Adelaide
Yes, even this you can surmount by art,
 Lee has surrendered, but—
Booth
No! all is lost.
 God judge me, right or wrong, but never man.
 I love peace more than life, have loved the Union.
 Have waited for the clouds to break, have prayed
 For justice, peace; but now all hope is dead.
 My prayers are futile, as my hopes have been.
 God’s will be done. I go to see and share
 The end, though bitter.
Adelaide
John! you must be calm.
Booth
I am most calm, but fixed.
Adelaide
You are not calm;
 Strange light is in your eyes, your face is pale.
 You cannot stretch your hands out but they tremble.
 You have avoided me, you walk alone,
 Sup, sit alone, lest concentrated thought,
 This thought of yours be turned aside. My friend,
 Take Beauty in your heart to heal its hurts.
 Art is for you. You are a son of Art—
 Why waste your spirit on such things as these?
 Rulers and nations pass, and wars are lost,
 Their issues are forgotten, pushed aside—
 Art is eternal and the sons of Art
 Live in its calm, above the dust and sweat
 Of politics and statecraft. O my friend,
 Why should this Brutus, the tyrranicide,
 The patriot, move you so; and why not Brutus
 As a soul made clear by Shakespeare for your Art
 To glory in and re-create for men
 To see what Brutus was?
Booth
Why, what is this
 But playing with life, that’s all it is to play,
 Hard play at that, to sleep, to walk, to rest
 For strength to trip the stage and imitate
 The soul of Brutus! If it be so much,
 Art as you say, to live him on the stage,
 What would it be to live him to the life,
 And do his act in deed?
Adelaide
What do you say?
 John, you are mad! So that is in your heart!
 Look! pause! and muster all your strength of mind,
 Forecast, survey—fly from yourself—away—
 Even for a week withdraw your mind from this—
 That you may see, return with freshened mind
 To look upon the horror that you plot.
 John, by the love you woke in me for beauty
 Of face and genius, listen, on my knees
 I ask you, pause and think!
Booth
But I have thought.
 I know I shall be hated by the North,
 And doubted in the South, it may be, yet
 God’s will be done. For in a day to come
 My name will shine as shines the name of Brutus,
 Whose spirit is in me and speaks to me.
 Could you have seen, as I have seen, the woes
 And horrors of this war in every state,
 Then you would pray, as I have prayed, to God
 To give the Northern mind pity and justice,
 And dry this sea of blood. Alas! my country!
 What is this trifling Art beside my country,
 This rhetoric spoken, memorized? My friend,
 I would have given a thousand lives to see
 My country whole, unbroken. Even now
 I’d give my life to see her what she was,
 Before this man, this tyrant, bloody Cæsar,
 This Cæsar worse than Cæsar, who—behold,
 In the name of God—why, think in the name of God
 Made her a pitiless sovereignty, a force
 As cold as steel, and dragged her glorious flag
 Through cruelty, oppression, till its stripes
 Are bloody gashes on the face of heaven.
 How I have loved that flag! How I have longed
 To see it flap free from the scarlet mist
 That spoils its glory. As for me, this country
 Which I loved as a lover loves his bride,
 Seems now a dream! The South has all my love,
 What has it done? Withdrawn, and that alone,
 From the Union which was formed by states withdrawing
 From the old confederacy, and leaving states
 Out in the cold that did not wish to join.
 What has the South done that it might not do
 Under the Declaration? Then to think
 That all these tens of thousands of our kin,
 Our blood, our brothers, should be massacred
 For loving God and Liberty, serving God.
 And now this day! The South is crushed at last,
 The negroes freed by what?—by force, by force
 Which John Brown used, and for the which he paid
 With his damned neck! O Reason! Adelaide,
 Of all men I am sanest, they are mad
 Who cannot see these truths: that slavery
 Is sanctioned by the Creator, read St. Paul;
 That men may revolutionize, as matter of right,
 Secede from what they have acceded to,
 And not be murdered for it. Do you think
 I have not measured motives, thoughts? My friend,
 I could be happy, if I could forget
 The duty laid upon me, have the means
 For happiness, so many friends and you,
 Great competence and fame, and greater fame
 In store for deeper art. So much for this!
 As for the South, as citizens, persons, love
 The South is not my friend. Then there’s my mother,
 Whom I adore: See what I sacrifice:
 Fame, money, friends, my mother—and for what?
 Were it the South, I should not think to act—
 But it is God, is Justice, and I love
 God, Justice, more than wealth or fame, yes more
 Than home or mother. All is lost at last.
 The South has been erased and is no more.
 The Republic of the North and South is dead,
 Gutted by a guerilla. Yes, my country
 Has vanished from the earth and is no more,
 I have no wish to live, my country being
 Dead and a stench.
Adelaide
I put my arms around you—
 Be patient—listen—do not thrust me off—
 John—
Booth
You must not hold me, Adelaide—farewell.
Adelaide
John! John!
Booth
God calls me—I obey!

