered that the slave in this case is the man whose profession is that of Aeschylus and Euripides, of Shakespeare and Goethe, of Tolstoy and Ibsen, and the master the holder of a party appointment which by the nature of its duties practically excludes the possibility of its acceptance by a serious statesman or great lawyer, it will be seen that the playwrights are justified in reproaching the framers of that Act for having failed not only to appreciate the immense importance of the theatre as a most powerful instrument for teaching the nation how and what to think and feel, but even to conceive that those who make their living by the theatre are normal human beings with the common rights of English citizens. In this extremity of inconsiderateness it is not surprising that they also did not trouble themselves to study the difference between a censor and a magistrate. And it will be found that almost all the people who disinterestedly defend the censorship today are defending him on the assumption that there is no constitutional difference between him and any other functionary whose duty it is to restrain crime and disorder.

One further difference remains to be noted. As a magistrate grows old his mind may change or decay; but the law remains the same. The censorship of the theatre fluctuates with every change in the views and character of the man who exercises it. And what this implies can only be appreciated by those who can imagine what the effect on the mind must be of the duty of reading through every play that is produced in the kingdom year in, year out.

Why the Lord Chamberlain?

What may be called the high political case against censorship as a principle is now complete. The pleadings are those which have already freed books and pulpits and political platforms in England from censorship, if not from occasional legal persecution. The stage alone remains under a censorship of a grotesquely unsuitable kind. No play can be performed if the Lord Chamberlain happens to disapprove of it. And the Lord Chamberlain’s functions have no sort of relationship to dramatic literature. A great judge of literature, a farseeing statesman, a born champion of liberty of conscience and intellectual integrity⁠—say a Milton, a Chesterfield, a Bentham⁠—would be a very bad Lord Chamberlain: so bad, in fact, that his exclusion from such a post may be regarded as decreed by natural law. On the other hand, a good Lord Chamberlain would be a stickler for morals in the narrowest sense, a busybody, a man to whom a matter of two inches in the length of a gentleman’s sword or the absence of a feather from a lady’s headdress would be a graver matter than the Habeas Corpus Act. The Lord Chamberlain, as Censor of the theatre, is a direct descendant of the King’s Master of the Revels, appointed in 1544 by Henry VIII to keep order among the players and musicians of that day when they performed at Court. This first appearance of the theatrical censor in politics as the whipper-in of the player, with its conception of the player as a rich man’s servant hired to amuse him, and, outside his professional duties, as a gay, disorderly, anarchic spoilt child, half privileged, half outlawed, probably as much vagabond as actor, is the real foundation of the subjection of the whole profession, actors, managers, authors and all, to the despotic authority of an officer whose business it is to preserve decorum among menials. It must be remembered that it was not until a hundred years later, in the reaction against the Puritans, that a woman could appear on the English stage without being pelted off as the Italian actresses were. The theatrical profession was regarded as a shameless one; and it is only of late years that actresses have at last succeeded in living down the assumption that actress and prostitute are synonymous terms, and made good their position in respectable society. This makes the survival of the old ostracism in the Act of 1843 intolerably galling; and though it explains the apparently unaccountable absurdity of choosing as Censor of dramatic literature an official whose functions and qualifications have nothing whatever to do with literature, it also explains why the present arrangement is not only criticized as an institution, but resented as an insult.

The Diplomatic Objection to the Lord Chamberlain

There is another reason, quite unconnected with the susceptibilities of authors, which makes it undesirable that a member of the King’s Household should be responsible for the character and tendency of plays. The drama, dealing with all departments of human life, is necessarily political. Recent events have shown⁠—what indeed needed no demonstration⁠—that it is impossible to prevent inferences being made, both at home and abroad, from the action of the Lord Chamberlain. The most talked-about play of the present year (1909), An Englishman’s Home, has for its main interest an invasion of England by a fictitious power which is understood, as it is meant to be understood, to represent Germany. The lesson taught by the play is the danger of invasion and the need for every English citizen to be a soldier. The Lord Chamberlain licensed this play, but refused to license a parody of it. Shortly afterwards he refused to license another play in which the fear of a German invasion was ridiculed. The German press drew the inevitable inference that the Lord Chamberlain was an anti-German alarmist, and that his opinions were a reflection of those prevailing in St. James’s Palace. Immediately after this, the Lord Chamberlain licensed the play. Whether the inference, as far as the Lord Chamberlain was concerned, was justified, is of no consequence. What is important is that it was sure to be made, justly or unjustly, and extended from the Lord Chamberlain to the Throne.

The Objection of Court Etiquette

There is another objection to the Lord Chamberlain’s censorship which affects the author’s choice of subject. Formerly very little heed was given in England to the susceptibilities of foreign courts. For instance, the notion that the Mikado of Japan should be as sacred to the English playwright as he is to the Japanese Lord Chamberlain would have seemed grotesque a generation ago. Now that the maintenance of entente cordiale between nations is one of the most prominent and most useful functions of the crown, the freedom of authors to deal with political subjects, even historically, is seriously threatened by the way in which the censorship makes the King responsible for the contents of every play. One author⁠—the writer of these lines, in fact⁠—has long desired to dramatize the life of Muhammad. But the possibility of a protest from the Turkish Ambassador⁠—or the fear of it⁠—causing the Lord Chamberlain to refuse to license such a play has prevented the play from being written. Now, if the censorship were abolished, nobody but the author could be held responsible for the play. The Turkish Ambassador does not now protest against the publication of Carlyle’s essay on the prophet, or of the English translations of the Koran in the prefaces to which Muhammad is criticized as an impostor, or of the older books in which he is reviled as “Mahound” and classed with the devil himself. But if these publications had to be licensed by the Lord Chamberlain it would be impossible for the King to allow the licence to be issued, as he would thereby be made responsible for the opinions expressed. This restriction of the historical drama is an unmixed evil. Great religious leaders are more interesting and more important subjects for the dramatist than great conquerors. It is a misfortune that public opinion would not tolerate a dramatization of Muhammad in Constantinople. But to prohibit it here, where public opinion would tolerate it, is an absurdity which, if applied in all directions, would make it impossible for the Queen to receive a Turkish ambassador without veiling herself, or the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s to display a cross on the summit of their Cathedral in a city occupied largely and influentially by Jews. Court etiquette is no doubt an excellent thing for court ceremonies; but to attempt to impose it on the drama is about as sensible as an attempt to make everybody in London wear court dress.

Why Not an Enlightened Censorship?

In the above cases the general question of censorship is separable from the question of the present form of it. Everyone who condemns the principle of censorship must also condemn the Lord Chamberlain’s control of the drama; but those who approve of the principle do not necessarily approve of the Lord Chamberlain being the Censor ex officio. They may, however, be entirely opposed to popular liberties, and may conclude from what has been said, not that the stage should be made as free as the church, press, or platform, but that these institutions should be censored as strictly as the stage. It will seem obvious to them that nothing is needed to remove all objections to a censorship except the placing of its powers in better hands.

Now though the transfer of the censorship to, say, the Lord Chancellor, or the Primate, or a Cabinet Minister, would be much less humiliating to the persons immediately concerned, the inherent vices of the institution would not be appreciably less disastrous. They would even be aggravated, for reasons which do not appear on the surface, and therefore need to be followed with some attention.

It is often said that the public is the real censor. That this is to some extent true is proved by the fact that plays which are licensed and produced in London have to be expurgated for the provinces. This does not mean that the provinces are more straitlaced, but simply that in many provincial towns there is only one theatre for all classes and all tastes, whereas in London there are separate theatres for separate sections of playgoers; so that, for example, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree can conduct His Majesty’s Theatre without the slightest regard to the tastes of the frequenters of the Gaiety Theatre; and Mr. George Edwardes can conduct the Gaiety Theatre without catering in any way for lovers of Shakespeare. Thus the farcical comedy which has scandalized the critics in London by the libertinage of its jests is played to the respectable dress circle of Northampton with these same jests slurred over so as to be imperceptible by even the most prurient spectator. The public, in short, takes care that nobody shall outrage it.

But the public also takes care that nobody shall starve it, or regulate its dramatic diet as a schoolmistress regulates the reading of her pupils. Even when it wishes to be debauched, no censor can⁠—or at least no censor does⁠—stand out against it. If a play is irresistibly amusing, it gets licensed no matter what its moral aspect may be. A brilliant instance is the Divorçons of the late Victorien Sardou, which may not have been the naughtiest play of the 19th century, but was certainly the very naughtiest that any English manager in his senses would have ventured to produce. Nevertheless, being a very amusing play, it passed the licenser with the exception of a reference to impotence as a ground for divorce which no English actress would have ventured on in any case. Within the last few months a very amusing comedy with a strongly polygamous moral was found irresistible by the Lord Chamberlain. Plenty of fun and a happy ending will get anything licensed, because the public will have it so, and the Examiner of Plays, as the holder of the office testified before the Commission of 1892 (Report, page 330), feels with the public, and knows that his office could not survive a widespread unpopularity. In short, the support of the mob⁠—that is, of the unreasoning, unorganized, uninstructed mass of popular sentiment⁠—is indispensable to the censorship as it exists today in England. This is the explanation of the toleration by the Lord Chamberlain of coarse and vicious plays. It is not long since a judge before whom a licensed play came in the course of a lawsuit expressed his scandalized astonishment at the licensing of such a work. Eminent churchmen have made similar protests. In some plays the simulation of criminal assaults on the stage has been carried to a point at which a step further would have involved the interference of the police. Provided the treatment of the theme is gaily or hypocritically popular, and the ending happy, the indulgence of the Lord Chamberlain can be counted on. On the other hand, anything unpleasing and unpopular is rigorously censored. Adultery and prostitution are tolerated and even encouraged to such an extent that plays which do not deal with them are commonly said not to be plays at all. But if any of the unpleasing consequences of adultery and prostitution⁠—for instance, an unsuccessful illegal operation (successful ones are tolerated) or venereal disease⁠—are mentioned, the play is prohibited. This principle of shielding the playgoer from unpleasant reflections is carried so far that when a play was submitted for license in which the relations of a prostitute with all the male characters in the piece was described as “immoral,” the Examiner of Plays objected to that passage, though he made no objection to the relations themselves. The Lord Chamberlain dare not, in short, attempt to exclude from the stage the tragedies of murder and lust, or the farces of mendacity, adultery, and dissolute gaiety in which vulgar people delight. But when these same vulgar people are threatened with an unpopular play in which dissoluteness is shown to be no laughing matter, it is prohibited at once amid the vulgar applause, the net result being that vice is made delightful and virtue banned by the very institution which is supported on the understanding that it produces exactly the opposite result.

The Weakness of the Lord Chamberlain’s Department

Now comes the question, Why is our censorship, armed as it is with apparently autocratic powers, so scandalously timid in the face of the mob? Why is it not as autocratic in dealing with playwrights below the average as with those above it? The answer is that its position is really a very weak one. It has no direct coercive forces, no funds to institute prosecutions and recover the legal penalties of defying it, no powers of arrest or imprisonment, in short, none of the guarantees of autocracy. What it can do is to refuse to renew the licence of a theatre at which its orders are disobeyed. When it happens that a theatre is about to be demolished, as was the case recently with the Imperial Theatre after it had passed into the hands of the Wesleyan Methodists, unlicensed plays can be performed, technically in private, but really in full publicity, without risk. The prohibited plays of Brieux and Ibsen have been performed in London in this way with complete impunity. But the impunity is not confined to condemned theatres. Not long ago a West End manager allowed a prohibited play to be performed at his theatre, taking his chance of losing his licence in consequence. The event proved that the manager was justified in regarding the risk as negligible; for the Lord Chamberlain’s remedy⁠—the closing of a popular and well-conducted theatre⁠—was far too extreme to be practicable. Unless the play had so outraged public opinion as to make the manager odious and provoke a clamor for his exemplary punishment, the Lord Chamberlain could only have had his revenge at the risk of having his powers abolished as unsupportably tyrannical.

The Lord Chamberlain then has his powers so adjusted that he is tyrannical just where it is important that he should be tolerant, and tolerant just where he could screw up the standard a little by being tyrannical. His plea that there are unmentionable depths to which managers and authors would descend if he did not prevent them is disproved by the plain fact that his indulgence goes as far as the police, and sometimes further than the public, will let it. If our judges had so little power there would be no law in England. If our churches had so much, there would be no theatre, no literature, no science, no art, possibly no England. The institution is at once absurdly despotic and abjectly weak.

An Enlightened Censorship Still Worse Than the Lord Chamberlain’s

Clearly a censorship of judges, bishops, or statesmen would not be in this abject condition. It would no doubt make short work of the coarse and vicious pieces which now enjoy the protection of the Lord Chamberlain, or at least of those of them in which the vulgarity and vice are discoverable by merely reading the prompt copy. But it would certainly disappoint the main hope of its advocates: the hope that it would protect and foster the higher drama. It would do nothing of the sort. On the contrary, it would inevitably suppress it more completely than the Lord Chamberlain does, because it would understand it better. The one play of Ibsen’s which is prohibited on the English stage, Ghosts, is far less subversive than A Doll’s House. But the Lord Chamberlain does not meddle with such far-reaching matters as the tendency of a play. He refuses to license Ghosts exactly as he would refuse to license Hamlet if it were submitted to him as a new play. He would license even Hamlet if certain alterations were made in it. He would disallow the incestuous relationship between the King and Queen. He would probably insist on the substitution of some fictitious country for Denmark in deference to the near relations of our reigning house with that realm. He would certainly make it an absolute condition that the closet scene, in which a son, in an agony of shame and revulsion, reproaches his mother for her relations with his uncle, should be struck out as unbearably horrifying and improper. But compliance with these conditions would satisfy him. He would raise no speculative objections to the tendency of the play.

This indifference to the larger issues of a theatrical performance could not be safely predicated of an enlightened censorship. Such a censorship might be more liberal in its toleration of matters which are only objected to on the ground that they are not usually discussed in general social conversation or in the presence of children; but it would presumably have a far deeper insight to and concern for the real ethical tendency of the play. For instance, had it been in existence during the last quarter of a century, it would have perceived that those plays of Ibsen’s which have been licensed without question are fundamentally immoral to an altogether extraordinary degree. Every one of them is a deliberate act of war on society as at present constituted. Religion, marriage, ordinary respectability, are subjected to a destructive exposure and criticism which seems to mere moralists⁠—that is, to persons of no more than average depth of mind⁠—to be diabolical. It is no exaggeration to say that Ibsen gained his overwhelming reputation by undertaking a task of no less magnitude than changing the mind of Europe with the view of changing its morals. Now you cannot license work of that sort without making yourself responsible for it. The Lord Chamberlain accepted the responsibility because he did not understand it or concern himself about it. But what really enlightened and conscientious official dare take such a responsibility? The strength of character and range of vision which made Ibsen capable of it are not to be expected from any official, however eminent. It is true that an enlightened censor might, whilst shrinking even with horror from Ibsen’s views, perceive that any nation which suppressed Ibsen would presently find itself falling behind the nations which tolerated him just as Spain fell behind England; but the proper action to take on such a conviction is the abdication of censorship, not the practice of it. As long as a censor is a censor, he cannot endorse by his licence opinions which seem to him dangerously heretical.

We may, therefore, conclude that the more enlightened a censorship is, the worse it would serve us. The Lord Chamberlain, an obviously unenlightened Censor, prohibits Ghosts and licenses all the rest of Ibsen’s plays. An enlightened censorship would possibly license Ghosts; but it would certainly suppress many of the other plays. It would suppress subversiveness as well as what is called bad taste. The Lord Chamberlain prohibits one play by Sophocles because, like Hamlet, it mentions the subject of incest; but an enlightened censorship might suppress all the plays of Euripides because Euripides, like Ibsen, was a revolutionary Freethinker. Under the Lord Chamberlain, we can smuggle a good deal of immoral drama and almost as much coarsely vulgar and furtively lascivious drama as we like. Under a college of cardinals, or bishops, or judges, or any other conceivable form of experts in morals, philosophy, religion, or politics, we should get little except stagnant mediocrity.

The Practical Impossibilities of Censorship

There is, besides, a crushing material difficulty in the way of an enlightened censorship. It is not too much to say that the work involved would drive a man of any intellectual rank mad. Consider, for example, the Christmas pantomimes. Imagine a judge of the High Court, or an archbishop, or a Cabinet Minister, or an eminent man of letters, earning his living by reading through the mass of trivial doggerel represented by all the pantomimes which are put into rehearsal simultaneously at the end of every year. The proposal to put such mind-destroying drudgery upon an official of the class implied by the demand for an enlightened censorship falls through the moment we realize what it implies in practice.

Another material difficulty is that no play can be judged by merely reading the dialogue. To be fully effective a censor should witness the performance. The mise-en-scène of a play is as much a part of it as the words spoken on the stage. No censor could possibly object to such a speech as “Might I speak to you for a moment, miss?” yet that apparently innocent phrase has often been made offensively improper on the stage by popular low comedians, with the effect of changing the whole character and meaning of the play as understood by the official Examiner. In one of the plays of the present season, the dialogue was that of a crude melodrama dealing in the most conventionally correct manner with the fortunes of a good-hearted and virtuous girl. Its morality was that of the Sunday school. But the principal actress, between two speeches which contained no reference to her action, changed her underclothing on the stage! It is true that in this case the actress was so much better than her part that she succeeded in turning what was meant as an impropriety into an inoffensive stroke of realism; yet it is nonetheless clear that stage business of this character, on which there can be no check except the actual presence of a censor in the theatre, might convert any dialogue, however innocent, into just the sort of entertainment against which the Censor is supposed to protect the public.

It was this practical impossibility that prevented the London County Council from attempting to apply a censorship of the Lord Chamberlain’s pattern to the London music halls. A proposal to examine all entertainments before permitting their performance was actually made; and it was abandoned, not in the least as contrary to the liberty of the stage, but because the executive problem of how to do it at once reduced the proposal to absurdity. Even if the Council devoted all its time to witnessing rehearsals of variety performances, and putting each item to the vote, possibly after a prolonged discussion followed by a division, the work would still fall into arrear. No committee could be induced to undertake such a task. The attachment of an inspector of morals to each music hall would have meant an appreciable addition to the ratepayers’ burden. In the face of such difficulties the proposal melted away. Had it been pushed through, and the inspectors appointed, each of them would have become a censor, and the whole body of inspectors would have become a police des moeurs. Those who know the history of such police forces on the continent will understand how impossible it would be to procure inspectors whose characters would stand the strain of their opportunities of corruption, both pecuniary and personal, at such salaries as a local authority could be persuaded to offer.

It has been suggested that the present censorship should be supplemented by a board of experts, who should deal, not with the whole mass of plays sent up for license, but only those which the Examiner of Plays refuses to pass. As the number of plays which the Examiner refuses to pass is never great enough to occupy a Board in permanent session with regular salaries, and as casual employment is not compatible with public responsibility, this proposal would work out in practice as an addition to the duties of some existing functionary. A Secretary of State would be objectionable as likely to be biased politically. An ecclesiastical referee might be biased against the theatre altogether. A judge in chambers would be the proper authority. This plan would combine the inevitable intolerance of an enlightened censorship with the popular laxity of the Lord Chamberlain.

The judge would suppress the pioneers, whilst the Examiner of Plays issued two guinea certificates for the vulgar and vicious plays. For this reason the plan would no doubt be popular; but it would be very much as a relaxation of the administration of the Public Health Acts accompanied by the cheapening of gin would be popular.

The Arbitration Proposal

On the occasion of a recent deputation of playwrights to the Prime Minister it was suggested that if a censorship be inevitable, provision should be made for an appeal from the Lord Chamberlain in cases of refusal of licence. The authors of this suggestion propose that the Lord Chamberlain shall choose one umpire and the author another. The two umpires shall then elect a referee, whose decision shall be final.

This proposal is not likely to be entertained by constitutional lawyers. It is a naive offer to accept the method of arbitration in what is essentially a matter, not between one private individual or body and another, but between a public offender and the State. It will presumably be ruled out as a proposal to refer a case of manslaughter to arbitration would be ruled out. But even if it were constitutionally sound, it bears all the marks of that practical inexperience which leads men to believe that arbitration either costs nothing or is at least cheaper than law. Who is to pay for the time of the three arbitrators, presumably men of high professional standing? The author may not be able: the manager may not be willing: neither of them should be called upon to pay for a public service otherwise than by their contributions to the revenue. Clearly the State should pay. But even so, the difficulties are only beginning. A licence is seldom refused except on grounds which are controversial.

The two arbitrators selected by the opposed parties to the controversy are to agree to leave the decision to a third party unanimously chosen by themselves. That is very far from being a simple solution. An attempt to shorten and simplify the passing of the Finance Bill by referring it to an arbitrator chosen unanimously by Mr. Asquith and Mr. Balfour might not improbably cost more and last longer than a civil war. And why should the chosen referee⁠—if he ever succeeded in getting chosen⁠—be assumed to be a safer authority than the Examiner of Plays? He would certainly be a less responsible one: in fact, being (however eminent) a casual person called in to settle a single case, he would be virtually irresponsible. Worse still, he would take all responsibility away from the Lord Chamberlain, who is at least an official of the King’s Household and a nominee of the Government. The Lord Chamberlain, with all his shortcomings, thinks twice before he refuses a licence, knowing that his refusal is final and may promptly be made public. But if he could transfer his responsibility to an arbitrator, he would naturally do so whenever he felt the slightest misgiving, or whenever, for diplomatic reasons, the licence would come more gracefully from an authority unconnected with the court. These considerations, added to the general objection to the principle of censorship, seem sufficient to put the arbitration expedient quite out of the question.

The Rejected Statement

Part II

The Licensing of Theatres

The Distinction Between Licensing and Censorship

It must not be concluded that the uncompromising abolition of all censorship involves the abandonment of all control and regulation of theatres. Factories are regulated in the public interest; but there is no censorship of factories. For example, many persons are sincerely convinced that cotton clothing is unhealthy; that alcoholic drinks are demoralizing; and that playing-cards are the devil’s picture-books. But though the factories in which cotton, whiskey, and cards are manufactured are stringently regulated under the factory code and the Public Health and Building Acts, the inspectors appointed to carry out these Acts never go to a manufacturer and inform him that unless he manufactures woollens instead of cottons, ginger-beer instead of whiskey, Bibles instead of playing-cards, he will be forbidden to place his products on the market. In the case of premises licensed for the sale of spirits the authorities go a step further. A public house differs from a factory in the essential particular that whereas disorder in a factory is promptly and voluntarily suppressed, because every moment of its duration involves a measurable pecuniary loss to the proprietor, disorder in a public house may be a source of profit to the proprietor by its attraction for disorderly customers. Consequently a publican is compelled to obtain a licence to pursue his trade; and this licence lasts only a year, and need not be renewed if his house has been conducted in a disorderly manner in the meantime.

Prostitution and Drink in Theatres

The theatre presents the same problem as the public house in respect to disorder. To begin with, a theatre is actually a place licensed for the sale of spirits. The bars at a London theatre can be let without difficulty for 30 pounds a week and upwards. And though it is clear that nobody will pay from a shilling to half a guinea for access to a theatre bar when he can obtain access to an ordinary public house for nothing, there is no law to prevent the theatre proprietor from issuing free passes broadcast and recouping himself by the profit on the sale of drink. Besides, there may be some other attraction than the sale of drink. When this attraction is that of the play no objection need be made. But it happens that the auditorium of a theatre, with its brilliant lighting and luxurious decorations, makes a very effective shelter and background for the display of fine dresses and pretty faces. Consequently theatres have been used for centuries in England as markets by prostitutes. From the Restoration to the days of Macready all theatres were made use of in this way as a matter of course; and to this, far more than to any prejudice against dramatic art, we owe the Puritan formula that the theatre door is the gate of hell. Macready had a hard struggle to drive the prostitutes from his theatre; and since his time the London theatres controlled by the Lord Chamberlain have become respectable and even socially pretentious. But some of the variety theatres still derive a revenue by selling admissions to women who do not look at the performance, and men who go to purchase or admire the women. And in the provinces this state of things is by no means confined to the variety theatres. The real attraction is sometimes not the performance at all. The theatre is not really a theatre: it is a drink shop and a prostitution market; and the last shred of its disguise is stripped by the virtually indiscriminate issue of free tickets to the men. Access to the stage is so easily obtained; and the plays preferred by the management are those in which the stage is filled with young women who are not in any serious technical sense of the word actresses at all. Considering that all this is now possible at any theatre, and actually occurs at some theatres, the fact that our best theatres are as respectable as they are is much to their credit; but it is still an intolerable evil that respectable managers should have to fight against the free tickets and disorderly housekeeping of unscrupulous competitors. The dramatic author is equally injured. He finds that unless he writes plays which make suitable sideshows for drinking-bars and brothels, he may be excluded from towns where there is not room for two theatres, and where the one existing theatre is exploiting drunkenness and prostitution instead of carrying on a legitimate dramatic business. Indeed everybody connected with the theatrical profession suffers in reputation from the detestable tradition of such places, against which the censorship has proved quite useless.

Here we have a strong case for applying either the licensing system or whatever better means may be devized for securing the orderly conduct of houses of public entertainment, dramatic or other. Liberty must, no doubt, be respected in so far that no manager should have the right to refuse admission to decently dressed, sober, and well-conducted persons, whether they are prostitutes, soldiers in uniform, gentlemen not in evening dress, Indians, or whatnot; but when disorder is stopped, disorderly persons will either cease to come or else reform their manners. It is, however, quite arguable that the indiscriminate issue of free admissions, though an apparently innocent and good-natured, and certainly a highly popular proceeding, should expose the proprietor of the theatre to the risk of a refusal to renew his licence.

Why the Managers Dread Local Control

All this points to the transfer of the control of theatres from the Lord Chamberlain to the municipality. And this step is opposed by the long-run managers, partly because they take it for granted that municipal control must involve municipal censorship of plays, so that plays might be licensed in one town and prohibited in the next, and partly because, as they have no desire to produce plays which are in advance of public opinion, and as the Lord Chamberlain in every other respect gives more scandal by his laxity than trouble by his severity, they find in the present system a cheap and easy means of procuring a certificate which relieves them of all social responsibility, and provides them with so strong a weapon of defence in case of a prosecution that it acts in practice as a bar to any such proceedings. Above all, they know that the Examiner of Plays is free from the pressure of that large body of English public opinion already alluded to, which regards the theatre as the Prohibitionist Teetotaller regards the public house: that is, as an abomination to be stamped out unconditionally. The managers rightly dread this pressure more than anything else; and they believe that it is so strong in local governments as to be a characteristic bias of municipal authority. In this they are no doubt mistaken. There is not a municipal authority of any importance in the country in which a proposal to stamp out the theatre, or even to treat it illiberally, would have a chance of adoption. Municipal control of the variety theatres (formerly called music halls) has been very far from liberal, except in the one particular in which the Lord Chamberlain is equally illiberal. That particular is the assumption that a draped figure is decent and an undraped one indecent. It is useless to point to actual experience, which proves abundantly that naked or apparently naked figures, whether exhibited as living pictures, animated statuary, or in a dance, are at their best not only innocent, but refining in their effect, whereas those actresses and skirt dancers who have brought the peculiar aphrodisiac effect which is objected to to the highest pitch of efficiency wear twice as many petticoats as an ordinary lady does, and seldom exhibit more than their ankles. Unfortunately, municipal councillors persist in confusing decency with drapery; and both in London and the provinces certain positively edifying performances have been forbidden or withdrawn under pressure, and replaced by coarse and vicious ones. There is not the slightest reason to suppose that the Lord Chamberlain would have been any more tolerant; but this does not alter the fact that the municipal licensing authorities have actually used their powers to set up a censorship which is open to all the objections to censorship in general, and which, in addition, sets up the objection from which central control is free: namely, the impossibility of planning theatrical tours without the serious commercial risk of having the performance forbidden in some of the towns booked. How can this be prevented?

Desirable Limitations of Local Control

The problem is not a difficult one. The municipality can be limited just as the monarchy is limited. The Act transferring theatres to local control can be a charter of the liberties of the stage as well as an Act to reform administration. The power to refuse to grant or renew a licence to a theatre need not be an arbitrary one. The municipality may be required to state the ground of refusal; and certain grounds can be expressly declared as unlawful; so that it shall be possible for the manager to resort to the courts for a mandamus to compel the authority to grant a licence. It can be declared unlawful for a licensing authority to demand from the manager any disclosure of the nature of any entertainment he proposes to give, or to prevent its performance, or to refuse to renew his licence on the ground that the tendency of his entertainments is contrary to religion and morals, or that the theatre is an undesirable institution, or that there are already as many theatres as are needed, or that the theatre draws people away from the churches, chapels, mission halls, and the like in its neighborhood. The assumption should be that every citizen has a right to open and conduct a theatre, and therefore has a right to a licence unless he has forfeited that right by allowing his theatre to become a disorderly house, or failing to provide a building which complies with the regulations concerning sanitation and egress in case of fire, or being convicted of an offence against public decency. Also, the licensing powers of the authority should not be delegated to any official or committee; and the manager or lessee of the theatre should have a right to appear in person or by counsel to plead against any motion to refuse to grant or renew his licence. With these safeguards the licensing power could not be stretched to censorship. The manager would enjoy liberty of conscience as far as the local authority is concerned; but on the least attempt on his part to keep a disorderly house under cover of opening a theatre he would risk his licence.

But the managers will not and should not be satisfied with these limits to the municipal power. If they are deprived of the protection of the Lord Chamberlain’s licence, and at the same time efficiently protected against every attempt at censorship by the licensing authority, the enemies of the theatre will resort to the ordinary law, and try to get from the prejudices of a jury what they are debarred from getting from the prejudices of a County Council or City Corporation. Moral Reform Societies, “Purity” Societies, Vigilance Societies, exist in England and America for the purpose of enforcing the existing laws against obscenity, blasphemy, Sabbath-breaking, the debauchery of children, prostitution and so forth. The paid officials of these societies, in their anxiety to produce plenty of evidence of their activity in the annual reports which go out to the subscribers, do not always discriminate between an obscene postcard and an artistic one, or to put it more exactly, between a naked figure and an indecent one. They often combine a narrow but terribly sincere sectarian bigotry with a complete ignorance of art and history. Even when they have some culture, their livelihood is at the mercy of subscribers and committee men who have none. If these officials had any power of distinguishing between art and blackguardism, between morality and virtue, between immorality and vice, between conscientious heresy and mere baseness of mind and foulness of mouth, they might be trusted by theatrical managers not to abuse the powers of the common informer. As it is, it has been found necessary, in order to enable good music to be performed on Sunday, to take away these powers in that particular, and vest them solely in the Attorney-General. This disqualification of the common informer should be extended to the initiation of all proceedings of a censorial character against theatres. Few people are aware of the monstrous laws against blasphemy which still disgrace our statute book. If any serious attempt were made to carry them out, prison accommodation would have to be provided for almost every educated person in the country, beginning with the Archbishop of Canterbury. Until some government with courage and character enough to repeal them comes into power, it is not too much to ask that such infamous powers of oppression should be kept in responsible hands and not left at the disposal of every bigot ignorant enough to be unaware of the social dangers of persecution. Besides, the common informer is not always a sincere bigot, who believes he is performing an action of signal merit in silencing and ruining a heretic. He is unfortunately just as often a blackmailer, who has studied his powers as a common informer in order that he may extort money for refraining from exercising them. If the manager is to be responsible he should be made responsible to a responsible functionary. To be responsible to every fanatical ignoramus who chooses to prosecute him for exhibiting a cast of the Hermes of Praxiteles in his vestibule, or giving a performance of Measure for Measure, is mere slavery. It is made bearable at present by the protection of the Lord Chamberlain’s certificate. But when that is no longer available, the common informer must be disarmed if the manager is to enjoy security.

Summary

The general case against censorship as a principle, and the particular case against the existing English censorship and against its replacement by a more enlightened one, is now complete. The following is a recapitulation of the propositions and conclusions contended for.

  1. The question of censorship or no censorship is a question of high political principle and not of petty policy.

  2. The toleration of heresy and shocks to morality on the stage, and even their protection against the prejudices and superstitions which necessarily enter largely into morality and public opinion, are essential to the welfare of the nation.

  3. The existing censorship of the Lord Chamberlain does not only intentionally suppress heresy and challenges to morality in their serious and avowed forms, but unintentionally gives the special protection of its official licence to the most extreme impropriety that the lowest section of London playgoers will tolerate in theatres especially devoted to their entertainment, licensing everything that is popular and forbidding any attempt to change public opinion or morals.

  4. The Lord Chamberlain’s censorship is open to the special objection that its application to political plays is taken to indicate the attitude of the Crown on questions of domestic and foreign policy, and that it imposes the limits of etiquette on the historical drama.

  5. A censorship of a more enlightened and independent kind, exercised by the most eminent available authorities, would prove in practice more disastrous than the censorship of the Lord Chamberlain, because the more eminent its members were the less possible it would be for them to accept the responsibility for heresy or immorality by licensing them, and because the many heretical and immoral plays which now pass the Lord Chamberlain because he does not understand them, would be understood and suppressed by a more highly enlightened censorship.

  6. A reconstructed and enlightened censorship would be armed with summary and effective powers which would stop the evasions by which heretical and immoral plays are now performed in spite of the Lord Chamberlain; and such powers would constitute a tyranny which would ruin the theatre spiritually by driving all independent thinkers from the drama into the uncensored forms of art.

  7. The work of critically examining all stage plays in their written form, and of witnessing their performance in order to see that the sense is not altered by the stage business, would, even if it were divided among so many officials as to be physically possible, be mentally impossible to persons of taste and enlightenment.

  8. Regulation of theatres is an entirely different matter from censorship, inasmuch as a theatre, being not only a stage, but a place licensed for the sale of spirits, and a public resort capable of being put to disorderly use, and needing special provision for the safety of audiences in cases of fire, etc., cannot be abandoned wholly to private control, and may therefore reasonably be made subject to an annual licence like those now required before allowing premises to be used publicly for music and dancing.

