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Title: Caliban by the Yellow Sands: A Community Masque of the Art of the Theatre

Author: Percy MacKaye

Illustrator: Robert Edmond Jones

Joseph Urban

Release date: October 11, 2018 [eBook #58076]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CALIBAN BY THE YELLOW SANDS: A COMMUNITY MASQUE OF THE ART OF THE THEATRE ***

- WORKS BY PERCY MACKAYE

- DRAMAS

- THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS. A Comedy.

- JEANNE D’ARC. A Tragedy.

- SAPPHO AND PHAON. A Tragedy.

- FENRIS THE WOLF. A Tragedy.

- A GARLAND TO SYLVIA. A Dramatic Reverie.

- THE SCARECROW. A Tragedy of the Ludicrous.

- YANKEE FANTASIES. Five One-act Plays.

- MATER. An American Study in Comedy.

- ANTI-MATRIMONY. A Satirical Comedy.

- TO-MORROW. A Play in Three Acts.

- A THOUSAND YEARS AGO. A Romance of the Orient.

- THE IMMIGRANTS. A Lyric Drama.

- MASQUES

- CALIBAN. A Shakespeare Masque.

- SAINT LOUIS. A Civic Masque.

- SANCTUARY. A Bird Masque.

- THE NEW CITIZENSHIP. A Civic Ritual.

- POEMS

- THE SISTINE EVE, and Other Poems.

- URIEL, and Other Poems.

- LINCOLN. A Centenary Ode.

- THE PRESENT HOUR.

- POEMS AND PLAYS. In Two Volumes.

- ESSAYS

- THE PLAYHOUSE AND THE PLAY.

- THE CIVIC THEATRE.

- A SUBSTITUTE FOR WAR.

- AT ALL BOOKSELLERS

- Uniform with this volume

- SAINT LOUIS: A CIVIC MASQUE

- AS ENACTED BY 7,000 CITIZENS OF SAINT LOUIS

CALIBAN

PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF SETEBOS, BY JOSEPH URBAN

CALIBAN

BY THE YELLOW SANDS

BY

PERCY MACKAYE

GARDEN CITY                NEW YORK

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

1916

ENDORSED BY THE DRAMA LEAGUE OF AMERICA

Copyright, 1916, by

PERCY MACKAYE

All rights reserved, including that of

translation into foreign languages,

including the Scandinavian

All acting rights, and motion picture rights, are reserved

by the author in the United States, Great Britain

and countries of the copyright Union

SPECIAL NOTICE

Regarding Public Performances and Readings

No performance of this Masque—professional or amateur—and no public reading of it may be given without the written permission of the author and the payment of royalty.

The author should be addressed in care of the publishers.

During the Shakespeare Tercentenary season of 1916, the Masque—after its New York production at the City College Stadium, May 23, 24, 25, 26, 27—will be available for production elsewhere, on a modified scale of stage performance.

With proper organization and direction, amateur participants may take part in performances with or without the Interludes.

For particulars concerning performances wholly amateur, address Miss Clara Fitch, Secretary Shakespeare Tercentenary Committee, 736 Marquette Building, Chicago, Ill.

After June first, a professional company, which will coöperate with local communities, will take the Masque on tour. For particulars address Miss A. M. Houston, Drama League of America, 736 Marquette Building, Chicago, Ill.

“Come unto these yellow sands,

And then take hands!”

THE TEMPEST.

CALIBAN

BY THE YELLOW SANDS

A COMMUNITY MASQUE

Of the Art of the Theatre

Devised and Written to Commemorate the

Tercentenary of the Death of

SHAKESPEARE

Illustrations by

Joseph Urban & Robert Edmond Jones

TO · THE · ONLIE

BEGETTER · OF · THE · BEST

IN · THESE · INSUING

SCENES · MASTER · W · S

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND CHARTS

Cover Design: “When the kings of earth clasp hands”

(Act II, Second Inner Scene).

By Robert Edmond Jones.

Preliminary Sketch of Setebos.

By Joseph Urban

Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

Ground Plan for Auditorium (with Stages

of Masque Proper and Interludes).

By Joseph Urban

xxx

Design of Stage for Masque Proper.

By Joseph Urban

xxxii

Preliminary Sketch for Seventh Inner Scene.

By Robert Edmond Jones

98

Preliminary Sketch for Tenth Inner Scene.

By Robert Edmond Jones

138

APPENDIX

Inner Structure of Masque (Chart).

By Percy MacKaye

154

A Community Masque Audience (Photograph).

By E. O. Thalinger

156

Community Masque Organization Plan (Chart).

By Hazel MacKaye

158

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE

xiii

MASQUE STRUCTURE

xxix

PERSONS AND PRESENCES

xxxi

PROLOGUE

3

FIRST INTERLUDE

32

ACT I

34

SECOND INTERLUDE

76

ACT II

78

THIRD INTERLUDE

110

ACT III

111

EPILOGUE

142

APPENDIX

147

PREFACE

Three hundred years alive on the 23rd of April, 1916, the memory of Shakespeare calls creatively upon a self-destroying world to do him honor by honoring that world-constructive art of which he is a master architect.

Over seas, the choral hymns of cannon acclaim his death; in battle-trenches artists are turned subtly ingenious to inter his art; War, Lust, and Death are risen in power to restore the primeval reign of Setebos.

Here in America, where the neighboring waters of his “vexed Bermoothes” lie more calm than those about his own native isle, here only is given some practical opportunity for his uninterable spirit to create new splendid symbols for peace through harmonious international expression.

As one means of serving such expression, and so, if possible, of paying tribute to that creative spirit in forms of his own art, I have devised and written this Masque, at the invitation of the Shakespeare Celebration Committee of New York City.

The dramatic-symbolic motive of the Masque I have taken from Shakespeare’s own play “The Tempest,” Act I, Scene 2. There, speaking to Ariel, Prospero says:

“Hast thou forgot

The foul witch Sycorax, who with age and envy

Was grown into a hoop? This damn’d witch Sycorax,

For mischiefs manifold and sorceries terrible

To enter human hearing was hither brought with child

And there was left by the sailors. Thou ...

Wast then her servant;

And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate

To act her earthly and abhorred commands,

Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee,

By help of her most potent ministers

And in her most unmitigable rage,

Into a cloven pine, within which rift

Imprisoned thou didst painfully remain ...

Then was this island—

Save for the son that she did litter here,

A freckled whelp hag-born—not honor’d with

A human shape ... that Caliban

Whom now I keep in service. Thou best know’st

What torment I did find thee in, ... it was a torment

To lay upon the damn’d.... It was mine art,

When I arrived and heard thee, that made gape

The pine and let thee out.”

“It was mine art”.... There—in Prospero’s words [and Shakespeare’s]—is the text of this Masque.

The art of Prospero I have conceived as the art of Shakespeare in its universal scope: that many-visioned art of the theatre which, age after age, has come to liberate the imprisoned imagination of mankind from the fetters of brute force and ignorance; that same art which, being usurped or stifled by groping part-knowledge, prudery, or lust, has been botched in its ideal aims and—like fire ill-handled or ill-hidden by a passionate child—has wrought havoc, hypocrisy, and decadence.

Caliban, then, in this Masque, is that passionate child-curious part of us all [whether as individuals or as races], grovelling close to his aboriginal origins, yet groping up and staggering—with almost rhythmic falls and back-slidings—toward that serener plane of pity and love, reason and disciplined will, where Miranda and Prospero commune with Ariel and his Spirits.

In deference to the master-originator of these characters and their names, it is, I think, incumbent on me to point out that these four characters, derived—but reimagined—from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” become, for the purposes of my Masque, the presiding symbolic Dramatis Personæ of a plot and conflict which are my own conception. They are thus no longer Shakespeare’s characters of “The Tempest,” though born of them and bearing their names.

Their words [save for a very few song-snatches and sentences] and their actions are those which I have given them; the development of their characters accords with the theme—not of Shakespeare’s play but of this Masque, in which Caliban’s nature is developed to become the protagonist of aspiring humanity, not simply its butt of shame and ridicule.

My conception and treatment also of Setebos [whose name is but a passing reference in Shakespeare’s play], the fanged idol [substituted by me for the “cloven pine”]; of Sycorax, as Setebos’ mate [in form a super-puppet, an earth-spirit rather than “witch”], from both of whom Caliban has sprung; of the Shakespearian Inner Scenes, as brief-flashing visions in the mind of Prospero; of the “Yellow Sands” as his magic isle, the world; these are not liberties taken with text or characters of Shakespeare; they are simply the means of dramatic license whereby my Masque aims to accord its theme with the art and spirit of Shakespeare.

Shakespeare’s own characters, that use his words[1] in scenes of his plays, have then no part in my Masque, except in the Inner Scenes,[2] where they are conceived as being conjured by Prospero and enacted by the Spirits of Ariel.

The theme of the Masque—Caliban seeking to learn the art of Prospero—is, of course, the slow education of mankind through the influences of coöperative art, that is, of the art of the theatre in its full social scope. This theme of coöperation is expressed earliest in the Masque through the lyric of Ariel’s Spirits taken from “The Tempest”; it is sounded, with central stress, in the chorus of peace when the kings clasp hands on the Field of the Cloth of Gold;[3] and, with final emphasis, in the gathering together of the creative forces of dramatic art in the Epilogue. Thus its motto is the one printed on the title page, in Shakespeare’s words:

“Come unto these yellow sands

And then take hands.”

So much for my Masque in its relationship to Shakespeare’s work and his art. Its contribution to the modern development of a form of dramatic art unpractised by him requires some brief comment.

This work is not a pageant, in the sense that the festivals excellently devised by Mr. Louis N. Parker in England, Mr. Lascelles in Canada, or Mr. Thomas Wood Stevens in America have been called pageants. Though of necessity it involves aspects of pageantry, its form is more closely related to the forms of Greek drama and of opera. Yet it is neither of these. It is a new form to meet new needs.

I have called this work a Masque, because—like other works so named in the past—it is a dramatic work of symbolism involving, in its structure, pageantry, poetry, and the dance. Yet I have by no means sought to relate its structure to an historic form; I have simply sought by its structure to solve a modern [and a future] problem of the art of the theatre. That problem is the new one of creating a focussed dramatic technique for the growing but groping movement vaguely called “pageantry,” which is itself a vital sign of social evolution—the half-desire of the people not merely to remain receptive to a popular art created by specialists, but to take part themselves in creating it; the desire, that is, of democracy consistently to seek expression through a drama of and by the people, not merely for the people.

For some ten years that potential drama of democracy has interested me as a fascinating goal for both dramatist and citizen, in seeking solution for the vast problem of leisure.[4] Two years ago at Saint Louis I had my first technical opportunity, on a large scale, to experiment in devising a dramatic structure for its many-sided requirements. There, during five performances, witnessed by half a million people, about seven thousand citizens of Saint Louis took part in my Masque [in association with the Pageant by Thomas Wood Stevens]. In the appendix of this volume a photograph gives a suggestion of one of those audiences, gathered in their public park [in seats half of which were free, half pay-seats] to witness the production.[5]

That production was truly a drama of, for, and by the people—a true Community Masque; and it was largely with the thought of that successful civic precedent that the Shakespeare Celebration first looked to Central Park as the appropriate site to produce their Community Festival, the present Masque, as the central popular expression of some hundreds of supplementary Shakespearean celebrations.

In so doing, they conceived the function of a public park—as it is conceived almost universally west of the Eastern States, and almost everywhere in Europe—to be that of providing outdoor space for the people’s expression in civic art-forms.

The sincere opposition of a portion of the community to this use of Central Park would never, I think, have arisen, if New York could have taken counsel with Saint Louis’s experience, and its wonderfully happy civic and social reactions. The opposition, however, was strong and conscientious; so that, on the same principle of community solidarity which was the raison d’etre for their informal application to use Central Park, the Shakespeare Celebration withdrew their wish to use it. To split community feeling by acrimonious discussion was contrary to the basic idea and function of the Celebration, which are to help unite all classes and all beliefs in a great coöperative movement for civic expression through dramatic art.

One very important public service, however, was performed by this Central Park discussion; it served clearly to point out a colossal lack in the democratic equipment of the largest and richest metropolis of the western hemisphere: namely, the total lack of any public place of meeting, where representative numbers of New York citizens can unite in seeing, hearing, and taking part in a festival or civic communion of their own. New York, a city of five million inhabitants, possesses no public stadium or community theatre. Little Athens, a mere village in comparison, had for its heart such a community theatre, which became the heart of civilization. Without such an instrument, our own democracy cannot hope to develop that coöperative art which is the expression of true civilization in all ages.

Happily for the Shakespeare Celebration and its aims, a large measure of solution has, at the date of this preface, been attained by the gracious offer of the New York City College authorities, through President Mezes, to permit the use of the Lewisohn Stadium and athletic field, temporarily to be converted into a sort of miniature Yale Bowl, for the production of the Shakespeare Masque on the night of May 23rd and the following four nights.

By the brilliant conception and technical plans of Mr. Joseph Urban for joining to the present concrete stadium of Mr. Arnold Brunner its duplicate in wood, on the east side of the field, and so placing the stage on its narrower width to the north, there will be created a practical outdoor theatre, remarkable in acoustics, qualified to accommodate in excellent seats about twenty thousand spectators, and some two or three thousand participants in the festival.

If such a consummation shall eventually become permanent there, it will complete the realization of a practicable dream already rendered partly complete by Mr. Adolf Lewisohn’s public-spirited donation of the present concrete structure. Referring to that practicable dream, I wrote four years ago in my volume “The Civic Theatre”:[6] “One day last spring, traversing with President John Finley the grounds lately appropriated, through his fine efforts, by the City of New York for a great stadium at the City College, I discussed with him the splendid opportunity there presented for focussing the popular enthusiasm toward athletic games in an art dramatic and nobly spectacular.”

This new dramatic art-form, then—a technique of the theatre adapted to democratic expression and dedicated to public service—I have called by the name Community Masque, and have sought to exemplify it on a large scale in two instances, at Saint Louis and at New York.

The occasion of this preface is not one to discuss the details of that new technique further than to suggest to the public, and to those critics who might be interested to make its implications clearer than the author and director of a production has time or opportunity to do, that the exacting time limits of presenting dramatically a theme involving many dissociated ages, through many hundreds of symbolic participants and leaders, are conditions which themselves impel the imagination toward creating a technique as architectural as music, as colorful as the pageant, as dramatic as the play, as plastic as the dance.

That my own work has attained to such a technique I am very far from supposing. I have, however, clearly seen the need for attaining to it, whatever the difficulties, if a great opportunity for democracy is not to be lost. To see that much, at a time when the vagueness of amateurs, however idealistic in desire, is obscuring the austere outlines of a noble technical art looming just beyond us, may perhaps be of some service.

As visual hints to the structure (Inner and Outer) of the present Masque, the charts here published may be suggestive to the reader. To the reader as such it remains to point out one vital matter of technique, namely, the relation of the dramatic dialogue to the Masque’s production.

Even more than a play [if more be possible], a Masque is not a realized work of art until it is adequately produced. To the casual reader, this Masque, as visualized merely on these printed pages, may appear to be a structure simply of written words: in reality it is a structure of potential interrelated pantomime, music, dance, lighting, acting, song [choral and lyric], scene values, stage management and spoken words.

Words spoken, then, constitute in this work but one of numerous elements, all relatively important. If no word of the Masque be heard by the audience, the plot, action, and symbolism will still remain understandable and, if properly produced, dramatically interesting. Synchronous with every speech occur, in production, effects of pantomime, lighting, music, and movement with due proportion and emphasis. Such, at least, is the nature of the technique sought, whether or not this particular work attains to it.

A Masque must appeal as emphatically to the eye as a moving picture, though with a different appeal to the imagination.

Because of this only relative value of the spoken word, there are many producers [theoretical and practical] who believe that the spoken word should be eliminated entirely from this special art of the theatre.

Artists as eminent and constructive in ideas as Gordon Craig, and many whom his genius has inspired, advocate indeed this total elimination of speech from the theatre’s art as a whole. For them that art ideally is the compound of only light and music and movement. The reason for this, I think, is because the sensibility of those artists is preëminently visual. Moreover, they are relatively inexpert, as artists, in the knowledge of the technique and values of the spoken word. Being visually expert and creative, they have, by their practical genius, established a world-wide school of independent visual art [assisted only by mass sounds of music].

For them this art has well nigh become the art of the theatre. Yet it is not so, I think, and can never be so, to that watching and listening sensibility for which all dramatic art is created—the soul of the audience. That soul, our soul, is a composite flowering of all the senses, and the life-long record of the spoken word [reiterated from childhood] is an integral, yes, the most intimate, element of our consciousness.

The association of ideas and emotions which only the spoken word can evoke is, therefore, a dramatic value which the art of the theatre cannot consistently ignore. It is chiefly because those artist-experts in word values, the poets, who might contribute their special technique to the theatre’s art, turn elsewhere creatively, that the field is left unchallenged and open to the gifted school of the visualists. The true dramatic art—which involves ideally a total coöperation—does not, and cannot, exclude the poet-dramatist. Shakespeare and Sophocles lived before electric light; if they had lived after, they would have set a different pace for Bakst and Reinhardt, and established a creative school more nobly poised in technique, more deeply human in appeal.

Now, therefore, when the poets are awaking to a new power and control of expression, here especially in our own country, if they will both learn and teach in this larger school, there rises before us the promise of an art more sensuous, sane, and communal than the theatre has ever known.

So, in the pioneering adventure of this Masque, which seeks by experiment to relate the spoken word to its larger coöperation with the visual arts, I have devised a structure in which the English language, spoken by actors, is an essential dramatic value.

Why, then, take pains [as I have done] to make it relatively non-essential in case it should not be heard?

For this reason: that now—at the present temporary and still groping stage of development of community Masque organization and production—there can be, in the nature of the case, no complete assurance beforehand of adequate acoustics in setting, or of voices trained to large-scale outdoor speech.

But, if this be so, would it not be the wiser part of creative valor to adapt my structure wholly to these elementary conditions, risk nothing, and devise simply pantomime?

No, for by that principle no forward step for the spoken word could ever be taken. If we are to progress in this new art, we must seek to make producing conditions conform to the spoken play, even more than the play to those conditions.

And this can be done; it has been done.

At Saint Louis the vast amphitheatre for my Masque was at first considered, by nearly all who saw it, to be utterly unsuited to the spoken word; yet, after careful study, experiment and technical provision for its use, the speech of actors was heard each night by at least two-thirds of the hundred and fifty thousand listeners. Of the seven thousand actors only about fifteen spoke, but these conveyed the spoken symbolism and drama of the action.

In the present Masque I have focussed the spoken word on the raised constructed stage of wood [A. and B. in the Chart], confined it to the speech of eight principal acting parts, and about twenty other subordinate parts, whose speaking lines [from Shakespeare’s plays] are still further focussed at the narrower inner stage [A. in the Chart], provided with special sounding boards.

On the other hand, for the ground-circle of the “Yellow Sands” [C. in the Chart], where the thousands of participants in the Interludes take part under an open sky, I have provided no spoken words, but only pantomime, mass movements, dances and choruses.

To the reader, then, I would repeat, that the words of this printed Masque are an essential, though not an exclusive, part of its structure, and are meant primarily to be spoken, not primarily to be read.

As in the case of my Civic Ritual “The New Citizenship”[7] this Masque can only have its completely adequate production on a large and elaborate scale. Like the Civic Ritual, however, which—originally designed for the New York stadium—is being performed on an adapted scale in many parts of the country, in schools and elsewhere, this Masque may perhaps serve some good purpose in being made available for performance in a smaller, simpler manner, adapted to the purposes of festivals during this year of Shakespeare’s Tercentenary. At the invitation, therefore, of Mr. Percival Chubb, President of the Drama League of America, who first suggested to me the writing of a Memorial Masque to Shakespeare, the publishers have made arrangements with officers of the Drama League for making known its availability as stated in their announcement printed at the back of this volume.

The accompanying stage-designs are the work of Mr. Joseph Urban, the eminent Viennese artist and producer [who has recently become an American], and of Mr. Robert Edmond Jones, designer of the scenes and costumes for Mr. Granville Barker’s production of “The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife.”

At the date of this preface, Mr. Arthur Farwell has nearly completed his compositions for the lyric choruses and incidental music of the Masque. The choruses will shortly be made available, published by G. Schirmer, New York.

With all three of these artists I am fortunate in being associated in preparations for the Masque’s New York production next May.

These preparations have met with many complex difficulties of launching and organization; the time remaining is very brief to accomplish the many-sided community task for which the Masque is designed; only the merest beginnings of so vast a movement can be attempted; but, with coöperation and support from those who believe in that task, the producers look forward hopefully to serving, in some pioneering degree, the great cause of community expression through the art of the theatre.

PERCY MACKAYE.

New York, February 22, 1916.

MASQUE STRUCTURE

THE ACTION

The action takes place, symbolically, on three planes: (1) in the cave of Setebos (before and after its transformation into the theatre of Prospero); (2) in the mind of Prospero (behind the Cloudy Curtains of the inner stage); and (3) on the ground-circle of “the Yellow Sands” (the place of historic time).

THE TIME

The Masque Proper is concerned, symbolically, with no literal period of time, but with the waxing and waning of the life of dramatic art (and its concomitant, civilization) from primitive barbaric times to the verge of the living present.

The Interludes are concerned with ritualistic glimpses of the art of the theatre (in its widest, communal scope) during three historical periods: (1) Antiquity, (2) the Middle Ages, and (3) Elizabethan England.

The Epilogue is concerned with the creative forces of dramatic art from antiquity to the present, and—by suggestion—with the future of those forces.

THE SETTING

The setting of the entire Masque is architectural and scenic, not a background of natural landscape as in the case of most outdoor pageants. Being constructed technically for performance, on a large scale, by night only, its basic appeals are to the eye, through expert illusions of light and darkness, architectural and plastic line, the dance, color, and pageantry of group movements; to the ear, through invisible choirs and orchestra, stage instrumental music and voices of visible mass-choruses [in the Interludes only].

As indicated by the accompanying diagram [Time Chart][8] of its Inner Structure, the Masque Proper is enacted by a comparatively few [about thirty] professional actors, who use the spoken word to motivate the large-scale pantomime of their action; the Interludes [which use no spoken word, but only dance, pageantry, miming, and choruses] are performed by community participants [to the number of thousands]; the Epilogue utilizes both kinds of performers.

Corresponding to this Inner Structure, the Outer Structure consists of three architectural planes or acting stages [all interdependent]: a modified form of Elizabethan stage, [here called “the Middle Stage—B”] consisting of a raised platform [to which steps lead up from a ground-circle, eight feet below] provided with a smaller, curtained Inner Stage [A—under a balcony, on which the upper visions appear, and above which the concealed orchestra and choirs are located]. This Inner Stage is two feet higher than the Middle Stage, from which ramps lead up to it. Shutting it off from the other, its “Cloudy Curtains,” when closed, meet at the centre; when they are open, the inner Shakespearean scenes [visions in the mind of Prospero] are then revealed within.

Between the raised Middle Stage and the audience lies the Ground-Circle—in form like the “orchestra” of a Greek theatre. Here the community Interludes take place around a low central Altar, from which rises a great hour-glass, flowing with luminous sands. This ground-circle is the place of the Yellow Sands, the outer wave-lines of which are bordered by the deep blue of the space beyond. The circle itself, representing the magic isle of Prospero [the temporal place of his art], is mottled with shadowy contours of the continents of the world.

Beneath the middle stage, and between the broad spaces of the steps which lead up to it from the ground-circle, is situated, at centre, the mouth of Caliban’s cell, which thus opens directly upon the Yellow Sands.

All of these features of the setting, however, are invisible when the Masque begins, and are only revealed as the lightings of the action disclose them.

GROUND·PLAN

FOR·AUDITORIUM·AND·STAGE

OF·SHAKESPEARE·MASQUE

A·INNER·STAGE·SHAKESPEARE·SCENES

B·MIDDLE·STAGE·ACTION·OF·MASQUE·PROPER·

C·OUTER·STAGE·(ON·THE·YELLOW·SANDS)·ACTION·OF·INTERLUDES·

PERSONS AND PRESENCES

I. OF THE MASQUE PROPER[9]

SPEAKING PERSONS

ARIEL

SYCORAX[10]

CALIBAN

PROSPERO

MIRANDA

LUST

DEATH

WAR

CALIGULA

[Impersonated by Lust]

ONE IN GRAY

[Impersonated by Death]

ANOTHER IN GRAY

[Impersonated by Caliban]

MUTE PRESENCES

SETEBOS[11]

CHORAL PRESENCES

SPIRITS OF ARIEL

POWERS OF SETEBOS

PANTOMIME GROUPS

LUST GROUP

┐

DEATH GROUP

│

WAR GROUP

├

Impersonated by the Powers of Setebos

ROMAN GROUP

│

THE ONES IN GRAY

┘

TRANSFORMATION CHOIR

┐

GREGORIAN CHOIR

├

Impersonated by the Spirits of Ariel

THE ONES IN GREEN

┘

THE NINE MUSES

RENAISSANCE FAUNS

II. OF THE TEN INNER-STAGE SCENES

[Enacted by the Spirits of Ariel.]

SEE APPENDIX: Pages 159-161.

Of these scenes eight are spoken scenes taken from plays of Shakespeare; one (the sixth) is a pantomime devised from a descriptive speech in “Henry the Eighth,” Act I, Scene I; one (the fourth) is a tableau scene symbolic of the early Christian Church. Those taken from Shakespeare are printed in black-faced type.

III. OF THE INTERLUDES

SEE APPENDIX: Pages 162, 166, 172, 184, 187, 190, 195.