(He goes out.)

BRUTUS LIVES AGAIN IN BOOTH

(Ford’s Theatre, Good Friday, April 14th, 1865.)

First Stage Hand
What time is it?
Second Stage Hand
Time for the curtain nearly.
First Stage Hand
There’s Miss Keene in the wings.

The orchestra starts up; the audience sings:

Honor to our soldiers,
 Our Nation’s greatest pride,
 Who ’neath our Starry Banner’s folds,
 Have fought, have bled and died.
 They’re Nature’s noblest handiwork,
 No king as proud as they.
 God bless the heroes of the land,
 And cheer them on their way.

Scene II. The White House.

Colfax
 Oglesby
 Lincoln
Lincoln
This for you, Colfax.
(Hands him a pass)
Come in at nine to-morrow.
 I’m off soon for the theatre with my wife—
 A little party. Grant was going too;
 Has changed his mind, goes north with Mrs. Grant.
 There’ll be an audience to see the hero
 Of Appomatox.
Oglesby
Well, rather you, I think
 Who picked Grant for the work, and brought the war
 To end, as it has ended.
Lincoln
Oh, not me.
 I am familiar as an old shoe here.
 I’d say the war is ending. There may be
 Some battle yet.
Colfax
Mere sputterings of the flame.
Lincoln
Well, something’s on. I had my dream last night
 Which I have had before, so often, always
 Before some great event: I’m in a boat,
 And swiftly move toward a shadowy shore.
 I had this dream preceding Bull Run, Vicksburg,
 Gettysburg, Antietam. It may be
 A battle’s on this minute. I think so.
 It must relate to Sherman. For I know
 No other great event to follow my dream.
Oglesby
Our dreams are made of days lived long ago:
 Your boat’s perhaps your flat boat at New Salem.
Colfax
I’m happy to live now, the war is won.
 God bless you, Mr. President, keep you too.
Lincoln
You will excuse me, gentlemen. I go,
 For Mrs. Lincoln waits.

(He goes out.)

Oglesby
The other day
 Lincoln was with Charles Sumner down the James,
 Was reading Shakespeare, read aloud three times
 Those lines which read: “Duncan is in his grave,
 After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well;
 Treason has done his worst: nor steel nor poison,
 Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing
 Can touch him further.”
Colfax
Did you note to-night
 He looked those words: “Nothing can touch him further”?
 These months before how ghastly gray his face!
 What droop of melancholy in his eyes!
 What weariness without words, what ultimate woe!
 And now to-night he stood transfigured here
 Clothed in a great serenity and a joy
 As if his life had wrought what he would have it.
Oglesby
Yes, he is changed. Shall we go on?

(They go out.)

Scene III. The entrance of Ford’s Theatre.

Booth

(Passing the doorkeeper without a ticket.)

Is this all right?
Doorkeeper
All right for you.
Booth
Can you leave,
 Go with me for a brandy?
Doorkeeper
No.
Booth
Why not?
 The play’s commenced, and everyone is here.
Doorkeeper
Not everyone—the presidential party!
Booth
They enter without tickets.
Doorkeeper
Yes, I know.
 Go in and watch Miss Keene a little, John.
 You might get wakened up to play again,
 Marc Antony to your brother’s Brutus.
Booth
No!
 Never with him again. And as for that
 My next part will be Brutus.

