University of Virginia Library

ACT II

Scene: The stage of the Grosvenor Theatre, set for the first act of “Troilus and Cressida.” Warwick Groom as Troilus and Silas Orchard as Pandarus are seated in the entrance to Priam's castle. Each has a bottle of wine and a silver drinking-cup, and Groom is turning over a book of the play.
Abbot, Salerne, Actors and Scene-shifters, at the back and in the wings.
Lady Sumner passes at the back, wringing her hands.
Groom.
Pandar—Prince Pandarus of Troy!—why you,
You are the very spirit of the stage!

Orchard.
You mean the part I play, not me myself.

Groom.
What other meaning could I have? You are
The part you play, and nothing else besides.

Orchard.
Now there you're wrong; I'm very much myself.

Groom.
There's not a dozen actors in the town
Who can be anything but the part they play.
You are a glove, my prince, fit or misfit:
Suave to the fingers like a second skin;
Pushed on with wetted index, grunt, grimace;
Or like the gauntlet of a dwarf that splits
Upon a giant's thumb.

Orchard.
And so are you!

Groom.
So they would make me; but I'll be a hand—
As I have been. This play was made for me—
For Troilus; and I'll have the business changed,
Prince Pandarus of Troy. What kind of ape
Was he that played your Troilus? Heavens!—A glove
Would have rebelled. The whole rehearsed and drilled
For Cressida, Ulysses, Hector, Helen!
And Troilus—in the book at blood-heat—stuck
In the shade to freeze; cut, mangled, hanged, drawn, quartered!
I'll have my lines restored, my scenes rehearsed
According to their import. Pandar, room,
By your leave, for Troilus! Stand, Diomed!
Unmanned abortion, bowelless coward, stand!
Prince Pandarus of Troy, you are the stage,
The inner spirit and the outward man.
For what's the theatre but a splendid bawd—
A little passive recreation pitched
To span the abyss from dinner time till supper;
To season minds of maidens and of wives
With spice of marriage and adultery;
The shoeing-horn of whoredom and the nest
Of cuckolds.

[Abbot comes down with Salerne and several scene-shifters.
Abbot.
Now—

Groom.
Avaunt, Sir Abbot! Fly!

Abbot.
Sir Tristram may be any instant here.
Now, will you go, or must we help you?

Groom.
Go?
Go where?

Abbot.
To your dressing-room.

Groom.
But I am dressed.

Abbot.
The last time:—Will you go?

Groom.
When I have played
My scene.

Abbot.
Quick, men; away with him.

Groom.
[Beating them off with his sword]
Away
With you. D'ye take me for a property,
Thrice sodden shifters? Abbot—friar John,
Go, mop your tonsure. Skip about! Shift, shift,
Inevitable vermin of the stage!

Abbot.
By God, sir, you'll remember this! You cur!

Groom.
You'll not forget it either, business bug!
Your discounts, claims, commissions, premiums—ha!
My unjust steward, we must cork it in,
This honest indignation, righteous bile,
The rancour lacing all our thoughts, or else,
By rent and vent, the lining of our pokes,
Like treacherous entrails, Judas' viscera
To wit, may fundamentally escape,
And leave us poorer than we were before.
Go down—to the box-office!

Abbot.
Thank the lord, Sir Tristram!
Enter Sir Tristram Sumner.
'Twas not my fault, at all; I did my best.
They treated him; he treated them: the wine's
Above the tide-mark, and the fat in the fire.

Sir T.
Orchard?

Orchard.
Oh, very well, Sir Tristram! Off
I go. Send for me if you want me: none
Shall say that Silas Orchard overstayed
His welcome.

[Goes out.
Sir T.
Send a line to Orchard's rooms:
See that the messenger is there before him:
No man in England can play the part like him.
[Abbot and Salerne, etc., go out.
Now what's the matter, Warwick?

Groom.
This gutted play!
You've cut the very things I want to say.
Here in my first scene comes your pruning-hook,
Your harvester, and shears my poppied patch:—
“Her bed is India; there she lies, a pearl”:—
Why man, it's poetry: I want to say it.
Then here—

Sir T.
Yes, yes; but this? Why this? You make
My theatre a pothouse.