IV. OF THE EPILOGUE

- SPEAKING PERSONS

- THE SPIRIT OF TIME

- SHAKESPEARE [as Prospero]

- PANTOMIME GROUPS[12]

- THEATRES [with Musicians, Dancers, Designers, Producers,

- Inventors, etc.: Creators of the art of the theatre]

- ACTORS

- DRAMATISTS

- SPIRIT TRUMPETERS [Announcers of the Groups]

STAGE·FOR·SHAKESPEARE·MASQUE·

BEHIND THE CLOUDY CURTAINS IS STAGE A OF INNER SCENES (SEE GROUND PLAN)

IN FRONT OF THE CURTAINS IS STAGE B OF MASQUE PROPER (SEE GROUND PLAN)

AT CENTRE, CALIBAN’S CELL OPENS UPON STAGE C OF INTERLUDES (SEE GROUND PLAN)

CALIBAN

PROLOGUE

The action begins in semi-darkness, out of which sound invisible choirs.

The scene is the cave of SETEBOS, whose stark-colored idol—half tiger and half toad—colossal and primitive—rises at centre above a stone altar.

On the right, the cave leads inward to the abode of SYCORAX; on the left, it leads outward to the sea, a blue-green glimpse of which is vaguely visible.

High in the tiger-jaws of the idol, ARIEL—a slim, winged figure, half nude—is held fettered.

In the dimness, he listens to deep-bellowing choirs from below, answered by a chorus of sweet shrill voices from within.

THE VOICES FROM BELOW

[Sing.]

Setebos! Setebos!

THE VOICES FROM WITHIN

[Sing.]

Ariel!

ARIEL

[Calls aloud.]

O, my brave spirits!

THE VOICES FROM BELOW

Setebos! Setebos!

Over us which art, and under:

Fang of fire

From mouth of thunder!

Hungering goad

From belly of mire!

Tiger and toad—

Setebos!

Blood which art on the jungle bloom,

Sloth and slumber and seed in the womb:

Which art wondrous

Over and under us,

Setebos! Setebos! Thou art Setebos!

THE VOICES FROM WITHIN

Sealèd in a starless cell,

We are shut from dawn and sky.

Ariel!—Ariel!

Why?

ARIEL

Setebos knows, but his jaws

Fetter me fast: he is dumb—

Answering never.

THE VOICES FROM WITHIN

We, who parch for dew and star—

Ariel!—Ariel!—

Must we perish where we are?

Tell!

ARIEL

Sycorax knows, but she sits

There in the cave with her son—

Mocking us ever.

THE VOICES FROM WITHIN

Ariel!

ARIEL

Call me no more,

Lest they torment us. I hear them

Coming now.

THE VOICE OF SYCORAX

Caliban!

ARIEL

Hush!

[Gigantic, the twisted form of SYCORAX looms from

within the rock.]

SYCORAX

[Calling toward the sea.]

Come, fish-fowl! Leave thy flapping in the mud

And keep thy father’s temple. Call his priests.

Thy father Toad’s a god, hath double teeth

In his two heads. The Tiger loins of him

Begot thee in my belly for a cub

To lick his paws and purr, else he may pinch thee

Behind an eye-tooth, like yon flitter mouse

That hangs there wriggling.

THE VOICE OF CALIBAN

So, so Sycorax!—

Coming!

SYCORAX

Aye, so so: crawling still!

[Malformed and hissing, CALIBAN enters on his belly

and arms.]

CALIBAN

Syc-Syco-

Sycorax! See!

SYCORAX

What hast thou got thee?

CALIBAN

[Laughs, half rising, and holds up a wriggling creature.]

Got

A little god—a little Caliban.

Ha!—make him out of mud. See: Squeezed it round

And slipped him through my fist-hole. Am a god:

[Rising.]

See Sycorax—her grandchild!

SYCORAX

’Tis an eel-worm.

Fling him to the white bat yonder.

[Her form vanishes in the rock.]

CALIBAN

[Approaching the idol.]

Ariel,

Here’s food for thee: a wormling for thy beak.

So, my trapped bird:—How sayst, ha?

ARIEL

[Sings.]

“Where the bee sucks there suck I.”

CALIBAN

[Laughing.]

Bee, sayst thou?

Still buzzest of thy wings, and eatest—air!

ARIEL

[Sings.]

“In a cowslip’s bell I lie.”

CALIBAN

My father’s gullet is no cowslip’s bell.

Shalt lie in the belly of Setebos.

[Tossing away the eel.]

—What waitest for?

ARIEL

I am waiting for one who will come.

CALIBAN

Aye? Who will come?

ARIEL

One from the heart of the world; and he shall rise

On tempest of music and in thunder of song.

CALIBAN

[Gaping.]

Thunder and tempest—so!

ARIEL

[With ecstasy.]

I see him now.

CALIBAN

[Crouching back.]

See him! Where, now?

ARIEL

In my dream:—He bears

A star-wrought staff and hooded cloak of blue,

And on his right hand bums the sun, and on

His left, the moon; and these he makes his masks

Of joy and sorrow.

CALIBAN

Where? Mine eye seeth naught.

ARIEL

Before him comes a maid—a child, all wonder—

And leads, him to this blighted isle.

CALIBAN

What for, here?

ARIEL

To set me free, and all my air-born spirits

Whom Setebos holds prisoned in this earth.

CALIBAN

Free? What’s that—free?

ARIEL

What thou canst never be

Who never shalt dance with us by yellow sands.

SPIRITS OF ARIEL

[Sing within.]

“Come unto these yellow sands,

And then take hands:

Courtsied when you have and kiss’d

The wild waves whist.

Foot it featly here and there”—

CALIBAN

Ho, blast their noises! Stop thy spirits’ squealing.

Their piping itcheth me like hornets’ stings.

SPIRITS OF ARIEL

[Sing on, within.]

“And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear”—

CALIBAN

[Screaming.]

Setebos! Squash ’em!

POWERS OF SETEBOS

[Sing below with strident roarings, drowning the song

of Ariel’s Spirits.]

Setebos! Setebos! Thou art Setebos!

CALIBAN

[Exulting grotesquely.]

Who’ll dance by yellow sands?—Who’s free now, spirit?

Ho, Caliban can squash their music. Free?

Aren’t I a god, bitch-born, the son of Setebos

Can howl all hell up? Worship me, thou wings!

Praise my toad-father in his temple!

ARIEL

The priests

Of Setebos are Lust and Death and War.

Not Ariel—nor Ariel’s Spirits ever—

Shall do them honor. One shall come hereafter

Whom we now worship, waiting.

CALIBAN

[Roaring.]

Sycorax!

SYCORAX

[Reappearing.]

Swallow thy croakings, bullfrog. Call the priests,

And fill this spirit’s nostrils with the reek

Of Setebos, his blood-rites.

THE SPIRITS OF ARIEL

[Cry out piercingly.]

Ariel!

ARIEL

Peace, my brave hearts! Be dumb—but still be dreaming!

CALIBAN

Powers of Setebos!—Lust, Death, War,—ho, now!

Hither, and do my father worship!

ARIEL

[Stifling a cry.]

Ah!

[Enter LUST, DEATH, and WAR, arrayed as priests

of Setebos.]

SYCORAX

[To Caliban.]

Come, toad-boy: watch with me, within.

CALIBAN

[Going within the cave, as Sycorax disappears.]

Free, saith?

Will dance by yellow sands?—Now, Spirit, dance!

[As Caliban goes within, the powers of Setebos come forth.

At the altar beneath Ariel, the three Priests lead

them in ceremonial rites of primeval pageantry and

dance—the sacrificial worship of Setebos. Above

them Ariel suffers, with closed eyes. In their

rites, Lust pours his libation, and lights the

altar fire, which—when War has made there his

living sacrifice—Death extinguishes in darkness.

Through the dark, which gradually changes to a glowing

dusky Ariel speaks aloud.]

ARIEL

O Spirits, I have dreamed, but Death has closed

My sight in darkness. Spirits, I have begotten

Sweet Joy, but Lust hath drowned her in his wine.

Yea, I have wove Love wings, but War hath robbed them

And riven his lovely body all alive

To feed the hungering flames of Setebos.

My Spirits, I your master am unmastered.

Speak to me! Comfort me! Is there no joy,

No love, no dream, that shall survive this dark?

Hath this our isle no king but Caliban?

Are there no yellow sands where we shall dance

To greet the master of a timeless dawn?

Or must there break no morning?—Ah, you are dumb

Still to my doubtings. Yet the dark grows pale,

And, paling, pulses now with rosier shadows;

And now the shadows tremble, and draw back

Their trailing glories: hark! All little birds

Wake in the gloaming: look! What young Aurora

Walks in the dusk below, and like a child

Turns her quick face to listen?—Ah!

[Below, against the light from the sea, has entered

the dim Figure he descries.]

THE FIGURE

Who calls?

ARIEL

Spirits, ’tis she! O, we have dreamed her true

At last—Miranda!

SPIRITS OF ARIEL

[Call, in echoing song.]

Miranda!

MIRANDA

[Searching with her eyes.]

Earth and air

Echo my name. Who calls me?

ARIEL

Ariel.

SPIRITS OF ARIEL

[As before.]

Ariel!

MIRANDA

Light and dark spin webs around me.

What art thou, voice—and where?

ARIEL

Here—and your servant.

MIRANDA

[Beholding him.]

O me!—poor Spirit!—What mouth so terrible

Utters a voice so tender?

ARIEL

Setebos,

God of this isle, holds me in ’s fangs.

MIRANDA

But why?

ARIEL

I will not serve him.

MIRANDA

[Naïvely, drawing nearer to the huge idol.]

Setebos, be kind.

Release this Spirit.

ARIEL

He hath nor ears, nor eyes,

Nor any sense to know thee by, but only

These tusks and claws and his toad-belly.

MIRANDA

Dost

Thou suffer, so?

ARIEL

Not now.

MIRANDA

And hath he held thee

Long captive?

ARIEL

Since old ocean’s slime first spawned

Under the moon, I have awaited thee

And him thou bringest here.

MIRANDA

You mean my father,

Prospero.

ARIEL

[Exultingly.]

Hail him, Spirits!

SPIRITS OF ARIEL

[Sing.]

Prospero!

MIRANDA

Yea, many a starry journey we have made

Searching this isle. At last to-day, at dawn,

I saw its yellow sands, and heard thy voice

Calling for pity. Now my father is come

And shall release thee.

ARIEL

Where? Where is he?

MIRANDA

Here:

His cloak is round us now: he holds us now

In his great art, revealing each to each

Though he be all invisible.

[Reëntering, Caliban comes forward, sniffing and

peering at Miranda.]

CALIBAN

Hath feet

And hair: hath bright hair shineth like a fish’s tail;

Hath mouth, and maketh small, sweet noises.

ARIEL

[Crying out.]

Beast,

Go back!

MIRANDA

[Staring, amazed.]

What’s here?

CALIBAN

Ca—Caliban; cometh here

To smell what ’tis.

[He sniffs nearer; then howls strangely.]

Spring in the air: Oho!

MIRANDA

Alas, poor creature! Who hath hurt thee?

CALIBAN

Hurt?

Who hurteth God? Am seed of Setebos:

Am Caliban: the world is all mine isle:

Kill what I please, and play with what I please;

So, yonder, play with him: pull out his wings

And put ’em back to grow.—Where be thy wings,

Spring-i’-the-air?

MIRANDA

O Ariel, is this sight

A true thing, and speaks truly?

ARIEL

What you hear

And see—’tis my master.

MIRANDA

’Tis so wonderful

I know not how to be sad.

CALIBAN

[In puzzled fascination, staring at Miranda.]

The moon hath a face

And smileth on the lily pools, but hath

No lily body withal: thy body is

All lilies and the smell of lily buds,

And thy round face a pool of moonbeams!

MIRANDA

[With smile and laughter.]

Nay,

Then look not in, lest thou eclipse the moon.

CALIBAN

Syc—Sycorax hath no such laughing: soundeth

Like little leaves i’ the rain! Hath no such mouth

Bright-lipp’d with berries ripe to suck i’ the sun—

Sycorax.

MIRANDA

Who is Sycorax?

ARIEL

Ah, pain!

CALIBAN

Ho, she that hath calved Caliban to the bull

Setebos, my blood-sire. [Pauses at a glowing thought,

then cries with sudden exultance:] So shall us twain

Caliban all this world!

[He crouches, then rolls over at her feet.]

—Laugh, Spring-i’-the-air!

Lift so thy lily-pad foot and rub his ear

Where the fur tickleth, and let thy Caliban

Tongue-lick its palm.

[He lies, dog-like, on his back, and laughs loud.]

MIRANDA

This wonder grows too wild.

ARIEL

Go, go! O flee away!

CALIBAN

[Leaping up.]

Away?—Aye, so!

[He approaches Miranda, who recoils, half fearful.]

Wist where salt water lappeth warm i’ the noon

And shore-fish breed i’ the shoals.—Wist where the sea-bull

Flap-flappeth his fin and walloweth there his cow

And snoreth the rainbow from his nostrils.

[He begins to dance grotesquely about her.]

Ho,

Spring-i’-the-air! shalt leap, shalt roll in the sun,

Shalt dance with lily-warm limbs, shalt race wi’ the gulls!

Shalt laugh, and call—Come, Come!

Come, come, Caliban!

Catcheth who catcheth can!

Mateth mew, mateth man:

Catch, come, Caliban!

ARIEL

O Setebos, let me go free!

MIRANDA

[To Caliban.]

Peace! Dance no more.

Go hence, and leave me.

CALIBAN

[Staring.]

Hence? Aye, both—us twain.

MIRANDA

[With simple command.]

Nay, thou alone.

CALIBAN

[With narrowing eyes, draws nearer.]

Saith what?

MIRANDA

[Unafraid.]

Go from me.

CALIBAN

[Stops, with a hissing growl.]

Syc-

Syc-Sycorax! Sycorax!

SYCORAX

[Reappearing.]

Mole in the mire, wilt squeak

When thou art trod on?—Bite! Bite, Setebos’ son!

Let the brave wonder breed of thee.

CALIBAN

Aye, mother.

[With rising passion—to Miranda.]

A child! Shalt bear me such as thou, with head

Of Caliban: no eel-worm, nay—a wonder,

With lily feet, that walk. Ho, Setebos!

SYCORAX

Setebos! Mate them at thine altar.

MIRANDA

[Fleeing from Caliban, pauses in terror of Sycorax.]

Save me!

POWERS OF SETEBOS

[Sing within.]

Setebos! Setebos!

CALIBAN

[Rushing toward Miranda.]

Mine!

MIRANDA

Save me, father!

ARIEL

[Calling shrilly.]

Prospero!

SPIRITS OF ARIEL

[Sing within.]

Prospero! Hail!

[A clap of thunder strikes, rolling, in sudden darkness.

Lightnings burst from the idol of Setebos.

From the flashing gloom, choruses of contending

spirits commingle the roar of their deep bass and

high-pitched choirs.]

SPIRITS OF ARIEL

Prospero! Prospero!

Out of our earth-pain

Raise and array us

In splendor of order!

Pour on our chaos—

Prospero! Prospero!—

Peace to our earth-pain!

POWERS OF SETEBOS

Setebos! Setebos!

Lord of our earth-bane,

Loose on his wrath way

The beast of thy jungle!

Pour on our pathway—

Setebos! Setebos!

Blood for thine earth-bane!

[Amid the tempestuous song, darkness, and thunder,

appears on the left a glowing, winged throne. On

the throne sits PROSPERO—in one hand, a scroll;

in the other, a miraculous staff.]

PROSPERO

[Raising his staff.]

Darkness, be light!—Tempest, be calm!—Miranda!

[The scene grows light, and is still.]

MIRANDA

[At the steps of the throne.]

Father!

PROSPERO

Come to me, child.

[As she mounts to him gladly.]

Sit here beside me.

[She sits at his feet, nestling in the folds of his great

garment.]

My cloak and staff protect thee.

MIRANDA

[Raising her eyes in dread.]

But the wild thing?

PROSPERO

Must be transformed.—Caliban!

CALIBAN

[Crouching at the centre, howls terribly.]

Setebos—sire!

Sycorax—mother! Hast swallowed them. Lord Thunder,

Strike us no more!

PROSPERO

I strike no more till time

Hath need of thunder. Rise now and be tamed,

Howler at Heaven.

CALIBAN

[Rising, bewildered.]

Tamed, saith? What shall it be—

That “tamed?”

PROSPERO

That shalt thou learn of Ariel.

Now—Ariel!

[He looks toward Ariel, still held in the mouth of Setebos.

Sycorax lies heaped and still by the altar.]

ARIEL

[Joyously.]

Master!

PROSPERO

Sycorax, lo, ’tis dead.

CALIBAN

[With wailing cry.]

Ah—yo!

PROSPERO

The will of Setebos is matched with mine

To rule our world. Time shall award the prize—

Mine own Miranda—to his power or mine.

His might is awful, but mine art is deep

To foil his power and exalt mine own.

Ariel, thy spirits shall help me.

ARIEL

Master, how?

PROSPERO

Thou, long time artless, now shalt learn mine art

To win my goal—Miranda’s freedom. Never

Till this immortal Caliban shall rise

To lordly reason, can Miranda hold

Her maiden gladness undismayed. For that

I will release thee from those fangs

Of Setebos.

ARIEL

For that, dear master, I have waited

Long ages, dreaming.

PROSPERO

So, wilt give thy promise

To learn of me, and teach this monster here?

ARIEL

O set me free to be thy servant ever.

Master, I promise!

PROSPERO

Fly! Run free!—Unfang him,

Setebos!

[Prospero raises his staff.

Slowly the tiger-jaws of the Idol open their fangs.

Ariel, with a joyous cry, slips into the air, and—as

he floats fluttering to the earth—his unseen

choir of Spirits sing with shrilly gladness:]

SPIRITS OF ARIEL

Prospero! Prospero! Hail!

ARIEL

[Dancing on the earth.]

Free! Free!

MIRANDA

[Eagerly.]

O, now his fettered Spirits: Free them too!

PROSPERO

Well urged, my own Miranda.—Setebos,

Disgorge these long-embowelled choirs!—Spirits,

Come forth!

[Again Prospero raises his staff.

Yawning enormous, the toad-mouth of the Idol, fitted

with green and blue light, widens to a lurid aperture

out of which come forth—dancing—the star-bright

Spirits of Ariel.

As they come, Ariel—springing toward Caliban—cries

exultingly:]

ARIEL

Now, Caliban, we dance by yellow sands!

[Singing as they rush forth, the Spirits dart with Ariel

swiftly about the grovelling Caliban and chase him,

dodging and whining, down the steps to the ground-circle,

mottled with its shadowy continents of the

world, and rimmed with its long, yellow wave-lines.]

SPIRITS OF ARIEL

“Come unto these yellow sands,

And then take hands:

Courtsied when you have and kiss’d

The wild waves whist.

Foot it featly here and there

And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear:

Hark, hark!

Bow-wow!

The watch-dogs bark:

Bow-wow!

Hark, hark! I hear

The strain of strutting chanticleer

Cry: cock-o-diddle-dow!”

[Encircling Caliban in their dance, and pelting him with

bright handfuls of the yellow sands, they tease and

drive him howling into his cave cell, where his dark,

monstrous shape silhouettes for a moment on the

orange-red glow, then vanishes within.

As he disappears, to their last “Bow-wow!”

and “"Cock-a-diddle-dow!”, they hasten back above

to Ariel, who leads them before Prospero.]

ARIEL

The beast is routed, Master. Was’t well done?

PROSPERO

The routed beast—returns. I charge thee, Spirit,

Not to torment, but teach him—for which task

Thou wilt require mine art. So by its power

We will transform this cave of Setebos

To be a temple to Miranda. Now

Let these thy Spirits lead her to her shrine

Yonder, where all her maiden Muses wait

To make her welcome.

[Prospero points to where, on the right, appears Miranda’s

shrine. From its portals come forth the Nine Muses, bearing

lutes and pipes. Prospero, turning to Miranda, rises and

gives her into Ariel’s care.]

Child, go with them now

And tarry till I summon.

MIRANDA

Sir, I will.

I thank you and these Spirits, and may we all

Be saved from Setebos.

ARIEL

Sweet Mistress, follow!

[To a melodious tiding and piping played by the Muses,

Ariel and his Spirits escort Miranda to the centre,

where the Muses meet and conduct her into the shrine,

while Ariel’s Spirits—at a gesture from him—dart

through the centre of the Cloudy Curtains and disappear.]

PROSPERO

[Calling.]

Now hither, bird, and perch!

ARIEL

[Running to him, on the throne.]

Beside you, Master!

PROSPERO

[Pointing to the ground-circle.]

Seest yonder Yellow Sands? There sleep the shores,

The cloudy capes and continents of time;

There wane and wax eternal tides, that mark

The ebb and flow of empires with their foam.

There shalt thou see the million-colored skein

Whereof I weave mine art. Look well and learn!

For this my art is of no only land

Or age, but born of all—itself a world

Snatched from the womb of History, to survive

Its mortal mother in imagination.—

Dost thou attend me?

ARIEL

Word and will, dear Master!

[At the mouth of Caliban’s cell are now visible Lust,

Death, and War, who in pantomime indicate to Caliban

their conspiracy against Prospero and Ariel.]

PROSPERO

’Tis well, for thou must prove my pupil. Look!

Even now the priests of Setebos conspire

With Caliban against us. They will compass

My fall, Miranda’s ruin, and thy bondage

Unless mine art can foil them. Therefore, now

Thou shalt behold the pageant of mine art

Pace from antiquity. First, while yon glass

Lets flow its yellow sands, behold appear

My rites of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome,

And, while they pass, I will instruct thee how

To use them.—Pageant, appear!

[A deep gong sounds.]

Lo, Egypt comes!

FIRST INTERLUDE[13]

Now in succession through the great gates of the ground-circle, in colorful incursions of costume and musky appear three main pageant groups, that perform—with distinctive artistry of dance, pantomime, mass movement, and choral song—three ritual episodes of the dramatic art of antiquity. The nature of each, by a few brief sentences, Prospero expounds to Ariel, and so to the audience. Concluding, each group of the first two departs from the circle.

The first Action—a symbolic ritual of Egypt—enters in seven separate processions, which converge at the centre in worship of the golden god Osiris.

The second group—expressing the noble zenith of Greek dramatic art—chants, with aspiring, athletic dance, the second chorus of the Antigone of Sophocles, celebrating the splendor of man. This Action is performed by the altar.

With the third enters a contrasted decadence of the theatre’s art with the Roman Mimes, who enact a farcical Comedy in Masks, in presence of the emperor Caligula and the Roman populace. Concluding, this Roman group does not depart, but retiring into partial shadow on the right, awaits there its later summons.

ACT I

[As the Roman Interlude closes, the light passes from the

ground-circle to the middle stage, where Prospero—descending

his throne with Ariel—moves toward the centre. While they

speak together there, Caliban—coming from his cave—crawls

part way up the steps and lies flat, occasionally lifting

his head to listen.]

PROSPERO

So, Ariel, I have harvested for thee

These orchards of mine art, and let thee taste

Their varied fruitages, some that have ripened

In climes auspicious, some that are part decayed.

Now from three vineyards—Egypt, Greece, and Rome—

I will distill a varicolored wine

For Caliban to drink. So, steeped in spirit,

Haply he also shall see visions. Hast

Thou learned by heart all that I whispered to thee?

ARIEL

All, Master.

PROSPERO

Tell me part.

ARIEL

You will create

Out of this world of art three scenes of vision.

PROSPERO

And who shall act them—say!

ARIEL

My Spirits shall;

And I will be their Prologue.

PROSPERO

For what purpose?

ARIEL

To tutor this beast.

PROSPERO

And why?

ARIEL

That he may grow

To reverence Miranda, and forswear Setebos.

PROSPERO

So! and to dispel the Powers

Of Setebos, I have transformed his cave

To be her temple and my theatre.—Look!

[Prospero raises his staff toward the darkness that conceals

the background. As he does so, increasing light reveals the

rude, irregular contours of the cave of Setebos transformed

to the architectural lines of a splendid proscenium, in the

oblong of which the Cloudy Curtains shut off the inner stage.

The idol of Setebos has vanished.

While this transformation is taking place, the Spirit Choirs

of Ariel appear above the proscenium, singing.]

SPIRITS OF ARIEL

In the same abode and cell

Where the Toad was wont to dwell,

And the Tiger stretched his claw,

We have built a shrine of Law:

We have chosen the lair of hate

To love, imagine and create.

Out of blood and dross,

Out of Setebos,

We are risen to show

The art of Prospero:

Here within his head and heart

Our souls are servants of his art.

[Their appearances vanish above.]

ARIEL

Most noble Master! Show me now behind

Those cloudy curtains: How have you transformed

The cave within?

PROSPERO

Come; I will show thee how.

[Prospero and Ariel pass through the curtains at the

centre and disappear within.

Meanwhile Caliban, peering above the top step, stares

in dumb awe at the changed scene. There he is hailed

from below by the priest of Setebos, Lust, who comes

forth from his cell and calls:]

LUST

Caliban! Remember Setebos!

CALIBAN

[Starting, backs down the steps in scared pantomime.]

Aye, Setebos! But I hear their watch-dogs bark:

Bow-wow! I feel their tongue-bites yet—their torments.

LUST

Caliban! Restore thy father’s temple.

CALIBAN

Yea, but my father had no feet to dance.

Curse on their yellow sands! They sting my eyes

Still wi’ their blindings. Blast ’em!

[He springs part way up the steps again.]

LUST

Caliban!

Restore the priests of Setebos!

CALIBAN

His priests!

Nay, what if the cock sang—their chanticleer

His Diddle-diddle-dow! Burneth my spine

Still with that crowing.

[Reënter Prospero through the curtains.]

LUST

Hush! he comes again.

I await thy call. Cry on Caligula

And I will come.

[Lust goes in the cell.]

PROSPERO

[Calling within the curtains.]

Now, Ariel, where art thou?

Ariel!

ARIEL

[Stepping forth from behind the curtains, dressed in

the garb of Prologue, bows low.]

Here, great Master! I am now

Prologus, at your service.

PROSPERO

Nay, not mine

But his. [Calling.]

Come, Caliban: behold thy tutor.