  9. In order to prevent the powers of the licensing authority being abused so as to constitute a virtual censorship, any Act transferring the theatres to the control of a licensing authority should be made also a charter of the rights of dramatic authors and managers by the following provisions:

    1. The public prosecutor (the Attorney-General) alone should have the right to set the law in operation against the manager of a theatre or the author of a play in respect of the character of the play or entertainment.

    2. No disclosure of the particulars of a theatrical entertainment shall be required before performance.

    3. Licences shall not be withheld on the ground that the existence of theatres is dangerous to religion and morals, or on the ground that any entertainment given or contemplated is heretical or immoral.

    4. The licensing area shall be no less than that of a County Council or City Corporation, which shall not delegate its licensing powers to any minor local authority or to any official or committee; it shall decide all questions affecting the existence of a theatrical licence by vote of the entire body; managers, lessees, and proprietors of theatres shall have the right to plead, in person or by counsel, against a proposal to withhold a licence; and the licence shall not be withheld except for stated reasons, the validity of which shall be subject to the judgment of the high courts.

    5. The annual licence, once granted, shall not be cancelled or suspended unless the manager has been convicted by public prosecution of an offence against the ordinary laws against disorderly housekeeping, indecency, blasphemy, etc., except in cases where some structural or sanitary defect in the building necessitates immediate action for the protection of the public against physical injury.

    6. No licence shall be refused on the ground that the proximity of the theatre to a church, mission hall, school, or other place of worship, edification, instruction, or entertainment (including another theatre) would draw the public away from such places into its own doors.

Preface Resumed

Mr. George Alexander’s Protest

On the facts mentioned in the foregoing statement, and in my evidence before the Joint Select Committee, no controversy arose except on one point. Mr. George Alexander protested vigorously and indignantly against my admission that theatres, like public houses, need special control on the ground that they can profit by disorder, and are sometimes conducted with that end in view. Now, Mr. Alexander is a famous actor-manager; and it is very difficult to persuade the public that the more famous an actor-manager is the less he is likely to know about any theatre except his own. When the Committee of 1892 reported, I was considered guilty of a perverse paradox when I said that the witness who knew least about the theatre was Henry Irving. Yet a moment’s consideration would have shown that the paradox was a platitude. For about quarter of a century Irving was confined night after night to his own theatre and his own dressing room, never seeing a play even there because he was himself part of the play; producing the works of long-departed authors; and, to the extent to which his talent was extraordinary, necessarily making his theatre unlike any other theatre. When he went to the provinces or to America, the theatres to which he went were swept and garnished for him, and their staffs replaced⁠—as far as he came in contact with them⁠—by his own lieutenants. In the end, there was hardly a first-nighter in his gallery who did not know more about the London theatres and the progress of dramatic art than he; and as to the provinces, if any chief constable had told him the real history and character of many provincial theatres, he would have denounced that chief constable as an ignorant libeller of a noble profession. But the constable would have been right for all that. Now if this was true of Sir Henry Irving, who did not become a London manager until he had roughed it for years in the provinces, how much more true must it be of, say, Mr. George Alexander, whose successful march through his profession has passed as far from the purlieus of our theatrical world as the king’s naval career from the Isle of Dogs? The moment we come to that necessary part of the censorship question which deals with the control of theatres from the point of view of those who know how much money can be made out of them by managers who seek to make the auditorium attractive rather than the stage, you find the managers divided into two sections. The first section consists of honorable and successful managers like Mr. Alexander, who know nothing of such abuses, and deny, with perfect sincerity and indignant vehemence, that they exist except, perhaps, in certain notorious variety theatres. The other is the silent section which knows better, but is very well content to be publicly defended and privately amused by Mr. Alexander’s innocence. To accept a West End manager as an expert in theatres because he is an actor is much as if we were to accept the organist of St. Paul’s Cathedral as an expert on music halls because he is a musician. The real experts are all in the conspiracy to keep the police out of the theatre. And they are so successful that even the police do not know as much as they should.

The police should have been examined by the Committee, and the whole question of the extent to which theatres are disorderly houses in disguise sifted to the bottom. For it is on this point that we discover behind the phantoms of the corrupt dramatists who are restrained by the censorship from debauching the stage, the reality of the corrupt managers and theatre proprietors who actually do debauch it without let or hindrance from the censorship. The whole case for giving control over theatres to local authorities rests on this reality.

Eliza and Her Bath

The persistent notion that a theatre is an Alsatia where the king’s writ does not run, and where any wickedness is possible in the absence of a special tribunal and a special police, was brought out by an innocent remark made by Sir William Gilbert, who, when giving evidence before the Committee, was asked by Colonel Lockwood whether a law sufficient to restrain impropriety in books would also restrain impropriety in plays. Sir William replied: “I should say there is a very wide distinction between what is read and what is seen. In a novel one may read that ‘Eliza stripped off her dressing gown and stepped into her bath’ without any harm; but I think if that were presented on the stage it would be shocking.” All the stupid and inconsiderate people seized eagerly on this illustration as if it were a successful attempt to prove that without a censorship we should be unable to prevent actresses from appearing naked on the stage. As a matter of fact, if an actress could be persuaded to do such a thing (and it would be about as easy to persuade a bishop’s wife to appear in church in the same condition) the police would simply arrest her on a charge of indecent exposure. The extent to which this obvious safeguard was overlooked may be taken as a measure of the thoughtlessness and frivolity of the excuses made for the censorship. It should be added that the artistic representation of a bath, with every suggestion of nakedness that the law as to decency allows, is one of the most familiar subjects of scenic art. From the Rhine maidens in Wagner’s Trilogy, and the bathers in the second act of Les Huguenots, to the ballets of water nymphs in our Christmas pantomimes and at our variety theatres, the sound hygienic propaganda of the bath, and the charm of the undraped human figure, are exploited without offence on the stage to an extent never dreamt of by any novelist.

A King’s Proctor

Another hare was started by Professor Gilbert Murray and Mr. Laurence Housman, who, in pure kindness to the managers, asked whether it would not be possible to establish for their assistance a sort of King’s Proctor to whom plays might be referred for an official legal opinion as to their compliance with the law before production. There are several objections to this proposal; and they may as well be stated in case the proposal should be revived. In the first place, no lawyer with the most elementary knowledge of the law of libel in its various applications to sedition, obscenity, and blasphemy, could answer for the consequences of producing any play whatsoever as to which the smallest question could arise in the mind of any sane person. I have been a critic and an author in active service for thirty years; and though nothing I have written has ever been prosecuted in England or made the subject of legal proceedings, yet I have never published in my life an article, a play, or a book, as to which, if I had taken legal advice, an expert could have assured me that I was proof against prosecution or against an action for damages by the persons criticized. No doubt a sensible solicitor might have advised me that the risk was no greater than all men have to take in dangerous trades; but such an opinion, though it may encourage a client, does not protect him. For example, if a publisher asks his solicitor whether he may venture on an edition of Sterne’s Sentimental Journey, or a manager whether he may produce King Lear without risk of prosecution, the solicitor will advise him to go ahead. But if the solicitor or counsel consulted by him were asked for a guarantee that neither of these works was a libel, he would have to reply that he could give no such guarantee; that, on the contrary, it was his duty to warn his client that both of them are obscene libels; that King Lear, containing as it does perhaps the most appalling blasphemy that despair ever uttered, is a blasphemous libel, and that it is doubtful whether it could not be construed as a seditious libel as well. As to Ibsen’s Brand (the play which made him popular with the most earnestly religious people) no sane solicitor would advise his client even to chance it except in a broadly cultivated and tolerant (or indifferent) modern city. The lighter plays would be no better off. What lawyer could accept any responsibility for the production of Sardou’s Divorçons or Clyde Fitch’s The Woman in the Case? Put the proposed King’s Proctor in operation tomorrow; and what will be the result? The managers will find that instead of insuring them as the Lord Chamberlain does, he will warn them that every play they submit to him is vulnerable to the law, and that they must produce it not only on the ordinary risk of acting on their own responsibility, but at the very grave additional risk of doing so in the teeth of an official warning. Under such circumstances, what manager would resort a second time to the Proctor; and how would the Proctor live without fees, unless indeed the Government gave him a salary for doing nothing? The institution would not last a year, except as a job for somebody.

Counsel’s Opinion

The proposal is still less plausible when it is considered that at present, without any new legislation at all, any manager who is doubtful about a play can obtain the advice of his solicitor, or Counsel’s opinion, if he thinks it will be of any service to him. The verdict of the proposed King’s Proctor would be nothing but Counsel’s opinion without the liberty of choice of counsel, possibly cheapened, but sure to be adverse; for an official cannot give practical advice as a friend and a man of the world: he must stick to the letter of the law and take no chances. And as far as the law is concerned, journalism, literature, and the drama exist only by custom or sufferance.

Wanted: A New Magna Charta

This leads us to a very vital question. Is it not possible to amend the law so as to make it possible for a lawyer to advise his client that he may publish the works of Blake, Zola, and Swinburne, or produce the plays of Ibsen and Mr. Granville Barker, or print an ordinary criticism in his newspaper, without the possibility of finding himself in prison, or mulcted in damages and costs in consequence? No doubt it is; but only by a declaration of constitutional right to blaspheme, rebel, and deal with tabooed subjects. Such a declaration is not just now within the scope of practical politics, although we are compelled to act to a great extent as if it was actually part of the constitution. All that can be done is to take my advice and limit the necessary public control of the theatres in such a manner as to prevent its being abused as a censorship. We have ready to our hand the machinery of licensing as applied to public houses. A licensed victualler can now be assured confidently by his lawyer that a magistrate cannot refuse to renew his licence on the ground that he (the magistrate) is a teetotaller and has seen too much of the evil of drink to sanction its sale. The magistrate must give a judicial reason for his refusal, meaning really a constitutional reason; and his teetotalism is not such a reason. In the same way you can protect a theatrical manager by ruling out certain reasons as unconstitutional, as suggested in my statement. Combine this with the abolition of the common informer’s power to initiate proceedings, and you will have gone as far as seems possible at present. You will have local control of the theatres for police purposes and sanitary purposes without censorship; and I do not see what more is possible until we get a formal Magna Charta declaring all the categories of libel and the blasphemy laws contrary to public liberty, and repealing and defining accordingly.

Proposed: A New Star Chamber

Yet we cannot mention Magna Charta without recalling how useless such documents are to a nation which has no more political comprehension nor political virtue than King John. When Henry VII calmly proceeded to tear up Magna Charta by establishing the Star Chamber (a criminal court consisting of a committee of the Privy Council without a jury) nobody objected until, about a century and a half later, the Star Chamber began cutting off the ears of eminent seventeenth century Nonconformists and standing them in the pillory; and then the Nonconformists, and nobody else, abolished the Star Chamber. And if anyone doubts that we are quite ready to establish the Star Chamber again, let him read the Report of the Joint Select Committee, on which I now venture to offer a few criticisms.

The report of the Committee, which will be found in the bluebook, should be read with attention and respect as far as page x, up to which point it is an able and well-written statement of the case. From page x onward, when it goes on from diagnosing the disease to prescribing the treatment, it should be read with even greater attention but with no respect whatever, as the main object of the treatment is to conciliate the How Not To Do It majority. It contains, however, one very notable proposal, the same being nothing more or less than to revive the Star Chamber for the purpose of dealing with heretical or seditious plays and their authors, and indeed with all charges against theatrical entertainments except common police cases of indecency. The reason given is that for which the Star Chamber was created by Henry VII: that is, the inadequacy of the ordinary law. “We consider,” says the report, “that the law which prevents or punishes indecency, blasphemy and libel in printed publications [it does not, by the way, except in the crudest police cases] would not be adequate for the control of the drama.” Therefore a committee of the Privy Council is to be empowered to suppress plays and punish managers and authors at its pleasure, on the motion of the Attorney-General, without a jury. The members of the Committee will, of course, be men of high standing and character: otherwise they would not be on the Privy Council. That is to say, they will have all the qualifications of Archbishop Laud.

Now I have no guarantee that any member of the majority of the Joint Select Committee ever heard of the Star Chamber or of Archbishop Laud. One of them did not know that politics meant anything more than party electioneering. Nothing is more alarming than the ignorance of our public men of the commonplaces of our history, and their consequent readiness to repeat experiments which have in the past produced national catastrophes. At all events, whether they knew what they were doing or not, there can be no question as to what they did. They proposed virtually that the Act of the Long Parliament in 1641 shall be repealed, and the Star Chamber reestablished, in order that playwrights and managers may be punished for unspecified offences unknown to the law. When I say unspecified, I should say specified as follows (see page xi of the report) in the case of a play:⁠—

  1. To be indecent.

  2. To contain offensive personalities.

  3. To represent on the stage in an invidious manner a living person, or any person recently dead.

  4. To do violence to the sentiment of religious reverence.

  5. To be calculated to conduce to vice or crime.

  6. To be calculated to impair friendly relations with any foreign power.

  7. To be calculated to cause a breach of the peace.

Now it is clear that there is no play yet written, or possible to be written, in this world, that might not be condemned under one or other of these heads. How any sane man, not being a professed enemy of public liberty, could put his hand to so monstrous a catalogue passes my understanding. Had a comparatively definite and innocent clause been added forbidding the affirmation or denial of the doctrine of Transubstantiation, the country would have been up in arms at once. Lord Ribblesdale made an effort to reduce the seven categories to the old formula “not to be fitting for the preservation of good manners, decorum, or the public peace”; but this proposal was not carried; whilst on Lord Gorell’s motion a final widening of the net was achieved by adding the phrase “to be calculated to”; so that even if a play does not produce any of the results feared, the author can still be punished on the ground that his play is “calculated” to produce them. I have no hesitation in saying that a committee capable of such an outrageous display of thoughtlessness and historical ignorance as this paragraph of its report implies deserves to be haled before the tribunal it has itself proposed, and dealt with under a general clause levelled at conduct “calculated to” overthrow the liberties of England.

Possibilities of the Proposal

Still, though I am certainly not willing to give Lord Gorell the chance of seeing me in the pillory with my ears cut off if I can help it, I daresay many authors would rather take their chance with a Star Chamber than with a jury, just as some soldiers would rather take their chance with a court-martial than at Quarter Sessions. For that matter, some of them would rather take their chance with the Lord Chamberlain than with either. And though this is no reason for depriving the whole body of authors of the benefit of Magna Charta, still, if the right of the proprietor of a play to refuse the good offices of the Privy Council and to perform the play until his accusers had indicted him at law, and obtained the verdict of a jury against him, were sufficiently guarded, the proposed committee might be set up and used for certain purposes. For instance, it might be made a condition of the intervention of the Attorney-General or the Director of Public Prosecutions that he should refer an accused play to the committee, and obtain their sanction before taking action, offering the proprietor of the play, if the Committee thought fit, an opportunity of voluntarily accepting trial by the Committee as an alternative to prosecution in the ordinary course of law. But the Committee should have no powers of punishment beyond the power (formidable enough) of suspending performances of the play. If it thought that additional punishment was called for, it could order a prosecution without allowing the proprietor or author of the play the alternative of a trial by itself. The author of the play should be made a party to all proceedings of the Committee, and have the right to defend himself in person or by counsel. This would provide a check on the Attorney-General (who might be as bigoted as any of the municipal aldermen who are so much dreaded by the actor-managers) without enabling the Committee to abuse its powers for party, class, or sectarian ends beyond that irreducible minimum of abuse which a popular jury would endorse, for which minimum there is no remedy.

But when everything is said for the Star Chamber that can be said, and every precaution taken to secure to those whom it pursues the alternative of trial by jury, the expedient still remains a very questionable one, to be endured for the sake of its protective rather than its repressive powers. It should abolish the present quaint toleration of rioting in theatres. For example, if it is to be an offence to perform a play which the proposed new Committee shall condemn, it should also be made an offence to disturb a performance which the Committee has not condemned. “Brawling” at a theatre should be dealt with as severely as brawling in church if the censorship is to be taken out of the hands of the public. At present Jenny Geddes may throw her stool at the head of a playwright who preaches unpalatable doctrine to her, or rather, since her stool is a fixture, she may hiss and hoot and make it impossible to proceed with the performance, even although nobody has compelled her to come to the theatre or suspended her liberty to stay away, and although she has no claim on an unendowed theatre for her spiritual necessities, as she has on her parish church. If mob censorship cannot be trusted to keep naughty playwrights in order, still less can it be trusted to keep the pioneers of thought in countenance; and I submit that anyone hissing a play permitted by the new censorship should be guilty of contempt of court.

Star Chamber Sentimentality

But what is most to be dreaded in a Star Chamber is not its sternness but its sentimentality. There is no worse censorship than one which considers only the feelings of the spectators, except perhaps one which considers the feelings of people who do not even witness the performance. Take the case of the Passion Play at Oberammergau. The offence given by a representation of the Crucifixion on the stage is not bounded by frontiers: further, it is an offence of which the voluntary spectators are guilty no less than the actors. If it is to be tolerated at all: if we are not to make war on the German Empire for permitting it, nor punish the English people who go to Bavaria to see it and thereby endow it with English money, we may as well tolerate it in London, where nobody need go to see it except those who are not offended by it. When Wagner’s Parsifal becomes available for representation in London, many people will be sincerely horrified when the miracle of the Mass is simulated on the stage of Covent Garden, and the Holy Ghost descends in the form of a dove. But if the Committee of the Privy Council, or the Lord Chamberlain, or anyone else, were to attempt to keep Parsifal from us to spare the feelings of these people, it would not be long before even the most thoughtless champions of the censorship would see that the principle of doing nothing that could shock anybody had reduced itself to absurdity. No quarter whatever should be given to the bigotry of people so unfit for social life as to insist not only that their own prejudices and superstitions should have the fullest toleration but that everybody else should be compelled to think and act as they do. Every service in St. Paul’s Cathedral is an outrage to the opinions of the congregation of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Westminster. Every Liberal meeting is a defiance and a challenge to the most cherished opinions of the Unionists. A law to compel the Roman Catholics to attend service at St. Paul’s, or the Liberals to attend the meetings of the Primrose League would be resented as an insufferable tyranny. But a law to shut up both St. Paul’s and the Westminster Cathedral; and to put down political meetings and associations because of the offence given by them to many worthy and excellent people, would be a far worse tyranny, because it would kill the religious and political life of the country outright, whereas to compel people to attend the services and meetings of their opponents would greatly enlarge their minds, and would actually be a good thing if it were enforced all round. I should not object to a law to compel everybody to read two newspapers, each violently opposed to the other in politics; but to forbid us to read newspapers at all would be to maim us mentally and cashier our country in the ranks of civilization. I deny that anybody has the right to demand more from me, over and above lawful conduct in a general sense, than liberty to stay away from the theatre in which my plays are represented. If he is unfortunate enough to have a religion so petty that it can be insulted (any man is as welcome to insult my religion, if he can, as he is to insult the universe) I claim the right to insult it to my heart’s content, if I choose, provided I do not compel him to come and hear me. If I think this country ought to make war on any other country, then, so long as war remains lawful, I claim full liberty to write and perform a play inciting the country to that war without interference from the ambassadors of the menaced country. I may “give pain to many worthy people, and pleasure to none,” as the Censor’s pet phrase puts it: I may even make Europe a cockpit and Asia a shambles: no matter: if preachers and politicians, statesmen and soldiers, may do these things⁠—if it is right that such things should be done, then I claim my share in the right to do them. If the proposed Committee is meant to prevent me from doing these things whilst men of other professions are permitted to do them, then I protest with all my might against the formation of such a Committee. If it is to protect me, on the contrary, against the attacks that bigots and corrupt pornographers may make on me by appealing to the ignorance and prejudices of common jurors, then I welcome it; but is that really the object of its proposers? And if it is, what guarantee have I that the new tribunal will not presently resolve into a mere committee to avoid unpleasantness and keep the stage “in good taste”? It is no more possible for me to do my work honestly as a playwright without giving pain than it is for a dentist. The nation’s morals are like its teeth: the more decayed they are the more it hurts to touch them. Prevent dentists and dramatists from giving pain, and not only will our morals become as carious as our teeth, but toothache and the plagues that follow neglected morality will presently cause more agony than all the dentists and dramatists at their worst have caused since the world began.

Anything for a Quiet Life

Another doubt: would a Committee of the Privy Council really face the risks that must be taken by all communities as the price of our freedom to evolve? Would it not rather take the popular English view that freedom and virtue generally are sweet and desirable only when they cost nothing? Nothing worth having is to be had without risk. A mother risks her child’s life every time she lets it ramble through the countryside, or cross the street, or clamber over the rocks on the shore by itself. A father risks his son’s morals when he gives him a latchkey. The members of the Joint Select Committee risked my producing a revolver and shooting them when they admitted me to the room without having me handcuffed. And these risks are no unreal ones. Every day some child is maimed or drowned and some young man infected with disease; and political assassinations have been appallingly frequent of late years. Railway travelling has its risks; motoring has its risks; aeroplaning has its risks; every advance we make costs us a risk of some sort. And though these are only risks to the individual, to the community they are certainties. It is not certain that I will be killed this year in a railway accident; but it is certain that somebody will. The invention of printing and the freedom of the press have brought upon us, not merely risks of their abuse, but the establishment as part of our social routine of some of the worst evils a community can suffer from. People who realize these evils shriek for the suppression of motor cars, the virtual imprisonment and enslavement of the young, the passing of Press Laws (especially in Egypt, India, and Ireland), exactly as they shriek for a censorship of the stage. The freedom of the stage will be abused just as certainly as the complaisance and innocence of the censorship is abused at present. It will also be used by writers like myself for raising very difficult and disturbing questions, social, political, and religious, at moments which may be extremely inconvenient to the government. Is it certain that a Committee of the Privy Council would stand up to all this as the price of liberty? I doubt it. If I am to be at the mercy of a nice amiable Committee of elderly gentlemen (I know all about elderly gentlemen, being one myself) whose motto is the highly popular one, “Anything for a quiet life,” and who will make the inevitable abuses of freedom by our blackguards an excuse for interfering with any disquieting use of it by myself, then I shall be worse off than I am with the Lord Chamberlain, whose mind is not broad enough to obstruct the whole range of thought. If it were, he would be given a more difficult post.

Shall the Examiner of Plays Starve?

And here I may be reminded that if I prefer the Lord Chamberlain I can go to the Lord Chamberlain, who is to retain all his present functions for the benefit of those who prefer to be judged by him. But I am not so sure that the Lord Chamberlain will be able to exercise those functions for long if resort to him is to be optional. Let me be kinder to him than he has been to me, and uncover for him the pitfalls which the Joint Select Committee have dug (and concealed) in his path. Consider how the voluntary system must inevitably work. The Joint Select Committee expressly urges that the Lord Chamberlain’s licence must not be a bar to a prosecution. Granted that in spite of this reservation the licence would prove in future as powerful a defence as it has been in the past, yet the voluntary clause nevertheless places the manager at the mercy of any author who makes it a condition of his contract that his play shall not be submitted for licence. I should probably take that course without opposition from the manager. For the manager, knowing that three of my plays have been refused a licence, and that it would be far safer to produce a play for which no licence had been asked than one for which it had been asked and refused, would agree that it was more prudent, in my case, to avail himself of the power of dispensing with the Lord Chamberlain’s licence. But now mark the consequences. The manager, having thus discovered that his best policy was to dispense with the licence in the few doubtful cases, would presently ask himself why he should spend two guineas each on licences for the many plays as to which no question could conceivably arise. What risk does any manager run in producing such works as Sweet Lavender, Peter Pan, The Silver King, or any of the ninety-nine percent of plays that are equally neutral on controversial questions? Does anyone seriously believe that the managers would continue to pay the Lord Chamberlain two guineas a play out of mere love and loyalty, only to create an additional risk in the case of controversial plays, and to guard against risks that do not exist in the case of the great bulk of other productions? Only those would remain faithful to him who produce such plays as the Select Committee began by discussing in camera, and ended by refusing to discuss at all because they were too nasty. These people would still try to get a licence, and would still no doubt succeed as they do today. But could the King’s Reader of Plays live on his fees from these plays alone; and if he could how long would his post survive the discredit of licensing only pornographic plays? It is clear to me that the Examiner would be starved out of existence, and the censorship perish of desuetude. Perhaps that is exactly what the Select Committee contemplated. If so, I have nothing more to say, except that I think sudden death would be more merciful.

Lord Gorell’s Awakening

In the meantime, conceive the situation which would arise if a licensed play were prosecuted. To make it clearer, let us imagine any other offender⁠—say a company promoter with a fraudulent prospectus⁠—pleading in Court that he had induced the Lord Chamberlain to issue a certificate that the prospectus contained nothing objectionable, and that on the strength of that certificate he issued it; also, that by law the Court could do nothing to him except order him to wind up his company. Some such vision as this must have come to Lord Gorell when he at last grappled seriously with the problem. Mr. Harcourt seized the opportunity to make a last rally. He seconded Lord Gorell’s proposal that the Committee should admit that its scheme of an optional censorship was an elaborate absurdity, and report that all censorship before production was out of the question. But it was too late: the volte face was too sudden and complete. It was Lord Gorell whose vote had turned the close division which took place on the question of receiving my statement. It was Lord Gorell without whose countenance and authority the farce of the books could never have been performed. Yet here was Lord Gorell, after assenting to all the provisions for the optional censorship paragraph by paragraph, suddenly informing his colleagues that they had been wrong all through and that I had been right all through, and inviting them to scrap half their work and adopt my conclusion. No wonder Lord Gorell got only one vote: that of Mr. Harcourt. But the incident is not the less significant. Lord Gorell carried more weight than any other member of the Committee on the legal and constitutional aspect of the question. Had he begun where he left off⁠—had he at the outset put down his foot on the notion that an optional penal law could ever be anything but a gross contradiction in terms, that part of the Committee’s proposals would never have come into existence.

Judges: Their Professional Limitations

I do not, however, appeal to Lord Gorell’s judgment on all points. It is inevitable that a judge should be deeply impressed by his professional experience with a sense of the impotence of judges and laws and courts to deal satisfactorily with evils which are so Protean and elusive as to defy definition, and which yet seem to present quite simple problems to the common sense of men of the world. You have only to imagine the Privy Council as consisting of men of the world highly endowed with common sense, to persuade yourself that the supplementing of the law by the common sense of the Privy Council would settle the whole difficulty. But no man knows what he means by common sense, though every man can tell you that it is very uncommon, even in Privy Councils. And since every ploughman is a man of the world, it is evident that even the phrase itself does not mean what it says. As a matter of fact, it means in ordinary use simply a man who will not make himself disagreeable for the sake of a principle: just the sort of man who should never be allowed to meddle with political rights. Now to a judge a political right, that is, a dogma which is above our laws and conditions our laws, instead of being subject to them, is anarchic and abhorrent. That is why I trust Lord Gorell when he is defending the integrity of the law against the proposal to make it in any sense optional, whilst I very strongly mistrust him, as I mistrust all professional judges, when political rights are in danger.

Conclusion

I must conclude by recommending the Government to take my advice wherever it conflicts with that of the Joint Select Committee. It is, I think, obviously more deeply considered and better informed, though I say it that should not. At all events, I have given my reasons; and at that I must leave it. As the tradition which makes Malvolio not only Master of the Revels but Master of the Mind of England, and which has come down to us from Henry VIII, is manifestly doomed to the dustbin, the sooner it goes there the better; for the democratic control which naturally succeeds it can easily be limited so as to prevent it becoming either a censorship or a tyranny. The Examiner of Plays should receive a generous pension, and be set free to practise privately as an expert adviser of theatrical managers. There is no reason why they should be deprived of the counsel they so highly value.

It only remains to say that public performances of “The Showing-Up of Blanco Posnet” are still prohibited in Great Britain by the Lord Chamberlain. An attempt was made to prevent even its performance in Ireland by some indiscreet Castle officials in the absence of the Lord Lieutenant. This attempt gave extraordinary publicity to the production of the play; and every possible effort was made to persuade the Irish public that the performance would be an outrage to their religion, and to provoke a repetition of the rioting that attended the first performances of Synge’s Playboy of the Western World before the most sensitive and, on provocation, the most turbulent audience in the kingdom. The directors of the Irish National Theatre, Lady Gregory and Mr. William Butler Yeats, rose to the occasion with inspiriting courage. I am a conciliatory person, and was willing, as I always am, to make every concession in return for having my own way. But Lady Gregory and Mr. Yeats not only would not yield an inch, but insisted, within the due limits of gallant warfare, on taking the field with every circumstance of defiance, and winning the battle with every trophy of victory. Their triumph was as complete as they could have desired. The performance exhausted the possibilities of success, and provoked no murmur, though it inspired several approving sermons. Later on, Lady Gregory and Mr. Yeats brought the play to London and performed it under the Lord Chamberlain’s nose, through the instrumentality of the Stage Society.

After this, the play was again submitted to the Lord Chamberlain. But, though beaten, he, too, understands the art of How Not To Do It. He licensed the play, but endorsed on his licence the condition that all the passages which implicated God in the history of Blanco Posnet must be omitted in representation. All the coarseness, the profligacy, the prostitution, the violence, the drinking-bar humor into which the light shines in the play are licensed, but the light itself is extinguished. I need hardly say that I have not availed myself of this licence, and do not intend to. There is enough licensed darkness in our theatres today without my adding to it.

Postscript⁠—Since the above was written the Lord Chamberlain has made an attempt to evade his responsibility and perhaps to postpone his doom by appointing an advisory committee, unknown to the law, on which he will presumably throw any odium that may attach to refusals of licences in the future. This strange and lawless body will hardly reassure our moralists, who object much more to the plays he licenses than to those he suppresses, and are therefore unmoved by his plea that his refusals are few and far between. It consists of two eminent actors (one retired), an Oxford professor of literature, and two eminent barristers. As their assembly is neither created by statute nor sanctioned by custom, it is difficult to know what to call it until it advises the Lord Chamberlain to deprive some author of his means of livelihood, when it will, I presume, become a conspiracy, and be indictable accordingly; unless, indeed, it can persuade the Courts to recognize it as a new Estate of the Realm, created by the Lord Chamberlain. This constitutional position is so questionable that I strongly advise the members to resign promptly before the Lord Chamberlain gets them into trouble.

Dramatis Personae

  • Babsy

  • Lottie

  • Hannah

  • Jessie

  • Emma

  • Elder Daniels

  • Blanco Posnet

  • Strapper Kemp

  • Squinty

  • Feemy Evans

  • Sheriff Kemp

  • The Foreman of the Jury

  • Nestor

  • Wagoner Jo

  • The Woman

  • Women; Men; Jurymen; Boys

The Showing-Up of Blanco Posnet

A number of women are sitting working together in a big room not unlike an old English tithe barn in its timbered construction, but with windows high up next the roof. It is furnished as a courthouse, with the floor raised next the walls, and on this raised flooring a seat for the Sheriff, a rough jury box on his right, and a bar to put prisoners to on his left. In the well in the middle is a table with benches round it. A few other benches are in disorder round the room. The autumn sun is shining warmly through the windows and the open door. The women, whose dress and speech are those of pioneers of civilisation in a territory of the United States of America, are seated round the table and on the benches, shucking nuts. The conversation is at its height.

