Man's consciousness of his inhumanity and indivinity are transmuted in his uninstructed imagination into the monstrous phantom—Sin; something so heinous and detestable interpenetrating all his being, works and ways, that many of the subtlest intelligences and most upright minds have found no relief from its remorseful obsession except in the atonement of Christ and faith in an immaterial future; or, more courageously, in a remorseless despair and the resolute acceptance of the postulate that life is a thing that should never have been. It has been left to me to show that this inhumanity, this indivinity, this Sin, has, like all man's ideas, conceptions, and fantasies, a Material source in the properties of the forms of Matter of which man consists. In expounding my new poetry I am at an immense disadvantage in one regard—that the latent forces of expansion and chemical affinity, the active electrical, magnetic, radiant and cohesive energies, and the perpetuity of molecular and interatomical motions in the oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, etc., of the Matter of man are as yet only vaguely conceived, so far at least as they relate to himself, in the mind of the reader. I must therefore reiterate that these forces, converted into anabolic and katabolic activities, into vitality, nervous energy, reproductive power, into love, hate, thought, imagination, into consciousness and self-consciousness, are the fount of man's notion that there is within him, and without, something other than Matter and its properties of form and energy: it is these material forces that man has ignorantly christened soul or spirit, with the immaterial significance of these words. Now no one in love feels sinful; no one in a passion of any kind feels sinful; no man gloriously drunk feels sinful; no deep-set ambition ever accuses itself of sin; an entirely healthy nature living a healthy life knows nothing of sin. Conviction of Sin has always been a limited experience. There have been, are, and will be, powerful and most Material natures, unaffected except temporarily and superficially by bouts of debauchery, prolonged mental strain, and the commission of every crime. Conviction of Sin, alike in the offspring of worn-out stock—epileptics, consumptives, neuropaths, mattoids, weak-bodied and weak-minded people generally—as in ordinary healthy natures, is the effect of the exhaustion of the Material forces of the Matter of man. The exhaustion may proceed from dissipation, from prolonged domestic or financial worry, or—not to multiply instances—it may be the result of the enormous discharge of nervous energy and the upheaval of the whole nature in the commission of a murder or the betrayal of a friend. But no ordinary, healthy man is ever convicted of Sin before the act, or in the act; the degenerate whose normal state is one of conscious sinfulness, feels for the moment deified upon the sudden access of energy that leads him into crime; and the outcast, when he learns to say, "Evil, be thou my good," stumbles, although unconsciously, upon the tremendous knowledge that the categoric imperative is the discharge of the material forces of Matter, whether the discharge be by the lightnings of the clouds, in the seismal throes of earth, or through the passion and imagination of men and women. Sin, then, is the exhaustion of the material forces of man. Discharges of force in ways of pleasure, in moods of delight, in trances of ecstasy, as well as discharges of force in feelings of rancour, jealousy, and malice, in deeds of lust, slaughter, and treachery, have alike to bear the unhallowed name of the succeeding reaction. It is a species of vengeance, this transference of the title Sin from the impotence of the spent Matter to the energy that was expended. The degenerate suffers because his forefathers used up the energies of the stock in enjoyment; the debauchee suffers by the over-discharge of his own force; and both feel a vengeful pleasure in transferring the moral nickname of their enfeebled condition to the innocent, whole-hearted liberty and power of the days of exuberant health. It is the meanest, most cowardly thing man has done to call his courage Sin: by this vengeance the enfeebled Matter of man obtains such pitiful satisfaction as an infant does when it calls the floor upon which it has broken its brow "bad," and invites its nurse to whip the offender. An apologue:—A bee, seized with an access of Quixotic daring, exhausted its sting in the neck of a quite harmless tourist, and shortly lay buzzing its last and lamenting its guilt. "What a sinner I have been!" the bee buzzed. A hornet flounced up and asked the bee what ailed it. "I have sinned," the bee replied, "and deserve only death and hell." "Let's see," cried the hornet, examining the bee; "why, you've no sting! You've used up your sting!" "Ay!" sighed the bee; "I've used it up, sinner that I am!" "Pooh!" replied the hornet, who was by way of being a casuist: "that's not how to look at it! Your sting, look you—your sting itself was the sin. Now, you are purged of that. Courage, mon camarade, le diable est mort!" "Whatever do you mean?" rejoined the bee. "When I was active and happy, confident and proud, with the power of life and death in my tail, going about the delightful business of the universe among the amorous flowers——" "Then you were sinful," interrupted the hornet, determined that his cousin should not die unconsoled: "now, since by the loss of your sting, which was your sin par excellence, you being sexless, you are convicted of sin, and have become penitent, your sin ceases, and you will go to heaven." But the bee in the sudden illumination of death whispered faintly but resolutely, "No, by heaven, and earth, and hell! None of your tricks on travellers bound for the undiscovered country. It was not until I lost my power to sin that I felt sinful; therefore I was never a sinner, and I'm not a sinner now." Whereupon the bee with a last effort flew into the bosom of a rose and died happy.
I now come to the Material source of the idea of God.
The Ether from which everything was evolved fills all space: it interpenetrates all Matter so intimately that the electrons of an atom swim in it with the liberty of fish in the sea. The Ether has never been analysed, quantitatively, qualitatively, or volumetrically; it has never been seen, heard, smelt, felt, tasted, or weighed.
A mathematician has suggested that the Ether is the unimaginable world of four dimensions, including, interpenetrating and transcending our cognizable Universe as a cube which is a world of three dimensions includes and transcends a possible world of two dimensions contained in a superficial square. Certain, if a world of two dimensions can exist, a world of four dimensions is not impossible; but we require to complete the series with a linear world of one dimension and a punctual world of none, which is absurd.