Behind these curtains he will show thee now

More than thy nature dreams on. If thou obey him

And learn mine art, thou shalt go free like him.

If not, thou shalt be spitted on a tooth

More sharp than Setebos. What sayest?

CALIBAN

[Cringing.]

Lord,

Art Cock o’ the world, and Caliban thy worm;

Yea, only beggeth thee crow no more, nor set

Thy dancing dogs to bark at him.

PROSPERO

Tush, fool:

Wilt thou obey?

CALIBAN

Obeyeth both of you.

PROSPERO

That’s well. Sit here and watch. Now, Ariel,

Thy prologue: then reveal what lies behind.

[Prospero mounts his throne, on the steps of which Caliban

squats below him, watching and listening with growing

curiosity. At the centre, before the Cloudy Curtains,

Ariel speaks.]

ARIEL

From Egypt, by our Master’s art,

Behold now, when these curtains part,

A scene of fleeting pageantry:

Behold where pale Mark Antony

Hath fled his sore defeated ships

In quest of Cleopatra’s lips,

And turned the tides of war amiss

To pawn a kingdom for a kiss.—

So, by my Spirits’ acting, see

Of what strange stuff these humans be!

[Ariel retires within through the curtains, which then—to

the melodic dirge of flutes within—draw apart, disclosing

the inner stage, which depicts a scene of vivid Egyptian

coloring.]

FIRST INNER SCENE

Against a background of deep blue sky, the barge[14] of Cleopatra lies moored at an ancient wharf:

From the left, along the wharf, enters Mark Antony, attended by Soldiers and Populace in Roman and Egyptian garb.

ANTONY

Hark! the land bids me tread no more upon ’t;

It is ashamed to bear me! Friends, come hither.

I am so hated in the world, that I

Have lost my way forever. I have a ship

Laden with gold; take that, divide it; fly,

And make your peace with Cæsar.

ALL

Fly! Not we.

ANTONY

I have fled myself; and have instructed cowards

To run and show their shoulders. Friends, be gone;

I have myself resolv’d upon a course

Which has no need of you; be gone....

Nay, do so; for, indeed, I have lost command....

[His followers depart, and Antony throws himself

down on a buttress of the wharf.

Meantime from the barge, Cleopatra—who has

looked on and listened—is led down to the landing

by Charmian and her Attendants, behind whom Eros

[a friend of Antony] follows.

They approach Antony, who—absorbed in his

grief—does not see them.]

EROS

Nay, gentle madam, to him, comfort him....

CHARMIAN

Do! Why, what else?

CLEOPATRA

Let me sit down. O Juno!

[As Cleopatra sinks down near him, Antony—now

beholding her—starts up with a cry of surprise and

passionate pain.]

ANTONY

No, no, no; no, no!

EROS

[Pointing to Cleopatra’s piteous aspect.]

See you here, sir?

ANTONY

[Hiding his face.]

O fie, fie, fie!

CHARMIAN

[Bending over her.]

Madam!

EROS

[Appealing to Antony.]

Sir, sir,—

ANTONY

Yes, my lord, yes; he at Philippi kept

His sword e’en like a dancer, while I struck

The lean and wrinkled Cassius; and ’twas I

That the mad Brutus ended ... yet now—No matter.

[He sinks down again.]

CLEOPATRA

[Rising, to her Attendants.]

Ah, stand by ... sustain me! O!

EROS

Most noble sir, arise; the queen approaches.

Her head’s declin’d, and death will seize her, but

Your comfort makes the rescue.

ANTONY

[Drawing still away, despairfully.]

I have offended reputation,

A most unnoble swerving.

EROS

Sir, the queen!

[Cleopatra and Antony face each other—gazing

into each other’s eyes.]

ANTONY

[Suddenly crying out.]

O, whither hast thou led me, Egypt? See,

How I convey my shame out of thine eyes

By looking back what I have left behind

’Stroy’d in dishonor.

CLEOPATRA

O my lord, my lord,

Forgive my fearful sails! I little thought

You would have follow’d.

ANTONY

Egypt, thou knew’st too well

My heart was to thy rudder tied by the strings,

And thou shouldst tow me after. O’er my spirit

Thy full supremacy thou knew’st, and that

Thy beck might from the bidding of the gods

Command me.

CLEOPATRA

O my pardon!

ANTONY

Now I must

To the young man send humble treaties, dodge

And palter in the shifts of lowness; who

With half the bulk o’ the world play’d as I pleased,

Making and marring fortunes. You did know

How much you were my conqueror; and that

My sword, made weak by my affection, would

Obey it on all cause.

CLEOPATRA

[Touching his arm, clings to him.]

Pardon, pardon!

ANTONY

[Overcome at her touch.]

Fall not a tear, I say; one of them rates

All that is won and lost. Give me a kiss.

Even this repays me.... Wine!

Bring wine, within there: wine! For fortune knows

We scorn her most when most she offers blows.

[He embraces Cleopatra.

From the right slaves enter, bearing chalices and

wine-beakers. With them come flutists and harpers,

making festal music.

Snatching from them a golden cup, Antony raises

it aloft with an impassioned gesture, returning the

triumphant smile of the Egyptian queen.]

CLOSING, THE CLOUDY CURTAINS

SHUT OFF THE SCENE.

[Meantime Caliban, who has risen absorbed and drawn slowly

nearer in child-like fascination, stands for an instant,

bewildered. Then, with a cry, he leaps forward in the dim-lit

space and gropes along the curtains with arms wide.]

CALIBAN

Ho, light! All’s smother: ’tis gone! Yo—yo, all gone—

Cloud-swallowed, all! Ah, woman, snake-bright queen,

Thou wonder-thing, come back! Ah, where—where—where?

PROSPERO

So, so! Canst thou, then, taste my vision, slave?

[He descends the throne toward Caliban.]

CALIBAN

[Staring about him.]

O dazzle-blue, gold-shine, hot lotus smell!

Blood-root in bloom, and scarlet water-weed!—

O silver sight and tinkle-tickling sound!—

Spurteth my body with joy—burst in my brain

Enormous moons of wonder!—Float, still float,

You purpling sails! Blaze, thou flame-woman! Speak

Sparkles of kissing fire!

PROSPERO

[Approaching him.]

Nay, art thou touched

Beyond thy tiger cravings?

CALIBAN

Ho, Lord Master,

Lord Chanticleer, unswallow from thy gorge

The world thou hast devoured!

PROSPERO

[Pointing toward Ariel, who comes forth again as

Prologus through the curtains.]

Ask of thy tutor;

He hath revealed that world to thy brute ken.—

Ariel, this lump of earth hath dreams within ’t,

That now begin to sprout. Send it more sun

And watering.

ARIEL

Sir, your art is rain and sun:

I am but air, to carry its wet or warmth

Whereso you list.

PROSPERO

So let it fall on him

Till he shall wax to a more worthy plant

For Miranda’s temple-garden.—Here is my Staff:

This wields my power. Here keep it in thy charge

Till I return. So, use it as a rod

To instruct this bungling cub of Setebos.

ARIEL

[As Prospero goes.]

I will, sir.—Go you far?

PROSPERO

No farther than

The frontiers of mine art. Farewell a while!

[Prospero passes within through the curtains. Half

confiding, half suspicious, Caliban comes near to

Ariel and questions him.]

CALIBAN

Art, saith! What’s that—his art?

ARIEL

’Tis that which burns

Now in thy blood: the same which conjured hither

Bright Egypt and the kiss of Antony.

CALIBAN

The woman and the kiss! Nay, saidest now

’Tis rain and sun!

ARIEL

’Tis so.

CALIBAN

Where falleth his rain?

Where shineth his sun?

ARIEL

Yonder on the Yellow Sands.

CALIBAN

Nay, show me this art! Is ’t hidden in thy hand?

Here, let me hold the staff.

[Caliban reaches for the staff; Ariel raises it warningly.]

ARIEL

Stay! Touch it not

Lest it shall scorch thy fingers and set fire

To the building world. The staff of Prospero

Is for his servants, not for slaves, to wield.

CALIBAN

[Drawing back from it, in fear.]

Scorcheth my fingers, ah?—So wield it, thou!

Show me once more the snake-bright queen.

ARIEL

Nay, Egypt

No more! But come with me to Prosper’s throne

Where I play master now. Here thou shalt sit

And watch the battlements of eternal Troy

Where Troilus woos inconstant Cressida.

CALIBAN

Showest me once more—woman?

ARIEL

Even so;

For many kinds of woman make mankind.

[Rising, Ariel points toward the inner stage

and speaks chantingly.]

Now, from out Time’s storied sphere,

Homer’s Troy I summon here,

On a dawn when Hector seeks

Battle with the besieging Greeks:

There, while heroes throng the gates,

Cressida her lover ’waits,

Casting from a height apart

Tangling hooks for Troilus’ heart.—

Behold her now, by Prosper’s art!

[Ariel raises his staff.]

SECOND INNER SCENE[15]

The Cloudy Curtains draw back, revealing the battlements of Troy. Above, on a rampart, in the first rays of morning, CRESSIDA appears, with a maiden Attendant.

Below, murmuring crowds are looking toward the outer gates. Among them pass the aged Trojan Queen, and the Greek Helen, in her younger beauty.

CRESSIDA

[Peering below.]

Who were those went by?

ATTENDANT

Queen Hecuba and Helen.

CRESSIDA

And whither go they?

ATTENDANT

Up to the eastern tower

To see the battle—Hector,

Before the sun uprose, was harnessed light

And to the field goes he.

[Enter behind them Pandarus.]

CRESSIDA

Hector’s a gallant man.—

[Turning to greet him.]

Good morrow, Uncle Pandarus.

PANDARUS

[Smiling.]

Good morrow, Cousin Cressid.

[Trumpets are sounded, off left.]

Hark! They are coming from the field. Shall we

stand up here and see them as they pass toward

Ilium?

CRESSIDA

At your pleasure.

[They move to a better vantage. At a gesture

from Cressida the Attendant departs.]

PANDARUS

Here, here’s an excellent place. I’ll tell you them

all by their names, as they pass by; but mark

Troilus above the rest.

CRESSIDA

[With a reproving laugh.]

Speak not so loud.

[Below, from the left, Trojan warriors, in battle

gear, begin to pass by, through the admiring

populace who cheer them occasionally.

Among them

ÆNEAS PASSES

PANDARUS

That’s Æneas: is not that a brave man? He’s one

of the flowers of Troy, I can tell you. But mark

Troilus; you shall see anon.

ANTENOR PASSES

CRESSIDA

Who’s that?

PANDARUS

That’s Antenor: he’s one o’ the soundest judgments

in Troy. But when comes Troilus? I’ll show

you Troilus anon. If he sees me, you shall see

him nod at me.

CRESSIDA

[Archly.]

Will he give you the nod?

PANDARUS

You shall see.

CRESSIDA

If he do, the rich shall have more.

HECTOR PASSES

PANDARUS

That’s Hector: that, that, look you, that; there’s a fellow!

Go thy way, Hector! There’s a brave man, niece.

CRESSIDA

O, a brave man!

PANDARUS

Swords! anything, he cares not; an the devil comes to

him, it’s all one. Yonder comes Paris—Paris!

PARIS PASSES

Who said he came hurt home to-day? He’s not hurt.

Why, this will do Helen’s heart good now, ha! Would

I could see Troilus now! You shall see Troilus anon.

HELENUS PASSES

CRESSIDA

Who’s that?

PANDARUS

[Searching with his eyes, grows impatiently expectant.]

That’s Helenus.—I marvel where Troilus is.—That’s

Helenus—I think he went not forth to-day.—That’s

Helenus.

CRESSIDA

Can Helenus fight, uncle?

PANDARUS

Helenus? no. Yes, he’ll fight indifferent well.—I

marvel where Troilus is. Hark! do you hear the

people cry “Troilus?”

TROILUS PASSES

[As he approaches, the populace cheer him.

His eyes, however, search about till they rest on

the battlement, where Cressida, returning his look,

starts back, trembling.

Noting both their actions, Pandarus continues

flauntingly to point out the young hero.]

’Tis Troilus! There’s a man, niece. Hem! Brave Troilus!

CRESSIDA

Peace! For shame, peace!

PANDARUS

Mark him: note him. O brave Troilus! Look well

upon him, niece; look you how his sword is bloodied,

and his helm more hacked than Hector’s.

O admirable youth! Go thy way, Troilus, go thy

way! Had I a sister were a grace, or a daughter a

goddess, he should take his choice. O admirable

man! Paris? Paris is dirt to him.

[While he is speaking, Cressida has taken from her

hair a flower, knotted its stem to an arrow, and

dropped the arrow beneath the rampart, where Troilus

lifts it with a smile and happy gesture, bearing it away

with him, right. As Pandarus now turns to her,

Cressida looks away left and points to others below.]

CRESSIDA

Here comes more.

MORE FORCES PASS

PANDARUS

Asses, fools, dolts! Chaff and bran! Porridge after

meat! I could live and die i’ the eyes of Troilus.

Ne’er look, ne’er look! the eagles are gone; crows

and daws, crows and daws! I had rather be such

a man as Troilus than Agamemnon and all Greece.

[Enter, above, Troilus’ Boy, who speaks to Pandarus.]

THE BOY

Sir, my lord Troilus would instantly speak with you.

PANDARUS

Where?

THE BOY

At your own house; there he unarms him.

PANDARUS

Good boy, tell him I come. [Exit Boy.]

Fare ye well, good niece.

[He goes off, above.]

CRESSIDA

Adieu, uncle!

[Below, the last of the soldiers and populace have

passed off, right, where Cressida gazes after them,

speaking aloud to herself:]

O more in Troilus thousandfold I see

Than in the glass of Pandar’s praise may be;

Yet hold I off. Women are angels, wooing.

Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing.

[Below, from the right, Troilus hastens back, alone.

The arrow with the flower he has thrust through the

links in his chain armor on his left side. Pointing

to it, he calls up toward the battlement.]

TROILUS

Cressida!

CRESSIDA

[With a glad cry.]

Troilus!

[Unwinding her long wine-red scarf, she ties it to

the battlement, whence it flutters down to Troilus.

Seizing it, he mounts by its aid toward the rampart,

where the face of Cressida peers luringly above him.]

TROILUS

[Calling upward as he mounts.]

Cressida!

[Just as he is about to reach Cressida,

THE CLOUDY CURTAINS CLOSE.

[At the centre Caliban now leaps up in loud, excited

laughter. Clapping his hands in the air, he

strides toward Ariel on the throne.]

CALIBAN

Aha! Troy, Troy! Lips of Troyland and Egypt!

Lovers in links of gold! Ho, wine of woman

Bubbling in vats of war!—drinketh you all

Caliban, Caliban, son of Setebos.—Ariel,

Learnest me Art? Lo, now: I am his Artist!

Tell him, Lord Prospero, Caliban createth

Glories more ’stounding still. Art? Ho, ’tis God’s play!

But me? Am God i’ the mire: can make me Troy

And purple Egypt out of the mud i’ my palm;

Giveth me only that—his little play stick

[Pointing to the staff in Ariel’s hand.]

To stir in the mud withal.

ARIEL

Not yet!—This staff

Is wrought to stir the spirits of the air,

Not dabble i’ the slime.

CALIBAN

Why so? From bog-slime bloometh

The lotus, and the sea-lark feedeth her young

Along the salt flats.—

[With childish wheedling.]

Prithee—the staff?

ARIEL

[Descending the throne.]

’Twould burn thee.

Touch not till thou art free. Yet patience, monster,

For thou hast learned to answer well, and growest

Rarely in thought and speech.

CALIBAN

[Tickled to laughter.]

Yea, clever monster

Soon groweth monstrous clever. More art, fine Ariel!

Let Caliban speak thy Prologue.

ARIEL

Hush!—Miranda!

[From her shrine Miranda comes forth, with the Muses.

Seeing the two, she pauses astonished.]

MIRANDA

Nay!—Is this Ariel?

ARIEL

’Tis I—Prologus.

Will you hear me, Mistress?

MIRANDA

[As Caliban approaches.]

Thou!—thou, Caliban!

ARIEL

My pupil.

CALIBAN

[With confiding assurance.]

Liketh well thy father’s art,

Spring-i’-the-air.

MIRANDA

God speed thy learning, monster!

I am more fain to help thee in that task

Than all else in the world.

CALIBAN

[Astonished and eager.]

Wouldst help me—thou?

MIRANDA

How happy, if I could!

CALIBAN

Yea, canst thou!—Hark:

[Glancing from his garb to Ariel’s.]

Let me wear glory, too! What booteth me

To be his Artist, if I wear no cloth

To show my glory? He there talketh no Prologue

Without his toga. Tog me, too, in brave

Colors!

MIRANDA

Well thought on.

[To one of the Muses.]

Quick, Euterpe: Fetch

Bright vesture forth.

ARIEL

For Caliban?

MIRANDA

For whom

So fit? The need of beauty lies

Most near to them who lack it.

[Euterpe returns, bringing bright garments, which she and

the other Maidens help now to put upon Caliban.]

So, dear Muses:

Lay on!

CALIBAN

[Delightedly tries to survey himself.]

Ha, Sycorax, an thou wert here now

To look on this thy son!

[He parades, with swelling pleasure, before the Muses.]

Gaze well, good Spirits!

Now, Ariel, thy pupil soon shall teach thee

What thing this Art is: yea, teach Prospero

A lesson in ’s own lore.

MIRANDA

[To Ariel, who is about to protest.]

Pray, let him tarry

This time with us. He is too full of dreams

To act us harm. Speak on thy Prologue.

CALIBAN

[Still parading.]

Prologue!

Aye, good: my Prologue shall come after.

ARIEL

Mistress,

Keep here, this staff for your protection.

[Accepting the staff from Ariel, Miranda takes seat on

the shrine, where the Muses range themselves about her.]

MIRANDA

So!

Be near us, Caliban.

CALIBAN

[Moving to the shrine steps, speaks to Ariel.]

What showest now?

ARIEL

[At centre, before the curtains.]

Now, in Time’s emblazoned tome

Egypt, Greece, turn page for Rome.

CALIBAN

[Mutters aloud.]

Rome, ha! I’ll show you Rome!

ARIEL

Rocked by mighty Cæsar’s fall

Glooms the world in battle pall,

Where by midnight, worn and spent,

Weary Brutus, in his tent,

Watches ’mid the Roman host.

There the pallid Cæsar’s ghost

Rises from his candle-flame

Accusing.—Who shall bear that blame?

Can Brutus wake a world from shame?

[Ariel disappears through the curtains.

Miranda raises the staff.]

THIRD INNER SCENE

The Cloudy Curtains part, disclosing the tent of Brutus, by moonlight.

Brutus—his outer armor laid aside—sits on a couch: near him Lucius, a boy, nods drowsily over a stringed instrument. After a brief pause, Brutus—gazing at him—speaks wistfully:

BRUTUS

Bear with me, good boy:

Canst thou hold up thy heavy eyes awhile

And touch thy instrument a strain or two?

LUCIUS

Aye, my lord, an’t please you.

BRUTUS

It does, my boy:

I should not urge thy duty past thy might;

I know young bloods look for a time of rest.

LUCIUS

I have slept, my lord, already.

BRUTUS

It was well done; and thou shalt sleep again;

I will not hold thee long. If I do live

I will be good to thee.

LUCIUS

[Tuning his instrument, sings dreamily:]

Fear no more the frown o’ the great;

Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke.

Care no more to clothe and eat;

To thee the seed is as the oak.

The sceptre, learning, physic, must

All follow this and come to dust.

[Lucius falls asleep.]

BRUTUS

This is a sleepy tune. O murderous slumber,

Lay’st thou thy leaden mace upon my boy

That plays thee music? Gentle knave, good-night;

I will not do thee so much wrong to wake thee.—

Let me see, let me see; is not the leaf turned down

Where I left reading? Here it is, I think.

[The Ghost of Cæsar appears.]

How ill this taper burns!—Ha! Who comes here?

I think it is the weakness of mine eyes

That shapes this monstrous apparition.

It comes upon me. Art thou anything?

Art thou some god, some angel, or some devil,

That makest my blood cold and my hair to stare?

Speak to me what thou art.

[In the darkness, dark ghostly shapes, hardly visible,

appear to urge forward the dead Cæsar, who alone

is luminous.]

THE GHOST

Thy evil spirit, Brutus.

BRUTUS

Why comest thou?

THE GHOST

To tell thee thou shalt see me at Philippi.

BRUTUS

Well; then I shall see thee again?

THE GHOST

Aye, at Philippi.

BRUTUS

Why, I will see thee at Philippi, then.

[The Ghost and the dim Shapes disappear.

Brutus rises.]

Now I have taken heart, thou vanishest:

Ill spirit, I would hold more talk with thee.—

[Calling aloud.]

Boy, Lucius! Romans, Romans! Awake—awake!

THE CLOUDY CURTAINS CLOSE

[Instantly, in the semi-darkness without, Caliban—with

a great cry—springs among the Muses, snatches

from Miranda the staff, and rushes with it to the

centre of the middle stage, shouting aloud:]

CALIBAN

Awake, Romans, awake!

[Low thunders growl, and sharp flashes glimmer about him.]

MIRANDA

[Cries out, appalled.]

The staff! His staff!

Touch not its power, lest thou lay waste the world!

CALIBAN

[Grasping the staff, staggers and sways wildly with it,

as though being shocked by an invisible force.]

Rome! Now do I hold the roof-beam o’ the world.

Now am I lord of lightnings: Lo, mine art

Shaketh the throne of Prospero.

[He strides upon the throne, raising the staff.]

Awake,

Imperial Rome! Return, ye snake-bright women

Of Troy and Egypt! Stain these yellow sands

Wine-red with spillings of your wreathèd bowls,

And let the orgied priests of revel reign.—

Caligula, be crowned by Setebos!

Caligula! Caligula! Caligula!

[While he cries aloud, the Powers of Setebos come forth from the cell beneath, clad as Roman men, women, and slaves and, joined by the Roman Interlude Pageant on the ground-circle, raise the Emperor on a palanquin upon their shoulders, and bear him up the steps to the middle stage, shouting “Caligula!”

Here a scene of mingled riot and orgy follows:

Women dancers with golden bowls, slaves shackled and driven with whips, rabble groups scrambling for bread loaves flung them by heralds, armed soldiery, and gorgeous patrician lords: these swarm in a sordid saturnalia, from the midst of which the masked form of Caligula rises dominant in splendor. At his gesture, slaves tear the Muses from their shrine, and give them over to the revellers.

High above all, clutching the staff, his huge limbs rioting grotesque from his silken garments, Caliban dances on the throne of Prospero.

Below, bass voices of invisible choirs chant through the din:

“Setebos! Setebos! Thou art Setebos!”

Seized from the throne with the Muses, Miranda—at the centre—is borne in faint dread to the reaching arms of Caligula, who is about to place upon her his crown, when a sudden pealing of silvery trumpets strikes silence over all. In awe the revellers gaze upward, and turn toward the background, listening.

Above them there, from the darkness, appears a colossal CROSS, burning with white fire.

Caligula drops his crown.

Shadow falls on the colorful pageantry, and all sink slowly to their knees, as the Spirits of Ariel appear again above—their luminous wings outspread like seraphim.

At either end one blows a slim tapering trumpet.

High and clear, then, their choirs chant in Gregorian unison:

SPIRITS OF ARIEL

Vexilla Regis pródeunt;

Fulget Crucis mystérium,

Quo carne carnis Cónditor

Suspénsus est patíbulo.

Quo vulneratis ínsuper

Mucróne diro lanceæ,

Ut nos laváret crimine,

Manavit unda et sánguine.

O Crux, ave, spes, unica:

Hoc Passiónis témpore,

Auge piis justítiam

Reisque dona veniam.

Te summa Deus Trínitas,

Collaudet omnis spiritus:

Quos per Crucis mystérium

Salvas, rege per sæcula.

During this chant, the dim revellers beneath

bow their bodies more low.

And now, to faint organ music, the Cloudy Curtains, parting, reveal the INNER STAGE hung like an early Christian shrine in a catacomb—with primitive tapestries of dusky blue and gold. Against these in the glow of candles, an image of haloed Saint Agnes holds a white lamb, which silent shepherds are adoring. This group remains motionless as a tableau.

Then silently from either side two priests come forth with swinging censers. Passing forward and down the steps to the ground-circle, they are followed in the dim light by the Roman revellers, who rise and pass off through the Interlude gates.

Last of all rises Caligula, who pauses hesitant, looking back where Miranda still kneels, now grouped about by her Muses.

As he stoops to lift his crown from the earth, two Figures in the INNER SCENE—a Shepherd Boy, and a Shepherd wrapt in a hide mantle—stir from the still picture and come forward in a circle of light, while

THE CLOUDY CURTAINS CLOSE

behind them, and above the white cross vanishes.

Speaking from the place of light to the Emperor’s form in shadow, the Shepherd calls to him:]

THE SHEPHERD

Caligula!

THE EMPEROR

Who calls?

THE SHEPHERD

Reveal thyself—

What thing thou art.

[Stepping slowly into the light, the EMPEROR bows himself

before the SHEPHERD, holding up his crown

which the Shepherd takes and says with a gesture:]

Lay off thy mask.

[Rising, the Emperor puts of his mask, revealing himself

as the PRIEST OF SETEBOS.]

Hail, Lust!

LUST

[To the Shepherd.]

Hail, Prospero!

PROSPERO

[Putting of his sheepskin cloak, which the boy

takes from him.]

Return to Setebos.

[To the Shepherd Boy.]

Ariel, lead him below.

ARIEL

So, Master!

[Ariel leads Lust away to the cell beneath.]

MIRANDA

[Rising, goes to Prospero’s arms.]

Father!

[From the outer dimness, Caliban—who, since the appearance

of the burning Cross, has lain flat on the throne steps—

now grovels forward [trailing his silken garment by one

sleeve] and flings the staff of Prospero into the light space.]

CALIBAN

No more! Will never touch it more!

PROSPERO

[Staring at the staff.]