Babsy A bumptious young slattern, with some good looks. I say that a man that would steal a horse would do anything.
Lottie A sentimental girl, neat and clean. Well, I never should look at it in that way. I do think killing a man is worse any day than stealing a horse.
Hannah Elderly and wise. I don’t say it’s right to kill a man. In a place like this, where every man has to have a revolver, and where there’s so much to try people’s tempers, the men get to be a deal too free with one another in the way of shooting. God knows it’s hard enough to have to bring a boy into the world and nurse him up to be a man only to have him brought home to you on a shutter, perhaps for nothing, or only just to show that the man that killed him wasn’t afraid of him. But men are like children when they get a gun in their hands: they’re not content till they’ve used it on somebody.
Jessie A good-natured but sharp-tongued, hoity-toity young woman; Babsy’s rival in good looks and her superior in tidiness. They shoot for the love of it. Look at them at a lynching. They’re not content to hang the man; but directly the poor creature is swung up they all shoot him full of holes, wasting their cartridges that cost solid money, and pretending they do it in horror of his wickedness, though half of them would have a rope round their own necks if all they did was known⁠—let alone the mess it makes.
Lottie I wish we could get more civilized. I don’t like all this lynching and shooting. I don’t believe any of us like it, if the truth were known.
Babsy Our Sheriff is a real strong man. You want a strong man for a rough lot like our people here. He ain’t afraid to shoot and he ain’t afraid to hang. Lucky for us quiet ones, too.
Jessie Oh, don’t talk to me. I know what men are. Of course he ain’t afraid to shoot and he ain’t afraid to hang. Where’s the risk in that with the law on his side and the whole crowd at his back longing for the lynching as if it was a spree? Would one of them own to it or let him own to it if they lynched the wrong man? Not them. What they call justice in this place is nothing but a breaking out of the devil that’s in all of us. What I want to see is a Sheriff that ain’t afraid not to shoot and not to hang.
Emma A sneak who sides with Babsy or Jessie, according to the fortune of war. Well, I must say it does sicken me to see Sheriff Kemp putting down his foot, as he calls it. Why don’t he put it down on his wife? She wants it worse than half the men he lynches. He and his Vigilance Committee, indeed!
Babsy Incensed. Oh, well! if people are going to take the part of horse-thieves against the Sheriff⁠—!
Jessie Who’s taking the part of horse-thieves against the Sheriff?
Babsy You are. Wait’ll your own horse is stolen, and you’ll know better. I had an uncle that died of thirst in the sagebrush because a Negro stole his horse. But they caught him and burned him; and serve him right, too.
Emma I have known a child that was born crooked because its mother had to do a horse’s work that was stolen.
Babsy There! You hear that? I say stealing a horse is ten times worse than killing a man. And if the Vigilance Committee ever gets hold of you, you’d better have killed twenty men than as much as stole a saddle or bridle, much less a horse.
Elder Daniels comes in.
Elder Daniels Sorry to disturb you, ladies; but the Vigilance Committee has taken a prisoner; and they want the room to try him in.
Jessie But they can’t try him till Sheriff Kemp comes back from the wharf.
Elder Daniels Yes; but we have to keep the prisoner here till he comes.
Babsy What do you want to put him here for? Can’t you tie him up in the Sheriff’s stable?
Elder Daniels He has a soul to be saved, almost like the rest of us. I am bound to try to put some religion into him before he goes into his Maker’s presence after the trial.
Hannah What has he done, Mr. Daniels?
Elder Daniels Stole a horse.
Babsy And are we to be turned out of the town hall for a horse-thief? Ain’t a stable good enough for his religion?
Elder Daniels It may be good enough for his, Babsy; but, by your leave, it is not good enough for mine. While I am Elder here, I shall umbly endeavor to keep up the dignity of Him I serve to the best of my small ability. So I must ask you to be good enough to clear out. Allow me. He takes the sack of husks and puts it out of the way against the panels of the jury box.
The Women Murmuring. That’s always the way. Just as we’d settled down to work. What harm are we doing? Well, it is tiresome. Let them finish the job themselves. Oh dear, oh dear! We can’t have a minute to ourselves. Shoving us out like that!
Hannah Whose horse was it, Mr. Daniels?
Elder Daniels Returning to move the other sack. I am sorry to say that it was the Sheriff’s horse⁠—the one he loaned to young Strapper. Strapper loaned it to me; and the thief stole it, thinking it was mine. If it had been mine, I’d have forgiven him cheerfully. I’m sure I hoped he would get away; for he had two hours start of the Vigilance Committee. But they caught him. He disposes of the other sack also.
Jessie It can’t have been much of a horse if they caught him with two hours start.
Elder Daniels Coming back to the centre of the group. The strange thing is that he wasn’t on the horse when they took him. He was walking; and of course he denies that he ever had the horse. The Sheriff’s brother wanted to tie him up and lash him till he confessed what he’d done with it; but I couldn’t allow that: it’s not the law.
Babsy Law! What right has a horse-thief to any law? Law is thrown away on a brute like that.
Elder Daniels Don’t say that, Babsy. No man should be made to confess by cruelty until religion has been tried and failed. Please God I’ll get the whereabouts of the horse from him if you’ll be so good as to clear out from this. Disturbance outside. They are bringing him in. Now ladies! please, please.
They rise reluctantly. Hannah, Jessie, and Lottie retreat to the Sheriff’s bench, shepherded by Daniels; but the other women crowd forward behind Babsy and Emma to see the prisoner.
Blanco Posnet is brought in by Strapper Kemp, the Sheriff’s brother, and a cross-eyed man called Squinty. Others follow. Blanco is evidently a blackguard. It would be necessary to clean him to make a close guess at his age; but he is under forty, and an upturned, red moustache, and the arrangement of his hair in a crest on his brow, proclaim the dandy in spite of his intense disreputableness. He carries his head high, and has a fairly resolute mouth, though the fire of incipient delirium tremens is in his eye.
His arms are bound with a rope with a long end, which Squinty holds. They release him when he enters; and he stretches himself and lounges across the courthouse in front of the women. Strapper and the men remain between him and the door.
Babsy Spitting at him as he passes her. Horse-thief! horse-thief!
Others You will hang for it; do you hear? And serve you right. Serve you right. That will teach you. I wouldn’t wait to try you. Lynch him straight off, the varmint. Yes, yes. Tell the boys. Lynch him.
Blanco Mocking. “Angels ever bright and fair⁠—”
Babsy You call me an angel, and I’ll smack your dirty face for you.
Blanco “Take, oh take me to your care.”
Emma There won’t be any angels where you’re going to.
Others Aha! Devils, more likely. And too good company for a horse-thief.
All Horse-thief! Horse-thief! Horse-thief!
Blanco Do women make the law here, or men? Drive these heifers out.
The Women Oh! They rush at him, vituperating, screaming passionately, tearing at him. Lottie puts her fingers in her ears and runs out. Hannah follows, shaking her head. Blanco is thrown down. Oh, did you hear what he called us? You foul-mouthed brute! You liar! How dare you put such a name to a decent woman? Let me get at him. You coward! Oh, he struck me: did you see that? Lynch him! Pete, will you stand by and hear me called names by a skunk like that? Burn him: burn him! That’s what I’d do with him. Aye, burn him!
The Men Pulling the women away from Blanco, and getting them out partly by violence and partly by coaxing. Here! come out of this. Let him alone. Clear the courthouse. Come on now. Out with you. Now, Sally: out you go. Let go my hair, or I’ll twist your arm out. Ah, would you? Now, then: get along. You know you must go. What’s the use of scratching like that? Now, ladies, ladies, ladies. How would you like it if you were going to be hanged?
At last the women are pushed out, leaving Elder Daniels, the Sheriff’s brother Strapper Kemp, and a few others with Blanco. Strapper is a lad just turning into a man: strong, selfish, sulky, and determined.
Blanco

Sitting up and tidying himself.

Oh woman, in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please⁠—

Is my face scratched? I can feel their damned claws all over me still. Am I bleeding? He sits on the nearest bench.

Elder Daniels Nothing to hurt. They’ve drawn a drop or two under your left eye.
Strapper Lucky for you to have an eye left in your head.
Blanco

Wiping the blood off.

When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou.

Go out to them, Strapper Kemp; and tell them about your big brother’s little horse that some wicked man stole. Go and cry in your mammy’s lap.

Strapper Furious. You jounce me any more about that horse, Blanco Posnet; and I’ll⁠—I’ll⁠—
Blanco You’ll scratch my face, won’t you? Yah! Your brother’s the Sheriff, ain’t he?
Strapper Yes, he is. He hangs horse-thieves.
Blanco With calm conviction. He’s a rotten Sheriff. Oh, a rotten Sheriff. If he did his first duty he’d hang himself. This is a rotten town. Your fathers came here on a false alarm of gold-digging; and when the gold didn’t pan out, they lived by licking their young into habits of honest industry.
Strapper If I hadn’t promised Elder Daniels here to give him a chance to keep you out of Hell, I’d take the job of twisting your neck off the hands of the Vigilance Committee.
Blanco With infinite scorn. You and your rotten Elder, and your rotten Vigilance Committee!
Strapper They’re sound enough to hang a horse-thief, anyhow.
Blanco Any fool can hang the wisest man in the country. Nothing he likes better. But you can’t hang me.
Strapper Can’t we?
Blanco No, you can’t. I left the town this morning before sunrise, because it’s a rotten town, and I couldn’t bear to see it in the light. Your brother’s horse did the same, as any sensible horse would. Instead of going to look for the horse, you went looking for me. That was a rotten thing to do, because the horse belonged to your brother⁠—or to the man he stole it from⁠—and I don’t belong to him. Well, you found me; but you didn’t find the horse. If I had took the horse, I’d have been on the horse. Would I have taken all that time to get to where I did if I’d a horse to carry me?
Strapper I don’t believe you started not for two hours after you say you did.
Blanco Who cares what you believe or don’t believe? Is a man worth six of you to be hanged because you’ve lost your big brother’s horse, and you’ll want to kill somebody to relieve your rotten feelings when he licks you for it? Not likely. Till you can find a witness that saw me with that horse you can’t touch me; and you know it.
Strapper Is that the law, Elder?
Elder Daniels The Sheriff knows the law. I wouldn’t say for sure; but I think it would be more seemly to have a witness. Go and round one up, Strapper; and leave me here alone to wrestle with his poor blinded soul.
Strapper I’ll get a witness all right enough. I know the road he took; and I’ll ask at every house within sight of it for a mile out. Come, boys.
Strapper goes out with the others, leaving Blanco and Elder Daniels together. Blanco rises and strolls over to the Elder, surveying him with extreme disparagement.
Blanco Well, brother? Well, Boozy Posnet, alias Elder Daniels? Well, thief? Well, drunkard?
Elder Daniels It’s no good, Blanco. They’ll never believe we’re brothers.
Blanco Never fear. Do you suppose I want to claim you? Do you suppose I’m proud of you? You’re a rotten brother, Boozy Posnet. All you ever did when I owned you was to borrow money from me to get drunk with. Now you lend money and sell drink to other people. I was ashamed of you before; and I’m worse ashamed of you now. I won’t have you for a brother. Heaven gave you to me; but I return the blessing without thanks. So be easy: I shan’t blab. He turns his back on him and sits down.
Elder Daniels I tell you they wouldn’t believe you; so what does it matter to me whether you blab or not? Talk sense, Blanco: there’s no time for your foolery now; for you’ll be a dead man an hour after the Sheriff comes back. What possessed you to steal that horse?
Blanco I didn’t steal it. I distrained on it for what you owed me. I thought it was yours. I was a fool to think that you owned anything but other people’s property. You laid your hands on everything father and mother had when they died. I never asked you for a fair share. I never asked you for all the money I’d lent you from time to time. I asked you for mother’s old necklace with the hair locket in it. You wouldn’t give me that: you wouldn’t give me anything. So as you refused me my due I took it, just to give you a lesson.
Elder Daniels Why didn’t you take the necklace if you must steal something? They wouldn’t have hanged you for that.
Blanco Perhaps I’d rather be hanged for stealing a horse than let off for a damned piece of sentimentality.
Elder Daniels Oh, Blanco, Blanco: spiritual pride has been your ruin. If you’d only done like me, you’d be a free and respectable man this day instead of laying there with a rope round your neck.
Blanco Turning on him. Done like you! What do you mean? Drink like you, eh? Well, I’ve done some of that lately. I see things.
Elder Daniels Too late, Blanco: too late. Convulsively. Oh, why didn’t you drink as I used to? Why didn’t you drink as I was led to by the Lord for my good, until the time came for me to give it up? It was drink that saved my character when I was a young man; and it was the want of it that spoiled yours. Tell me this. Did I ever get drunk when I was working?
Blanco No; but then you never worked when you had money enough to get drunk.
Elder Daniels That just shows the wisdom of Providence and the Lord’s mercy. God fulfils himself in many ways: ways we little think of when we try to set up our own shortsighted laws against his Word. When does the Devil catch hold of a man? Not when he’s working and not when he’s drunk; but when he’s idle and sober. Our own natures tell us to drink when we have nothing else to do. Look at you and me! When we’d both earned a pocketful of money, what did we do? Went on the spree, naturally. But I was humble minded. I did as the rest did. I gave my money in at the drink-shop; and I said, “Fire me out when I have drunk it all up.” Did you ever see me sober while it lasted?
Blanco No; and you looked so disgusting that I wonder it didn’t set me against drink for the rest of my life.
Elder Daniels That was your spiritual pride, Blanco. You never reflected that when I was drunk I was in a state of innocence. Temptations and bad company and evil thoughts passed by me like the summer wind as you might say: I was too drunk to notice them. When the money was gone, and they fired me out, I was fired out like gold out of the furnace, with my character unspoiled and unspotted; and when I went back to work, the work kept me steady. Can you say as much, Blanco? Did your holidays leave your character unspoiled? Oh, no, no. It was theatres: it was gambling: it was evil company: it was reading in vain romances: it was women, Blanco, women: it was wrong thoughts and gnawing discontent. It ended in your becoming a rambler and a gambler: it is going to end this evening on the gallows tree. Oh, what a lesson against spiritual pride! Oh, what a⁠—Blanco throws his hat at him.
Blanco Stow it, Boozy. Sling it. Cut it. Cheese it. Shut up. “Shake not the dying sinner’s hand.”
Elder Daniels Aye: there you go, with your scraps of lustful poetry. But you can’t deny what I tell you. Why, do you think I would put my soul in peril by selling drink if I thought it did no good, as them silly temperance reformers make out, flying in the face of the natural tastes implanted in us all for a good purpose? Not if I was to starve for it tomorrow. But I know better. I tell you, Blanco, what keeps America today the purest of the nations is that when she’s not working she’s too drunk to hear the voice of the tempter.
Blanco Don’t deceive yourself, Boozy. You sell drink because you make a bigger profit out of it than you can by selling tea. And you gave up drink yourself because when you got that fit at Edwardstown the doctor told you you’d die the next time; and that frightened you off it.
Elder Daniels Fervently. Oh thank God selling drink pays me! And thank God He sent me that fit as a warning that my drinking time was past and gone, and that He needed me for another service!
Blanco Take care, Boozy. He hasn’t finished with you yet. He always has a trick up His sleeve⁠—
Elder Daniels Oh, is that the way to speak of the ruler of the universe⁠—the great and almighty God?
Blanco He’s a sly one. He’s a mean one. He lies low for you. He plays cat and mouse with you. He lets you run loose until you think you’re shut of him; and then, when you least expect it, he’s got you.
Elder Daniels Speak more respectful, Blanco⁠—more reverent.
Blanco Springing up and coming at him. Reverent! Who taught you your reverent cant? Not your Bible. It says He cometh like a thief in the night⁠—aye, like a thief⁠—a horse-thief⁠—
Elder Daniels Shocked. Oh!
Blanco Overbearing him. And it’s true. That’s how He caught me and put my neck into the halter. To spite me because I had no use for Him⁠—because I lived my own life in my own way, and would have no truck with His “Don’t do this,” and “You mustn’t do that,” and “You’ll go to Hell if you do the other.” I gave Him the go-bye and did without Him all these years. But He caught me out at last. The laugh is with Him as far as hanging me goes. He thrusts his hands into his pockets and lounges moodily away from Daniels, to the table, where he sits facing the jury box.
Elder Daniels Don’t dare to put your theft on Him, man. It was the Devil tempted you to steal the horse.
Blanco Not a bit of it. Neither God nor Devil tempted me to take the horse: I took it on my own. He had a cleverer trick than that ready for me. He takes his hands out of his pockets and clenches his fists. Gosh! When I think that I might have been safe and fifty miles away by now with that horse; and here I am waiting to be hung up and filled with lead! What came to me? What made me such a fool? That’s what I want to know. That’s the great secret.
Elder Daniels At the opposite side of the table. Blanco: the great secret now is, what did you do with the horse?
Blanco Striking the table with his fist. May my lips be blighted like my soul if ever I tell that to you or any mortal man! They may roast me alive or cut me to ribbons; but Strapper Kemp shall never have the laugh on me over that job. Let them hang me. Let them shoot. So long as they are shooting a man and not a sniveling skunk and softy, I can stand up to them and take all they can give me⁠—game.
Elder Daniels Don’t be headstrong, Blanco. What’s the use? Slyly. They might let up on you if you put Strapper in the way of getting his brother’s horse back.
Blanco Not they. Hanging’s too big a treat for them to give up a fair chance. I’ve done it myself. I’ve yelled with the dirtiest of them when a man no worse than myself was swung up. I’ve emptied my revolver into him, and persuaded myself that he deserved it and that I was doing justice with strong stern men. Well, my turn’s come now. Let the men I yelled at and shot at look up out of Hell and see the boys yelling and shooting at me as I swing up.
Elder Daniels Well, even if you want to be hanged, is that any reason why Strapper shouldn’t have his horse? I tell you I’m responsible to him for it. Bending over the table and coaxing him. Act like a brother, Blanco: tell me what you done with it.
Blanco Shortly, getting up and leaving the table. Never you mind what I done with it. I was done out of it. Let that be enough for you.
Elder Daniels Following him. Then why don’t you put us on to the man that done you out of it?
Blanco Because he’d be too clever for you, just as he was too clever for me.
Elder Daniels Make your mind easy about that, Blanco. He won’t be too clever for the boys and Sheriff Kemp if you put them on his trail.
Blanco Yes, he will. It wasn’t a man.
Elder Daniels Then what was it?
Blanco Pointing upward. Him.
Elder Daniels Oh what a way to utter His holy name!
Blanco He done me out of it. He meant to pay off old scores by bringing me here. He means to win the deal and you can’t stop Him. Well, He’s made a fool of me; but He can’t frighten me. I’m not going to beg off. I’ll fight off if I get a chance. I’ll lie off if they can’t get a witness against me. But back down I never will, not if all the hosts of heaven come to snivel at me in white surplices and offer me my life in exchange for an umble and a contrite heart.
Elder Daniels You’re not in your right mind, Blanco. I’ll tell em you’re mad. I believe they’ll let you off on that. He makes for the door.
Blanco Seizing him, with horror in his eyes. Don’t go: don’t leave me alone: do you hear?
Elder Daniels Has your conscience brought you to this that you’re afraid to be left alone in broad daylight, like a child in the dark.
Blanco I’m afraid of Him and His tricks. When I have you to raise the devil in me⁠—when I have people to show off before and keep me game, I’m all right; but I’ve lost my nerve for being alone since this morning. It’s when you’re alone that He takes His advantage. He might turn my head again. He might send people to me⁠—not real people perhaps. Shivering. By God, I don’t believe that woman and the child were real. I don’t. I never noticed them till they were at my elbow.
Elder Daniels What woman and what child? What are you talking about? Have you been drinking too hard?
Blanco Never you mind. You’ve got to stay with me: thats all; or else send someone else⁠—someone rottener than yourself to keep the devil in me. Strapper Kemp will do. Or a few of those scratching devils of women.
Strapper Kemp comes back.
Elder Daniels To Strapper. He’s gone off his head.
Strapper Foxing, more likely. Going past Daniels and talking to Blanco nose to nose. It’s no good: we hang madmen here; and a good job too!
Blanco I feel safe with you, Strapper. You’re one of the rottenest.
Strapper You know you’re done, and that you may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. So talk away. I’ve got my witness; and I’ll trouble you not to make a move towards her when she comes in to identify you.
Blanco Retreating in terror. A woman? She ain’t real: neither is the child.
Elder Daniels He’s raving about a woman and a child. I tell you he’s gone off his chump.
Strapper Calling to those without. Show the lady in there.
Feemy Evans comes in. She is a young woman of twenty-three or twenty-four, with impudent manners, battered good looks, and dirty-fine dress.
Elder Daniels Morning, Feemy.
Feemy Morning, Elder. She passes on and slips her arm familiarly through Strapper’s.
Strapper Ever see him before, Feemy?
Feemy That’s the little lot that was on your horse this morning, Strapper. Not a doubt of it.
Blanco Implacably contemptuous. Go home and wash yourself, you slut.
Feemy Reddening, and disengaging her arm from Strapper’s. I’m clean enough to hang you, anyway. Going over to him threateningly. You’re no true American man, to insult a woman like that.
Blanco A woman! Oh Lord! You saw me on a horse, did you?
Feemy Yes, I did.
Blanco Got up early on purpose to do it, didn’t you?
Feemy No I didn’t: I stayed up late on a spree.
Blanco I was on a horse, was I?
Feemy Yes you were; and if you deny it you’re a liar.
Blanco To Strapper. She saw a man on a horse when she was too drunk to tell which was the man and which was the horse⁠—
Feemy Breaking in. You lie. I wasn’t drunk⁠—at least not as drunk as that.
Blanco Ignoring the interruption.⁠—and you found a man without a horse. Is a man on a horse the same as a man on foot? Yah! Take your witness away. Who’s going to believe her? Shove her into the dustbin. You’ve got to find that horse before you get a rope round my neck. He turns away from her contemptuously, and sits at the table with his back to the jury box.
Feemy Following him. I’ll hang you, you dirty horse-thief; or not a man in this camp will ever get a word or a look from me again. You’re just trash: that’s what you are. White trash.
Blanco And what are you, darling? What are you? You’re a worse danger to a town like this than ten horse-thieves.
Feemy Mr. Kemp: will you stand by and hear me insulted in that low way? To Blanco, spitefully. I’ll see you swung up and I’ll see you cut down: I’ll see you high and I’ll see you low, as dangerous as I am. He laughs. Oh you needn’t try to brazen it out. You’ll look white enough before the boys are done with you.
Blanco You do me good. Feemy. Stay by me to the end, won’t you? Hold my hand to the last; and I’ll die game. He puts out his hand: she strikes savagely at it; but he withdraws it in time and laughs at her discomfiture.
Feemy You⁠—
Elder Daniels Never mind him, Feemy: he’s not right in his head today. She receives the assurance with contemptuous credulity, and sits down on the step of the Sheriff’s dais.
Sheriff Kemp comes in: a stout man, with large flat ears, and a neck thicker than his head.
Elder Daniels Morning, Sheriff.
The Sheriff Morning, Elder. Passing on. Morning, Strapper. Passing on. Morning, Miss Evans. Stopping between Strapper and Blanco. Is this the prisoner?
Blanco Rising. That’s so. Morning, Sheriff.
The Sheriff Morning. You know, I suppose, that if you’ve stole a horse and the jury find against you, you won’t have any time to settle your affairs. Consequently, if you feel guilty, you’d better settle em now.
Blanco Affairs be damned! I’ve got none.
The Sheriff Well, are you in a proper state of mind? Has the Elder talked to you?
Blanco He has. And I say it’s against the law. It’s torture: that’s what it is.
Elder Daniels He’s not accountable. He’s out of his mind, Sheriff. He’s not fit to go into the presence of his Maker.
The Sheriff You are a merciful man, Elder; but you won’t take the boys with you there. To Blanco. If it comes to hanging you, you’d better for your own sake be hanged in a proper state of mind than in an improper one. But it won’t make any difference to us: make no mistake about that.
Blanco Lord keep me wicked till I die! Now I’ve said my little prayer. I’m ready. Not that I’m guilty, mind you; but this is a rotten town, dead certain to do the wrong thing.
The Sheriff You won’t be asked to live long in it, I guess. To Strapper. Got the witness all right, Strapper?
Strapper Yes, got everything.
Blanco Except the horse.
The Sheriff What’s that? Ain’t you got the horse?
Strapper No. He traded it before we overtook him, I guess. But Feemy saw him on it.
Feemy She did.
Strapper Shall I call in the boys?
Blanco Just a moment, Sheriff. A good appearance is everything in a low-class place like this. He takes out a pocket comb and mirror, and retires towards the dais to arrange his hair.
Elder Daniels Oh, think of your immortal soul, man, not of your foolish face.
Blanco I can’t change my soul, Elder: it changes me⁠—sometimes. Feemy: I’m too pale. Let me rub my cheek against yours, darling.
Feemy You lie: my color’s my own, such as it is. And a pretty color you’ll be when you’re hung white and shot red.
Blanco Ain’t she spiteful, Sheriff?
The Sheriff Time’s wasted on you. To Strapper. Go and see if the boys are ready. Some of them were short of cartridges, and went down to the store to buy them. They may as well have their fun; and it’ll be shorter for him.
Strapper Young Jack has brought a boxful up. They’re all ready.
The Sheriff Going to the dais and addressing Blanco. Your place is at the bar there. Take it. Blanco bows ironically and goes to the bar. Miss Evans: you’d best sit at the table. She does so, at the corner nearest the bar. The Elder takes the opposite corner. The Sheriff takes his chair. All ready, Strapper.
Strapper At the door. All in to begin.
The crowd comes in and fills the court. Babsy, Jessie, and Emma come to the Sheriff’s right; Hannah and Lottie to his left.
The Sheriff Silence there. The jury will take their places as usual. They do so.
Blanco I challenge this jury, Sheriff.
The Foreman Do you, by Gosh?
The Sheriff On what ground?
Blanco On the general ground that it’s a rotten jury. Laughter.
The Sheriff That’s not a lawful ground of challenge.
The Foreman It’s a lawful ground for me to shoot yonder skunk at sight, first time I meet him, if he survives this trial.
Blanco I challenge the Foreman because he’s prejudiced.
The Foreman I say you lie. We mean to hang you, Blanco Posnet; but you will be hanged fair.
The Jury Hear, hear!
Strapper To the Sheriff. George: this is rot. How can you get an unprejudiced jury if the prisoner starts by telling them they’re all rotten? If there’s any prejudice against him he has himself to thank for it.
The Boys That’s so. Of course he has. Insulting the court! Challenge be jiggered! Gag him.
Nestor A juryman with a long white beard, drunk, the oldest man present. Besides, Sheriff, I go so far as to say that the man that is not prejudiced against a horse-thief is not fit to sit on a jury in this town.
The Boys Right. Bully for you, Nestor! That’s the straight truth. Of course he ain’t. Hear, hear!
The Sheriff That is no doubt true, old man. Still, you must get as unprejudiced as you can. The critter has a right to his chance, such as he is. So now go right ahead. If the prisoner don’t like this jury, he should have stole a horse in another town; for this is all the jury he’ll get here.
The Foreman That’s so, Blanco Posnet.
The Sheriff To Blanco. Don’t you be uneasy. You will get justice here. It may be rough justice; but it is justice.
Blanco What is justice?
The Sheriff Hanging horse-thieves is justice; so now you know. Now then: we’ve wasted enough time. Hustle with your witness there, will you?
Blanco Indignantly bringing down his fist on the bar. Swear the jury. A rotten Sheriff you are not to know that the jury’s got to be sworn.
The Foreman Galled. Be swore for you! Not likely. What do you say, old son?
Nestor Deliberately and solemnly. I say: Guilty!!!
The Boys Tumultuously rushing at Blanco. That’s it. Guilty, guilty. Take him out and hang him. He’s found guilty. Fetch a rope. Up with him. They are about to drag him from the bar.
The Sheriff Rising, pistol in hand. Hands off that man. Hands off him, I say, Squinty, or I drop you, and would if you were my own son. Dead silence. I’m Sheriff here; and it’s for me to say when he may lawfully be hanged. They release him.
Blanco As the actor says in the play, “a Daniel come to judgment.” Rotten actor he was, too.
The Sheriff Elder Daniel is come to judgment all right, my lad. Elder: the floor is yours. The Elder rises. Give your evidence. The truth and the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God.
Elder Daniels Sheriff: let me off this. I didn’t ought to swear away this man’s life. He and I are, in a manner of speaking, brothers.
The Sheriff It does you credit, Elder: every man here will acknowledge it. But religion is one thing: law is another. In religion we’re all brothers. In law we cut our brother off when he steals horses.
The Foreman Besides, you needn’t hang him, you know. There’s plenty of willing hands to take that job off your conscience. So rip ahead, old son.
Strapper You’re accountable to me for the horse until you clear yourself, Elder: remember that.
Blanco Out with it, you fool.
Elder Daniels You might own up, Blanco, as far as my evidence goes. Everybody knows I borrowed one of the Sheriff’s horses from Strapper because my own’s gone lame. Everybody knows you arrived in the town yesterday and put up in my house. Everybody knows that in the morning the horse was gone and you were gone.
Blanco In a forensic manner. Sheriff: the Elder, though known to you and to all here as no brother of mine and the rottenest liar in this town, is speaking the truth for the first time in his life as far as what he says about me is concerned. As to the horse, I say nothing; except that it was the rottenest horse you ever tried to sell.
The Sheriff How do you know it was a rotten horse if you didn’t steal it?
Blanco I don’t know of my own knowledge. I only argue that if the horse had been worth its keep, you wouldn’t have lent it to Strapper, and Strapper wouldn’t have lent it to this eloquent and venerable ram. Suppressed laughter. And now I ask him this. To the Elder. Did we or did we not have a quarrel last evening about a certain article that was left by my mother, and that I considered I had a right to more than you? And did you say one word to me about the horse not belonging to you?
Elder Daniels Why should I? We never said a word about the horse at all. How was I to know what it was in your mind to do?
Blanco Bear witness all that I had a right to take a horse from him without stealing to make up for what he denied me. I am no thief. But you haven’t proved yet that I took the horse. Strapper Kemp: had I the horse when you took me, or had I not?
Strapper No, nor you hadn’t a railway train neither. But Feemy Evans saw you pass on the horse at four o’clock twenty-five miles from the spot where I took you at seven on the road to Pony Harbor. Did you walk twenty-five miles in three hours? That so, Feemy? eh?
Feemy That’s so. At four I saw him. To Blanco. That’s done for you.
The Sheriff You say you saw him on my horse?
Feemy I did.
Blanco And I ate it, I suppose, before Strapper fetched up with me. Suddenly and dramatically. Sheriff: I accuse Feemy of immoral relations with Strapper.
Feemy Oh you liar!
Blanco I accuse the fair Euphemia of immoral relations with every man in this town, including yourself, Sheriff. I say this is a conspiracy to kill me between Feemy and Strapper because I wouldn’t touch Feemy with a pair of tongs. I say you daren’t hang any white man on the word of a woman of bad character. I stand on the honor and virtue of my American manhood. I say that she’s not had the oath, and that you daren’t for the honor of the town give her the oath because her lips would blaspheme the holy Bible if they touched it. I say that’s the law; and if you are a proper United States Sheriff and not a low-down lyncher, you’ll hold up the law and not let it be dragged in the mud by your brother’s kept woman.
Great excitement among the women. The men much puzzled.
Jessie That’s right. She didn’t ought to be let kiss the Book.
Emma How could the like of her tell the truth?
Babsy It would be an insult to every respectable woman here to believe her.
Feemy It’s easy to be respectable with nobody ever offering you a chance to be anything else.
The Women Clamoring all together. Shut up, you hussy. You’re a disgrace. How dare you open your lips to answer your betters? Hold your tongue and learn your place, miss. You painted slut! Whip her out of the town!
The Sheriff Silence. Do you hear? Silence. The clamor ceases. Did anyone else see the prisoner with the horse?
Feemy Passionately. Ain’t I good enough?
Babsy No. You’re dirt: that’s what you are.
Feemy And you⁠—
The Sheriff Silence. This trial is a man’s job; and if the women forget their sex they can go out or be put out. Strapper and Miss Evans: you can’t have it two ways. You can run straight, or you can run gay, so to speak; but you can’t run both ways together. There is also a strong feeling among the men of this town that a line should be drawn between those that are straight wives and mothers and those that are, in the words of the Book of Books, taking the primrose path. We don’t wish to be hard on any woman; and most of us have a personal regard for Miss Evans for the sake of old times; but there’s no getting out of the fact that she has private reasons for wishing to oblige Strapper, and that⁠—if she will excuse my saying so⁠—she is not what I might call morally particular as to what she does to oblige him. Therefore I ask the prisoner not to drive us to give Miss Evans the oath. I ask him to tell us fair and square, as a man who has but a few minutes between him and eternity, what he done with my horse.
The Boys Hear, hear! That’s right. That’s fair. That does it. Now, Blanco. Own up.
Blanco Sheriff: you touch me home. This is a rotten world; but there is still one thing in it that remains sacred even to the rottenest of us, and that is a horse.
The Boys Good. Well said, Blanco. That’s straight.
Blanco You have a right to your horse, Sheriff; and if I could put you in the way of getting it back, I would. But if I had that horse I shouldn’t be here. As I hope to be saved, Sheriff⁠—or rather as I hope to be damned; for I have no taste for pious company and no talent for playing the harp⁠—I know no more of that horse’s whereabouts than you do yourself.
Strapper Who did you trade him to?
Blanco I did not trade him. I got nothing for him or by him. I stand here with a rope round my neck for the want of him. When you took me, did I fight like a thief or run like a thief; and was there any sign of a horse on me or near me?
Strapper You were looking at a rainbow, like a damned silly fool instead of keeping your wits about you; and we stole up on you and had you tight before you could draw a bead on us.
The Sheriff That don’t sound like good sense. What would he look at a rainbow for?
Blanco I’ll tell you, Sheriff. I was looking at it because there was something written on it.
The Sheriff How do you mean written on it?
Blanco The words were, “I’ve got the cinch on you this time, Blanco Posnet.” Yes, Sheriff, I saw those words in green on the red streak of the rainbow; and as I saw them I felt Strapper’s grab on my arm and Squinty’s on my pistol.
The Foreman He’s shammin mad: that’s what he is. Ain’t it about time to give a verdict and have a bit of fun, Sheriff?
The Boys Yes, let’s have a verdict. We’re wasting the whole afternoon. Cut it short.
The Sheriff Making up his mind. Swear Feemy Evans, Elder. She don’t need to touch the Book. Let her say the words.
Feemy Worse people than me has kissed that Book. What wrong I’ve done, most of you went shares in. I’ve to live, haven’t I? same as the rest of you. However, it makes no odds to me. I guess the truth is the truth and a lie is a lie, on the Book or off it.
Babsy Do as you’re told. Who are you, to be let talk about it?
The Sheriff Silence there, I tell you. Sail ahead, Elder.
Elder Daniels Feemy Evans: do you swear to tell the truth and the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God.
Feemy I do, so help me⁠—
The Sheriff That’s enough. Now, on your oath, did you see the prisoner on my horse this morning on the road to Pony Harbor?
Feemy On my oath⁠—Disturbance and crowding at the door.
At the Door Now then, now then! Where are you shovin to? What’s up? Order in court. Chuck him out. Silence. You can’t come in here. Keep back.
Strapper rushes to the door and forces his way out.
The Sheriff Savagely. What’s this noise? Can’t you keep quiet there? Is this a Sheriff’s court or is it a saloon?
Blanco Don’t interrupt a lady in the act of hanging a gentleman. Where’s your manners?
Feemy I’ll hang you, Blanco Posnet. I will. I wouldn’t for fifty dollars hadn’t seen you this morning. I’ll teach you to be civil to me next time, for all I’m not good enough to kiss the Book.
Blanco Lord keep me wicked till I die! I’m game for anything while you’re spitting dirt at me, Feemy.
Renewed Tumult at the Door Here, what’s this? Fire them out. Not me. Who are you that I should get out of your way? Oh, stow it. Well, she can’t come in. What woman? What horse? What’s the good of shoving like that? Who says? No! you don’t say!
The Sheriff Gentlemen of the Vigilance Committee: clear that doorway. Out with them in the name of the law.
Strapper Without. Hold hard, George. At the door. They’ve got the horse. He comes in, followed by Wagoner Jo, an elderly carter, who crosses the court to the jury side. Strapper pushes his way to the Sheriff and speaks privately to him.
The Boys What! No! Got the horse! Sheriff’s horse! Who took it, then? Where? Get out. Yes it is, sure. I tell you it is. It’s the horse all right enough. Rot. Go and look. By Gum!
The Sheriff To Strapper. You don’t say!
Strapper It’s here, I tell you.
Wagoner Jo It’s here all right enough, Sheriff.
Strapper And they’ve got the thief too.
Elder Daniels Then it ain’t Blanco.
Strapper No: it’s a woman. Blanco yells and covers his eyes with his hands.
The Whole Crowd A woman!
The Sheriff Well, fetch her in. Strapper goes out. The Sheriff continues, to Feemy. And what do you mean, you lying jade, by putting up this story on us about Blanco?
Feemy I ain’t put up no story on you. This is a plant: you see if it isn’t.
Strapper returns with a Woman. Her expression of intense grief silences them as they crane over one another’s heads to see her. Strapper takes her to the corner of the table. The Elder moves up to make room for her.
Blanco Terrified. Sheriff: that woman ain’t real. You take care. That woman will make you do what you never intended. That’s the rainbow woman. That’s the woman that brought me to this.
The Sheriff Shut your mouth, will you. You’ve got the horrors. To the Woman. Now you. Who are you? and what are you doing with a horse that doesn’t belong to you?
The Woman I took it to save my child’s life. I thought it would get me to a doctor in time. The child was choking with croup.
Blanco Strangling, and trying to laugh. A little choker: that’s the word for him. His choking wasn’t real: wait and see mine. He feels his neck with a sob.
The Sheriff Where’s the child?
Strapper On Pug Jackson’s bench in his shed. He’s makin’ a coffin for it.
Blanco With a horrible convulsion of the throat⁠—frantically. Dead! The little Judas kid! The child I gave my life for! He breaks into hideous laughter.
The Sheriff Jarred beyond endurance by the sound. Hold you noise, will you. Shove his neckerchief into his mouth if he don’t stop. To the Woman. Don’t you mind him, ma’am: he’s mad with drink and devilment. I suppose there’s no fake about this, Strapper. Who found her?
Wagoner Jo I did, Sheriff. There’s no fake about it. I came on her on the track round by Red Mountain. She was settin on the ground with the dead body on her lap, stupid-like. The horse was grazin’ on the other side of the road.
The Sheriff Puzzled. Well, this is blamed queer. To the Woman. What call had you to take the horse from Elder Daniels’ stable to find a doctor? There’s a doctor in the very next house.
Blanco Mopping his dabbled red crest and trying to be ironically gay. Story simply won’t wash, my angel. You got it from the man that stole the horse. He gave it to you because he was a softy and went to bits when you played off the sick kid on him. Well, I guess that clears me. I’m not that sort. Catch me putting my neck in a noose for anybody’s kid!
The Foreman Don’t you go putting her up to what to say. She said she took it.
The Woman Yes: I took it from a man that met me. I thought God sent him to me. I rode here joyfully thinking so all the time to myself. Then I noticed that the child was like lead in my arms. God would never have been so cruel as to send me the horse to disappoint me like that.
Blanco Just what He would do.
Strapper We ain’t got nothin’ to do with that. This is the man, ain’t he? Pointing to Blanco.
The Woman Pulling herself together after looking scaredly at Blanco, and then at the Sheriff and at the jury. No.
The Foreman You lie.
The Sheriff You’ve got to tell us the truth. That’s the law, you know.
The Woman The man looked a bad man. He cursed me; and he cursed the child: God forgive him! But something came over him. I was desperate. I put the child in his arms; and it got its little fingers down his neck and called him Daddy and tried to kiss him; for it was not right in its head with the fever. He said it was a little Judas kid, and that it was betraying him with a kiss, and that he’d swing for it. And then he gave me the horse, and went away crying and laughing and singing dreadful dirty wicked words to hymn tunes like as if he had seven devils in him.
Strapper She’s lying. Give her the oath, George.
The Sheriff Go easy there. You’re a smart boy, Strapper; but you’re not Sheriff yet. This is my job. You just wait. I submit that we’re in a difficulty here. If Blanco was the man, the lady can’t, as a white woman, give him away. She oughtn’t to be put in the position of having either to give him away or commit perjury. On the other hand, we don’t want a horse-thief to get off through a lady’s delicacy.
The Foreman No we don’t; and we don’t intend he shall. Not while I am foreman of this jury.
Blanco With intense expression. A rotten foreman! Oh, what a rotten foreman!
The Sheriff Shut up, will you. Providence shows us a way out here. Two women saw Blanco with a horse. One has a delicacy about saying so. The other will excuse me saying that delicacy is not her strongest holt. She can give the necessary witness. Feemy Evans: you’ve taken the oath. You saw the man that took the horse.
Feemy I did. And he was a low-down rotten drunken lying hound that would go further to hurt a woman any day than to help her. And if he ever did a good action it was because he was too drunk to know what he was doing. So it’s no harm to hang him. She said he cursed her and went away blaspheming and singing things that were not fit for the child to hear.
Blanco Troubled. I didn’t mean them for the child to hear, you venomous devil.
The Sheriff All that’s got nothing to do with us. The question you have to answer is, was that man Blanco Posnet?
The Woman No. I say no. I swear it. Sheriff: don’t hang that man: oh don’t. You may hang me instead if you like: I’ve nothing to live for now. You daren’t take her word against mine. She never had a child: I can see it in her face.
Feemy Stung to the quick. I can hang him in spite of you, anyhow. Much good your child is to you now, lying there on Pug Jackson’s bench!
Blanco Rushing at her with a shriek. I’ll twist your heart out of you for that. They seize him before he can reach her.
Feemy Mocking at him as he struggles to get at her. Ha, ha, Blanco Posnet. You can’t touch me; and I can hang you. Ha, ha! Oh, I’ll do for you. I’ll twist your heart and I’ll twist your neck. He is dragged back to the bar and leans on it, gasping and exhausted. Give me the oath again, Elder. I’ll settle him. And do you to the Woman take your sickly face away from in front of me.
Strapper Just turn your back on her there, will you?
The Woman God knows I don’t want to see her commit murder. She folds her shawl over her head.
The Sheriff Now, Miss Evans: cut it short. Was the prisoner the man you saw this morning or was he not? Yes or no?
Feemy A little hysterically. I’ll tell you fast enough. Don’t think I’m a softy.
The Sheriff Losing patience. Here: we’ve had enough of this. You tell the truth, Feemy Evans; and let us have no more of your lip. Was the prisoner the man or was he not? On your oath?
Feemy On my oath and as I’m a living woman⁠—Flinching. Oh God! he felt the little child’s hands on his neck⁠—I can’t⁠—Bursting into a flood of tears and scolding at the other woman. It’s you with your snivelling face that has put me off it. Desperately. No: it wasn’t him. I only said it out of spite because he insulted me. May I be struck dead if I ever saw him with the horse!
Everybody draws a long breath. Dead silence.
Blanco Whispering at her. Softy! Crybaby! Landed like me! Doing what you never intended! Taking up his hat and speaking in his ordinary tone. I presume I may go now, Sheriff.
Strapper Here, hold hard.
The Foreman Not if we know it, you don’t.
The Boys Barring the way to the door. You stay where you are. Stop a bit, stop a bit. Don’t you be in such a hurry. Don’t let him go. Not much.
Blanco stands motionless, his eye fixed, thinking hard, and apparently deaf to what is going on.
The Sheriff Rising solemnly. Silence there. Wait a bit. I take it that if the Sheriff is satisfied and the owner of the horse is satisfied, there’s no more to be said. I have had to remark on former occasions that what is wrong with this court is that there’s too many Sheriffs in it. Today there is going to be one, and only one; and that one is your humble servant. I call that to the notice of the Foreman of the jury, and also to the notice of young Strapper. I am also the owner of the horse. Does any man say that I am not? Silence. Very well, then. In my opinion, to commandeer a horse for the purpose of getting a dying child to a doctor is not stealing, provided, as in the present case, that the horse is returned safe and sound. I rule that there has been no theft.
Nestor That ain’t the law.
The Sheriff I fine you a dollar for contempt of court, and will collect it myself off you as you leave the building. And as the boys have been disappointed of their natural sport, I shall give them a little fun by standing outside the door and taking up a collection for the bereaved mother of the late kid that showed up Blanco Posnet.
The Boys A collection. Oh, I say! Calls that sport? Is this a mothers’ meeting? Well, I’ll be jiggered! Where does the sport come in?
The Sheriff Continuing. The sport comes in, my friends, not so much in contributing as in seeing others fork out. Thus each contributes to the general enjoyment; and all contribute to his. Blanco Posnet: you go free under the protection of the Vigilance Committee for just long enough to get you out of this town, which is not a healthy place for you. As you are in a hurry, I’ll sell you the horse at a reasonable figure. Now, boys, let nobody go out till I get to the door. The court is adjourned. He goes out.
Strapper To Feemy, as he goes to the door. I’m done with you. Do you hear? I’m done with you. He goes out sulkily.
Feemy Calling after him. As if I cared about a stingy brat like you! Go back to the freckled maypole you left for me: you’ve been fretting for her long enough.
The Foreman To Blanco, on his way out. A man like you makes me sick. Just sick. Blanco makes no sign. The Foreman spits disgustedly, and follows Strapper out. The Jurymen leave the box, except Nestor, who collapses in a drunken sleep.
Blanco Suddenly rushing from the bar to the table and jumping up on it. Boys, I’m going to preach you a sermon on the moral of this day’s proceedings.
The Boys Crowding round him. Yes: let’s have a sermon. Go ahead, Blanco. Silence for Elder Blanco. Tune the organ. Let us pray.
Nestor Staggering out of his sleep. Never hold up your head in this town again. I’m done with you.
Blanco Pointing inexorably to Nestor. Drunk in church. Disturbing the preacher. Hand him out.
The Boys Chivying Nestor out. Now, Nestor, outside. Outside, Nestor. Out you go. Get your subscription ready for the Sheriff. Skiddoo, Nestor.
Nestor Afraid to be hanged! Afraid to be hanged! At the door. Coward! He is thrown out.
Blanco Dearly beloved brethren⁠—
A Boy Same to you, Blanco. Laughter.
Blanco And many of them. Boys: this is a rotten world.
Another Boy Lord have mercy on us, miserable sinners. More laughter.
Blanco Forcibly. No: that’s where you’re wrong. Don’t flatter yourselves that you’re miserable sinners. Am I a miserable sinner? No: I’m a fraud and a failure. I started in to be a bad man like the rest of you. You all started in to be bad men or you wouldn’t be in this jumped-up, jerked-off, hospital-turned-out camp that calls itself a town. I took the broad path because I thought I was a man and not a snivelling canting turning-the-other-cheek apprentice angel serving his time in a vale of tears. They talked Christianity to us on Sundays; but when they really meant business they told us never to take a blow without giving it back, and to get dollars. When they talked the golden rule to me, I just looked at them as if they weren’t there, and spat. But when they told me to try to live my life so that I could always look my fellowman straight in the eye and tell him to go to hell, that fetched me.
The Boys Quite right. Good. Bully for you, Blanco, old son. Right good sense too. Aha‑a‑ah!
Blanco Yes; but what’s come of it all? Am I a real bad man? a man of game and grit? a man that does what he likes and goes over or through other people to his own gain? or am I a snivelling crybaby that let a horse his life depended on be took from him by a woman, and then sat on the grass looking at the rainbow and let himself be took like a hare in a trap by Strapper Kemp: a lad whose back I or any grown man here could break against his knee? I’m a rottener fraud and failure than the Elder here. And you’re all as rotten as me, or you’d have lynched me.
A Boy Anything to oblige you, Blanco.
Another We can do it yet if you feel really bad about it.
Blanco No: the devil’s gone out of you. We’re all frauds. There’s none of us real good and none of us real bad.
Elder Daniels There is One above, Blanco.
Blanco What do you know about Him? you that always talk as if He never did anything without asking your rotten leave first? Why did the child die? Tell me that if you can. He can’t have wanted to kill the child. Why did He make me go soft on the child if He was going hard on it Himself? Why should He go hard on the innocent kid and go soft on a rotten thing like me? Why did I go soft myself? Why did the Sheriff go soft? Why did Feemy go soft? What’s this game that upsets our game? For seems to me there’s two games bein’ played. Our game is a rotten game that makes me feel I’m dirt and that you’re all as rotten dirt as me. T’other game may be a silly game; but it ain’t rotten. When the Sheriff played it he stopped being rotten. When Feemy played it the paint nearly dropped off her face. When I played it I cursed myself for a fool; but I lost the rotten feel all the same.
Elder Daniels It was the Lord speaking to your soul, Blanco.
Blanco Oh yes: you know all about the Lord, don’t you? You’re in the Lord’s confidence. He wouldn’t for the world do anything to shock you, would He, Boozy dear? Yah! What about the croup? It was early days when He made the croup, I guess. It was the best He could think of then; but when it turned out wrong on His hands He made you and me to fight the croup for him. You bet He didn’t make us for nothing; and He wouldn’t have made us at all if He could have done His work without us. By Gum, that must be what we’re for! He’d never have made us to be rotten drunken blackguards like me, and good-for-nothing rips like Feemy. He made me because He had a job for me. He let me run loose till the job was ready; and then I had to come along and do it, hanging or no hanging. And I tell you it didn’t feel rotten: it felt bully, just bully. Anyhow, I got the rotten feel off me for a minute of my life; and I’ll go through fire to get it off me again. Look here! which of you will marry Feemy Evans?
The Boys Uproariously. Who speaks first? Who’ll marry Feemy? Come along, Jack. Now’s your chance, Peter. Pass along a husband for Feemy. Oh my! Feemy!
Feemy Shortly. Keep your tongue off me, will you?
Blanco Feemy was a rose of the broad path, wasn’t she? You all thought her the champion bad woman of this district. Well, she’s a failure as a bad woman; and I’m a failure as a bad man. So let Brother Daniels marry us to keep all the rottenness in the family. What do you say, Feemy?
Feemy Thank you; but when I marry I’ll marry a man that could do a decent action without surprising himself out of his senses. You’re like a child with a new toy: you and your bit of human kindness!
The Woman How many would have done it with their life at stake?
Feemy Oh well, if you’re so much taken with him, marry him yourself. You’d be what people call a good wife to him, wouldn’t you?
The Woman I was a good wife to the child’s father. I don’t think any woman wants to be a good wife twice in her life. I want somebody to be a good husband to me now.
Blanco Any offer, gentlemen, on that understanding? The boys shake their heads. Oh, it’s a rotten game, our game. Here’s a real good woman; and she’s had enough of it, finding that it only led to being put upon.
Hannah Well, if there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn’t be anything left for us to do, would there?
Elder Daniels Be of good cheer, brothers. Fight on. Seek the path.
Blanco No. No more paths. No more broad and narrow. No more good and bad. There’s no good and bad; but by Jiminy, gents, there’s a rotten game, and there’s a great game. I played the rotten game; but the great game was played on me; and now I’m for the great game every time. Amen. Gentlemen: let us adjourn to the saloon. I stand the drinks. He jumps down from the table.
The Boys Right you are, Blanco. Drinks round. Come along, boys. Blanco’s standing. Right along to the Elder’s. Hurrah! They rush out, dragging the Elder with them.
Blanco To Feemy, offering his hand. Shake, Feemy.
Feemy Get along, you blackguard.
Blanco It’s come over me again, same as when the kid touched me, same as when you swore a lie to save my neck.
Feemy Oh well, here. They shake hands.

