 | Tristan de Léonois |  |
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ACT I
Scene
The Hall of the Castle of Tintagel.King Mark and Queen Yseult la Belle sit side by side on their thrones.
Brangaena sits on the steps of the Queen's throne.
The feast is over; the Cornish Nobles still sit at the long tables.
A Bard with oak-wreath and a great harp recoils before the forbidding hand of Yseult, who, with drooped head, yet silences his lay.
King Mark.
You will not listen? Autumn evening-tide
Is pensive for its music—very heavy
At heart are autumn evenings. Will you not listen?
Yseult.
No!
[There is a long silence.
. . . Let autumn rouse to winter! What have songs
To do with the unleasing branches? Rouse
The jest! Light up, light up!
Bring in a fool!
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Ah, to be adverse to your will for ever!
I cannot give command
For Triolet to come;
I cannot say to the grave, Make mirth, restore
Our Triolet of France to ring his bells,
And draw his flock behind him, wheresoever
His tinkle find its pasture.
Triolet
Is gone!
Will you not listen?
Yseult.
No!
Mark.
Then bring the chess-boards!
(To Yseult.)
I will win our game.
Cries.
Chess-boards! Ay, ay, the royal game!
Yseult.
Your king—
Can I check him, can I ever check your king?
Mark.
Lights, and the board!
[They begin to play. Duke Audret enters. There is silence, and the sound of the pieces as they are moved. After a while the King laughs.
Your knight is gone!
[The Queen plays on languidly. After making one of her moves, she clasps her head with her arms and yawns. Then with sudden and sharp animation she makes another move.
Yseult.
Check to your king, my King!
Mark.
This castle, ah, this castle ... Were you blind?
Lord of Tintagel, to my aid
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[Yseult again clasps her head round with her arms and yawns. Brangaena rises and listens.
The squires outside are noisy.
Yseult.
'Tis some beggar,
Or some wild creature in their midst. Ha, ha!
Your cruel squires . . .
But these are merry games,
Where there are shouts!
Cries.
Hue! hue! Whoop, whoop! Hue, hue!
Yseult
(rising).
Brangaena, listen,
A hue and cry! Whoop, whoop!
Mark.
It spoils the game.
Reprove them, Audret.
Yseult.
Hark—
The sound of little bells that ride aloft,
Like bubbles on a cataract.
Cries.
Whoop, whoop!
Fool . . . Rap his ears—
His pate!
Whip him—and soundly!
The bladder-skin, beat out his squeals.
Hoy, hoy!
Whoop! whoop! The clown, the ugly clown!
The gipsy!
The solemn otter!
Ha, ha, ha!
[A Fool, fighting his way among blows and jeers, is precipitated into the hall.
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Protection!
Mark.
Of the king's sceptre, since the jester's cannot
Subdue the people?
(To Yseult.)
Here is company,
Here your desire.
Now will the evening speed
As Christmas-time . . .
More lights about the Queen!
Cheer, cheer!
A carpet for the fool!
A cloak!
His rags will shame us.
Dignity must wait
On such portentous wrinkles . . .
Not even ocean
Digs brown sand in such curves.
Yseult.
Ha, ha, I never
Beheld a thing so laughable. Ha, ha!
He fixes me!
Audret.
With otter eyes.
Yseult.
An otter,
A hunted, old dog-otter!
Ha, ha, ha!
Brangaena, this great fool is worth a thousand
Of little Monsieur Triolet de France . . .
Eyes—but these hunted things have eyes indeed!
Mark.
Friend, you are welcome!
The Fool.
Sire,
Noble and good among all kings of earth,
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Alas,
My folly! Can I run away from tears . . .
Or can I fly my folly?
[He lays his face on his arm and weeps. With a sudden convulsive movement his bells tinkle; as if warned, he gets up and makes obeisance.
God protect you,
Good Sire of Cornwall!
God protect you, lady!
Mark.
Friend, tell us what should bring you to Tintagel?
Truth, fool!
Fool.
Yseult the Queen!
Yseult.
I—for this hair's sake?
[She holds out a glittering fold of her tresses.
Fool.
Gold of the sun, for that—
Lords, all must know
How I have loved the Queen.
[Close to Mark, and making the gestures with his hands of one who bargains.
I have a sister,
A beautiful, dark sister, cloaked and hooded
In raven hair—wild sloes her blackest eyes,
And love a bloom, a dimness on them—love
For Mark the King of Cornwall.
