University of Virginia Library

ACT I

SCENE.—A Room, opening off a Ballroom.
Enter a lady dressed as an Amazon, and a gentleman dressed as a Clown; both masked.
Clown.
Fair warrior, how speed you in a fight,
If all fordone after the second waltz?

Amazon.
My soul is tired of folly, not my limbs.
Good clown, of your light wit enlighten me
Concerning somewhat cloudy.

Clown.
Certainly.
My light wit if it may dispel your night,
Will flaunt as proudly as the sun. Behold!

[Unmasks.
Amazon.
You are too hot. I would not, sir be scorched:
Becloud your beams again. Your eyes burn bright—
Oh!—like the round holes carved in turnip-lamps,
Lit up by boys on witching hallow-e'ens
To fright their sisters and the serving-maids:
I am afraid: clap to the shutters, pray.
[Clown masks.
Now, like the hollowed orbs of the baboon
Your eyes gleam furtively—like rush-lights dim
That steal into the night through secret chinks
Of steep-thatched huts in lonely highland glens.

Clown.
I might enlarge upon the periods
On either side your nose, that put an end
By saucy looks to any parleying
Save that of sharp-edged words: but haste me now
To know the darkness which I must illume.

Amazon.
What wight is he, as gentle Sidney dressed,
Who casts his wit about like pearls—I mean
Like pearl-less oysters, which the crowd accept,
Unskilled or unconcerned, as worth mirth's price,
While you and I perceive them what they are,
Sad fish indeed, old, stale, unsavoury?

Clown.
I've marked him well, but know not who he is:
He seems to be acquaint with comic writers.
Know you the nymph that danced with him but now—
She, with the rosy garland—only hue
About her white robe save her golden hair—
With frank blue eyes that always seem to ring
With peals of fairy laughter, summer's queen?

Enter a gentleman dressed as a Corsair, and a lady dressed as a Contadina; both masked.
Amazon.
Hush!

Clown.
Ah! I noted these in the last waltz.

Amazon.
She's my full cousin; he, a highland one.
I think they be in love.

Enter a gentleman dressed as an Elizabethan Courtier, and a lady dressed to symbolise Summer. After them runs in hurriedly a lady dressed as a Scotch Peasant-girl. They are masked. The Courtier shuts the door and puts his back against it.
Clown.
Our cynosures!

Amazon.
Indeed! Pray, let me out.

Courtier.
Superb she-warrior, rest you here a space:
Nay, frown not, most redoubted amazon:
I have a thing to say: I'll say it now.
That which the world calls folly is my trade,
Unwitting that its trade is only folly.
I neither crave the statesman's rancid fame,
The sailor's vogue, the soldier's red renown,
Nor care I to discover: Africa
Agrees not well with my adventurous sprite;
The negress is not lovely—that's the die:
Nor is the Arctic climate amorous.
I wrote a book—Good lack, the solitude!
But first the woe by which I was confined!
O Luna, of thy tenderness I pray
Let me no more be fructified by woe!
The highway?—Fie on steam and liveried lightning!—
Whate'er I fancy if I may I do.
A happy notion fills me now; give ear,
Gentle and lovely ladies, gentlemen,
Sprightly and handsome. Will you hearken it?
[They assent.
It is my earnest hope to make you mad.—
These gala robes wherein we now are dressed
Why should we cast for good and all to-night,
To don the wintry worldling's dingy slough,
Returning sadly to the chrysalis?
Fashion, propriety, convention?—Tush!
Let us like noble heretics protest
Against all dogmas false and fashionable,
And, if need be, with righteous resignation
Attest our faith in glorious martyrdom,
Tied to opinion's stake, and burned by tongues
Of scandalous fire, blazing from faggot hearts.
Then, gentle friends, since such is our resolve,
We can do nothing nobler than attack
Fashion's mainstay, the discipline of dress.
I swear that you may well with less ado
Worship the sun, keep harems, or, like France
When liberty became beside herself,
Extend the week from seven days to ten—
Yea, set apart and consecrate each day
To traversing with all your might and main,
In order, Moses' ten “commandements,”
Than steadfast be in non-observance brave
Of the great ordinance of dressing all
In fashion's right religious uniform.
So, shall we dare the world? Who says with me,
To wear this fancy dress to-morrow too
In the sun's kindly, and the world's ill, eye?

Amazon.
Suppose we do, what issue do you see?

Courtier.
Whatever fantasies our minds may don
We shall expound with these our fancy clothes.
There is none here, I think, to whom I'm known,
Nor do I know a single one of you;
So I propose that each assume some name
To complement the dress worn, to be used
While we are in this mood.

Clown
[to Amazon].
If that were fixed
You should be called war's bride, Bellona bold.

Bellona.
Bellona would be bold to call you clown.

Corsair
[to Contadina].
I'll call you—what? Some lingering name: Herminia!

Herminia.
Herminia!

Corsair.
What name for me, Herminia?
What word, however harsh, would by your lips
Be sweetened to a note of Syren strength,
That, whispered, should have force to summon me
From Iceland to Ceylon. Tell me, Herminia.

Herminia.
I think Antinous should be your name.