Press Cuttings

By direction of the Lord Chamberlain the General and the Prime Minister in this play must in all public performances of it be addressed and described as General Bones and Mr. Johnson, and by no means as General Mitchener and Mr. Balsquith. The allusions to commoner persons are allowed to stand as they are.

General Mitchener, by the way, is not the late Lord Kitchener, but an earlier and more highly connected commander. Balsquith (Balfour-Asquith) is obviously neither of these statesmen, and cannot in the course of nature be both.

Dramatis Personae

  • General Mitchener

  • Balsquith, the Prime Minister

  • An Orderly

  • Mrs. Farrell, an Irish charwoman

  • Lady Corinthia Fanshawe

  • Mrs. Rosa Carmina Banger

  • Offstage voices

Press Cuttings

The forenoon of the first of April, 1911.

General Mitchener is at his writing table in the War Office, opening letters. On his left is the fireplace, with a fire burning. On his right, against the opposite wall, is a standing desk with an office stool. The door is in the wall behind him, halfway between the table and the desk. The table is not quite in the middle of the room: it is nearer to the hearthrug than to the desk. There is a chair at each end of it for persons having business with the General. There is a telephone on the table.

Long silence.

A Voice Outside Votes for Women!
The General starts convulsively; snatches a revolver from a drawer; and listens in an agony of apprehension. Nothing happens. He puts the revolver back, ashamed; wipes his brow; and resumes his work. He is startled afresh by the entry of an Orderly. This Orderly is an unsoldierly, slovenly, discontented young man.
Mitchener Oh, it’s only you. Well?
The Orderly Another one, sir. She’s chained herself.
Mitchener Chained herself? How? To what? We’ve taken away the railings and everything that a chain can be passed through.
The Orderly We forgot the doorscraper, sir. She lay down on the flags and got the chain through before she started hollerin’. She’s lyin’ there now; and she downfaces us that you’ve got the key of the padlock in a letter in a buff envelope, and that you’ll see her when you open it.
Mitchener She’s mad. Have the scraper dug up and let her go home with it hanging round her neck.
The Orderly There is a buff envelope there, sir.
Mitchener You’re all afraid of these women. He picks the letter up. It does seem to have a key in it. He opens the letter; takes out a key and a note; and reads: “Dear Mitch”⁠—Well, I’m dashed!
The Orderly Yes, sir.
Mitchener What do you mean by “Yes, sir”?
The Orderly Well, you said you was dashed, sir; and you did look⁠—if you’ll excuse my saying it, sir⁠—well, you looked it.
Mitchener Who has been reading the letter, and is too astonished to attend to the Orderly’s reply. This is a letter from the Prime Minister asking me to release the woman with this key if she padlocks herself, and to have her shown up and see her at once.
The Orderly Tremulously. Don’t do it, governor.
Mitchener Angrily. How often have I ordered you not to address me as “governor.” Remember that you are a soldier and not a vulgar civilian. Remember also that when a man enters the army he leaves fear behind him. Here’s the key. Unlock her and show her up.
The Orderly Me unlock her! I dursen’t. Lord knows what she’d do to me.
Mitchener Pepperily, rising. Obey your orders instantly, sir; and don’t presume to argue. Even if she kills you, it is your duty to die for your country. Right about face. March.
The Orderly goes out, trembling.
The Voice Outside Votes for Women! Votes for Women! Votes for Women!
Mitchener Mimicking her. Votes for Women! Votes for Women! Votes for Women! In his natural voice. Votes for children! Votes for babies! Votes for monkeys! He posts himself on the hearthrug and awaits the enemy.
The Orderly Outside. In you go. He pushes a panting Suffragette into the room. The person, sir. He withdraws.
The Suffragette takes off her tailor-made skirt and reveals a pair of fashionable trousers.
Mitchener Horrified. Stop, madam. What are you doing? You must not undress in my presence. I protest. Not even your letter from the Prime Minister⁠—
The Suffragette My dear Mitchener: I am the Prime Minister. He takes off his hat and cloak; throws them on the desk; and confronts the General in the ordinary costume of a Cabinet Minister.
Mitchener Good heavens! Balsquith!
Balsquith Throwing himself into Mitchener’s chair. Yes: it is indeed Balsquith. It has come to this: that the only way that the Prime Minister of England can get from Downing Street to the War Office is by assuming this disguise; shrieking “Votes for Women”; and chaining himself to your doorscraper. They were at the corner in force. They cheered me. Bellachristina herself was there. She shook my hand and told me to say I was a vegetarian, as the diet was better in Holloway for vegetarians.
Mitchener Why didn’t you telephone?
Balsquith They tap the telephone. Every switchboard in London is in their hands, or in those of their young men.
Mitchener Where on earth did you get the dress? I hope it’s not a French dress!
Balsquith Great heavens, no. We’re not allowed even to put on our gloves with French chalk. Everything’s labelled “Made in Camberwell.”
Mitchener As a Tariff Reformer, I must say “Quite right.” Balsquith has a strong controversial impulse and is evidently going to dispute this profession of faith. No matter. Don’t argue. What have you come for?
Balsquith Sandstone has resigned.
Mitchener Amazed. Old Red resigned!
Balsquith Resigned.
Mitchener But how? Why? Oh, impossible! the proclamation of martial law last Tuesday made Sandstone virtually Dictator in the metropolis, and to resign now is flat desertion.
Balsquith Yes, yes, my dear Mitchener; I know all that as well as you do: I argued with him until I was black in the face, and he so red about the neck that if I had gone on he would have burst. He is furious because we have abandoned his plan.
Mitchener But you accepted it unconditionally.
Balsquith Yes, before we knew what it was. It was unworkable, you know.
Mitchener I don’t know. Why is it unworkable?
Balsquith I mean the part about drawing a cordon round Westminster at a distance of two miles, and turning all women out of it.
Mitchener A masterpiece of strategy. Let me explain. The suffragettes are a very small body; but they are numerous enough to be troublesome⁠—even dangerous⁠—when they are all concentrated in one place⁠—say in Parliament Square. But by making a two-mile radius and pushing them beyond it, you scatter their attack over a circular line twelve miles long. A superb piece of tactics. Just what Wellington would have done.
Balsquith But the women won’t go.
Mitchener Nonsense: they must go.
Balsquith They won’t.
Mitchener What does Sandstone say?
Balsquith He says: Shoot them down.
Mitchener Of course.
Balsquith You’re not serious?
Mitchener I’m perfectly serious.
Balsquith But you can’t shoot them down! Women, you know!
Mitchener Straddling confidently. Yes you can. Strange as it may seem to you as a civilian, Balsquith, if you point a rifle at a woman and fire it, she will drop exactly as a man drops.
Balsquith But suppose your own daughters⁠—Helen and Georgina⁠—
Mitchener My daughters would not dream of disobeying the proclamation. As an afterthought. At least Helen wouldn’t.
Balsquith But Georgina?
Mitchener Georgina would if she knew she’d be shot if she didnt. That’s how the thing would work. Military methods are really the most merciful in the end. You keep sending these misguided women to Holloway and killing them slowly and inhumanely by ruining their health; and it does no good: they go on worse than ever. Shoot a few, promptly and humanely; and there will be an end at once of all resistance and of all the suffering that resistance entails.
Balsquith But public opinion would never stand it.
Mitchener Walking about and laying down the law. There’s no such thing as public opinion.
Balsquith No such thing as public opinion!!
Mitchener Absolutely no such thing. There are certain persons who entertain certain opinions. Well, shoot them down. When you have shot them down, there are no longer any persons entertaining those opinions alive, consequently there is no longer any more of the public opinion you are so much afraid of. Grasp that fact, my dear Balsquith; and you have grasped the secret of government. Public opinion is mind. Mind is inseparable from matter. Shoot down the matter and you kill the mind.
Balsquith But hang it all⁠—
Mitchener Intolerantly. No I won’t hang it all. It’s no use coming to me and talking about public opinion. You have put yourself into the hands of the army; and you are committed to military methods. And the basis of all military methods is that when people won’t do what they are told to do, you shoot them down.
Balsquith Oh, yes; it’s all jolly fine for you and Old Red. You don’t depend on votes for your places. What do you suppose would happen at the next election?
Mitchener Have no next election. Bring in a Bill at once repealing all the Reform Acts and vesting the Government in a properly trained magistracy responsible only to a Council of War. It answers perfectly in India. If anyone objects, shoot him down.
Balsquith But none of the members of my party would be on the Council of War. Neither should I. Do you expect us to vote for making ourselves nobodies?
Mitchener You’ll have to, sooner or later, or the Socialists will make nobodies of the lot of you by collaring every penny you possess. Do you suppose this damned democracy can be allowed to go on now that the mob is beginning to take it seriously and using its power to lay hands on property? Parliament must abolish itself. The Irish parliament voted for its own extinction. The English parliament will do the same if the same means are taken to persuade it.
Balsquith That would cost a lot of money.
Mitchener Not money necessarily. Bribe them with titles.
Balsquith Do you think we dare?
Mitchener Scornfully. Dare! Dare! What is life but daring, man? “To dare, to dare, and again to dare”⁠—
Female Voice in the Street Votes for Women! Mitchener, revolver in hand, rushes to the door and locks it. Balsquith hides under the table. Votes for Women!
A shot is heard.
Balsquith Emerging in the greatest alarm. Good heavens, you haven’t given orders to fire on them: have you?
Mitchener No; but it’s a sentinel’s duty to fire on anyone who persists in attempting to pass without giving the word.
Balsquith Wiping his brow. This military business is really awful.
Mitchener Be calm, Balsquith. These things must happen; they save bloodshed in the long run, believe me. I’ve seen plenty of it; and I know.
Balsquith I haven’t; and I don’t know. I wish those guns didn’t make such a devil of a noise. We must adopt Maxim’s Silencer for the army rifles if we’re going to shoot women. I really couldn’t stand hearing it. Someone outside tries to open the door and then knocks. What’s that?
Mitchener Who’s there?
The Orderly It’s only me, governor. It’s all right.
Mitchener Unlocking the door and admitting the Orderly, who comes between them. What was it?
The Orderly Suffragette, sir.
Balsquith Did the sentry shoot her?
The Orderly No, sir: she shot the sentry.
Balsquith Relieved. Oh: is that all?
Mitchener Most indignantly. All? A civilian shoots down one of His Majesty’s soldiers on duty; and the Prime Minister of England asks, “Is that all?”!!! Have you no regard for the sanctity of human life?
Balsquith Much relieved. Well, getting shot is what a soldier is for. Besides, he doesn’t vote.
Mitchener Neither do the suffragettes.
Balsquith Their husbands do. To the Orderly. Did she kill him?
The Orderly No, sir. He got a stinger on his trousers, sir; but it didn’t penetrate. He lost his temper a bit and put down his gun and clouted her head for her. So she said he was no gentleman; and we let her go, thinking she’d had enough, sir.
Mitchener Groaning. Clouted her head! These women are making the army as lawless as themselves. Clouted her head indeed! A purely civil procedure.
The Orderly Any orders, sir?
Mitchener No. Yes. No. Yes: send everybody who took part in this disgraceful scene to the guardroom. No. I’ll address the men on the subject after lunch. Parade them for that purpose: full kit. Don’t grin at me, Sir. Right about face. March.
The Orderly obeys and goes out.
Balsquith Taking Mitchener affectionately by the arm and walking him persuasively to and fro. And now, Mitchener, will you come to the rescue of the Government and take the command that Old Red has thrown up?
Mitchener How can I? You know that the people are devoted heart and soul to Sandstone. He is only bringing you “on the knee,” as we say in the army. Could any other living man have persuaded the British nation to accept universal compulsory military service as he did last year? Why, even the Church refused exemption. He is supreme⁠—omnipotent.
Balsquith He was, a year ago. But ever since your book of reminiscences went into two more editions than his, and the rush for it led to the wrecking of the Times Book Club, you have become to all intents and purposes his senior. He lost ground by saying that the wrecking was got up by the booksellers. It showed jealousy; and the public felt it.
Mitchener But I cracked him up in my book⁠—you see I could do no less after the handsome way he cracked me up in his⁠—and I can’t go back on it now. Breaking loose from Balsquith. No: it’s no use, Balsquith: he can dictate his terms to you.
Balsquith Not a bit of it. That affair of the curate⁠—
Mitchener Impatiently. Oh, damn that curate. I’ve heard of nothing but that wretched mutineer for a fortnight past. He is not a curate: whilst he is serving in the army he is a private soldier and nothing else. I really haven’t time to discuss him further. I’m busy. Good morning. He sits down at his table and takes up his letters.
Balsquith Near the door. I am sorry you take that tone, Mitchener. Since you do take it, let me tell you frankly that I think Lieutenant Chubbs-Jenkinson showed a great want of consideration for the Government in giving an unreasonable and unpopular order, and bringing compulsory military service into disrepute.
Mitchener No order is unreasonable; and all orders are unpopular.
Balsquith When the leader of the Labor Party appealed to me and to the House last year not to throw away all the liberties of Englishmen by accepting compulsory military service without full civil rights for the soldier⁠—
Mitchener Rot.
Balsquith —I said that no British officer would be capable of abusing the authority with which it was absolutely necessary to invest him.
Mitchener Quite right.
Balsquith That carried the House;⁠—
Mitchener Naturally.
Balsquith —and the feeling was that the Labor Party were soulless cads.
Mitchener So they are.
Balsquith And now comes this unmannerly young whelp Chubbs-Jenkinson, the only son of what they call a soda king, and orders a curate to lick his boots. And when the curate punches his head, you first sentence him to be shot; and then make a great show of clemency by commuting it to a flogging. What did you expect the curate to do?
Mitchener Throwing down his pen and his letters and jumping up to confront Balsquith. His duty was perfectly simple. He should have obeyed the order; and then laid his complaint against the officer in proper form. He would have received the fullest satisfaction.
Balsquith What satisfaction?
Mitchener Chubbs-Jenkinson would have been reprimanded. In fact, he was reprimanded. Besides, the man was thoroughly insubordinate. You can’t deny that the very first thing he did when they took him down after flogging him was to walk up to Chubbs-Jenkinson and break his jaw. That showed there was no use flogging him; so now he will get two years hard labor; and serve him right!
Balsquith I bet you a guinea he won’t get even a week. I bet you another that Chubbs-Jenkinson apologizes abjectly. You evidently haven’t heard the news.
Mitchener What news?
Balsquith It turns out that the curate is well connected. Mitchener staggers at the shock. He reels into his chair and buries his face in his hands over the blotter. Balsquith continues remorselessly, stooping over him to rub it in. He has three aunts in the peerage; Lady Richmond’s one of them; Mitchener punctuates these announcements with heartrending groans and they all adore him. The invitations for six garden parties and fourteen dances have been cancelled for all the subalterns in Chubbs’s regiment. Mitchener attempts to shoot himself.
Balsquith Seizing the pistol. No: your country needs you, Mitchener.
Mitchener Putting down the pistol. For my country’s sake. Balsquith, reassured, sits down. But what an infernal young fool Chubbs-Jenkinson is, not to know the standing of his man better! Why didn’t he know? It was his business to know. He ought to be flogged.
Balsquith Probably he will be, by the other subalterns.
Mitchener I hope so. Anyhow, out he goes. Out of the army. He or I.
Balsquith Steady, steady. His father has subscribed a million to the party funds. We owe him a peerage.
Mitchener I don’t care.
Balsquith I do. How do you think parties are kept up? Not by the subscriptions of the local associations, I hope. They don’t pay for the gas at the meetings.
Mitchener Man: can you not be serious? Here are we, face to face with Lady Richmond’s grave displeasure; and you talk to me about gas and subscriptions. Her own nephew!!!!!
Balsquith Gloomily. It’s unfortunate. He was at Oxford with Bobby Bessborough.
Mitchener Worse and worse. What shall we do?
A Voice in the Street Votes for Women! Votes for Women!
A terrific explosion shakes the building. They take no notice.
Mitchener Breaking down. You don’t know what this means to me, Balsquith. I love the army. I love my country.
Balsquith It certainly is rather awkward.
The Orderly comes in.
Mitchener Angrily. What is it? How dare you interrupt us like this?
The Orderly Didn’t you hear the explosion, sir?
Mitchener Explosion. What explosion? No: I heard no explosion: I have something more serious to attend to than explosions. Great Heavens! Lady Richmond’s nephew has been treated like any common laborer; and while England is reeling under the shock, a private walks in and asks me if I heard an explosion.
Balsquith By the way, what was the explosion?
The Orderly Only a sort of bombshell, sir.
Balsquith Bombshell!
The Orderly A pasteboard one, sir. Full of papers with Votes for Women in red letters. Fired into the yard from the roof of the Alliance Office.
Mitchener Pooh! Go away. Go away.
The Orderly, bewildered, goes out.
Balsquith Mitchener: you can save the country yet. Put on your full dress uniform and your medals and orders and so forth. Get a guard of honor⁠—something showy⁠—horse guards or something of that sort; and call on the old girl⁠—
Mitchener The old girl?
Balsquith Well, Lady Richmond. Apologize to her. Ask her leave to accept the command. Tell her that you’ve made the curate your adjutant or your aide-de-camp or whatever is the proper thing. By the way, what can you make him?
Mitchener I might make him my chaplain. I don’t see why I shouldn’t have a chaplain on my staff. He showed a very proper spirit in punching that young cub’s head. I should have done the same myself.
Balsquith Then I’ve your promise to take command if Lady Richmond consents?
Mitchener On condition that I have a free hand. No nonsense about public opinion or democracy.
Balsquith As far as possible, I think I may say yes.
Mitchener Rising intolerantly and going to the hearthrug. That won’t do for me. Don’t be weak-kneed, Balsquith. You know perfectly well that the real government of this country is and always must be the government of the masses by the classes. You know that democracy is damned nonsense, and that no class stands less of it than the working class. You know that we are already discussing the steps that will have to be taken if the country should ever be face to face with the possibility of a Labor majority in parliament. You know that in that case we should disfranchise the mob, and if they made a fuss, shoot them down. You know that if we need public opinion to support us, we can get any quantity of it manufactured in our papers by poor devils of journalists who will sell their souls for five shillings. You know⁠—
Balsquith Stop. Stop, I say. I don’t know. That is the difference between your job and mine, Mitchener. After twenty years in the army a man thinks he knows everything. After twenty months in the Cabinet he knows that he knows nothing.
Mitchener We learn from history⁠—
Balsquith We learn from history that men never learn anything from history. That’s not my own: it’s Hegel.
Mitchener Who’s Hegel?
Balsquith Dead. A German philosopher. He half rises, but recollects something and sits down again. Oh, confound it: that reminds me. The Germans have laid down four more Dreadnoughts.
Mitchener Then you must lay down twelve.
Balsquith Oh yes: it’s easy to say that; but think of what they’ll cost.
Mitchener Think of what it would cost to be invaded by Germany and forced to pay an indemnity of five hundred millions.
Balsquith But you said that if you got compulsory military service there would be an end of the danger of invasion.
Mitchener On the contrary, my dear fellow, it increases the danger tenfold, because it increases German jealousy of our military supremacy.
Balsquith After all, why should the Germans invade us?
Mitchener Why shouldn’t they? What else has their army to do? What else are they building a navy for?
Balsquith Well, we never think of invading Germany.
Mitchener Yes, we do. I have thought of nothing else for the last ten years. Say what you will, Balsquith, the Germans have never recognized, and until they get a stern lesson, they never will recognize, the plain fact that the interests of the British Empire are paramount, and that the command of the sea belongs by nature to England.
Balsquith But if they won’t recognize it, what can I do?
Mitchener Shoot them down.
Balsquith I can’t shoot them down.
Mitchener Yes you can. You don’t realize it; but if you fire a rifle into a German he drops just as surely as a rabbit does.
Balsquith But dash it all, man, a rabbit hasn’t got a rifle and a German has. Suppose he shoots you down.
Mitchener Excuse me, Balsquith; but that consideration is what we call cowardice in the army. A soldier always assumes that he is going to shoot, not to be shot.
Balsquith Jumping up and walking about sulkily. Oh come! I like to hear you military people talking of cowardice. Why, you spend your lives in an ecstasy of terror of imaginary invasions. I don’t believe you ever go to bed without looking under it for a burglar.
Mitchener Calmly. A very sensible precaution, Balsquith. I always take it; and, in consequence, I’ve never been burgled.
Balsquith Neither have I. Anyhow, don’t you taunt me with cowardice. He posts himself on the hearthrug beside Mitchener, on his left. I never look under my bed for a burglar. I’m not always looking under the nation’s bed for an invader. And if it comes to fighting, I’m quite willing to fight without being three to one.
Mitchener These are the romantic ravings of a Jingo civilian, Balsquith. At least you’ll not deny that the absolute command of the sea is essential to our security.
Balsquith The absolute command of the sea is essential to the security of the principality of Monaco. But Monaco isn’t going to get it.
Mitchener And consequently Monaco enjoys no security. What a frightful thing! How do the inhabitants sleep with the possibility of invasion, of bombardment, continually present to their minds? Would you have our English slumbers broken in the same way? Are we also to live without security?
Balsquith Dogmatically. Yes. There’s no such thing as security in the world: and there never can be as long as men are mortal. England will be secure when England is dead, just as the streets of London will be safe when there’s no longer a man in her streets to be run over or a vehicle to run over him. When you military chaps ask for security you are crying for the moon.
Mitchener Very seriously. Let me tell you, Balsquith, that in these days of aeroplanes and Zeppelin airships, the question of the moon is becoming one of the greatest importance. It will be reached at no very distant date. Can you, as an Englishman, tamely contemplate the possibility of having to live under a German moon? The British flag must be planted there at all hazards.
Balsquith My dear Mitchener, the moon is outside practical politics. I’d swap it for a coaling station tomorrow with Germany or any other Power sufficiently military in its way of thinking to attach any importance to it.
Mitchener Losing his temper. You are the friend of every country but your own.
Balsquith Say nobody’s enemy but my own. It sounds nicer. You really needn’t be so horribly afraid of the other countries. They’re all in the same fix as we are. I’m much more interested in the death rate in Lambeth than in the German fleet.
Mitchener You daren’t say that in Lambeth.
Balsquith I’ll say it the day after you publish your scheme for invading Germany and repealing all the Reform Acts.
The Orderly comes in.
Mitchener What do you want?
The Orderly I don’t want anything, governor, thank you. The secretary and president of the Anti-Suffragette League says they had an appointment with the Prime Minister, and that they’ve been sent on here from Downing Street.
Balsquith Going to the table. Quite right. I forgot them. To Mitchener. Would you mind my seeing them here? I feel extraordinarily grateful to these women for standing by us and facing the suffragettes, especially as they are naturally the gentler and timider sort of women. The Orderly moans. Did you say anything?
The Orderly No, sir.
Balsquith Did you catch their names?
The Orderly Yes, sir. The president is Lady Corinthia Fanshawe; and the secretary is Mrs. Banger.
Mitchener Abruptly. Mrs. what?
The Orderly Mrs. Banger.
Balsquith Curious that quiet people always seem to have violent names.
The Orderly Not much quiet about her, sir.
Mitchener Outraged. Attention! Speak when you’re spoken to. Hold your tongue when you’re not. Right about face. March. The Orderly obeys. That’s the way to keep these chaps up to the mark. The Orderly returns. Back again! What do you mean by this mutiny?
The Orderly What am I to say to the ladies, sir?
Balsquith You don’t mind my seeing them somewhere, do you?
Mitchener Not at all. Bring them in to see me when you’ve done with them: I understand that Lady Corinthia is a very fascinating woman. Who is she, by the way?
Balsquith Daughter of Lord Broadstairs, the automatic turbine man. Gave quarter of a million to the party funds. She’s musical and romantic and all that⁠—don’t hunt: hates politics: stops in town all the year round: one never sees her anywhere except at the opera and at musical at-homes and so forth.
Mitchener What a life! To the Orderly. Where are the ladies?
The Orderly In No. 17, Sir.
Mitchener Show Mr. Balsquith there; and send Mrs. Farrell here.
The Orderly Calling into the corridor. Mrs. Farrell! To Balsquith. This way sir. He goes out with Balsquith.
Mrs. Farrell, a lean, highly respectable Irish charwoman of about fifty, comes in.
Mitchener Mrs. Farrell: I’ve a very important visit to pay: I shall want my full dress uniform and all my medals and orders and my presentation sword. There was a time when the British Army contained men capable of discharging these duties for their commanding officer. Those days are over. The compulsorily enlisted soldier runs to a woman for everything. I’m therefore reluctantly obliged to trouble you.
Mrs. Farrell Your meddles ’n’ ordhers ’n’ the crooked sword widh the ivory handle ’n’ your full dress uniform is in the waxworks in the Chamber o’ Military Glory over in the place they used to call the Banquetin’ Hall. I told you you’d be sorry for sendin’ them away; and you told me to mind me own business. You’re wiser now.
Mitchener I am. I had not at that time discovered that you were the only person in the whole military establishment of this capital who could be trusted to remember where anything was, or to understand an order and obey it.
Mrs. Farrell It’s no good flattherin’ me. I’m too old.
Mitchener Not at all, Mrs. Farrell. How is your daughter?
Mrs. Farrell Which daughther?
Mitchener The one who has made such a gratifying success in the Music Halls.
Mrs. Farrell There’s no music halls nowadays: they’re Variety Theatres. She’s got an offer of marriage from a young jook.
Mitchener Is it possible? What did you do?
Mrs. Farrell I told his mother on him.
Mitchener Oh! What did she say?
Mrs. Farrell She was as pleased as Punch. Thank Heaven, she says, he’s got somebody that’ll be able to keep him when the supertax is put up to twenty shillings in the pound.
Mitchener But your daughter herself? What did she say?
Mrs. Farrell Accepted him, of course. What else would a young fool like her do? He inthrojooced her to the Poet Laureate, thinkin’ she’d inspire him.
Mitchener Did she?
Mrs. Farrell Faith, I dunna. All I know is she walked up to him as bold as brass ’n’ said, “Write me a sketch, dear.” Afther all the throuble I’ve took with that child’s manners she’s no more notion how to behave herself than a pig. You’ll have to wear General Sandstone’s uniform: it’s the ony one in the place, because he won’t lend it to the shows.
Mitchener But Sandstone’s clothes won’t fit me.
Mrs. Farrell Unmoved. Then you’ll have to fit them. Why shouldn’t they fitchya as well as they fitted General Blake at the Mansion House?
Mitchener They didn’t fit him. He looked a frightful guy.
Mrs. Farrell Well, you must do the best you can with them. You can’t exhibit your clothes and wear them too.
Mitchener And the public thinks the lot of a commanding officer a happy one! Oh, if they could only see the seamy side of it. He returns to his table to resume work.
Mrs. Farrell If they could only see the seamy side o’ General Sandstone’s uniform, where his flask rubs agen’ the buckle of his braces, they’d tell him he ought to get a new one. Let alone the way he swears at me.
Mitchener When a man has risked his life on eight battlefields, Mrs. Farrell, he has given sufficient proof of his self-control to be excused a little strong language.
Mrs. Farrell Would you put up with bad language from me because I’ve risked me life eight times in childbed?
Mitchener My dear Mrs. Farrell, you surely would not compare a risk of that harmless domestic kind to the fearful risks of the battlefield.
Mrs. Farrell I wouldn’t compare risks run to bear livin’ people into the world to risks run to blow dhem out of it. A mother’s risk is jooty: a soldier’s is nothin but divilmint.
Mitchener Nettled. Let me tell you, Mrs. Farrell, that if the men did not fight, the women would have to fight themselves. We spare you that at all events.
Mrs. Farrell You can’t help yourselves. If three-quarters of you was killed we could replace you with the help of the other quarter. If three-quarters of us was killed how many people would there be in England in another generation? If it wasn’t for that, the men’d put the fightin’ on us just as they put all the other dhrudgery. What would you do if we was all kilt? Would you go to bed and have twins?
Mitchener Really, Mrs. Farrell, you must discuss these questions with a medical man. You make me blush, positively.
Mrs. Farrell Grumbling to herself. A good job too. If I could have made Farrell blush I wouldn’t have had to risk me life so often. You ’n’ your risks ’n’ your bravery ’n’ your self-conthrol indeed! “Why don’t you conthrol yourself?” I sez to Farrell. “It’s agen’ me religion,” he sez.
Mitchener Plaintively. Mrs. Farrell: you’re a woman of very powerful mind. I’m not qualified to argue these delicate matters with you. I ask you to spare me, and to be good enough to take these clothes to Mr. Balsquith when the ladies leave.
The Orderly comes in.
The Orderly Lady Corinthia Fanshawe and Mrs. Banger want to see you, sir. Mr. Balsquith told me to tell you.
Mrs. Farrell They’ve come about the vote. I don’t know whether it’s dhem dhat want it or dhem dhat doesn’t want it: anyhow, they’re all alike when they get into a state about it. She goes out, having gathered Balsquith’s suffragette disguise from the desk.
Mitchener Is Mr. Balsquith not with them?
The Orderly No, sir. Couldn’t stand Mrs. Banger, I expect. Fair caution she is. Chuckling. Couldn’t help larfin’ when I sor ’im ’op it.
Mitchener Highly incensed. How dare you indulge in this unseemly mirth in the presence of your commanding officer? Have you no sense of a soldier’s duty?
The Orderly Sadly. I’m afraid I shan’t ever get the ’ang of it, sir. You see, my father has a tidy little barber’s business down off Shoreditch; and I was brought up to be chatty and easy-like with everybody. I tell you, when I drew the number in the conscription it gev my old mother the needle and it gev me the ’ump. I should take it very kind, sir, if you’d let me off the drill and let me shave you instead. You’d appreciate my qualities then: you would indeed, sir. I shan’t never do myself jastice at soljerin’, sir. I can’t bring myself to think of it as proper work for a man with an active mind, as you might say, sir. ’Arf of it’s only ’ousemaidin’; and t’other ’arf is dress-up and make-believe.
Mitchener Stuff, sir. It’s the easiest life in the world. Once you learn your drill, all you have to do is to hold your tongue and obey your orders.