Nevertheless, it is possible to form some idea of the nature of the Ether. Its invisibility is not beyond our conception: this negative quality is characteristic of many fluids, notably of the atmosphere; but the atmosphere becomes apparent in the object-glass of the telescope when the moon is seen like a white pebble in a rushing stream. The imponderability of the Ether can also be conceived by analogy with the atmosphere. Every man, knowing nothing of it, carries upon his shoulders a column of air sixty miles high and weighing many tons. In calm weather the very presence of this voluminous vapour is unfelt: it is only when the wind rises that we know how heavy its hand can be. Thus a poetical or concrete conception of the Ether is not negatived by that which it is not. But this omnipresent substance can be conceived positively, and the most suitable analogue is the sea. The sea consists of two gases—hydrogen and oxygen, united chemically to form water, and containing in solution two or three hundred grains to the pint of compounds of the following forms of Matter: Kalium, natrium, magnesium, calcium, sulphur, carbon, chlorine, bromine, iodine, and traces of everything soluble and partially soluble in water: it contains also, dissolved in various salts and bases, the very elements, hydrogen and oxygen, of which it is itself compounded. If a fluid so simple as water, braided of only three molecules of Matter, two of hydrogen and one of oxygen, can be so powerful a solvent, it follows that a fluid so complex as the Ether, woven and interwoven of molecules of all the elements, that is, of molecules of every form of Matter, must be dynamic in the highest degree, must be an omnipotent solvent: if water, consisting of only two elements, can hold in solution, besides its own constituents, ten or a dozen other elements, the Ether, consisting of all the elements, a fortiori can hold in solution all these elements. Nor is the actual omnipresence of the Ether altogether beyond our grasp. To say that every electron, every atom, every molecule, every element or form of Matter, every planet, sun, and system, floats in the Ether and is interpenetrated by it, is to say that which seems improbable; but the analogy of water again helps to a natural concrete image. To say that three-quarters by weight of human flesh, three-eighths by weight of human bones, consist of water, is to say that which seems improbable, but which is nevertheless true. Thus we can guess the Ether in terms of our Universe of three dimensions.
The esoteric nature of the Ether is more easily understood. I use the word "esoteric" with my own meaning, implying nothing mystical. By esoteric I mean here a thing known only to me. Upon the publication of this book, the thing I am about to tell becomes exoteric. I make no mystery. The Universe is all mystery: the existence of a drop of water is as mysterious as the existence of music.
Man is the Universe alive and conscious, and with the capacity of entire self-consciousness. This capacity, undeveloped and misunderstood, is the source of all man's misery, the hotbed of the idea of Sin and the idea of God. Unable to comprehend it, the Greek and the Norseman projected their trouble into Olympus and Hades, Asgard and Nifelheim, gods and goddesses, titans, giants, furies, valkyrs. Every people cast out and projected its self-consciousness as Other World in some form. A unique race, the Jews, threw its shadow on the Universe as Jehovah, the One God, jealous, vengeful, inhuman. The European Aryans laid hold of this, but in a decadent, Christianized form; and as they lacked in general the intense individuality of the Hebrew, they soon brought it into a deliquescence of the Trinity, the Mother of Heaven, Saints, transubstantiation, the God of love, etc. The hardier northern races, however, reverted to a more Hebraic form, preferring the God of battles to the Madonna; and withal the idea of the One God remained dominant in Christian countries, being recruited by the sudden rise and rivalry of Islam, with its strident profession of monotheism. The material source of this uneasy self-consciousness which projects itself into Other World is twofold. One of these is the Nature of Man, formerly called Original Sin, God and Sin being in this regard convertible terms. I have stated this source clearly enough in the "Prime Minister," in that passage where the protagonist overcomes the desire to pray, conjuring himself to—
"think
Instead what God is, sanely think; and what
The sanguine source of our immortal hope;
Think how some common drudging neighbour-wight
(Not Hercules nor a titan of the war
Venerean; no, but any honest Jack)
Could happily beget for fifty years
A hundred wholesome children annually:
How every rosy Jill encloisters germs
Of many thousand brats; think this and laugh
Aloud, delighted with the naive, the rich
Conceit of immortality and vast
Exuberance of the race that swells and throbs
In every man and woman, strings the nerves,
Ignites the brain and thunders in the heart
With God and life eternal."
The other source of the idea of God is in the Ether. I have not yet dealt with this by name in any of my writings, and had intended to reserve it for my "Testament of a Deliverer"; but having elected to prepare a brief and general account of my message, I must at least mention it here. My statement of the Ethereal source of the idea of God is not nearly mature yet. Nevertheless, the idea is simple and clear; it is indeed self-evident. Every molecule of which man consists is not only saturated in the all-pervading Ether, but is kneaded of it, visible, ponderable Matter being a condensation of the invisible, imponderable Ether. In a last analysis, which takes us back to the first synthesis, man is therefore the Ether become conscious. It is not a question of bulk. Man is an inhabitant of the earth, which is one of the smallest planets of one of the smallest systems in the Universe; but man consists of the Universe, of the whole Universe in its condensed form, and also of the whole Universe in its invisible, imponderable form, being permeated and pervaded by the omnipotent, omnipresent Ether, being soaked in it, being drunk with it, being it. There is nothing anywhere higher than man; there can be nothing higher than the Universe become self-conscious. In his uninstructed time man called the Ether which permeates him, which is his ecstasy, God and gods: "Out of God he came," he thought; "and back to God he should return;" or he called it Nirvana and an infinite peace. Imagination is the radiation of the omnipotent Ether. Only the whole Universe become conscious could have imagined God the Creator. Now man knows that there is no God; that nothing was made; that all is a becoming; that he is the Ether, condensed, evolved; and that he will devolve again into that invisible, imponderable form of Matter: and this knowledge inherent in himself is infinitely satisfying. All the imaginings about the source of his being which man has maddened over, which he has clung to in good report and ill, which he has died for in battle and at the stake, have their roots in Material truth. The idea of the Trinity, for example, is clearly the effort of the Universe become conscious in man to express that visible and invisible being and that power, namely, Ether, Matter, Energy, which we now know to be the triple form of the Universe; and the sublime idea of the Immaculate Conception has the same profound significance as the union of the gods with the daughters of men in all mythologies; it means that man procreates something more than man; it means that he procreates a conscious Universe. I think it unlikely that Matter has become conscious anywhere else than on our earth. In man the Ether and the principal forms of Matter are conscious and self-conscious. It is not conceivable that some other dozen elements might become conscious; Matter cannot imagine life and consciousness without carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus. It is not necessary that other elements should become conscious, because every element is a form of the one substance: therefore in man the whole Universe is conscious. I should say that there is not now, that there has not been at any time, a mate or a peer of man; and—I repeat it once more—there cannot be anything higher than man, because man is the whole Universe become conscious and self-conscious. This is a great thing: it is the greatest thing that has been told to the world. It will destroy all existing religions, governments, institutions, morality and all moralities, all philosophy, all literature, all art. It puts an end to man's mistaken effort towards an impossible Divinity by way of an impossible Humanity: he will leave that henceforth to the bees and the ants; he is higher than the bees and the ants; he is more Material than they. But that prolonged, deadlift agony towards an impossible Divinity by way of an impossible Humanity sprang, like all man's travail, from a Material truth. Man's aim at something higher than man meant that there is nothing anywhere higher than man. There is nothing anywhere higher than man. The terror and splendour of this will give the world pause; nor will the world yield to it easily, for here is an actual new-birth at last: to know that there can be no first cause, no metaphysic; that there can be no Other World; that man is the Material Universe become conscious. A thousand years' war would not be too terrible a travail for the birth of the world's self-consciousness: thereafter man could be and do something; heretofore he has been and done nothing.
