The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays by Gordon Bottomley et al. (best books to read .TXT) 📕

for the rest of his life—force him to remain a mere knave, forever.

POMPDEBILE. You are right.

KNAVE. Terrible as this punishment is, I admit that I deserve it,
Your Majesty.

POMPDEBILE. What prompted you to commit this dastardly crime?

KNAVE. All my life I have had a craving for tarts of any kind. There is something in my nature that demands tarts—something in my constitution that cries out for them—and I obey my constitution as rigidly as does the Chancellor seek to obey his. I was in the garden reading, as is my habit, when a delicate odor floated to my nostrils, a persuasive odor, a seductive, light brown, flaky odor, an odor so enticing, so suggestive of tarts fit for the gods—- that I could stand it no longer. It was stronger than I. With one gesture I threw reputation, my chances for future happiness, to the winds, and leaped through the window. The odor led me to the oven; I seized a tart, and, eating it, experienced the one perfect moment of my existence. After having eaten that one tart, my craving for other tarts has disappeared. I shall live with the memory of that first tart before me forever, or die content, having tasted true perfection.

POMPDEBILE. M-m-m, how extraordinary! Let him be beaten fifteen strokes on the back. Now, Pastry Cooks to the Royal Household, we await your decision!

(The COOKS bow as before; then each selects a tart from the tray on the table, lifts it high, then puts it in his mouth. An expression of absolute ecstasy and beatitude comes over their faces. They clasp hands, then fall on each other's necks, weeping.)

POMPDEBILE (impatiently). What on earth is the matter?

YELLOW HOSE. Excuse our emotion. It is because we have at last encountered a true genius, a great master, or rather mistress, of our art.

(They bow to VIOLETTA.)

POMPDEBILE. They are good, then?

BLUE HOSE (his eyes to heaven). Good! They are angelic!

POMPDEBILE. Give one of the tarts to us. We would sample it.

(The PASTRY COOKS hand the tray to the KING, who selects a tart and eats it.)

POMPDEBILE (to VIOLETTA). My dear, they are marvels! marvels! (He comes down from the throne and leads VIOLETTA up to the dais.) Your throne, my dear.

VIOLETTA (sitting down, with a sigh). I'm glad it's such a comfortable one.

POMPDEBILE. Knave, we forgive your offense. The temptation was very great. There are things that mere human nature cannot be expected to resist. Another tart, Cooks, and yet another!

CHANCELLOR. But, Your Majesty, don't eat them all. They must go to the museum with the dishes of the previous Queens of Hearts.

YELLOW HOSE. A museum—those tarts! As well lock a rose in a money-box!

CHANCELLOR. But the constitution commands it. How else can we commemorate, for future generations, this event?

KNAVE. An Your Majesty, please, I will commemorate it in a rhyme.

POMPDEBILE. How can a mere rhyme serve to keep this affair in the minds of the people?

KNAVE. It is the only way to keep it in the minds of the people. No event is truly deathless unless its monument be built in rhyme. Consider that fall which, though insignificant in itself, became the most famous of all history, because someone happened to put it into rhyme. The crash of it sounded through centuries and will vibrate for generations to come.

VIOLETTA. You mean the fall of the Holy Roman Empire?

KNAVE. No, Madam, I refer to the fall of Humpty Dumpty.

POMPDEBILE. Well, make your rhyme. In the meantime let us celebrate. You may all have one tart. (The PASTRY COOKS pass the tarts. To VIOLETTA) Are you willing, dear, to ride the white palfrey garlanded with flowers through the streets of the city?

VIOLETTA. Willing! I have been practising for days!

POMPDEBILE. The people, I suppose, are still clamoring at the gates.

VIOLETTA. Oh, yes, they must clamor. I want them to. Herald, tell them that to every man I shall toss a flower, to every woman a shining gold piece, but to the babies I shall throw only kisses, thousands of them, like little winged birds. Kisses and gold and roses! They will surely love me then!

CHANCELLOR. Your Majesty, I protest. Of what possible use to the people—?