The Orderly But I do assure you, sir, ’arf the time they’re the wrong orders; and I get into trouble when I obey them. The sergeant’s orders is all right; but the officers don’t know what they’re talkin’ about. Why, the ’orses knows better sometimes. “Fours,” says Lieutenant Trevor at the gate of Buck’nam Palace only this mornin’ when we was on duty for a State visit to the Coal Trust. I was fourth man like in the first file; and when I started the ’orse ’eld back; and the sergeant was on to me straight. “Threes, you bally fool,” ’e whispers. An’ ’e was on to me again about it when we come back, and called me a fathead, ’e did. “What am I to do,” I says: “the lieutenant’s orders was fours,” I says. “I’ll show you who’s lieutenant here,” ’e says. “In future you attend to my orders and not to ’iz,” ’e says: “what does ’e know about it?” ’e says. “You didn’t give me any orders,” I says. “Couldn’t you see for yourself there wasn’t room for fours,” ’e says: “why can’t you think?” “General Mitchener tells me I’m not to think, but to obey orders,” I says. “Is Mitchener your sergeant or am I?” ’e says in his bullyin’ way. “You are,” I says. “Well,” ’e says, “you got to do what your sergeant tells you: that’s discipline,” ’e says. “And what am I to do for the General?” I says. “You’re to let him talk,” ’e says: “that’s what ’e’s for.”
Mitchener Groaning. It is impossible for the human mind to conceive anything more dreadful than this. You’re a disgrace to the service.
The Orderly Deeply wounded. The service is a disgrace to me. When my mother’s people pass me in the street with this uniform on, I ’ardly know which way to look. There never was a soldier in my fam’ly before.
Mitchener There never was anything else in mine, sir.
The Orderly My mother’s second cousin was one of the Parkinsons o’ Stepney. Almost in tears. What do you know of the feelings of a respectable family in the middle station of life? I can’t bear to be looked down on as a common soldier. Why can’t my father be let buy my discharge? You’ve done away with the soldier’s right to ’ave his discharge bought for him by his relations. The country didn’t know you were going to do that or it’d never ’ave stood it. Is an Englishman to be made a mockery like this?
Mitchener Silence. Attention. Right about face. March.
The Orderly Retiring to the standing desk and bedewing it with passionate tears. Oh that I should have lived to be spoke to as if I was the lowest of the low! Me! that has shaved a City of London aldermen wiv me own hand.
Mitchener Poltroon. Crybaby. Well, better disgrace yourself here than disgrace your country on the field of battle.
The Orderly Angrily coming to the table. Who’s going to disgrace his country on the field of battle. It’s not fightin’ I object to: it’s soljerin’. Show me a German and I’ll have a go at him as fast as you or any man. But to ’ave me time wasted like this, an’ be stuck in a sentry box at a street corner for an ornament to be stared at; and to be told “right about face: march,” if I speak as one man to another: that ain’t pluck: that ain’t fightin’: that ain’t patriotism: it’s bein’ made a bloomin’ sheep of.
Mitchener A sheep has many valuable military qualities. Emulate them, don’t disparage them.
The Orderly Oh, wot’s the good of talkin’ to you? If I wasn’t a poor soldier I could punch your head for forty shillins or a month. But because you’re my commandin’ officer you deprive me of my right to a magistrate, and make a compliment of giving me two years ’ard ’sted o’ shootin’ me. Why can’t you take your chance the same as any civilian does?
Mitchener Rising majestically. I search the pages of history in vain for a parallel to such a speech made by a private to a General. But for the coherence of your remarks I should conclude that you were drunk. As it is, you must be mad. You shall be placed under restraint at once. Call the guard.
The Orderly Call your grandmother. If you take one man off the doors the place’ll be full of suffragettes before you can wink.
Mitchener Then arrest yourself; and off with you to the guardroom.
The Orderly What am I to arrest myself for?
Mitchener That’s nothing to you. You have your orders: obey them. Do you hear. Right about face. March.
The Orderly How would you feel if you was told to right-about-face and march as if you was a doormat?
Mitchener I should feel as if my country had spoken through the voice of my officer. I should feel proud and honored to be able to serve my country by obeying its commands. No thought of self, no vulgar preoccupation with my own petty vanity, could touch my mind at such a moment. To me my officer would not be a mere man: he would be for the moment⁠—whatever his personal frailties⁠—the incarnation of our national destiny.
The Orderly What I’m saying to you is the voice of old England a jolly sight more than all this rot that you get out of books. I’d rather be spoke to by a sergeant than by you. He tells me to go to hell when I challenges him to argue it out like a man. It ain’t polite; but it’s English. What you say ain’t anything at all. You don’t act on it yourself. You don’t believe in it. You’d punch my head if I tried it on you; and serve me right. And look here. Here’s another point for you to argue⁠—
Mitchener With a shriek of protest. No⁠—
Mrs. Banger comes in followed by Lady Corinthia Fanshawe. Mrs. Banger is a masculine woman of forty with a powerful voice and great physical strength. Lady Corinthia, who is also over thirty, is beautiful and romantic.
Mrs. Banger Throwing the door open decisively and marching straight to Michener. Pray how much longer is the Anti-Suffragette League to be kept waiting? She passes him contemptuously and sits down with impressive confidence in the chair next the fireplace. Lady Corinthia takes the chair on the opposite side of the table with equal aplomb.
Mitchener I’m extremely sorry. You really do not know what I have to put with. This imbecile, incompetent, unsoldierly disgrace to the uniform he should never have been allowed to put on, ought to have shown you in fifteen minutes ago.
The Orderly All I said was⁠—
Mitchener Not another word. Attention. Right about face. March. The Orderly sits down doggedly. Get out of the room this instant, you fool, or I’ll kick you out.
The Orderly Civilly. I don’t mind that, sir. It’s human. It’s English. Why couldn’t you have said it before? He goes out.
Mitchener Take no notice, I beg: these scenes are of daily occurrence now that we have compulsory service under the command of the halfpenny papers. Pray sit down.
Lady Corinthia and Mrs. Banger Rising. Thank you. They sit down again.
Mitchener Sitting down with a slight chuckle of satisfaction. And now, ladies, to what am I indebted⁠—
Mrs. Banger Let me introduce us. I am Rosa Carmina Banger: Mrs. Banger, organizing secretary of the Anti-Suffragette League. This is Lady Corinthia Fanshawe, the president of the League, known in musical circles⁠—I am not musical⁠—as the Richmond Park nightingale. A soprano. I am myself said to be almost a baritone; but I do not profess to understand these distinctions.
Mitchener Murmuring politely. Most happy, I’m sure.
Mrs. Banger We have come to tell you plainly that the Anti-Suffragettes are going to fight.
Mitchener Gallantly. Oh, pray leave that to the men, Mrs. Banger.
Lady Corinthia We can no longer trust the men.
Mrs. Banger They have shown neither the strength, the courage, nor the determination which are needed to combat women like the suffragettes.
Lady Corinthia Nature is too strong for the combatants.
Mrs. Banger Physical struggles between persons of opposite sexes are unseemly.
Lady Corinthia Demoralizing.
Mrs. Banger Insincere.
Lady Corinthia They are merely embraces in disguise.
Mrs. Banger No such suspicion can attach to combats in which the antagonists are of the same sex.
Lady Corinthia The Anti-Suffragettes have resolved to take the field.
Mrs. Banger They will enforce the order of General Sandstone for the removal of all women from the two mile radius⁠—that is, all women except themselves.
Mitchener I am sorry to have to inform you, madam, that the Government has given up that project, and that General Sandstone has resigned in consequence.
Mrs. Banger That does not concern us in the least. We approve of the project and will see that it is carried out. We have spent a good deal of money arming ourselves; and we are not going to have that money thrown away through the pusillanimity of a Cabinet of males.
Mitchener Arming yourselves! But, my dear ladies, under the latest proclamation women are strictly forbidden to carry chains, padlocks, tracts on the franchise, or weapons of any description.
Lady Corinthia Producing an ivory-handled revolver and pointing it at his nose. You little know your countrywomen, General Mitchener.
Mitchener Without flinching. Madam: it is my duty to take possession of that weapon in accordance with the proclamation. Be good enough to put it down.
Mrs. Banger Producing an eighteenth century horse pistol. Is it your duty to take possession of this also?
Mitchener That, madam, is not a weapon: it is a curiosity. If you would be kind enough to place it in some museum instead of pointing it at my head, I should be obliged to you.
Mrs. Banger This pistol, sir, was carried at Waterloo by my grandmother.
Mitchener I presume you mean your grandfather.
Mrs. Banger You presume unwarrantably.
Lady Corinthia Mrs. Banger’s grandmother commanded a canteen at that celebrated battle.
Mrs. Banger Who my grandfather was is a point that has never been quite clearly settled. I put my trust not in my ancestors, but in my good sword, which is at my lodgings.
Mitchener Your sword!
Mrs. Banger The sword with which I slew five Egyptians with my own hand at Kassassin, where I served as a trooper.
Mitchener Lord bless me! But was your sex never discovered?
Mrs. Banger It was never even suspected. I had a comrade⁠—a gentleman ranker⁠—whom they called Fanny. They never called me Fanny.
Lady Corinthia The suffragettes have turned the whole woman movement on to the wrong track. They ask for a vote.
Mrs. Banger What use is a vote? Men have the vote.
Lady Corinthia And men are slaves.
Mrs. Banger What women need is the right to military service. Give me a well-mounted regiment of women with sabres, opposed to a regiment of men with votes. We shall see which will go down before the other. No: we have had enough of these gentle pretty creatures who merely talk and cross-examine ministers in police courts, and go to prison like sheep, and suffer and sacrifice themselves. This question must be solved by blood and iron, as was well said by Bismarck, whom I have reason to believe was a woman in disguise.
Mitchener Bismarck a woman!
Mrs. Banger All the really strong men of history have been disguised women.
Mitchener Remonstrating. My dear lady!
Mrs. Banger How can you tell? You never knew that the hero of the charge at Kassassin was a woman: yet she was: it was I, Rosa Carmina Banger. Would Napoleon have been so brutal to women, think you, had he been a man?
Mitchener Oh, come, come! Really! Surely female rulers have often shown all the feminine weaknesses. Queen Elizabeth, for instance. Her vanity, her levity⁠—
Mrs. Banger Nobody who has studied the history of Queen Elizabeth can doubt for a moment that she was a disguised man.
Lady Corinthia Admiring Mrs. Banger. Isn’t she splendid!
Mrs. Banger Rising with a large gesture. This very afternoon I shall cast off this hampering skirt forever; mount my charger; and with my good sabre lead the Anti-Suffragettes to victory. She strides to the other side of the room, snorting.
Mitchener But I can’t allow anything of the sort, madam. I shall stand no such ridiculous nonsense. I’m perfectly determined to put my foot down⁠—
Lady Corinthia Don’t be hysterical, General.
Mitchener Hysterical!
Mrs. Banger Do you think we are to be stopped by these childish exhibitions of temper. They are useless; and your tears and entreaties⁠—a man’s last resource⁠—will avail you just as little. I sweep them away, just as I sweep your plans of campaign “made in Germany”⁠—
Mitchener Flying into a transport of rage. How dare you repeat that infamous slander! He rings the bell violently. If this is the alternative to votes for women, I shall advocate giving every woman in the country six votes. The Orderly comes in. Remove that woman. See that she leaves the building at once.
The Orderly forlornly contemplates the iron front presented by Mrs. Banger.
The Orderly Propitiatorily. Would you ’av the feelin’ ’art to step out, madam.
Mrs. Banger You are a soldier. Obey your orders. Put me out. If I got such an order I should not hesitate.
The Orderly To Mitchener. Would you mind lendin’ me a ’and, Guvner?
Lady Corinthia Raising her revolver. I shall be obliged to shoot you if you stir, General.
Mrs. Banger To the Orderly. When you are ordered to put a person out you should do it like this. She hurls him from the room. He is heard falling headlong downstairs and crashing through a glass door. I shall now wait on General Sandstone. If he shows any sign of weakness, he shall share that poor wretch’s fate. She goes out.
Lady Corinthia Isn’t she magnificent?
Mitchener Thank heaven she’s gone. And now, my dear lady, is it necessary to keep that loaded pistol to my nose all through our conversation?
Lady Corinthia It’s not loaded. It’s heavy enough, goodness knows, without putting bullets in it.
Mitchener Triumphantly snatching his revolver from the drawer. Then I am master of the situation. This is loaded. Ha, ha!
Lady Corinthia But since we are not really going to shoot one another, what difference can it possibly make?
Mitchener Putting his pistol down on the table. True. Quite true. I recognize there the practical good sense that has prevented you from falling into the snares of the suffragettes.
Lady Corinthia The suffragettes, General, are the dupes of dowdies. A really attractive and clever woman⁠—
Mitchener Gallantly. Yourself, for instance.
Lady Corinthia Snatching up his revolver. Another step and you are a dead man.
Mitchener Amazed. My dear lady!
Lady Corinthia I am not your dear lady. You are not the first man who has concluded that because I am devoted to music and can reach F in alt with the greatest facility⁠—Patti never got above E flat⁠—I am marked out as the prey of every libertine. You think I am like the thousands of weak women whom you have ruined⁠—
Mitchener I solemnly protest⁠—
Lady Corinthia Oh, I know what you officers are. To you a woman’s honor is nothing, and the idle pleasure of the moment is everything.
Mitchener This is perfectly ridiculous. I never ruined anyone in my life.
Lady Corinthia Never! Are you in earnest?
Mitchener Certainly I am in earnest. Most indignantly in earnest.
Lady Corinthia Throwing down the pistol contemptuously. Then you have no temperament; you are not an artist. You have no soul for music.
Mitchener I’ve subscribed to the regimental band all my life. I bought two sarrusophones for it out of my own pocket. When I sang Tosti’s “Goodbye Forever” at Knightsbridge in 1880 the whole regiment wept. You are too young to remember that.
Lady Corinthia Your advances are useless. I⁠—
Mitchener Confound it, madam, can you not receive an innocent compliment without suspecting me of dishonorable intentions?
Lady Corinthia Love⁠—real love⁠—makes all intentions honorable. But you could never understand that.
Mitchener I’ll not submit to the vulgar penny-novelette notion that an officer is less honorable than a civilian in his relations with women. While I live I’ll raise my voice⁠—
Lady Corinthia Tush!
Mitchener What do you mean by tush?
Lady Corinthia You can’t raise your voice above its natural compass. What sort of voice have you?
Mitchener A tenor. What sort had you?
Lady Corinthia Had! I have it still. I tell you I am the highest living soprano. Scornfully. What was your highest note, pray?
Mitchener B flat⁠—once⁠—in 1879. I was drunk at the time.
Lady Corinthia Gazing at him almost tenderly. Though you may not believe me, I find you are more interesting when you talk about music than when you are endeavoring to betray a woman who has trusted you by remaining alone with you in your apartment.
Mitchener Springing up and fuming away to the fireplace. Those repeated insults to a man of blameless life are as disgraceful to you as they are undeserved by me, Lady Corinthia. Such suspicions invite the conduct they impute. She raises the pistol. You need not be alarmed: I am only going to leave the room.
Lady Corinthia Fish.
Mitchener Fish! This is worse than tush. Why fish?
Lady Corinthia Yes, fish: coldblooded fish.
Mitchener Dash it all, madam, do you want me to make advances to you?
Lady Corinthia I have not the slightest intention of yielding to them; but to make them would be a tribute to romance. What is life without romance?
Mitchener Making a movement towards her. I tell you⁠—
Lady Corinthia Stop. No nearer. No vulgar sensuousness. If you must adore, adore at a distance.
Mitchener This is worse than Mrs. Banger. I shall ask that estimable woman to come back.
Lady Corinthia Poor Mrs. Banger! Do not for a moment suppose, General Mitchener, that Mrs. Banger represents my views on the suffrage question. Mrs. Banger is a man in petticoats. I am every inch a woman; but I find it convenient to work with her.
Mitchener Do you find the combination comfortable?
Lady Corinthia I do not wear combinations, General: with dignity they are unwomanly.
Mitchener Throwing himself despairingly into the chair next the hearthrug. I shall go mad. I never for a moment dreamt of alluding to anything of the sort.
Lady Corinthia There is no need to blush and become self-conscious at the mention of underclothing. You are extremely vulgar, General.
Mitchener Lady Corinthia: you have my pistol. Will you have the goodness to blow my brains out. I should prefer it to any further effort to follow the gyrations of the weathercock you no doubt call your mind. If you refuse, then I warn you that you’ll not get another word out of me⁠—not if we sit here until doomsday.
Lady Corinthia I don’t want you to talk. I want you to listen. You do not yet understand my views on the question of the Suffrage. She rises to make a speech. I must preface my remarks by reminding you that the suffragette movement is essentially a dowdy movement. The suffragettes are not all dowdies; but they are mainly supported by dowdies. Now I am not a dowdy. Oh, no compliments⁠—
Mitchener I did not utter a sound.
Lady Corinthia Smiling. It is easy to read your thoughts. I am one of those women who are accustomed to rule the world through men. Man is ruled by beauty, by charm. The men who are not have no influence. The Salic Law, which forbade women to occupy a throne, is founded on the fact that when a woman is on the throne the country is ruled by men, and therefore ruled badly; whereas when a man is on the throne, the country is ruled by women, and therefore ruled well. The suffragettes would degrade women from being rulers to being voters, mere politicians, the drudges of the caucus and the polling booth. We should lose our influence completely under such a state of affairs. The New Zealand women have the vote. What is the result? No poet ever makes a New Zealand woman his heroine. One might as well be romantic about New Zealand mutton. Look at the suffragettes themselves. The only ones who are popular are the pretty ones, who flirt with mobs as ordinary women flirt with officers.
Mitchener Then I understand you to hold that the country should be governed by the women after all.
Lady Corinthia Not by all the women. By certain women. I had almost said by one woman. By the women who have charm⁠—who have artistic talent⁠—who wield a legitimate, a refining influence over the men. She sits down gracefully, smiling, and arranging her draperies with conscious elegance.
Mitchener In short, madam, you think that if you give the vote to the man, you give the power to the women who can get round the man.
Lady Corinthia That is not a very delicate way of putting it; but I suppose that is how you would express what I mean.
Mitchener Perhaps you’ve never had any experience of garrison life. If you had, you’d have noticed that the sort of woman who is clever at getting round men is sometimes rather a bad lot.
Lady Corinthia What do you mean by a bad lot?
Mitchener I mean a woman who would play the very devil if the other women didn’t keep her in pretty strict order. I don’t approve of democracy, because it’s rot; and I’m against giving the vote to women because I’m not accustomed to it and therefore am able to see with an unprejudiced eye what infernal nonsense it is. But I tell you plainly, Lady Corinthia, that there is one game that I dislike more than either democracy or votes for women; and that is the game of Antony and Cleopatra. If I must be ruled by women, let me have decent women, and not⁠—well, not the other sort.
Lady Corinthia You have a coarse mind, General Mitchener.
Mitchener So has Mrs. Banger. And, by George! I prefer Mrs. Banger to you!
Lady Corinthia Bounding to her feet. You prefer Mrs. Banger to me!!!
Mitchener I do. You said yourself she was splendid.
Lady Corinthia You are no true man. You are one of those unsexed creatures who have no joy in life, no sense of beauty, no high notes.
Mitchener No doubt I am, madam. As a matter of fact, I am not clever at discussing public questions, because, as an English gentleman, I was not brought up to use my brains. But occasionally, after a number of remarks which are perhaps sometimes rather idiotic, I get certain convictions. Thanks to you, I have now got a conviction that this woman question is not a question of lovely and accomplished females, but of dowdies. The average Englishwoman is a dowdy and never has half a chance of becoming anything else. She hasn’t any charm; and she has no high notes except when she’s giving her husband a piece of her mind, or calling down the street for one of the children.
Lady Corinthia How disgusting!
Mitchener Somebody must do the dowdy work! If we had to choose between pitching all the dowdies into the Thames and pitching all the lovely and accomplished women, the lovely ones would have to go.
Lady Corinthia And if you had to do without Wagner’s music or do without your breakfast, you would do without Wagner. Pray does that make eggs and bacon more precious than music, or the butcher and baker better than the poet and philosopher? The scullery may be more necessary to our bare existence than the cathedral. Even humbler apartments might make the same claim. But which is the more essential to the higher life?
Mitchener Your arguments are so devilishly ingenious that I feel convinced you got them out of some confounded book. Mine⁠—such as they are⁠—are my own. I imagine it’s something like this. There is an old saying that if you take care of the pence, the pounds will take care of themselves. Well, perhaps if we take care of the dowdies and the butchers and the bakers, the beauties and the bigwigs will take care of themselves. Rising and facing her determinedly. Anyhow, I don’t want to have things arranged for me by Wagner. I’m not Wagner. How does he know where the shoe pinches me? How do you know where the shoe pinches your washerwoman? you and your high F in alt! How are you to know when you haven’t made her comfortable unless she has a vote? Do you want her to come and break your windows?
Lady Corinthia Am I to understand that General Mitchener is a democrat and a suffragette?
Mitchener Yes: you have converted me⁠—you and Mrs. Banger.
Lady Corinthia Farewell, creature. Balsquith enters hurriedly. Mr. Balsquith: I am going to wait on General Sandstone. He, at least, is an officer and a gentleman. She sails out.
Balsquith Mitchener: the game is up.
Mitchener What do you mean?
Balsquith The strain is too much for the Cabinet. The old Liberal and Unionist Free Traders declare that if they are defeated on their resolution to invite tenders from private contractors for carrying on the Army and Navy, they will go solid for votes for women as the only means of restoring the liberties of the country which we have destroyed by compulsory military service.
Mitchener Infernal impudence!
Balsquith The Labor Party is taking the same line. They say the men got the Factory Acts by hiding behind the women’s petticoats, and that they will get votes for the army in the same way.
Mitchener Balsquith: we must not yield to clamor. I have just told this lady that I am at last convinced⁠—
Balsquith Joyfully.⁠—that the suffragettes must be supported?
Mitchener No: that the anti-suffragettes must be put down at all hazards.
Balsquith Same thing.
Mitchener No. For you now tell me that the Labor Party demands votes for women. That makes it impossible to give them, because it would be yielding to clamor. The one condition on which we can consent to grant anything in this country is that nobody shall presume to ask for it.
Balsquith Earnestly. Mitchener: it’s no use. You can’t have the conveniences of Democracy without its occasional inconveniences.
Mitchener What are its conveniences, I should like to know?
Balsquith Well, when you tell people that they are the real rulers and they can do what they like, nine times out of ten, they say “All right: tell us what to do.” But it happens sometimes that they get an idea of their own; and then of course you’re landed.
Mitchener Sh⁠—
Balsquith Desperately shouting him down. No: it’s no use telling me to shoot them down: I’m not going to do it. After all, I don’t suppose votes for women will make much difference. It hasn’t in the other countries in which it has been tried.
Mitchener I never supposed it would make any difference. What I can’t stand is giving in to that Pankhurst lot. Hang it all, Balsquith, it seems only yesterday that we put them in quod for a month. I said at the time that it ought to have been ten years. If my advice had been taken this wouldn’t have happened. It’s a consolation to me that events are proving how thoroughly right I was.
The Orderly rushes in.
The Orderly Look ’ere, sir: Mrs. Banger locked the door of General Sandstone’s room on the inside; an’ she’s sittin’ on his ’ead ’til he signs a proclamation for women to serve in the army.
Mitchener Put your shoulder to the door and burst it open.
The Orderly It’s only in storybooks that doors burst open as easy as that. Besides, I’m only too thankful to ’av a locked door between me and Mrs. B.; and so is all the rest of us.
Mitchener Cowards. Balsquith: to the rescue! He dashes out.
Balsquith Ambling calmly to the hearth. This is the business of the Sergeant at Arms rather than of the leader of the House. There’s no use in my tackling Mrs. Banger: she would only sit on my head too.
The Orderly You take my tip, Mr. Balsquith. Give the women the vote and give the army civil rights; and ’av done with it.
Mitchener returns and comes between them.
Mitchener Balsquith: prepare to hear the worst.
Balsquith Sandstone is no more?
Mitchener On the contrary, he is particularly lively. He has softened Mrs. Banger by a proposal of marriage in which he appears to be perfectly in earnest. He says he has met his ideal at last, a really soldierly woman. She will sit on his head for the rest of his life; and the British Army is now to all intents and purposes commanded by Mrs. Banger. When I remonstrated with Sandstone she positively shouted “Right about face. March” at me in the most offensive tone. If she hadn’t been a woman I should have punched her head. I precious nearly punched Sandstone’s. The horrors of martial law administered by Mrs. Banger are too terrible to be faced. I demand civil rights for the army.
The Orderly Chuckling. Wot ’oh, General! Wot ’oh!
Mitchener Hold your tongue. He goes to the door and calls. Mrs. Farrell! He returns, and again addresses the Orderly. Civil rights don’t mean the right to be uncivil. Pleased with his own wit. Almost a pun. Ha ha!
Mrs. Farrell What’s the matther now? She comes to the table.
Mitchener To the Orderly. I have private business with Mrs. Farrell. Outside, you infernal blackguard.
The Orderly Arguing, as usual. Well, I didn’t ask to⁠—Mitchener seizes him by the nape; rushes him out; slams the door; and comes solemnly to Mrs. Farrell.
Mitchener Excuse the abruptness of this communication, Mrs. Farrell; but I know only one woman in the country whose practical ability and force of character can maintain her husband in competition with the husband of Mrs. Banger. I have the honor to propose for your hand.
Mrs. Farrell D’ye mean you want to marry me?
Mitchener I do.
Mrs. Farrell No thank you. I’d have to work for you just the same; only I shouldn’t get any wages for it.
Balsquith That will be remedied when women get the vote. I’ve had to promise that.
Mitchener Winningly. Mrs. Farrell: you have been charwoman here now ever since I took up my duties. Have you really never, in your more romantic moments, cast a favorable eye on my person?
Mrs. Farrell I’ve been too busy casting an unfavorable eye on your cloze an’ on the litther you make with your papers.
Mitchener Wounded. Am I to understand that you refuse me?
Mrs. Farrell Just wait a bit. She takes Mitchener’s chair and rings up the telephone. Double three oh seven Elephant.
Mitchener I trust you’re not ringing for the police, Mrs. Farrell. I assure you I’m perfectly sane.
Mrs. Farrell Into the telephone. Is that you, Eliza? She listens for the answer. Not out of bed yet! Go and pull her out by the heels, the lazy sthreel; an’ tell her her mother wants to speak to her very particularly about General Mitchener. To Mitchener. Don’t you be afeard: I know you’re sane enough when you’re not talkin’ about the Germans. Into the telephone. Is that you, Eliza? She listens for the answer. D’ye remember me givin’ you a clout on the side of the head for tellin’ me that if I only knew how to play me cards I could marry any General on the staff instead o’ disgracin’ you be bein’ a charwoman? She listens for the answer. Well, I can have General Mitchener without playin’ any cards at all. What d’ye think I ought to say? She listens. Well, I’m no chicken meself. To Mitchener. How old are you?
Mitchener With an effort. Fifty-two.
Mrs. Farrell Into the telephone. He says he’s fifty-two. She listens; then, to Mitchener. She says you’re down in Who’s Who as sixty-one.
Mitchener Damn Who’s Who!
Mrs. Farrell Into the telephone. Anyhow I wouldn’t let that stand in the way. She listens. If I really what? She listens. I can’t hear you. If I really what? She listens. Who druv him? I never said a word to⁠—Eh? She listens. Oh, love him. Arra, don’t be a fool, child. To Mitchener. She wants to know do I really love you. Into the telephone. It’s likely indeed I’d frighten the man off with any such nonsense, at my age. What? She listens. Well, that’s just what I was thinkin’.
Mitchener May I ask what you were thinking, Mrs. Farrell? This suspense is awful.
Mrs. Farrell I was thinkin’ that p’raps the Duchess might like her daughther-in-law’s mother to be a General’s lady betther than to be a charwoman. Into the telephone. Wait’le you’re married yourself, me fine lady: you’ll find out that every woman’s a charwoman from the day she’s married. She listens. Then you think I might take him? She listens. G’lang, you young scald: if I had you here I’d teach you manners. She listens. That’s enough now. Back wid you to bed; and be thankful I’m not there to put me slipper across you. She rings off. The impudence! To Mitchener. “Bless you, me childher, may you be happy,” she says. To Balsquith, going to his side of the room. “Give dear old Mitch me love,” she says.
The Orderly opens the door, ushering in Lady Corinthia.
The Orderly Lady Corinthia Fanshawe to speak to you, sir.
Lady Corinthia General Mitchener: your designs on Mrs. Banger are defeated. She is engaged to General Sandstone. Do you still prefer her to me?
Mrs. Farrell He’s out o’ the hunt. He’s engaged to me.
The Orderly, overcome by this news, reels from the door to the standing desk and clutches the stool to save himself from collapsing.
Mitchener And extremely proud of it, Lady Corinthia.
Lady Corinthia Contemptuously. She suits you exactly. Coming to Balsquith. Mr. Balsquith: you, at least, are not a Philistine.
Balsquith No, Lady Corinthia; but I’m a confirmed bachelor. I don’t want a wife; but I want an Egeria.
Mrs. Farrell More shame for you!
Lady Corinthia Silence, woman. The position and functions of a wife may suit your gross nature. An Egeria is exactly what I desire to be. To Balsquith. Can you play accompaniments?
Balsquith Melodies only, I regret to say. With one finger. But my brother, who is a very obliging fellow, and not unlike me personally, is acquainted with three chords, with which he manages to accompany most of the comic songs of the day.
Lady Corinthia I do not sing comic songs. Neither will you when I am your Egeria. You must come to my musical at-home this afternoon. I will allow you to sit at my feet.
Balsquith Doing so. That is my ideal of romantic happiness. It commits me exactly as far as I desire to venture. Thank you.
The Orderly Wot price me, General? Won’t you celebrate your engagement by doin’ something for me? Mayn’t I be promoted to be a sergeant.
Mitchener You’re too utterly incompetent to discharge the duties of a sergeant. You are only fit to be a lieutenant. I shall recommend you for a commission.
The Orderly Hooray! The Parkinsons o’ Stepney’ll be proud to have me call on ’em now. I’ll go and tell the sergeant what I think of him. Hooray! He rushes out.
Mrs. Farrell Going to the door and calling after him. You might have the manners to shut the door afther you. She shuts it and comes between Mitchener and Lady Corinthia.
Mitchener Poor wretch! the day after civil rights are conceded to the army he and Chubbs-Jenkinson will be found incapable of maintaining discipline. They will be sacked and replaced by really capable men. Mrs. Farrell: as we are engaged, and I am anxious to do the correct thing in every way, I am quite willing to kiss you if you wish it.
Mrs. Farrell You’d only feel like a fool; and so would I.
Mitchener You are really the most sensible woman. I’ve made an extremely wise choice. He kisses her hand.
Lady Corinthia To Balsquith. You may kiss my hand, if you wish.
Balsquith Cautiously. I think we had better not commit ourselves too far. Let us change a subject which threatens to become embarrassing. To Mitchener. The moral of the occasion for you, Mitchener, appears to be that you’ve got to give up treating soldiers as if they were schoolboys.
Mitchener The moral for you, Balsquith, is that you’ve got to give up treating women as if they were angels. Ha ha!
Mrs. Farrell It’s a mercy you’ve found one another out at last. That’s enough now.