The generative power of man and the all-pervading Ether, conscious in him, are the Material sources of the idea of God. From the first source there comes also the idea of Sin cognate and isomeric with the idea of God. (The Devil, the personification of God as Sin, has been so long a joke that he is out of court.) These twin ideas God and Sin died together on Calvary two thousand years ago. The history of Christendom is the history of the obsequies of these ideas, of the devolution of these ideas. ("The Testament of a Prime Minister," pp. 76-81.) Out of Matter the Myth of God and Sin and Heaven and Hell arose. Return that myth in which the imagination of Christendom still dwells in all serious moods and times of passion, return it to its Material source, and let the world's imagination go with it and be born again, to live no longer in a myth but in the Universe itself. I say, with the Prime Minister, let
"the passionate heart of man,
The proud imagination and the dream
That hovers homeless as the myths decay,
Exempt from fabulous wonder, rooted deep
In Substance one and multiform, and breathed
In all the mystery of the things that are,
Create indomitable will to truth,
An open mind at home in space and time,
A stainless memory splendidly endowed
With actual knowledge, a Material soul
At one with the Material Universe."
With the Bishop of St. James's I watch the future, an actual world wherein an actual man shall be and do greatly
"In majesty Material, the Nessus-shirt
Of spirit, warp and woof of legend, dyed
In many-coloured Sin, the mordant shame
That cankered life, and clung, a grafted hide
About his innocent flesh, fallen off, or flayed
With hideous woe, and in its proper filth
Corrupted into naught. Forthwith the world
Begins again, not even a pallid dream
Of legendary pasts to cloud the dawn.
I say it simply:—With the Universe
Man clothes himself; arrayed in time and space,
In darkness and in light, no lamp, no gleam
He follows, for the sun illumines him
And every sun his kinsmen in the skies,
The systems, constellations, galaxies.
At home in the empyrean, issuing thence,
His free imagination momently
Remembers flame pellucid, which it was
And will be in the nebula again
When all the orbs that stock the loins of night
Return into the sun, and fill with seed
Of chastest fire the impassioned womb of space."
To conclude for the present: Whence is the Universe and Why? The Universe itself is the only answer to these questions. Whence is the Universe? There is no whence; it fills space. Why is the Universe? It cannot tell: it is neither necessary nor unnecessary: it is. There are, properly, no answers to these questions; therefore these questions are not. The Universe says always and only, "Here and Now."
THE THEATROCRAT A TRAGIC PLAY OF CHURCH AND STAGE
"This is the freedom of the Universe"
Wordsworth
PERSONS
Sir Tristram Sumner … Proprietor and Manager of the Grosvenor
Theatre.
Gervase Sackville … Bishop of St. James's.
Warwick Groom …}
Silas Orchard … } Actors.
Mark Belfry … An American Manager.
Hildreth … Sir Tristram's Secretary.
Abbot … Business Manager.
Salerne … Stage Manager.
Blyth … }
Boulder … } Commissionaires.
Temple … Sir Tristram's Dresser.
Rouse … Call-boy.
Two Doctors
Lady Sumner … Sir Tristram's Wife.
Europa Troop … An Actress.
Actors, Scene-shifters, Property-men.
Scene: London. Time: The Present A month elapses between the third and fourth Acts.
THE THEATROCRAT
ACT I
Scene: Sir Tristram Sumner's study in his house in Piccadilly. Sir Tristram is reading an old letter. When the door opens he puts the letter hastily in his pocket.
Enter Lady Sumner.
Sir T. Martha! You've come to trouble me; your eyes
Are lustreless and evil. Will it end
At all? Will you give over urging death?
Lady S. A visitor.
Sir T. Who is it?
Lady S. Warwick Groom.
Sir T. Impossible: at any time impossible.
I hate him, Martha.
Lady S. Hate? Hate Warwick Groom!
I thought you hated no one.
Sir T. So did I!
But him I hate; because—he was my friend.
Lady S. And would be still.
Sir T. Therefore I hate him more!
But that's not true: hate fathoms hate, and answers
Index-like, the searching current of its thought,
Down through the earth, or round it in the nerveless
Air. Deep he hates me; by my hate I know.
I tell you, Martha, were Warwick Groom and I
Alone together for an hour, the death
Of either or of both would testify
Our rooted rancour.
Lady S. I cannot understand!
True, he is wild, this Warwick Groom of ours,
And doors are shut against him; but a braver
Artist starves not anywhere.
Sir T. Starves? Let him starve.
Lady S. This is so new, so sudden, Tristram!
Sir T. No;
Nothing is sudden that the heart brings forth.
The mushroom spawn of passing loves and hates
By thunder-showers and puddles quickly bred,
To rot as quickly, in sequestered nooks
Or by the trodden highways, are nothing—nothing
But rashes on the skin.
Lady S. You change the figure:
The very rhapsody of Warwick Groom!
Sir T. Plastic as molten metal! Living hate
Mine is, a deeply struck deliberate cancer
In the heart, and half as old as I: half
Of my life it is: I know it now mature
That knew it not a-growing: wholesome hate!
A wholesome cancer, a resourceful pain,
A fount of passion!
Lady S. You forget yourself;
For now you stare and pant like some insane
Unhappy woman, sick with jealousy,
Her strangled voice and prayer, "Oh, just to crush
"My rival like a flea!"
Sir T. So would I do!
Lady S. I cannot understand you.
Sir T. I understand.
We know each other, Warwick Groom and I.
No legendary friendship ever wove
The lives of men in such a gallant web
As ours displayed: the secrets of our hearts
Were interchanged like goodly gifts that made
The giver and receiver ache with joy:
Our thoughts, our deeds, our sins were known and loved
Of either; nothing irksome, trivial, dull
Could happen day or night to him or me
Since telling of it gave it import, grave
Or humorous, subtle, sweet, or sad. Too well,
Too infinitely well we knew each other!
Grudge, longing, foible, vanity, conceit,
Ambition, terror, cowardice, fancy, whim
Revealed themselves in either's consciousness
Beyond the scope and verge of comely minds,
That there might still be something to confide,
Some proof of new affection: once, at least,
Two men should know each other inside out!
To cut and carve a specimen, a corpse,
A limbless, headless trunk, malodorous, foul,
O'er-hacked, o'er-handled by anatomists,
Tyros and demonstrators, makes a job
Cleaner than knowing truly inside out
The heart of man, the actual heart of man,
Not in a general mass of studies culled
From books, but in particular, one's friend.