POMPDEBILE. Be quiet. The Queen may scatter what she pleases.

KNAVE. My rhyme is ready, Your Majesty.

POMPDEBILE. Repeat it.

KNAVE.

  The Queen of Hearts
  She made some tarts
  All on a summer's day.
  The Knave of Hearts
  He stole those tarts
  And took them quite away.

  The King of Hearts
  Called for those tarts
  And beat the Knave full sore.
  The Knave of Hearts
  Brought back the tarts
  And vowed he'd sin no more.

VIOLETTA (earnestly). My dear Knave, how wonderful of you! You shall be Poet Laureate. A Poet Laureate has no social position, has he?

KNAVE. It depends, Your Majesty, upon whether or not he chooses to be more laureate than poet.

VIOLETTA (rising, her eyes closed in ecstasy). Your
Majesty! Those words go to my head—like wine!

KNAVE. Long live Pompdebile the Eighth, and Queen Violetta!

(The trumpets sound.)

HERALDS. Make way for Pompdebile the Eighth, and Queen Violetta!

VIOLETTA (excitedly). Vee-oletta, please!

HERALDS. Make way for Pompdebile the Eighth, and Queen Vee-oletta—

(The KING and QUEEN show themselves at the door—and the people can be heard clamoring outside.)

[CURTAIN] FAME AND THE POET[1]

Lord Dunsany

[Footnote 1: Reprinted from the Atlantic Monthly for June, 1919, by special permission of Lord Dunsany and the editors of the Atlantic Monthly.]

SCENE: The Poet's rooms in London. Windows in back. A high screen in a corner.

TIME: February 30th.

CHARACTERS

HARRY DE REVES.—A Poet.

(This name, though of course of French origin, has become anglicized and is pronounced DE REEVES.)

DICK PRATTLE.—A Lieutenant-Major of the Royal Horse Marines.

FAME.

(The POET is sitting at a table, writing. Enter DICK PRATTLE.)

PRATTLE. Hullo, Harry.

DE REVES. Hullo, Dick. Good Lord, where are you from?

PRATTLE (casually). The ends of the Earth.

DE REVES. Well, I'm damned!

PRATTLE. Thought I'd drop in and see how you were getting on.

DE REVES. Well, that's splendid. What are you doing in London?

PRATTLE. Well, I wanted to see if I could get one or two decent ties to wear,—you can get nothing out there,—then I thought I'd have a look and see how London was getting on.

DE REVES. Splendid! How's everybody?

PRATTLE. All going strong.

DE REVES. That's good.

PRATTLE. (seeing paper and ink). But what are you doing?

DE REVES. Writing.

PRATTLE. Writing? I didn't know you wrote.

DE REVES. Yes, I've taken to it rather.

PRATTLE. I say—writing's no good. What do you write?

DE REVES. Oh, poetry.

PRATTLE. Poetry? Good Lord!

DE REVES. Yes, that sort of thing, you know.

PRATTLE. Good Lord! Do you make any money by it?

DE REVES. No. Hardly any.

PRATTLE. I say—why don't you chuck it?

DE REVES. Oh, I don't know. Some people seem to like my stuff, rather. That's why I go on.

PRATTLE. I'd chuck it if there's no money in it.

DE REVES. Ah, but then it's hardly in your line, is it? You'd hardly approve of poetry if there was money in it.

PRATTLE. Oh, I don't say that. If I could make as much by poetry as I can by betting I don't say I wouldn't try the poetry touch, only—

DE REVES. Only what?

PRATTLE. Oh, I don't know. Only there seems more sense in betting, somehow.

DE REVES. Well, yes. I suppose it's easier to tell what an earthly horse is going to do, than to tell what Pegasus—

PRATTLE. What's Pegasus?

DE REVES. Oh, the winged horse of poets.

PRATTLE. I say! You don't believe in a winged horse, do you?

DE REVES. In our trade we believe in all fabulous things. They all represent some large truth to turn us. An emblem like Pegasus is as real a thing to a poet as a Derby winner would be to you.

PRATTLE. I say. (Give me a cigarette. Thanks.) What? Then you'd believe in nymphs and fauns, and Pan, and all those kind of birds?

DE REVES. Yes. Yes. In all of them.

PRATTLE. Good Lord!

DE REVES. You believe in the Lord Mayor of London, don't you?

PRATTLE. Yes, of course; but what has—

DE REVES. Four million people or so made him Lord Mayor, didn't they? And he represents to them the wealth and dignity and tradition of—

PRATTLE. Yes; but, I say, what has all this—

DE REVES. Well, he stands for an idea to them, and they made him
Lord Mayor, and so he is one….

PRATTLE. Well, of course he is.

DE REVES. In the same way Pan has been made what he is by millions; by millions to whom he represents world-old traditions.

PRATTLE. (rising from his chair and stepping backwards, laughing and looking at the POET in a kind of assumed wonder). I say…. I say…. You old heathen … but Good Lord….

(He bumps into the high screen behind, pushing it back a little.)

DE REVES. Look out! Look out!

PRATTLE. What? What's the matter?

DE REVES. The screen!

PRATTLE. Oh, sorry, yes. I'll put it right.

(He is about to go round behind it.)

DE REVES. No, don't go round there.

PRATTLE. What? Why not?

DE REVES. Oh, you wouldn't understand.

PRATTLE. Wouldn't understand? Why, what have you got?

DE REVES. Oh, one of those things…. You wouldn't understand.

PRATTLE. Of course I'd understand. Let's have a look. (The POET walks toward PRATTLE and the screen. He protests no further. PRATTLE looks round the corner of the screen.) An altar.

DE REVES. (removing the screen altogether). That is all. What do you make of it?

(An altar of Greek design, shaped like a pedestal, is revealed. Papers litter the floor all about it.)

PRATTLE. I say—you always were an untidy devil.

DE REVES. Well, what do you make of it?

PRATTLE. It reminds me of your room at Eton.

DE REVES. My room at Eton?

PRATTLE. Yes, you always had papers all over your floor.

DE REVES. Oh, yes—

PRATTLE. And what are these?

DE REVES. All these are poems; and this is my altar to Fame.

PRATTLE. To Fame?

DE REVES. The same that Homer knew.

PRATTLE. Good Lord!

DE REVES. Keats never saw her. Shelley died too young. She came late at the best of times, now scarcely ever.

PRATTLE. But, my dear fellow, you don't mean that you think there really is such a person?

DE REVES. I offer all my songs to her.

PRATTLE. But you don't mean you think you could actually see Fame?

DE REVES. We poets personify abstract things, and not poets only but sculptors and painters too. All the great things of the world are those abstract things.

PRATTLE. But what I mean is they're not really there, like you or me.

DE REVES. To us these things are more real than men, they outlive generations, they watch the passing of Kingdoms: we go by them like dust; they are still here, unmoved, unsmiling.

PRATTLE. But, but, you can't think that you could see
Fame, you don't expect to see it.

DE REVES. Not to me. Never to me. She of the golden trumpet and
Greek dress will never appear to me…. We all have our dreams.

PRATTLE. I say—what have you been doing all day?

DE REVES. I? Oh, only writing a sonnet.

PRATTLE. Is it a long one?

DE REVES. Not very.

PRATTLE. About how long is it?

DE REVES. About fourteen lines.

PRATTLE (impressively). I tell you what it is.

DE REVES. Yes?

PRATTLE. I tell you what. You've been overworking yourself. I once got like that on board the Sandhurst, working for the passing-out exam. I got so bad that I could have seen anything.

DE REVES. Seen anything?

PRATTLE. Lord, yes: horned pigs, snakes with wings, anything, one of your winged horses even. They gave me some stuff called bromide for it. You take a rest.

DE REVES. But my dear fellow, you don't understand at all. I merely said that abstract things are to a poet as near and real and visible as one of your bookmakers or barmaids.

PRATTLE. I know. You take a rest.

DE REVES. Well, perhaps I will. I'd come