The Dark Lady of the Sonnets

Preface to the Dark Lady of the Sonnets

How the Play Came to Be Written

I had better explain why, in this little piece d’occasion, written for a performance in aid of the funds of the project for establishing a National Theatre as a memorial to Shakespeare, I have identified the Dark Lady with Mistress Mary Fitton. First, let me say that I do not contend that the Dark Lady was Mary Fitton, because when the case in Mary’s favor (or against her, if you please to consider that the Dark Lady was no better than she ought to have been) was complete, a portrait of Mary came to light and turned out to be that of a fair lady, not of a dark one. That settles the question, if the portrait is authentic, which I see no reason to doubt, and the lady’s hair undyed, which is perhaps less certain. Shakespeare rubbed in the lady’s complexion in his sonnets mercilessly; for in his day black hair was as unpopular as red hair was in the early days of Queen Victoria. Any tinge lighter than raven black must be held fatal to the strongest claim to be the Dark Lady. And so, unless it can be shown that Shakespeare’s sonnets exasperated Mary Fitton into dyeing her hair and getting painted in false colors, I must give up all pretence that my play is historical. The later suggestion of Mr. Acheson that the Dark Lady, far from being a maid of honor, kept a tavern in Oxford and was the mother of Davenant the poet, is the one I should have adopted had I wished to be up to date. Why, then, did I introduce the Dark Lady as Mistress Fitton?

Well, I had two reasons. The play was not to have been written by me at all, but by Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton; and it was she who suggested a scene of jealousy between Queen Elizabeth and the Dark Lady at the expense of the unfortunate Bard. Now this, if the Dark Lady was a maid of honor, was quite easy. If she were a tavern landlady, it would have strained all probability. So I stuck to Mary Fitton. But I had another and more personal reason. I was, in a manner, present at the birth of the Fitton theory. Its parent and I had become acquainted; and he used to consult me on obscure passages in the sonnets, on which, as far as I can remember, I never succeeded in throwing the faintest light, at a time when nobody else thought my opinion, on that or any other subject, of the slightest importance. I thought it would be friendly to immortalize him, as the silly literary saying is, much as Shakespeare immortalized Mr. W. H., as he said he would, simply by writing about him.

Let me tell the story formally.

Thomas Tyler

Throughout the eighties at least, and probably for some years before, the British Museum reading room was used daily by a gentleman of such astonishing and crushing ugliness that no one who had once seen him could ever thereafter forget him. He was of fair complexion, rather golden red than sandy; aged between forty-five and sixty; and dressed in frock coat and tall hat of presentable but never new appearance. His figure was rectangular, waistless, neckless, ankleless, of middle height, looking shortish because, though he was not particularly stout, there was nothing slender about him. His ugliness was not unamiable; it was accidental, external, excrescential. Attached to his face from the left ear to the point of his chin was a monstrous goitre, which hung down to his collar bone, and was very inadequately balanced by a smaller one on his right eyelid. Nature’s malice was so overdone in his case that it somehow failed to produce the effect of repulsion it seemed to have aimed at. When you first met Thomas Tyler you could think of nothing else but whether surgery could really do nothing for him. But after a very brief acquaintance you never thought of his disfigurements at all, and talked to him as you might to Romeo or Lovelace; only, so many people, especially women, would not risk the preliminary ordeal, that he remained a man apart and a bachelor all his days. I am not to be frightened or prejudiced by a tumor; and I struck up a cordial acquaintance with him, in the course of which he kept me pretty closely on the track of his work at the Museum, in which I was then, like himself, a daily reader.

He was by profession a man of letters of an uncommercial kind. He was a specialist in pessimism; had made a translation of Ecclesiastes of which eight copies a year were sold; and followed up the pessimism of Shakespeare and Swift with keen interest. He delighted in a hideous conception which he called the theory of the cycles, according to which the history of mankind and the universe keeps eternally repeating itself without the slightest variation throughout all eternity; so that he had lived and died and had his goitre before and would live and die and have it again and again and again. He liked to believe that nothing that happened to him was completely novel: he was persuaded that he often had some recollection of its previous occurrence in the last cycle. He hunted out allusions to this favorite theory in his three favorite pessimists. He tried his hand occasionally at deciphering ancient inscriptions, reading them as people seem to read the stars, by discovering bears and bulls and swords and goats where, as it seems to me, no sane human being can see anything but stars higgledy-piggledy. Next to the translation of Ecclesiastes, his magnum opus was his work on Shakespeare’s Sonnets, in which he accepted a previous identification of Mr. W. H., the “onlie begetter” of the sonnets, with the Earl of Pembroke (William Herbert), and promulgated his own identification of Mistress Mary Fitton with the Dark Lady. Whether he was right or wrong about the Dark Lady did not matter urgently to me: she might have been Maria Tompkins for all I cared. But Tyler would have it that she was Mary Fitton; and he tracked Mary down from the first of her marriages in her teens to her tomb in Cheshire, whither he made a pilgrimage and whence returned in triumph with a picture of her statue, and the news that he was convinced she was a dark lady by traces of paint still discernible.

In due course he published his edition of the Sonnets, with the evidence he had collected. He lent me a copy of the book, which I never returned. But I reviewed it in the Pall Mall Gazette on the 7th of January 1886, and thereby let loose the Fitton theory in a wider circle of readers than the book could reach. Then Tyler died, sinking unnoted like a stone in the sea. I observed that Mr. Acheson, Mrs. Davenant’s champion, calls him Reverend. It may very well be that he got his knowledge of Hebrew in reading for the Church; and there was always something of the clergyman or the schoolmaster in his dress and air. Possibly he may actually have been ordained. But he never told me that or anything else about his affairs; and his black pessimism would have shot him violently out of any church at present established in the West. We never talked about affairs: we talked about Shakespeare, and the Dark Lady, and Swift, and Koheleth, and the cycles, and the mysterious moments when a feeling came over us that this had happened to us before, and about the forgeries of the Pentateuch which were offered for sale to the British Museum, and about literature and things of the spirit generally. He always came to my desk at the Museum and spoke to me about something or other, no doubt finding that people who were keen on this sort of conversation were rather scarce. He remains a vivid spot of memory in the void of my forgetfulness, a quite considerable and dignified soul in a grotesquely disfigured body.

Frank Harris

To the review in the Pall Mall Gazette I attribute, rightly or wrongly, the introduction of Mary Fitton to Mr. Frank Harris. My reason for this is that Mr. Harris wrote a play about Shakespeare and Mary Fitton; and when I, as a pious duty to Tyler’s ghost, reminded the world that it was to Tyler we owed the Fitton theory, Frank Harris, who clearly had not a notion of what had first put Mary into his head, believed, I think, that I had invented Tyler expressly for his discomfiture; for the stress I laid on Tyler’s claims must have seemed unaccountable and perhaps malicious on the assumption that he was to me a mere name among the thousands of names in the British Museum catalogue. Therefore I make it clear that I had and have personal reasons for remembering Tyler, and for regarding myself as in some sort charged with the duty of reminding the world of his work. I am sorry for his sake that Mary’s portrait is fair, and that Mr. W. H. has veered round again from Pembroke to Southampton; but even so his work was not wasted: it is by exhausting all the hypotheses that we reach the verifiable one; and after all, the wrong road always leads somewhere.

Frank Harris’s play was written long before mine. I read it in manuscript before the Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre was mooted; and if there is anything except the Fitton theory (which is Tyler’s property) in my play which is also in Mr. Harris’s it was I who annexed it from him and not he from me. It does not matter anyhow, because this play of mine is a brief trifle, and full of manifest impossibilities at that; whilst Mr. Harris’s play is serious both in size, intention, and quality. But there could not in the nature of things be much resemblance, because Frank conceives Shakespeare to have been a brokenhearted, melancholy, enormously sentimental person, whereas I am convinced that he was very like myself: in fact, if I had been born in 1556 instead of in 1856, I should have taken to blank verse and given Shakespeare a harder run for his money than all the other Elizabethans put together. Yet the success of Frank Harris’s book on Shakespeare gave me great delight.

To those who know the literary world of London there was a sharp stroke of ironic comedy in the irresistible verdict in its favor. In critical literature there is one prize that is always open to competition, one blue ribbon that always carries the highest critical rank with it. To win, you must write the best book of your generation on Shakespeare. It is felt on all sides that to do this a certain fastidious refinement, a delicacy of taste, a correctness of manner and tone, and high academic distinction in addition to the indispensable scholarship and literary reputation, are needed; and men who pretend to these qualifications are constantly looked to with a gentle expectation that presently they will achieve the great feat. Now if there is a man on earth who is the utter contrary of everything that this description implies; whose very existence is an insult to the ideal it realizes; whose eye disparages, whose resonant voice denounces, whose cold shoulder jostles every decency, every delicacy, every amenity, every dignity, every sweet usage of that quiet life of mutual admiration in which perfect Shakespearian appreciation is expected to arise, that man is Frank Harris. Here is one who is extraordinarily qualified, by a range of sympathy and understanding that extends from the ribaldry of a buccaneer to the shyest tendernesses of the most sensitive poetry, to be all things to all men, yet whose proud humor it is to be to every man, provided the man is eminent and pretentious, the champion of his enemies. To the Archbishop he is an atheist, to the atheist a Catholic mystic, to the Bismarckian Imperialist an Anacharsis Klootz, to Anacharsis Klootz a Washington, to Mrs. Proudie a Don Juan, to Aspasia a John Knox: in short, to everyone his complement rather than his counterpart, his antagonist rather than his fellow-creature. Always provided, however, that the persons thus confronted are respectable persons. Sophie Perovskaia, who perished on the scaffold for blowing Alexander II to fragments, may perhaps have echoed Hamlet’s

Oh God, Horatio, what a wounded name⁠—
Things standing thus unknown⁠—I leave behind!

but Frank Harris, in his Sonia, has rescued her from that injustice, and enshrined her among the saints. He has lifted the Chicago anarchists out of their infamy, and shown that, compared with the Capitalism that killed them, they were heroes and martyrs. He has done this with the most unusual power of conviction. The story, as he tells it, inevitably and irresistibly displaces all the vulgar, mean, purblind, spiteful versions. There is a precise realism and an unsmiling, measured, determined sincerity which gives a strange dignity to the work of one whose fixed practice and ungovernable impulse it is to kick conventional dignity whenever he sees it.

Harris “durch Mitleid wissend

Frank Harris is everything except a humorist, not, apparently, from stupidity, but because scorn overcomes humor in him. Nobody ever dreamt of reproaching Milton’s Lucifer for not seeing the comic side of his fall; and nobody who has read Mr. Harris’s stories desires to have them lightened by chapters from the hand of Artemus Ward. Yet he knows the taste and the value of humor. He was one of the few men of letters who really appreciated Oscar Wilde, though he did not rally fiercely to Wilde’s side until the world deserted Oscar in his ruin. I myself was present at a curious meeting between the two, when Harris, on the eve of the Queensberry trial, prophesied to Wilde with miraculous precision exactly what immediately afterwards happened to him, and warned him to leave the country. It was the first time within my knowledge that such a forecast proved true. Wilde, though under no illusion as to the folly of the quite unselfish suit-at-law he had been persuaded to begin, nevertheless so miscalculated the force of the social vengeance he was unloosing on himself that he fancied it could be stayed by putting up the editor of The Saturday Review (as Mr. Harris then was) to declare that he considered Dorian Grey a highly moral book, which it certainly is. When Harris foretold him the truth, Wilde denounced him as a fainthearted friend who was failing him in his hour of need, and left the room in anger. Harris’s idiosyncratic power of pity saved him from feeling or showing the smallest resentment; and events presently proved to Wilde how insanely he had been advised in taking the action, and how accurately Harris had gauged the situation.

The same capacity for pity governs Harris’s study of Shakespeare, whom, as I have said, he pities too much; but that he is not insensible to humor is shown not only by his appreciation of Wilde, but by the fact that the group of contributors who made his editorship of The Saturday Review so remarkable, and of whom I speak none the less highly because I happened to be one of them myself, were all, in their various ways, humorists.

“Sidney’s Sister: Pembroke’s Mother”

And now to return to Shakespeare. Though Mr. Harris followed Tyler in identifying Mary Fitton as the Dark Lady, and the Earl of Pembroke as the addressee of the other sonnets and the man who made love successfully to Shakespeare’s mistress, he very characteristically refuses to follow Tyler on one point, though for the life of me I cannot remember whether it was one of the surmises which Tyler published, or only one which he submitted to me to see what I would say about it, just as he used to submit difficult lines from the sonnets.

This surmise was that “Sidney’s sister: Pembroke’s mother” set Shakespeare on to persuade Pembroke to marry, and that this was the explanation of those earlier sonnets which so persistently and unnaturally urged matrimony on Mr. W. H. I take this to be one of the brightest of Tyler’s ideas, because the persuasions in the sonnets are unaccountable and out of character unless they were offered to please somebody whom Shakespeare desired to please, and who took a motherly interest in Pembroke. There is a further temptation in the theory for me. The most charming of all Shakespeare’s old women, indeed the most charming of all his women, young or old, is the Countess of Rousillon in All’s Well That Ends Well. It has a certain individuality among them which suggests a portrait. Mr. Harris will have it that all Shakespeare’s nice old women are drawn from his beloved mother; but I see no evidence whatever that Shakespeare’s mother was a particularly nice woman or that he was particularly fond of her. That she was a simple incarnation of extravagant maternal pride like the mother of Coriolanus in Plutarch, as Mr. Harris asserts, I cannot believe: she is quite as likely to have borne her son a grudge for becoming “one of these harlotry players” and disgracing the Ardens. Anyhow, as a conjectural model for the Countess of Rousillon, I prefer that one of whom Jonson wrote

Sidney’s sister: Pembroke’s mother:
Death: ere thou has slain another,
Learnd and fair and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee.

But Frank will not have her at any price, because his ideal Shakespeare is rather like a sailor in a melodrama; and a sailor in a melodrama must adore his mother. I do not at all belittle such sailors. They are the emblems of human generosity; but Shakespeare was not an emblem: he was a man and the author of Hamlet, who had no illusions about his mother. In weak moments one almost wishes he had.

Shakespeare’s Social Standing

On the vexed question of Shakespeare’s social standing Mr. Harris says that Shakespeare “had not had the advantage of a middle-class training.” I suggest that Shakespeare missed this questionable advantage, not because he was socially too low to have attained to it, but because he conceived himself as belonging to the upper class from which our public school boys are now drawn. Let Mr. Harris survey for a moment the field of contemporary journalism. He will see there some men who have the very characteristics from which he infers that Shakespeare was at a social disadvantage through his lack of middle-class training. They are rowdy, ill-mannered, abusive, mischievous, fond of quoting obscene schoolboy anecdotes, adepts in that sort of blackmail which consists in mercilessly libelling and insulting every writer whose opinions are sufficiently heterodox to make it almost impossible for him to risk perhaps five years of a slender income by an appeal to a prejudiced orthodox jury; and they see nothing in all this cruel blackguardism but an uproariously jolly rag, although they are by no means without genuine literary ability, a love of letters, and even some artistic conscience. But he will find not one of the models of this type (I say nothing of mere imitators of it) below the rank that looks at the middle class, not humbly and enviously from below, but insolently from above. Mr. Harris himself notes Shakespeare’s contempt for the tradesman and mechanic, and his incorrigible addiction to smutty jokes. He does us the public service of sweeping away the familiar plea of the Bardolatrous ignoramus, that Shakespeare’s coarseness was part of the manners of his time, putting his pen with precision on the one name, Spenser, that is necessary to expose such a libel on Elizabethan decency. There was nothing whatever to prevent Shakespeare from being as decent as More was before him, or Bunyan after him, and as self-respecting as Raleigh or Sidney, except the tradition of his class, in which education or statesmanship may no doubt be acquired by those who have a turn for them, but in which insolence, derision, profligacy, obscene jesting, debt contracting, and rowdy mischievousness, give continual scandal to the pious, serious, industrious, solvent bourgeois. No other class is infatuated enough to believe that gentlemen are born and not made by a very elaborate process of culture. Even kings are taught and coached and drilled from their earliest boyhood to play their part. But the man of family (I am convinced that Shakespeare took that view of himself) will plunge into society without a lesson in table manners, into politics without a lesson in history, into the city without a lesson in business, and into the army without a lesson in honor.

It has been said, with the object of proving Shakespeare a laborer, that he could hardly write his name. Why? Because he “had not the advantage of a middle-class training.” Shakespeare himself tells us, through Hamlet, that gentlemen purposely wrote badly lest they should be mistaken for scriveners; but most of them, then as now, wrote badly because they could not write any better. In short, the whole range of Shakespeare’s foibles: the snobbishness, the naughtiness, the contempt for tradesmen and mechanics, the assumption that witty conversation can only mean smutty conversation, the flunkeyism towards social superiors and insolence towards social inferiors, the easy ways with servants which is seen not only between The Two Gentlemen of Verona and their valets, but in the affection and respect inspired by a great servant like Adam: all these are the characteristics of Eton and Harrow, not of the public elementary or private adventure school. They prove, as everything we know about Shakespeare suggests, that he thought of the Shakespeares and Ardens as families of consequence, and regarded himself as a gentleman under a cloud through his father’s ill luck in business, and never for a moment as a man of the people. This is at once the explanation of and excuse for his snobbery. He was not a parvenu trying to cover his humble origin with a purchased coat of arms: he was a gentleman resuming what he conceived to be his natural position as soon as he gained the means to keep it up.

This Side Idolatry

There is another matter which I think Mr. Harris should ponder. He says that Shakespeare was but “little esteemed by his own generation.” He even describes Jonson’s description of his “little Latin and less Greek” as a sneer, whereas it occurs in an unmistakably sincere eulogy of Shakespeare, written after his death, and is clearly meant to heighten the impression of Shakespeare’s prodigious natural endowments by pointing out that they were not due to scholastic acquirements. Now there is a sense in which it is true enough that Shakespeare was too little esteemed by his own generation, or, for the matter of that, by any subsequent generation. The bargees on the Regent’s Canal do not chant Shakespeare’s verses as the gondoliers in Venice are said to chant the verses of Tasso (a practice which was suspended for some reason during my stay in Venice: at least no gondolier ever did it in my hearing). Shakespeare is no more a popular author than Rodin is a popular sculptor or Richard Strauss a popular composer. But Shakespeare was certainly not such a fool as to expect the Toms, Dicks, and Harrys of his time to be any more interested in dramatic poetry than Newton, later on, expected them to be interested in fluxions. And when we come to the question whether Shakespeare missed that assurance which all great men have had from the more capable and susceptible members of their generation that they were great men, Ben Jonson’s evidence disposes of so improbable a notion at once and forever. “I loved the man,” says Ben, “this side idolatry, as well as any.” Now why in the name of common sense should he have made that qualification unless there had been, not only idolatry, but idolatry fulsome enough to irritate Jonson into an express disavowal of it? Jonson, the bricklayer, must have felt sore sometimes when Shakespeare spoke and wrote of bricklayers as his inferiors. He must have felt it a little hard that being a better scholar, and perhaps a braver and tougher man physically than Shakespeare, he was not so successful or so well liked. But in spite of this he praised Shakespeare to the utmost stretch of his powers of eulogy: in fact, notwithstanding his disclaimer, he did not stop “this side idolatry.” If, therefore, even Jonson felt himself forced to clear himself of extravagance and absurdity in his appreciation of Shakespeare, there must have been many people about who idolized Shakespeare as American ladies idolize Paderewski, and who carried Bardolatry, even in the Bard’s own time, to an extent that threatened to make his reasonable admirers ridiculous.

Shakespeare’s Pessimism

I submit to Mr. Harris that by ruling out this idolatry, and its possible effect in making Shakespeare think that his public would stand anything from him, he has ruled out a far more plausible explanation of the faults of such a play as Timon of Athens than his theory that Shakespeare’s passion for the Dark Lady “cankered and took on proud flesh in him, and tortured him to nervous breakdown and madness.” In Timon the intellectual bankruptcy is obvious enough: Shakespeare tried once too often to make a play out of the cheap pessimism which is thrown into despair by a comparison of actual human nature with theoretical morality, actual law and administration with abstract justice, and so forth. But Shakespeare’s perception of the fact that all men, judged by the moral standard which they apply to others and by which they justify their punishment of others, are fools and scoundrels, does not date from the Dark Lady complication: he seems to have been born with it. If in The Comedy of Errors and A Midsummer Night’s Dream the persons of the drama are not quite so ready for treachery and murder as Laertes and even Hamlet himself (not to mention the procession of ruffians who pass through the latest plays) it is certainly not because they have any more regard for law or religion. There is only one place in Shakespeare’s plays where the sense of shame is used as a human attribute; and that is where Hamlet is ashamed, not of anything he himself has done, but of his mother’s relations with his uncle. This scene is an unnatural one: the son’s reproaches to his mother, even the fact of his being able to discuss the subject with her, is more repulsive than her relations with her deceased husband’s brother.

Here, too, Shakespeare betrays for once his religious sense by making Hamlet, in his agony of shame, declare that his mother’s conduct makes “sweet religion a rhapsody of words.” But for that passage we might almost suppose that the feeling of Sunday morning in the country which Orlando describes so perfectly in As You Like It was the beginning and end of Shakespeare’s notion of religion. I say almost, because Isabella in Measure for Measure has religious charm, in spite of the conventional theatrical assumption that female religion means an inhumanly ferocious chastity. But for the most part Shakespeare differentiates his heroes from his villains much more by what they do than by what they are. Don John in Much Ado is a true villain: a man with a malicious will; but he is too dull a duffer to be of any use in a leading part; and when we come to the great villains like Macbeth, we find, as Mr. Harris points out, that they are precisely identical with the heroes: Macbeth is only Hamlet incongruously committing murders and engaging in hand-to-hand combats. And Hamlet, who does not dream of apologizing for the three murders he commits, is always apologizing because he has not yet committed a fourth, and finds, to his great bewilderment, that he does not want to commit it. “It cannot be,” he says, “but I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall to make oppression bitter; else, ere this, I should have fatted all the region kites with this slave’s offal.” Really one is tempted to suspect that when Shylock asks “Hates any man the thing he would not kill?” he is expressing the natural and proper sentiments of the human race as Shakespeare understood them, and not the vindictiveness of a stage Jew.

Gaiety of Genius

In view of these facts, it is dangerous to cite Shakespeare’s pessimism as evidence of the despair of a heart broken by the Dark Lady. There is an irrepressible gaiety of genius which enables it to bear the whole weight of the world’s misery without blenching. There is a laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement. In the lines which Mr. Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III, immediately after pitying himself because

There is no creature loves me
And if I die no soul will pity me,

adds, with a grin,

Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity for myself?

Let me again remind Mr. Harris of Oscar Wilde. We all dreaded to read De Profundis: our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart. But we were throwing away our pity. De Profundis was de profundis indeed: Wilde was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but nonetheless it was de profundis in excelsis. There was more laughter between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no genius. Wilde, like Richard and Shakespeare, found in himself no pity for himself. There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man announces their tragedy. I cannot for the life of me see the broken heart in Shakespeare’s latest works. “Hark, hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings” is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten’s comment that if Imogen does not appreciate it, “it is a vice in her ears which horse hairs, and cats’ guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend,” the sally of a saddened one. Is it not clear that to the last there was in Shakespeare an incorrigible divine levity, an inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow? Think of the poor Dark Lady having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun from everything. Mr. Harris writes as if Shakespeare did all the suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty. But why does he not put himself in the Dark Lady’s place for a moment as he has put himself so successfully in Shakespeare’s? Imagine her reading the hundred and thirtieth sonnet!

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head;
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak; yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound.
I grant I never saw a goddess go:
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was never for a moment safe with Shakespeare. Bear in mind that she was not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes; that Shakespeare’s revulsions, as the sonnet immediately preceding shows, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got sick when they saw the queen’s conduct; and then ask Mr. Harris whether any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the “sugred” compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain, that seemed to Shakespeare as natural and amusing a reaction as the burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his poems by Cloten and Touchstone.

Jupiter and Semele

This does not mean that Shakespeare was cruel: evidently he was not; but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a mortal. The one thing Shakespeare’s passion for the Dark Lady was not, was what Mr. Harris in one passage calls it: idolatrous. If it had been, she might have been able to stand it. The man who “dotes yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves,” is tolerable even by a spoilt and tyrannical mistress; but what woman could possibly endure a man who dotes without doubting; who knows, and who is hugely amused at the absurdity of his infatuation for a woman of whose mortal imperfections not one escapes him: a man always exchanging grins with Yorick’s skull, and inviting “my lady” to laugh at the sepulchral humor of the fact that though she paint an inch thick (which the Dark Lady may have done), to Yorick’s favor she must come at last. To the Dark Lady he must sometimes have seemed cruel beyond description: an intellectual Caliban. True, a Caliban who could say

Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises
Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had waked after long sleep
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds, methought, would open and show riches
Ready to drop on me: that when I wak’d
I cried to dream again.

which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it, whereas there can be no doubt at all that of “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,” etc., not a word was lost on her.

