MOMUS. Yes, you're growing ever so dull. A week on earth will do you good
... if you're not too much of an old 'un.
CHARON. I'm not an old 'un.
MOMUS. You are an old 'un.
[And when a thing isn't really funny, say it twice and it often sounds
so. Charon is tempted.
CHARON. I can't leave the boat.
HIPPONAX. Oh, take me back to earth again. They'll mock at me on the other
side of this hellish river ... play tricks on me ...
MERCURY. Charon, give him your oar. He shall mind the boat till Monday. A
final and a wholesome exercise in what he calls his philosophy, to row all
day from a place he has never understood to a place he doesn't believe in.
HIPPONAX. I can't row.
MOMUS. You don't know what you can do till you try. You'll have more muscle
by Monday.
CHARON. Can you get good wine below?
MERCURY. To your boat, philosopher.
[What is a blind man to question the voice of a god? He turns to the
hated river, tapping the ground with his pole. Now comes a joke, one of
the very oldest.
MOMUS. One moment.
HIPPONAX. [As he turns back, hopeful of respite.] What is it?
MOMUS. How far would you have got if I hadn't called you back?
[Mercury hardly smiles. But Charon is abandoned to mirth. He slaps his
old knees with his hands.
CHARON. He's a funny fellow.
HIPPONAX. Dull clown!
[And he starts again. But there's another joke he must be part of, just
as old and just as silly.
MOMUS. No, no! Turn to the right, and to the right. Still to the right. And
again to the right. That's right.
[Round and round went Hipponax until he found his path again. S
... and unkind? Yes, Nature and children with their parables of humour
sometimes seem to be so ... but only if we lose all touch with them.
Then the voice of Mercury is like music...
MERCURY. Come; earthwards both of you. I smell the spring and fields and
flowers. Is that Pan piping? No, a bird's song. Such little things as that
does Psyche love and seek. On we go.
[Mercury is gone. You should wonder how, though it looks mere walking.
Charon is walking after, so tame an exit that it will never do.
"Give us a back, old 'un," says Momus, and leap-frogs him. Poor old back,
it gives way. For Momus is a weight indeed. But if you can't laugh at your
own hurts, what can you laugh at? So Charon totters after, chuckling as he
rubs his bones.
And Uncle Edward and Alice draw the blue curtains. Uncle Edward's eye
questions the audience. They don't so often applaud this scene. For one
thing, they're still settling down. And then, applause is not the only sign
they're liking it, nor yet the best. But you can tell by the feel of them.
Edward can. And if it's a friendly, happy, a sort of "home-y" feel, why
then, the quieter they sit the better. But Alice only thinks of how the
actors do, and she is never too pleased with this scene. It's never
beautiful enough to look at. Mercury (poor dear!) is never really like a
god. And so she hurries to the next.
* * * * *
ALICE. The next part is going to be all in dumb-show, because it's in the
fifteenth century, and that's how they used to play things in the fifteenth
century, when they played heaps of Harlequinades ... and Uncle and I and
the actors are nothing if not correct.
UNCLE EDWARD. True.
ALICE. But first we are going to skip an awful lot, all the part about the
Early Ages, and the Middle Ages and all about how the gods gradually became
actors...
UNCLE EDWARD. Better tell them.
ALICE. Well, it's rather difficult to understand. But you know if you stop
believing in a thing, such as fairies, or that you like chocolate, or that
your Uncle's fond of you ... after a bit it somehow isn't there any longer.
That's what nearly happened to the gods. But Mercury knew that if people
won't believe a thing when you say it's real, they'll just as good as
believe it and understand it a great deal better when it only seems
make-believe. And that's Art. And as the easiest art in the world is the
art of acting ... I hope they didn't hear [She wags back her little head to
the proscenium.] ... the gods became actors.
UNCLE EDWARD. Now you get back to the story. It's all they [He wags his big
head at the audience.] 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....