Had fortune not divided us I know
Both had gone mad. He hates the thought of me,
As I the thought of him—the natural end
Of every intimacy pushed outside
The limit. Souls are clad and should be seen
In vestments only: things and thoughts there are
We must not think: forbidden is the tree
Of knowledge still to those that love themselves,
Their friends, their art, their people and the world.
This is a righteous hate in him and me.
Lady S. It desolates my heart to think it true!
What shall I say to him?
Sir T. Give him some food,
Some drink, some money.
Lady S. But he comes with news!
Oh, I forgot; you moved me so! Your Troilus,
It seems, is ill.
Sir T. Ah; so. He looked consumptive.
The understudy is letter-perfect.
Lady S. Yes;
But think: the first of such a play—so harsh,
So questionable.
Sir T. Interest follows Troilus:
This is a blow; but not a deadly one.
Lady S. And fortune's blows may prove caresses. Warwick
Can play the part.
Sir T. Groom? In my theatre? Martha!
Lady S. I once had leave to counsel you, though now
You shun me, Tristram——
Sir T. Martha!
Lady S. Yes, you do;
And take the mind of every one but me.
Tristram, you know my heart. Is it unclean
Like Warwick Groom's? You loved me once: has love
Fermented, like your friendship, into hate?
Sir T. Should not a woman's heart escape the probe
Men search each other with, the fathom line,
The dredge, the sunken shaft that brings to light
No pearls of price, no gems, nor golden ore,
But wreck and rust, drowned hopes and dead men's bones?
Lady S. There's terror in your mind: terror for me,
And terror for yourself!—But this is vain.—
I think that help has come; I yet may live.
The play, the play! No question Warwick Groom
Is Troilus to the accent. Have you lost
Your love of art along with other loves?
Sir T. Martha!
Lady S. Forgive me that.—Europa Troop:
It's not for love, the world and I know well,
You tossed her Cressida. The wanton salt
Of her, so loathsome to a passionate mind,
Is admirable here; and art demands
This sacrifice besides, since it may be
That you should give the hated Warwick Groom
A part predicting him, so like a glove
It fits him.
Sir T. Let me think; and you—think you:
Will "Troilus and Cressida" succeed?
Lady S. I think it will; if you salute what chance
Provides, a perfect Troilus.
Sir T. Do you feel
The fit upon you—your telepathic mood?
Lady S. I hardly know: I think the play is safe.
Sir T. If Groom plays Troilus?
Lady S. If Groom plays Troilus.
Sir T. You say he knows the part. How can that be?
Lady S. That you must ask him.
Sir T. Martha!
Lady S. Fate—it's fate.
Sir T. What's his condition? Is he well put on?
Drunk—sober—maudlin? How?
Lady S. Sober and trim;
Pallid and beautiful.
Sir T. You loved him once.
Lady S. Tristram!
Sir T. I mean, he was in love with you.
Lady S. You knew that from the first.
Sir T. But never knew
If you loved him.
Lady S. You never asked me that!
Sir T. It never troubled me; nor does it now:
But every question that a man may put,
Or may not put a woman, shapes itself
Some time or other; and the chastest mind,
When love begins to mellow, and passion falls,
A ripened friendship from the tree of life,
Thinks of his wife one time at least, "had I
Her maidenhead?"
Lady S. Tristram!
Sir T. The word escaped.
Lady S. Oh, you are crude and cruel! But I am for you:—
Not every husband; some men marry widows;
Some marry harlots; some——
Sir T. Yes; some?
Lady S. It seems
Some marry virgins and are none the wiser.
Sir T. That's not like dying.
Lady S. No. And Warwick Groom?
Sir T. Yes; but remain. Not him alone with me.
Lady S. There's something in your mind more than you say.
Sir T. Without a doubt. No man can speak his mind.
Lady S. But every woman can, I think.
Sir T. And does?
Lady S. If she be gently asked.
Sir T. What shall I ask?
Lady S. Ask? Anything. But you are harassed, ill.
Let me conclude with Groom.
Sir T. No; bring him in.
[Sir Tristram at the telephone communicates with his business manager, Abbot, while Lady Sumner goes out and re-enters with Warwick.]
Groom. Tristram!
Sir T. [At the telephone] Warwick!—old friend! (No, Abbot; wait.)
Groom. You'll give me this?
Sir T. You know the part?
Groom. I know it.
Lady S. We'll test him, Tristram.
[Takes up a copy of Troilus and Cressida.]
Sir T. Shame! (Yes? Sumner. No.
A dozen Heidsieck? Yes, at once; from me.
Send him my love; tell him he shall get well.)
You never played it?
Groom. No; I studied it
When you announced the play a year ago;
And when you placed it in rehearsal——
Sir T. Yes;
You wrote me, I remember.
Groom. And received
No answer.
Lady S. Tristram!
Sir T. Hateful oversight!
Forgive me, Warwick. Having cast the part,
Not knowing you were free … (Yes. Sumner. What?
Yes; let the understudy dress. No. Yes.
Perhaps we'll have another Troilus. Groom.
To-night. Oh no! I think. A great success.)
Lady S. And now I'll test him.
Sir T. Women are merciless!
Lady S. And that's the cue! I speak for Hector, Warwick.
"Unarm thee, go; and doubt thou not, brave boy,
"I'll stand to-day for thee and me and Troy."
Groom. "Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you
"Which better fits a lion than a man."
Lady S. "What vice is that, good Troilus? Chide me for it."
Groom. "When many times the captive Grecians fall,
"Even in the fan and wind of your fair sword,
"You bid them rise and live."
Lady S. "O, 'tis fair play!"
Groom. "Fool's play"—I'll not go on, for I have asked
Like courteous mercy, Tristram.
Sir T. You have brought
Mercy to us, boy—a Troilus unmatched
From swift Scamander to the lordly Thames.
Groom. Then am I happy. Tristram, Martha, years
How many have I wasted; ten, a dozen,
Despairing up and down the railways, caught
And imprisoned, like some adventurer
Forlorn, in dreary tunnels, stations, inns,
Provincial companies and theatres,
The dismallest labyrinth where every step
Stumbles at skeletons of dead ambitions
And dying reputations; as close to London
As the suburbs are, further away, that is,
Than hell from heaven, and bitterer than hell.
Be hung upon the fringe of paradise,
Stewing in brimstone with the spicy scent
Of asphodel to lave the sulphurous air,
And envy Tantalus his pleasant lines
For ever and a day!
Sir T. You keep your zest
Of talk, your thunder and lightning.