A thousand years

To build, and build for beauty, yet in one flare

Of riot lust, a lubber idiot

Confounds time and my toil.—Ah, daughter, daughter!

How shall mine art reclaim this lapsing ape

From his own bondage?

MIRANDA

Sir, my heart is shaken;

Yet the sweet sight of Agnes and her lamb

Hath shown new comfort.

[Stooping, she lifts the staff and holds it toward him.]

Therefore, even as a Shepherd,

Take up thy staff in patience, and urge still onward

This poor sloughed sheep.

PROSPERO

Yea, patience! Sun, moon, stars,

And all that waxes hath its waning-hour;

But patience is the night behind the stars,

Steadfast through all eclipse.

[With his staff, he touches Caliban where he lies cringed.]

Stir, thou thick clot

Of clay and god-spittle! Let thine atoms thaw

To mud, where Prosper may imprint once more

His blurrèd seal.

CALIBAN

[Hoarsely, half rising.]

Mud: yea, methought to be

His Artist, and make dream-things of mine own

Like Ariel his spirits, yet now—am mud.

MIRANDA

[Pitifully.]

Nay, star-dust!

ARIEL

[Returning.]

Master, from those far frontiers

You visited, have you not brought us back

More pageants of your art?

PROSPERO

Yes, Ariel:

Back from the dim bourns of the Middle Age

Of Germany, France, Spain, and Italy.

And now, for this slave’s tutelage, I’ll show you

Their quaint moralities and mad-cap mirth.

Come hither, and watch: Lo, olden Germany!

Pageant of the north, appear.

SECOND INTERLUDE[16]

Once more, through the community gates of the ground-circle, appear, in contrasted ritual, successive Folk-Groups, that perform now episodic phases of the dramatic art of Europe in the Middle Ages. Concluding, each group departs.

First comes the Germanic, in part grimly austere, in part naïvely grotesque. On a portable, three-tiered stage this group enacts both audience and players of a popular morality play: a pantomime scene depicting—in heaven, earth, and hell—the tragic, romantic HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS.

This Action is followed by the contrasted splendor of a mediæval French scene. Here, in presence of the Kings of France and England, on THE FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD, is performed a colorful tournament on horseback.

Last follows a fusion of the Spanish and Italian groups in the Third Action: a light-hearted dramatic Scherzo, full of laughter, knavery, and romantic love, performed—in the midst of a festa—by the pied actors of the COMMEDIA DELL’ ARTE.

During this last Action, Prospero and Ariel [above] have withdrawn through the Cloudy Curtains, leaving Caliban alone, staring spellbound at the many-hued festival below him.

ACT II

[Now, when the Italian Interlude is concluded, the light—passing to the middle stage—illumines at centre the lone figure of Caliban, where he squats above his cell. Gazing out over the ground-circle, he calls aloud his yearning thoughts:]

CALIBAN

O Sands—Yellow Sands! Falleth on you his rain,

Shineth his sun! Yea, there his breeding dews

Quicken your blind rock-seeds, till wondrous live things

Burst ’em with flame-bright petals; and where his light falls

You blossom with stars and flowers: But me—me saith,

Am mud! Calleth me a bubble of black ooze

Can breed but only mine own belly-kind—

Bog-fish and moles.—Lieth!

[Rising with a great gesture.]

He lieth! ’Tis lies!

Sands!—You wild, yellow sands! I, too, I, too,

Am born to dance by your eternal waves

And build brave temples there. I, too, shall bring you

Shoutings of life-song, like those Spirits.—Lo,

I come to you—I come now!

[Running down the steps, he rushes out upon the ground-circle,

where he stoops on bent knees and kisses the shining earth.

Behind him, at the entrance of the cell, Death appears,

holding a great gray cloak.

He comes forward, speaking in a thin monotone.]

DEATH

Caliban!

CALIBAN

[Raising his head.]

What calleth me there?

DEATH

Death: priest of Setebos.

CALIBAN

His temple is fallen: will build no more like his.

DEATH

Thou shalt restore his temple, Caliban.

CALIBAN

[Rising.]

Nay, will not!

DEATH

None can say me Nay. I am

The will to not be which denies all wills.

[Through the Cloudy Curtains—slowly—Prospero enters,

in troubled meditation.]

CALIBAN

And I am Caliban: [Pointing toward Prospero.]

will be his servant.

DEATH

Caliban, thou shalt fail. Thyself art failure,

Setebos’ son.

CALIBAN

Myself am done with Setebos:

Wear now Miranda’s cloth.

DEATH

Thou shalt wear mine.

Behold!

CALIBAN

[Looking at the gray cloak.]

What’s that?

DEATH

My cloak, where thou shalt hide

To snare Miranda unto bondage. Hark!

[Far, cold, and thin a dirgeful choir sounds from the

cell behind the figure of Death.]

THE DIRGE

Gray—gray—gray: Joy be unholy and hidden;

Wan be the rainbow of wonder, frozen the tide!

Blind—blind—blind: Passion be pale and forbidden;

Dumb be the lips of the soul to Beauty denied!

PROSPERO

[Speaks to Ariel, who comes running from behind the

Cloudy Curtains.]

Blithe bird of mine, my heart is boding ill.

Hast thou heard?

ARIEL

Nay, Master, what?

PROSPERO

His dirges.

ARIEL

Whose?

PROSPERO

Setebos’. Ha, ’tis not his lust I dread,

Nay, nor his tiger tooth, nor belly on fire:

’Tis when his fever cools: when the gray ash

Covers the life-flame, and the boiling senses

Skim with thin ice, and the rank bloom wears hoar-frost:

Not savage souls, ’tis dead souls that defeat us.

Not red, but gray—gray.

[While Prospero and Ariel have spoken together above,

Caliban, below, has been drawn half hypnotized

by Death toward the cell.]

DEATH

[To Caliban.]

Follow me.

CALIBAN

I follow!

DEATH

[At the cell’s mouth, lifts the gray cloak to put upon

Caliban.]

Wear now my color.

CALIBAN

[As Death touches him, springs back.]

No, no; thy hand-touch freezeth.

[Fearfully he leaps up the steps, crying aloud:]

Prospero! I will serve thee.

DEATH

[Disappearing within the cell.]

Thou shalt fail.

CALIBAN

[Bowing before Prospero.]

Master, raise up thy servant.

PROSPERO

Raise thyself.

CALIBAN

[Slowly rising.]

So—while thou lookest on me, I can rise.

PROSPERO

Nay, look once more on what I now create

For thee to rise by. ’Tis mine art, not me,

Reigns as thy master. Master it, and go free.

[The Three move toward the throne, where they soon

group themselves on the steps.]

CALIBAN

What wilt thou show me now?

PROSPERO

A mind distraught—

Grasping at realms invisible—like thine,

Poor groping dreamer. Ariel, from the scroll

Of mine old Gothic meditations, bid

Thy spirits blazon now a glimpse of Hamlet.

[He hands to Ariel his scroll.]

ARIEL

Your will, great Master, we revere it.—

Lo where, to meet his father’s spirit,

Pale Hamlet watches now, before

The parapets of Elsinore!

[Ariel raises the scroll; then, unrolling it, bends his looks

upon it, while the Cloudy Curtains part, revealing the

FIFTH INNER SCENE.

On a platform at Elsinore, by blazing starlight, three Figures are seen pacing the cold.

HAMLET

The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.

HORATIO

It is a nipping and an eager air.

HAMLET

What hour now?

HORATIO

I think it lacks of twelve.

MARCELLUS

No, it is struck.

HORATIO

Indeed?

I heard it not: then it draws near the season

Wherein the spirit held its wont to walk.

[A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off within.]

What does this mean, my lord?

HAMLET

The King doth wake to-night and takes his rouse,

Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-start reels;

And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,

The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out

The triumph of his pledge....

HORATIO

[Pointing.]

My lord, it comes!

[Enter Ghost.]

HAMLET

Angels and ministers of grace defend us!—

Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn’d,

Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,

Thou comest in such a questionable shape

That I will speak to thee: I’ll call thee Hamlet,

King, father, royal Dane: O answer me!...

What may this mean,

That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel

Revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon,

Making night hideous, and we fools of nature

So horridly to shake our disposition

With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?

Say, why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?

[The Ghost beckons Hamlet.]

HORATIO

It beckons you to go away with it,

As if it some impartment did desire

To you alone.

MARCELLUS

Look with what courteous action

It waves you to a more removed ground:

But do not go with it.

HORATIO

No; by no means.

HAMLET

It will not speak; then I will follow it.

HORATIO

Do not, my lord.

HAMLET

Why, what should be the fear?

I do not set my life at a pin’s fee;

And for my soul, what can it do to that,

Being a thing immortal as itself?—

It waves me forth again: I’ll follow it.

MARCELLUS

You shall not go, my lord.

HAMLET

Hold off your hands.

HORATIO

Be ruled; you shall not go.

HAMLET

My fate cries out,

And makes each petty artery in this body

As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve.

Still am I call’d. Unhand me, gentlemen.

By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me!

I say, away!—Go on; I’ll follow thee!

[As Hamlet, impetuous, makes after the departing ghost,

THE CLOUDY CURTAINS CLOSE

CALIBAN

[Springing up.]

No, no! Follow not! Let him not follow! ’Tis

A spirit lureth to Setebos and Death.

He knoweth him not, what ’tis;—but, master, I know.

Me, me too hath he beckoned with blind eyes

And offered his gray cloth.

PROSPERO

Thee? Death hath beckoned

And yet thou didst not follow?

CALIBAN

Hither I fled

To serve thee, but he said that I should fail;

Yet—yet, and thou wilt help, I will not fail!

PROSPERO

And what wouldst have of me?

CALIBAN

[Pointing to Ariel.]

Thy wonder scroll:

Nay, not thy staff again! Will never more

Botch with thy lightnings. Nay, but this littler

thing

Lend me, and let me bear it against Death

To free my father’s spirit from his gray pall.

Lettest Ariel: let now thy Caliban

Conspire to serve thee.

[He reaches for the scroll.]

PROSPERO

Why, thou wheedlest well,

And I must hope in thy self-weening. Yet

Beware lest thou thyself shalt wear the drab

Thou takest from him: Gray hath arsenic

More keen than scarlet or the corroding blood

That sered the flesh of Hercules.

CALIBAN

[Eagerly.]

Wilt lend me

The scroll?

PROSPERO

[With a gesture to Ariel.]

Here!

[Ariel hands the scroll, which Prospero then gives

to Caliban.]

Use this token of mine art

Less blindfold than the last.

[Caliban bounds away with the scroll.]

ARIEL

[Half protesting.]

Will trust him, Master?

PROSPERO

Yea, though he fail me yet again, for only

Trust can create its object.

CALIBAN

[Joyfully kissing the scroll and raising it.]

Now, now, Setebos,

Thy son shall wean thy Powers from Death, thy priest!

[Descending the steps, Caliban hastens to the mouth of

the cell, where—as he is about to enter—Death reappears

and hails him.]

DEATH

Welcome, Caliban!

[Death beckons within. Pausing momentarily, Caliban

seems about to draw back, but recovering his purpose

cries out hoarsely:]

CALIBAN

Go on; I’ll follow thee.

[He follows within and disappears. Caliban and Death have

hardly vanished, when Miranda comes from her shrine,

followed by the Muses, who are accompanied by a troop

of Fauns. The classic hides of these are partly concealed

by gay mediæval garments [Florentine and French], and

some bear in their hands great vellum books and

parchments, which they stack in a pile near the shrine.]

MIRANDA

[Calling joyously.]

Muses, sweet friends to mirth! Come forth again

And fetch your little Fauns, that drowsed so long

In mildew’d vaults of antique vellum, through all

The winters of dark ages. Come, sad Clio,

Unpucker your frown! You, pale Melpomene,

Blush to a lovelier time. Yond yellow sands,

That ran blood-red with orgies of old Rome,

Shine golden now with young renascence. The ages

Renew their summer. Joy hath its June once more,

For once more Prosper reigns.

PROSPERO

[As Miranda comes to him.]

’Tis thy returning

Restores my summer time. I see thou hast

Been rummaging old lockers.

MIRANDA

Aye, sir, and found

These sharp-eared Fauns, hiding like wintered field-mice

In attic parchments. So I set ’em free

To play, while Care the Cat’s away.—Come, now,

Sicilian boys, caper your shag-hair shins,

And thou, Terpsychore, lead on their dance

To please my father.

[At her command, Terpsychore and the Fauns—to instruments

played by the Muses—perform a joyous dance before

Prospero. As they conclude, he greets them with a smile.]

PROSPERO

Thanks, you hearts upleaping!

After long ominous hours, thanks for your festa!

And you, dear child incorrigible for joy,

Come now, I will requite you—not in gold,

But golden fantasy, wrought all one glow

Of shadowless shining.

MIRANDA

Ah, another vision?

PROSPERO

Aye, ’tis a vision, that myself beheld

Shine on the soil of France. I’ll show you Peace:

The kings of earth at peace, after red battle;

Two kings of men, each clasping brother’s hand

Warm with the golden passion of strong peace.

MIRANDA

What kings were they, and where?

PROSPERO

England and France:

’They met in the vale of Andren, ’twixt Guynes and Arde;

I was then present, saw them salute on horseback;

Beheld them, when they lighted, how they clung

In their embracement, as they grew together.’—[17]

But tell us, Ariel, what I told thee remember,

How Peace was crowned on the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

MIRANDA

How brave a name! Would I had been there!

ARIEL

[Bowing, as Prologue.]

’You lost

The view of earthly glory: men might say

Till this time pomp was single, but now married

To one above itself. Each following day

Became the next day’s master, till the last

Made former wonders its. To-day, the French,

All clinquant, all in gold, like heathen gods,

Shone down the English; and to-morrow, they

Made Britain India: every man that stood

Show’d like a mine. Their dwarfish pages were

As cherubins, all gilt: the madams too,

Not used to toil, did almost sweat to bear

The pride upon them, that their very labor

Was to them as a painting: now this masque

Was cried incomparable, and the ensuing night

Made it a fool and beggar. The two Kings,

Equal in lustre, were now best, now worst,

As presence did present them.’[18]—Lo, now, see

How first they met, and clasped their hands in peace!

[Lifting Prospero’s staff, Ariel makes a gesture toward

the Cloudy Curtains, which part, discovering the

SIXTH INNER SCENE

Here, to an opening fanfare of golden trumpets, takes place a PANTOMIME, all of gold, depicting to the eye, as in a glowing fantasy, the meeting of the Kings and their Retinues: the alighting of the Kings from horseback, their embracement and their clasping of hands.

During this enactment of the pantomime, the choirs of Ariel’s Spirits sing, unseen:]

SPIRITS OF ARIEL

Glory and serenity,

Splendor of desire,

Blend where golden lilies bloom

Mid St. George’s fire:

Lilies of France!—behold

How they glow on the Field of the Cloth of Gold,

And the battle-captains curb their bands

Where the kings of earth clasp hands.

Power and principality

Raise to Peace their choir

Where Lord Christ his lilies cling

Round the Dragon’s ire:

Lilies of Christ!—behold

How they flame from the Field of the Cloth of Gold,

Where the captains bow to their Lord’s commands

And the kings of men clasp hands.

[At the climax of the meeting of the Kings,

THE CLOUDY CURTAINS CLOSE

PROSPERO

[Smiling, to Miranda.]

This glowing taketh thee.

MIRANDA

O, my good father!

Methinks my soul is a flake o’ the sun, for where

Things golden shine, I spangle, too; yea, burn

To be Aurora, and trail cloth of gold

Around the world.

PROSPERO

Unless my will miscarry,

Thou shalt be such a morning messenger

And wake the world with beauty. Now my plans

Wait on a vast result, for Caliban

Himself hath gone to deal with Setebos

His gray priest, Death.

MIRANDA

What, Caliban! O glad

Hope for us all! Your art begins to triumph,

And Ariel’s Spirits to conquer.

PROSPERO

That still waits:

Meanwhile mine art drinks from this renaissance

Deep draughts against a dark to-morrow.—Hither,

You Fauns! Come, bear my gold-emblazoned scrolls

And silver-claspèd books before me!

[Lifting the scrolls and volumes from their pile by the

shrine, the Fauns come forward with them to Prospero,

who turns affectionately to Miranda.]

I

Will leave you now, and pore awhile on these

For further conjurings.

MIRANDA

[Detaining him.]

Yet conjure once

Again before you go!

PROSPERO

What wouldst thou, dear?

MIRANDA

Hardly I know: but something high, serene,

And passionately fair: some vision’d glimpse

Of fadeless youth, and lovers rich through love.

PROSPERO

Why, Ariel hath his orders still.—[To Ariel.] List, pupil:

To glad thy mistress’ heart, when I am gone,

Pour the warm moon-wine of Italian night

Into a dream-cup, where entrancèd lovers

Seal with charm’d lips their vows. Therein dissolve

What visions rise, till they shall melt in one

Gloaming of love and music.—So, Miranda,

Rich dreams! Faun-boys, bear on my books before me!

[Accompanied by the bright-clothed Fauns, bearing the

great books and scrolls in quaint procession, Prospero

departs through the throne-entrance.

Meantime, the Muses and Miranda gather at the

shrine, where Ariel approaches Miranda.]

ARIEL

Mistress—

MIRANDA

Hark, Muses! Ariel, speak on!

ARIEL

Ear and eye, now, list and lo:

Mirth of mad Mercutio,

Juliet’s sigh for Romeo;

Dim Lorenzo’s murmur’d “Ah!”

For moon-dreaming Jessica;

Dance of flower-soul’d Perdita

Wafted to her Florizel

Like a wave o’ the sea: List well;

Lo, their night renews its spell!

[At Ariel’s last word and gesture, the Cloudy Curtains

part, disclosing the

SEVENTH INNER SCENE

In the glow and gloom of Italian night, as high clouds intermittently obscure the moon, a palace garden lies in deep shadow. Emerging only partly into view, where soft light-floodings fall on moss-stained statue, marble bench, and balcony, there is revealed at first [on the left] nothing but a glimpse of garden wall, before which flash in the dimness two pied figures [Benvolio and Mercutio]. Calling shrilly, their young voices rain showers of fluting laughter.

PRELIMINARY SKETCH FOR SEVENTH INNER SCENE: JONES

BENVOLIO

Romeo! My cousin Romeo!...

He ran this way, and leap’d this orchard wall:

Call, good Mercutio.

MERCUTIO

Nay, I’ll conjure, too:

Romeo! humors! madman! passion! lover!—

I conjure thee by thy true love’s bright eyes,

By her high forehead and her scarlet lip,

By her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh

And the demesnes that there adjacent lie,

That in thy likeness thou appear to us!—

He heareth not, he stirreth not, he moveth not.

BENVOLIO

Come, he hath hid himself among these trees,

To be consorted with the humorous night:

Blind is his love and best befits the dark.

MERCUTIO

If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark ...

Romeo, good-night: I’ll to my truckle-bed;

This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep:

Come, shall we go?

[They disappear, swallowed up in black shadow. And now

the shadow, shifting, leaves bare in mellow

moonshine a glimpse of the garden and the balcony,

where Juliet, bending forward, calls mysteriously

into the dark below:]

JULIET

Hist! Romeo! hist! O for a falconer’s voice,

To lure this tassel-gentle back again!

Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud;

Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies,

And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine

With repetition of my Romeo’s name.

ROMEO

[Emerging, below, from the shadow.]

It is my soul that calls upon my name:

How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night,

Like softest music to attending ears!

JULIET

Romeo!

ROMEO

My dear?

JULIET

At what o’clock to-morrow

Shall I send to thee?

ROMEO

At the hour of nine.

JULIET

I will not fail: ’tis twenty years till then.

I have forgot why I did call thee back.

ROMEO

Let me stand here till thou remember it.

JULIET

I shall forget, to have thee still stand there,

Remembering how I love thy company.

ROMEO

And I’ll still stay, to have thee still forget,

Forgetting any other home but this.

JULIET

’Tis almost morning; I would have thee gone:

And yet no further than a wanton’s bird,

Who lets it hop a little from her hand....

Good-night, good-night! Parting is such sweet sorrow

That I shall say good-night till it be morrow!

[Once more deep shadow engulfs the scene; and now,

out of the dark, harmonious music sounds in

strains of passionate wistfulness. So, as the

music sounds, on the right, beams of the moon

reveal a flowery bank, whereby Lorenzo and Jessica

are discovered.]

LORENZO

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

Here will we sit and let the sounds of music

Creep in our ears: Soft stillness and the night

Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:

There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins,

Such harmony is in immortal souls;

But whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

[Swift shadow sweeps over them in darkness. Waning from

its visionary theme to a hint of the “muddy vesture

of decay,” the music flows onward then into a dance

melody; moonlight touches the garden again [on the left]

with its liquid glow, wherein—whirled into light from a

group of shadowy dancers outside—Florizel and Perdita

are disclosed.]

FLORIZEL

[As Perdita withdraws shyly her hand from his,

speaks to her ardently.]

What you do

Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,

I’d have you do it ever ... When you do dance, I wish you

A wave o’ the sea, that you might ever do

Nothing but that; move still, still so,

And own no other function: each your doing

So singular in each particular,

Crowns what you are doing in the present deed,

That all your acts are queens....

PERDITA

O Doricles,

Your praises are too large: but that your youth,

And the true blood which peepeth fairly through ’t,

Do plainly give you an unstained shepherd,

With wisdom I might fear, my Doricles,

You woo’d me the false way.

FLORIZEL

I think you have

As little skill to fear as I have purpose

To put you to ’t. But come; our dance, I pray:

Your hand, my Perdita!

PERDITA

[Giving her hand confidingly.]

My Florizel!

[Together they dance away into the dark and the luring

music, as

THE CLOUDY CURTAINS CLOSE

[Still, after the curtains’ closing, the music continues, but now more faint, changing the idyllic strains of the dance rhythm to a minor sadness, which gradually takes form as a drear, monotonous processional. Through the faint music, Miranda speaks to Ariel.]

MIRANDA

Too brief! too brief, sweet bird! O Ariel, be

Time’s nightingale, and charm these lovers back

To yearn immortal youth. Methinks already

Their absence leaves us age’d: Dost thou not feel

A waning of high powers? Doth not a pallor

Creep on the glowing world?

ARIEL

Yea, so I have felt

After the equinox—November coming on.

MIRANDA

[Starting, as she gazes at one of the Muses.]

Euterpe dear! What lock of gray is this

In thy bright hair?—Quick, Ariel: fetch my father,

For sudden my heart aches, and I wish him near.

ARIEL

Straight I will bring him, and my Spirits, too.

Be merry, mistress: they shall soon restore us.

[Ariel hastens off, left. As he does so, the Muses, with

downcast looks, file off right into the shrine.]

MIRANDA

Nay, darling Muses! do not leave me, too.

What, must you all go hence? Still I must tarry

To greet my father. Friends, good-bye!

[They depart.]

Ah me!

What voices make their dirge within my heart?

[While she has spoken, the mouth of Caliban’s cell,

emitting a ghastly glow, fills with dim Shapes, which

pour outward, and swarm slowly upward over the steps,

covering the stage with a moving, huddled grayness,

out of which two cloaked Figures rise distinct in the

dusk. As they come forth and hover nearer to Miranda,

a cold dirge issues with them from below.]

THE DIRGE

[As before.]

Gray—gray—gray: Joy be unholy and hidden;

Wan be the rainbow of wonder, frozen the tide!

Blind—blind—blind: Passion be pale and forbidden;

Dumb be the lips of the soul to Beauty denied!

[Slowly the gray hosts surround Miranda, who stares at

them, only half believing their presence, till the

dusk, growing lighter, reveals their long Puritan

cloaks and peaked hats, and the two muffled Ones in

Gray towering before her. Then faintly she speaks

to them:]

MIRANDA

What are you? Why are you come? Ah, you—’tis you:

Priest of Setebos!—Caliban!

[She sways and falls.]

CALIBAN

Ha, she swooneth.—

O Death, unfasten thy spell!

DEATH

Nay, thou hast failed.

[Lifting the scroll of Prospero, which he has taken from

Caliban, Death makes a gesture to his followers.]

Bear her to Setebos!

[Then, laying his hand upon Caliban, he turns with him

backward, as a group of the gray-cloaked Shapes raise

the limp form of Miranda to a cloth-draped bier, and

thus bear her downward toward the cell’s mouth. In

dim processional, as they go, they raise again their

dirge:]

THE DIRGE

Gray—gray—gray: Love, be sin-born of Misgiving!

Life, be a garment of dullness, drab from the loom!

Bleak—bleak—bleak: Death, Death is lord of the living:

Not in the clay but the heart of man lies the tomb.

[Disappearing in the cell below, their chant dies away.

Above them, from the left, Ariel returns, alone.

Searching in the dusk, half fearfully, he calls:]

ARIEL

Miranda—mistress: He hath vanished. Nowhere

Can I find trace of him. Yea, and my Spirits

They, too—they, too, are gone, lost in the grayness:

All have deserted us! Miranda—mistress!

Where art thou? Gone, thyself?—and I alone!

O gray, that hast engulfed a world of beauty,

Where shall I find them ever more—my master,

My star-bright mistress? Hear me, Yellow Sands!

If you have beheld them, answer now my prayer!

[Outstretching his arms toward the Sands.]

Prospero! Prospero!—Master!

[From far across the Sands bursts a mellow radiance,

and the rich voice of Prospero calling in answer:]

PROSPERO

Ariel! Ariel!

Ho, bird!

[Springing into light upon the farthest wave-lines of the

Yellow Sands, Prospero comes returning, surrounded by

the Spirits of Ariel, clad all in green and bearing in

their midst a garlanded May-pole.

Marching joyously across the circle toward Ariel, all in

radiant glow, they come shouting a choral song:]

THE SPIRITS OF ARIEL

“Sumer is icumen in,

Lhude sing cuccu!

Groweth sed, and bloweth med,

And springth the wude nu.—Sing cuccu!

“Awe bleteth after lomb

Lhouth after calve cu!

Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth,

Murie sing cuccu!

“Cuccu, cuccu, well singes thu, cuccu:

Ne swike thu naver nu;

Sing cuccu, nu, sing cuccu,

Sing cuccu, sing cuccu, nu!”

[Leaping up the steps, they plant the May-pole at

the centre, where Ariel greets them.]

ARIEL

Dear Master! O blithe hearts: Have welcome home!

PROSPERO

Welcome our May-pole back!—Where is thy mistress?

ARIEL

[Startled.]

Alas! You know not?

PROSPERO

[Reassuringly.]

Nay, I know. But cheerly,

My birdlings! Now that ye are flocked once more

Round this enchanted tree, I’ll conjure you

Out of mine art such joyous rites, that they

Shall draw your Mistress even from the tomb

To join our revels. Come now, gather round

And watch my antic rites of Merry England!

THIRD INTERLUDE[19]

Now through the Interlude gates, and from all sides, a jocund festival pours into the illumined space of the ground-circle: the folk festival of Elizabethan England.

Simultaneously, in different parts, as in a merry rural fair, various popular arts and pastimes begin, and continue together: Morris dancers and pipers, balladists and play-actors, folk dancers, fiddlers, clowns, and Punch-and-Judy performers romp, rant, parade, and jingle amongst flower-girls and gay-garbed jesters spangling by the bright venders’ booths.

Central, at a point of vantage, above a gaping crowd of lumpkins and children, Noah’s wife harangues the heavens from the old play.

So they pursue their merriment, till the low rumble and lowering of a thunder-cloud disperses them with its passing shadow.

ACT III

[At the conclusion now of the English Interlude, out of the shadow a roseate glow suffuses the cell of Caliban, from which the green-clad Spirits of Ariel come running forth, bringing in their midst Miranda. Leading her in daisy chains, they mount with her the steps toward Prospero, singing in glad chorus:]

THE SPIRITS OF ARIEL

“Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year’s pleasant king;

Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,

Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing,

Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

“The palm and may make country houses gay,

Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,

And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay:

Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

“The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,

Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit,

In every street these tunes our ears do greet:

Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

Spring! the sweet Spring!”

PROSPERO

[Greeting her.]

Welcome, most dear!

MIRANDA

Once more you bring me home,

And the gray world wears green!

THE VOICE OF CALIBAN

[Calling, beneath.]

Ho, Spring-i’-the-air!

MIRANDA

Hark!

[From his cell, bare-headed, with gray cloak unbound

and flapping behind, Caliban bursts forth and

hastens toward them.]

CALIBAN

Spring-i’-the-air! Ah, leave me not alone!

Take me forth with thee, too! Not Death can hold me

When thou goest forth from him.

MIRANDA

It was thyself

That led’st me unto him.

CALIBAN

With thee—with thee

Would I lie even with Death. But when thou leavest,

Thy life-song prickleth his sod, and maketh my sap

To leap, and lick the sun again.

[Kneeling before her.]

O, whither

Thou goest, let Caliban go, and wear thy cloth

Whatso its colors be!

PROSPERO

[Darkly.]

Keep from her, slave!

Touch not her hem. Her Muses garbed thee once

Gay in her colors. Thou soiled’st them with shame.

Next time thou worest drab, and lured’st thy Mistress

Deathward in gray. Now—now thou darest crave

Once more to wear her cloth?

CALIBAN

Yea, do I! See:

This cloak—so I forswear it!

[He puts off the gray cloak, tears it, and tramples upon

it; then turns to Miranda.]

Give me now

Thy green to wear!

PROSPERO

Insolence infinite!

Ariel, my staff!

MIRANDA

Stay!—What to do?

PROSPERO

[About to raise the staff.]

To teach

This unwhipt hound—to howl.

CALIBAN

[Starting back.]

Great Master!

MIRANDA

Grace,

Dear Father! Patience needs no quick compulsion.

Thine art is wondrous patient, and this poor

Slow climber needs thine art.

PROSPERO

Why, once again

Thou art my wiser self.

[To Caliban.]

Go, lick her hand,

And feed from it.

CALIBAN

[Laying his cheek on Miranda’s hand weeps,

with great sobs.]

Spring—Spring-i’-the-air, thy dew

Dabbleth my face. O wonder, what art thou

That fillest so mine eyes with rain-shine?

MIRANDA

April,

Not I, can conjure spring i’ the air, and April

Plies rarest art in England.—Ariel,

Fetch us, from out my father’s dreamery,

Nature’s spring-charm and echo of English song!

[To the Spirits of Ariel.]

Our greenwood cloth! Come, busk him, merry men all:

Aye, both of us!

CALIBAN

[Rapturously.]

This time I will not fail thee.

MIRANDA

[To Prospero, indicating Caliban.]

Have faith in this fellow-creature, and let these spirits

Clothe him anew.

PROSPERO

As you like it, dear, be it so!

[The Spirits clothe Caliban and Miranda in green, while from

within the Cloudy Curtains an unseen chorus sings:]

THE CHORUS

“Under the greenwood tree

Who loves to lie with me,

And tune his merry note

Unto the sweet bird’s throat,

Come hither, come hither, come hither:

Here shall he see

No enemy

But winter and rough weather.”

ARIEL

Spirits within, ho!

[The Spirits run through the curtains, at centre,

and disappear within.]

Prosper’s hood

Broods now a dream of Arden wood,

Where young Orlando, daring fight

For succor of old Adam’s plight,

Defies the greenwood company—

But meets there with no enemy.

CALIBAN

[By the throne with Miranda and Prospero, murmurs aloud:]

No enemy!

[As Ariel raises his staff, the Cloudy Curtains part,

disclosing

THE EIGHTH INNER SCENE

A place of dappled shine and shadow in the forest. No boughs or trees are visible, but only a luminous glade of color, where falling sunlight filters a swaying glow and gloom from high, wind-stirred branches above. On the edges of the scene, the semi-obscurity half conceals forms of the forest company [Jacques, the Duke, etc.] who, seated about their noon-time meal, sing their chorus:

THE CHORUS

Who doth ambition shun

And loves to live i’ the sun,

Seeking the food he eats

And pleased with what he gets,

Come hither, come hither, come hither:

Here shall he see

No enemy

But winter and rough weather.

[Enter Orlando, with his sword drawn.]

ORLANDO

[Fiercely.]

Forbear, and eat no more!

JACQUES

Why, I have eat none yet.

ORLANDO

Nor shalt not, till necessity be served.

THE DUKE

What would you have? Your gentleness shall force

More than your force move us to gentleness.

ORLANDO

I almost die for food; and let me have it.

THE DUKE

Sit down and feed, and welcome to our table.

ORLANDO

Speak you so gently? Pardon me, I pray you:

I thought that all things had been savage here;

And therefore put I on the countenance

Of stern commandment. But whate’er you are

That in this desert inaccessible

Under the shade of melancholy boughs

Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time;

If ever you have looked on better days,

If ever been where bells have knoll’d to church,

If ever sat at any good man’s feast,

If ever from your eyelids wiped a tear

And known what ’tis to pity and be pitied,

Let gentleness my strong enforcement be:

In the which hope I blush, and hide my sword.

THE DUKE

True is it that we have seen better days,

And have with holy bell been knoll’d to church,

And sat at good men’s feasts, and wiped our eyes

Of drops that sacred pity hath engender’d:

And therefore sit you down in gentleness

And take upon command what help we have

That to your wanting may be minister’d.

ORLANDO

Then but forbear your food a little while,

Whiles, like a doe, I go to find my fawn

And give it food. There is an old poor man,

Who after me hath many a weary step

Limp’d in pure love: till he be first suffic’d

I will not touch a bit.

THE DUKE

Go find him out,

And we will nothing waste till you return.

ORLANDO

I thank ye; and be blest for your good comfort!

[Exit Orlando.]

THE DUKE

Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy:

This wide and universal theatre

Presents more woeful pageants than the scene

Wherein we play in.

JACQUES

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players!

[Re-enter Orlando with Adam, whom he helps to support.]

THE DUKE

Welcome! Set down your venerable burden

And let him feed.

ORLANDO

I thank you most for him.

ADAM

So had you need:

I scarce can speak to thank you for myself.

THE DUKE

Welcome: fall to! Give us some music; sing!

[Once more, as the chorus resumes the song “Under

the Greenwood Tree,”

THE CLOUDY CURTAINS CLOSE

[The music dies away within.

With a strange, dawning reverence, Caliban turns to

Miranda and speaks:]

CALIBAN

“I scarce can speak to thank you for myself.”—

Like him there you have furnish’d me food of pity

And a new world with no enemy!

MIRANDA

You have none,

Save the blind storms of your own nature.

CALIBAN

Those

Tempests are still now.

PROSPERO

[Approaching.]

So mine art hath power

Once more to calm? Good: now the time is ripe

Methinks to rest awhile, for I am happily

Weary, and will take rest from thought.—Miranda,

Wilt come within? Unhood me for brief slumber,

And smooth my couch?

MIRANDA

[Rising.]

Right gladly.

PROSPERO

[To Ariel.]

And thou, too,

One moment: I’ve more for this tutelage.

[Prospero passes off, right, by the throne exit, accompanied

by Ariel. Miranda, about to follow,

pauses at Caliban’s entreating voice.]

CALIBAN

Stay! What your pity hath made me cries to you—

Leave me not! Let me be yours!

MIRANDA

[Wonderingly.]

How mean you—mine?

CALIBAN

Your Caliban, your creature, your bond slave

To fetch and bear for you.

MIRANDA

I want no bonds

’Twixt me and any friend. Nay, we are friends

And free to serve each other.

CALIBAN

Yet I yearn

For more: I know not what.

MIRANDA

What more could be

More happy?

CALIBAN

Here I crawled upon my belly

Brute-stuttering for you, where now I stand

And pray—with Prosper’s tongue. His art hath bred

Within my blood a kinship with your kindness

That cries: “Miranda, thou and I are one!”—

I know not how—I know not how.

MIRANDA

You love me.

’Tis simple, then: I love you, Caliban.

CALIBAN

[In a splendor of amazement.]

Lovest me—thou? thou!—Wilt be mine?

MIRANDA

Nay, truly

You know not how. Love knows not mine and thine,

But only ours; and all the world is ours

To serve Love in. I am not thine, good friend.

[She goes within.]

CALIBAN

Stay yet!—She loveth me! Yet Love, she saith,

Love knows not mine and thine.

A VOICE FROM BENEATH

[Calls deeply.]

She shall be thine,

Caliban!

CALIBAN

[Starting.]

Mine! Who saith that word?

THE VOICE

She shall

Be thine!

CALIBAN

How mine?—Say!

THE VOICE

Thou shalt fight for her.

CALIBAN

[Pointing toward the Cloudy Curtains.]

Shall fight? Nay, there—the youth put by his sword,

For the other said: “Your gentleness shall force

More than your force move us to gentleness.”

THE VOICE

Yet thou shalt fight!

CALIBAN

[Springing forward above his cell.]

What art thou?

[From the mouth of the cell a flame-colored Figure

strides forth and replies:]

THE FIGURE

War: thy father’s

Priest.—Caliban, remember Setebos!

CALIBAN

Ha, Setebos! Com’st thou once more with priest-craft

To lure me back to him?—Begone!

WAR

Yet not

Without me shalt thou win Miranda.

CALIBAN

[Fiercely.]

Go!

WAR

[Returning within the cell, disappears as his voice

dies away.]

Remember War! Miranda shall be thine!

CALIBAN

[Hoarsely.]

Miranda—mine!

ARIEL

[Comes running from the throne entrance.]

Ho, pupil, now be merry!

Great Prosper sleeps, and from his slumber sends thee

A dream of fairy laughter.

CALIBAN

[Darkly, amazed.]

Laughter!

ARIEL

Aye,

An English make-believe of antic elves

And merry wives, to douse the lustful fire

Of old John Falstaff, lured to Windsor Forest.—

Our Master deems thou hast learned art enough

To laugh at apings of it.

CALIBAN

[Still amazed, but curious.]

Laugh?

ARIEL

Aye, list!

[Caliban stands on one side, with arms folded and

listens.]

To Windsor’s magic oak now turn:

There—his fatty bulk in guise

Of the hornèd hunter Herne—

Big Sir John in ambush lies

Where the counterfeited fays

Troop along the forest ways:

How his lust will cease to burn

For the Merry Wives—now gaze

Yonder by the oak, and learn!

[Ariel raises his staff. Parting, the Cloudy Curtains

disclose

THE NINTH INNER SCENE

The gigantic trunk of an oak rises in moonlight, surrounded by the glimmering purple of the obscure forest.

Trooping from the left, enter the disguised Fairies, following their leader Sir Hugh Evans.]

EVANS

Trib, trib, fairies; come; and remember your parts:

be pold, I pray you; follow me into the pit; and when

I give the watch ’ords, do as I pid you: Come,

come; trib, trib.

[They conceal themselves.

A distant chiming sounds as Falstaff enters, disguised

as Herne, wearing a stag’s head with great horns.]

FALSTAFF

The Windsor bell hath struck twelve; the minute

draws on. Now, the hot-blooded gods assist me!

Remember, Jove, thou wast a bull for thy Europa;

love set on thy horns. O powerful love! That, in

some respects, makes a beast a man, in some other

a man a beast.

CALIBAN

[Listening intently near the edge of the scene.]

A man a beast!

FALSTAFF

Think on ’t, Jove: Where gods have hot backs, what shall

poor men do? For me, I am here a Windsor stag; and

the fattest, I think, i’ the forest. Send me a cool

rut-time, Jove! Who comes here? My doe?

[Enter Mistress Ford and Mistress Page.]

MRS. FORD

Sir John! Art thou there, my deer? My male deer?

FALSTAFF

My doe with the black scut! Let the sky rain potatoes,

let it thunder to the tune of green sleeves; I will

shelter me here.

MRS. FORD

Mistress Page is come with me, sweetheart.

FALSTAFF

Divide me like a bribe buck, each a haunch: Am I a

woodman, ha? Speak I like Herne the hunter?

As I am a true spirit, welcome!

[Noise within.]

MRS. PAGE

Alas, what noise?

MRS. FORD

Heaven forgive our sins!

FALSTAFF

What should this be?

MRS. PAGE AND MRS. FORD

Away! Away!

[They run off.]

FALSTAFF

I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil

that’s in me should set hell on fire; he would never

else cross me thus.

[Enter Sir Hugh Evans, disguised as before; Pistol,

as Hobgoblin; Mistress Quickly, Anne Page, and

others as Fairies, with tapers.]

MRS. QUICKLY

Fairies, black, gray, green, and white,

You moonshine revellers, and shades of night,

You orphan heirs of fixed destiny,

Attend your office and your quality.

Crier Hobgoblin, make the fairy oyes.

PISTOL

Elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys!

FALSTAFF

They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die:

I’ll wink and couch: no man their works must eye.

[He lies upon his face.]

EVANS

Where’s Bede? Go you, and where you find a maid

That, ere she sleeps, has thrice her prayers said,

Raise up the organs of her fantasy;

Sleep she as sound as careless infancy!

But those as sleep and think not on their sins

Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides, and shins!

CALIBAN

[Growing excitedly absorbed.]

Ha, pinch them, saith!

MRS. QUICKLY

Away; disperse: but till ’tis one o’clock,

Our dance of custom round about the oak

Of Herne the hunter, let us not forget.

EVANS

Pray you, lock hand in hand; yourselves in order set;

And twenty glow-worms shall our lanterns be

To guide our measure round about the tree.

But, stay; I smell a man of middle-earth.

FALSTAFF

Heaven defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest he

transform me to a piece of cheese!

PISTOL

Vile worm, thou wast o’erlook’d even in thy birth.

MRS. QUICKLY

With trial-fire touch me his finger-end:

If he be chaste, the flame will back descend

And turn him to no pain; but if he start,

It is the flesh of a corrupted heart.

PISTOL

A trial, come.

EVANS

Come, will this wood take fire?

[They burn him with their tapers.]

FALSTAFF

Oh! Oh! Oh!

CALIBAN

[Crying out.]

Ah, ah! They plague him, too!

MRS. QUICKLY

Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire!

About him, Fairies; sing a scornful rhyme;

And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time.

ALL

[As they dance about him, pinch, burn him, and sing:]

Fie on sinful fantasy!

Fie on lust and luxury!

Lust is but a bloody fire

Kindled with unchaste desire,

Fed in heart, whose flames aspire

As thoughts do blow them, higher and higher.

Pinch him, Fairies, mutually;

Pinch him for his villany;

Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about,

Till candles and starlight and moonshine be out!

FALSTAFF

[Rising and pulling off his buck’s head, cries out:]

Oh! Oh! Oh!

[As he is about to flee, tormented by the dancing figures,

THE CLOUDY CURTAINS CLOSE

CALIBAN

[Bursting into bitter laughter.]

Ah-ha, ha!

“Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire!”

Mocketh me, mocketh me, ah!—A man with horns

And heart of monster!

[Striding fiercely toward Ariel.]

He mocketh me, thy lord!

ARIEL

[Laughing silverly.]

Why, ’tis but fairy sport for laughter.

CALIBAN

[With choking passion.]

Laughter!

Ah-ha! Me, too—me, too, thy spirits plagued

And pinched, to piping jigs.

[Seizing Ariel.]

I tell thee, smiling

Spirit, thy laughter scorcheth me with nettles,

[Pointing toward the curtains.]

And that hot bulk of lust hath made my loins

To rage with boiling blood.

ARIEL

[Struggling.]

Unclutch thy hand!

CALIBAN

Not till I bleed that oil of laughter from thee

Which lappeth me in flame.

THE VOICE OF WAR

[Calls deeply from below.]

Hail, Caliban!

CALIBAN

[Pausing, releases Ariel, and listens.]

Callest me, War?

THE VOICE

Miranda shall be thine!

CALIBAN

Mine!—Yea, now I am mocked to know myself

What rutting stag I am! And her, the doe

I mate, my horns shall battle for, and be

Mine own—mine, mine! Miranda!

MIRANDA

[Coming from within, right, raises her hand in gentle

warning.]

Hush thy tone;

My father slumbers yet.

[Showing Prospero’s hood, which she carries.]

He hath put by

This hood, wherein he sends thee here another

Visioning.

CALIBAN

[Stares at her, breathing hard.]

So: what now?

ARIEL

[To Miranda.]

He rages, Mistress.

Beware! He babbleth of War.

MIRANDA

Why, then he conjures

The dream my father sends: another picture,

Painted in gules on England’s ancient shield:

King Harry, by the high walls of Harfleur.

[To Caliban.]

So you may learn, good friend, how noblest natures

Are moved to tiger passions—by a painting

Called Honor, dearer than their brothers’ lives.

CALIBAN

Why will he show me this?

MIRANDA

Perchance that you,

Born of a tiger’s loins, seeing that picture,

May recognize an image of yourself

And so recoil to reason and to love.

CALIBAN

So, mocketh me once more?

MIRANDA

Nay, never that.

But let us look thereon, and learn together.

CALIBAN

[Starts toward her, but curbs himself, trembling.]

Together!

MIRANDA

[To Ariel.]

Hold his magic hood and conjure.

ARIEL

[Taking the hood of Prospero.]

Image of Strife, may never more

Your like draw near!

Pageant of long-forgotten War,

Appear!

Harry of England, lo, is here!

[As Ariel lifts Prospero’s hood on the staff, the

Cloudy Curtains party and discover

THE TENTH INNER SCENE

Before high mediæval walls, partly shattered, to pealing of trumpets, appear in their armor, King Henry the Fifth, and his nobles, surrounded by soldiers, with cross-bows and scaling-ladders.

Standing above on a parapet, the King is exhorting them with vehement ardor.

KING HENRY

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,

Or close the wall up with the English dead!

In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man

As modest stillness and humility:

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,

Then imitate the action of the tiger;

Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,

Disguise fair nature with hard-favor’d rage;

Then lend the eye a terrible aspect....

Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit

To his full height. On, on, you noble English,

Whose blood is fet from fathers of War-proof!...

Be copy now to men of grosser blood,

And teach them how to war. And you, good yeomen,

Whose limbs were made in England, show us here

The mettle of your pasture; let us swear

That you are worth your breeding, which I doubt not....

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,

Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot.

Follow your spirit, and upon this charge

Cry, “God for Harry, England, and Saint George!”

THE SOLDIERS

[With a great shout.]

Ho, God for Harry, England, and Saint George!

[As they leap forward, to the blare of trumpets, and

begin to scale the ladders,

THE CLOUDY CURTAINS CLOSE

[Instantly Caliban, seizing from the staff the hood of

Prospero, shakes it aloft and shouts:]

PRELIMINARY SKETCH FOR TENTH INNER SCENE: JONES

CALIBAN

Ho, God for Caliban and Setebos!

War, War for Prosper’s throne! Miranda’s shrine!

[A booming detonation resounds, and a roar of voices

from below.]

THE VOICES

Caliban, Caliban, hail!

[From the throne-entrance Prospero—unhooded—hastens

in, surrounded by the Spirits of Ariel, bearing

long shining lances. Mounting swiftly the throne

and joined by Ariel and Miranda, Prospero calls

to Caliban, who—wearing his hood and lifting his

staff—strides toward him.]

PROSPERO

[His unhooded features revealing their likeness to

Shakespeare’s.]

Who wakes my sleep

With these usurping thunders?

CALIBAN

War and I!

Now Setebos returns, and thou art fallen!

[A second detonation booms.

Red glare bursts from Caliban’s cell, and War rushes

forth with the Powers of Setebos, clad in his flaring

habiliments, followed by the groups of Lust and Death.

Bearing lighted torches, amid the roaring of Setebos

choruses, flashing fireworks and bombs, they swarm

upon the half-obscure stage.

Led by War, the flame-colored hordes clash with the

Spirits of Ariel, overcome them, and take captive

Miranda, Prospero, and Ariel.

As War holds Miranda in his power, Prospero confronts

Caliban who—wearing his hood and raising his

staff—exults before him:]

Hail, Prospero! Who now is master-artist!

Who wieldeth now the world?

PROSPERO

Hail, Caliban!

Slumb’ring, from me thou robb’st my hood and staff

Which wield my power; yet not mine art they wield

Without my will: my will thou canst not rob

Nor ravish.

CALIBAN

[With eyes gleaming.]

But Miranda!

PROSPERO

Nay, nor her:

For she is charmed against thy body’s rape

By chastity of soul. Thy will and War

May break, but cannot build the world: And One,

Who bore us all within her womb, still lives

To stanch our wounds with her immortal healing.

CALIBAN

Where?

PROSPERO

[Pointing.]

Yonder, on the Yellow Sands! She rises now

And calls across the tides of fleeting change

Her deathless artists of the plastic mind—

My art that builds the beauty of the world.

EPILOGUE

Where Prospero points, the light passes from the pageant of War to the centre of the Yellow Sands.

There, in mellow splendor, a serene female Figure, rising majestic from the altar, calls to the thronging shadows.

THE SPIRIT OF TIME

Children of men, my passionate children, hark!

To-day and Yesterday I am To-morrow:

Out of my primal dark

You dawn—my joy, my sorrow.

Lovers of life, you rapturous lovers, lo

The lives you clutch are by my lightnings riven:

Yea, on my flux and flow,

Like sea-birds tempest-driven.

Yet from my founts of life, fecund, divine,

Still dauntless lovers dare my dark tribunal,

Building a common shrine

To hold their love communal.

So out of War up looms unconquered Art:

Blind forces rage, but masters rise to mould them.

Soldiers and kings depart;

Time’s artists—still behold them!

As the Spirit of Time ceases to speak, the light passes to the entrances of the Greek ground-circle, where now—from either side—enters a Pageant of the great Theatres of the world—from the ancient Theatre of Dionysus to the Comedie Francaise—in symbolic groups, with their distinctive banners and insignia. The names of these are blazoned on their group standards, and the groups themselves [like those that follow] are announced from either end of the high balcony above the inner stage by two spirit Trumpeters, the one beneath a glowing disk of the sun, the other beneath a sickle moon.

While these, below, have ranged themselves on the ground-circle and steps above—the groups of War, Lust, and Death have dwindled away in the background darkness—leaving only Prospero, Miranda, and Ariel, grouped in light at the centre.

Then on either wing of the stage, at right and left, appears luminous a colossal mask—the one of Tragedy, the other of Comedy. Through the mouths of these, now come forth, in national pageant groups,[20] the creators of the art of the theatre from antiquity to the verge of the living present: the world-famed actors, dramatists, producers, musicians, directors, and inventors of its art.

First come the great Actors, in the guise of their greatest rôles—from Thespis and Roscius of old to Irving, Salvini, Coquelin, Booth, of modern times, the comic actors tumbling forth from the Mask of Comedy, the tragic from the Tragic Mask.

They are followed by national groups of the great Dramatists from Æschylus to Ibsen, who pass in review before Prospero.

Among these, with the Elizabethan Dramatists, grouped with Marlowe, Green, Jonson, Beaumont, and Fletcher, and others, appears the modest figure of Shakespeare, at first unemphasized.

For one moment, however, as Shakespeare himself approaches Prospero, he pauses, Prospero rises, and the two figures—strangely counterparts to their beholders—look in each other’s eyes: a moment only. For Prospero, slipping off his cloak, lays it on the shoulders of Shakespeare, who sits in Prospero’s place, while Prospero moves silently off with the group of Dramatists.

Finally, when these pageants of Time have passed, and the stately Spirit of Time vanished in dark on the Yellow Sands, the only light remains on the figure of Shakespeare—and the two with him: Ariel tiptoe behind him, peering over his shoulder; Miranda beside him, leaning forward, with lips parted to speak.

Then to these, out of the dimness, comes forth Caliban. Groping, dazed, he reaches his arms toward the dark circle, where the stately Spirit has vanished. In a voice hoarse with feeling, he speaks aloud.

CALIBAN

Lady of the Yellow Sands! O Life! O Time!

Thy tempest blindeth me: Thy beauty baffleth.—

A little have I crawled, a little only

Out of mine ancient cave. All that I build

I botch; all that I do destroyeth my dream.

