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Read Ebook: The Jewel Merchants: A Comedy in One Act by Cabell James Branch
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Ebook has 256 lines and 11245 words, and 6 pages
It read, I still think, well enough: I am certain that, when we came to rehearse, the thing did not "act" at all, and that its dialogue, whatever its other graces, had the defect of being unspeakable. So at each rehearsal we--by which inclusive pronoun I would embrace the actors and the producing staff at large, and with especial ardor Miss Louise Burleigh, who directed all--changed here a little, and there a little more; and shifted this bit, and deleted the other, and "tried out" everybody's suggestions generally, until we got at least the relief of witnessing at each rehearsal a different play. And steadily my manuscript was enriched with interlineations, to and beyond the verge of legibility, as steadily I substituted, for the speeches I had rewritten yesterday, the speeches which the actor delivered naturally.
This process made, at all events, for what we in particular wanted, which was a play that the League could stage for half an evening's entertainment; but it left existent not a shred of the rhetorical fripperies which I had in the beginning concocted, and it made of the actual first public performance a collaboration with almost as many contributing authors as though the production had been a musical comedy.
The play presents three persons, to any one of whom the committing of murder or theft or adultery or any other suchlike interdicted feat, is just the risking of the penalty provided against the breaking of that especial law if you have the vile luck to be caught at it: and this to them is all that "wickedness" can mean. We nowadays are encouraged to think differently: but such dear privileges do not entitle us to ignore the truth that had any of these three advanced a dissenting code of conduct, it would, in the time and locality, have been in radical irreverence of the best-thought-of tenets. There was no generally recognized criminality in crime, but only a perceptible risk. So must this trio thriftily adhere to the accepted customs of their era, and regard an infraction of the Decalogue very much as we today look on a violation of our prohibition enactments.
In fact, we have accorded to the Eighteenth Amendment almost exactly the status then reserved for Omnipotence. You found yourself confronted by occasionally enforced if obviously unreasonable supernal statutory decrees, which every one broke now and then as a matter of convenience: and every now and then, also, somebody was caught and punished, either in this world or in the next, without his ill-fortune's involving any disgrace or particular reprehension. As has been finely said, righteousness and sinfulness were for the while "in strange and dreadful peace with each other. The wicked man did not dislike virtue, nor the good man vice: the villain could admire a saint, and the saint could excuse a villain, in things which we often shrink from repeating, and sometimes recoil from believing."
Such was the sixteenth-century Tuscan view of "wickedness." I have endeavored to reproduce it without comment.
As for our Guido, he is best kept conformable to modern tastes, I suspect, by nobody's prying too closely into the earlier relations between the Duke and his handsome minion. The insistently curious may resort to history to learn at what price the favors of Duke Alessandro were secured and retained: it is no part of the play.
Above all, though, I must remind you that the Duke is unspurred by malevolence. A twinge of jealousy there may be, just at first, to find his pampered Eglamore so far advanced in the good graces of this pretty girl, but that is hardly important. Thereafter the Duke is breaking no law, for the large reason that his preference in any matter is the only law thus far divulged to him. As concerns the man and the girl he discovers on this hill-top, they, in common with all else in Tuscany, are possessions of Duke Alessandro's. They can raise no question as to how he "ought" to deal with them, for to your chattels, whether they be your finger rings or your subjects or your pomatum pots or the fair quires whereon you indite your verses, you cannot rationally he said to "owe" anything.... No, the Duke is but a spirited lad in quest of amusement: and Guido and Graciosa are the playthings with which, on this fine sunlit morning, he attempts to divert himself.
This much being granted--and confessed,--we let the play begin.
THE JEWEL MERCHANTS
Originally produced by the Little Theatre League of Richmond, Virginia, at the Binford High School Auditorium, 22 February, 1921.
GRACIOSA...........................Elinor Fry Daughter of Balthazar Valori
GUIDO........................Roderick Maybee A jewel merchant
Produced under the direction of Louise Burleigh.
SONG:
Let me have dames and damsels richly clad To feed and tend my mirth, Singing by day and night to make me glad.
Let me have fruitful gardens of great girth Filled with the strife of birds, With water-springs and beasts that house i' the earth.
Let me seem Solomon for lore of words, Samson for strength, for beauty Absalom.
Knights as my serfs be given; And as I will, let music go and come, Till, when I will, I will to enter Heaven.
GUIDO Ah, madonna....
GRACIOSA Welcome, Ser Guido. Your journey has been brief.
GUIDO It has not seemed brief to me.
GRACIOSA Why, it was only three days ago you told me it would be a fortnight before you came this way again.
GUIDO Yes, but I did not then know that each day spent apart from you, Madonna Graciosa, would be a century in passing.
GRACIOSA Dear me, but your search must have been desperate!
GUIDO Yes, my search is desperate.
GRACIOSA Did you find gems worthy of your search?
GUIDO Very certainly, since at my journey's end I find Madonna Graciosa, the chief jewel of Tuscany.
GRACIOSA Such compliments, Guido, make your speech less like a merchant's than a courtier's.
GUIDO Ah, well, to balance that, you will presently find courtiers in Florence who will barter for you like merchants. May I descend?
GRACIOSA Yes, if you have something of interest to show me.
GUIDO Am I to be welcomed merely for the sake of my gems? You were more gracious, you were more beautifully like your lovely name, on the fortunate day that I first encountered you ... only six weeks ago, and only yonder, where the path crosses the highway. But now that I esteem myself your friend, you greet me like a stranger. You do not even invite me into your garden. I much prefer the manner in which you told me the way to the inn when I was an unknown passer-by. And yet your pennant promised greeting.
GRACIOSA Ah, Guido, I flew it the very minute the boy from the inn brought me your message!
GUIDO Now, there is the greeting I had hoped for! But how do you escape your father's watch so easily?
GRACIOSA My father has no need to watch me in this lonely hill castle. Ever since I can remember I have wandered at will in the forest. My father knows that to me every path is as familiar as one of the corridors in his house; and in no one of them did I ever meet anybody except charcoal-burners, and sometimes a nun from the convent, and--oh, yes!--you. But descend, friend Guido.
GUIDO That "Oh, yes, you!" is a very fitting reward for my devotion. For I find that nowadays I travel about the kingdom buying jewels less for my patrons at court than for the pleasure of having your eyes appraise them, and smile at me.
GRACIOSA Guido, you have in point of fact been very kind to me, and very amusing, too, in my loneliness on the top of this hill. See, here is the turquoise bracelet I had from you the second time you passed. I wear it always--secretly.
GUIDO That is wise, for the turquoise is a talisman. They say that the woman who wears a turquoise is thereby assured of marrying the person whom she prefers.
GRACIOSA I do not know about that, nor do I expect to have much choice as to what rich nobleman marries me, but I know that I love this bracelet--
GUIDO In fact, they are handsome stones.
GRACIOSA Because it reminds me constantly of the hours which I have spent here with my lute--
GUIDO Oh, with your lute!
GRACIOSA And with your pack of lovely jewels--
GUIDO Yes, to be sure! with my jewels.
GRACIOSA And with you.
GUIDO There is again my gracious lady. Now, in reward for that, you shall feast your eyes.
GRACIOSA And what have you to-day?
GUIDO For one thing, pearls, black pearls, set with a clasp of emeralds. See! They will become you.
GRACIOSA How cool! But I--poor child of a poor noble--I cannot afford such.
GUIDO Oh, I did not mean to offer them to you to-day. No, this string is intended for the Duke's favorite, Count Eglamore.
GRACIOSA Count Eglamore! These are for him?
GUIDO For Count Eglamore.
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