Groom. Let me talk
A minute! It's a dozen lifetimes since
We met. The luck of some! the luck! Old gag,
The luck! It seems but yesterday that I
Beheld the Parthenon, one towering wave
Of wild delight from stalls to gallery, break
At my feet, the vanguard of a tide
Of triumph, governed by the moon of hearts,
The world's applause, that should have borne me on
To the trade winds and harbours of success.
One season—only one in London town!
Two failures after, and with finer parts
Than that that seemed to place me, cast me out
Provincial and suburban derelict.
Nightly to play upon the blood and brain
Of London!—Tristram! Martha!—On the best,
Most beautiful and bravest folk on earth!—
Ah, let them sneer that fail! I never fail
Although I seem to, for I love the world,
And all that's in it, and what's best I love
The best!—To play on London's sense and heart
With passion and emotion, tears and flame,
Laughter and anguish, terror, splendour, might—
As you do, Tristram, and as I could do:
Is there vocation, mission, martyrdom
That equals it? Oh, every night to act
A part of power, and feel a thousand hearts
Beat stroke for stroke with yours, in heaven, in hell,
In London—nowhere else!—in London town,
The core of the world: ten years of that—three—one,
Then any death in rags and hospitals,
Garrets and dens and drunkenness, disgraced,
Forgotten, but my inmost will achieved!
Sir T. Your pulses hum with youth, and scarce two years
Between us!
Lady S. Scarce a year!
Groom. And that makes less
Than nothing 'twixt the tropics where we are,
The equatorial forties.
Sir T. Less than nothing.
Lady S. This, then, is Troilus, Tristram?
Sir T. Troilus? Yes!
Off to the theatre; dress; rehearse all day,
And fire the town at night.
Groom. I'll play the part
As ne'er I played! Thanks from my soul, deep thanks,
Tristram and Martha. Till the call-boy calls!
[Goes out.]
Sir T. Still more excitable, more frenzied. Not——?
Lady S. Oh, no! the febrile genius of the man.
Some wine he had from me, so worn he seemed:
One glass; it lit him like a torch.
Sir T. [At the telephone] (Yes. Groom:
He takes the part. My great regret express
To all the principals, because to-day
I break their well-earned rest: pick out your words:
Summon them promptly to rehearse with Groom.
What? Surely. Fifty. See him when he comes.
No; extra: mornings, extra. Tut! I can't give less.
Yes; keep the understudy under arms.
Myself? At three. Box-office; libraries?
That's good … Ah! … Dubious: time will tell.)
Booked for a week, and there it stops!
Lady S. Oh, Tristram!
Let me see! [She presses one hand to her eyes and grasps the copy of
"Troilus and Cressida" tightly in the other.] Clear! Yes; if Groom
plays Troilus!
Sir T. If Groom plays——
Lady S. Hush! Again I see and hear!
[Throws away the book and uncovers her eyes.]
Psychic, or magic, out of heaven or hell
That message comes: "If Warwick Groom plays Troilus."
Sir T. It rings with menace.
Lady S. Terror! Should we fail?—
Oh, we are ruined, Tristram!
Sir T. Once for all!
That I am facing.
Lady S. They will help you yet!
Sir T. Not now. Failure to-night begins the end.
My personal triumph and the theatre's
Cannot be questioned——
Lady S. Who would dare!
Sir T. But debt
Increases like a tide when sun and moon
Uplift the mass of waters and the west
Scourges the huge Atlantic. Now you laugh:
That's best. My guarantors withdraw their names
To-night, if failure knells the curtain down.
Lady S. Tristram!—our own account!—that's overdrawn!
Sir T. And overdrawn again!
Lady S. The tragedy!
The only tragedy! The end of love,
The loss of children, snuffing out of hope,
Decay of soul is happiness itself
Beside the want of means—with our desires,
Experience, fancies, dreams.
Sir T. Yes, but you laughed;
And you must laugh again and yet again.
Why, Martha, with a roof above our heads,
A crust to eat, we will be what we are,
The essence of ourselves, in every fate.
Lady S. Live poor again? Not for a moment, Tristram!
No man can be himself in poverty,
Nor woman either: all the world knows that,
And sweats and aches and lies and sins for wealth.
No, Tristram; but the old deliverance.
Sir T. What?
Lady S. [Takes a vial from her pocket] This, that so often set our hearts at rest.
Sir T. Have I not told you never to show me that?
Lady S. Yes; but I show it. Is your courage gone?
Are you afraid to look upon the past?
Sir T. What purpose can it serve?
Lady S. It eases me
To talk of it. Do you remember, Tristram?
Sir T. What ghouls you are, you women! What hyenas,
Digging for ever in the past!
Lady S. Have you
Forgotten? Is your memory such a sieve?
Sir T. No! I remember many heady times
When although fortune scowled and fate undid
Our utmost toil, yet love and tranquil sleep
Fulfilled the night with this beneath our pillow,
And certain death at any moment ours.
Lady S. And always then the sombre clouds dispersed,
And fate began to build us up again.
Sir T. We slept together …
Lady S. Yes …
Sir T. Well, we shall see.
Lady S. [Takes up the book of the play and covers her eyes again]
I see the theatre—what was Warwick's brag?—
One tidal wave of wild humanity
From stalls to gallery, surging at your feet,
If Warwick Groom plays Troilus? Why that "if"?
Sir T. There's menace there!
Lady S. Why can't I hear it say,
"Since Warwick Groom plays Troilus"? … Can't we die
At once? If you would only care to die!
I should be glad to die: I am very tired.
Sir T. If failure rings the curtain down, perhaps
That way as well as any.
Lady S. Will you promise?
Sir T. No; I'll not promise! A thousand things may chance.
Lady S. A thousand things? Yes; should a foe of yours
Or Warwick's—Tristram, they may drown his wits
In all good fellowship! Then where are we?
Will you not go and guard him?
Sir T. Presently.
I have a thing to settle in my mind.
Lady S. May I go, Tristram?
Sir T. If you think it well.
Lady S. Oh, better than well, I think it.
[Knocking.]
Not for me I hope. [Opens the door] What? Who? The Bishop of St.
James's!
Sir T. St. James's! Come—come in!
[Enter Gervase Sackville, Bishop of St. James's.]
I thought the east
Had held you captive for another month.
St. J. I finished what I gave myself to do
In half the time I judged the work would take.
Lady S. Oh, welcome, Gervase! Like a single sorrow
You come to bless us: wonder at my words;
They have the sweetest meaning. Fortune comes
With Gervase, Tristram—how, I cannot tell:
Or short, or long, it comes: I feel it here;
But yet I go to guard the ark.
St. J. The ark?
Lady S. The theatre, the play, the purse—our lives!