And is it to be supposed that Shakespeare was too stupid or too modest not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele? Shakespeare was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid cough of the minor poet was never heard from him.

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme

is only one out of a dozen passages in which he (possibly with a keen sense of the fun of scandalizing the modest coughers) proclaimed his place and his power in “the wide world dreaming of things to come.” The Dark Lady most likely thought this side of him insufferably conceited; for there is no reason to suppose that she liked his plays any better than Minna Wagner liked Richard’s music dramas: as likely as not, she thought The Spanish Tragedy worth six Hamlets. He was not stupid either: if his class limitations and a profession that cut him off from actual participation in great affairs of State had not confined his opportunities of intellectual and political training to private conversation and to the Mermaid Tavern, he would probably have become one of the ablest men of his time instead of being merely its ablest playwright. One might surmise that Shakespeare found out that the Dark Lady’s brains could no more keep pace with his than Anne Hathaway’s, if there were any evidence that their friendship ceased when he stopped writing sonnets to her. As a matter of fact the consolidation of a passion into an enduring intimacy generally puts an end to sonnets.

That the Dark Lady broke Shakespeare’s heart, as Mr. Harris will have it she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis. “Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love,” says Rosalind. Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespeare put all his own impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims

And this word “love,” which greybeards call divine,
Be resident in men like one another
And not in me: I am myself alone.

Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia: her death moves him to fierce disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal of a fencing match to finish the day with. As against this view Mr. Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespeare did betray himself again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing; and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another. Shakespeare never “saw himself,” as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio. In Mr. Harris’s own play Shakespeare is presented with the most pathetic tenderness. He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not Shakespeare because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the Shakespearian gaiety. Take these away and Shakespeare is no longer Shakespeare: all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle, is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all things: a victim. Now who can think of Shakespeare as a man with a grievance? Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all Shakespeare’s loves: his love of music (which Mr. Harris has been the first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of mockery. “Spit in the hole, man; and tune again.” “Divine air! Now is his soul ravished. Is it not strange that sheep’s guts should hale the souls out of men’s bodies?” “An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him.” There is just as much Shakespeare here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south and the bank of violets.

I lay stress on this irony of Shakespeare’s, this impish rejoicing in pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men, not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in Mr. Harris’s otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book. Fortunately, it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment) it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr. Harris left himself out of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and with an unconquerable style which is the man.

The Idol of the Bardolaters

There is even an advantage in having a book on Shakespeare with the Shakespearian irony left out of account. I do not say that the missing chapter should not be added in the next edition: the hiatus is too great: it leaves the reader too uneasy before this touching picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant. But it is nonetheless probable that in no other way could Mr. Harris have got at his man as he has. For, after all, what is the secret of the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible or even interesting Shakespeare, and the easy triumph of Mr. Harris in giving us both? Simply that Mr. Harris has assumed that he was dealing with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration of fact, tradition, or interpretation, that pointed to any human imperfection in their hero. They thus leave themselves with so little material that they are forced to begin by saying that we know very little about Shakespeare. As a matter of fact, with the plays and sonnets in our hands, we know much more about Shakespeare than we know about Dickens or Thackeray: the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it because it proves that Shakespeare was not only very unlike the conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the same reckoning, even a respectable man. The academic view starts with a Shakespeare who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about “lousy Lucy” cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by the actors. This ideal Shakespeare was too well behaved to get drunk; therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio treated as a thing observed, not experienced: nay, the disgust of Hamlet at the drinking customs of Denmark is taken to establish Shakespeare as the superior of Alexander in self-control, and the greatest of teetotallers.

Now this system of inventing your great man to start with, and then rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all (with your wastepaper basket full of them), ends in leaving Shakespeare with a much worse character than he deserves. For though it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespeare. Mr. Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in convincing us that Shakespeare was a man of normal constitution sexually, and was not the victim of that most cruel and pitiable of all the freaks of nature: the freak which transposes the normal aim of the affections. Silence on this point means condemnation; and the condemnation has been general throughout the present generation, though it only needed Mr. Harris’s fearless handling of the matter to sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern fashion. There is always some stock accusation brought against eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is retrospective. The cases of Shakespeare and Michelangelo are cited as proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers. All of which is gross nonsense. Unfortunately, in Shakespeare’s case, prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered, does prevent the refutation from being shouted. Mr. Harris, the deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced. He dismisses with proper contempt the stupidity which places an outrageous construction on Shakespeare’s apologies in the sonnets for neglecting that “perfect ceremony” of love which consists in returning calls and making protestations and giving presents and paying the trumpery attentions which men of genius always refuse to bother about, and to which touchy people who have no genius attach so much importance. No leader who had not been tampered with by the psychopathic monomaniacs could ever put any construction but the obvious and innocent one on these passages. But the general vocabulary of the sonnets to Pembroke (or whoever “Mr. W. H.” really was) is so overcharged according to modern ideas that a reply on the general case is necessary.

Shakespeare’s alleged Sycophancy and Perversion

That reply, which Mr. Harris does not hesitate to give, is twofold: first, that Shakespeare was, in his attitude towards earls, a sycophant; and, second, that the normality of Shakespeare’s sexual constitution is only too well attested by the excessive susceptibility to the normal impulse shown in the whole mass of his writings. This latter is the really conclusive reply. In the case of Michelangelo, for instance, one must admit that if his works are set beside those of Titian or Paul Veronese, it is impossible not to be struck by the absence in the Florentine of that susceptibility to feminine charm which pervades the pictures of the Venetians. But, as Mr. Harris points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespeare. The language of the sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by Shakespeare’s verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespeare always seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be outraged. But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the language of passion: their cruelty shows it. There is no evidence that Shakespeare was capable of being unkind in cold blood. But in his revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator.

In seizing on these two points Mr. Harris has made so sure a stroke, and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespeare’s social position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual social position as a penniless tradesman’s son taking to the theatre for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of good family. I am prepared to contend that though Shakespeare was undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr. W. H. even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not sycophantic if Mr. W. H. was really attractive and promising, and Shakespeare deeply attached to him. A sycophant does not tell his patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant. A sycophant, when his patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly what he thinks of him. Above all, a sycophant does not write to his patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of sincerity is all over the sonnets. Shakespeare, we are told, was “a very civil gentleman.” This must mean that his desire to please people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the fact that Shakespeare conceived and expressed all his emotions with a vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of Cassio that

Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge
Had stomach for them all,

we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the earlier and more coldblooded sonnets.

Shakespeare and Democracy

Now take the general case pled against Shakespeare as an enemy of democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed by Mr. Harris. Will it really stand fire? Mr. Harris emphasizes the passages in which Shakespeare spoke of mechanics and even of small master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least “good words” from him

He that will give good words to thee will flatter
Beneath abhorring.

But let us be honest. As political sentiments these lines are an abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars. Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody, including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken, foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley admitted, two hundred years after Shakespeare wrote Coriolanus, that universal suffrage was out of the question. Surely the real test, not of Democracy, which was not a live political issue in Shakespeare’s time, but of impartiality in judging classes, which is what one demands from a great human poet, is not that he should flatter the poor and denounce the rich, but that he should weigh them both in the same balance. Now whoever will read Lear and Measure for Measure will find stamped on his mind such an appalled sense of the danger of dressing man in a little brief authority, such a merciless stripping of the purple from the “poor, bare, forked animal” that calls itself a king and fancies itself a god, that one wonders what was the real nature of the mysterious restraint that kept “Eliza and our James” from teaching Shakespeare to be civil to crowned heads, just as one wonders why Tolstoy was allowed to go free when so many less terrible levellers went to the galleys or Siberia. From the mature Shakespeare we get no such scenes of village snobbery as that between the stage country gentleman Alexander Iden and the stage Radical Jack Cade. We get the shepherd in As You Like It, and many honest, brave, human, and loyal servants, beside the inevitable comic ones. Even in the Jingo play, Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare went to work with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespeare was one of them that “crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning.” Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning such people! If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr. Harris relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespeare loathed courtiers.

If, on the other hand, Shakespeare’s characters are mostly members of the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr. Harris’s own plays and mine. Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands. Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote’s troubles with innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul. Hamlet’s experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber. A poor man is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy. The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that lay in Shakespeare’s power. When poverty is abolished, and leisure and grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want of money or wretched drudgery. Our plays of poverty and squalor, now the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men, will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read only by historical students of social pathology.

Then consider Shakespeare’s kings and lords and gentlemen! Would even John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered? Surely a more mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage. The very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of divinity. I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespeare’s Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in general as Mr. Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side. I could even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespeare’s defects is his lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism. He had of course no prevision of democratic Collectivism. He was, except in the commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through. Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention quite in the vein of the Fabian Society. He was concerned about drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not merely despair of human nature. His first and last word on parliament was “Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the thing thou dost not.” He had no notion of the feeling with which the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome. The explanation is, not a general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation, and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig principles of individual liberty.

Shakespeare and the British Public

I have rejected Mr. Harris’s view that Shakespeare died brokenhearted of “the pangs of love despised.” I have given my reasons for believing that Shakespeare died game, and indeed in a state of levity which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop. But Mr. Harris’s evidence does prove that Shakespeare had a grievance and a very serious one. He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public was another matter. The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was excited by the magic of Shakespeare’s art rather than by his views. He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the common people. But Shakespeare was not satisfied with this. What is the use of being Shakespeare if you are not allowed to express any notions but those of Autolycus? Shakespeare did not see the world as Autolycus did: he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen’s power of penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift’s horror of its cruelty and uncleanliness.

Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce popular work. Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance! Their earlier works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they were not popular when they were written. The alternative of doing popular work was never really open to them: had they stooped they would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people’s heads. But Handel and Shakespeare were not held to their best in this way. They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap up the measure. They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces; but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art. When Shakespeare was forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it mutinously, calling the plays “As You Like It,” and “Much Ado About Nothing.” All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our theatres. Later on Burbage’s power and popularity as an actor enabled Shakespeare to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good deal. The history of Shakespeare’s tragedies has thus been the history of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that “when he would have said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried” was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all speaking of Garrick’s Richard, and Kean’s Othello, and Irving’s Shylock, and Forbes Robertson’s Hamlet without knowing or caring how much these had to do with Shakespeare’s Richard and Othello and so forth. And the plays which were written without great and predominant parts, such as Troilus and Cressida, All’s Well That Ends Well, and Measure for Measure, have dropped on our stage as dead as the second part of Goethe’s Faust or Ibsen’s Emperor and Galilean.

Here, then, Shakespeare had a real grievance; and though it is a sentimental exaggeration to describe him as a brokenhearted man in the face of the passages of reckless jollity and serenely happy poetry in his latest plays, yet the discovery that his most serious work could reach success only when carried on the back of a very fascinating actor who was enormously overcharging his part, and that the serious plays which did not contain parts big enough to hold the overcharge were left on the shelf, amply accounts for the evident fact that Shakespeare did not end his life in a glow of enthusiastic satisfaction with mankind and with the theatre, which is all that Mr. Harris can allege in support of his broken-heart theory. But even if Shakespeare had had no failures, it was not possible for a man of his powers to observe the political and moral conduct of his contemporaries without perceiving that they were incapable of dealing with the problems raised by their own civilization, and that their attempts to carry out the codes of law and to practise the religions offered to them by great prophets and lawgivers were and still are so foolish that we now call for The Superman, virtually a new species, to rescue the world from mismanagement. This is the real sorrow of great men; and in the face of it the notion that when a great man speaks bitterly or looks melancholy he must be troubled by a disappointment in love seems to me sentimental trifling.

If I have carried the reader with me thus far, he will find that trivial as this little play of mine is, its sketch of Shakespeare is more complete than its levity suggests. Alas! its appeal for a National Theatre as a monument to Shakespeare failed to touch the very stupid people who cannot see that a National Theatre is worth having for the sake of the National Soul. I had unfortunately represented Shakespeare as treasuring and using (as I do myself) the jewels of unconsciously musical speech which common people utter and throw away every day; and this was taken as a disparagement of Shakespeare’s “originality.” Why was I born with such contemporaries? Why is Shakespeare made ridiculous by such a posterity?

Dramatis Personae

  • A Beefeater

  • William Shakespeare

  • Queen Elizabeth

  • The Dark Lady

The Dark Lady of the Sonnets

Fin de siècle 15⁠–⁠1600. Midsummer night on the terrace of the Palace at Whitehall, overlooking the Thames. The Palace clock chimes four quarters and strikes eleven.

A Beefeater on guard. A Cloaked Man approaches.
The Beefeater Stand. Who goes there? Give the word.
The Man Marry! I cannot. I have clean forgotten it.
The Beefeater Then cannot you pass here. What is your business? Who are you? Are you a true man?
The Man Far from it, Master Warder. I am not the same man two days together: sometimes Adam, sometimes Benvolio, and anon the Ghost.
The Beefeater Recoiling. A ghost! Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
The Man Well said, Master Warder. With your leave I will set that down in writing; for I have a very poor and unhappy brain for remembrance. He takes out his tablets and writes. Methinks this is a good scene, with you on your lonely watch, and I approaching like a ghost in the moonlight. Stare not so amazedly at me; but mark what I say. I keep tryst here tonight with a dark lady. She promised to bribe the warder. I gave her the wherewithal: four tickets for the Globe Theatre.
The Beefeater Plague on her! She gave me two only.
The Man Detaching a tablet. My friend: present this tablet, and you will be welcomed at any time when the plays of Will Shakespeare are in hand. Bring your wife. Bring your friends. Bring the whole garrison. There is ever plenty of room.
The Beefeater I care not for these newfangled plays. No man can understand a word of them. They are all talk. Will you not give me a pass for The Spanish Tragedy?
The Man To see The Spanish Tragedy one pays, my friend. Here are the means. He gives him a piece of gold.
The Beefeater Overwhelmed. Gold! Oh, sir, you are a better paymaster than your dark lady.
The Man Women are thrifty, my friend.
The Beefeater ’Tis so, sir. And you have to consider that the most openhanded of us must e’en cheapen that which we buy every day. This lady has to make a present to a warder nigh every night of her life.
The Man Turning pale. I’ll not believe it.
The Beefeater Now you, sir, I dare be sworn, do not have an adventure like this twice in the year.
The Man Villain: wouldst tell me that my dark lady hath ever done thus before? that she maketh occasions to meet other men?
The Beefeater Now the Lord bless your innocence, sir, do you think you are the only pretty man in the world? A merry lady, sir: a warm bit of stuff. Go to: I’ll not see her pass a deceit on a gentleman that hath given me the first piece of gold I ever handled.
The Man Master Warder: is it not a strange thing that we, knowing that all women are false, should be amazed to find our own particular drab no better than the rest?
The Beefeater Not all, sir. Decent bodies, many of them.
The Man Intolerantly. No. All false. All. If thou deny it, thou liest.
The Beefeater You judge too much by the Court, sir. There, indeed, you may say of frailty that its name is woman.
The Man Pulling out his tablets again. Prithee say that again: that about frailty: the strain of music.
The Beefeater What strain of music, sir? I’m no musician, God knows.
The Man There is music in your soul: many of your degree have it very notably. Writing. “Frailty: thy name is woman!” Repeating it affectionately. “Thy name is woman.”
The Beefeater Well, sir, it is but four words. Are you a snapper-up of such unconsidered trifles?
The Man Eagerly. Snapper-up of⁠—He gasps. Oh! Immortal phrase! He writes it down. This man is a greater than I.
The Beefeater You have my lord Pembroke’s trick, sir.
The Man Like enough: he is my near friend. But what call you his trick?
The Beefeater Making sonnets by moonlight. And to the same lady too.
The Man No!
The Beefeater Last night he stood here on your errand, and in your shoes.
The Man Thou, too, Brutus! And I called him friend!
The Beefeater ’Tis ever so, sir.
The Man ’Tis ever so. ’Twas ever so. He turns away, overcome. Two Gentlemen of Verona! Judas! Judas!!
The Beefeater Is he so bad as that, sir?
The Man Recovering his charity and self-possession. Bad? Oh no. Human, Master Warder, human. We call one another names when we are offended, as children do. That is all.
The Beefeater Ay, sir: words, words, words. Mere wind, sir. We fill our bellies with the east wind, sir, as the Scripture hath it. You cannot feed capons so.
The Man A good cadence. By your leave. He makes a note of it.
The Beefeater What manner of thing is a cadence, sir? I have not heard of it.
The Man A thing to rule the world with, friend.
The Beefeater You speak strangely, sir: no offence. But, an’t like you, you are a very civil gentleman; and a poor man feels drawn to you, you being, as ’twere, willing to share your thought with him.
The Man ’Tis my trade. But alas! the world for the most part will none of my thoughts.
Lamplight streams from the palace door as it opens from within.
The Beefeater Here comes your lady, sir. I’ll to t’other end of my ward. You may e’en take your time about your business: I shall not return too suddenly unless my sergeant comes prowling round. ’Tis a fell sergeant, sir: strict in his arrest. Go’d’en, sir; and good luck! He goes.
The Man “Strict in his arrest”! “Fell sergeant”! As if tasting a ripe plum. O‑o‑o‑h! He makes a note of them.
A Cloaked Lady gropes her way from the palace and wanders along the terrace, walking in her sleep.
The Lady Rubbing her hands as if washing them. Out, damned spot. You will mar all with these cosmetics. God made you one face; and you make yourself another. Think of your grave, woman, not ever of being beautified. All the perfumes of Arabia will not whiten this Tudor hand.
The Man “All the perfumes of Arabia”! “Beautified”! “Beautified”! a poem in a single word. Can this be my Mary? To the Lady. Why do you speak in a strange voice, and utter poetry for the first time? Are you ailing? You walk like the dead. Mary! Mary!
The Lady Echoing him. Mary! Mary! Who would have thought that woman to have had so much blood in her! Is it my fault that my counsellors put deeds of blood on me? Fie! If you were women you would have more wit than to stain the floor so foully. Hold not up her head so: the hair is false. I tell you yet again, Mary’s buried: she cannot come out of her grave. I fear her not: these cats that dare jump into thrones though they be fit only for men’s laps must be put away. What’s done cannot be undone. Out, I say. Fie! a queen, and freckled!
The Man Shaking her arm. Mary, I say: art asleep?
The Lady wakes; starts; and nearly faints. He catches her on his arm.
The Lady Where am I? What art thou?
The Man I cry your mercy. I have mistook your person all this while. Methought you were my Mary: my mistress.
The Lady Outraged. Profane fellow: how do you dare?
The Man Be not wroth with me, lady. My mistress is a marvellous proper woman. But she does not speak so well as you. “All the perfumes of Arabia”! That was well said: spoken with good accent and excellent discretion.
The Lady Have I been in speech with you here?
The Man Why, yes, fair lady. Have you forgot it?
The Lady I have walked in my sleep.
The Man Walk ever in your sleep, fair one; for then your words drop like honey.
The Lady With cold majesty. Know you to whom you speak, sir, that you dare express yourself so saucily?
The Man Unabashed. Not I, nor care neither. You are some lady of the Court, belike. To me there are but two sorts of women: those with excellent voices, sweet and low, and cackling hens that cannot make me dream. Your voice has all manner of loveliness in it. Grudge me not a short hour of its music.
The Lady Sir: you are overbold. Season your admiration for a while with⁠—
The Man Holding up his hand to stop her. “Season your admiration for a while⁠—”
The Lady Fellow: do you dare mimic me to my face?
The Man ’Tis music. Can you not hear? When a good musician sings a song, do you not sing it and sing it again till you have caught and fixed its perfect melody? “Season your admiration for a while”: God! the history of man’s heart is in that one word admiration. Admiration! Taking up his tablets. What was it? “Suspend your admiration for a space⁠—”
The Lady A very vile jingle of esses. I said “Season your⁠—”
The Man Hastily. Season: ay, season, season, season. Plague on my memory, my wretched memory! I must e’en write it down. He begins to write, but stops, his memory failing him. Yet tell me which was the vile jingle? You said very justly: mine own ear caught it even as my false tongue said it.
The Lady You said “for a space.” I said “for a while.”
The Man “For a while.” He corrects it. Good! Ardently. And now be mine neither for a space nor a while, but forever.
The Lady Odds my life! Are you by chance making love to me, knave?
The Man Nay: ’tis you who have made the love: I but pour it out at your feet. I cannot but love a lass that sets such store by an apt word. Therefore vouchsafe, divine perfection of a woman⁠—no: I have said that before somewhere; and the wordy garment of my love for you must be fire-new⁠—
The Lady You talk too much, sir. Let me warn you: I am more accustomed to be listened to than preached at.
The Man The most are like that that do talk well. But though you spake with the tongues of angels, as indeed you do, yet know that I am the king of words⁠—
The Lady A king, ha!
The Man No less. We are poor things, we men and women⁠—
The Lady Dare you call me woman?
The Man What nobler name can I tender you? How else can I love you? Yet you may well shrink from the name: have I not said we are but poor things? Yet there is a power that can redeem us.
The Lady Gramercy for your sermon, sir. I hope I know my duty.
The Man This is no sermon, but the living truth. The power I speak of is the power of immortal poesy. For know that vile as this world is, and worms as we are, you have but to invest all this vileness with a magical garment of words to transfigure us and uplift our souls till earth flowers into a million heavens.
The Lady You spoil your heaven with your million. You are extravagant. Observe some measure in your speech.
The Man You speak now as Ben does.
The Lady And who, pray, is Ben?
The Man A learned bricklayer who thinks that the sky is at the top of his ladder, and so takes it on him to rebuke me for flying. I tell you there is no word yet coined and no melody yet sung that is extravagant and majestical enough for the glory that lovely words can reveal. It is heresy to deny it: have you not been taught that in the beginning was the Word? that the Word was with God? nay, that the Word was God?
The Lady Beware, fellow, how you presume to speak of holy things. The Queen is the head of the Church.
The Man You are the head of my Church when you speak as you did at first. “All the perfumes of Arabia”! Can the Queen speak thus? They say she playeth well upon the virginals. Let her play so to me; and I’ll kiss her hands. But until then, you are my Queen; and I’ll kiss those lips that have dropt music on my heart. He puts his arms about her.
The Lady Unmeasured impudence! On your life, take your hands from me.
The Dark Lady comes stooping along the terrace behind them like a running thrush. When she sees how they are employed, she rises angrily to her full height, and listens jealously.
The Man Unaware of the Dark Lady. Then cease to make my hands tremble with the streams of life you pour through them. You hold me as the lodestar holds the iron: I cannot but cling to you. We are lost, you and I: nothing can separate us now.
The Dark Lady We shall see that, false lying hound, you and your filthy trull. With two vigorous cuffs, she knocks the pair asunder, sending the man, who is unlucky enough to receive a righthanded blow, sprawling an the flags. Take that, both of you!
The Cloaked Lady In towering wrath, throwing off her cloak and turning in outraged majesty on her assailant. High treason!
The Dark Lady Recognizing her and falling on her knees in abject terror. Will: I am lost: I have struck the Queen.
The Man Sitting up as majestically as his ignominious posture allows. Woman: you have struck William Shakespeare.
Queen Elizabeth Stupent. Marry, come up!!! Struck William Shakespeare quotha! And who in the name of all the sluts and jades and light-o’-loves and fly-by-nights that infest this palace of mine, may William Shakespeare be?
The Dark Lady Madam: he is but a player. Oh, I could have my hand cut off⁠—
Queen Elizabeth Belike you will, mistress. Have you bethought you that I am like to have your head cut off as well?
The Dark Lady Will: save me. Oh, save me.
Elizabeth Save you! A likely savior, on my royal word! I had thought this fellow at least an esquire; for I had hoped that even the vilest of my ladies would not have dishonored my Court by wantoning with a baseborn servant.
Shakespeare Indignantly scrambling to his feet. Baseborn! I, a Shakespeare of Stratford! I, whose mother was an Arden! baseborn! You forget yourself, madam.
Elizabeth Furious. S’blood! do I so? I will teach you⁠—
The Dark Lady Rising from her knees and throwing herself between them. Will: in God’s name anger her no further. It is death. Madam: do not listen to him.
Shakespeare Not were it e’en to save your life, Mary, not to mention mine own, will I flatter a monarch who forgets what is due to my family. I deny not that my father was brought down to be a poor bankrupt; but ’twas his gentle blood that was ever too generous for trade. Never did he disown his debts. ’Tis true he paid them not; but it is an attested truth that he gave bills for them; and ’twas those bills, in the hands of base hucksters, that were his undoing.
Elizabeth Grimly. The son of your father shall learn his place in the presence of the daughter of Harry the Eighth.
Shakespeare Swelling with intolerant importance. Name not that inordinate man in the same breath with Stratford’s worthiest alderman. John Shakespeare wedded but once: Harry Tudor was married six times. You should blush to utter his name.
Crying out together.
The Dark Lady Will: for pity’s sake⁠—
Elizabeth Insolent dog⁠—
Shakespeare Cutting them short. How know you that King Harry was indeed your father?
Elizabeth Zounds! Now by⁠—She stops to grind her teeth with rage.
The Dark Lady She will have me whipped through the streets. Oh God! Oh God!
Shakespeare Learn to know yourself better, madam. I am an honest gentleman of unquestioned parentage, and have already sent in my demand for the coat-of-arms that is lawfully mine. Can you say as much for yourself?
Elizabeth Almost beside herself. Another word; and I begin with mine own hands the work the hangman shall finish.
Shakespeare You are no true Tudor: this baggage here has as good a right to your royal seat as you. What maintains you on the throne of England? Is it your renowned wit? your wisdom that sets at naught the craftiest statesmen of the Christian world? No. ’Tis the mere chance that might have happened to any milkmaid, the caprice of Nature that made you the most wondrous piece of beauty the age hath seen. Elizabeth’s raised fists, on the point of striking him, fall to her side. That is what hath brought all men to your feet, and founded your throne on the impregnable rock of your proud heart, a stony island in a sea of desire. There, madam, is some wholesome blunt honest speaking for you. Now do your worst.
Elizabeth With dignity. Master Shakespeare: it is well for you that I am a merciful prince. I make allowance for your rustic ignorance. But remember that there are things which be true, and are yet not seemly to be said (I will not say to a queen; for you will have it that I am none) but to a virgin.
Shakespeare Bluntly. It is no fault of mine that you are a virgin, madam, albeit ’tis my misfortune.
The Dark Lady Terrified again. In mercy, madam, hold no further discourse with him. He hath ever some lewd jest on his tongue. You hear how he useth me! calling me baggage and the like to your Majesty’s face.
Elizabeth As for you, mistress, I have yet to demand what your business is at this hour in this place, and how you come to be so concerned with a player that you strike blindly at your sovereign in your jealousy of him.
The Dark Lady Madam: as I live and hope for salvation⁠—
Shakespeare Sardonically. Ha!
The Dark Lady Angrily.⁠—ay, I’m as like to be saved as thou that believest naught save some black magic of words and verses⁠—I say, madam, as I am a living woman I came here to break with him forever. Oh, madam, if you would know what misery is, listen to this man that is more than man and less at the same time. He will tie you down to anatomize your very soul: he will wring tears of blood from your humiliation; and then he will heal the wound with flatteries that no woman can resist.
Shakespeare Flatteries! Kneeling. Oh, madam, I put my case at your royal feet. I confess to much. I have a rude tongue: I am unmannerly: I blaspheme against the holiness of anointed royalty; but oh, my royal mistress, am I a flatterer?
Elizabeth I absolve you as to that. You are far too plain a dealer to please me. He rises gratefully.
The Dark Lady Madam: he is flattering you even as he speaks.
Elizabeth A terrible flash in her eye. Ha! Is it so?
Shakespeare Madam: she is jealous; and, heaven help me! not without reason. Oh, you say you are a merciful prince; but that was cruel of you, that hiding of your royal dignity when you found me here. For how can I ever be content with this black-haired, black-eyed, black-avised devil again now that I have looked upon real beauty and real majesty?
The Dark Lady Wounded and desperate. He hath swore to me ten times over that the day shall come in England when black women, for all their foulness, shall be more thought on than fair ones.To Shakespeare, scolding at him. Deny it if thou canst. Oh, he is compact of lies and scorns. I am tired of being tossed up to heaven and dragged down to hell at every whim that takes him. I am ashamed to my very soul that I have abased myself to love one that my father would not have deemed fit to hold my stirrup⁠—one that will talk to all the world about me⁠—that will put my love and my shame into his plays and make me blush for myself there⁠—that will write sonnets about me that no man of gentle strain would put his hand to. I am all disordered: I know not what I am saying to your Majesty: I am of all ladies most deject and wretched⁠—
Shakespeare Ha! At last sorrow hath struck a note of music out of thee. “Of all ladies most deject and wretched.” He makes a note of it.
The Dark Lady Madam: I implore you give me leave to go. I am distracted with grief and shame. I⁠—
Elizabeth Go. The Dark Lady tries to kiss her hand. No more. Go. The Dark Lady goes, convulsed. You have been cruel to that poor fond wretch, Master Shakespeare.
Shakespeare I am not cruel, madam; but you know the fable of Jupiter and Semele. I could not help my lightnings scorching her.
Elizabeth You have an overweening conceit of yourself, sir, that displeases your Queen.
Shakespeare Oh, madam, can I go about with the modest cough of a minor poet, belittling my inspiration and making the mightiest wonder of your reign a thing of nought? I have said that “not marble nor the gilded monuments of princes shall outlive” the words with which I make the world glorious or foolish at my will. Besides, I would have you think me great enough to grant me a boon.
Elizabeth I hope it is a boon that may be asked of a virgin Queen without offence, sir. I mistrust your forwardness; and I bid you remember that I do not suffer persons of your degree (if I may say so without offence to your father the alderman) to presume too far.
Shakespeare Oh, madam, I shall not forget myself again; though by my life, could I make you a serving wench, neither a queen nor a virgin should you be for so much longer as a flash of lightning might take to cross the river to the Bankside. But since you are a queen and will none of me, nor of Philip of Spain, nor of any other mortal man, I must e’en contain myself as best I may, and ask you only for a boon of State.
Elizabeth A boon of State already! You are becoming a courtier like the rest of them. You lack advancement.
Shakespeare “Lack advancement.” By your Majesty’s leave: a queenly phrase. He is about to write it down.
Elizabeth Striking the tablets from his hand. Your tables begin to anger me, sir. I am not here to write your plays for you.
Shakespeare You are here to inspire them, madam. For this, among the rest, were you ordained. But the boon I crave is that you do endow a great playhouse, or, if I may make bold to coin a scholarly name for it, a National Theatre, for the better instruction and gracing of your Majesty’s subjects.
Elizabeth Why, sir, are there not theatres enow on the Bankside and in Blackfriars?
Shakespeare Madam: these are the adventures of needy and desperate men that must, to save themselves from perishing of want, give the sillier sort of people what they best like; and what they best like, God knows, is not their own betterment and instruction, as we well see by the example of the churches, which must needs compel men to frequent them, though they be open to all without charge. Only when there is a matter of a murder, or a plot, or a pretty youth in petticoats, or some naughty tale of wantonness, will your subjects pay the great cost of good players and their finery, with a little profit to boot. To prove this I will tell you that I have written two noble and excellent plays setting forth the advancement of women of high nature and fruitful industry even as your Majesty is: the one a skilful physician, the other a sister devoted to good works. I have also stole from a book of idle wanton tales two of the most damnable foolishnesses in the world, in the one of which a woman goeth in man’s attire and maketh impudent love to her swain, who pleaseth the groundlings by overthrowing a wrestler; whilst, in the other, one of the same kidney showeth her wit by saying endless naughtinesses to a gentleman as lewd as herself. I have writ these to save my friends from penury, yet showing my scorn for such follies and for them that praise them by calling the one As You Like It, meaning that it is not as I like it, and the other Much Ado About Nothing, as it truly is. And now these two filthy pieces drive their nobler fellows from the stage, where indeed I cannot have my lady physician presented at all, she being too honest a woman for the taste of the town. Wherefore I humbly beg your Majesty to give order that a theatre be endowed out of the public revenue for the playing of those pieces of mine which no merchant will touch, seeing that his gain is so much greater with the worse than with the better. Thereby you shall also encourage other men to undertake the writing of plays who do now despise it and leave it wholly to those whose counsels will work little good to your realm. For this writing of plays is a great matter, forming as it does the minds and affections of men in such sort that whatsoever they see done in show on the stage, they will presently be doing in earnest in the world, which is but a larger stage. Of late, as you know, the Church taught the people by means of plays; but the people flocked only to such as were full of superstitious miracles and bloody martyrdoms; and so the Church, which also was just then brought into straits by the policy of your royal father, did abandon and discountenance the art of playing; and thus it fell into the hands of poor players and greedy merchants that had their pockets to look to and not the greatness of this your kingdom. Therefore now must your Majesty take up that good work that your Church hath abandoned, and restore the art of playing to its former use and dignity.
Elizabeth Master Shakespeare: I will speak of this matter to the Lord Treasurer.
Shakespeare Then am I undone, madam; for there was never yet a Lord Treasurer that could find a penny for anything over and above the necessary expenses of your government, save for a war or a salary for his own nephew.
Elizabeth Master Shakespeare: you speak sooth; yet cannot I in any wise mend it. I dare not offend my unruly Puritans by making so lewd a place as the playhouse a public charge; and there be a thousand things to be done in this London of mine before your poetry can have its penny from the general purse. I tell thee, Master Will, it will be three hundred years and more before my subjects learn that man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that cometh from the mouth of those whom God inspires. By that time you and I will be dust beneath the feet of the horses, if indeed there be any horses then, and men be still riding instead of flying. Now it may be that by then your works will be dust also.
Shakespeare They will stand, madam: fear nor for that.
Elizabeth It may prove so. But of this I am certain (for I know my countrymen) that until every other country in the Christian world, even to barbarian Muscovy and the hamlets of the boorish Germans, have its playhouse at the public charge, England will never adventure. And she will adventure then only because it is her desire to be ever in the fashion, and to do humbly and dutifully whatso she seeth everybody else doing. In the meantime you must content yourself as best you can by the playing of those two pieces which you give out as the most damnable ever writ, but which your countrymen, I warn you, will swear are the best you have ever done. But this I will say, that if I could speak across the ages to our descendants, I should heartily recommend them to fulfil your wish; for the Scottish minstrel hath well said that he that maketh the songs of a nation is mightier than he that maketh its laws; and the same may well be true of plays and interludes.The clock chimes the first quarter. The Warder returns on his round. And now, sir, we are upon the hour when it better beseems a virgin queen to be abed than to converse alone with the naughtiest of her subjects. Ho there! Who keeps ward on the queen’s lodgings tonight?
The Warder I do, an’t please your majesty.
Elizabeth See that you keep it better in future. You have let pass a most dangerous gallant even to the very door of our royal chamber. Lead him forth; and bring me word when he is safely locked out; for I shall scarce dare disrobe until the palace gates are between us.
Shakespeare Kissing her hand. My body goes through the gate into the darkness, madam; but my thoughts follow you.
Elizabeth How! to my bed!
Shakespeare No, madam, to your prayers, in which I beg you to remember my theatre.
Elizabeth That is my prayer to posterity. Forget not your own to God; and so goodnight, Master Will.
Shakespeare Goodnight, great Elizabeth. God save the Queen!
Elizabeth Amen.
Exeunt severally: she to her chamber: he, in custody of the Warder, to the gate nearest Blackfriars.