Yet—yet I yearn to build, to be thine Artist

And stablish this thine Earth among the stars—

Beautiful!

[Turning to the light, where the Three are grouped.]

—O bright Beings, help me still!

More visions—visions, Master!

[With gesture of longing, he crouches at Shakespeare’s

feet, gazing up in his face, which looks on him

with tenderness. With Caliban, Miranda too appeals

to the Cloaked Figure.]

MIRANDA

[Wistfully.]

—Master?

[To her raised eyes, he returns a pensive smile.]

SHAKESPEARE

[As Prospero]                        “Child,

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this unsubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.”

[Then, while the light focusses and fades in darkness on

the pensive form of Shakespeare, the choirs of

Ariel’s Spirits repeat, unseen, in song:]

THE SPIRITS OF ARIEL

“We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.”

FINIS

APPENDIX

CONTENTS OF APPENDIX

1.

FOREWORD

2.

PERSONS AND PRESENCES (OF THE TEN INNER SCENES)

3.

INTERLUDES I, II, III

4.

EPILOGUE

5.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

FOREWORD

The actors of a Community Masque being members of the community, it becomes the function of the Masque-director to reverse the traditional order of theatrical procedure and—so far as possible—to take the public, as participants, into the confidence of “behind the scenes” beforehand.

If this were a play only [in the Broadway sense], I should gather together my staff and company for a preliminary reading, assign parts, devise plans of rehearsal, and get personally in touch with the comparatively few persons involved in its production. Being, however, a new kind of drama, involving some thousands of persons as actors, and some scores of leaders as a projected staff, it becomes practically necessary to print and publish, before production, not only the foregoing spoken and sung Masque-Proper, but the sketched-in outlines of the nonspeaking Interludes which follow.

In the nature of the case, these outlines are preliminary and [though necessarily printed here] are still plastic and susceptible to various modifications. Thus publication at the moment in New York is essentially for the purpose of rendering each of the hundreds of participants more intimately familiar with his or her special relationship [as group participant or group principal] to the work as a whole.

To this is also added the need for making its text and stage-directions available to communities outside of New York, which have already expressed their desire to organize for its production after next May.

An interesting American phase of the New York production is the problem of carrying its community meaning to the still polyglot population, so that steps have been taken for the immediate translation of the Masque into Italian, German, and Yiddish.

By referring to the chart INNER STRUCTURE, the reader will see that it offers a technical solution for the participation of about a dozen national and civic groups within the time limits of the festival, without disintegrating the organic unity of the plot and action of the drama, with which the actions of the various groups are fused and synthesized. This form of technique [the result of some years of thought and experiment in this field] contributes a basis for the future development of the outdoor community art of the theatre, on a scale adapted to modern cities.

The Masque thus becomes, so to speak, a Masque of Masques. For example, the seven-minute Don Giovanni pantomime scene-plot of the Spanish and Italian Action in Interlude II [of which Mr. Ernest Peixotto is the community group-chairman] is being enlarged, under Mr. Peixotto’s direction, into the spring festival of the MacDowell Club, performed locally at its clubhouse, lasting an hour and a half, for the Prologue of which the author has written the dialogue.

So each of the other Interlude Actions, necessarily brief in time-limit, is itself a potential Masque or festival, capable of being developed locally into larger proportions. And this is being done in New York in the case of several other of the Interlude Actions.

At the present date, among those who are actively interested in the production side of the Interludes, are the Misses Lewisohn, and their associates of the Neighborhood Playhouse, for interpreting the Egyptian; Mr. Franklin Sargent of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, in association with members of the Greek Colony, for the Greek; Mr. Arturo Giovannitti [who, as poet, is also translating the Masque into Italian] and members of the Italian colony, for the Roman; Mr. Otto J. Merkel, and members of the German University League, for the German; Mr. Charles A. Donner and members of the Alliance Francaise, for the French; Mr. Rene Wildenstein, Mr. Peixotto, and members of the Spanish-speaking community, for the Spanish-Italian; the New York Branch of the English Folk-Dance Society, under direction of Mr. Cecil Sharp, for the Interlude of Elizabethan England; the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters [Chairman, Mr. William Dean Howells], for the Epilogue.

As indicated in the Inner Structure Chart, an Action of ancient India[21] was originally planned for the beginning of Interlude I. This was chiefly devised, in conference with the author and director, by the director of the community Interludes, Mr. Garnet Holme, who has brought to this New York production his very valuable experience in directing outdoor festivals in California and England. Owing, however, to brevity of time and the pressure of organization details, this Action has been omitted from the production in May.

- SHADED: MASQUE PROPER:

- SPEAKING ACTORS (ABOUT 30)

- MUTE FIGURANTS (ABOUT 300)

- INVISIBLE CHOIRS

- ACTION ON STAGES A & B OF GROUND PLAN

- WHITE: INTERLUDES & EPILOGUE:

- NON-SPEAKING PARTICIPANTS (ABOUT 2,000)

- VISIBLE CHORUSES

- COMMUNITY DANCES

- PANTOMIME ACTING

- MASS MOVEMENTS

- ACTION ON STAGE C OF GROUND PLAN

Of the other members of the producing staff of the Interludes, Mrs. Robert Anderson contributes to her direction of the community dances her admirable knowledge of the subject, and Mrs. John W. Alexander to the Interlude costuming [in association with Mr. Urban and Mr. Jones] the excellent insight and artistry which contributed so much [with the work of her husband, the late President of the Academy] to the impressiveness of the “Joan of Arc” stadium performance at Harvard, and other productions of Maude Adams and Charles Frohman.

In the following descriptions of the Interlude Actions, the numbers of community actors are based on an arbitrary computation [at this date] of a total of 1,500, at least double which number will require to be enlisted to make sure of sufficient persons for the five New York performances. The numbers here printed, however, are purely tentative and are subject to modification. Of the terms used for community actors, the term Participants means those who take part in the Interludes only; Figurants those who also take part in groups of the Masque Proper; Specials those who take part only in the special group, or groups, designated.

In the projected tour of the Masque outside of New York, a modified performance of the Masque, on a smaller scale, when acted without the Interludes, will require, in local community actors, only the Figurants.

It will be evident, I think, to the reader, that the organization of a community for a Masque performance on so large a scale is a special technique, only recently in process of development. As a contribution to this technique, the appended Community Organization Chart has been drawn up by my sister, Hazel MacKaye, who has brought to it her experience, of several years, in organizing and directing community pageants and masques, some of them of her own authorship.

Space and time do not permit of further comment in this Foreword on many important social relationships and reactions involved in this new community art. The accompanying photograph, however, of a Community Masque audience—150,000 citizens of Saint Louis gathered in May, 1914, to witness the Pageant and Masque of Saint Louis, in which over 7,000 of their fellow-citizens took part—may be suggestive to the imagination of the reader. On the background may be seen, at centre, the thousand-foot stage, and, at left and right, the tents of the community actors, men and women.

Space and time also do not permit of any adequate emphasis upon the enormous importance, and contribution to this growing art-form, of music in its community aspects. In this respect, the splendid pioneering work of Mr. Harry H. Barnhart in creating community choruses in Rochester and New York City is fundamentally significant. In the creative field of composition, rich in its manifold promise, Mr. Arthur Farwell, director of the New York Music School Settlement, and composer of the music of this Masque, has devoted probably more attention than any other American composer to this community type of musical art.

A COMMUNITY MASQUE AUDIENCE

Copyright, 1914. By E. O. Thalinger, St. Louis

150,000 SPECTATORS OF THE PAGEANT AND MASQUE OF SAINT LOUIS,

IN WHICH 7,500 CITIZENS TOOK PART, MAY, 1914

[IN BACKGROUND, CENTRE, THE STAGE; RIGHT AND LEFT, TENTS OF ACTORS]

To the Shakespeare Celebration of New York, since its origin last year in activities of the Drama League, Miss Mary Porter Beegle, of Barnard College, has contributed her unflagging zest and enthusiasm, Mr. Howard Kyle his disinterested, manifold services, Miss Kate Oglebay her remarkable thoroughness in organizing the Supplementary Celebrations.

In his original and deeply based work of experiment, through channels of the People’s Institute and the School for Community Centre Workers, Mr. John Collier has shown fundamental leadership in a field all-important to the community purposes of this Masque: the modern economics and organization of coöperative art.

As this Foreword goes to press, Prof. Richard Ordynski has joined Mr. Urban in the work of the Masque’s New York production.

To Mr. Everard Thompson, producers and committees alike are indebted for his unfailing, friendly resourcefulness.

As references to the reader curious to study the art of the theatre in the eras touched upon in these Interludes, a lengthy Bibliography might well be submitted. For this Foreword, it may suffice to refer to three very useful works, in several volumes, viz: “The Drama,” Editor Alfred Bates, Historical Publishing Company [a dozen volumes]; “The Art of the Theatre,” Karl Manzius, Scribners, [5 volumes]; “The Theatre, Its Development in France and England, and a History of Its Greek and Latin Origins,” Charles Hastings, London, Duckworth, 1902 [and Lippincott].

The beneficial possibilities of community festival art and organization are, of course, commensurate with the time and opportunity afforded for their development. As mentioned in the Preface, the time for the New York production has, by unavoidable circumstance, become far too brief to accomplish, between the present date and the 23rd of May the deep social reactions potential in this festival. A year, instead, for the work of preparation would be none too much. It is hoped, however, that the production of this Masque may at least help to establish the festival movement in New York on a sound and perennial community basis.

PERCY MACKAYE.

New York, March 26, 1916.

PERSONS AND PRESENCES

OF THE TEN INNER SCENES

[Enacted by the Spirits of Ariel.]

- FIRST INNER SCENE

- SPEAKING PERSONS

- Antony

- Cleopatra

- Charmian

- Eros

- PANTOMIME GROUPS

- Roman Soldiers

- Egyptian Populace

- Flutists

- Harpists

- Wine Bearers

- SECOND INNER SCENE

- SPEAKING PERSONS

- Cressida

- Her Attendant

- Pandarus

- Boy

- Troilus

- MUTE PERSONS

- Hecuba

- Helen

- Æneas

- Antenor

- Hector

- Paris

- Helenus

- PANTOMIME GROUPS

- Trojan Warriors

- Trojan Populace

- THIRD INNER SCENE

- SPEAKING PERSONS

- Brutus

- Lucius, a boy

- Ghost of Cæsar

- MUTE PRESENCES

- Shapes in the Darkness

- FOURTH INNER SCENE

- SPEAKING PERSONS

- Saint Agnes [An Image]

- A Shepherd [Impersonated by Prospero]

- A Shepherd Boy [Impersonated by Ariel]

- Other Shepherds

- FIFTH INNER SCENE

- SPEAKING PERSONS

- Hamlet

- Horatio

- Marcellus

- MUTE PERSONS

- The Ghost of Hamlet’s Father

- SIXTH INNER SCENE

- [Derivative from Shakespeare]

- PANTOMIME PERSONS AND GROUPS

- King Henry the Eighth, of England

- King Francis the First, of France

- Their Soldiers and Followers

- SEVENTH INNER SCENE

- SPEAKING PERSONS

- Benvolio

- Mercutio

- Romeo

- Juliet

- Lorenzo

- Florizel

- Perdita

- MUTE PERSONS

- Jessica

- EIGHTH INNER SCENE

- SPEAKING PERSONS

- Orlando

- Jacques

- Duke

- Adam

- PANTOMIME GROUPS

- Foresters of Arden

- NINTH INNER SCENE

- SPEAKING PERSONS

- Sir Hugh Evans [as Fairy]

- Sir John Falstaff

- Mistress Ford

- Mistress Page

- Mistress Quickly [as Fairy]

- Pistol [as Hobgoblin]

- PANTOMIME GROUPS

- Fairies [Counterfeited by Followers of Sir Hugh]

- TENTH INNER SCENE

- SPEAKING PERSONS AND GROUPS

- King Henry the Fifth

- His Soldiers and Followers

INTERLUDE I

FIRST ACTION: EGYPTIAN

COMMUNITY ACTORS [148]

Comprise

PARTICIPANTS [75]

FIGURANTS [73]

Osiris, the god of summer and fecundity.

Worshippers of Osiris [Men and Women].

7

Groups, each group comprising

15

Dancers [Parts & Figs.]

5

Drum-players, Followers [Parts and Figs.]

1

Priest Leader [Participant]

Total

Dancers

105

”

Drum-players

35

140

”

Leaders

7

147

Osiris

1

148

THEME

Egyptian Worshippers of the god Osiris, B. C. 1000, celebrate his resurrection from death by a dramatic ritual, symbolizing how the seven portions of his rended body unite again at his rebirth.

ACTION

At the deep pealing of gongs, from each of the three entrances to the ground-circle, two diverging Processions issue forth, a seventh issuing from the cell of Caliban. All are dressed in robes and concealing masks of black.

Slowly, to the rhythmic beat of Egyptian drums [borne by the last five in each procession], by seven separate routes, they move out upon the Yellow Sands, and so converge toward the altar at the centre.

Within about a rod of the altar they pause, while their seven Priest-Leaders move forward—each bearing a fire urn—to the altar, on which an immense circular disk lies. On the disk, a prone Shape lies concealed beneath a black cloth.

Bowing before the altar, the seven Priests then rise and, mounting the steps, extend their arms to touch the rim of the disk. Thus—their black masks turned skyward—they raise their shrill voices in a mournful Egyptian chant.

Moving then backward to the ground, they drop incense within their seven urns, from which rise seven pillars of smoke, lighted by the glow of fire beneath.

In this increasing glow, the black Shape on the disk stirs, slowly rises beneath its dark cloth, and extends upward its hidden arms. During this, the drums beat from a low muffled cadence increasingly to a loud rolling rhythm, to which now—at a shrill choral cry from all the worshippers—the black cloth on the central Shape sloughs to its feet, revealing—in a burst of radiant splendor—the flame-bright form of the god Osiris.

In tall shining mitre, he raises his ox-herd’s whip and shepherd’s crook. With these, to the joyous cries of his Worshippers, he bestows with archaic gesture a seven-fold sign of benediction.

Once more then mounting the altar steps, the Priests step forth from their black robes and masks in their own garments of yellow gold. Thus, touching again the rim of the disk, they begin to revolve it—at first slowly.[22]

And now at its first motion, Osiris begins to dance.

In this dance he expresses the former beneficence of his life, the sufferings of his death, the rending of his body into seven parts and finally the joy of his resurrection.[23]

In rhythm to the primitive music, the Priests revolve the disk to the dancing movement of the god.

In this revolving movement his Worshippers below join in a dance on the ground (expressive of the blending of the seven parts of his body), where one by one successively the seven Processions encircle the altar and the dancing Osiris. As they do so, they slough off their dark garments, weaving thus a whirling movement in which the proportion of black ever diminishes while the golden yellow increases, until finally—in a blaze only of gold-yellow radiance—the Priests raise aloft on its pedestal the disk, still spinning, while the flame-red god, still dancing, is borne away in procession by his joyous Worshippers, shouting aloud their shrill cries of “Osiris!”

When all have disappeared through the south gate of the circle, Prospero on his throne speaks to Ariel,[24] announcing the Second Action of the Interlude—his art of the drama in Greece.

INTERLUDE I

SECOND ACTION: GREEK

COMMUNITY ACTORS [175]

Comprise

PARTICIPANTS [100]

Individuals [2]

Actors [9]

Sophocles

Antigone

The Choregus[25]

Ismene

Friends of Sophocles [20]

Creon

Aristophanes

Haemon

Socrates

Eurydice

Anaxagoras

Teiresias

Alcibiades

A Watchman

Euripides

A Messenger

Fifteen Others

A Second Messenger

Chorus [60]

Trainers and Stage Leaders [5]

Choreutai [In four bands,

Chorodidaskalos [Chorus Master]

fifteen in each band.]

Orchestrodidaskalos

Musicians [4]

[Dancing Master]

Four Fute-players

Choryphaios [Stage Chorus Leader]

Two Parastatai [His

Assistant Leaders]

FIGURANTS [75]

Athenian Audience [75]

Pericles

Aspasia

Seventy-three Others.

THEME

Sophocles rehearses the Second Chorus of his drama “Antigone” in the Theatre of Dionysus, at Athens, B. C. 440.

ACTION

At the sounding of Interlude trumpets, the light passes to the great gates of the ground-circle, from which simultaneously two main groups enter.

From the right enter Athenian Citizens, accompanying Pericles and Aspasia. These move forward to the north portion of the Yellow Sands [between the centre of stage B and the altar] and there form the semicircle of an antique audience, which faces the altar and the modern audience. Among these, two seats are placed for Aspasia and Pericles.

From the left gate, meanwhile, has entered the Choregus [producer of the play], in conversation with Sophocles, followed closely by a group of twenty friends, among whom are Socrates, Aristophanes, Anaxagoras, Alcibiades, and Euripides. These move toward the centre. There Sophocles summons the Chorodidaskalos [Chorus Master], and the Orchestrodidaskalos [Dancing Master] to confer with him and the Choregus. Returning part way toward the left gate, the Chorus Master calls aloud “Antigone!”

Enter, then [left], the Actor of the part of Antigone, followed by a group of Actors comprising the impersonators of Ismene, Creon, Haemon, Eurydice, Teiresias, a Watchman, and two Messengers. With these, who carry their classic masks in their hands, the Choregus confers in pantomime, directs them to join Sophocles at the altar, and then calls aloud: “Choreutai!”

Thereupon enter the Choreutai [Members of the Chorus], sixty in number, in four bands, fifteen in each band. Preceded by the Choryphaios [Stage Chorus Leader] and four Flute-players [one for each band], escorted by two Parastatai [Assistant Leaders], the Chorus march in military order first south [each band in three ranks of five men] till they are opposite the altar, then east [each band in five files of three men], till they halt near the altar.

Here, after Sophocles has greeted Pericles and Aspasia nearby in the impromptu audience [which his group of friends have now joined], after he has chatted with Socrates, and been chaffed by Aristophanes and Alcibiades, he turns with the Choregus to conduct the rehearsal.

After giving directions to Antigone and Ismene, who rehearse in pantomime a snatch of their first scene together, and after a few instructions to Haemon, Euripides, and Teiresias, Sophocles now bids the Choregus direct the last few passages between Creon and the Messenger, just before the Second Chorus in the play.

They do so in pantomime; Creon, with final threatening gesture to the Messenger, makes his exit, and the Messenger—thanking the gods for his escape from Creon’s anger—also departs.

And now, by direction of Sophocles, the Chorus Master and the Master of Dance make signal to the Chorus and the Flute-players; Sophocles steps back near Pericles and his other friends: the Flutists begin playing and, under leadership of the two masters of choral song and of dance, the Chorus—with vigorous, rhythmic cadence of their athletic bodies—perform an austere dance about the altar, raising to its measure their choral song:

CHORUS

The words of this chorus are translated here by the author from the Second Chorus of Sophocles’ play “Antigone.”

Many are the wonders of time, but the mightiest wonder is man;

Man! for he maketh his path with the south wind, over the surges

Down where the storm-white billows

Loom to devour him: Yea,

And Earth, the immortal, the oldest of gods,

The untoilsome, he tameth with toiling horses

Dark where his turning ploughshare

Plougheth from age unto age.

Birds, O the wild-hearted birds, and the breeds of the savage

wood

Deep in his woven nets he hath snared, and the broods of the

bright sea

Leadeth he likewise captive—

Master of masters, Man!

And high on the hills he hath tracked to her wild

The shaggy-maned horse and yoked her in harness;

Tireless, too, hath his spirit

Tamed the wild mountain bull.

Words, and the wind of great thought, and the mood that

mouldeth a state,

These hath he mastered, and knoweth to parry the white

frost arrow’s

Pitiless barb, and the pouring

Arrows of purple rain.

All, all hath he mastered, and all that may come

He meeteth with cunning and power; but only

Death hath he failed to master:

Death is the master of man.

As they conclude, a runner comes hastening from the right gate, calling “Pericles!”

Pericles rises, receives in pantomime the message of the runner, and indicates to Sophocles that he must return to the city.

He and Aspasia and their followers depart [right gate]. With a gesture, then, to the Choregus, Sophocles dismisses the rehearsal; he and his friends follow the others; the Chorus forms again in files and ranks, moving off with the playing Flute-players to the right Interlude gate, where all disappear.

INTERLUDE I

THIRD ACTION: ROMAN

COMMUNITY ACTORS [150]

Comprise

PARTICIPANTS AND SPECIALS

Individuals [2]

Caligula, Emperor of Rome

Naevoleia, a female Mime

Roman Patricians [21]

Roman Populace [80]

Musicians [10]

Two Players of Flutes

”      ” ” Citherns

”      ” ” Lyres

”      ” ” Scabillae [foot cymbals]

”      ” ” Shields and Cymbals

Pantomime Actors [7]

Pantimimus, announcing the Pantomime, “Hercules and the Sphinx.”

Two Boy Pantomimi

Hercules, the demigod

Silenus, the satyr

Servus, a slave

Omphale, a Nymph [afterward disguised as the Sphinx]

Mimes and Dancers [32]

16 Boy-Mimes, as Fauns

16 Girl-Mimes, as Nymphs

THEME

The Emperor Caligula witnesses a farcical comedy in pantomime, enacted in a street of Rome, A. D. 40.

ACTION

As the last of the Greeks disappear right, the Interlude trumpets sound at the left gate. There immediately resounds a great shout and clamor of voices, crying aloud: “Caligula! Salve, Imperator!” The gate is thrown open, and the Roman populace throng in, accompanying—in varied groups of squalor and poverty—the gorgeous Patricians that escort the Emperor Caligula, borne in a chariot, behind which follow a troupe of Roman Pantomime Actors and Mimes who carry a light platform with curtain, which they set up [centre, north], facing the altar.

The curtain is painted to represent the street exterior of a house, in the Pompeian-Roman style. In the centre, set in a lintel frame, is depicted a wide squat door, the stage platform forming its sill. Above the door is a window casement. Both door and window are devised to open and close practically. The top of the curtain is designed as an over-jutting tiled roof.

With the Pantomimists come a group of Musicians, consisting of players on flutes, shields and cymbals, citherns and lyres, and two who wear fastened to their ankles pairs of scabilla, a kind of cymbal for the feet.

The Populace and Patricians meantime cross to right of centre [further southwest].

In the chariot beside Caligula rides Naevoleia, a female Mime, whom Caligula—with amorous playfulness—kisses and crowns with gold laurel as she alights. Alighting with her, he himself helps to attire her in the garments worn in her part of the nymph Omphale in the stage pantomime to follow. Doing so, he thrusts aside—with a glance and gesture of jealous anger—the Chief Actor, who [in the part of Hercules] approaches to assist.

Caligula then escorts her to the improvised stage where she teasingly parts with him to play her rôle in the Comedy. Caligula returns to his chariot.

And now the Comedy is announced by the appearance [through the curtain door] of Pantomimus, a particolored figure, garbed antiquely as a harlequin, wreathed and masked.[26]

Behind Pantomimus, enter [on either side of him] two little Pantomimi, half his height, exactly resembling him in every particular. These, as with skipping step and motion Pantomimus makes his introduction, imitate his every movement of wand and gesture.

By his action, which is accompanied by flute, cymbal, and scabilla players, Pantomimus describes very briefly the plot of the comedy which is to follow, viz:

THE SPHINX AND HERCULES[27]

THEME

Hercules, lured by the nymph Omphale to live with her a woman’s way of life, becomes terribly bored, rebels, and vows to a statue of the Sphinx to resume his manly exploits. By the help of the satyr Silenus, however, who makes Hercules drunk, Omphale—in guise of the Sphinx—wins Hercules back and marries him.

ACTION

As Pantomimus concludes this dumb-show exposition, he signs to his two Assistants, who run out and bring back two stage properties, which they place on either side: the right-hand one represents a squat pillar, on the top of which is the sitting figure of a bronze Sphinx; the left-hand—a set-piece of foliage and shrubbery.

All three then make their exit.

Enter, then, on the ground plane, from behind the stage platform, Servus, a house-slave, masked as such. He places on the platform a low seat and, beside it, a heap of wool and spinning materials. Then he prostrates himself toward the left ground entrance, as enter there—dancing to cymbal music—a group of young girl-mimes [without masks], dressed as Nymphs and carrying distaffs.

In the midst of these—preceded by most of them—enter Hercules, in grotesque mask, which depicts a comic-dejected expression. He is wadded after the manner of the comic histrionic vase-figures of antiquity, and walks downcast. Instead of his legendary lion’s skin, there hangs from his shoulder the wooly pelt of a sheep; in place of his knotted club, his hand holds a huge distaff; and for the rest he is dressed like a Greek woman.

He is accompanied by Omphale, masked as a beautiful and amorous nymph. Over her shoulders she wears his lion’s skin; in one hand she holds his massive club; with the other she caresses him.

With coquetting wiles, the Nymphs in their dancing draw the two toward the centre, where they sit beside the wool—Hercules, with heavy sighs, beginning to spin, while Omphale, posing in the lion’s skin, approves his labor. Here the Nymphs, reclined about them on the platform and the ground, execute a rhythmic dance with their arms and distaffs, singing to their movement:

Angustam amice pauperiem pati

robustus acri militia puer

condiscat et Parthos feroces

vexet eques metuendus hasta

vitamque sub divo et trepides agat

in rebus ilium ex moenibus hosticis

matrona bellanti tyranni

prospiciens et adulta virgo

suspiret, eheu, ne rudis agminum

sponsus lacessat regius asperum

tactu leonem, quem cruenta

per medias rapit ira caedes.

At the culmination of this, Hercules, who has been repelling the attentions of Omphale, at first with feeble ennui, but afterward with increasing determination, now rises in grandiose disgust, and—snatching from her his lion’s skin and club—repudiates her and the Nymphs.