[Goes out.]
St. J. My cousin's moody, Tristram.
Sir T. I never thought
To need a friend for the last rite of friendship,
The revelation and unbosoming
Of weakness. Had you come a day, an hour,
Some heart-beats later, business, theatre, world,
With permanent eclipse of insight, soul,
Of something nameless yet, had spared you this
That I am going to tell you. Will you sit,
Or must you walk about?
St. J. The highest mood
Is stillest.
[They sit.]
Sir T. Still as death! I loved my wife,
And she loved me: she loves me strangely yet
In some dispassionate absorbing way
That tortures her. I do not love her now;
And why I know: we have no children.
St. J. What!
Sir T. There must be fruit of love, if love's to last.
St. J. Now you perplex me, Tristram.
Sir T. There were children:
You christened four—and buried them. Ah, yes;
If they had lived!
St. J. If they had lived? What then?
Sir T. Profound affection for the hallowed womb
That gave my passion form and brought to light
Its ecstasy in boys and girls of mine:
Desire had changed to deep affection then;
But often now I loathe this childless woman,
And think with horror how she knows my heart,
My tendernesses, selfishnesses, thoughts
Inchoate, wanton follies, baby talk:
My wife became my mistress in the end.
St. J. Oh now I see into the depths of it!
Sir T. When our last child had died and she and I
Were raw with grief, unhinged by wild despair,
A fount and flame of lust arose in both,
As though we had eaten of some forbidden fruit,
Or swallowed magic earth, or been bewitched,
Or drenched with aphrodisiac. At the time
My fame was in the nadir, and our lives'
Duration insignificant to us:
So every night with poison in a vial
Beneath our pillow to end it when we chose,
A letch that never seemed to sate itself
Drained us of all humanity; but I,
Refined and tempered in the heat and cold,
Desire and languor, languor and desire,
The rhythm of this, by natural sorcery
Became at last an artist: think of it!
I found myself the master of the mood,
Enchanting folk and playing on their nerves
As though an audience were a zither; made
A name far-sounding; and, by your goodwill, too
Am now—Heaven save the mark, the banal end!—
Am now, Sir Tristram Sumner, nominal,
As well as actual theatrocrat.
St. J. Do I speak now?
Sir T. Not yet. A jealousy
More sombre than my hate—a thing to note,
That love is never jealous of the past—
A sombre jealousy begot by hate
Began to whisper "Strike her; wound her; kill."
St. J. Your wife and I are cousins.
Sir T. Therefore I speak.
She has no kin but you to help her now.
Shall I go on?
St. J. Go on.
Sir T. My first of friends Was Warwick Groom. Upon my marriage-morning This letter came:—"Do you know that Warwick "Groom and Martha Sackville were lovers? She "visited him every night in his dressing-room at the "Parthenon when he played Romeo; and the reason "why he insisted on beginning the fourth act with "the fifth scene of the third act was the reason you "guess at once: it gave them time. But that was "not the only place in the play where they performed "their private intermede. How this was managed? "Ask old Odham, Groom's dresser."
St. J. Malicious, were it not so impotent.
Sir T. Perhaps so; but I kept it.
St. J. So I see.
Whom have you shown it to?
Sir T. To none but you.
St. J. Burn it.
Sir T. [Placing the letter in his pocket again] I can't; I feel it tells the truth.
St. J. Never believe it, Tristram! Martha Sackville,
Stately and unapproachable, and chaste
As fire and snow—whatever Martha Sumner
May be now.
Sir T. The wantonest women veil
Their lust with dignity; or knowing it not,
Feel it, and are constrained and awkward: broach
It once, then lechery rushes out unstopped
By——
St. J. Hush! Why have you told me this?
Sir T. Advice—
I want advice.
St. J. Tell me the rest.
Sir T. I thought
For half an hour when this came, reasoning thus:
"Martha is chaste: against my eyes and ears
"That I will die for"—I was deep in love.
"And if she dropped a stitch, what's that to me?
"Women are sensual, full of seed like men;
"But me she loves—a different fire from that
"Uneasy prurience wondering girls and boys
"Alike give facile way to, now and then.
"Have I no past? If she has hers, we both
"Begin the world anew." And best and worst
This Odham died upon my marriage-day.
St. J. What kind of man was he?
Sir T. A wastrel, prime
And perfect; a vocation—genius for it:
A parson's son, of course: acted himself
A while, then fell to dressing unperturbed.
He died of alcohol.—We played a week,—
He, Romeo, I, Mercutio; failed and lost
Three thousand pounds or so. But he and I
Were marked and sought for. Of the two I think
Groom was the abler actor, and certainly
Beyond comparison popular. Bidding high
After my marriage I declined to play
Except with mediocrities, having felt
Rather than recognised, how much depends
Upon the pathos of inequality,
The very essence of the theatre.
Groom was my rival in the public mind;
Therefore I made my book against him—he,
Against me, doubtless, burrowing underground.
Armed with advantage all unknown to him—
'Varsity, Policy, Church—I kept him out
Wherever I came in: not difficult
Without advantage even, he being then
As now, his own worst enemy, debauched
And drunken, with relapses of remorse.
In one relapse——
St. J. Relapse!
Sir T. ——he stormed the town
Then failed and failed again; while I became
The representative actor of my time.
My fame is rooted in his infamy:
Especially in his; and in the fame
Eclipsed of every actor—which to me
Would be the blackest infamy.
St. J. So harsh!
Sir T. Truth, Gervase; it's the truth; no pleasure, power,
Glory, applause, but strikes its cancerous roots
Deep in the hearts of men; for what is fame
But envy by a virtuous title saved
From dying of chagrin, transmuted echo
Of curses and of sighs!
St. J. Come to the crux.
Sir T. I hate my wife. She forces Warwick on me
To play the part of Troilus. Suddenly
The nebulous past contracts to this: my wife
Was Warwick's mistress before she married me;
And I could kill them both. What must I do?
St. J. You must not kill them, and you must deny
That Martha was Warwick's mistress: deny it now.
Sir T. Deny the roundness of a woman's limbs,
Deny the sexes and that blood is red!
Well, I deny it, since I have no proof.
What next?
St. J. A simple thing. I long have thought
That marriages should end when love is dead—
On either side: the marriage vow should be
"Till love is dead," not "till death do us part";
And sacrament might end it solemnly,
As it began. The Church is backward there:
Its grip might fasten on the world again
If once divorce became a sacrament.
Sir T. Divorce?
St. J. Do you remember how I pled
Against your marriage?
Sir T. I remember.
St. J. Judged
My hidden purpose snobbish I suppose?
Sir T. I thought there underlay your argument
A dread of misalliance.