Overruled

Preface to Overruled

The Alleviations of Monogamy

This piece is not an argument for or against polygamy. It is a clinical study of how the thing actually occurs among quite ordinary people, innocent of all unconventional views concerning it. The enormous majority of cases in real life are those of people in that position. Those who deliberately and conscientiously profess what are oddly called advanced views by those others who believe them to be retrograde, are often, and indeed mostly, the last people in the world to engage in unconventional adventures of any kind, not only because they have neither time nor disposition for them, but because the friction set up between the individual and the community by the expression of unusual views of any sort is quite enough hindrance to the heretic without being complicated by personal scandals. Thus the theoretic libertine is usually a person of blameless family life, whilst the practical libertine is mercilessly severe on all other libertines, and excessively conventional in professions of social principle.

What is more, these professions are not hypocritical: they are for the most part quite sincere. The common libertine, like the drunkard, succumbs to a temptation which he does not defend, and against which he warns others with an earnestness proportionate to the intensity of his own remorse. He (or she) may be a liar and a humbug, pretending to be better than the detected libertines, and clamoring for their condign punishment; but this is mere self-defence. No reasonable person expects the burglar to confess his pursuits, or to refrain from joining in the cry of Stop Thief when the police get on the track of another burglar. If society chooses to penalize candor, it has itself to thank if its attack is countered by falsehood. The clamorous virtue of the libertine is therefore no more hypocritical than the plea of Not Guilty which is allowed to every criminal. But one result is that the theorists who write most sincerely and favorably about polygamy know least about it; and the practitioners who know most about it keep their knowledge very jealously to themselves. Which is hardly fair to the practice.

Inaccessibility of the Facts

Also it is impossible to estimate its prevalence. A practice to which nobody confesses may be both universal and unsuspected, just as a virtue which everybody is expected, under heavy penalties, to claim, may have no existence. It is often assumed⁠—indeed it is the official assumption of the Churches and the divorce courts⁠—that a gentleman and a lady cannot be alone together innocently. And that is manifest blazing nonsense, though many women have been stoned to death in the east, and divorced in the west, on the strength of it. On the other hand, the innocent and conventional people who regard gallant adventures as crimes of so horrible a nature that only the most depraved and desperate characters engage in them or would listen to advances in that direction without raising an alarm with the noisiest indignation, are clearly examples of the fact that most sections of society do not know how the other sections live. Industry is the most effective check on gallantry. Women may, as Napoleon said, be the occupation of the idle man just as men are the preoccupation of the idle woman; but the mass of mankind is too busy and too poor for the long and expensive sieges which the professed libertine lays to virtue. Still, wherever there is idleness or even a reasonable supply of elegant leisure there is a good deal of coquetry and philandering. It is so much pleasanter to dance on the edge of a precipice than to go over it that leisured society is full of people who spend a great part of their lives in flirtation, and conceal nothing but the humiliating secret that they have never gone any further. For there is no pleasing people in the matter of reputation in this department: every insult is a flattery; every testimonial is a disparagement: Joseph is despised and promoted, Potiphar’s wife admired and condemned: in short, you are never on solid ground until you get away from the subject altogether. There is a continual and irreconcilable conflict between the natural and conventional sides of the case, between spontaneous human relations between independent men and women on the one hand and the property relation between husband and wife on the other, not to mention the confusion under the common name of love of a generous natural attraction and interest with the murderous jealousy that fastens on and clings to its mate (especially a hated mate) as a tiger fastens on a carcase. And the confusion is natural; for these extremes are extremes of the same passion; and most cases lie somewhere on the scale between them, and are so complicated by ordinary likes and dislikes, by incidental wounds to vanity or gratifications of it, and by class feeling, that A will be jealous of B and not of C, and will tolerate infidelities on the part of D whilst being furiously angry when they are committed by E.

The Convention of Jealousy

That jealousy is independent of sex is shown by its intensity in children, and by the fact that very jealous people are jealous of everybody without regard to relationship or sex, and cannot bear to hear the person they “love” speak favorably of anyone under any circumstances (many women, for instance, are much more jealous of their husbands’ mothers and sisters than of unrelated women whom they suspect him of fancying); but it is seldom possible to disentangle the two passions in practice. Besides, jealousy is an inculcated passion, forced by society on people in whom it would not occur spontaneously. In Brieux’s Bourgeois aux Champs, the benevolent hero finds himself detested by the neighboring peasants and farmers, not because he preserves game, and sets mantraps for poachers, and defends his legal rights over his land to the extremest point of unsocial savagery, but because, being an amiable and public-spirited person, he refuses to do all this, and thereby offends and disparages the sense of property in his neighbors. The same thing is true of matrimonial jealousy; the man who does not at least pretend to feel it and behave as badly as if he really felt it is despised and insulted; and many a man has shot or stabbed a friend or been shot or stabbed by him in a duel, or disgraced himself and ruined his own wife in a divorce scandal, against his conscience, against his instinct, and to the destruction of his home, solely because Society conspired to drive him to keep its own lower morality in countenance in this miserable and undignified manner.

Morality is confused in such matters. In an elegant plutocracy, a jealous husband is regarded as a boor. Among the tradesmen who supply that plutocracy with its meals, a husband who is not jealous, and refrains from assailing his rival with his fists, is regarded as a ridiculous, contemptible and cowardly cuckold. And the laboring class is divided into the respectable section which takes the tradesman’s view, and the disreputable section which enjoys the license of the plutocracy without its money: creeping below the law as its exemplars prance above it; cutting down all expenses of respectability and even decency; and frankly accepting squalor and disrepute as the price of anarchic self-indulgence. The conflict between Malvolio and Sir Toby, between the marquis and the bourgeois, the cavalier and the puritan, the ascetic and the voluptuary, goes on continually, and goes on not only between class and class and individual and individual, but in the selfsame breast in a series of reactions and revulsions in which the irresistible becomes the unbearable, and the unbearable the irresistible, until none of us can say what our characters really are in this respect.

The Missing Data of a Scientific Natural History of Marriage

Of one thing I am persuaded: we shall never attain to a reasonable healthy public opinion on sex questions until we offer, as the data for that opinion, our actual conduct and our real thoughts instead of a moral fiction which we agree to call virtuous conduct, and which we then⁠—and here comes in the mischief⁠—pretend is our conduct and our thoughts. If the result were that we all believed one another to be better than we really are, there would be something to be said for it; but the actual result appears to be a monstrous exaggeration of the power and continuity of sexual passion. The whole world shares the fate of Lucrezia Borgia, who, though she seems on investigation to have been quite a suitable wife for a modern British Bishop, has been invested by the popular historical imagination with all the extravagances of a Messalina or a Cenci. Writers of belles lettres who are rash enough to admit that their whole life is not one constant preoccupation with adored members of the opposite sex, and who even countenance La Rochefoucauld’s remark that very few people would ever imagine themselves in love if they had never read anything about it, are gravely declared to be abnormal or physically defective by critics of crushing unadventurousness and domestication. French authors of saintly temperament are forced to include in their retinue countesses of ardent complexion with whom they are supposed to live in sin. Sentimental controversies on the subject are endless; but they are useless, because nobody tells the truth. Rousseau did it by an extraordinary effort, aided by a superhuman faculty for human natural history, but the result was curiously disconcerting because, though the facts were so conventionally shocking that people felt that they ought to matter a great deal, they actually mattered very little. And even at that everybody pretends not to believe him.

Artificial Retribution

The worst of that is that busybodies with perhaps rather more than a normal taste for mischief are continually trying to make negligible things matter as much in fact as they do in convention by deliberately inflicting injuries⁠—sometimes atrocious injuries⁠—on the parties concerned. Few people have any knowledge of the savage punishments that are legally inflicted for aberrations and absurdities to which no sanely instructed community would call any attention. We create an artificial morality, and consequently an artificial conscience, by manufacturing disastrous consequences for events which, left to themselves, would do very little harm (sometimes not any) and be forgotten in a few days.

But the artificial morality is not therefore to be condemned offhand. In many cases it may save mischief instead of making it: for example, though the hanging of a murderer is the duplication of a murder, yet it may be less murderous than leaving the matter to be settled by blood feud or vendetta. As long as human nature insists on revenge, the official organization and satisfaction of revenge by the State may be also its minimization. The mischief begins when the official revenge persists after the passion it satisfies has died out of the race. Stoning a woman to death in the east because she has ventured to marry again after being deserted by her husband may be more merciful than allowing her to be mobbed to death; but the official stoning or burning of an adulteress in the west would be an atrocity because few of us hate an adulteress to the extent of desiring such a penalty, or of being prepared to take the law into our own hands if it were withheld. Now what applies to this extreme case applies also in due degree to the other cases. Offences in which sex is concerned are often needlessly magnified by penalties, ranging from various forms of social ostracism to long sentences of penal servitude, which would be seen to be monstrously disproportionate to the real feeling against them if the removal of both the penalties and the taboo on their discussion made it possible for us to ascertain their real prevalence and estimation. Fortunately there is one outlet for the truth. We are permitted to discuss in jest what we may not discuss in earnest. A serious comedy about sex is taboo: a farcical comedy is privileged.

The Favorite Subject of Farcical Comedy

The little piece which follows this preface accordingly takes the form of a farcical comedy, because it is a contribution to the very extensive dramatic literature which takes as its special department the gallantries of married people. The stage has been preoccupied by such affairs for centuries, not only in the jesting vein of Restoration Comedy and Palais Royal farce, but in the more tragically turned adulteries of the Parisian school which dominated the stage until Ibsen put them out of countenance and relegated them to their proper place as articles of commerce. Their continued vogue in that department maintains the tradition that adultery is the dramatic subject par excellence, and indeed that a play that is not about adultery is not a play at all. I was considered a heresiarch of the most extravagant kind when I expressed my opinion, at the outset of my career as a playwright, that adultery is the dullest of themes on the stage, and that from Francesca and Paolo down to the latest guilty couple of the school of Dumas fils, the romantic adulterers have all been intolerable bores.

The Pseudo Sex Play

Later on, I had occasion to point out to the defenders of sex as the proper theme of drama, that though they were right in ranking sex as an intensely interesting subject, they were wrong in assuming that sex is an indispensable motive in popular plays. The plays of Molière are, like the novels of the Victorian epoch or Don Quixote, as nearly sexless as anything not absolutely inhuman can be; and some of Shakespeare’s plays are sexually on a par with the census: they contain women as well as men, and that is all. This had to be admitted; but it was still assumed that the plays of the nineteenth century Parisian school are, in contrast with the sexless masterpieces, saturated with sex; and this I strenuously denied. A play about the convention that a man should fight a duel or come to fisticuffs with his wife’s lover if she has one, or the convention that he should strangle her like Othello, or turn her out of the house and never see her or allow her to see her children again, or the convention that she should never be spoken to again by any decent person and should finally drown herself, or the convention that persons involved in scenes of recrimination or confession by these conventions should call each other certain abusive names and describe their conduct as guilty and frail and so on: all these may provide material for very effective plays; but such plays are not dramatic studies of sex: one might as well say that Romeo and Juliet is a dramatic study of pharmacy because the catastrophe is brought about through an apothecary. Duels are not sex; divorce cases are not sex; the Trade Unionism of married women is not sex. Only the most insignificant fraction of the gallantries of married people produce any of the conventional results; and plays occupied wholly with the conventional results are therefore utterly unsatisfying as sex plays, however interesting they may be as plays of intrigue and plot puzzles.

The world is finding this out rapidly. The Sunday papers, which in the days when they appealed almost exclusively to the lower middle class were crammed with police intelligence, and more especially with divorce and murder cases, now lay no stress on them; and police papers which confined themselves entirely to such matters, and were once eagerly read, have perished through the essential dullness of their topics. And yet the interest in sex is stronger than ever: in fact, the literature that has driven out the journalism of the divorce courts is a literature occupied with sex to an extent and with an intimacy and frankness that would have seemed utterly impossible to Thackeray or Dickens if they had been told that the change would complete itself within fifty years of their own time.

Art and Morality

It is ridiculous to say, as inconsiderate amateurs of the arts do, that art has nothing to do with morality. What is true is that the artist’s business is not that of the policeman; and that such factitious consequences and put-up jobs as divorces and executions and the detective operations that lead up to them are no essential part of life, though, like poisons and buttered slides and red-hot pokers, they provide material for plenty of thrilling or amusing stories suited to people who are incapable of any interest in psychology. But the fine artist must keep the policeman out of his studies of sex and studies of crime. It is by clinging nervously to the policeman that most of the pseudo sex plays convince me that the writers have either never had any serious personal experience of their ostensible subject, or else have never conceived it possible that the stage dare present the phenomena of sex as they appear in nature.

The Limits of Stage Presentation

But the stage presents much more shocking phenomena than those of sex. There is, of course, a sense in which you cannot present sex on the stage, just as you cannot present murder. Macbeth must no more really kill Duncan than he must himself be really slain by Macduff. But the feelings of a murderer can be expressed in a certain artistic convention; and a carefully prearranged sword exercise can be gone through with sufficient pretence of earnestness to be accepted by the willing imaginations of the younger spectators as a desperate combat.

The tragedy of love has been presented on the stage in the same way. In Tristan and Isolde, the curtain does not, as in Romeo and Juliet, rise with the lark: the whole night of love is played before the spectators. The lovers do not discuss marriage in an elegantly sentimental way: they utter the visions and feelings that come to lovers at the supreme moments of their love, totally forgetting that there are such things in the world as husbands and lawyers and duelling codes and theories of sin and notions of propriety and all the other irrelevancies which provide hackneyed and bloodless material for our so-called plays of passion.

Pruderies of the French Stage

To all stage presentations there are limits. If Macduff were to stab Macbeth, the spectacle would be intolerable; and even the pretence which we allow on our stage is ridiculously destructive to the illusion of the scene. Yet pugilists and gladiators will actually fight and kill in public without sham, even as a spectacle for money. But no sober couple of lovers of any delicacy could endure to be watched. We in England, accustomed to consider the French stage much more licentious than the British, are always surprised and puzzled when we learn, as we may do any day if we come within reach of such information, that French actors are often scandalized by what they consider the indecency of the English stage, and that French actresses who desire a greater license in appealing to the sexual instincts than the French stage allows them, learn and establish themselves on the English stage. The German and Russian stages are in the same relation to the French and perhaps more or less all the Latin stages. The reason is that, partly from a want of respect for the theatre, partly from a sort of respect for art in general which moves them to accord moral privileges to artists, partly from the very objectionable tradition that the realm of art is Alsatia and the contemplation of works of art a holiday from the burden of virtue, partly because French prudery does not attach itself to the same points of behavior as British prudery, and has a different code of the mentionable and the unmentionable, and for many other reasons, the French tolerate plays which are never performed in England until they have been spoiled by a process of bowdlerization; yet French taste is more fastidious than ours as to the exhibition and treatment on the stage of the physical incidents of sex. On the French stage a kiss is as obvious a convention as the thrust under the arm by which Macduff runs Macbeth through. It is even a purposely unconvincing convention: the actors rather insisting that it shall be impossible for any spectator to mistake a stage kiss for a real one. In England, on the contrary, realism is carried to the point at which nobody except the two performers can perceive that the caress is not genuine. And here the English stage is certainly in the right; for whatever question there arises as to what incidents are proper for representation on the stage or not, my experience as a playgoer leaves me in no doubt that once it is decided to represent an incident, it will be offensive, no matter whether it be a prayer or a kiss, unless it is presented with a convincing appearance of sincerity.

Our Disillusive Scenery

For example, the main objection to the use of illusive scenery (in most modern plays scenery is not illusive; everything visible is as real as in your drawing room at home) is that it is unconvincing; whilst the imaginary scenery with which the audience provides a platform or tribune like the Elizabethan stage or the Greek stage used by Sophocles, is quite convincing. In fact, the more scenery you have the less illusion you produce. The wise playwright, when he cannot get absolute reality of presentation, goes to the other extreme, and aims at atmosphere and suggestion of mood rather than at direct simulative illusion. The theatre, as I first knew it, was a place of wings and flats which destroyed both atmosphere and illusion. This was tolerated, and even intensely enjoyed, but not in the least because nothing better was possible; for all the devices employed in the productions of Mr. Granville Barker or Max Reinhardt or the Moscow Art Theatre were equally available for Colley Cibber and Garrick, except the intensity of our artificial light. When Garrick played Richard II in slashed trunk hose and plumes, it was not because he believed that the Plantagenets dressed like that, or because the costumes could not have made him a fifteenth century dress as easily as a nondescript combination of the state robes of George III with such scraps of older fashions as seemed to playgoers for some reason to be romantic. The charm of the theatre in those days was its make-believe. It has that charm still, not only for the amateurs, who are happiest when they are most unnatural and impossible and absurd, but for audiences as well. I have seen performances of my own plays which were to me far wilder burlesques than Sheridan’s Critic or Buckingham’s Rehearsal; yet they have produced sincere laughter and tears such as the most finished metropolitan productions have failed to elicit. Fielding was entirely right when he represented Partridge as enjoying intensely the performance of the king in Hamlet because anybody could see that the king was an actor, and resenting Garrick’s Hamlet because it might have been a real man. Yet we have only to look at the portraits of Garrick to see that his performances would nowadays seem almost as extravagantly stagey as his costumes. In our day Calvé’s intensely real Carmen never pleased the mob as much as the obvious fancy ball masquerading of suburban young ladies in the same character.

Holding the Mirror Up to Nature

Theatrical art begins as the holding up to Nature of a distorting mirror. In this phase it pleases people who are childish enough to believe that they can see what they look like and what they are when they look at a true mirror. Naturally they think that a true mirror can teach them nothing. Only by giving them back some monstrous image can the mirror amuse them or terrify them. It is not until they grow up to the point at which they learn that they know very little about themselves, and that they do not see themselves in a true mirror as other people see them, that they become consumed with curiosity as to what they really are like, and begin to demand that the stage shall be a mirror of such accuracy and intensity of illumination that they shall be able to get glimpses of their real selves in it, and also learn a little how they appear to other people.

For audiences of this highly developed class, sex can no longer be ignored or conventionalized or distorted by the playwright who makes the mirror. The old sentimental extravagances and the old grossnesses are of no further use to him. Don Giovanni and Zerlina are not gross: Tristan and Isolde are not extravagant or sentimental. They say and do nothing that you cannot bear to hear and see; and yet they give you, the one pair briefly and slightly, and the other fully and deeply, what passes in the minds of lovers. The love depicted may be that of a philosophic adventurer tempting an ignorant country girl, or of a tragically serious poet entangled with a woman of noble capacity in a passion which has become for them the reality of the whole universe. No matter: the thing is dramatized and dramatized directly, not talked about as something that happened before the curtain rose, or that will happen after it falls.

Farcical Comedy Shirking Its Subject

Now if all this can be done in the key of tragedy and philosophic comedy, it can, I have always contended, be done in the key of farcical comedy; and “Overruled” is a trifling experiment in that manner. Conventional farcical comedies are always finally tedious because the heart of them, the inevitable conjugal infidelity, is always evaded. Even its consequences are evaded. Mr. Granville Barker has pointed out rightly that if the third acts of our farcical comedies dared to describe the consequences that would follow from the first and second in real life, they would end as squalid tragedies; and in my opinion they would be greatly improved thereby even as entertainments; for I have never seen a three-act farcical comedy without being bored and tired by the third act, and observing that the rest of the audience were in the same condition, though they were not vigilantly introspective enough to find that out, and were apt to blame one another, especially the husbands and wives, for their crossness. But it is happily by no means true that conjugal infidelities always produce tragic consequences, or that they need produce even the unhappiness which they often do produce. Besides, the more momentous the consequences, the more interesting become the impulses and imaginations and reasonings, if any, of the people who disregard them. If I had an opportunity of conversing with the ghost of an executed murderer, I have no doubt he would begin to tell me eagerly about his trial, with the names of the distinguished ladies and gentlemen who honored him with their presence on that occasion, and then about his execution. All of which would bore me exceedingly. I should say, “My dear sir: such manufactured ceremonies do not interest me in the least. I know how a man is tried, and how he is hanged. I should have had you killed in a much less disgusting, hypocritical, and unfriendly manner if the matter had been in my hands. What I want to know about is the murder. How did you feel when you committed it? Why did you do it? What did you say to yourself about it? If, like most murderers, you had not been hanged, would you have committed other murders? Did you really dislike the victim, or did you want his money, or did you murder a person whom you did not dislike, and from whose death you had nothing to gain, merely for the sake of murdering? If so, can you describe the charm to me? Does it come upon you periodically; or is it chronic? Has curiosity anything to do with it?” I would ply him with all manner of questions to find out what murder is really like; and I should not be satisfied until I had realized that I, too, might commit a murder, or else that there is some specific quality present in a murderer and lacking in me. And, if so, what that quality is.

In just the same way, I want the unfaithful husband or the unfaithful wife in a farcical comedy not to bother me with their divorce cases or the stratagems they employ to avoid a divorce case, but to tell me how and why married couples are unfaithful. I don’t want to hear the lies they tell one another to conceal what they have done, but the truths they tell one another when they have to face what they have done without concealment or excuse. No doubt prudent and considerate people conceal such adventures, when they can, from those who are most likely to be wounded by them; but it is not to be presumed that, when found out, they necessarily disgrace themselves by irritating lies and transparent subterfuges.

My playlet, which I offer as a model to all future writers of farcical comedy, may now, I hope, be read without shock. I may just add that Mr. Sibthorpe Juno’s view that morality demands, not that we should behave morally (an impossibility to our sinful nature) but that we shall not attempt to defend our immoralities, is a standard view in England, and was advanced in all seriousness by an earnest and distinguished British moralist shortly after the first performance of “Overruled.” My objection to that aspect of the doctrine of original sin is that no necessary and inevitable operation of human nature can reasonably be regarded as sinful at all, and that a morality which assumes the contrary is an absurd morality, and can be kept in countenance only by hypocrisy. When people were ashamed of sanitary problems, and refused to face them, leaving them to solve themselves clandestinely in dirt and secrecy, the solution arrived at was the Black Death. A similar policy as to sex problems has solved itself by an even worse plague than the Black Death; and the remedy for that is not salvarsan, but sound moral hygiene, the first foundation of which is the discontinuance of our habit of telling not only the comparatively harmless lies that we know we ought not to tell, but the ruinous lies that we foolishly think we ought to tell.

Dramatis Personae

  • Mrs. Juno

  • Mr. Gregory Lunn

  • Mr. Sibthorpe Juno

  • Mrs. Seraphita Lunn

Overruled

A Lady and Gentleman are sitting together on a chesterfield in a retired corner of the lounge of a seaside hotel. It is a summer night: the French window behind them stands open. The terrace without overlooks a moonlit harbor. The lounge is dark. The chesterfield, upholstered in silver grey, and the two figures on it in evening dress, catch the light from an arc lamp somewhere; but the walls, covered with a dark green paper, are in gloom. There are two stray chairs, one on each side. On the Gentleman’s right, behind him up near the window, is an unused fireplace. Opposite it on the Lady’s left is a door. The Gentleman is on the Lady’s right.

The Lady is very attractive, with a musical voice and soft appealing manners. She is young: that is, one feels sure that she is under thirty-five and over twenty-four. The Gentleman does not look much older. He is rather handsome, and has ventured as far in the direction of poetic dandyism in the arrangement of his hair as any man who is not a professional artist can afford to in England. He is obviously very much in love with the Lady, and is, in fact, yielding to an irresistible impulse to throw his arms around her.

The Lady Don’t⁠—oh don’t be horrid. Please, Mr. Lunn! She rises from the lounge and retreats behind it. Promise me you won’t be horrid.
Gregory Lunn I’m not being horrid, Mrs. Juno. I’m not going to be horrid. I love you: that’s all. I’m extraordinarily happy.
Mrs. Juno You will really be good?
Gregory I’ll be whatever you wish me to be. I tell you I love you. I love loving you. I don’t want to be tired and sorry, as I should be if I were to be horrid. I don’t want you to be tired and sorry. Do come and sit down again.
Mrs. Juno Coming back to her seat. You’re sure you don’t want anything you oughtn’t to?
Gregory Quite sure. I only want you. She recoils. Don’t be alarmed: I like wanting you. As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
Mrs. Juno Yes; but the impulse to commit suicide is sometimes irresistible.
Gregory Not with you.
Mrs. Juno What!
Gregory Oh, it sounds uncomplimentary; but it isn’t really. Do you know why half the couples who find themselves situated as we are now behave horridly?
Mrs. Juno Because they can’t help it if they let things go too far.
Gregory Not a bit of it. It’s because they have nothing else to do, and no other way of entertaining each other. You don’t know what it is to be alone with a woman who has little beauty and less conversation. What is a man to do? She can’t talk interestingly; and if he talks that way himself she doesn’t understand him. He can’t look at her: if he does, he only finds out that she isn’t beautiful. Before the end of five minutes they are both hideously bored. There’s only one thing that can save the situation; and that’s what you call being horrid. With a beautiful, witty, kind woman, there’s no time for such follies. It’s so delightful to look at her, to listen to her voice, to hear all she has to say, that nothing else happens. That is why the woman who is supposed to have a thousand lovers seldom has one; whilst the stupid, graceless animals of women have dozens.
Mrs. Juno I wonder! It’s quite true that when one feels in danger one talks like mad to stave it off, even when one doesn’t quite want to stave it off.
Gregory One never does quite want to stave it off. Danger is delicious. But death isn’t. We court the danger; but the real delight is in escaping, after all.
Mrs. Juno I don’t think we’ll talk about it any more. Danger is all very well when you do escape; but sometimes one doesn’t. I tell you frankly I don’t feel as safe as you do⁠—if you really do.
Gregory But surely you can do as you please without injuring anyone, Mrs. Juno. That is the whole secret of your extraordinary charm for me.
Mrs. Juno I don’t understand.
Gregory Well, I hardly know how to begin to explain. But the root of the matter is that I am what people call a good man.
Mrs. Juno I thought so until you began making love to me.
Gregory But you knew I loved you all along.
Mrs. Juno Yes, of course; but I depended on you not to tell me so; because I thought you were good. Your blurting it out spoilt it. And it was wicked besides.
Gregory Not at all. You see, it’s a great many years since I’ve been able to allow myself to fall in love. I know lots of charming women; but the worst of it is, they’re all married. Women don’t become charming, to my taste, until they’re fully developed; and by that time, if they’re really nice, they’re snapped up and married. And then, because I am a good man, I have to place a limit to my regard for them. I may be fortunate enough to gain friendship and even very warm affection from them; but my loyalty to their husbands and their hearths and their happiness obliges me to draw a line and not overstep it. Of course I value such affectionate regard very highly indeed. I am surrounded with women who are most dear to me. But every one of them has a post sticking up, if I may put it that way, with the inscription: Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted. How we all loathe that notice! In every lovely garden, in every dell full of primroses, on every fair hillside, we meet that confounded board; and there is always a gamekeeper round the corner. But what is that to the horror of meeting it on every beautiful woman, and knowing that there is a husband round the corner? I have had this accursed board standing between me and every dear and desirable woman until I thought I had lost the power of letting myself fall really and wholeheartedly in love.
Mrs. Juno Wasn’t there a widow?
Gregory No. Widows are extraordinarily scarce in modern society. Husbands live longer than they used to; and even when they do die, their widows have a string of names down for their next.
Mrs. Juno Well, what about the young girls?
Gregory Oh, who cares for young girls? They’re sympathetic. They’re beginners. They don’t attract me. I’m afraid of them.
Mrs. Juno That’s the correct thing to say to a woman of my age. But it doesn’t explain why you seem to have put your scruples in your pocket when you met me.
Gregory Surely that’s quite clear. I⁠—
Mrs. Juno No: please don’t explain. I don’t want to know. I take your word for it. Besides, it doesn’t matter now. Our voyage is over; and tomorrow I start for the north to my poor father’s place.
Gregory Surprised. Your poor father! I thought he was alive.
Mrs. Juno So he is. What made you think he wasn’t?
Gregory You said your poor father.
Mrs. Juno Oh, that’s a trick of mine. Rather a silly trick, I suppose; but there’s something pathetic to me about men: I find myself calling them poor So-and-So when there’s nothing whatever the matter with them.
Gregory Who has listened in growing alarm. But⁠—I⁠—is?⁠—wa⁠—? Oh Lord!
Mrs. Juno What’s the matter?
Gregory Nothing.
Mrs. Juno Nothing! Rising anxiously. Nonsense: you’re ill.
Gregory No. It was something about your late husband⁠—
Mrs. Juno My late husband! What do you mean? Clutching him, horror-stricken. Don’t tell me he’s dead.
Gregory Rising, equally appalled. Don’t tell me he’s alive.
Mrs. Juno Oh, don’t frighten me like this. Of course he’s alive⁠—unless you’ve heard anything.
Gregory The first day we met⁠—on the boat⁠—you spoke to me of your poor dear husband.
Mrs. Juno Releasing him, quite reassured. Is that all?
Gregory Well, afterwards you called him poor Tops. Always poor Tops, or poor dear Tops. What could I think?
Mrs. Juno Sitting down again. I wish you hadn’t given me such a shock about him; for I haven’t been treating him at all well. Neither have you.
Gregory Relapsing into his seat, overwhelmed. And you mean to tell me you’re not a widow!
Mrs. Juno Gracious, no! I’m not in black.
Gregory Then I have been behaving like a blackguard. I have broken my promise to my mother. I shall never have an easy conscience again.
Mrs. Juno I’m sorry. I thought you knew.
Gregory You thought I was a libertine?
Mrs. Juno No: of course I shouldn’t have spoken to you if I had thought that. I thought you liked me, but that you knew, and would be good.
Gregory Stretching his hands towards her breast. I thought the burden of being good had fallen from my soul at last. I saw nothing there but a bosom to rest on: the bosom of a lovely woman of whom I could dream without guilt. What do I see now?
Mrs. Juno Just what you saw before.
Gregory Despairingly. No, no.
Mrs. Juno What else?
Gregory Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted: Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted.
Mrs. Juno They won’t if they hold their tongues. Don’t be such a coward. My husband won’t eat you.
Gregory I’m not afraid of your husband. I’m afraid of my conscience.
Mrs. Juno Losing patience. Well! I don’t consider myself at all a badly behaved woman; for nothing has passed between us that was not perfectly nice and friendly; but really! to hear a grown-up man talking about promises to his mother!⁠—
Gregory Interrupting her. Yes, yes: I know all about that. It’s not romantic: it’s not Don Juan: it’s not advanced; but we feel it all the same. It’s far deeper in our blood and bones than all the romantic stuff. My father got into a scandal once: that was why my mother made me promise never to make love to a married woman. And now I’ve done it I can’t feel honest. Don’t pretend to despise me or laugh at me. You feel it too. You said just now that your own conscience was uneasy when you thought of your husband. What must it be when you think of my wife?
Mrs. Juno Rising aghast. Your wife!!! You don’t dare sit there and tell me coolly that you’re a married man!
Gregory I never led you to believe I was unmarried.
Mrs. Juno Oh! You never gave me the faintest hint that you had a wife.
Gregory I did indeed. I discussed things with you that only married people really understand.
Mrs. Juno Oh!!
Gregory I thought it the most delicate way of letting you know.
Mrs. Juno Well, you are a daisy, I must say. I suppose that’s vulgar; but really! really!! You and your goodness! However, now we’ve found one another out there’s only one thing to be done. Will you please go.
Gregory Rising slowly. I ought to go.
Mrs. Juno Well, go.
Gregory Yes. Er⁠—He tries to go. I⁠—I somehow can’t. He sits down again helplessly. My conscience is active: my will is paralyzed. This is really dreadful. Would you mind ringing the bell and asking them to throw me out? You ought to, you know.
Mrs. Juno What! make a scandal in the face of the whole hotel! Certainly not. Don’t be a fool.
Gregory Yes; but I can’t go.
Mrs. Juno Then I can. Goodbye.
Gregory Clinging to her hand. Can you really?
Mrs. Juno Of course I⁠—She wavers. Oh, dear! They contemplate one another helplessly. I can’t. She sinks on the lounge, hand in hand with him.
Gregory For heaven’s sake pull yourself together. It’s a question of self-control.
Mrs. Juno Dragging her hand away and retreating to the end of the chesterfield. No: it’s a question of distance. Self-control is all very well two or three yards off, or on a ship, with everybody looking on. Don’t come any nearer.
Gregory This is a ghastly business. I want to go away; and I can’t.
Mrs. Juno