She is named
Brunhilda, she is dark and beautiful.
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But my Burgundian sister I will barter
For your Yseult, out of pure love and duty.
Swift! Make exchange!
Yseult.
Close with his bargain, Sire!
Take Brunhild, give Yseult to the brown fool,
That she may count his wrinkles in a month,
And his grimaces in a whole year's time.
Wife of a Fool—my part!
[She laughs. The Fool advances with outstretched hand.
Mark
(laughing bitterly).
And if I give her,
What would you do with her, where take her, Fool?
The Fool.
Yonder between the zenith and the clouds—
They for her floor, the blue height for her roof—
In that large space through which the sun takes air,
As in his garden and own solitude,
Where are no winds to make their quarrel, thither
I will lead up the Queen, and ask the sun
Gift of a crystal chamber, walled with roses
In tapestry of summer, full of light,
When Dawn plays on the crystal and the roses
The music of her freshness.
Mark.
My royal lady,
No singing of my minstrels charmed your ear—
So for your punishment a fool turns poet;
And you must hear who clamoured for a fool.
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Brangaena, in the fields of Ireland often
We saw that country.
Brangaena.
O sweet Queen, a country
We found when the tall grass had buried us
In spires and clover . . . ah!
Mark.
The prattling jester,
He loves his words and decks them bravely out.
Cries.
Oh, a good fool! Dwell with us at Tintagel!
Mark.
Friend, what assurance have you that my lady
Will follow you up yonder? You are wizen
And hideous . . .
(To the Courtiers.)
Look, what see you to commend?
Yseult.
His eyes—he plucked them from some sad, wild creature
Under writhed forest-bark. . . .
[The Fool comes close to her impulsively.
Brangaena.
Fool, even by your eyes,
Why should my lady follow?
The Fool.
Why?
Because I have accomplished for her sake
Many a labour, many a deed of glory,
Many a deed of daring, and for her
I have become a fool . . . for her am mad . . .
A fool!
Mark.
Who art thou?
The Fool.
Tristan, I am Tristan,
He who so loved the Queen, who loves her yet,
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You know, you all must know that I am Tristan!
[He leads the laugh that runs round the hall. Mark joins in it, glancing wrathfully at Yseult, who gives one sigh, as if a viol had been struck; then, flushing with wrath, starts to her feet.
Yseult.
Go, wretched fool, creature of evil, go!
Who brought him in?
Out from my presence—Mark,
Out from your presence send him.
Mark.
Softly, Queen!
You cried aloud for jests—this is the jest.
Now be you merry as at Christmastide!
Deny not to the fool his privilege
To tongue whatever folly lifts the heart
By laughter and derision into ease.
With fools we play the fool.
The Fool.
Do you remember,
How, dying of the venom that I took
From Morhout's sword, I landed on your shore,
Faint, with my harp, and how you healed my anguish,
And healed me into health? . . . Do you remember, Queen?
Yseult.
Hunt him away—out from my sight with him!
[The Fool chases the Nobles and Squires to the door.
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Out of my sight!
Dolts, wiseacres, leave me to use my hour
With Queen Yseult. I am come to love the Queen.
Grant me her privacy.
[The King laughs. Yseult, red with deeper wrath, stamps her foot.
Yseult.
Sire, hunt him out,
As he was hunted in. Let him be lashed and torn.
Mark.
Softly—a woman must not blench from light
Of drollery and wit.
The Fool
(more passionately).
O Queen Yseult,
Do you remember, when you laid the splinter,
You found in Morhout's skull—your kinsman's skull—
Against my mutilated sword, and lo,
It fitted close and you beheld me Tristan,
And raised my sword to kill, but did not kill me?
I was a wondrous knight!
Do you remember, Queen?
Yseult.
Cursed be the mariners of Cornwall, cursed,
Who brought you to this shore and did not throw you
To the rolling quiet of mid-sea. My curse!
[The whole room is gathered round with strenuous attention, broken every now and then by a malicious laugh.
The Fool.
Do you remember, Queen? . . .
[Yseult descends the steps of the Throne, taking Brangaena's hand.
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Teller of tales,
What is there to remember in vain dreams?
In prattle of delusion? Yesternight
You drank too deep—and it is drunkenness
That spins for us these tales.
The Fool
(with more passionate accents).
True! I am drunk,
And of such draught, that never of its frenzy
My heart-throbs will be stayed.