St. J. Wrong: my plea
Was candid. I maintained and still maintain
The artist should be celibate; a priest
Exempt from human ties.
Sir T. I think so too;
Though when I married Martha I desired
Experience of the noble cares of life,
As the true discipline and academe
Of art. How foolish! how insane! for art
Is like religion, only undefiled
In perfect freedom and abandonment.
St. J. You hang upon a verge of perilous truth:
Religion is the very art of art.
But that can wait: I have much to say on that.—
I hold it deadly sin, if anything
Is to be christened sin, for you and her
To live together longer, love being dead.
I counsel you to leave her; and I myself,
Who married you, will privately pronounce
A precept of divorce.
Sir T. But Martha's fate?
St. J. Her life will be most beautiful: refined
By love—by lust that purifies the soul
More certainly than any chastisement;
Disordered by the loss of all her children—
A doom that makes the deeds done in the flesh
Pernicious to the mind, to fancy noisome;
She shall become a perfect bride of Heaven—
Bride of the Universe.
Sir T. Gervase—how strange!
You counsel separation?
St. J. Before the law;
Before the Universe, divorce.
Sir T. Again,
The Universe!
St. J. News that can wait a while.
Sir T. And I should be the minister of art,
Unfettered by a single private tie,
A public votary. Yes; but how? the means?
Who will provide for Martha? And myself!
Who will provide for me? The day we part,
My creditors and hers—they ruin us.
St. J. And that is grave; yet may be overcome.
Sir T. But what a sordid hell we welter in!
Art is inhuman, Gervase.
St. J. Yes, all art,
And all religion and the life of man:
Inhuman, Tristram. Is it news to you?
Sir T. Then is there no humanity in men?
St. J. None, Tristram; none! Humanity! a dream
Phantasmal as divinity itself.
Sir T. Humanity, divinity—ideals?
Do you believe in nothing, Gervase?
St. J. No.
Belief—— But that can wait.
Sir T. Wait! what can wait?
That is your cry to-day. What, and till when?
Is it a revelation?
St. J. Now you laugh;
And that is sane and good: the bitterest grin
Is hopeful. What I have to say can wait
Until—— Why do you reproduce to-night
This decadent, mordant, hateful travesty?
Sir T. "Troilus and Cressida"? It is my mood:
Man as he is—and woman. Oh, I stalk
A theory here! Heaven help us, and the cat!
I play Ulysses.
[The telephone rings.]
St. J. Shall I go?
Sir T. [At the telephone] No, Gervase!
What are you dubious of? (Yes. Martha! Well?
Groom? Drinking—drunk. How horrible? No. Yes.)
I'm ruined, Gervase! Martha saw and heard
Our fate to-night in that magnetic mood
She will solicit. (Yes. I come at once.)
We conquer if Warwick Groom plays Troilus;
If not our curtain's down, our lights are out,
My last part played.
[Both have reached the door hurriedly and are about to go out.]
St. J. Not though your bitterest foe
Is satisfied to-night: for "fortune comes
"With me." So said your prophetess.
Sir T. She did!
The day is young: the thing may be retrieved.
When shall I see you?
St. J. After the play.
Sir T. Till then?
St. J. I also have my art.
Sir T. You in your church,
I in my theatre.
St. J. One purpose serve?
ACT II
Scene: The stage of the Grosvenor Theatre, set for the first act of "Troilus and Cressida." Warwick Groom as Troilus and Silas Orchard as Pandarus are seated in the entrance to Priam's castle. Each has a bottle of wine and a silver drinking-cup, and Groom is turning over a book of the play.
Abbot, Salerne, Actors and Scene-shifters, at the back and in the wings.
Lady Sumner passes at the back, wringing her hands.
Groom. Pandar—Prince Pandarus of Troy!—why you,
You are the very spirit of the stage!
Orchard. You mean the part I play, not me myself.
Groom. What other meaning could I have? You are
The part you play, and nothing else besides.
Orchard. Now there you're wrong; I'm very much myself.
Groom. There's not a dozen actors in the town
Who can be anything but the part they play.
You are a glove, my prince, fit or misfit:
Suave to the fingers like a second skin;
Pushed on with wetted index, grunt, grimace;
Or like the gauntlet of a dwarf that splits
Upon a giant's thumb.
Orchard. And so are you!
Groom. So they would make me; but I'll be a hand—
As I have been. This play was made for me—
For Troilus; and I'll have the business changed,
Prince Pandarus of Troy. What kind of ape
Was he that played your Troilus? Heavens!—A glove
Would have rebelled. The whole rehearsed and drilled
For Cressida, Ulysses, Hector, Helen!
And Troilus—in the book at blood-heat—stuck
In the shade to freeze; cut, mangled, hanged, drawn, quartered!
I'll have my lines restored, my scenes rehearsed
According to their import. Pandar, room,
By your leave, for Troilus! Stand, Diomed!
Unmanned abortion, bowelless coward, stand!
Prince Pandarus of Troy, you are the stage,
The inner spirit and the outward man.
For what's the theatre but a splendid bawd—
A little passive recreation pitched
To span the abyss from dinner time till supper;
To season minds of maidens and of wives
With spice of marriage and adultery;
The shoeing-horn of whoredom and the nest
Of cuckolds.
[Abbot comes down with Salerne and several scene-shifters.]
Abbot. Now——
Groom. Avaunt, Sir Abbot! Fly!
Abbot. Sir Tristram may be any instant here.
Now, will you go, or must we help you?
Groom. Go?
Go where?
Abbot. To your dressing-room.
Groom. But I am dressed.
Abbot. The last time:—Will you go?
Groom. When I have played
My scene.
Abbot. Quick, men; away with him.
Groom. [Beating them off with his sword] Away
With you. D'ye take me for a property,
Thrice sodden shifters? Abbot—friar John,
Go, mop your tonsure. Skip about! Shift, shift,
Inevitable vermin of the stage!
Abbot. By God, sir, you'll remember this! You cur!
Groom. You'll not forget it either, business bug!
Your discounts, claims, commissions, premiums—ha!
My unjust steward, we must cork it in,
This honest indignation, righteous bile,
The rancour lacing all our thoughts, or else,
By rent and vent, the lining of our pokes,
Like treacherous entrails, Judas' viscera
To wit, may fundamentally escape,
And leave us poorer than we were before.
Go down—to the box-office!
Abbot. Thank the lord, Sir Tristram!
[Enter Sir Tristram Sumner.]
'Twas not my fault, at all; I did my best.
They treated him; he treated them: the wine's
Above the tide-mark, and the fat in the fire.
Sir T. Orchard?