(He goes into the theatre.)

Scene IV. Lincoln and Mrs. Lincoln Driving to the Theatre.

Lincoln
Mary, the war is over. We have had
 Hard times since we came here. But now, thank God,
 The war is over. We may hope for peace,
 And happiness for the four years that remain,
 While I close up my work as President.
 Then back to Illinois to rest and live.
 I have some money saved. Wrote recently
 To friends to find a house for me in Chicago—
 We can live there, or Springfield. Law again,
 At least enough to keep us.
Mrs. Lincoln
That’s my dream,
 And from this night we start to live, rejoice.

(They drive on.)

Scene V. The stage of Ford’s Theatre.

(Laura Keene as “Florence Trenchard”; John Dyatt as “Dundreary” in dialogue in Tom Taylor’s “American Cousin.”)

Florence
“Can’t you see the point of that joke?”
Dundreary
“No, really.”
Florence
“You can’t see it?”
Dundreary
“No!”

(Lincoln, Mrs. Lincoln and party enter the box.)

Florence

(Making a profound courtesy to Lincoln.)

“Everyone can see that!”

(The audience breaks into great applause. The band plays “Hail to the Chief.” Lincoln bows to the audience.)

Scene VI. Back of the stage.

First Stage Hand
Whose horse is at the door?
Second Stage Hand
Booth’s!
A Voice
Ten twenty-five.
First Stage Hand
Ten twenty-five.
Second Stage Hand
Ten twenty-five.

Scene VII. The Presidential Box.

Lincoln
Oh, no! No persecution, bloody work,
 How to articulate the states again,
 Just how to handle the states that left us—well,
 There will be problems up from day to day,
 During my term, at least. But no revenge,
 No hate, no hanging, killing—rather shoo!
 Like Hannah Armstrong used to shoo her chickens.
 Let the obstreporous, unreconciled
 Go clear to—Halifax—get out! But, Major,
 My feeling is to treat the Southern people
 As fellow citizens. To be their fellows
 And not their masters is my way.
Maj. Rathbone
We need
 Your genius, Mr. President, for the work
 Of reconstruction more, if that may be,
 Then we had need of you to push the war.
Mrs. Lincoln
How do you like the play?
Lincoln
Oh, very good.

Scene VIII. Dress Circle.

First Auditor
(Gazing at the Presidential box.)
What’s keeping General Grant? I came to see
 The conqueror of Lee.
Second Auditor
He will not come.
 Too late now.
First Auditor
(Looking at his watch.)
Yes, ten twenty-five.
Second Auditor
Who’s that?
First Auditor
Who?
Second Auditor
Why, a man as pale as snow
 Or ivory, with hair black as a horse’s tail
 Passed back of the seats there, and approached the entrance
 To Lincoln’s box.
First Auditor
A secret officer,
 With message of a battle. Oh, perhaps
 Sherman has vanquished Johnston!

Scene IX. In the passageway leading to the Presidential box.

Booth
Right or wrong, God judge me—never man.
 Liberty is dead—I would not live,
 Beyond my country’s life. Oh, Liberty!
 Brutus, sustain me!

Scene X. The Presidential box.

Major Rathbone
(Observing Lincoln rise.)
Can I get something for you?
Lincoln
I want my coat.
 I felt a chill and shudder down my back.
(He gets his coat and is seated.)

Scene XI. Booth at the door of the Presidential box aiming a pistol.

Booth
Brutus! (He fires. The President’s head falls upon
 his breast. Booth rushes into the box, slashes Major
 Rathbone with a dagger, leaps from the box to the stage.
 Falls, arises.)

Scene XII. On the stage.

Booth
Sic semper Tyrannis! The South is avenged!

(He rushes off. Great confusion.)

BOOTH’S PHILIPPI

(Garrett’s Tobacco House, Bowling Green, Virginia, April 26th, 1865. Booth and Harrold.)