Groom.
Pothouse? [Drinks]
Why,
Your theatre's well enough to drink in, Knight.
Knight? Vain, deluded, damned theatrocrat!

Sir T.
What, Warwick! What!

Groom.
An actor knighted! Once
The actor was an artist here in England.
When England in Queen Bess's time became
A world above the world, and felt itself
Adult and masculine, then lightly came
The actor and the act, outside the state,
Authentic and alone.

Sir T.
Enough of that!
We know your fantasies. Will you attempt
The part; or are you spoiled for this time, Warwick?

Groom.
I'll speak this matter out. When plays were damned
By churchmen, and the player a citizen
Of rascaldom on sufferance living only,
Great was the stage, a lover of all life,
The friend of sinners and the home of sin,
A city of refuge for humanity
Escaping from religion and the curses
Of the law; for church and stage are deadly foes;
They can be strong only in enmity;
And both were shrines of art when either shunned
The other, or met in battle: now that they mix,
Illicit lovers and against the lust
Of nature, sterile hybrids mock their couch;
And soon the lofty strain of either ends
In mere abortion. When the monarch set
The lethal signet on the theatre
Of gross respectability, knighting you,
Sir Tristram, and other players unfortunate,
Ranking you in the state with grocers, brewers,
Distillers, lawyers, painters, aldermen,
He dealt a double blow at church and stage
And both are bleeding from the wound.

Sir T.
Why this
To me—me specially?

Groom.
Because you haunt
The clergy, and the clergy fawn on you,
Singling you out: the Bishop of St. James's
Is fast your friend: and nonconformists—Hell!
Have sung your praise in public. I maintain
The stage must stand alone like all things great,
Unspotted of the church, the state, the world.

Sir T.
You try my patience. This is so—all this,
And endless matter to a like intent.

Groom.
But who has grasped the meaning? who perceives
That these luxurious theatres of ours
Are only living graves—the ornate tomb
Of drama?

Sir T.
I perceive it. Hopeful men
Are always digging graves unwittingly;
Cathedrals—noble cenotaphs of faith
Long dead: academies—of plastic art
The tomb; our ancient universities—
The mausoleum and the monument
Of learning; justice in the law-courts buried
Lies most worshipfully; soon our sculptured banks—
To make an end—will be the sepulchre
Of all finance: is not the whole world bankrupt?

Groom.
Turn it to ribaldry! I love the stage,
And hate to see it made the prostitute
Of crafty godliness that's mainly this—
The rancid odour of a worn-out sex.
To see the stage that should be sweet, humane,
More tolerant than art, freer than sin—
Let me say sin to mean all human scope,
The utmost license of unbridled mirth,
The noble freedom of the tragic mood,
A perfect liberty of drift and range,
The universal mind and deed of man:
To see the stage corrupted by the church,
Debauched by bland religion, venomous
Betrayer of the spirit; and foul with creed,
The helpless necessary excrement
Wherewith religion sullies everything:
To see this loathsome doom of what I love
Is deadlier to me than blank despair,
Than death and everlasting obloquy.

Sir T.
To me it means the element I use,
For church and stage are dramaturgy both:
The one inspires a happy will to death;
The other floods the soul of man with life.
If you must carp against the stage, attack
The usury that leads it on a chain,
Exploiting all that's base: there's loads of gold
In flattered meannesses; the public pays
To be degraded: easiest escape
Is downward to the abyss; the greasy plank
Requires no effort.

Groom.
Tristram of the times,
The creature of infectious decadence
That triumphs everywhere: a harvest home
Of mellow, putrid autumns; afternoon
And twilight of the state, the church, the stage.
By heaven and earth, the syndicated shows
That pay the big percentages are sweet
Beside a gelded Shakespeare, and the priest
Pronouncing benediction from the stalls!