Orchard. Oh, very well, Sir Tristram! Off
I go. Send for me if you want me: none
Shall say that Silas Orchard overstayed
His welcome.
[Goes out.]
Sir T. Send a line to Orchard's rooms:
See that the messenger is there before him:
No man in England can play the part like him.
[Abbot and Salerne, etc., go out.]
Now what's the matter, Warwick?
Groom. This gutted play!
You've cut the very things I want to say.
Here in my first scene comes your pruning-hook,
Your harvester, and shears my poppied patch:—
"Her bed is India; there she lies, a pearl":—
Why man, it's poetry: I want to say it.
Then here——
Sir T. Yes, yes; but this? Why this? You make
My theatre a pothouse.
Groom. Pothouse? [Drinks] Why,
Your theatre's well enough to drink in, Knight.
Knight? Vain, deluded, damned theatrocrat!
Sir T. What, Warwick! What!
Groom. An actor knighted! Once
The actor was an artist here in England.
When England in Queen Bess's time became
A world above the world, and felt itself
Adult and masculine, then lightly came
The actor and the act, outside the state,
Authentic and alone.
Sir T. Enough of that!
We know your fantasies. Will you attempt
The part; or are you spoiled for this time, Warwick?
Groom. I'll speak this matter out. When plays were damned
By churchmen, and the player a citizen
Of rascaldom on sufferance living only,
Great was the stage, a lover of all life,
The friend of sinners and the home of sin,
A city of refuge for humanity
Escaping from religion and the curses
Of the law; for church and stage are deadly foes;
They can be strong only in enmity;
And both were shrines of art when either shunned
The other, or met in battle: now that they mix,
Illicit lovers and against the lust
Of nature, sterile hybrids mock their couch;
And soon the lofty strain of either ends
In mere abortion. When the monarch set
The lethal signet on the theatre
Of gross respectability, knighting you,
Sir Tristram, and other players unfortunate,
Ranking you in the state with grocers, brewers,
Distillers, lawyers, painters, aldermen,
He dealt a double blow at church and stage
And both are bleeding from the wound.
Sir T. Why this
To me—me specially?
Groom. Because you haunt
The clergy, and the clergy fawn on you,
Singling you out: the Bishop of St. James's
Is fast your friend: and nonconformists—Hell!
Have sung your praise in public. I maintain
The stage must stand alone like all things great,
Unspotted of the church, the state, the world.
Sir T. You try my patience. This is so—all this,
And endless matter to a like intent.
Groom. But who has grasped the meaning? who perceives
That these luxurious theatres of ours
Are only living graves—the ornate tomb
Of drama?
Sir T. I perceive it. Hopeful men
Are always digging graves unwittingly;
Cathedrals—noble cenotaphs of faith
Long dead: academies—of plastic art
The tomb; our ancient universities—
The mausoleum and the monument
Of learning; justice in the law-courts buried
Lies most worshipfully; soon our sculptured banks—
To make an end—will be the sepulchre
Of all finance: is not the whole world bankrupt?
Groom. Turn it to ribaldry! I love the stage,
And hate to see it made the prostitute
Of crafty godliness that's mainly this—
The rancid odour of a worn-out sex.
To see the stage that should be sweet, humane,
More tolerant than art, freer than sin—
Let me say sin to mean all human scope,
The utmost license of unbridled mirth,
The noble freedom of the tragic mood,
A perfect liberty of drift and range,
The universal mind and deed of man:
To see the stage corrupted by the church,
Debauched by bland religion, venomous
Betrayer of the spirit; and foul with creed,
The helpless necessary excrement
Wherewith religion sullies everything:
To see this loathsome doom of what I love
Is deadlier to me than blank despair,
Than death and everlasting obloquy!
Sir T. To me it means the element I use,
For church and stage are dramaturgy both:
The one inspires a happy will to death;
The other floods the soul of man with life.
If you must carp against the stage, attack
The usury that leads it on a chain,
Exploiting all that's base: there's loads of gold
In flattered meannesses; the public pays
To be degraded: easiest escape
Is downward to the abyss; the greasy plank
Requires no effort.
Groom. Tristram of the times,
The creature of infectious decadence
That triumphs everywhere: a harvest home
Of mellow, putrid autumns; afternoon
And twilight of the state, the church, the stage.
By heaven and earth, the syndicated shows
That pay the big percentages are sweet
Beside a gelded Shakespeare, and the priest
Pronouncing benediction from the stalls!
Sir T. The decadence is everywhere?—perhaps;
But how should that concern the decadents?
Their function is to hasten the decay.
It has been held, it has been proved that life
Is but the decadence of matter, soul
The decadence of life; now, soul itself,
The parasite that drains the sap of life,
Begins its decadence. But what of that?
We must go through with it.—Come, will you play
Prince Troilus, boy; or, flatly, are you drunk?
Groom. [Drinks] I cannot tell; perhaps: I love to drink:
The dingy world becomes a crystal orb
Revealing truth when wine enlightens me—
Truth like a sumptuous vision in a bell
Of dew, a magic bubble blown to film
That melts and bursts, a passion of delight,
A shimmering womb of diverse stains and deep.
By Bacchus and his panthers, I believe
A great career of drunkenness were worth
A man's ambition! Alcohol's as good
As law, the church, the army, or the stage!
Henceforth my business and my art will be
To drink and to be drunken. [Drinks] Odours faint
Of pallid wayside roses, heavier scents
Of roses of the garden, deeper snares
Of bowls of roses ripe and faded, bowls
Of leaves of roses, faded, dark and sweet,
The last aroma! Clusters of the vine,
Mature, deep-bosomed, umbered with the sun;
Old dregs and essences of happiness,
Of women's pulses wound like springs of steel,
Of sanguine wars, of sinews, swords, of hearts
As hard as nether millstones, burning love
Like molten adamant! Oh, heaven and hell
Are wed and wanton in a cup of wine,
Bouquet and ichor of eternity!
I shall go out and cry it in the streets.
Sir T. [To the Actors in the wings]
Go with him to his room. Let him drink on
Until he sleeps. That is the end of this.
[Groom goes out, accompanied by the Actors.]
Lady S. [Coming down quickly]
And this the end for us, Sir Tristram. Drink.
Sir T. [Taking the vial which Lady Sumner offers]
Are you insane? You have not drunk?
Lady S. Not yet.
Here on your stage we two must die together—
An ever famous tragedy of art
In this uncouth commercial age of ours.
I hear it still: "If Warwick Groom plays Troilus."
He cannot play it now—poor Warwick Groom!
Ambiguous poison in that "if"; but death
Will end all ambiguity. Tristram, drink.