SCENE I

Booth
If this must be, I take it. Be a man.
 Don’t whine like that. You suffer only from fear.
 But if you had this torturing leg. My God!
 If you rode sixty miles as I did, flesh
 Prodded at every jump by broken bones ...
Harrold
What’s that?
Booth
A dog there in the yard.
Harrold
Those troopers
 We hid from on the way here—Federals—
 Did they go on, or follow, hunting us?
Booth
We’re ended likely. Let us stand our ground.
 We have our carbines for the ending up ...
But oh, to be thus hunted, like a dog,
 Through swamps, woods, thickets, chased by gunboats too,
 With every hand against me. And for what?
 For doing what brought honor unto Brutus,
 And deathless fame to Tell. Who’ll clear my name?
 Who’ll print what I have written? There’s the pang
 To die and have my spirit and sacrifice
 Sealed up in silence, or drowned out in cries
 Of “cut-throat” or “assassin.”
 I struck down
 A greater tyrant than great Brutus slew.
 And my act was more pure than his or Tell’s.
 One would be great, and one had private wrongs
 To heap his country’s up for quick revenge.
 But I, what greatness could I hope for this?
 What wrongs had I except the common wrong?
 I struck for country and for that alone;
 I struck for liberty that groaned beneath
 A tyrant’s monstrous tyranny—and now look
 The cold hand they extend me in the South
 For which I struck! Our country bleeding, broken,
 Cried to me for relief, and I was made
 The instrument of God by God alone.
Harrold
A rooster crows!
Booth
Two hours till morning yet.
 It’s only two o’clock.
Harrold
What shall we do?
Booth
To-night we’ll try the river once again ...
 Why not return to Washington and end it?
 They’d try me and I’d clear my name. Repent?
 No, I do not repent. But I’ve a soul
 Too great to die a felon’s death. Swift guns
 Against a firing wall are honorable.
 Before them I can clear my name. O God!
 Give me a brave man’s death, for I have wronged,
 Nor hated no one. And was this a wrong
 To kill a tyrant? God must deem it so,
 By making it a curse upon our time,
 Our country and our countrymen. My fate
 How miserable soever it may be
 Proves not I did a wrong.
Great Milton come
 And comfort me in this my agony!
 You who could write a tyrant forfeits life
 To those whom he oppresses, and ’tis just
 To take him off. O curse of Cain no less!
 Now I must pray again.

(He prays.)

Scene II. (At the Garrett House.)

(Lieutenant Baker, and a squad, including Boston Corbett.)

Baker
(Knocking at the door.) Halloo! halloo!
A Voice
What’s wanted?
Baker
Open the door!

Scene III. (Inside the Tobacco House.)

Harrold
They’ve come.
Booth
Yes! rapping at the door. Perhaps
 Old Garrett will not tell that we are here.
 Hold to your carbine. Do as I command.

Scene IV. (At the Garrett House.)

Baker
(Taking Garrett by the throat.)
Where are these fellows? In your house?
Garrett
No! No!
Baker
We’ll search! Men, search the house!
Garrett
They are not here!
Baker
You make yourself accomplice if you hide them.
 Last time: where are they?
Garrett
In the Tobacco House.

Scene V. (Inside the Tobacco House.)

Harrold
They’re walking toward us.
Booth
Do as I command.
Baker
(Outside.) Come out of there.
Boston Corbett
(Outside.) Lieutenant, they can pick
 The whole of us through cracks with their carbines.
 Old Garrett says they’re armed.
(He goes back of the tobacco house.)
Baker
Come out of there.
 Five minutes to come out, then I set fire
 To the tobacco house.
Booth
(Inside.)
Who are you? What do you want?
Baker
(Outside.)
We want you. And we know you. Come, you are
 Booth, assassin of the President. Surrender arms.
 Come out!
Booth
(Inside.)
I want a little time to think about it.
(A silence.)
Baker
(Outside.)
Well, now come out.
Booth
(Inside.)
You are a brave man, captain, I believe,
 Honorable too. I am a cripple, have
 One leg, the other broken. Yet no less
 If you will take your men a hundred yards
 From the door of the tobacco house, I’ll come
 Out as you command and fight you all.
Baker
(Outside.)
I have not come to fight, but capture you.
Booth
(Inside.)
Give me a chance for life. I’ll better terms.
 If you will take your men off fifty yards
 I’ll come out, fight you all, till I am killed,
 Or kill you all.
Baker
(Outside.)
No!
Booth
(Inside.)
You are a coward, sir,
 Denying to a brave man chance for life.
Harrold
(Inside.)
They’ve set the house afire! Now, let me out!
(The house burns.)
Booth
(Inside.)
You hellish coward, would you leave me now?
 Go! Go! and leave me. It would be dishonor
 To die with such a coward.
 Let this man
 Come out of here!
Baker
(Outside.)
All right! Hand out his arms
 And come.
Booth
(Inside amid flames.)
A coward goes to cowards.
(The flames are coming up around Booth.)
(He stands on a crutch, pale and defiant.)