[Uncle Edward is snapping his fingers and pointing to Ms trousers.]
Yes, I know. Even to-day Pantaloon is still wearing the very Venetian
clothes of the time when he first played the part. He's got on the first
pantaloons ever worn, and his hair is tied in a lovelock. Clown and
Pantaloon have got white faces. By this time funny actors, who acted in
dumb-show, used to put flour on their faces, like Pierrot you know, because
the theatres were so dark and they wanted to show their expressions. Then
there's the scene. I do hope you'll like the scene. It's supposed to be
Italy, and I think it's beautiful. Anyhow it's the kind of scene we have
to have so as not to take up too much room. And it has beehives in it.
Columbine keeps two, one for bees and one for butterflies.
[It is part of Alice's regret, for which she keeps a nearly secret
sigh, that we couldn't have real bees and butterflies. She thinks it
would be so jolly to see the bees and butterflies go among the audience
and settle on the buttonholes and sprays they wear and bring back the
sense of gardens to the people there.
Uncle, do you know how Clown told me how to tell the difference?
UNCLE EDWARD. You minx!
ALICE. Put your hand into the butterfly hive, and if they sting you, you
know it's the bees.
UNCLE EDWARD. Did he? Well, go on and tell them the rest.
ALICE. Yes. Columbine has run away again. The story's always got to be
that. Either Columbine runs away from somebody, or somebody runs away with
her. That's because the soul is always struggling to be free. This time
Cousin Clown and Uncle Pantaloon helped her. She could twist them round her
little finger. And she made a great mistake in running away with this very
sham-serious young man.
UNCLE EDWARD. Sham-serious?
ALICE. He only thinks he's serious because he reads books all day long. And
she married him, and he's turned out to be most awfully dull. And I'm most
awfully sorry for her. He treats her like a bit of furniture. Isn't
it funny the way the soul will fall in love ... and with the most
unaccountable people; and you know how you say "I can't think what she sees
in the man...." But a god can see ... and an artist. And Harlequin's a bit
of both. So when he comes along ... Uncle, the rest of it isn't a very nice
story. Will they mind?
UNCLE EDWARD. They? They'll like it all the better.
ALICE. Well, you see the husband being so dull, she wants somebody to take
her out and show her things and be attentive. And there's the Man of the
World. And things are getting rather serious. For Cousin Clown and Uncle
Pantaloon aren't any use. They're just stupid and friendly and nice, like
all one's country cousins. But just in time comes Harlequin-Mercury. He has
no wings left to his feet, because you wear off wings rather soon if you
wander about the world. And his wand hasn't any snakes left. It's just
painted white wood. And it's a good thing we've come to the jokes about the
sausages, because, now Harlequin's only a strolling player, he's sometimes
awfully hungry.
UNCLE EDWARD. Very true. Are they ready?
ALICE. I'll see.
[So she turns and sticks her head through the curtains.
Yes.
UNCLE EDWARD. Music.
[And the music begins again.
Some are all for a bell, and again others are for a gong, but ...
[He wields his trusty mallet for three hard whacks on the floor. And
then the two of them draw back the curtains on the second scene.
* * * * *
A line of dark cypress trees; a blue sky and an Italian landscape. A path
to a house. A young man lying on the ground reading. His name is Gelsomino.
The music tells him that he hears Columbine. He stirs, looks round, frowns,
and goes back to his book. Columbine flies out of the house.
ALICE. [Radiant and proud.] This is Columbine.
[And what should Columbine be like? Well, she is just like what you'd
most like her to be. She has a rose in her hand. She stops as she sees
her husband, then shyly puts out her arms to him, but he cannot see
that, for his back is turned. She creeps up to him and drops the rose
on his book. He brushes the rose away and waves her away too.
He's not really angry, but you see he's married to her, and he can't bear
being interrupted.
[Columbine stands looking--deliberately looking her prettiest; wistful,
appealing.