Courtier
[to Summer].
And you, sweet summer—Flora?

Summer.
I'd be called,
And for no other reason than I would,
Not Flora, no, nor Maud, but Mary-Jane.

Courtier
[to Peasant-girl].
Sweet lowland lass—alas, without a lad!—
Will you be of us and yourself re-christen.

Peasant-girl.
I harboured here to shun a horrid man
Whom I saw, like a pirate, bearing down
To rob me of a dance. I'll sport with you.

Courtier.
What name, then, lassie?—Effie, Jeanie, Katie?

Peasant-girl.
No; call me May Montgomery, if you please.

Courtier.
What? May Montgomery! Why choose that name?
None of the rest have been extravagant
To take a surname's luxury.

May.
Let me—
Nay, for I will: I'll not be in the fashion:
And it will be a pleasing penance, too.

Courtier.
A pleasing penance! Can you tell us how?

May.
I scarcely like. But, sir, I like your play,
Because I would be called Montgomery.

Courtier.
Then, May Montgomery, tell us your romance.

May.
Alas, the speed I have to tell my tale
Is slow as melancholy thoughts can be,
That strike as often as a passing-bell:
A bitter-sweet confession I must make.
O ladies, do not fit your faces, pray,
For some iniquity! Sadly, 'tis this.
In Paris, where I lived a year ago,
A youth fell sick in love for worthless me:
I marvel now, though then I thought it due:
Yet love creates, being a divinity,
What it affects; and his most holy love
Inspired poor me with beauty not my own,
Though still I wonder that what grace I have
Could be enriched with such induement sweet
As he cast over it; for at that time
He lacked his passion's courage, so he wrote
A tender tale whose heroine was me,
But metamorphosed to a deity.
The book is throbbing like his fiery heart;
This I have learned with memorising it:
And now it is my only orison,
My only literature, my only joy.
I lull myself to sleep low-murmuring it,
And in my dreams its sweetest scenes enact;
I waken smiling in his tender arms,
And sob to find mine clasped about myself.
After his book he came to hear his doom:
Trembling he stood: I, wanton, doomed us both—
Him to his grave, for then I loved him not;
Myself, to love him now most hopelessly.
And May Montgomery in his book I am:
Pray, call me so; it is a lovely name.

Courtier.
And is your lover dead?

May.
I fear it, sir.

Courtier.
Now, are we named anew, all except me.
How will you call me? Come, give me a name
What in his story is your lover hight?

May.
Earl Edmund; and the whisper went that he
By right was lord of many lands and towers
In Scotland here: but that I do not know.

Courtier.
I pray you, bid me take that name.

May.
O no!
Earl Edmund! That were blasphemy!—But yes!
I will be glad to speak it out aloud.

Edmund.
Speak it, I pray, as often as you choose.—
Well, I am tired of barring up this door.
So, on the morrow, by the stroke of noon
Be all together, dressed as now we are,
Assembled at the distant, dusky end
Of that most pleasant pathway of the glen,
Where lovers, shaded by a green arcade,
Wander toward eventide, slow, silently.

May.
The Alley of Sighs.

Edmund.
So is it called, I think.

Bellona.
What there to do, I pray you?

Edmund.
I know not:
Plan nothing, and you'll see a wondrous plot.
Meantime, unmask, and let us see ourselves.
[They unmask.
Now, call our names.

They go out, repeating their new names. Mary-Jane and May Montgomery re-enter immediately.
May.
Sweet mother, do you know how well you look?
They all think you at least as young as I.

Mary-Jane.
My darling, it is you who keep me young:
The world is young while you are fresh and fair.
I was eighteen when you were born, my dear:
I'm more than twice your age, for you're sixteen.

May.
Which no one will believe.—To think that I
At fifteen should be loved with such a love
As poor Earl Edmund's was!—Now, Mary-Jane,
Do you intend to play in this new game?

Mary-Jane.
I think they merely mean a passing joke.

May.
O no! it is to be an earnest joke.
Do let them call me May Montgomery!
Besides, he whom I am to call Earl Edmund
Has got his eyes and voice—indeed he has.

Mary-Jane.
Well, we will go to-morrow to the glen:
I like the company of sprightly men:
And you will have this earl to clarify
The sorrow-shaded cheek and tear-dimmed eye.

May.
O Mary-Jane, I am a widow too!
I'll never wed another; nor will you.

[They go out.
Re-enter Earl Edmund.
Edmund.
She looks at me perplexed and wistfully;
But I am certain that she knows me not.
How should she! When her memory might have caught
A faithful copy of me, love, unrisen,
Shrank from the dawn: and so it is that now
When love has flooded all her life, the shape
Conceived of me within her inmost heart
Must be the picture of a false ideal:
I dread to think how fine a thing she loves.
I'm glad she cannot pierce my sanguine mood,
And find the haggard child of pain and care,
Who, pain being dead, and in pale care's despite,
Has laughed himself to pleasant looks and strength.
Of my identity the sudden news
Would to my suit hardly be suitable:
Wherefore I'll fall upon some easy course,
And gently glide unfelt into her heart.

[Goes out.