Scene VI. (Boston Corbett looking through a crack in the Tobacco House at Booth amid the flames.)

Corbett
I hear you God and will obey!

(He points a carbine through a crack and fires at Booth. Booth leaps and falls. The soldiers go in and bring him out on the lawn.)

Scene VII. (On the lawn.)

Baker
(To Corbett.)
Why did you shoot? You had no orders to?
 I’ll take you back to Washington in chains!
 Why did you shoot?
Corbett
God told me to.
Baker
It looks it.
 You hit him just behind the ear. Same place
 Where Lincoln got the mortal wound.
Booth
Tell mother
 I died for country, liberty, as Brutus
 Did what he did for Rome. I thought it best
 To do what I have done. God’s will be done
 As I have tried to do it.

(He dies.)

THE BURIAL OF BOSTON CORBETT

(One warden to another.)

(Asylum for the insane, Kansas, 1885.)

So this is what we bury? How his face
 Seems like a smear of yellow wax. This beard
 Grown fine and curly. Something nasty here,
 Hermaphroditic, feminine. Like a dog
 That has run loose with rabies, yelps and snaps,
 And makes a terror for a day, is slain,
 And lies where passers-by can foot the corpse,
 So he lies here: this steadfast paranoic!
 How vanished from these sealed lids dreams of God!
 Where are they now? For all this outer world
 Of lunatics, care-takers, wardens, world
 Of fields and villages, the state and states
 Smiles at these lids so neatly sealed, the God
 That had his altar in the spectral light
 Of his mad eyes!
This is the man who slew
 The slayer of the noble Lincoln. First
 For the common good was Cæsar slain by Brutus,
 And Booth slew Lincoln in a dream of Brutus,
 This Corbett slew the slayer in a faith
 Of God. Catch up the corner of the sheet.
He gets a grave where many hundreds lie,
 Each with his epitaph of “Rest in Peace”;
 Who had no peace in living, for the dreams
 Of God, or Duty, Terror, Visions Vain.
Some say he came to Kansas, hither drawn
 By hope of sympathy, since all are mad
 In Kansas; otherwise the true God know,
 And keep His ritual of reform. He found
 God mocked in Kansas, or he had not tried
 To shoot the state assembly to a man,
 When he was keeper of the door. Perhaps
 ’Twas right enough to slay the actor Booth,
 Obeying God; we might accept his word
 God told him to kill Booth. But was it God
 Commanded him to slay so many honorable
 Members of the Kansas legislature
 For legislating, or not legislating
 As God would have them? Well, I have a doubt.
 And many doubted his divine appointment
 For massacre like that. And so we flung
 The lasso round him, gathered him, and quick
 We shut him in the pound, dishonored God,
 As he conceived it, doing so.
 I’ve heard
 Brutus at last said, Miserable Virtue, Bawd,
 Thou wert a world alone, a cheat at last!
 This Boston Corbett never did recant
 The faith, or God, the word.
So ends it here.
 Mad unto death! This Corbett is the corneous
 And upcurved withered calyx of a flower
 Rich out of time. His madness is the lisping
 Of that same stricken calyx in the wind
 Of Infinite Mysteries.
Are you ready now?
 Knot fast your corners of the sheet to hold.
 All ready, to the field. There in corruption
 We’ll sow him, to be raised—but why at all
 Should he be raised?

THE NEW APOCRYPHA

BUSINESS REVERSES

(Mark, Chapter VI.)