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Read Ebook: The Harlequinade: An Excursion by Calthrop Dion Clayton Granville Barker Harley
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Ebook has 169 lines and 8732 words, and 4 pages
CHARON. Do you know who I am? Charon.
Oh! Well, I'll mention it in a footnote.
CHARON. Stop your foolish talk, man, and stand up. Don't you see who is with me?
I was once ... a sort of philosopher.
MERCURY. Really! Row him across, Charon; loose him among the shades of the poets and children, and in pity they may teach him to see.
CHARON. Come along.
What is it?
MOMUS. How far would you have got if I hadn't called you back?
... the gods became actors.
UNCLE EDWARD. Now you get back to the story. It's all they care about.
ALICE. Yes. Momus helped Mercury find Psyche, and they all had a tremendous time and hoped it would never be Monday. For every time they got to the end of a century they wanted to stay and see what would happen in the next. Like when you eat nuts it's so very difficult to stop at any particular nut, isn't it? Now I ...
UNCLE EDWARD. But they don't want to hear about you.
ALICE. Sorry.
UNCLE EDWARD. And don't gabble. This ain't the metaphysics, which they can't abear. This is facts. They respect facts.
ALICE. I hate facts. They're so dull. It was when they became actors they got their new names. Harlequin and Columbine and Clown and Pantaloon. And they travelled from Greece into Italy, where Charon got called Pantaloon because he acted an old gentleman of Venice, and Saint Pantaleone is a patron of Venice, and there were heaps of people called Pantaleone there in the fifteenth....
This is Columbine.
St! George!
Bring 'em round a bit ... the number two steels.
But perhaps George is busy with the next scene.
UNCLE EDWARD. Never you mind.
Well, what did he say?
ALICE. He said:--"I was thinking of having one myself, Miss Whistler."
On the warm side. Go on with your bit.
What?
ALICE. All right, Uncle; it's to make a surprise. They really haven't, and they never can. They may lose their magicky magic; for the world grows up like we do. But Harlequin can still see deep into the hearts of men, and Columbine's so sweet that you can't help loving her though you don't know why. And that's the realest magic of all. There!
Pantaloon's the hero's lawyer ... because when you're an old 'un you're always a bit of a lawyer ... you can't help it. And Clown is Charles, his friend, a country squire, come up to swagger in London because they did. The story's the same story really ... it always is ... just twisted about. The Italian young man was buried in books, which was bad enough. But this young man is so drowned deep in himself ... which is worse ... that he's almost nothing but clothes. In fact he has so dropped right through himself, that he isn't himself at all. There's nothing left of him but the reflection in his mirror. In his mirror! Do remember that ... it's important.... And Harlequin has to make a man of him ... because Harlequin is the spirit of man wanting to come to life. It's the young man's wedding morning, and Harlequin-valet--is putting out his wedding suit. There's a Woman of the World this time instead of a Man of the World, who is going to marry him only for his money. But Columbine, the chambermaid that he has never even noticed ...
... when I was a boy they grew in the garden.
HARLEQUIN. Flower, my lord?
EGLANTINE. I must give her a guinea. Give me a guinea. Send her to me.
HARLEQUIN. Certainly, my lord.
A guinea, child, for the song. Sing at your work. I like to hear you.
Now, let's see. Love is a ... Artless as a bird! Love ... When a woman loves you, she ... That might be the oldest song in the world!
HARLEQUIN. It is, my lord.
EGLANTINE. Take them, put them in the fire. As epigrams well enough, Mr. Talon; but perhaps the simple truth is, that I do not love her ladyship.
Let it remind us all of the time. Mr. Talon, Lady Clarissa's lawyers expect you at nine with the bonds for twelve thousand five hundred pounds. Don't let me detain you.
CLOWN. Lady Clarissa! But that's the very name...
EGLANTINE. Stay, George, and bring me to the church and tell me your story on the way. You'll pardon me, my wedding suit awaits me.
Quin!
HARLEQUIN. My lord.
To some extent he is, Sir George.
CLOWN. Gad, let me think a minute ... though the wine's in my head. What sum did you lose to Sir Jeffrey last night? Your bride's name was Clarissa.... I heard it. And Clarissa Mordaunt's the name of that fine lady. Odds, Bobs and Buttons! You're not the fool fop, Eglantine, are you?
Stay, give me pen and ink. This is for her when the name is altered. Her home I think you said....
Would she think so?
HARLEQUIN. Let us ask her when she has picked up the pieces.
I beg your pardon. Well, that was in seventeen hundred and something. And we skip the eighteen hundreds because they were so busy: too busy to play, except just riotously, and we skip to-day, too, because ... well, really because what we showed you about to-day with bits of "you" put in it might seem rather rude. And we skip to-morrow, because to-morrow really is too serious to make our sort of jokes about. So we go right on to the day after. And you've noticed, haven't you, that we go westward all the time? So next the scene's in America, which you get to through New York. Things have been going from bad to worse with our four poor gods, but what has principally knocked them endways is machinery. Now America is full of machinery. And they can't understand it. For whatever a machine is supposed to do in the end, there's one thing it always seems sure to do in the beginning, if you're not very, very careful. And that is to knock the spirit out of a man. Which is his magic. Clown and Pantaloon and Harlequin and Columbine are very simple folk, you know. They let themselves be just what it's most natural to be, and only try to give their friends in front ... kind friends in front, they call them ... just what will make them happiest quickest. So this is what they've come to be by this time, Clown and Columbine, Harlequin and Pantaloon. No names but those, no meaning, no real part at all in the rattle and clatter of machinery which is now called Life. They're out of it. They clung to the skirts of the theatre for a bit. But the theatre, aching to be "in it", flung them off. The intellectual drama had no use for them, no use at all. And so they found themselves busking on the pavement, doing tricks and tumbling and singing silly songs to the unresponsive profiles of long lines of ladies , waiting admittance to the matin?es of some highly intellectual play. And with glasses on those noses they'd be reading while they waited the book of that same play: so even then our poor gods busked in vain. But worse, far worse....
Along came the Man of the World again. He calls himself the Man of Business now. "Do the Public really want this sort of stuff?" he said. "Well, let 'em have it. But as a Business Proposition, if you please."
So he bought up all the theatres, and he said he'd make them pay. And his cousin, the Man in the Street, took shares. And they organised the Theatre. And they made it efficient. And they conducted it on sound commercial lines. And the magic vanished and people wondered where and why. Now what we're going to show you, you won't believe could ever happen at all. It does seem like the cheapest of cheap jokes. But really if we will think magic's to be bought and sold, and if we leave our gods to starve because there isn't any money in their laughter or their tears ... well, it's more than the Theatre that may suffer. But the poor pampered Theatre is our business now, and here's our cheap, cheap joke about it. You aren't expected to laugh ... in fact, perhaps you shouldn't. It's one of those jokes you smile at, crookedly you know, this joke of the Theatre as it well may be the day after to-morrow if some of us don't look out.
, you leave it to me, and let's all keep our tempers. See here, Mr. Man, is this the old 99th Street Theayter?
MAN OF THE WORLD. This, sir, and you know it as well as I do, is nothing so out of date. It is Number 2613 of the five thousand Attraction Houses controlled by the Hustle Trust Circuit of Automatic Drama: President, Mr. Theodor B. Kedger. But it is located on 99th Street, New York City.
CLOWN. Are you the boss?
MAN OF THE WORLD. I am a deputy sub-inspector of the New York and New Jersey division of the circuit.
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