Flinging down the sheep’s pelt and setting his foot upon it, he breaks his distaff in pieces and, threatening Omphale, drives the Nymphs off the scene, left. [During this excitement, Servus—who has been standing aside—seizes the heap of wool, and exit with it in flight.] Turning then to the image of the Sphinx, Hercules expresses in dumb-show how, lured by the riddle of the Sphinx, he aspires to fight and conquer the world for her sake. Laying his club and lion’s skin devoutly at the foot of the column, he kneels, embraces it, and raises then his arms in supplication to the Sphinx.

Thus kneeling, he is watched furtively at a distance by Omphale, who, at his outburst, has run to the edge of the foliage, right. Hercules, rising, puts on his lion’s skin, and brandishing his club heroically for the benefit of the immovable Sphinx, goes off, left.

Immediately Omphale seizes from amid the foliage a sylvan pipe, and blows on it a brief, appealing ditty. At this, from behind the foliage, run out boy-mimes, in the guise of Fauns; she gesticulates to them beseechingly. They run back and presently return, advancing to pipe-music, accompanying and leading a goat, astride of which sits Silenus, an old grotesque Satyr, in mask.

Omphale greets him joyfully and helps him down from the goat. She then describes to him in pantomime the late outburst of Hercules—his breaking the spindle, his enamoration for the Sphinx, etc., and prays his aid and advice.

Silenus pauses an instant in philosophical absorption, then gives a leap and skip. Omphale, seeing that he has hit on some plan, expresses her pleasure and inquires what his plan may be. Silenus bids her call a slave. Omphale claps her hands toward the left entrance. Servus enters. Silenus signs to him. Servus goes back and returns immediately, rolling in a wine-cask, from which he fills an antique beaker. From this Silenus sips and approves. He then points to the Sphinx and asks if be that of which Hercules is enamored. Omphale assents. Silenus then directs Servus to lift the Sphinx down from the pillar. Servus does so, revealing its hollow interior as he carries it. Silenus, drawing Omphale’s attention to this fact of its hollowness, opens the door in the curtain, and commands Servus to bear the Sphinx within. Servus does so. Silenus, then, pointing to the window above the door, whispers in the ear of Omphale, who, delighted, enters the door after Servus. Silenus closes the door as Hercules reënters, left.

The hero has discarded his woman’s garb, and comes forward now dressed as a man, with lion’s skin and club—his mask changed to one of an exultant and martial expression.

Silenus greets him with obsequious and cunning servility and offers him wine. Hercules, with good-natured hauteur, condescends to accept the cup which he offers. While he is drinking, the window above in the curtain opens, and Omphale thrusts her head out, revealing [within] beside her own, the Sphinx’s head. Silenus secretively motions her to be cautious. Seeing his gesture, Hercules looks up, but not swiftly enough to detect Omphale, who withdraws. Again looking forth, as he turns to drink again, Omphale mocks Hercules below, dropping wisps of wool on his head, the source of which, however, Hercules fails to detect. Silenus explains that the wool is really feathers, which fell from a bird flying overhead.

Hercules now, under the sly persuasions of the old Satyr, grows more pleased with the wine, and becomes drunk—as he becomes so, expressing to Silenus, with increasing familiarity and descriptive force, all the mighty exploits he intends to accomplish in the service of the incomparable Sphinx, whose living prototype he declares he will immediately set forth in search of.

Starting now, humorously drunk, to depart [right] he is detained by Silenus, who points upward to the window, where now the blank, immovable face of the Sphinx looks forth at the sky. Hercules, bewildered, asks Silenus if it is really the Sphinx herself and alive? Silenus assents and proves his assertion by pointing to the deserted pedestal. At this, Hercules addresses the Sphinx, with impassioned gestures. The Sphinx remains immovable. Hercules becomes discouraged. Silenus then puts a pipe in his hand, and tells him to play it. He does so, and is rewarded by a slow, preternatural look from the Sphinx. At this he plays more vociferously and, surrounded by the little piping Fauns, performs a serenade beneath the casement, while Silenus, looking on from a distance, rubs his hands with sly delight.

The serenade ends by Hercules, on his knees, imploring the Sphinx to come down. The Sphinx at length consents and the casement closes. Silenus calls his Fauns away to the edge of the foliage, and Hercules goes to the door.

For a moment nothing happens and Hercules knocks on the steps impatiently with his club. Then the door opens and enter the Sphinx—dressed below in the Greek garments of Omphale, but from the waist upward consisting of the sitting image of the Sphinx, beneath whose closed wings the arms of Omphale are thrust through and have place for motion.

The Sphinx, its tail swinging behind, descends the steps, reticent and impassive, attended by Hercules, drunk and enamored.

Then at the foot of the steps, to the accompaniment from the foliage of the piping Fauns, who play softly a variation of the serenade theme, Hercules woos the Sphinx, who, at the proper moment, succumbs to his entreaties. After embracing him amorously, she extends her hand to him. He seizes it to kiss; she withdraws it and signifies that he must put a ring on the ring-finger. Hercules hunts about him in vain for the ring. Calling then to Silenus and the Fauns, he explains to them the situation.

Silenus, producing a ring, hands it to Hercules, who puts it on the finger of the Sphinx.

Instantly a clash of cymbals is heard from the left, and a clapping of palms from the right, and re-enter the dancing Nymphs, who encircle the scene just as Servus removes from the bride the great mask of the Sphinx, thereby revealing her to the astounded Hercules—as Omphale, who embraces him, exulting in her ring.

Just as she is embracing and kissing him, the scene is interrupted by a cry of jealous rage from Caligula who springs from his chariot, calling: “Hercules!” At his gesture slaves run before him, seize Hercules, and hale him toward Caligula, who bids them whip him. Frightened, for an instant, Omphale [the Mime Naevoleia] then hastens as if to intercede, but, seeing Caligula’s expression, taunts him with toying bravado, and finally as he kisses her makes him burst with her into laughter, as Hercules is dragged off through the hooting crowd, flogged by Caligula’s slaves. [During the latter part of this Roman Action, LUST has appeared at the mouth of Caliban’s cell and looked on. His voice now joins the loud laughter of Caligula.]

Dispersing in confusion, the Pantomime Actors remove their curtain and platform [right] into the darkness, which now envelops also Caligula and the Roman populace.

END OF INTERLUDE I

INTERLUDE II

FIRST ACTION: GERMANIC

COMMUNITY ACTORS [150]

Comprise

PARTICIPANTS [150]

Individuals [2]

Forerunner [Einschreier]

Out-crier [Ausschreier]

Pantomime Actors [6]

Musicians [10]

Doctor Faustus

Ten Pipers

An Apprentice

Lucifer

Symbolic Group [22]

Two Devils

Doctors [8]

Helena

Priests [4]

Artists [9]

Melancholia [1]

Citizens of Nüremberg [110]

Men and Women [70]

Apprentices [40]

THEME

On a street of Nüremberg, in their Shrovetide festival, a band of Apprentices enact, on a wheeled stage, a pantomime scene from an early version of “Doctor Faustus.” Time: Sixteenth century.

ACTION

At Prospero’s final words in Act I, the playing of pipes is heard at the right Interlude Gates, where enter a band of Apprentices, accompanying a wheeled street-stage, drawn by donkeys with bells and set with a three-fold scene of Earth, Heaven, and Hell. Some of the Apprentices are masked, some disguised as fools. They enter, singing an old German folk song, and march to the centre of the ground-circle (between the altar and the south entrance), where the stage pauses. Before them has hastened a forerunner (Einschreier), blowing a horn and shouting: “Schauspieler! Doctor Faustus!”

Along with them, Pipers accompany their singing. Behind them follow folk of Nüremberg, gaping peasants and merry-making young people.

From the left gate, meanwhile [in obscurer light], enters a graver group, clad symbolically as Doctors of Learning, Priests, and Artists, accompanying another wheeled vehicle, the stage of which is wholly curtained from view.

These stop at some distance from the former group, and look on from a place of shadow.

And now, where the first stage has paused in a place of brighter glow, the Actors appear and begin their pantomime.

Doctor Faustus appears on the Middle Stage, Earth. There, amid his astronomical instruments, he greets the gaping crowd and points a telescope toward the place of Heaven. Suddenly a comet flashes above the stage. An Apprentice inquires the reason. Doctor Faustus explains it by revealing its two fathers—the Sun and the Moon, which now appear shining simultaneously in Heaven.

At this sorcery, Lucifer comes from Hell, signifies to Faustus that his hour has come, and that he must follow him. Faustus begs a last wish, which Lucifer reluctantly grants. He begs to see once more his beloved Helena of Troy.

Then in Heaven appears Helena, who comes to Faustus on Earth and embraces him. But now Lucifer—summoning two tailed devils with pitch-forks—bids them drag Faustus from the arms of Helena, who flees back to Heaven, disappearing there, as Faustus is prodded and haled to the up-bursting flames of Hell, amid the exultant laughter of Lucifer.

At this finale, the stage and its audience moves off through the left gate, while the graver Symbolic Group—crossing right in deep shadow—pauses at the centre.

There, for a moment, the curtains of their pageant stage are drawn, revealing—in mystic light—a dim-glowing tableau of Albrecht Dürer’s Melancholia.

As this pales into darkness, the Group with its curtained stage moves vaguely off, and vanishes through the right gate of the Interlude.

INTERLUDE II

SECOND ACTION: FRENCH

COMMUNITY ACTORS [150]

Comprise

PARTICIPANTS [50]

FIGURANTS [100]

Individuals [4]

Francis I, of France

Heralds [10: Figurants]

Henry VIII, of England

French [5]

French Tourney-rider

English [5]

English Tourney-rider

Nobles and Courtiers

Servants and Followers

[88: Figurants]

[48: Participants]

French [44]

French [24]

English [44]

English [24]

THEME[28]

To celebrate Peace between their nations, after long war, Francis I of France and Henry VIII of England meet on the Field of the Cloth of Gold [A. D. 1520], and hold a tournament.

ACTION

After the mystic tableau of the Melancholia has departed, a peal of trumpets from the Interlude gates [right and left] ushers in a pageant of contrasted splendor.

In the left gateway appear the Heralds of the French, in the right, of the English.

Then [to music of the unseen orchestra, above, playing the instrumental music only of the Chorus “Glory and Serenity,” which later is sung by voices in Act II], enter, on horseback, the two Kings, Francis I and Henry VIII, accompanied by their Nobles and Servants.

All are clad in golds and yellows.

On the banners of the English is depicted St. George and the Dragon; on the banners of the French—the lilies of France.

The servants set up at centre [just south of Caliban’s cell] a gorgeous canopy with two thrones, in which the two Kings, dismounting, take their seats, the French followers grouped on the left, the English on the right.

Then to the royal presence, a Herald summons, by trumpet call, two Tourney-riders [French and English], who come riding in armor, from the south gate, on horses caparisoned with their national colors and symbols.

Taking their places, at signal again of the Herald, to shouts of the spectators, they ride at each other with set lances, in a mock battle—which comprises two actions.

In the first action, the French rider is unhorsed, in the second, the English rider.

During both actions, the English cry “St. George for England!” the French “Vive la France!”

Between the two actions, the French King rises and toasts the English King, to acclamations of the French.

After the second action, King Henry compliments King Francis, to acclamations of the English.

Then, as the two Kings clasp hands, both sides shout aloud: “God save the King!” and “Vive le Roi!” raising aloft their banners and emblems.

At the climax of this demonstration, the invisible orchestra resumes the march of “Glory and Serenity,” to which the Kings, remounting their horses, ride off side by side, followed by their English and French suites, now commingled, disappearing through the south gateway.

INTERLUDE II

THIRD ACTION: SPANISH-ITALIAN

COMMUNITY ACTORS [150]

Comprise

PARTICIPANTS [150]

[NO FIGURANTS]

Individuals [2]

Improvised Comedy

The Doge of Venice

Actors [6]

The Spanish Ambassador

Il Capitano

Arlecchino

Venetian Nobles [24]

Il Commandatore

Spanish Courtiers [24]

Pantalone

Brighella

Venetian Populace [94]

Columbina

THEME

On the plaza of St. Marks in Venice [A. D., about 1630], a troop of Improvised Comedy Actors [of the Commedia dell’ Arte] enact before the Doge and the Spanish Ambassador, amid the populace, during a festa, a pantomime scene depicting an adventure of Don Giovanni.

ACTION

When the last of the gold-clad French and English have departed through the South Gate, a chiming of church-bells from the gates of the north [right and left] gives signal for the entrance there of an Italian Festa.

From the right, enters the Doge with his Venetian nobles, accompanied by the Italian populace; from the left, the Spanish Ambassador and his Suite, accompanied by a troop of Improvised Comedy Actors, who set up a platform on wooden horses before the Doge and the Ambassador where they meet and greet each other, at right of centre [north].

Here six Actors mount the platform, at the back of which is a curtain, divided in the middle.

These are Il Capitano [the Captain], Arlecchino [Harlequin], Il Commandatore [the Commander], Pantalone [Pantaloon], Brighella, and Columbina [Columbine]. They all pass behind the curtain, through the folds in the middle.

After a moment’s prelude of stringed instruments, then, the Pantomime begins.

First, in semi-darkness, HARLEQUIN appears, carrying a lighted lantern on the end of a sword. At a noise of laughter from behind the curtain he stops and trembles. The laughter sounds again, deep and harsh; Harlequin trembles so violently that the lantern falls and goes out.

In the dimness, enter Il Capitano in the part of DON GIOVANNI, muffled in an immense cloak. Harlequin falls on his back, feigning death, but keeping his sword pointing upward. Stumbling against him, Don Giovanni draws his sword and strikes the sword of Harlequin, who leaps up. They begin a duel, in the midst of which they suddenly recognize each other as friends and embrace.

Enter now [bringing lanterns, which illumine the stage more brightly] PANTALOON and BRIGHELLA. Both are wrapped in cloaks.

Greeting Don Giovanni, who returns the greeting, Pantaloon explains that he has a rendezvous with a beautiful young lady [the head of Columbine having peered momentarily through the curtain]; that he will make a certain sign to call her; that he must be cautious, as she has a fierce and suspicious father. Don Giovanni becomes very interested, and confides that he, too, must attend a rendezvous, for which he needs a disguise. For this, he persuades Pantaloon to change cloaks with him. They do so, their servants also exchanging cloaks.

Exeunt then Pantaloon and Brighella.

Don Giovanni now, approaching the curtain, makes the aforesaid sign described by Pantaloon. At this, enter COLUMBINE, who mistakes him for Pantaloon and approaches him lovingly. He allows her to do so, but soon—opening his cloak—he terrifies her by his wrong identity. However, he is handsomer than Pantaloon, and quickly wins her for himself. In this Harlequin delightedly assists him.

Finally, just as Columbine succumbs and goes to his arms, her father, THE COMMANDER, enters. Seeing her in Don Giovanni’s arms, he bursts into terrible anger, draws his sword, and attacks the lover. Harlequin tries to prevent him but fails.

Putting the frightened Columbine behind him, Don Giovanni returns the attack with his sword, fights and suddenly kills the Commander, who falls motionless.

In terror, Columbine and Harlequin scream and run out [through the curtain], leaving Don Giovanni standing with one foot and his sword-point prodding the dead body.

To screams and shudderings also from the horrified onlookers of the populace, darkness falls on the stage.

Then, as suddenly—in a burst of light—the Actors come trooping forth all together in laughter, make faces and comic gestures at the people, remove their curtain and stage, and run off [right], to merry twanging of instruments, followed by the Doge, Ambassador, and populace.

END OF INTERLUDE II

INTERLUDE III

In the New York production in May, 1916, the performance of this Interlude will be arranged by members of the New York City Centre of the U. S. A. Branch of the English Folk Dance Society, under the personal direction of Mr. Cecil J. Sharp, who has devised the Action of this Interlude, and has worded the description of it—in conference with the author—as here printed.

ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND

Action Continuous, in 8 Successive Episodes

COMMUNITY ACTORS [about 400]

Comprise

PARTICIPANTS AND FIGURANTS

Individuals

Tideswell Procession: [100]

Sun

May Tree Procession: [100]

Frost

Morris Dance Group: [25]

May Queen

Dancers: 16

Hobby Horse Dancer

Attendants: 9

Club-Man

Hobby Horse Group: [25]

Fool

Dancers: 15

Witch

Attendants: 10

King

Tumblers and Jugglers: [25]

Queen

Rustic Play-Actors: [25]

Noah

Winter Group: [50]

Noah’s Wife

Spring Group: [50]

THEME

Celebration of an Elizabethan May Day Festival on the outskirts of an English town.

ACTION

1: CONTEST BETWEEN SPRING AND WINTER

A group of 25 young men, representing Winter, all dressed in close-fitting black garments, enter from Caliban’s cell. They carry a ball and, commanded by one of their number—Frost—advance slowly and dejectedly and lie down near the centre of the ground guarding the ball. A group of 25 young men, dressed in tight-fitting green garments, representing Spring, enter through the right Interlude Gate. Headed by one of their number—Sun—they come forward running and shouting. Winter[29] rise and stand in defence of the ball. A scuffle ensues and the ball is released from the scrimmage. It is then kicked about by both sides, Spring trying to force it toward the water,[30] Winter repelling it therefrom. Sun and Frost encourage their respective supporters but do not touch the ball. Groups of villagers come in, by twos and threes [20 to 25 in number], and join the ranks of Spring, who are thus enabled to overpower Winter. Eventually, one of the Spring group secures the ball, holds it aloft and, surrounded by his followers, runs toward the water. Winter follow, fatigued and languid. As the Spring man approaches the water, maidens, 10 or 12 in number, enter from various quarters and swell the group. The ball is then raised and ceremonially thrown into the water; whereupon, the girls join Spring in hunting Winter back again into their cave.

2: PROCESSIONAL DANCE THROUGH VILLAGE

While Winter is being driven off the arena, a procession of Villagers, comprising 50 couples [i. e., partners], enter through South Interlude Gate and dance the Tideswell Processional Morris. The dancers include men, women, and children of all classes and are dressed in their holiday clothes, plentifully bedecked with flowers and ribbons. Each carries two handkerchiefs, one in each hand, or, if preferred, boughs of May blossom. They dance round the arena in a spiral until the front couple reach the centre; whereupon, all raise their arms and shout on the last chord of the tune. Spring and all the actors already on the ground join in the procession at the rear, or wherever they can squeeze in.

3: REVELS AND AMUSEMENTS

Upon the completion of the dance, the dancers disperse noisily all over the ground. The children play Singing Games, e. g., “Oats and Beans,” “Here We Come Gathering Nuts (i. e. Knots) in May,” “Old Sir Roger,” etc., in different parts of the ground—not too close together. Booths and stalls are brought in, a rustic stage[31] is set up, tumblers and jugglers, surrounded by groups of spectators, give their performances, and all unite in a scene of general merriment. Couples, each consisting of a boy and a girl, carry May garlands, sing May day songs, and solicit offerings. The young men chase the girls and kiss them “under the green,” i. e., while raising the boughs of green over their heads.

4: MAY POLE PROCESSION

The following procession enters from South Interlude Gate.

- [1] Two Jack-O’-Greens

- [2] Plough-boys with plough.

- [3] Sowers.

- [4] Reapers.

- [5] Wagon, drawn by several yoke of oxen, carrying the tree.

- [6] Milkmaids.

- [7] Blacksmiths.

- [8] Wheelwrights.

- [9] Carpenters.

- [10] Butchers.

- [11] Shoemakers.

- [1] Hidden in bushes of green, surmounted by a

- May Garland.

- [2] White smocks, patched with pictures, in red

- and black cloth, representing farm-animals. Hats

- covered with flowers, their plough smothered with

- ribbons and flowers.

- [3] Carrying baskets of grain, pretending to sow.

- [4] With reaping hooks or sickles.

- [5] Wagon and oxen decorated with greenery and

- ribbons, the horns of the oxen with flowers. The

- carters, who walk on either side of the wagon, wear

- broad-brimmed hats, short smocks, breeches, all

- covered with ribbons and flowers, and carry whips

- or goads similarly decorated, with which they urge

- on the oxen.

- [6] Carrying pails and dishes; wearing short

- dresses, and sun-hats or bonnets, all covered with

- flowers and ribbons.

- [7] With bare heads, leathern aprons, carrying

- implements of trade—hammers, anvils, tongs.

- [8] Carrying or rolling wheels.

- [9] With saws, planes, tools, etc.

- [10] Wearing blue blouses, carrying marrow bones

- and cleavers, and clashing them as they march.

When the wagon reaches the May-pit, the procession halts. The tree is ceremonially removed, ivy, laurels, and other greenery wound round it spirally, a large bunch of flowers placed at the top, and then, in dead silence, solemnly raised to position. Directly this is accomplished, the spectators raise a great shout and repeat it three times: “The Pole is up.”

5: ELECTION OF MAY QUEEN, AND MAY POLE DANCE

The men disperse in groups and, after some discussion and altercation, proceed in a body to the woman of their choice, present her with a wreath of May blossom, with ribbon streamers and rosettes for her dress, and escort her to a raised mound of grass where every one may see her. She is kissed “under the green” by the men, amid much laughter and merriment. The woman chosen is a regular “man’s girl,” jolly and of a romping kind, quite different from the conventional May Queen.

A large group is formed round the May pole in a ring, alternately men and women, and all take hands. The May pole dance is then performed—“Sellenger’s Round” and “Gathering Peascods.”

6: HOBBY HORSE AND PADSTOW MAY SONG

The hobby horse is made in the following way: A wooden hoop, about 3 feet in diameter, is covered with black canvas with a hole in the centre, about the size of a man’s head. The canvas is edged with red and white ribbon round the circumference, and depends from the edges about 4 feet like a curtain. The hoop is then placed on a man’s shoulders, his head, hidden in a tall conical mask of many colors, passing through a hole in the centre of the canvas, the curtain hiding his body and legs. In the front of the hoop is a long, slender horse’s head, made of wood, and at the back of the hoop is attached a curly horse’s tail about 18 inches long. The horse is accompanied by the “Club-man” who is dressed in black, covered with rosettes and bows of colored ribbon, and wears a grotesque mask similar to that of the hobby horse. Throughout the proceedings, he faces the Horse and dances backward, holding in his right hand a stout, nobbed club, about 18 to 24 inches in length, colored like the mask.

The hobby horse enters from the left Interlude Gate, escorted by six or eight couples of men, gaily dressed and decorated with flowers, singing the May song, in which the assembled spectators join. As they make their appearance, the crowd runs out, meets them, and surrounds them in a ring, in the middle of which the horse and its attendant dance, the former every now and again dashing out and trying to catch one of the maidens, who, with much laughter, usually succeeds in avoiding his clumsy embraces. When the tune has been sung a few times, a slight pause is made, the horse sinks down with his head on the ground, the club-man drops on one knee and places his club on the horse’s nose, while the crowd sing very solemnly the dirge-like strain, “O Where is St. George?” At the conclusion of this, a slight pause is made and then the riotous May song is suddenly taken up and the dance resumed. This may be repeated once or twice, when the proceedings are interrupted by the entrance of the

7: MORRIS DANCERS

The dancers, all of them men, are 16 in number and are accompanied by a King and Queen, Witch and Fool, and Hobby horses. The Witch and Fool head the procession, the former with his broom, and the latter with his stick, fox’s tail, and bladder clearing the way. The King and Queen march at the head of the Morris dancers, the King beating time with his sword. The Hobby horses prance round and aid the Witch and Fool in clearing a passage. The dancers move forward, dancing the “Winster Processional Dance.” When the procession has reached a good position in the centre, the tune changes and without pause the dancers perform the “Winster Morris Reel,” “The Old Woman Tossed up in a Blanket.”

For the dresses of the dancers see photographs in The Morris Book [parts II and III]. The Witch is a man dressed in bedraggled woman’s clothes, with face blackened, and carries a short besom. The Fool has a pork-pie hat covered with flowers and feathers, tunic, to the hips, of bright multi-colored stuff edged with silver fringe, buckskin breeches, stockings of odd colors, and bells round the ankles. He carries a stick with a fox’s tail at one end and a bladder at the other. Sometimes he has a dinner-bell attached to the middle of his back. The King and Queen are serious characters, the latter being represented by a man dressed in woman’s clothes. The King carries a sword and should be dressed in the military dress of the period: the Queen is grandly dressed, with a touch of comic extravagance, in the garb of a court lady of the period. The Hobby horses—say half a dozen in number—are of the “tournament” variety, and carry sticks and bladders.

8: COUNTRY DANCES AND RECESSIONAL

When the Morris dance is finished, the company disperses and amuses itself for a while until the pipe-and-taborers make their appearance. This is a signal for every one to find a partner for a country dance. Groups are formed all over the ground and “The Black Nag” is performed, followed by a Longways dance, e. g., “Row well, ye mariners.” On the conclusion of the latter, the dancers, who are already in processional formation, dance off the ground to the “Helston Ferry Processional Dance,” disappearing in different groups through the several exits.

EPILOGUE

ACTION: INTERNATIONAL AND SYMBOLIC

THEME

In three main, symbolic groups—Theatres, Actors, Dramatists—The Spirit of Time summons the creative forces of the art of the theatre, to defeat the destructive influences of War, Lust, and Death, and prophetically to survive them.

ACTION[32]

First, from the two gates [right and left] of the ground-circle, the Pageant of Theatres enters in two processions, which group themselves [right and left of Caliban’s cell] on the flight of steps and ramps leading to Stage B.

Secondly, through the mouth-entrances of the Masks of Comedy and of Tragedy, the Comic Actors [through the former] and the Tragic Actors [through the latter] enter upon stage B, cross before Prospero and take their stations, with their respective Theatres, on the steps and ramps.

Thirdly, the Dramatists, of Comedy and Tragedy, do likewise.

In this procession of the Dramatists, occurs the pantomime and stage business of the meeting between Prospero and Shakespeare.

After the procession of Dramatists, all three main groups are enveloped by darkness, in which—after the final choir of Ariel’s spirits—they disperse, unseen.