Sir T.
The decadence is everywhere?—perhaps;
But how should that concern the decadents?
Their function is to hasten the decay.
It has been held, it has been proved that life
Is but the decadence of matter, soul
The decadence of life; now, soul itself,
The parasite that drains the sap of life,
Begins its decadence. But what of that?
We must go through with it.—Come, will you play
Prince Troilus, boy; or, flatly, are you drunk?

Groom.
[Drinks]
I cannot tell; perhaps: I love to drink:
The dingy world becomes a crystal orb
Revealing truth when wine enlightens me—
Truth like a sumptuous vision in a bell
Of dew, a magic bubble blown to film
That melts and bursts, a passion of delight,
A shimmering womb of diverse stains and deep.
By Bacchus and his panthers, I believe
A great career of drunkenness were worth
A man's ambition! Alcohol's as good
As law, the church, the army, or the stage!
Henceforth my business and my art will be
To drink and to be drunken. [Drinks]
Odours faint
Of pallid wayside roses, heavier scents
Of roses of the garden, deeper snares
Of bowls of roses ripe and faded, bowls
Of leaves of roses, faded, dark and sweet,
The last aroma! Clusters of the vine,
Mature, deep-bosomed, umbered with the sun;
Old dregs and essences of happiness,
Of women's pulses wound like springs of steel,
Of sanguine wars, of sinews, swords, of hearts
As hard as nether millstones, burning love
Like molten adamant! Oh, heaven and hell
Are wed and wanton in a cup of wine,
Bouquet and ichor of eternity!
I shall go out and cry it in the streets.

Sir T.
[To the Actors in the wings]
Go with him to his room. Let him drink on
Until he sleeps. That is the end of this.

[Groom goes out, accompanied by the Actors.
Lady S.
[Coming down quickly]
And this the end for us, Sir Tristram. Drink.

Sir T.
[Taking the vial which Lady Sumner offers]
Are you insane? You have not drunk?

Lady S.
Not yet.
Here on your stage we two must die together—
An ever famous tragedy of art
In this uncouth commercial age of ours.
I hear it still: “If Warwick Groom plays Troilus.”
He cannot play it now—poor Warwick Groom!
Ambiguous poison in that “if”; but death
Will end all ambiguity. Tristram, drink.

Sir T.
Your eyes are wandering, pale and beggarly;
Your voice is phantom-like, far off and chill:
Martha, you have gone mad.

Lady S.
We both were mad;
But I am sane at last: I cannot live.
Be sane, and drink.

Sir T.
Not here, not now, not ever.

Lady S.
Not? But defeat is here, is everywhere;
Behind the scenes, in front, and in our hearts.
You promised me a hundred thousand times
You never would survive defeat.

Sir T.
We loved
Each other then; and were you now to say,
“If failure rings the curtain down to-night,
“Let us two, having loved each other well,
“Having discharged ourselves of all our love,
“Die in each other's arms”, I should assent;
Forget these years of dull estrangement; snatch
You off to Venice or Palermo; end
Defeat and triumph, and the world and time
In one superb and golden aftermath,
A full-eared harvest-moon of winnowed love.

Lady S.
Your words are like a smoky gust of heat
Across a wilderness of snow! Shame! shame!

Sir T.
I cannot love where I am not beloved,
And will not die to please an unloved wife.

Lady S.
But I do love you, Tristram! Love you? Oh,
Did I not give you all the love I had?
I love you now with something more than love;
And never shall I rest until my dust,
Cold, senseless, passionless, inanimate,
Divinely rotted into virgin mould,
Is mixed with yours to all eternity.

Sir T.
A deadly love—that has the ring of hate!

Lady S.
It is a kind of hate. I cannot live!
I cannot live! I cannot let you live!
Remember, Tristram, how like frantic beasts
We toiled at love. Oh! . . . Oh! . . . How long I fought
This grinding passion of remorse, how strove
To deem the noxious beautiful! A fan
Against a storm! The wind is up; my boat
Beats on the breakers; all is swamped and lost.

Sir T.
But beauty sanctioned all our frantic love.
Sometimes a moment's nausea—yes, sometimes
I shudder when I think; but hurl it off
Because I know the meaning: I am tired,
Depressed, too solitary; or forget
To eat, absorbed in study: food and wine
Replenish all my powers, and straightway sex
Becomes the purest wonder in the world.

Lady S.
My sex is dead: it dies in women, sex.
I sinned; my life was sin; and since the power
To sin is dead, the sinner must die too.

Sir T.
But I have still the power, the will to sin.

Lady S.
How hateful! Oh, how hateful! Tristram, think!
Failure, defeat, disgrace—certain, to-night:
I see it, feel it, know it; and never yet
Has my delivered mood brought back to me
A lying message. Better instant death!

Sir T.
But fortune came with Gervase—so you said.

Lady S.
I felt a sudden lifting of despair
When Gervase came; but that was death: he brought
Religion, resignation, denial, death.
Oh, we must die! Conceive what failure means!
Eyes of commiseration, scornful lips,
Emphatic pressure of a pitying hand,
Thrice gracious bows, and triple-hatted shrugs,
Sugared contempt, and rancour heavy-spiced
Must never greet us, Tristram: we must die.
You would not have our special enemy,
The whipper-in of anti-Sumnerites,
In print and prattle triumph nauseously?

Sir T.
A change, by heaven! Are you not she who held
No jargon ever writ or babbled hurt
An artist or an artist's wife?

Lady S.
I did,
Being sick and sore and wounded to the quick:
Who talks of jargon says “my soul is stung”.
The mask is off, Sir Tristram. I'm going to die;
And mean to tell the truth right on from now
Until we drink that draught together. Choose:
A flood of truth about the world and us,
Or death immediately. Let it be death.
The pain it is to me to live! Oh, Tristram!

Sir T.
I mean to live; and so do you. Defeat
Is not so sure: at least, my own success
Is certain always, though the play may fail—
As plays have failed before and will again.

Lady S.
Not this time: you will fail: you will be hissed!

Sir T.
Martha!

Lady S.
I saw and heard: I hear it now.
The long hiss from the gallery like a scourge,
A skilful hiss that flicks the proper sore:
You only, not the play. Your race is run;
Come, be a man and die. After to-night
What life is ours? First, bankruptcy: the court,
Exposure of our choice extravagance,
That seemed so needful to our finer souls;
The sale of our belongings next, friends, foes
Bidding for things that are a part of us:
Oh, I would just as soon walk naked down
The Strand, as have my skirts and linen tossed
And fingered by the women-folk I know!
Give me the poison if you will not drink;
I'll die alone. Give it me, when I ask!
Will you not give it me? And afterwards—
Oh afterwards! The provinces! What said
Poor Warwick? I remember: “Stations, inns
“Provincial companies and theatres,
“The dismallest labyrinth where every step
“Stumbles at skeletons of dead ambitions!”
Give me my vial, Tristram; give it me.

Sir T.
You know the play will fail! you hear that hiss?

Lady S.
Nothing is surer.

Sir T.
Then we must not die,
For should we die we make your vision vain.

Lady S.
How can you jest! Oh, hateful! Oh, unkind!

Sir T.
Not so: I say your augury mistakes;
I challenge you to live and find it false.

Lady S.
You know it is not false. I speak the truth,
Nothing but truth!

Sir T.
Why, then, an intermede!
Had I your maidenhead?

Lady S.
Ah—h—h!

Sir T.
Tell the truth.

Lady S.
Unholy beast! give me the poison, quick!
I want to die; I want to die alone!

Sir T.
That might be well; but not just now, nor here.

Lady S.
I wonder . . . Could I drown myself? Alone?

Sir T.
Salerne! Salerne!
[Goes out.
Re-enter Salerne.
The understudy's dressed?

Salerne.
He is.

Sir T.
And Groom? Asleep?

Salerne.
As sound as Noah.

Sir T.
Have him sent home.

Salerne.
The other principals?

Sir T.
Detain them still. I must rehearse the play.