O Queen Yseult,
Do you forget that noon on the mid-sea,
That mid-May noon, so warm and beautiful,
When you were thirsty? Daughter of a King,
Do you forget? We drank from the same cup;
We drank, and ever has the fatal glory
Astounded me, as planet-struck. O Queen,
Do you not yet remember
—what we drank?
[Yseult has been leaning on Brangaena and gazing at the Fool with wide, terrified eyes. At his last appeal she hides her head in her mantle and breaks from Brangaena. But the King, holding her ermine cloak, draws her back and seats her again at his side.
Mark.
Wait, wait, a little, fair, impatient one!
We will set fooling to another tune;
Or where is our festivity, where Christmas,
Where is the red-lit winter?
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Your trade?
The Fool.
To serve great kings.
Mark.
And can you hunt
With dogs and with gyr-falcons?
Fool.
As I will!
With traps I capture swans and geese and doves
Of the wild-wood; with harriers in the cloud
I run the cranes and herons.
[All laugh.
Mark.
When you fish
What do you draw out of the freshets, brother?
The Fool.
Wolves of the night, great wood-bears; and my falcons
Drop goats before me, foxes and specked does;
My hawks run hares to ground: and I can brew
Herb-broths, and tune the harp and sing in tune.
I can love queens—defend myself, with staff,
As you have seen to-day, and tell you tales.
Heigh for my sceptre!
It can rouse slow blood.
Wake laggards . . .
Up, ye Cornish Lords, to hunt!
You have already eaten—I have livened
Your long repose—Up, men! . . .
The bells, the bells, the bells!
Let out your hounds to echo them!
Mark.
Brave fool!
To hunt—the trail lies well.
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Sire, as you ride
I would ride with you and would somewhat say.
[The Fool noisily drives all out, and descends the steps.
Mark.
Seek me!—Yseult, this hour of bitterness
You roused, and I in vengeance kept awake,
May God forgive! Let us forgive each other.
Seek rest—as I the holy dusk and dew
Through which I track the wolf. I am ashamed
Your lash could make me heat your cheeks. Forgive!
Yseult.
I could not longer
Have listened to these follies; I am weary.
I suffer, Mark!
Mark.
The evening give you grace,
Its grace!
Yseult.
Farewell, my lord!
Mark.
Farewell, poor Queen.
Repose—forget! We were feasting—we are men.
[He kisses her brow and turns away. The Fool on the steps, leading down to the passage, watches with lit eyes. As the King passes he leaves the steps, doffs and shows a bare head.
Fool, if she call, no more of thy chimeras;
No more that name be mentioned to the Queen.
Amuse her with some tale of love—
Some debonair, gay plot. Serve me.
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(kissing his hand to the King).
Hunt first!
[The King and his following go out. Suddenly the Fool, covering his face with his hands, sinks a heap on the steps of the great hall that descends into the passage. Yseult is in Brangaena's arms.
Yseult.
Why was I born? It is a bitter thing
When life is dust and ashes and yet lives
Beheld and laughed across.
Would this veil were
The stirless pall of death, laid over, over!
There was—where is he . . .
That fool, wry monster, twisted in a cross?
Brangaena, in ill-hour he came within:
He is a mage, enchanter, divinator:
He knows what you and I and—Tristan only
Can know; by magic and by lot he knows.
I am undone. I perish . . . fall in ruins!
Brangaena.
O loved, but if
It should in truth be Tristan . . .
Yseult.
Tristan—that!
He has a brow the light makes shadow on,
And hair as ruddy and as full of leaf
As beech-leaves when they crisp and cling in frost.
This counterfeit of devils,
This hideous creature, Tristan!
But God curse him;
Cursed be the hour that he was born, and cursed
The ship that sailed him nor with warping timbers
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Of my enchantment rolls!
Brangaena.
The mad magician
May be a chosen messenger from Tristan.
Yseult.
From Tristan who has blabbed, and told what noon
Covered in cloth of gold, as a great harp
Is covered from corrosion. Vile the lips
That chirp what the great covered harp withholds!
Brangaena.
Perchance to win your credence,
Secrets are told—
Yseult.
I do not think as you.
Nothing reminded me of life, no pressure
Or storm of the olden ages drove upon me;
Nothing but wonder like the pain of death.
[She groans repeatedly.
But find him—learn if any recollection
Leap in you as you question him.
[Hearing voices the Fool has raised his head, and listens with a face full of despair; as Brangaena comes down the steps to him, he drops his staff and bells, that roll down the steps, tinkling faerily.
The Fool.
Brangaena,
Brangaena, frank, adored, Brangaena, listen;
Pity me, by the love of God!
Brangaena
(seized with panic).
What fiend
Taught you my name—a hell-burnt, hideous fool?
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Long have I known it. By my head once ruddy,
Unless my reason with my hair was sheared,
'Tis you who are the cause of all my sorrow,
Through you I am a madman and a fool.
Was it not you that failed to guard the philtre
I drank upon the sea, that Yseult tasted,
That was her mother's bride-gift to King Mark?
Yseult, my life, my death—you gave us wine
Of love to drink—then gave yourself a victim,
A sacrifice vowed to atone your crime.
Do you no more remember?
[He has risen up and sets his eyes on her burningly.
Brangaena
(with a shriek of terror).
No!
[She turns and runs up the steps. He follows her precipitately.
The Fool.
Have pity, pity!
Yseult—
[He finds himself facing Yseult. Brangaena falls at her feet, hiding her face. He opens his arms wide, as if to clasp the Queen to his breast; but, shamefaced and wrung with agony, she recoils. He trembles and retreats towards the wall by the door, against which he supports himself.
I have lived too long! Yseult denies me—
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She hears not, feels not, as the blind, who know
The flower by scent, the flower by touch; who know
The stranger by his breathing, and the friend
By the familiar breathing, as a power
Of the air coming forward.
Ah, the blind
Are fearless; ah, the blind
Are sure—Yseult rejects me!
[He advances again.
If you loved—
Yseult
(creeping near him).
I doubt; I cannot tell . . .
I do not know you, Tristan.
The Fool.
Queen Yseult,
I am Tristan—he that has so loved you, Queen!
(With new energy.)
Do you remember the false chamberlain
Snowed flour between my bed and the King's couch,
A lance-length severed, where you lay alone,
And the lance-length I leapt—our hearts were joined:
But my fresh wound burst sudden, bled its drops
Upon your sheet, upon the mealy boards,
Betraying us to death!
Yseult
(she draws near, fascinated).
And Tristan pleaded
On his proud knees for me . . . His face was level
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While little waves of anguish moved his lips. . . .
The Fool.
And then the King
Repented him of fire as instrument
To punish your offence and cast you forth
Among his lepers? . . . Nay, forget, forget!
Let me not see that memory on your face . . .
Think how you laid your head upon my body—
Your golden head, and I its pillow—
The evening I had rescued you. Forget
The unbearable! . . .
Yseult.
That Tristan took a wife.
The Fool.
Virgin she is, God pardon me! This ring
Fell to the ground upon my marriage-night. . . .
Yseult.
The ring—the ring of jasper, the green ring!
[She opens her arms wide.
Thine! Take me, Tristan!
[He enfolds her silently—then, after a while he speaks in his own natural voice, with uncontorted face, beautiful under its dark stain.
Tristan.
Love, what of the ring?
A dog—old Husdent—
Had known me of his instinct; but a semblance
Checked you . . . ah, woman, woman! . . . and a ring
Contents your unbelief, a bare, green stone.
Yseult.
It may be all enchantment, all illusion;
But by my vow that when I saw this ring,
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Of wisdom or of folly should be done—
On my soul's faith, if this be wise or foolish—
You see me—take me, Tristan!
[She falls in swoon on his breast. He kisses her eyes and her face, till she revives and smiles to his smile.
Tristan.
Not to know
Love in his very person! If the god
Of heaven comes as the lightning, as a Fool
Comes the great Lord of Jove. After wild Love
Men raise their hue and cry. He fills the ears
Of the beloved with eddies, with the sound
Of love as of a sea that tosses wrecks,
Where all is madness: and he comes half-white,
Half-black, with jangling pulses, all the air
And every current surging to the throb
Of frenzied bells—and when he looks like hatred
He is most Love, most god-like; when despised,
He thinks of the old spheres he tuned at first,
That are the worlds.
Have you wept for me, Yseult?
I have not wept; I sicken
And waste away. My death is very near;
I shall not come again.
A nightingale
I drew you, after parting, to the orchard;
My anguish, like a thread, guided your steps
To our trysting-fir.
Then for three years I wandered;
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I feigned myself a leper. You had listened
To tales that I had fled an enemy,
Conjured to stand in your all-hallowed name—
And when I asked you alms, beneath the leper
You saw me and refused me, and at last
Broke in a laugh that shattered me as levin
The doomed hearth it has struck.
Yseult.
That laugh! O Tristan,
Within the church I fell upon the pavement,
My arms cross-stretched.
Tristan.
You knew me as the bird
Of love; you knew me as the death-in-life
Of love, even as a leper. When I came
For the last time, a Fool, you gave no sign.
Yseult.
I kept my vow of love—the ring, the ring!
To you, O Love. . . .
Tristan.
I promised on saints' bones,
Laid on God's shrine, your father and your mother,
That loyally I would bear you over sea
To Mark of Cornwall . . . and that oath was vain.
This little ring has held.
Yseult
(in a low breath).
A virgin still!
She is not wife—ah!
[She lets her breath pass freely.
Strain me to your heart,
And let our hearts be broken in their mould,
And we be joined for ever. Lead me, Tristan,
Away, away to the Islands of the Blest,
To the country where the song is never ended
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Return, where we shall be. Do you remember—
It was your promise when the sparrows twittered,
And when the wall of air broke down with dawn,
And Tristan in the orchard from Yseult
Was driven away?
Tristan.
I said it was no sun
That lighted the alternate blocks of blue
And grey that build Tintagel.
Yseult.
Tristan, Tristan!
No more to part!
Tristan.
I soon will hold my promise.
Have we not drunk all joy, all misery?
The cup is nearly void, the time approaches
When this deep prophecy within my spirit
Comes to its term; and when I call, Yseult,
Will you be ready? Will you come, Yseult?
Yseult.
Tristan, my faith! You know that I shall come.
Your hands, your hands—the ring!
Tristan.
Your tremulous lips,
Dearer than any faith a ring can plight!
Yseult.
Your eyes—what sorrow
And yet content—their love is so entire!
You never seemed to look at anything
Save me you held within them. But your hair,
My glory—gone, gone!
Tristan.
Paid away—red gold
To buy this moment.
Yseult.
And your paleness covered. . . .
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A gipsy stain for this mad wayfaring.
Yseult.
Tristan, your voice—its nearness! Very far
Are other voices. I could sob with wonder
To have beside my ear deliciousness
Of such warm shock. . . . To-night, to-night be ours!
Tristan.
Ah, if to-night . . . one parts more utterly
If one must part at dawn.
Death, death, O death!
To drink the very soul in her, then part—
Better the jangled bells of folly, better
A jester's laugh! Alas, for us!
Brangaena
(who has been watching by the door. throws up her arms).
The King!
Mark enters with his following, Audret at his side.
Audret.
You see—they sever!
Here is the proof. My life on this disguise.
He is no Fool.
[Tristan throws back his hood, shows his shaved head and contorted features.
Tristan.
Old Fool, I am no Fool!
I am Sir Tristan, Tristan de Léonois.
The Queen has heard my suit. She is a gentle,
Fond Queen! Fair Lords, to-night I shall embrace her.
Do you not know she loves me? Ha, ha, ha!
Sir King, I thank you . . . Ha, ha, ha!
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Arrest him!
He shall be punished for this insolence.
I bade him never more to name that name.
Tristan
(springing through them as they advance to lay hands on him).
She named the name, not I.
Fair Lords, you chase me;
Fair King, you would condemn me to the lash—
Why, why? I tell you she is won. To-night
I shall embrace her, and I go
Far, far away to set in readiness
The glassy house that I have promised her,
The roses, red as blood against the sun,
The crystal kindling.
Mark.
Hunt him from the castle!
He is a Fool indeed, but to our service
Intractable.
Cries.
Hoy, hoy! Hue, hue! Whoop, whoop!
Whoop and away. Hue, hue!
[Tristan leaps down the steps, snatches up his staff to defend himself, rings his bells, and points upward.
Tristan.
She follows me between the sky and clouds.
[The Squires draw back from his blows and begin to laugh: he joins their laughter. Without haste, and kissing his hand back to them, he dances off.
Mark
(to Yseult).
What is this Fool—what did he say?
Yseult.
He dances—
Look, dances still . . . What is he? O my lord,
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Marc, in an evil hour he came to us.
My head . . . oh, weary, aching! . . .
I have heard follies and am dazed. I know not. . . .
Mark.
Brangaena, help! We will support the Queen,
And you shall couch her.
Let no sound be made!
No sound within the castle! . . . Hush!
[The laughter ceases near and then far.
| Tristan de Léonois | |