EPILOGUE

COMMUNITY ACTORS [300]

Comprise

SPECIALS: 300

Theatres:    Total

100 persons [25 groups]

Actors:         ”

100      ”

Dramatists:  ”

100      ”

----

[33]Grand total

300      ”

From the following lists of Theatres, Actors, and Dramatists, revised and modified, the final groups will be selected. The lists, as here given, are merely preliminary, and have been sketched in, during the printing of this Appendix, so as not to be wholly omitted from the publication of this edition. As far as they concern the New York production of the Masque, they are not to be construed as anything more than suggestive material for the necessarily impressionistic pageant-groups of the Epilogue.

THEATRES

ANCIENT GREECE

Theatre of Dionysus at Athens, Epidaurus, Ephesus, Sicyon.

ANCIENT ROME

Theatre of Pompey, Scarrus, Balbus Cornelius, Marcellus.

Provincial Theatres

Antioch, Lyons, Herculaneum, Orange.

CONSTANTINOPLE

Hippodrome, of Emperor Septimius Severus.

ITALY

Florence

della Pergola

Venice

Fenice

Genoa

Carlo Felice

Milan

La Scala

Vicenza

Olympian Theatre

PORTUGAL

Lisbon                   San Carlos

FRANCE

Hotel du Burgoyne, Comedie Francaise, Palais Royal, Odeon, Porte St. Martin, Antoine.

AUSTRIA

Vienna                   Burgtheater

GERMANY

Weimar, Deutsches, Lessing.

RUSSIA

Art Theatre, Warsaw; Kremlin, Moscow.

AMERICA

New York

Booth’s, Bowery, Wallack’s, Daly’s.

Boston

Federal Street, Boston Theatre, Boston Museum.

Philadelphia

Arch Street, Walnut Street, Chestnut Street.

Chicago

McVicker’s.

San Francisco

California.

Washington

Ford’s.

New Orleans

St. Charles.

ENGLAND

Globe, Bankside, Bear Garden, Hope, Swan, Drury Lane, Haymarket, Covent Garden.

Dublin

Smock Alley.

ACTORS

GREECE

Thespis, Polus [of Aegina], Aristodemus, Neoptolemus, Thessalus, Athenodorus, Cleander, Mynniscus [of Chalcis], Callipides, Timotheus.

ROME

Esopus, Roscius, C. Publilius, Ambivius Turpio, Haitilius Praenestinus, Bathyllus, Pylades, Publilius Syrus.

ITALY

[Actors] Domenico Biancolelli, Luigi Riccoboni, Nicola Barbieri, Francesco Andreini, Fiorelli, Tommasino, Salvini, Madena, Rossi.

[Actresses] Sedowsky, Isabella Andreini, Ristori.

SPAIN

[Actors] Lope de Rueda, Navarro of Toledo, Alonso de Olmedo, Sebastian de Prado, Isidoro Maiquez, José Valero, Julián Romea, Rafael Calvo, Antonio Vico.

[Actresses] La Baltasara, La Calderona, La Pacheca, La Tirana, Rita Luna, Matilde Diez.

FRANCE

[Actors] Jodelet, Harduin, Rodogune, Talma, Got, LeKain, Molé, Fréville, Baron, Montfleury, Lemaitre, Coquelin, Mounet Sulley.

[Actresses] Dangville, Rachel, George, Mars, Des Oeillets, Bejart, Champmeslé, Lecouvreur, Dumesnil, Clairon, David.

HOLLAND

[Actors] Louis Bouwmeister, Willem Haverkorn, Johannes Haverkamp, Andries Snoek.

[Actresses] Mme. Wattier.

GERMANY

[Actors] Possart, Bamay, Kainz, Iffland, Konrad, Ekkof, Dawison, Lewinsky, Döhring, Ackerman, Carl Bonn, Dalberg, L. Dessoit, Anschutz, Hasse, Beckmann, Gabillon.

[Actresses] Sonnenthal, Devrient, Schröder, Carolina Neuber, Charlotte Wolter, Julie Rettich, Julie Löwe, Carolina Bauer, Geistinger, Zitt, Raabe, Buske, Fleck, Brockmann, Matkowsky, Dingelstedt, Borchers.

[SCANDINAVIA]

DENMARK

[Actors] Ludwig Phister, Christen N. Rosenkilde, Nicolai Nielsen, Emil Poulsen, Michael Wieke, Michael Rosing.

[Actresses] Johanne Louise Heiberg, Anna Neilsen, Julie Södring.

SWEDEN

[Actors] Fredrik Deland, Ebba Hwasser, Pierre Deland, Karl Georg Dahlquist.

NORWAY

[Actors] Johannes Brun, Henrik Klausen.

[Actresses] Laura Gundersen, Lucie Wolf, Sophie Pavelius.

RUSSIA

[Actors] V. Samoilov, N. Samoilov, Nikitin, Ershov, Lenski, Karatygina (family), M. S. Shchepkin, Krapivnitzki.

[Actresses] Fedotava, Vyera Samortova, Savina, Karatygina (family), Kommissaryhevskaya, E. P. Struyskaya.

AMERICA

[Actors] Junius Brutus Booth, Jas. Wallack, Edwin Forrest, Edwin Booth, Lester Wallack, Wm. Warren, John McCulloch, Lawrence Barrett, E. A. Sothern, Jos. Jefferson, Wm. Florence, James A. Hackett, John Gilbert, Edward L. Davenport, Wm. B. Wood, T. A. Cooper, Wilson Barrett, Rignold, Chas. Wheatley, MacKean, Buchanon, James Murdock, J. B. Roberts, Williamson, Whiffin, Tony Pastor, Hart, Harrigan, Stuart Robson, John T. Raymond, Denman Thompson, Maurice Barrymore, Richard Mansfield.

[Actresses] Charlotte Cushman, Mrs. John Drew, Modjeska, Matilda Heron, Mme. Ponisi, Laura Keene, Fannie Davenport, Ada Rehan.

GREAT BRITAIN

[Actors] Burbage, Betteron, Colley Cibber, Garrick, Macready, Edmund Kean, Tyrone Power, Samuel Phelps, Buckstone, Charles Macklin, Samuel Foote, Tate Wilkinson, Barry, Quinn, Henderson, John Philip Kemble, Robert Wilks, Thomas Sheridan, Henry Mossop, John Liston, William Betty, Henry Irving, Lawrence Irving.

[Actresses] Nance Oldfield, Mrs. Betterton, Mrs. Mountfort, Mrs. Bracegirdle, Nell Gwynne, Mrs. Siddons, Peg Woffington, Fanny Kemble, Hannah Pritchard, Mrs. Abington, Mrs. Jordan, George Anne Bellamy, Helen Barry, Helen Faucit, Katherine Clive, Mrs. Farren.

DRAMATISTS

GREECE

[Tragedy] Aeschylus, Choerilus, Pratinas, Phrynichus, Sophocles, Euripides, Carcinus, Chaeremon.

[Comedy] Phormis [of Maenalus], Epicharmus, Susarion, Chionides, Aristophanes, Eupolis, Magnes, Philemon, Menander, Rhinthon, Apollodorus, Diphilus, Posidippus.

ROME

[Tragedy] Livius Andronicus, Accius, Pacuvius, Asinius Pollis, Varius, Ovid, Seneca, Curiatius Maternus, J. Cæsar Strabo.

[Comedy] Plautus, Terence, Ennius, Statius Caecilius, Lavinius, Naevius, Melissus, Afranius, Laberius, Pomponius, Atta.

ITALY

[Tragedy] Ariosto, Manzoni, Alfieri, Nicolini, Tasso.

[Comedy] Metastasio, Martelli, Maffei, Gozzi, Pindemonti, Monti, Flavio, Goldoni.

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

[Spain] Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderon, Alarcon, Gongora, Argensola, Moreto, de Hoz, Canizarez, Luzan, Huerta.

[Portugal] Saa de Miranda, Gil Vincente, Ferreira, Garcao.

FRANCE

Etienne Jodelle, Garnier, Larivey, Montcrétien, Hardi, Viaud, Scudéri, Corneille, Boisrobert, Chevreau, Scarron, de Bergerac, Quinault, Molière, Boursault, Racine, Voltaire, l’Hermite, Rotrou, Crébillon, Le Sage, Beaumarchais, Longpierre, Fontenelli, La Motte, Legrand, Destouches, Marivaux, Sardou, Hugo, Dumas, Scribe, Zola, Legouvé, Augier, Halévy, Le Maitre, De Vigny.

HOLLAND

Hooft, Brederoo, Vondel, Vos, Goes, Pels, Asselijn, van Focquenbroch, Bilderdijk.

GERMANY

Hans Sachs, Gryphius, Gottshed, Klopstock, Wieland, Herder, Kozebue, Hafner, Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Novalis, Arnim, Hoffmann, Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, Kleist, Grillparzer, Schlegel, Freytag, Heyse, Gutzkow, Wagner, Werner, Körner, Klingemann, Uhland, Chamisso, Arndt, Heine, Grabbe, Immermann, Weise, Grinunelohausen, Klinger, Ludwig, Laube, Holm, Giebel, Wildenbruch, Angengruber, Nestroy, Raimund.

SCANDINAVIA

Holberg, Oehlenschläger, J. L. Heiberg, Bjornson, Wessel, Ewald, Hauch, Hostrup, Hertz, Paludan-Müller, Overskou, Ibsen, Lidner, Tegner, Runeberg, Blanche, Strindberg, Kielland, Lie.

RUSSIA

Sumarokoff, Catherine II, Von Viezin, Krilov, Astrovski, Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoi, Tchekhof, Griboyedov.

AMERICA

Royal Tyler, John Howard Payne, Boker, Longfellow, Wm. Young, N. P. Willis, Dion Boucicault, John Brougham, Augustin Daly, Steele MacKaye, Bronson Howard, James A. Herne, Clyde Fitch, William Vaughn Moody.

GREAT BRITAIN

Beaumont, Fletcher, Jonson, Shirley, Greene, Peele, Webster, Ford, Massinger, Middleton, Heywood, Lyly, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Dekker, Marston:—Dryden, Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Otway, Etheredge, d’Urfey, Farquhar, d’Avenant, Sedley, Lacy, Shadwell, Crowne, Steele, Addison, Rowe:—Goldsmith, Sheridan, Fielding, Shelley:—Knowles, Lytton, Robertson, Tennyson, Browning, Reade, Taylor, Wilde:—Phillips, Synge, Hankin, Davidson.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Information for Communities, Clubs, Societies, and Drama

League Centres throughout the Country about

Mr. PERCY MACKAYE’S

SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENARY MASQUE

Entitled

“CALIBAN: BY THE YELLOW SANDS”

Doubleday, Page & Company have pleasure in announcing Mr. MacKaye’s Masque, which in many respects has become the national tribute of the New York Shakespeare Celebration, the Shakespeare National Memorial Committee, and The Drama League of America for the anniversary of 1916.

The publication of the Masque has been hurried as much as possible in order to give communities, societies, colleges, and Drama League centres throughout the country an opportunity to read the text and thus arrange their celebrations in harmony with the Masque.

The first performances of the Masque will be given by the New York Shakespeare Celebration during the week of May 23d, when it will be enacted out of doors, at night, in the City College Stadium adapted to seat about 20,000 spectators. There several thousand citizens of New York will take part in conjunction with a body of actors of national repute. It will then be released for use by other communities or societies on June 1st. Immediately after the close of the New York performances, a professional company will take the Masque on the road for presentation by them in conjunction with community and club groups throughout the country. The professional company will fill the leading parts and take with them a complete outfit of scenery and properties. For full particulars, address the Chairman of the National Circuit Committee, 736 Marquette Bldg., Chicago, Ill., or, Augustin Duncan, 50 West 12th St., New York City.

Amateur performances of the Masque may also be given after June 1st, without the aid of the professional company, by making proper arrangements for securing permission. Full directions for amateur performances, or for public readings where seats are sold, may be had from Miss Alice Houston, National Headquarters, Drama League of America, Chicago, Ill.

The Drama League of America strongly recommends to its centres the use of the Masque as the special League reading for April. The text will be available in two editions: Paper at 50 cents and Cloth at $1.25 or thereabouts.

The Drama League hopes to establish in the near future a Pageant Series, similar to the Play Series, of which “Caliban” by Mr. MacKaye would be the first volume.

REMEMBER THESE POINTS

“CALIBAN: BY THE YELLOW SANDS”

By Percy MacKaye. A National tribute to Shakespeare for 1916. Endorsed by the Drama League of America.

FIRST PERFORMANCE

New York, May 23d, by citizens and notable group of professional actors.

RELEASED FOR GENERAL USE

June 1st. Acting rights may be secured as indicated below:—

PERFORMANCES BY COMMUNITIES OR

CLUBS WITH PROFESSIONAL COMPANY

Full particulars may be had by addressing Miss Alice M. Houston, Chairman Circuit Committee, Drama League of America, 1426 Forest Ave., Evanston, Ill.

ALL-AMATEUR PERFORMANCES

Full particulars may be had by addressing Miss Clara Fitch, Chairman Shakespeare Tercentenary Committee, 736 Marquette Bldg., Chicago, Ill.

PUBLIC READINGS WHERE SEATS ARE SOLD

For particulars address Miss Houston (as above).

THE PRINTED BOOK OF THE MASQUE

Paper edition 50 cents. Cloth edition $1.25 net. For sale everywhere at book shops or by Doubleday, Page & Company, Garden City, New York.

New York City

Shakespeare Tercentenary Celebration

CIVIC ORGANIZATION

MISS MARY PORTER BEEGLE, Chairman

MRS. AXEL O. IHLSENG, Executive Secretary

10 EAST 43D STREET, NEW YORK CITY

Telephone, Murray Hill 9745

Supplementary Celebrations

Chairman of Finance

MISS KATE OGLEBAY, Chairman

MR. W. FORBES MORGAN, JR.

MISS FERN CLAWSON, Vice-Chairman

Executive Chairman

MR. EVERARD THOMPSON

Advisory on Forms of Celebrations

Masque Committee Chairman

MISS JOSEPHINE BEIDERHASE

MRS. SIMEON FORD

MISS FRANCES E. CLARKE

Music

MR. ARTHUR FARWELL

MR. HARRY BIRNBAUM

MR. WM. CHAUNCY LANGDON

MISS AZUBAH LATHAM

Organizing Director of the Masque

MISS CONSTANCE MACKAY

Mr. GARNET HOLME

Telephone, Greeley 1137

Board of Directors

PROF. ALLAN ABBOTT

DR. GEORGE F. KUNZ

MISS MARY PORTER BEEGLE

HOWARD KYLE

DR. WILLIAM E. BOHN

MISS OLIVIA LEVENTRITT

CRANSTON BRENTON

MRS. PHILIP M. LYDIG

JOHN COLLIER

W. FORBES MORGAN, JR.

MISS LAURA SEDGWICK COLLINS

MRS. M. FAIRCHILD OSBORN

MRS. AUGUST DREYER

MISS FLORENCE OVERTON

MAX EASTMAB

REV. DR. JOSEPH SILVERMAN

MRS. WILLIAM EINSTEIN

PROF. EDMUND BRONK SOUTHWICK

MRS. SIMEON FORD

MR. M. J. STROOCK

MRS. DANIEL GUGGENHEIM

MR. EVERARD THOMPSON

MRS. J. NORMAN DE R. WHITEHOUSE

THE SHAKESPEARE CELEBRATION

will present

in the Lewisohn Stadium of the College of the City of New York

on the nights of May 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 1916, at Eight O’clock

The Community Masque

CALIBAN

By the Yellow Sands

PRODUCTION STAFF

Author and Director

PERCY MACKAYE

Composer and Director of Music

ARTHUR FARWELL

Producers

JOSEPH URBAN

RICHARD ORDYNSKI

Designer of Inner Scenes

ROBERT EDMOND JONES

Director of Interludes

GARNET HOLME

Director of Costumes

MRS. JOHN W. ALEXANDER

Director of Dances

MRS. ROBERT ANDERSON

Staff Assistant

HAZEL MACKAYE

Office of the Director: 529 Marbridge Bldg. (34th St. & 6th Ave.); telephone, Greeley 1137.

For particulars regarding Tickets, etc., communication should be made with the office of the Shakespeare Celebration, 10 East 43d St., New York. Telephones, Murray Hill 9745 and 4158.

THE MAYOR’S HONORARY COMMITTEE

For the New York Shakespeare Celebration

OTTO H. KAHN, Chairman.

HERBERT ADAMS

REV. JOHN HAYNES HOLMES

DR. FELIX ADLER

FREDERIC C. HOWE

JACOB P. ADLER

ARTHUR CURTISS JAMES

JOHN G. AGAR

MRS. PAUL KENNADAY

ROBERT AITKEN

DR. J. J. KINDRED

WINTHROP AMES

DARWIN P. KINGSLEY

DONN BARBER

LEE KOHNS

JOSEPH BARONDESS

DR. GEORGE F. KUNZ

MRS. AUGUST BELMONT

THOMAS W. LAMONT

GUTZON BORGLUM

DR. HENRY M. LEIPSIGER

CHANCELLOR ELMER E. BROWN

ADOLPH LEWISOHN

HENRY BRUERE

M. J. LAVELLE, V.G.

ARNOLD BRUNNER

WALTER LIPPMANN

PRES. NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER

PHILIP LYDIG

ABRAHAM CAHAN

CLARENCE H. MACKAY

MRS. WILLIAM ASTOR CHANDLER

MISS ELIZABETH MARBURY

WILLIAM M. CHASE

EDWIN MARKHAM

JOSEPH H. CHOATE

MISS HELEN MAROT

THOMAS W. CHURCHILL

DR. BRANDER MATTHEWS

PAUL D. CRAVATH

REV. HOWARD MELISH

JOHN D. CRIMMINS

DR. APPLETON MORGAN

GEORGE CROMWELL

J. P. MORGAN

R. FULTON CUTTING

DR. HENRY MOSKOWITZ

WALTER DAMROSCH

ADOLPH S. OCHS

R. S. DAVIS

RALPH PULITZER

HENRY P. DAVISON

PERCY R. PYNE, 2d

ROBT. W. DE FOREST

W. C. REICK

MRS. CAMDEN C. DIKE

ELIHU ROOT

A. J. DITTENHOEFER

EDWARD A. RUMELY

CLEVELAND H. DODGE

JACOB M. SCHIFF

CAROLINE B. DOW

MORTIMER L. SCHIFF

FRANK L. DOWLING

JAMES SPEYER

MRS. H. EDWARD DREIER

FRANCIS LYNDE STETSON

MAX EASTMAN

FREDERIC A. STOKES

SAMUEL H. EVINS

J. G. PHELPS STOKES

JOHN H. FINLEY

JOSEF STRANSKY

NED ARDEN FLOOD

OSCAR S. STRAUS

DANIEL C. FRENCH

AUGUSTUS THOMAS

CHARLES DANA GIBSON

LOUIS UNTERMEYER

BERTRAM C. GOODHUE

MRS. WILLIAM K. VANDERBILT

RT. REV. DAVID H. GREER

OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD

JULES GUERIN

MISS LILLIAN D. WALD

MRS. DANIEL GUGGENHEIM

DR. JAMES J. WALSH

MRS. BENJAMIN GUINESS

CABOT WARD

NORMAN HAPGOOD

J. ALDEN WEIR

MRS. J. BORDEN HARRIMAN

CHARLES D. WETMORE

WILLIAM LAUREL HARRIS

EDWARD J. WHEELER

COL. GEORGE HARVEY

F. W. WHITRIDGE

TIMOTHY HEALY

THOMAS W. WHITTLE

A. BARTON HEPBURN

GEORGE WICKERSHAM

MORRIS HILLQUIT

WILLIAM G. WILLCOX

JAMES P. HOLLAND

DR. STEPHEN S. WISE

H. J. WRIGHT

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS

GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The words of Shakespeare used in this Masque, are quoted from the Tudor Edition of Shakespeare’s Works, edited by Neilson and Thorndike (Macmillan). The stage directions and cuts, however, are not taken from any edition, but have been made by me for purposes of the Inner Scenes.

[2] In this book these Inner Scenes are printed in black-faced type.

[3] This is the motive of Mr. Robert Edmond Jones’ cover design for this volume.

[4] An outline of suggestions on this subject I published in a volume, “The Civic Theatre, in Relation to the Redemption of Leisure” [1912]. Further ideas and their applications are contained in the prefaces and dramatic texts of my Bird Masque “Sanctuary,” “Saint Louis: A Civic Masque,” and “The New Citizenship,” a Civic Ritual.

[5] The outgoing cost of the Saint Louis production was $122,000; the income $139,000. The balance of $17,000 has been devoted to a fund for civic art. The cost of producing a single play by Sophocles at Athens was $500,000.

[6] Page 71, on Constructive Leisure (Mitchell Kennerley, 1912).

[7] New York, 1915, Macmillan.

[8] See Appendix, page 154.

[9] The Masque Proper consists of the Prologue and Three Acts, without the Inner Scenes and the Epilogue and Interludes.

[10] Visualized by a Super-puppet.

[11] Visualized by an idol.

[12] See Appendix: Pages 207-216.

[13] The more detailed description of this Interlude is given in the Appendix, pages 162 to 183.

[14]

“The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,

Burn’d on the water: the poop was beaten gold;

Purple the sails, and so perfumed that

The winds were love-sick with them. The oars were silver,

Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke.... For her own person,

It beggar’d all description: she did lie

In her pavilion—cloth-of-gold of tissue—

O’er-picturing that Venus where we see

The fancy out-work nature. On each side her

Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,

With diverse-color’d fans, whose wind did seem

To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool....

Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,

So many mermaids, tended her i’ the eyes,

And made their bends adornings. At the helm

A seeming mermaid steers; the silken tackle

Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,

That yarely frame the office. From the barge

A strange invisible perfume hits the sense

Of the adjacent wharfs.”

—[Antony and Cleopatra: II, 2. Shakespeare.]

The charm and splendor of this description applies here only to the beauty of the barge and those it bears: otherwise Cleopatra and her attendants are, in their appearance, distraught and fearful, and the barge shows signs of recent perilous escape from the scene of Antony’s sea-battle with Octavius Cæsar.

Being here conceived as a plastic vision in the mind of Prospero, this Inner Scene—an excerpt from Act III, Scene XI, of Shakespeare’s play—has, by dramatic license appropriate to this masque, been laid in a scene suggested by the above description of the barge.

[15] During this scene, Caliban—watching intently—slides from the steps of the throne and crawls slowly forward on his stomach to the centre, where he lies prone, with head lifted—his body pointed toward the Inner stage—kicking at times his lower legs [from the knees] in the air.

[16] For fuller description of this Interlude, see Appendix, pages 184-194.

[17] From Shakespeare’s “King Henry the Eighth,” Act I, Scene 1.

[18] From Shakespeare’s “King Henry the Eighth,” Act I, Scene 1.

[19] See Appendix, pages 196-204, for more detailed description.

[20] For details of these Epilogue groups, see Appendix, pages 205-216.

[21] The plan for this India episode is based on a ritual scene of the ancient Hindu drama “Shakuntala,” by Kalidasa, translated by Garnet Holme and Arthur W. Ryder, and recently produced by the authors in California. The translation is published by University of California Press, Berkeley, 1914. Those communities that may desire to include this Action in their local festivals should communicate with Mr. Garnet Holme, care of The Shakespeare Celebration, 10 East 43rd Street, New York City.

[22] The revolving of the disk, of course, is apparent only, not real. Actually, the disk remains motionless; it appears to revolve because of the motion of the Priests around it.

[23] See “Kings and Gods of Egypt,” Alexandre Moret; pp. 69-108.

[24] Similarly before each of the Actions of each Interlude, Prospero makes a brief explanatory comment to Ariel (and thus to the audience).

[25] The Choregus was the Producer, usually a man of great wealth.

[26] In one hand Pantomimus carries a wand resembling a caduceus, but differing from that of Mercury in that the heads of the twining snakes are carved as little masks of comedy, and the tip of the wand, to which the flying wings are affixed, is the shining disk of a mirror, into which at times Pantomimus peers quaintly at his reflection.

[27] The Pantomime is adapted from a Roman Interlude by the author in his drama “Sappho and Phaon.”

[28] This Theme inheres in an excerpt from Shakespeare’s “King Henry VIII,” Act I, Scene I, quoted by Ariel as Prologue to the Sixth Inner Scene of the Masque, for which the actual dialogue of no Shakespeare Scene dealing with France appears so appropriate for the Masque’s uses as a pantomime based on this excerpt from Henry VIII.

[29] The words Winter and Spring refer to the respective Groups.

[30] The water is represented by the blue ground, beyond the verge of the Yellow Sands.

[31] Here the play-actors enact a scene from the old play of “Noah’s Flood.”

[32] The Action here described, like that of all the preceding Interludes, is simply a preliminary outline, subject to modification and development at rehearsals.

[33] With this number several hundred of the Interlude participants and Masque figurants are to be correlated in the final ensemble.

Transcriber’s Notes:

The cover image is in the public domain.

Uncertain or antiquated spellings or ancient words were not corrected.

The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate.

Typographical errors have been silently corrected but other variations in spelling and punctuation remain unaltered.

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Table of Contents

CALIBAN BY THE YELLOW SANDS

PREFACE

MASQUE STRUCTURE

The Action

The Time

The Setting

PERSONS AND PRESENCES

I. OF THE MASQUE PROPER[9]

II. OF THE TEN INNER-STAGE SCENES

III. OF THE INTERLUDES

IV. OF THE EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

FIRST INTERLUDE[13]

ACT I

FIRST INNER SCENE

SECOND INNER SCENE[15]

THIRD INNER SCENE

SECOND INTERLUDE[16]

ACT II

FIFTH INNER SCENE.

SIXTH INNER SCENE

SEVENTH INNER SCENE

THIRD INTERLUDE[19]

ACT III

THE EIGHTH INNER SCENE

THE NINTH INNER SCENE

THE TENTH INNER SCENE

EPILOGUE

APPENDIX

FOREWORD

PERSONS AND PRESENCES

FOOTNOTES:

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE