The Importance of Being
A Play
by
Brian Murphy
Copyright Ó by Brian Murphy, 2011
(248) 608-6866
bmurphy@oakland.edu
Stewart Headlam
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING
A Prefatory Paragraph
Although
Stewart Headlam was quite famous as a radical clergyman, in
The Importance of Being
by
Brian Murphy
Act I
Scene 1: The pulpit of
Scene 2: The Rectory of St. Paul’s Church, October
1893. (p. 8)
Scene 3: A solitary confinement cell, Pentonville
Prison, Winter, 1894.
(p. 33)
Intermission
Act II
Scene 1: Headlam’s drawing room-office,
Scene 2: (framed by the Act I pulpit, Autumn, 1924),
Headlam’s drawing room-office, 7 AM,
CHARACTERS:
Stewart
Headlam, aged 70 at the beginning and
end, about 40 otherwise.
Bernard Keane [accent on first syllable],
an ardent young clergyman in his mid-20’s.
Miss Angelica Smythe, an efficient secretary,
pert and attractive, around 30.
GB Shaw, still full of
youthful high spirits, in his early 40’s.
Emma Kingman Headlam, Headlam’s wife, an extremely, and voluptuously, beautiful woman,
around 35.
Lester Kingman, Emma’s father, a very
energetic 60 year old.
Mr. New Man, young.
Mary, a maid.
Ada Leverson, a brilliant middle-aged
woman dubbed “Sphinx” by her famous friend Oscar Wilde.
Oscar Wilde, as he would appear emerging from prison, in
1897.
ACT I
Scene 1
[Stewart Duckworth Headlam,
the famous and controversial clergyman, white-haired and still handsome at 70,
mounts a pulpit. He lights two candles
and then clicks on a new electric light.
The surrounding gloom is somehow inviting. He clears his throat, and with a practiced
toss of his head, begins.]
"We are such things as dreams are made on,
"and our little life
is rounded with a sleep."
My final sermon!
How quickly it has come, and how fantastically long ago was my first
sermon: thus, time’s mystery.
Some of you sat right here, in
In the latter days of the last century, I may have
been moderately famous, or rather infamous, for trying to bring our Church
along the lines of modern thought. Of
course, in the 1880's and '90's, "modern thought" meant
respect for, and hope in, Science; it meant social progress—less poverty, more
education, a sharing of wealth, more happiness for all. Was it not one of humanity's Golden
Ages? There was a genuine chance for enlightenment
and happiness round the world in what we regarded not as cynical colonial
imperialism but as an endlessly beneficent Pax
Britannica.
Yes, how naive and foolish that seems today, in
1924—in what I hear they call The Age of Jazz!
Have you read the poem they're all talking about by that young American,
Eliot? Everything in
ruins, fragments; everything unreal.
Oh, I retire from a world quite strange to me.
Young men of my generation and education felt we
could change the world: for we saw the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a new light.
Did we change the world?
Well, ten years ago The Great War began. Was that our answer? Oh, the War began, like all wars, with bright
uniforms and high hopes and ended, like all wars, as a ruinous catastrophe.
Allow me the privilege of the old: I return to the
past and bid you farewell from my
era, that happy Golden Age: I wish you
hope in the fears of today.
Still it persists, that question: what have I to assert?
Well, I assert: ever we must search for God, and never be certain we have found Him. In that sense, Tennyson's great lines still
ring true—and more necessary than ever:
“There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds."
We search for God, and this search strengthens our
souls: oh yes, sometimes—I am certain of it—I have seen God.
In that Golden Age, long ago, I once spoke to a
young man in prison. What began as a
corporal act of mercy became a troubling, even mysterious, sighting of the
Divine.
Some nights ago, I sat behind a great banquet table
and heard myself eulogized; I heard praises sung and accomplishments tallied;
recalled for me were the days of great controversy, when I defended Bradlaugh, yes! that atheist
scientist, when I defended the theatre as innocent pleasure and the drama of
Shakespeare as a source of profoundly religious wisdom, when I defended the
dance as an important human art form. I
was reminded of my work in education, in prison-reform, in the creation of the
Guild of St. Matthew.
It was all true, yes, yes: I deny none of it, and I
hope my life's-work has had but a fraction of the good ascribed to it by my
friends—by so many of you.
I sat there as in a dream: such is the strangeness
of time that all my daily labors, my works and
struggles, melted
"into
air, into thin air.”
Oh yes!
"We
are such stuff
"As dreams are made
on."
As I prepare "to break my staff" and
"bury it certain fathoms in the earth," I ask myself what, really and
truly, deeply and truly, is on my
mind.
Allow me to recall with you
some aspects of my life which will not
appear in my obituary which must inevitably—there'll always be a Times !—appear in
due course. One wife. Many of you have known her, have known [he says
her name with obvious difficulty] Emma.
Three men there are: one, that boy in prison.
Another is Wilde.
Ah, I hear your groan—“not loud but deep.” Am I going to dredge all that up again? Oscar Wilde:
buried in disgrace in Paris, the man we no longer speak of. Well, tonight I wish to speak of him. From
him I learned some things harder to express than those certainties I carried
with such youthful assurance to
But in order to tell the rather surprising story of
how Wilde came into my life, I must tell you another story, this about
Shaw. Yes, today he is GBS, the Grand
Old Man of English Literature. But he (or you? Shaw,
are you sitting somewhere back there?) came into my
life in the early 1890's, just before his great fame commenced. We met at the controversial plays of The
Independent Theatre: he liked sitting next me when I wore my clerical cloth—The
Devil's Disciple he styled himself. I admired
his musical and dramatic reviews—full of intelligent life, they were; they set
me stronger in my own convictions about the importance of art in our lives and
in the new world I fancied we were creating.
There was one particular encounter. Of this let me speak, at last, this
evening. It gave Shaw the idea for a
play: that play was the first of his immensely successful works. For me . . . well, it became the story of my
life.
ACT I
Scene 2
[The Rectory of
HEADLAM. Good morning, good morning. Both. Good morning.
BOTH. Good morning.
HEADLAM. Well, well, well. And now, Miss Smythe,
what have you got ready for Bernard today?
MISS SMYTHE.
He is to take your schedule.
BERNARD. I
am?!
MISS SMYTHE. Yes, Master Keane.
You have got to do all the rounds yourself this morning.
BERNARD. And
why is that, Miss Smythe?
MISS SMYTHE.
That is so himself can have a day to himself.
BERNARD. A
day to himself! Er, why of curse . . .
I mean, of course.
HEADLAM. Ha, ha, Bernard! No, go ahead and curse! It's exactly what I deserve for loading all
the work on to you.
BERNARD. But,
er, why, Mister
Headlam?
HEADLAM. Bernard!
Mister?
BERNARD.
Oh. Terribly
sorry. Stewart.
MISS SYMTHE. There. You've said it.
BERNARD. Yes,
I have. But, er, Stewart, I've never
known you to take what they call a day "off." May I be so . . . so presumptuous? Might there be anything . . . wrong?
HEADLAM [rather struck by this view of himself]. Wrong! What do you mean, Bernard? What on earth could be wrong?
BERNARD. Why,
er, er, I meant only, I mean to say, Stewart, it is so, so unusual a proceeding for you. Really, I meant nothing more. Although, really, into every life some rain,
et cetera, et cetera.
HEADLAM. Yes, I see your drift, Bernard, and then must
fall, et cetera, et cetera.
BERNARD. Uh,
yes, yes. Exactly.
MISS SMYTHE.
If I might be so presumptuous:
might it not be an idea particularly apt at the moment, if, Mister Keane, you
were to be about your business and start on the rounds for the day? [She
hands him a piece of foolscap.] Here's
the list. You may leave your notes on
this shelf, for I shall certainly be finished for the day by the time you get
through all that lot.
HEADLAM. Stop a moment, Bernard. I’m very nearly startled to find you think it
amazing I would want to do anything other than work.
BERNARD.
Well, when one's work is such as we are privileged to be called to . . . .
HEADLAM [waving this away]. Yes. Quite. But I will
tell you why I am asking you to bear my fair share today. Naturally, I will return the favor. Anytime.
BERNARD. My
dear Stewart: you return the favor every day.
MISS SMYTHE.
Master Keane, you are beginning to make me ill.
BERNARD. Miss
Smythe!
HEADLAM. Now, now, Bernard, there,
there. You mustn't mind.
BERNARD.
Mustn't I?
HEADLAM. Not a bit of it. It's just
. . . well, it's just our Miss Smythe. Without that
occasional moment of tartness, it wouldn't be Miss Smythe
there at her desk at all. It certainly
wouldn't be the same place without her.
MISS SMYTHE.
Thank you, Mister Headlam, for the testimonial, but you make it sound as if I were slightly dead.
HEADLAM. Hah!
Bernard, you see what I mean? Spares no one. And,
now, let me turn to your question. My
dear fellow, I daresay you feel like poor Falstaff when we first meet him. He asks Prince Hal ,
"what time a'day it is," and, for answer, receives
four pages of brilliantly expressed scorn and abuse.
[He picks up a letter opener
shaped like a scimitar and taps it on the finger nail of his left thumb. He picks up a newspaper, glances, and
discards it.]
HEADLAM. My wife is coming back today.
BERNARD. Oh?
Er, yes?
HEADLAM. Yes.
BERNARD. Ah,
I see. Yes, of course.
HEADLAM. Do you, Bernard?
BERNARD.
Well, I think so, Sir . . . .
[HEADLAM winces visibly.]
BERNARD.
Sorry. Stewart. Well . . . I think [with an air taking the bull by the horns
and saying it straight out] you want
to be alone with Mrs. Headlam.
HEADLAM. Yes . . . well, that's it exactly! [His
tone suggests that this is not quite how he had seen it before.] Yes.
Let me tell you something, Bernard.
And I want you to hear this, Miss Smythe, so
please don't invent an excuse to leave the room discreetly. Now, marriage is not a state or an
institution really, though we speak of it that way. Marriage, essentially, is a union.
MISS SMYTHE. More a trade than a church?
[A bell rings.]
MISS SMYTHE.
Why, Mister Headlam, your eloquence is more than usually effective this
morning. Admirers are gathering already.
HEADLAM [almost sprinting to the door]. Oh, bother admirers! It might be her! [Exits.]
BERNARD. May
I ask you something, er, a bit personal, Miss Smythe?
MISS SMYTHE.
Personal! Why, Master Keane, I am
. . . I am alarmed and intrigued.
BERNARD. Do
you admire him, Miss Smythe? I mean to say, do you admire him tremendously, as
I do?
MISS SMYTHE.
Why Bernard, yes, I do admire him, and I think, tremendously. But certainly not as you do.
[HEADLAM leads SHAW in and
hangs up a mack and a long scarf. BERNARD and MISS SMYTHE do not notice and go
on talking. SHAW puts a forefinger to his lips.]
BERNARD. I
ask because I sense a certain reserve. I
mean, he is so tremendously extraordinary.
[HEADLAM is about to enter,
but SHAW restrains him and pulls him back toward the
coat rack.]
MISS SMYTHE.
Why, yes, I suppose he is that.
We can agree on that. I think we
admire him pretty much the same. But you
are . . . well, you are just down from university; and I have no intention
whatsoever of becoming the founding secretary of The Headlam Society.
BERNARD. But why? I don't
understand. I'm sorry. But I don't.
I mean, I don't know if a Headlam
Society would be in, er, the best interests of us all. On the model, I take it you would mean, of
The Browning Society. But, then after
all if it were!
Wouldn't you think it a tremendous
. . . a tremendous privilege?
MISS SMYTHE.
Certainly not! It would mean more
work for even less pay. Probably no pay
at all! Privilege!
BERNARD. Miss
Smythe! I
mean, how can you . . . ?
SHAW [roaring with a strange, stuttering kind of laugh]. Ha, ha, ha!
[BERNARD and MISS SMYTHE
turn, each appalled at having been overheard.]
SHAW. I say,
Headlam! The Browning
of this latter day, this fin de siecle.
HEADLAM. Bernard, weren't you just about to be off on
your rounds, my rounds, I mean to say?
BERNARD. Why,
er, yes, Mis . . . Stewart.
HEADLAM. Before you go—here, for Heaven's sake, wrap
this round your throat; there's a very raw east wind this morning—I want you to
meet the most brilliant writer in London—Mister George Shaw. Shaw: meet Bernard Keane. Ah!
But your middle name is Bernard as well.
There are two of you. Is it
George Shaw or Bernard Shaw?
SHAW. As yet,
I haven't decided—though I hate "George." It's a name you pick when you want anonymity.
BERNARD [somewhat
confused]. Well, in my case, they
named me Bernard . . . and so I'm . . .
Bernard. [They bow; then BERNARD recognizes the surname.] But Shaw!
But, not, not, you don't mean . . . .
HEADLAM. Yes, I do.
BERNARD. . .
. him.
HEADLAM. Yes, him. If
you're ever to see the Devil in the flesh, Bernard, behold! Ecce Diabolo!!
SHAW.
Headlam, you do me overwhelming honor.
MISS SMYTHE.
Why, I've heard of you too!
HEADLAM. Shaw, Miss Smythe—our
invaluable secretary. Miss Smythe, allow me to present Mister Shaw.
MISS SMYTHE.
The devil you say! Aren't you the
chap who took out his watch and offered to let the Almighty exterminate him in
five minutes as a proof of His existence?
HEADLAM [to SHAW]. You see how it is. Your fame precedes you.
SHAW. Oh,
that is mere notoriety—not fame. Yet.
BERNARD [doing his best to follow all this]. But what, er, after you took
your watch out, well, what, er, happened?
[They all roar with laughter.]
HEADLAM [putting his arm round Bernard's shoulder and adjusting the scarf]. There, there, Bernard. We shouldn't laugh. But you see: Mister Shaw is still with us.
MISS SMYTHE.
And, Master Keane, you may draw your own conclusions about the Deity.
BERNARD. But, but, I mean . . . . Well, I don't know what I mean. I am sorry.
I am very confused. [He bursts into tears.]
MISS SMYTHE.
Mister Keane!
HEADLAM. Why, Bernard!
SHAW. I have
never seen such a thing! Headlam, I'll
come back later.
HEADLAM. No, no, really, Shaw.
SHAW. I
will. I'll take a turn in the market. Come back in three-quarters of an hour. Would that do, do you think?
HEADLAM. Well . . . perfectly.
[SHAW takes his scarf and
his hat and lets himself out. BERNARD is
trying to get away from MISS SMYTHE, who has attempted to pat his head.]
HEADLAM [taking charge]. Bernard, there, there,
there. That'll do Miss Smythe, thank you. [Undoes the scarf.] Here.
Now, I want you to sit down. Miss
Smythe, perhaps you could ask young Mary to fetch us
a cup of tea?
MISS SMYTHE [exiting]. Of course.
BERNARD.
Mister Headlam, I am so sorry. I
have made an utter ass of myself. . . I
am so ashamed at having embarrassed you in front of . . . in front of your
distinguished guest.
HEADLAM. Nonsense, Bernard,
nonsense. Let's sit and talk this
over. Can you tell me what it was, what
provoked . . . ?
BERNARD. Oh,
Mister Headlam, if that man has
proved that there is no God, if this was in the newspapers, and if everybody in
HEADLAM. Hmm. Yes, Bernard, I see.
BERNARD.
Mister Headlam: do you believe
in God?
HEADLAM [gasps]. Oh, of course I do, Bernard. Sometimes, we English are so proud of our
sense of humor and so eager to be able go along with men and bring the Word
everywhere, that we laugh where we should not and are solemn when we should
smile. I believe in . . . well, what do I believe in? I hardly
attend to questions like that any longer.
BERNARD [with a slight smile]. Well, you're
so busy.
HEADLAM [laughs].
Ah, your sense of irony hasn't evaporated
entirely, Bernard. But you're quite
right.
Well, here in 1893, what do I believe in?
I believe, I believe: in God, the Father Almighty ?. . . the Creator of Heaven and Earth?
Well, yes. I
believe in the divinity of creation.
BERNARD. But
does that mean you believe in a divine Creator?
HEADLAM. You are shrewd today, Bernard. You come close, you come close.
BERNARD.
Well? Er, Stewart?
HEADLAM. Well.
Now that you press me, what can
I say? No, Bernard, I do not think I
believe in a divine Creator. I do not
think the universe has a father in the sense that you and I have fathers.
BERNARD. But
then what role . . . ?
HEADLAM. What role is left for us? I realize the danger here. Disraeli, that shrewd old fox, once addressed
the Dean of Westminster—I think it was—at any rate, someone becoming alarmingly
liberal with advancing years: "Remember, Sir: no dogma, no
dean." Well, I shall just have to
risk it. Of course, I have the luxury of
independent means. I realize that. Shaw reminds me of it.
BERNARD. Er,
is that to be it, then? Only people with
independent incomes can be—dare I say it—atheists?
HEADLAM. Oh, good heavens, Bernard! It's only a word. All it means is that one is literally away from God—or, more precisely, one
particular concept of God. You know what Shaw once told me? He said his favorite philosopher was a
Frederick Nietzche.
BERNARD. Who?
HEADLAM. Well, exactly. I mean: who else would have a favorite
philosopher no one has ever heard of?
How exactly like Shaw. At all
events, I mention this because he quoted a saying of this favorite philosopher
of his which, I must admit, has rather stuck in my mind.
BERNARD. Yes?
HEADLAM. It's only four words long: "God is a Conjecture."
BERNARD.
That's it? But doesn't that bring
the whole show down?
HEADLAM. Oh, I don't think so. In my mind, I always capitalize the
"C" in "Conjecture."
BERNARD. Are
you being funny?
HEADLAM. I'd rather hoped so.
[HEADLAM
strides about, then puts his hands on Bernard's
shoulders and seats him. He goes on:] Now then,
Bernard, as I see it, we have two plain duties.
The first is that we use all our powers to spread the Word.
. . the Word of Justice. The second is that
we use all our powers to spread the Word of . . . Joy. How much of our world
is grimed over with ugliness—and therefore
misery. To some of us are given the
means, and therefore the challenge, to fight this.
BERNARD. But
what of . . of . . . of Christianity?
HEADLAM. What do you mean, Bernard?
BERNARD. Er,
er, well, I, I mean such things as sin and redemption and . . . and so forth.
HEADLAM. Well, Bernard, I denounce the sins of
rapacious capitalism and cold materialism.
And I wish to redeem our society by drawing the logically inevitable
Socialist conclusions from the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This, to me, is our calling. Not theological debate and discourse. What use is it, eh?—this endless debating the
proverbial number of angels on that damned head of that damned medieval pin, eh
Bernard? No, no, no! We are here to realize the
BERNARD.
Where is Miss Smythe?
HEADLAM. Miss Smythe! Why, yes, that tea is rather long in coming, isn't it? But, Bernard, surely my views on these
matters cannot be entirely new to you.
Good Heavens! All the bishops in
BERNARD.
Well, it's just I had not known they were so . . . .
HEADLAM. Extreme?
BERNARD.
Well, er, er, Stewart, I have the impression, almost, that you don't
believe in God!
HEADLAM. "God." That is a very big word, Bernard, a very big
word—a Conjecture, in fact. If a belief in a supernatural father helps anyone
achieve justice and find joy, why should I quarrel about it? Alternatively, why quarrel with me? "By their fruits you shall know
them."
BERNARD.
Ah. A saying
from the Son of God.
HEADLAM. Bernard?
How'd you know Jesus didn't mean that we are all sons of God? Wouldn't
that be as logical an inference, and more consonant with the Jesus who defied
the God-obsessed (you might almost say, quite exactly, the God-damned)
authorities of His time? Would not that be better—and, when you think
about the matter carefully, even more plausible—than the image of Jesus
standing on some mountain top and saying
I am the Son of God, and the rest of you are miserable worms? You see, doesn't the Fatherhood of God
suggest that we are all—Jesus included—brothers
and sisters to each other? Surely that's the great point.
[MISS SMYTHE enters with a
tea tray, followed
by a florid-faced, grizzled sixty-ish man wearing
expensive, but very brown, clothes. This
is LESTER KINGMAN.]
MISS SMYTHE. Sorry the tea took so long, Mister Headlam,
but Mary had popped out, and I found our old friend Mister Kingman hanging
about the back, so I suggested he come in the front door.
HEADLAM
[astonished]. Lester Kingman!
KINGMAN [deferential, tentative in the extreme]. Hallo, Stewart. How are you?
Your gurl is as himpertinent
as hever. I
was in the neighborhood and thought . . . .
HEADLAM. In the neighborhood! Just strolling about
KINGMAN. Now then, now then, Stewart, draw it
mild. Why, it's not more'n
three, and, after all, it was you who told me I was no longer welcome in your 'ome. But, but, now
I've no desire for a quarrel. Haven't the stomach for it any more, if the truth be
known.
HEADLAM. What is it?
What do you want?
KINGMAN. Why, Stewart, a touch a Christian
charity? See me own daughter and see how
her 'usband is gettin'
on? Why, you know, you've become quite
famous, you have—and no mistake. Talkin' here, talkin' there,
newspaper reporters takin' down every blessed word
you say. I always thought you'd make
your mark, and by thunder, you 'ave, Stewart me boy, and no mistake.
HEADLAM [with a suspiciously formal bow]. The good opinion of one's father-in-law is,
of course, always welcome.
KINGMAN. Of course, we've had our little differences .
. . but, but, now, that's all in the past.
HEADLAM. Our "litttle
differences" . . . in the past, are they?
Little differences like a just wage for your employees?
KINGMAN [explosively]. My hemployees in me own
business, what I created by myself and out of nothing and with not a whit of
help from anyone! And then to have
county councils and rich clorgymen tellin' me what I have to pay me own men! By God, it's enough to . . . .
HEADLAM. Now, now, father-in-law. They are not
little differences, and obviously they are not
in the past; but we've no need to argue them out now. You want to see your daughter? Very well. Take a chair.
I expect her at any time.
KINGMAN. What?
She's not living here with you any more?
HEADLAM. What?
What are you saying? I don't
understand.
KINGMAN. Well, a man's wife ought to be . . .with him . . . at 'ome. It's only decent and proper.
HEADLAM. What the devil are you talking about? Emma went to the country with her friends the
Markbys.
She'll be back today. Take a chair. I've some work to do.
KINGMAN. Before I'm sent to the corner, Stewart, what
do you say we shake hands and let bygones be bygones?
[HEADLAM stands, irresolute
for a moment.]
[EMMA, with SHAW just behind
her, appears in the doorway.]
EMMA. Say
yes, Stewart.
HEADLAM. Emma!
My dear! [He rushes to embrace her; she laughs at his
ardor.]
[EMMA consents to be
embraced and whirled to the center of the room, where HEADLAM tries to help
disentangle her small bags. Without
touching him, she motions him away.]
EMMA.
Stewart. My
dear. Really. You are such a . . . . .
[She laughs.
They all laugh with her. She puts
things down, puts other things in place, and takes charge while they all look
at her. SHAW, who has returned with her, is openly gaping and
leaning against a book case—evidently for support. For EMMA is extremely beautiful: she is
dressed in the height of fashion , with a necktie and
masculine-feminine clothes swathed voluptuously over her generous body. Her hair—thick and a rich, dark brown—is
piled imperiously up over a commanding brow.
She looks at the world through clear, unblinking grey eyes, with long
lashes and strong eyebrows. The men are, where the men are always to be found, in a heap at her
feet.]
EMMA. Why,
Father!
KINGMAN. Hallo, Emm.
EMMA. Hello,
Father. It's been some time.
KINGMAN. Oh, don't say that, Emma. Didn't you just say we should forgive and
forget?
EMMA [moving about the room, putting it to rights]. Oh no.
I said you and Stewart should forgive and forget. But, here, you may.
[She leans forward. Her father kisses her cheek.]
EMMA. And Stewart.
[She leans forward again,
and Stewart is permitted a chaste kiss.]
EMMA [going about the room]. Why, hello, Bernard.
Miss Smythe.
[BERNARD bows. MISS SMYTHE tries to hide the sour look on
her face.]
STEWART. My
dear Emma, I am so happy you've returned!
Here, let me introduce my new friend.
This is . . . .
EMMA. Mister
George Bernard Shaw. Quite
so. Mister Shaw and I have
met. In fact, we are very nearly old
friends.
SHAW [talking to Headlam, but not taking his eyes off Emma]. Why yes, Headlam. I met Mrs. Headlam at a concert. Two months ago. I remember it exactly. How could one forget?
BERNARD. I
have never really understood the difference.
MISS SMYTHE.
You will, Bernard; one day you will.
HEADLAM. In the present circumstance, Bernard, Shaw
would be envious; and I would be jealous.
BERNARD. Oh,
I see: the jealous husband, and the envious . . . .
HEADLAM [rather dryly]. . . . suitor . . . would be the word, I should think.
[There is an awkward silence. Finally, SHAW, who has been so enraptured by
EMMA that he hasn't noticed the awkwardness, speaks.]
SHAW. Suitor. Only one suitor? I
should think [arm outstretched, with
gallantry] the whole of
MISS SMYTHE.
That would be very bad for business, wouldn't it? I mean, both the vegetable and the spiritual
business would be seriously inconvenienced.
SHAW [spins
around, looks at her, and roars with laughter]. Why, Headlam, you've a whole house of geniuses.
EMMA. Geniuses!
In the plural?
We have Stewart. One genius is
enough. More than
enough? Myself, I never have
anything to say.
SHAW. No matter. My fellow Hibernian, Mister Oscar Wilde,
assures us that beauty is a form of genius.
[He bows; she returns the bow.]
[Before another silence can
begin to swell, MISS SMYTHE approaches BERNARD.]
MISS SMYTHE.
Well, speaking of beauty and the bodies of men in the streets, shouldn't
you be getting at last to your rounds?
BERNARD [as if
she were speaking of something cosmically remote]. What?
Oh. Oh, yes. Well, I suppose so. Seems rather pointless now.
HEADLAM [deliberately misunderstanding]. Now, now, Bernard, there's
still plenty of time. Get through those
in the
SHAW. Oh,
yes. In fact, I'm afraid I have some
rather bad news for you: I intend never to leave.
EMMA. Well,
then, this is something in the nature of a homecoming for both of us, isn't it,
Mister Shaw?
HEADLAM. Emma!
Well, I'd best speak to Mary about lunch. Would half past one suit everyone?
KINGMAN. Well, if I am being included here, I accept
with pleasure, and ‘alf-one would suit me just
admirably.
HEADLAM. Ah, what a relief, Kingman! [Bundling people as he speaks.] Miss Smythe, would
you show my esteemed father-in-law the garden terrace and a copy of some paper he might enjoy . . . .
EMMA [laughing, and caricaturing her own father]. In 'is 'ouse? Waalll: all I kin say his: not bloody likely.
KINGMAN [like everyone else, genuinely shocked]. Em!! I
say!!
HEADLAM [quietly]. My dear, you go too far.
SHAW [roaring with laughter]. Going too
far is always the most interesting place to go.
MISS SMYTHE.
Come along, Bernard. Dangerous
waters here.
[MISS SMYTHE shows Kingman
and Bernard out the door; she exits.
EMMA, SHAW, and HEADLAM all look at each other for a moment. EMMA opens her mouth,
changes her mind, and shrugs.]
EMMA. I'd
best confer with Mary about this suddenly gala luncheon. Gentlemen. [She sweeps out.]
HEADLAM [after a silence]. Wonderful woman. Wonderful wife.
SHAW. Wonderful wife? Ugh.
Who would want to be—or love—such a thing? Oh, Headlam, Headlam, Wilde is right: beauty is a form of genius. And she
is the rarest of geniuses. We are both
clods at her feet. It is right she
should step over us, step on us
should she wish. Oh, Headlam! Your wife . . . .
HEADLAM. Yes, dull as it sounds, she is my wife.
SHAW.
Headlam: I must, as a man of honor, say it out straightaway: I am in
love with her.
HEADLAM. In love with her?
SHAW. Completely. Insanely. Utterly. Absolutely and totally in love with her, with Emma—oh, how I love the sound of her name!—Emma, Emma, Emma, Emma. Oh, and Emma!
HEADLAM [walks
to his desk; turns; turns back. He
laughs, or—rather—tries to laugh. What
emerges is an unconvincing stage laugh.
Then he becomes reflective, as if he had put the humor of Shaw's
declaration behind him.]. I . . . I
don't know what to say. what should I say?
What can I say? What does one say
on such, er, occasions? I . . . I have never
. . . I don't know. [The wind has been knocked out of him.]
SHAW.
Headlam, you must know: I never meant this to happen. I fell in love with her the minute I saw her,
before I knew she was your, or anyone else's, wife. But there it is, man: what are we going to do
about it?
HEADLAM [faintly ominous]. “Think'st thou I'd make a career of
doubt? To be once in doubt is to be at
once resolved: and on the proof, away at once with love or jealousy.”
SHAW. Ah. you Bardolaters. If you don't know what to say, you quote
Shakespeare.
HEADLAM [quietly]. Take care, Shaw.
SHAW.
Headlam! Don't you see? I am beyond all that sort of thing.
HEADLAM. But I'm not.
And I don't think it right to fall in love with another man's wife.
SHAW [genuinely
surprised]. What ever happened to
the Reverend Stewart Headlam, the fearless front-line fighter for
progress? Headlam, I tell you frankly: you sound almost, well, conventional.
HEADLAM. Well, Shaw, I am sorry to disappoint you.
I am not quite ready with an original ethic. I am inhibited by the fact that we are
talking about my wife . . . about my, my marriage, about my life, in fact.
SHAW. Why
don't we all go away somewhere? Morris
is right: love is the answer. Love is all that matters. The three of us could live together. I don't mind sharing her. In fact . . . .
HEADLAM. The devil you don't! Why, thank you, Shaw. That's marvelously generous of you!
SHAW. Oh, can
we not get beyond all this static, death-inducing, stultifying convention? Why should we not live together?
HEADLAM. Shaw!
SHAW. Oh, can
we not get past all this conventional outrage, this humbug and huffing? This is
HEADLAM. The three of us living on coconuts and
bananas on a
SHAW. Her coconuts and our bananas. Why not?
HEADLAM. Oh, come, Shaw. "No man is an island" and all that
sort of thing.
SHAW.
Headlam: please stop quoting. You
must search your own heart and tell me what you
really and truly think.
HEADLAM. How is it that you want to run away with my
wife and I feel that I am on trial?
SHAW. Well,
because we want to bring you along.
HEADLAM. "We"! You've spoken to Emma about all this?
SHAW. Not a syllable. I needed to speak with you first.
HEADLAM. Yes. As a man of honor.
Yes, I see.
EMMA [entering suddenly]. "A man of honor."
Stewart, you always conduct conversations on the highest plane
possible. No. Do not tell me of whom you are speaking. Sometimes, I think I am almost sick to death
of "men of honor."
[SHAW and HEADLAM exchange a
look. EMMA, bustling gracefully, does
not see the look.]
MISS SMYTHE [also
entering abruptly]. Mister Headlam,
there's a man from the Bishop in the front office. Mrs. Headlam, your father is making the most
piteous sounds: left all alone; why it's as if he had no daughter at all; that
sort of thing.
EMMA [exiting]. Thank you, Angelica.
I will, with everyone's leave, tend to the piteous sounds.
HEADLAM [rather uncertainly]. And I . . . well, I will see to the Bishop's
man. Shaw, we will, er, discuss
more. Anon.
SHAW [bowing with exaggerated grace as HEADLAM leaves]. Angelica! What an extraordinary name. It amazes me.
MISS SMYTHE [setting briskly to work at her desk]. Well, there was no thought of pleasing you
when I was christened.
SHAW.
Shakespeare again! Does everyone
in this infernal rectory quote Shakespeare all the time? It's enough to drive one perfectly mad. You are obviously a young woman of some
gifts, of some originality of thought.
So you must stop quoting Shakespeare.
In fact, if humanity is ever to progress, we must stop reading Shakespeare!
MISS SMYTHE.
Why, I love Shakespeare!
SHAW. Well,
what is life but a giving up of what you love?
MISS SMYTHE [looking up from her desk and turning round
to look at him]. That's a very curious thing
to say.
SHAW. You
don't think it true?
MISS SMYTHE [looking back at the work on her desk]. Oh, it’s true all right.
SHAW [after a silence, during which he contemplates her back]. I see.
MISS SMYTHE.
What is it you see, Mister Shaw?
No! Say nothing. I am sorry I asked.
SHAW. You
love him. That's why you're here. That's why you become tense whenever Emma,
Mrs. Headlam, is in the room.
MISS SMYTHE.
Oh, that is not true!
SHAW. It
isn't?
MISS SMYTHE.
The way he . . . . Well, should I ever marry—which seems extremely problematical—I
should not want my husband to carry
on about me in that absurd
manner. Yes, very well, we can all
admire the woman's good hair, tolerable figure, and fetching style. But all this uxorious raving about her! That is
enough to drive one perfectly mad.
SHAW [after a pause]. Tell me why.
I am intensely curious. Why do
you love him?
MISS SMYTHE
[turning in her chair, pausing, then: very decisively]. Well . . . why ever not? He is an intelligent man, trying to do as
much good as he can. He may be even a
great man. [She gives a little laugh.]
Besides, he is very good looking, and I like good looking men, Mister
Shaw, so there.
SHAW [warmly]. Miss Angelica Smythe: I hope that
you are the harbinger of a whole new style and way of thinking. The New Woman. That's what you are. One caution, Signorina
Angelicissima: pioneers are often very lonely.
MISS SMYTHE.
Well, then, I've got that part
of it down nice and perfect. And, Mister
Shaw, what about yourself, then? Aren't
you yourself pretty besotted?
SHAW [buoyantly]. Oh, of course, of course. I have never known what the phrase "I
adore you" means. Now I do.
MISS SMYTHE. Mister. Shaw! That's
. . . .
SHAW. Oh, I
know: hopelessly sentimental, an immature infatuation, not really serious, a
counter-blast to my life of rigorous control and Spartan efficiency . . . all
that I know. And I don’t, even to the
tiniest degree, care.
MISS SMYTHE.
Mister Shaw!
SHAW. Yes, I
know: revolting, and worse than revolting: in her toils, one is unmanned, finished off.
EMMA [entering]. Mister Shaw!
SHAW. Oh . .
. you!
MISS SMYTHE.
Mrs. Headlam! How . . . how much
have you . . . ?
EMMA.
Heard? I heard that Mister Shaw
has been unmanned. He has my sympathies. As does his future wife.
MISS SMYTHE [involuntarily putting her hand to her mouth
and laughing]. Mrs. Headlam?
EMMA. Yes, Miss Smythe?
MISS SMYTHE.
Is, er, er, your father, er, comfortable?
EMMA. Well,
certainly more than you two are.
MISS SMYTHE.
I think I'll just, just . . . .
EMMA. Think
of something else to do, some other place else to be?
MISS SMYTHE [standing
and waving her hands in confusion].
Oh! [She leaves the room.]
EMMA.
Well! Mister Shaw?
SHAW. Do you
know this? Do you know this
already?
EMMA [for the first time, looking puzzled]. Mister Shaw?
SHAW. Oh,
good heavens! Don't call me that. Please.
EMMA. Well .
. . then: George.
SHAW.
Oh! A thousand times worse!
EMMA. You are
a very difficult man to please. And
what, then, should I call you?
SHAW. A secret name, one that you must give me.
EMMA. Oh, I
see. A secret name!
SHAW. And you
must allow me to . . . .
EMMA. I must
allow you to . . . ?
SHAW [hurling himself before her, on his knees]. Say your
name. Your name! Emma!
Oh, the music of it—Emma, Emma, Emma. Emma, Emma. Emmmm: the beginning of the world. Know it all: I love you! I adore you!
And I will always love and adore you.
EMMA [gasping]. You must . . . allow me. Excuse me.
I must sit down. [She sits in Miss Smythe's
chair.]
SHAW. Emma:
my love for you is total, complete, imperious; it
commands me; it is glorious or degrading—as
you choose. Yes, it is in your hands. I am
in your hands. Never have I felt such
painful trembling, such fearful anxiety, such abject
misery alternating with both the phenomenal and numinous glories of the
ultimate ecstasies.
EMMA [having regained her composure]. I do not know what I have done to deserve such,
such . . . honor?
SHAW. As
Wilde said, "beauty is a form of genius." Your beauty!
I would have to be a great poet to so much as begin to do it justice.
EMMA. Well,
you've certainly got all the words, Mister Shaw: it's only arranging them you
want.
SHAW [wincing]. Mister Shaw!
EMMA. Well,
you really must allow a bit of time for me to come up with a secret name. Very well. I have it.
Michael.
SHAW. Michael?
EMMA. You
like it?
SHAW. Well,
it's a bit ordinary for a secret name.
EMMA. Ah. All right, then. I believe I have it.
SHAW [with
eyes closed]. Ah?
EMMA. It is
the perfect name for a chap who can throw himself before a married woman,
married indeed to a friend of his, and declare his love like a tenor at the
opera. [She stands, then touches him on the shoulder,
as if knighting him.] Arise, Don
Juan.
SHAW. Don
Juan!
EMMA. Don Juan. It's
perfect for you. Since you are a
Socialist, I shall drop the aristocratic "Don" and call you
Juan.
SHAW. I don't
think you are taking me quite seriously.
I assure you . . . .
EMMA. Please
. . . Juan. Assurances of any kind are,
under the circumstances, distinctly unreassuring. There is nothing assuring about anything so
unstable, so completely emotional.
SHAW. Well,
stability is something you of course already have. Marriage, I have been assured, is filled with
stability. But is that not the
problem? Monogamy
being monotonous?
EMMA. And you
want to save me from a fate worse than monotony?
SHAW.
No! I want you to save me. My life is in your hands. Of course, [he coughs] I realize that is a cliché.
EMMA. Your life? My
hands! How did we get to this point?
SHAW. “The blind bow-boy's butt-shaft.”
HEADLAM [entering]. Ah. So you've told her.
EMMA [rising, a bit icily]. Stewart! You
know of this?
HEADLAM. Yes.
Shaw was kind enough to confide in me his . . . regard and . . . and affection.
EMMA. Ah
well. Our friend's outpourings go
something beyond regard and affection.
Well? What are we to do about all
this? Am I to choose between you? The two of you make bids? I let you know with whom I shall honor my . .
. hand, shall we say?
SHAW.
No! Why think in such
conventional, such limited ways? The
three of us should live together. Why
ever not? Let us find new ways of
living, new ways of thinking about living.
We say we are advanced people, progressive, forward-looking: well, we
should look, progress, and then advance there.
EMMA [with a small, giddy laugh]. The
three of us! All live together! You know, I really think I must be dreaming
this.
SHAW. This is
far more real and meaningful than any dream could be.
EMMA. You
know, I feel I have passed beyond the normal bounds of meaning and
reality.
SHAW. An indispensable first step.
HEADLAM. The first step heading
where exactly?
SHAW. To
where ever our eccentric destiny may take us.
The main thing is that we must be ready, eager to embrace all of life's possibilities. Headlam, do you not
see what this means? It means we are the
first children in a new generation of mankind.
HEADLAM. Oh, Shaw, how I wish I could look at it as
you do. Like Emma, I feel I have passed
beyond . . . .
SHAW. Well,
you see—both of you—we have already done so.
EMMA. Have we
indeed?
[SHAW and HEADLAM turn to
look at her; for
a moment, they had forgotten her presence.]
HEADLAM. Er, well, you see, my dear . . . .
SHAW. Of
course we have! In how many households
in
EMMA.
Juan! Juan indeed! We have created a new civilization? [She
laughs.] All that has happened is
that a number of words have been uttered.
Words! Nothing
more.
SHAW [genuinely
puzzled]. Emma, what do you mean?
HEADLAM. My dear, my dear: after all, "in the
beginning was the Word."
EMMA.
Stewart, I must tell you something:
I have never known what that means.
HEADLAM. Emma!
[MISS SMYTHE and KINGMAN
enter, arguing, oblivious to the tense triangle.]
MISS SMYTHE.
No, Mister Kingman, I certainly do not agree. I may not be as crankily Socialist as
everyone else is around here, but I most certainly do think "the laborer is worthy of his hire.”
EMMA. That's
another. What could that possibly mean? I once heard
Stewart preach a sermon on the text "She despised him in her
heart." [She laughs.] There were, as
I recall, several practical applications to everyday life. [She
laughs again.]
SHAW. Why,
Emma, [HEADLAM visibly starts at the use
of her first name] you're becoming rather agnostical,
aren't you?
KINGMAN [benignly]. Well, yes, yes, that's all very well, but I think we
can say that sentiments of that kind are very beautiful and very idealistic , and so forth and so on, and about as useful and
practical as . . . as that flaming
picture over the hearth. What is that picture, anyway?
HEADLAM. Titian. A reproduction, of course. It's called "The Assumption of the
Virgin."
KINGMAN. Oh!
Em! Is that proper? Is it respectable? The world has changed much
in my time, and make no mistake.
Well, well, please excuse us, gentlemen.
We were arguing economics and justice and things of that nature. Must be the helevated atmosphere of the place. [He
laughs comfortably.]
MISS SMYTHE [now
sensing the strain]. Excuse the
interruption. Mr. Kingman, would you be
willing to assist in a small matter?
Dreadful nuisance . . . but a drain in the scullery . . . and we don't
want to call a plumber . . . and I remember that before your present greatness,
you were . . . .
KINGMAN. Quite a 'andyman, as our American cousins say. Well, I daresay I can hearn me place at the luncheon table. I'm proud to be a working man, and I don't
care who 'ears it. [Puts his arm out ceremoniously; Miss Smythe
bows and takes it.] Em, gentlemen,
I am, as you see, being taken quite in hand by your Miss Smythe. There'd be worse fates, eh?
[MISS SMYTHE takes his arm
and the two walk off, laughing. Despite
their own situation, the three look at the departees
in bemused disbelief.]
EMMA. Well,
Mister Shaw—Juan, I mean—what do you think of that? Perhaps all five of us should live together?
[SHAW looks a little nonplussed; HEADLAM looks a
little worried. There is a moment of
silence.]
EMMA [closes
her eyes; then opens them]. Stewart:
what do you have to say about all this?
For instance . . . oh, things such as our marriage? Things of that sort?
HEADLAM. Emma, you know, I trust, that you have my
heart. I would never ask you to be bound
by some mere legal quibble, which is, really, what, from one point of view, I
suppose, all that marriage is. I have
always admired your independence, your sense of freedom. I would never seek to constrain, much less
imprison, you.
EMMA. Very beautifully said, Stewart.
[HEADLAM bows his head.]
SHAW. Don't
be a fool, Headlam. She's being ironic.
EMMA [turning
to, almost on, SHAW]. It was beautifully
said, and Stewart is no fool . . . my
dear Juan.
SHAW. Emma,
my dear Headlam: please accept my apologies.
HEADLAM. Nonsense, Shaw, nonsense. How embarrassing to be talked about in this
fashion. Please. Both of you. I beg you.
However, what are we to do?
EMMA. I have
a suggestion: why don't the two of you
live together? And, after luncheon, I
shall go home with my father.
SHAW.
What? You have two men ready to
blow their brains out for your sake—and you want to go back home with your
father!
HEADLAM. Emma, my . . . dear: I am quite out of my
depth here, and I confess I don’t know
what the right thing to do is . . . or . . . or what to say.
EMMA.
Stewart! You don't know the right
thing! You don't know what to say? You cannot find it in The Bible or Das Kapital? Oh, in that case, we have come a long way
indeed. I don't know that I can call it
a new civilization. But it is a . . .
very civilized civilization.
HEADLAM. Emma . . . .
SHAW. Really,
Emma, you should draw it mild—as the saying has it.
EMMA. Mild! Mild? I must admit that I am learning something about myself, my marriage, my life in this parsonage—as you like to call it, Juan. You know, at times, I wonder why all women don't run from their homes screaming. Senor Don Juan, do you remember that play at which we met? At the Independent Theatre? A Doll's House? That's the story. That's my story, and I never knew it until this minute. How could I possibly progress to anything when I am trapped in this place and the only whiff of freedom comes in the form of a besotted lover who wants to make me a completely disreputable woman.
And he isn't even drunk! There is something so absurd about having a
lover who is a teetotaler.
SHAW.
Headlam! You don't mean to say
you have alcohol in this parsonage?
HEADLAM. I don't mean to say anything at all.
EMMA. Of course there is no alcohol. Do you know what I have come to think? I am too sober. Shaw—Juan, I mean—you are drunk on your
words. Stewart, my dear, you could never
be drunk. Do you remember the last time
father favored us with a visit? He took
Miss Smythe out to supper and gave her champagne. Your concern? You were afraid, you said, that she might
sing in the streets. When you said that,
I simply laughed . . . and then I realized that I could do that: why, I would love
to sing in the streets.
SHAW.
Marianne! Lead us on to freedom!
HEADLAM. Marianne?
SHAW. Ah,
Marianne is the name of the legendary woman always pictured as leading the
French revolutionaries on to victory.
EMMA. She is
usually portrayed with one breast, if not two, exposed.
HEADLAM. Oh, yes, I know the one you mean.
EMMA [much
amused]. Do you really,
Stewart? And is this what I am to
do? Expose my breasts and lead the two
of you out into
HEADLAM [shaking his head]. Really, I don't know whether this has gone too far or . .
SHAW.
Headlam: Emma is trying to laugh
all this away. Aren't you?
EMMA. Well,
Shaw, and what do you think I should I do?
SHAW. Expose
a breast and let us see what happens.
HEADLAM. Shaw!
Now, that is enough! This has gone too far: this is my wife, Sir.
SHAW [sighing]. Well, evidently, we haven't gone far enough. We have to begin all over again if you're
going to indulge in this outdated gallantry—chivalry based on seeing your wife
as chattel. We are mired hopelessly in
conventionality. This is what we are
trying to change.
HEADLAM. Well, yes, of course. We want to change things, but we must beware
of change for the sake of change.
EMMA. Why
ever not?
HEADLAM. Really, my dear . . . .
EMMA.
Stewart: please do not address me as "my dear."
HEADLAM
[amazed]. My dear,
why ever not?
EMMA [her mood
breaking, she laughs]. Ah, Stewart,
Stewart.
SHAW [a bit
alarmed]. Headlam. Emma.
Are we not rather straying from the point? And we have Miss Smythe
and Mister Lester Kingman expecting lunch.
HEADLAM. Yes, it is nearly time for lunch, so I
propose that we . . . .
EMMA. Lunch? Ah, yes,
lunch! I see the new civilization must
wait. We have three men who require
lunch! Four, when Bernard returns. Why, of course, as soon as Miss Smythe and Mary and I have served the meal, and the men
pronounce themselves satiated, why then we can come back to the subject—the New
Life, the new civilization.
[She boils over.] All I ever hear is this talk of the New Woman,
of progress and change and development and freedom. The talk, you may have noticed, is all from
men. Women are permitted a certain
amount of freedom, yes, if there is a certain style, if they don't go too far,
if they don't challenge the men.
Oh, God! What
a picture, what a vision of a future!
And do you want to know how it affects me? It enrages me. I don't know if all women do so, but I am
always biting my tongue; worse, I want to hurt myself, cut myself, anything but
stay on this road, two feet wide, that I must stay on.
Stewart, late one night, we
were coming from the Bishop's palace and crossing
It's enough to make any woman hate . . . well, it is
enough to make me hate men.
[She pulls her necktie off.] God, how I hate the lot of you! [She
begins to unbutton her blouse.] So
you two men would like me to lead you on to something, some new freedom. Very well. [She
opens her shirt: spectacular
revelation.]
HEADLAM [tries
to cover her]. Emma! For God's sake, think who you are! Shaw, would you please leave us?
SHAW [rooted
to the spot, stunned by
EMMA’S beauty and gesture].
I . . . cannot.
EMMA [ending the tussle with HEADLAM by angrily pulling away from him, then
coolly buttoning her shirt]. Mister Shaw need not leave. I
will be leaving you, Stewart. The two of
you should live together. But this is over at last. I am sorry, Stewart. Indeed, I am very sorry. I will agree to any terms you wish regarding
a separation, or even a divorce. You are
a good, a genuinely good, man. You
deserve better. Shaw here does not. In any case, I am very sorry . . . because I
cannot imagine what the pair of you will do about lunch. Good bye.
[She goes out. The door slams.]
HEADLAM
[dazed]. Lunch? Lunch. No.
No. Emma is right. She is always right. I cannot imagine what we are going to do about . . lunch.
SHAW. She
certainly got the wrong idea out of Ibsen, didn't she? The wrong moral, the wrong course of
action! This will never do. Headlam: think, man, think. What are we going to do about this? How are we going to think about it? This is entirely the wrong thing. We must rewrite this.
HEADLAM. Rewrite
this? My dear Shaw, I think you are as
mad as a hatter. What are we going to do
about . . . anything . . . about lunch?
SHAW [airily]. Oh, I shouldn't worry about
that, old man. Let's go in. [He
puts his arm round HEADLAM'S shoulder.]
HEADLAM. But . . . whatever are we going to say?
SHAW [his
stuttering laugh is more than usually wild].
My dear fellow: we'll think of something. We always think of something. Right now, we must bend our energies on
thinking of something else, something new, something other-than-this.
[With SHAW'S laughter, the
two exit and the stage darkens. Immediately, there are rasping sounds of cell
doors closing and clanging metal and other sounds from a prison, and Scene 3
follows immediately.]
Act I
Scene 3
[A solitary confinement cell. Misty darkness. MR. NEW MAN sits and stares. HEADLAM enters.]
HEADLAM. Good morning.
NEW MAN. You
are not Mister George Bernard Shaw. [His voice has a slightly Irish lilt.]
I will not speak with anyone who is not Mister George Bernard Shaw.
HEADLAM. Why not?
NEW MAN. I
will not tell you because I will not speak with you.
HEADLAM. I ask only because I am curious.
NEW MAN. I
will not speak with you.
HEADLAM. Ah.
Well, the thing is, you see, I know Mister Shaw.
NEW MAN [interested,
in spite of himself]. Hmmm? You know
him? Now, you actually know Mister George Bernard Shaw?
HEADLAM. I do.
NEW MAN.
Well, and who are you then?
HEADLAM. My name is Stewart Headlam.
NEW MAN [pointing
to his collar]. Well, you look like
a bloody priest.
HEADLAM. Quite true.
NEW MAN. And
you and Shaw are friends?
HEADLAM. Well, yes, we are; but it is rather . .
. more complicated than that.
NEW MAN.
Indeed? Why did he send you?
HEADLAM. Oh, he didn't send me. Mister Shaw is abroad at present. He knows nothing of this.
NEW MAN. Then
why ever did you come to this terrible place?
HEADLAM. Well, visiting the sick and imprisoned is one of the prescribed duties of the
clergy. The more pertinent question is
why you came to this terrible place.
NEW MAN. Oh, I am here because all the other places are so much more terrible. Here at least is solitude. Out there? —Ah, the pain of other people.
HEADLAM. Well, of course, there are in human
relationships many . . . disappointments.
NEW MAN [with
a sob]. Disappointments!
HEADLAM [briskly]. Yet man is an inherently social being—indeed, a political animal, as Aristotle put it.
NEW MAN.
Well, there's little enough doubt about the animal part. The other animals are much luckier—except for
those unfortunates who come into contact with our miserable species; for, when
they do, we kill, butcher, and eat them; and when we don't need their flesh for
our bellies or their fur for our skin, we perform experiments on them—experiments
of such diabolical ingenuity and malevolent cruelty as to make the angels
weep.
HEADLAM. Ah. But,
er, what does my friend Shaw have to do with all this?
NEW MAN. Why,
he is the only person in
Only Shaw has a vision of the future. Only he knows that with brains and freedom
from the superstitions of the past, we can save ourselves.
HEADLAM. Superstitions?
NEW MAN.
Yes. Religion, Law, Science:
things of that sort.
HEADLAM. Science?
NEW MAN.
Yes! Modern Science first
exposed Religion as a pretentious sham . . . and then turned itself into
one! Shaw alone understands that. It isn't just the horrors of vivisection and
the fraud of vaccination. At bottom,
Science thinks that we are little machines humming along—and humming pointlessly
at that—inside of a great big machine called the Universe. And Science will name and oil the parts, and
everything will then continue to hum along: pointlessly.
HEADLAM [after a brief pause]. You are obviously a man of
intelligence and deep reflection. May I
ask you a question?
NEW MAN. You
may.
HEADLAM. Why are you in this terrible place? What did you do?
NEW MAN. I
fell afoul of the Law.
HEADLAM. Could you not be a little more . . . ?
NEW MAN. Specific?
HEADLAM. Well, I don't wish to be . . . .
NEW MAN. Intrusive?
HEADLAM. But I cannot imagine what a man of your
intelligence and culture could possibly have done to be here. What terrible crime . . . ?
NEW MAN. I
took my clothes off in
[A long silence.]
HEADLAM. I see.
NEW MAN. Do
you?
HEADLAM. Well . . . no.
NEW MAN. It
was a warm day, do you see.
HEADLAM. Ah.
NEW MAN. It
was a very warm day, and I had just
come from hearing Mister Shaw lecture at Hyde Park Corner, and I had walked all
the way to Piccadilly. I thought of Mister
Shaw's defiance and courage, and I pondered his assertion that we must remake
the whole of
I was suffused with happiness. More poetry came to me. I fear I uttered these lines positively aloud
as I walked along
"Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born?
"I hasten to inform him or her it is just as
lucky to die.
"Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine
male and female,
"For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have
shed tears,
"Undrape! you are not
guilty to me!"
I was seized by a feeling of utter and overwhelming
happiness.
Besides, it is so ridiculous. Why should the sight of a naked man be so
terrifying, so utterly horrifying? The
naked human body is an object of study. . . so long as it's safely dead in a laboratory; and veneration
. . . so long as it's piously framed
in a museum.
HEADLAM. What, er, happened exactly?
NEW MAN. Oh,
horror, horror. Ladies screamed. I believe one actually fainted—dead away, right
down and smacked the very paving stones.
Men shouted at me and hurried their women away from the sight. It was as if no greater obscenity or human
outrage could be imagined.
HEADLAM. And how long was it before . . . ?
NEW MAN. Oh,
minutes. And not very
many of them. It was
Piccadilly. Plenty of
policemen. And it wasn't as if [he laughs] I was trying to hide
anything.
HEADLAM. What happened?
NEW MAN. A
policeman blew his whistle and knocked me to the ground. Then there was an army of them. Bloody pervert, they called me. Hauled me up, covered me with a scratchy
blanket, and off to gaol. Been here ever since. And, you know, they'll never let me out.
HEADLAM. What do you mean?
NEW MAN.
Well, they don't know what to do with me, you see; and I don't really want to leave. To go where, for the love
of God? And
why? I thought perhaps Mister
Shaw . . . . But, no. They'll put me in a mental hospital. They let
you take your clothes off in places like that! There
it's perfectly normal—because they think you're perfectly insane.
Perhaps I am.
Do you think I'm insane?
HEADLAM. I'm a priest, not a doctor.
NEW MAN.
Priests used to be consulted on such matters.
HEADLAM. Well . . .when it
might be a case of diabolic possession.
NEW MAN. Well
. . . perhaps it is. Can you help me?
HEADLAM [after a long pause]. You are an intelligent man. You want to challenge contemporary society's
conventions and restraints. You are not
insane. You are not possessed by the
Devil. However, my young friend, you are
perhaps possessed by the devil's disciple—as Shaw rather likes
to style himself. Here is what I think I
have learned from what you have said this morning: if you are, in any sense,
"possessed," it is by a hope, a hope for a new civilization. You are not crazy, but taking your clothes
off in
NEW MAN.
Yes. That’s about it. I must say, you have limned the matter
perfectly. Now I am less surprised that
you and Mister Shaw are friends. Forgive
me for having underestimated you.
HEADLAM. Ah.
NEW MAN. Tell
me, Father Headlam: would Mister Shaw have been able to help me?
HEADLAM [after a small pause]. No. I think
not. Mr. Shaw is a rarity and real
genius, but . . . .
NEW MAN. Bit
too much larger than life?
HEADLAM. Something along those lines, certainly.
NEW MAN.
Well, there it is. And here's
another line of poetry to describe my poor place in this vale of tears:
"wandering between two worlds, one dead, the
other powerless to be born."
HEADLAM. Perhaps I should take my leave, Mister
Newman.
NEW MAN.
Actually, you know, that's not my real name.
HEADLAM. Oh?
NEW MAN. No
point in your knowing. One dead; the other . . . powerless to be born. Well, I will return to my somewhat
constricted solitary wanderings. And yourself, Father Headlam?
HEADLAM [surprising himself]. Oh, my wanderings will be nearly as solitary and
only slightly less constricted than your own.
I will see what can be done in your case. Your being here for something so . . .
absurd, so . . . harmless . . . well,
it's quite monstrous. [He begins to walk away, then
comes back.] It is passing strange that we put a man in prison because he
does not want to wear clothes! Why, after
all, do we wear clothes? We wear clothes because it's cold.
In the tropics, people don't wear clothes. So, some of our species moved north, turned
pale, and had to supplement tender white skins with clothes for warmth.
NEW MAN. It
is a painfully clear case of making a virtue of necessity.
HEADLAM [roars]. Exactly!
Exactly! So it’s no longer for warmth that we wear clothes, oh no: now, we cover
the shame of our nakedness. Cold
weather is turned into shame.
NEW MAN. In a
cold climate, of course, when the rich have all the skins, the poor probably would feel shame as well as cold.
HEADLAM. That's a very Bernard-Shaw sort of
insight. Shawian. Shavian.
NEW MAN.
Thank you.
HEADLAM [after a pause, during which they have looked at each other
meditatively]. Actually, Mister Newman, a
second thought . . . .
NEW MAN. Yes?
HEADLAM. My second thought amazes me: A part of me envies you. I feel sorry that I have to leave this place
while you are permitted to stay in it.
NEW MAN.
Permitted! [It is his turn to laugh.]
HEADLAM. Perhaps I mean that here, one can, at last,
be Hamlet “bounded in a nutshell and king of infinite space.”
NEW MAN. Were it not for those dreams.
HEADLAM. One's dreams, one's
thoughts: oneself. In this nutshell, you
have the chance to know yourself. [He turns to go.] Thank you, Mister Newman. You've held a mirror up to nature.
NEW MAN [waves
his arms, taking in the entire theatre].
Oh, Father Headlam, here, it is here, in this nutshell, and only
here, that we have true freedom.
[HEADLAM exits.
MR. NEW
MAN begins wandering. Does he take his
clothes off? House lights come up half
for the Intermission. He wanders through the theatre and slips away
unobtrusively before Act II begins.
ACT II
Scene 1
[Stewart Headlam's
rich, rectory-like,
Inheritor of two sturdy incomes, yielding a
whopping 2,000 pounds a year, HEADLAM has given up trying to wrest an ordinary
ecclesiastical appointment from his ever-frowning bishop. Although generally
described as "silenced," he has gone on talking very volubly, indeed
vociferously. To effect the largest
possible megaphone he could devise, he has created the Guild of St. Matthew,
the stated goal of which is "the realization of the
So MISS SMYTHE and BERNARD KEANE are still installed
in his household. His offices have
always resembled a home more than a place of business. MISS SMYTHE'S up-to-date typewriter is on a
rather low round table with a comfortable upholstered chair snugged
invitingly against it. BERNARD has his
own table with a straight back chair; by the fireplace, he also has his own
reading chair—at the side of which is another table covered with his papers and
books.
However, it is the
It is early Monday morning—
BERNARD. Look
at this! The Police News in the home of the Reverend Stewart Headlam!
MISS SMYTHE.
Oh, well, young Master Keane, it's you that are reading it. I merely bought them. But, then, how could one not? There were great mountains of newspapers just
outside the Holborn Street Station. I went right along the whole lot and bought
one of each. News agent thought I was
potty. There are editions coming out
every hour it seems! It's so curiously exciting, though, isn't
it?
BERNARD.
That's one of his words, isn't it?
"Curiously."
MISS SMYTHE. Mr. Headlam's?
BERNARD. No, no! [Showing her the front page of the Police News.] His. Here look:
"Closing Scene at the Old Bailey."
A picture of him in the dock and images above: "1882: Oscar Wilde
as a lecturer in
MISS SMYTHE.
Well, he always wanted to be famous.
BERNARD.
Ambition achieved! There's nobody
more famous today.
MISS SMYTHE. Infamous, certainly.
[They pause and devour more
of the papers, skimming, stopping, gasping, tossing aside, laughing
aloud.]
BERNARD.
Listen! [He reads with
rhetorical flourishes.] "It is
on all grounds unfortunate that the jury should have failed to arrive at a
decision upon the charges brought against Oscar Wilde and his fellow prisoner. The gravest stigma continues to attach to the
two men who for five days have stood in the dock; society feels that a gross
public scandal has not yet been probed to its depths; and that a great mass of
loathsome evidence must once more be heard in open court."
Heavens! "A great mass of
loathsome evidence." Miss Smythe . . . well, . . . .
MISS SMYTHE.
Yes, Bernard?
BERNARD.
Well, it's very difficult to discuss this with a . . . .
MISS SMYTHE. Lady? Me?
Remember our friend Shaw—of the George Bernard variety? He assured me—thank you very much—that I was
no lady but was, rather, a New Woman. We
New Women smoke cigarettes, make our own money, don't care tuppence
about convention, wear clothes that shock because they
are so practical and masculine-looking.
And we talk about anything. Even money. Ask
anything you like.
BERNARD.
Don't laugh at me, Miss Smythe. Please.
I can't bear that. You see, I
have read all the newspapers, like everybody else, and I see that they talk
about this "love that dare not speak its name," and references to
this man Wilde kissing or not kissing some boy . . .but
I . . . I must confess that I feel as if I'm the only adult person in all of
London who doesn't really know, er, exactly
. . . .
MISS SMYTHE.
What all this "loathsome evidence" is actually about?
BERNARD
[relieved]. Yes, er, exactly.
MISS SMYTHE [with a shrug]. Well, talking about physical
matters is much easier than talking about money, actually. Are you ready, Bernard?
BERNARD. Ummm, I think so.
MISS SMYTHE.
The "great mass of loathsome evidence" refers to sexual
congress between men. Or
. . . among men. Depending.
[Long silence.]
BERNARD.
Ah.
MISS SMYTHE.
Er, Bernard? Which is your
school?
BERNARD.
MISS SMYTHE.
Ah. Doctor
Arnold's. The
moral one. I thought that might
explain it.
BERNARD.
Actual, ah, relations between men ? Just, ah, . . . men?
MISS SMYTHE.
Yes. Not the usual arrangement. [Mostly to herself:] Of course, they
tell me that in some parts of
BERNARD. I .
. . I don't know what to say.
MISS SMYTHE.
Well, unless the press arrive, Bernard, it isn't really necessary for
you to say anything at all. I'll let you
know when you need to issue a statement.
No, no, Bernard: I am not laughing at you. In point of fact . . . do you know Mrs.
Patrick Campbell? I mean: do you know
who she is?
BERNARD. The actress?
MISS SMYTHE. The very one. Well,
she is supposed to have said, apropos
Oscar Wilde and the whole crew of them , "I don't
care what they do—just so they don't
do it in the streets and frighten the horses." [She laughs.]
BERNARD [shaking his head mournfully]. Those actresses.
MISS SMYTHE.
Oh, Bernard.
[HEADLAM enters unseen at
the rear; he is
busy with the circulars on a small vestibule table.]
BERNARD.
Well, I'm sorry if you think me the perfection of priggishness, as you
always like to say. But just listen to
this. [He picks up the paper with a flourish.] Here it is—The Morning,
[He mouths the words with a
smacking satisfaction:] "The satisfaction which society is due!" That is a very noble and awe-inspiring
phrase, in my opinion.
MISS SMYTHE.
Is that "awe-inspiring" or "saw-inspiring," Bernard?
BERNARD. Miss
Smythe, please!
Can you never be serious?
Listen. There's more:
"Ought the prosecution to stop there? That is a very grave question. Whatever may be the truth as regards Wilde
and
[He reads the following with
great emphasis.]
"If there is a widespread canker in our midst,
as the authorities seem to believe, it cannot too soon be thoroughly
cauterized."
Now, Miss Smythe, you may
quote some foolish actress who says she
does not care what they do; but, from what you tell me, this is all even more
terrible than I had dreamt! I think
there is a widespread canker.
MISS SMYTHE. Hmmmm. I say:
what exactly is a canker?
HEADLAM [suddenly tossing the circulars in a wastebasket and coming from the
back]. Canker. An ulcerous sore. A source of spreading
corruption.
MISS SMYTHE.
Oh!
BERNARD.
Mister Headlam! Stewart, I
mean. Good morning. So you agree with me? This dreadful business is a source of spreading corruption?
HEADLAM. No, Bernard, I do not. A good morning to you both. No, Bernard, for the moment all that I will
agree to is that such is the definition of
"canker." I looked it up
because I chanced upon that same leader in The
Morning myself. [He shows them another copy of the same paper.] I read it because I was looking for the
luncheon schedule at the Gaiety Restaurant.
You see? The leading article is
just below it.
MISS SMYTHE.
Yes. You know, it is very
strange, but during the whole of this past month I have noticed that no one
ever actually reads about the trial:
they just happened to see something about it while they were looking up
something else—say, oh, information on church services.
HEADLAM [caught out, roars with laughter]. Ah, Angelicissima! Well, there is, to be sure, some truth in
what you are saying. I confess—well, now
that you've caught me out, I might as well confess it—I do have a great
interest in this Trial of the Century as the press are
calling it. I have even attended some of last week's proceedings at the Old
Bailey. I do confess it. But I assure you both: I was looking at the restaurant schedule. You see, I am planning to take Mrs. Headlam
there today for luncheon.
MISS SMYTHE and BERNARD [simultaneously]. Mrs.
Headlam!!
HEADLAM. Yes.
She is coming here today. Consider: I have not seen her in—what?—nearly two
years.
BERNARD.
Well, er, Stewart, that is wonderful.
Does this betoken . . . ?
HEADLAM. All it betokens, Bernard, is luncheon—possibly
at the Gaiety in the
MISS SMYTHE [looking up from the newspapers]. But, Mister Headlam, you
have managed to truly surprise us—and that twice over—Mrs. Headlam's
coming here, and your
going to the Old Bailey. Did you really
get into the court?
HEADLAM. I did indeed.
I have a friend in
BERNARD. Ah,
you always have a friend somewhere. But
do tell us. What was it like? Were you there
when Mr. Wilde made his remark about not kissing a boy because he doesn't like
to kiss doormats?
MISS SMYTHE [with the impatience of an aficionado]. No, no, Bernard.
That was in the first trial—when
he tried to sue Queensberry. That line
about the boy not being beautiful enough to kiss was Wilde's fatal mistake,
trying to be smart. The first trial . .
. .
HEADLAM. Yes, yes, it was the first trial, and, no, I
was not then present. But I must also
confess I have read all the papers with intentional
assiduity.
BERNARD [eagerly, with an almost unconscious parody]. He was asked if he had ever kissed some
boy. And he answered, "Oh, dear me,
no: he was not possessed of a beautiful face, I'm afraid." Imagine!!
[He strikes an
"Aesthetic" pose:] Not a
beautiful face, I'm afraid!
HEADLAM. Well, that is almost what he said.
MISS SMYTHE.
What did he say?
HEADLAM. It was more . . . "oh dear no, he was a
peculiarly plain boy. I pitied him for
it." I remember the alliteration of
"pitied" and "peculiarly plain."
MISS SMYTHE.
Yes. He seems to like words of
that sort—peculiarly and curiously.
HEADLAM. Well, there's nothing illegal about liking
adverbs.
BERNARD. But
there is something illegal about . . .
about . . . all this loathsome business.
HEADLAM [as always, unashamed by the utterance of the cliché]. Please, Bernard, remember that in this
country a man is innocent until adjudged guilty. And Oscar Wilde has not been found
guilty. Indeed, The Morning's article goes on to say that Wilde is still in prison
only because they have not yet raised bail.
And, mind you, this accusation involves a misdemeanor! One would have thought, from the way
everyone’s carrying on about this, that he'd murdered a policeman. Mr. Justice Charles has set a preposterously
high bail; and Wilde is still, as we speak, in prison; evidently such friends
as he has left are attempting to raise bail now. All this about a man who has not been found
guilty!
MISS SMYTHE.
He will be.
BERNARD.
Certainly he will. This is
HEADLAM. You both seem so certain about this. Have you
ever met him?
BERNARD [shocked]. Certainly not!
MISS SMYTHE. Nor I. Of course not. But
have you ever met him, Mr. Headlam?
HEADLAM. Well, I hardly claim that I know him, but,
yes, I have met him—twice.
MISS SMYTHE [after a pause]. Well? Can you not tell us the manner of it?
HEADLAM. The first time I met him . . . ? Ah, yes, it was at an opening at the
Grosvenor Gallery. He is very tall, you
know—quite unmistakable. I don't know
how I knew him; I
suppose his picture must have been in the illustrated papers even in those
days. Someone—I can't remember who it
was, now—introduced us. What struck me
was the way he had been so totally absorbed in the paintings: he was standing
in front of a wall almost entirely covered with Burne-Jones pictures. Wilde's own absorption made him seem a little
mystical and ethereal himself—as if he were in
a Burne-Jones painting.
MISS SMYTHE.
Well, it wasn't his ethereal propensities that brought him to the Old
Bailey.
HEADLAM. Angelica. Really. Let him who is without sin cast the first
stone.
MISS SMYTHE.
Well, in this case, I think I
might, without any hypocrisy whatsoever, heave a rock in good conscience.
BERNARD. Really. It's too
loathsome, all of it.
HEADLAM [shakes
his head]. This lack of sympathy and
just plain, good old Christian charity is uncharacteristic of both of you. Something about loving the sinner . . . the
saying goes?
BERNARD. But
this is no ordinary case. As you say, it
is The Trial of the Century. Now we
discover what kind of a people we are.
HEADLAM. Yes, Bernard; I suppose that is perfectly
true.
MISS SMYTHE.
What was the other occasion?
HEADLAM. Other occasion?
MIS SMYTHE. The other occasion, Mister Headlam, on which you met this man
Wilde.
HEADLAM. "This man Wilde." Well, well.
The second occasion was at, of all places, a Naval Exhibition.
BERNARD. A
Naval Exhibit!
HEADLAM. Yes, it was even more astonishing to see
Wilde there than Shaw. But one would
have hardly imagined a Naval Exhibition's attracting either of them.
[There is a knock at the
door; it is opened;
and the maid, MARY, enters.]
MARY. Excuse
me, Mister Headlam; but there is a lady and a Mister Shaw to see you.
HEADLAM, BERNARD, MISS SMYTHE [in chorus]. Shaw!
MARY [taken aback]. Why, yes, Sir.
He claims he’s a friend of yours and insists he must speak to you on a
matter of great urgency.
HEADLAM. Well, well, well. Quelle
coincidence! Please, Mary, be so kind
as to show the lady and Mister Shaw in.
MARY [with a curtsey]. Certainly, Mr. Headlam.
SHAW [rushing
right past an astonished MARY, who opens her mouth to announce him; but before she can utter a
syllable:] Headlam! Here's the damnedest thing! Here is the damnedest thing! And you
are the only one who can help.
HEADLAM [shakes hands; his left hand goes up to stop the torrent]. Good morning, Shaw. You remember my secretary Miss Smythe? And Bernard Keane?
SHAW [looking at them wonderingly].
Who? What? Oh, yes, yes, of course. [Shakes hands.] How are you Bernard? Angelica, is it not?
MISS SMYTHE.
It is indeed. How
do you do, Mister Shaw?
BERNARD [gives
a little bow]. Mister Shaw.
SHAW [introducing the rather short lady breathlessly trailing behind him]. And this is Ada Leverson. Headlam, I believe you know. [He
points.] Bernard, Miss Smythe.
HEADLAM. Mrs. Leverson, it's
very nice to see you again. Here,
please, take a chair. Mary, please bring
us tea, would you? [MARY curtsies and exits.] Now, Shaw, here, take this—it's Bernard's
favorite chair—and tell us—unless it's confidential—what this is all
about. This is not about Mrs. Headlam,
is it?
SHAW [obviously
amazed]. Mrs. Headlam! Good God, man: what could Emma possibly have
to do with this?
HEADLAM:
Well, of course, I don't yet know what "this" is.
SHAW [thrown off track for a moment]. Well, no, of course not. Why, er, why [suddenly almost evasive] that is, what would make you think that .
. . ?
HEADLAM. Well, one day, two years ago . . . .
SHAW.
Ah! Yes, I see what you
mean. Well, yes, we tried, after that slightly catastrophic
day, Emma and I, to continue being
friends—rather, I tried—but one day she
flew into a temper, and I've not seen her since. It's been nearly two years. She told me I was a soulless automaton. Worse, she quoted Oscar Wilde, who said that
I had not an enemy in the world and that none of my friends liked me. [He
laughs.] I always rather enjoy
hearing someone quote that. I dwell in
the suburbs of Oscar's fame. But
Emma—oh—she meant to hurt. And succeeded. [Dreamily:]
Ah, two years ago. [Impatiently:] However, that is not what I need to speak to you about.
HEADLAM. Ah, yes.
And is this confidential? Bernard
and Angelica could . . . .
SHAW. No,
no. Confidential? It's the most public thing in the world. In fact, it's about Oscar Wilde.
[General amazement.]
BERNARD.
Another coincidence! We were just
speaking of . . . him.
SHAW. Of
course you were. There are special editions of all the papers—except The Times, of course. And Queensberry! Why the man is running round
MISS SMYTHE.
Are you serious, Mr. Shaw?
SHAW. I am
always serious, Miss Smythe, Angelica. Never anything else. But see here, Headlam. Here is the situation. You know—everyone does—that Wilde's name has
been removed from the posters advertising his own plays—two plays running at
the same time in the
HEADLAM. Yes, yes.
As Bernard says, we were just discussing the case.
SHAW. Well,
what you may not know is that all of his friends, even that loathsome Bosie who urged him into the whole terrible thing . . . .
BERNARD. Bosie?
MISS SMYTHE. Lord Alfred Douglas, who urged Wilde to sue the Marquess
of Queensberry. Queensberry is
BERNARD. Ah,
yes, I see. Of course.
Sorry for the interruption.
HEADLAM. Go on, Shaw.
SHAW. Well,
the situation is this: almost literally, Oscar, the most popular man in
I found him then to be exactly what everyone has
described—the most wonderful talker in the world. Really: he seemed quite inspired, and there
was no vast audience, no journalists, just the three of us—you remember—and yet
he seemed quite divine—words, in perfect cadence, flowed forth, his
incomparable brain taking the stuff of everyday life and transmuting it into
something as dream-like and wonderful as a Burne-Jones painting.
BERNARD.
Burne-Jones! Really, one must
try to keep clear of all that sort of
thing.
SHAW. I beg
your pardon?
BERNARD.
Sorry. But we were just speaking
of this man Burne-Jones as well.
MISS SMYTHE.
Beware Bernard making resolutions.
SHAW. At all
events, may we come to the point?
SHAW. Very well. Headlam:
You are the only person I know rich enough to whom we might put the following
question: will you kindly provide one thousand, two hundred and fifty pounds so
that Oscar Wilde need not rot in prison any longer?
BERNARD. But
. . . but suppose he flees the country?
I understand all his friends are heading off to
MISS SMYTHE.
Ah, there it is, you see: first, you make resolutions for yourself;
then, you begin making them for other people.
BERNARD. Miss
Smythe!
HEADLAM. Bernard!
You are taking quite the wrong line here, in my opinion.
MISS SMYTHE.
What a lot of money!
BERNARD. Well, the word of an Irish gentleman!
SHAW. Excuse
me, Bernard, but I'm Irish myself and I wouldn't want to begin an argument as
to the respective worth of English or Irish trust on any question whatsoever.
MISS SMYTHE.
Bernard? Silence might be the
wisest counsel in the present situation.
BERNARD. I am
sorry, but all this loathsome . . . .
HEADLAM. Please.
Shaw: let's talk business. The
bail amount is . . . ?
SHAW. Five thousand pounds.
Half of that is being allowed Wilde on his own recognizance.
BERNARD.
Humph! I'd allow a man of that sort nothing at all.
MISS SMYTHE.
Bernard! Please!
BERNARD.
Sorry.
SHAW. That
swine Bosie's elder brother—his name's Percival—has
no money, but, more out of loyalty to Bosie and
hatred of his father than out of any real concern for Oscar, he has agreed to
scrape up half the remaining amount. Has in fact already done so.
That part of the money's certain.
MISS SMYTHE.
I say, how does one do
that—raise over a thousand pounds—if one has no money?
SHAW. And in
the present case, this Percival hates his father almost as much as his brother Bosie does. Another
example of the loving British family, as you see. So this Percival was inspired to hit up all
his aristocratic pals, I expect; and in any case has managed to find twelve
hundred and fifty pounds.
Leverson and
SHAW. . . . and I was commissioned to ask for it.
MISS SMYTHE.
Twelve hundred and fifty pounds!
You realize, Mr. Headlam, that if you do this,
people will think you are doing it for the sake of the notoriety. And there will
be notoriety. The members of your Guild
of St. Matthew will surely . . . well, I can't imagine how they'd receive such
news.
BERNARD.
Well, I certainly can so imagine it!
They'll think it—well!—they will think it . . . very vulgar.
They will think you are being pushy and rushing into an area where no
decent clergyman should be seen at all.
They will think you are wallowing in
SHAW. Why, you
know, Bernard, that's very well phrased, that about
BERNARD [ignoring him]. Mister Headlam, er Stewart, you are not thinking of
. . . well, I mean, it's not as if you were friends like,
like Mrs. Leverson here. You hardly know the man.
MISS SMYTHE.
Mister Headlam?
HEADLAM [after a pause]. I think my duty is pretty plain here . . . peculiarly plain.
BERNARD.
Stewart: you're not thinking of doing it?
HEADLAM. Bernard: I am not thinking of not doing
it. Under the law, Oscar Wilde is an
innocent man.
MISS SMYTHE.
But you hardly know the man!
BERNARD.
Thank God for that!
HEADLAM. Really? I wonder, when I
contemplate the vastness of the cosmos, if God really and truly takes the
time—or, rather, a bite out of His eternity—to give a good curse about
matters of this sort.
BERNARD.
Mister Headlam!
MISS SMYTHE.
Well!
SHAW. Bravo,
Headlam! Shall we take it as settled,
then? I confess I'd not expected to walk
up to you and say please give us twelve hundred and fifty pounds and receive an
affirmative in the next breath. Headlam:
you amaze me.
MISS SMYTHE.
I think we are all of us amazed.
HEADLAM. In heaven's name, why?
BERNARD.
Mister Headlam! Why? Here
is a man universally vilified—and vilified by everyone you know and respect—excepting Mister Shaw here, evidently . . . .
Mrs. Leverson is, I gather, an old friend of This
Man Wilde. But tell me, Mister
Shaw: why are you willing to do this—with
somebody else's money, I mean?
SHAW [cheerfully]. Well, I have none of my own, you see; so I have
always learned to spend other people's money.
It saves expense and prevents confusion.
BERNARD [alone in refusing to laugh]. But, really, Mister Shaw, all joking aside, and in
all seriousness, in the face of all this mass of loathsome evidence, why should
you stand up for this man Wilde? After
all, he said that . . . that bad thing
about you.
SHAW. Bad thing?
BERNARD. About . . . about . . . none
of your friends liking you.
SHAW. Oh, that! Ha!
That is as nothing. I'd better not
tell you what Oscar calls Father Headlam here.
MISS SMYTHE [most
eagerly]. Oh, what? What does a man like .
. like The Man
Wilde call a man like Mister Headlam?
SHAW. He
calls him The Heresiarch.
BERNARD [puzzled]. Heresiarch?
SHAW.
Yes. The
Heresiarch of
HEADLAM [with a smile]. Why, thank you, Shaw. As always, you place matters in quite a fresh
perspective.
SHAW. Not at all. Now,
Bernard asked me why I, though supposedly the butt of one of Oscar's barbs
(though his barbs always bounce off
amusingly; the man is ultimately hopeless as a great comic writer: he has no
malice in him) now you ask why I, though no fan of Oscar, the Dublin snob, am
eager to spend precious time, energies, and other people's money in helping
him. Well, Bernard, I will tell
you.
Some years ago, before the plays, but after the
scandalous Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde
was at the pinnacle of the too-too Aesthetic Movement. True, he was actually developing a
conscience—a soul (he would say). After hearing myself
and some others at a meeting of the Fabian Society, he wrote a beautiful essay
called "The Soul of Man under Socialism." It was vague in the details—the Webbs still think him a mere dilettante—but it was the political vision of a sensitive man and a
quite surprisingly original thinker . . .
a man who, in my opinion, was
still a Dublin snob and wasting his time with that idiotic art-for-art's-sake
movement.
At that time, I'd hardly dared think of writing
plays myself. I was writing a thousand
words a day on novels—five novels which no one read even, or especially, when I
managed to get some of them published.
But I was developing my own political conscience. As a consequence, I decided to get up a
petition in support of the famous Chicago Anarchists. I approached my friends in the Fabians. No signatures. Too radical.
I approached the writers and artists who called
themselves fearless revolutionaries. No
signatures. Too
American.
At the end of all that traipsing and begging,
I had, besides my own,
exactly one signature. It
was that of Mister Oscar Wilde's. He had
absolutely nothing to gain by this quixotic gesture: he knew that he and I
would be the sole signatories to this obviously futile letter of support. He was not political. He owed me nothing. Indeed, try as he might, and he did try, he
couldn't really bring himself to like me.
To him, I am an unusually obnoxious enfant
terrible aging very badly.
MARY [quite
distracted, with a tea tray, which she sets on a table]. Er, Mr. Headlam?
HEADLAM. Yes, Mary.
Thank you for the tea. We will
pour.
MARY. Er, Mr.
Headlam?
HEADLAM. Yes, Mary?
What is it?
MARY. Well,
er, the mistress, that is, she that uset to be the
mistress . . . .
HEADLAM. Mrs. Headlam!
Is she here?
MARY. Yes,
Sir.
HEADLAM. Excuse me, everyone! [He rushes out.]
SHAW. Emma! Is Emma here?
MISS SMYTHE.
So we have been told. She wanted
a "private conference."
BERNARD. He's
taking her to the Gaiety for luncheon.
SHAW.
Well! I am floored. I wonder what the devil she wants.
MISS SMYTHE.
So do we all, Mr. Shaw—though we don't all
invoke the devil to say so.
SHAW. You
don't? Ah, Angelica: you know, I used to
think that your name meant "angelic."
BERNARD. That
is what it means.
SHAW. Not at all. In the Orlando Furioso, Angelica
is the Spirit of Beauty; she is sent by the Saracens to French Christian
soldiers who, being French, all promptly fall at her feet and are then
easily slaughtered by their enemies. You
may think you're angelic, but in actuality you're a variant of Delilah. So, Bernard and Headlam must beware. In your present guise, Angelica, you are a
New Woman. Say whatever you like.
MISS SMYTHE [to Bernard]. You see?
BERNARD. I
see.
[With HEADLAM in tow, EMMA
appears. It is another grand
entrance. Two years, at any rate, have
not withered her. She enters to an awed
silence. Everyone stares. SHAW gapes.
HEADLAM is flustered. EMMA makes
the rounds, silently shaking hands with MISS SMYTHE and BERNARD, finally with
EMMA.
SHAW. As well
as I can ever be with neither the stimulation nor the consolation of your
friendship.
EMMA. Very prettily said.
You are never at a loss for words.
SHAW. Never. [A sigh.] Except around you.
EMMA [regally touching his cheek]. Ah, my Don Juan.
SHAW. Ummm.
HEADLAM. Well, er, Emma . . . well . . . shall we . . . you said something about a
private conference . . . so I was about to book us a table at the Gaiety in the
EMMA. No,
Stewart. It was Simpson's in the
BERNARD. Of
course, Mrs. Headlam, please accept my best wishes. We must allow you some private conference with
your . . .er, with, er, Mister Headlam, that is, Stewart.
SHAW. Certainly. We'll just
clear right out of here if it's privacy you want.
EMMA. Pray be
seated, all of you. Angelica and Bernard
are still part of Stewart's private circle.
HEADLAM. Angelica, would you be kind enough to ask
Mary to bring us another cup? Thanks so
much.
MISS SMYTHE [exiting quickly]. Certainly, Mister Headlam.
EMMA. Well,
Bernard, you and Miss Smythe seem quite
unchanged. Unchanged
for the better.
SHAW. Ah,
dear God, still as witty as she is beautiful!
I can't bear it!
HEADLAM. Shaw.
Please.
SHAW.
Yes. Quite. Sorry.
Carry on.
MISS SMYTHE [re-entering quickly with MARY, who has a
cup and saucer in hand]. Here, let me pour the tea.
EMMA. Ah,
thanks very much.
[MARY assists with the tea;
then she stays, lingering, through the rest of the scene.]
HEADLAM. None for me, thanks.
BERNARD. Nor me.
SHAW. I will
join Emma, naturally.
EMMA. Naturally. In point
of fact, I am very pleased that you're all here. I need to impress upon Stewart the folly of
what he is thinking of doing.
HEADLAM. Emma!
Are you talking about . . . ?
EMMA. The Man
Wilde, of course.
MISS SMYTHE.
But, but, how could you know? We
only just ourselves . . . .
BERNARD. Yes,
really, Mister Shaw and the, er, lady just arrived . . . .
EMMA. Oh, I
knew it before Stewart did.
HEADLAM . In Heaven's name, Emma, why not? I have already decided, in fact, to do
so. Just before you arrived, I gave my
word to Shaw.
EMMA. Ah,
your word. Now, "honor's at the
stake," is that it?
SHAW [sotto voce ]. Grrr. Shakespeare again!
EMMA. Ah,
Stewart, I see that you are unchanged—possibly not for the better. You
realize that Shaw will use your nobility, not to mention your money, to further
his own ends while making you a scapegoat.
And, Stewart, make no mistake: you will be made a scapegoat. They will stone you—and I mean literally
stone you. Queensberry is roaring
through
BERNARD. Why,
of course, Mrs. Headlam! It's what I've
been saying all the morning.
EMMA. Miss Smythe?
MISS SMYTHE.
Oh . . . I agree. Mister Headlam
sees it as a matter of law—an innocent man, and all that. But there are other, larger, issues here.
HEADLAM. Really? What could possibly be a larger issue than our
whole fundamental conception of law and justice: a man is innocent until
adjudged guilty and not one minute before.
Shaw? Shaw, don't you agree with
me? Shaw?
SHAW [who has been staring at EMMA all this time]. Hmmm? What?
Wilde? Oh, I don't care. Let the Irish blighter rot.
HEADLAM. Shaw!
SHAW [still dreamily outrageous]. Ah do
you see this woman, Headlam, really see her?
Oh, yes, love is enough.
BERNARD. I
suppose that is a saying of this man
Wilde?
MISS SMYTHE.
Actually, Bernard, it's William Morris.
BERNARD. Is
he . . . one of them?
HEADLAM [gazing thoughtfully at BERNARD]. I think I do
begin to see. I begin to see. . . fear. But of
what are we so afraid? Emma, why did you come here to tell me this? Why should it matter so much—matter I mean, to
you? You are, after all, friends with
EMMA.
HEADLAM. Why, Emma . . . .
SHAW.
Emma! How conventional of you!
EMMA. You may recall, Juan, that it was my very
conventionality which precipitated this upheaval in our lives. You recall Stewart's reaction to my brief
flirtation with the unconventional? I
have thought it over, these past two years:
I like the conventional, the
normal: you can count on it; it's real; it's normal ; it's healthy.
EMMA [ignoring her sarcasm]. But you,
Stewart, if you do this, you will go down in history as the only man in the
kingdom to help a man everyone rightly deplores and despises. You will be aiding a man judged to be an
abomination in the sight of God and man.
It is a disgrace from which you will never recover, and some of that
disgrace will cling to me . . . as well as to all those close to you—Angelica
and Bernard, even your precious Guild of St. Matthew. You will be throwing away absolutely
everything you have ever worked for.
[Silence.]
HEADLAM [finally]. Well, Shaw. What do you say? You're my only ally.
SHAW [still staring at EMMA]. She is too beautiful to disagree with.
HEADLAM. Shaw!
Seriously: what would you do?
SHAW. Headlam. You ask me
to be serious. I am rarely placed in
such a situation. But let me say this:
if I were you, and Emma were to come back into my
life, I would do absolutely anything that she should return to me. This could prove to be a sort of last chance
for you. Do you love this woman, or do
you not?
HEADLAM [with quiet intensity]. I have loved her so much that . . . well, when Wilde
talked about "the love that dare not speak its name," I felt
the truth of it: this is what I have felt so keenly—the kind of love one experiences
only once in one's life. Have not all of
us, at some time, felt such a love?
[He pauses.
BERNARD looks over at MISS SMYTHE, who catches her breath, looks at
Headlam involuntarily and then looks down miserably. HEADLAM sees this, and the
shock of recognition shows in his face.]
HEADLAM. Angelica . . . .
SHAW. Beware,
Headlam: in a previous existence she led
thousands of men to ruin.
MISS SMYTHE.
Oh. [She can hardly speak.]
Mister Headlam, Stewart: yes, I
have loved you. I do love you.
[She pauses. She can hardly
believe that, after all these years, she has said it.] But if you will not listen to Mrs. Headlam,
and I know better than anyone how you love her, you certainly will not be
swayed by me. [She stands up.] Well! Having said it, I can remain no longer. Good bye, Stewart. In fact, good-bye,
everyone. [With tears in her eyes, she leaves quickly.]
SHAW. Well,
the Saracens would have been most disappointed.
Of course, they were after the French and hadn't encountered good solid
English virtue.
BERNARD. Oh,
bother the French! Please, Mister
Headlam!
HEADLAM [growing hard and resolved in the midst of the confusion]. What about yourself, Bernard? Can you no longer be associated with such a
one as myself?
BERNARD. Mister
Headlam, I have admired you more than anyone I ever . . . . But, please, you are making a terrible,
terrible mistake. As Mrs. Headlam says,
and says truly, you will be throwing away everything you have ever worked
for. And for what?
HEADLAM. For justice, Bernard, for
justice.
EMMA. This is
impossible. To you, Stewart,
abstractions have a solider reality than human beings, than your own life. One of the many human flaws, you see,
occasioned by your priestly perfection.
HEADLAM [shocked by the bitterness of her sarcasm]. Oh, Emma.
I . . . I have loved you.
EMMA.
Yes. And everyone loves you. Poor Miss Smythe.
Bitterly ironic, isn't it?
Love! Well, there's nothing to be
done. I wish there were. I don't know why I hate it so much. Love! And the way you are always dancing before the
multitudes. I wish I could hate it and
love you—on the model of your favorite quotation about hating the sin and
loving the sinner, another of your favorite passages I have never been able to
understand.
HEADLAM [gasping, with tears in his eyes]. Oh, Emma . . . I have loved
you.
EMMA [icily]. No doubt, Stewart, no doubt. But it proves to be a love which cannot turn
into what love, what normal love,
must turn into.
BERNARD [after a small pause]. Er, Mrs. Headlam, what is that?
EMMA. A livable way of life.
[She draws on her gloves.] Perhaps, Bernard, you would accompany me
to the carriage? That is, if you, like
Angelica, will be leaving?
BERNARD [rising]. Thank you, Mrs. Headlam. Truly, I must. Yes! [He hears Destiny calling.] I must leave. And it would be an honor to see you to your
carriage. Goodbye, goodbye, everyone.
[BERNARD and EMMA exit.]
HEADLAM [after
a bleak moment of gazing at the emptiness which Emma has left behind, going to
his desk, writing for a moment, then handing SHAW a scrip]. Here, Shaw.
The money.
I'd better give it you before you rush off after them
. . . after
Emma. Not that I would blame you.
SHAW [coolly pocketing the scrip].
Thanks, Headlam. [Exiting]
By the way, never have a love whose name you can't speak. Bad for your insides. Always express it as loudly and fully as you
can, and you'll live to be 90, as I intend to do. I'll give this to Leverson,
who will get Wilde out of prison. I
imagine that Queensberry will continue to hound him; but, of course, Oscar will
be surrounded by all two of his friends.
HEADLAM. Thank you,
SHAW. Oh we
will—as well as the money. Good-bye,
Headlam. [Exits with
[HEADLAM looks at the door,
through which most of his life has just walked out. There is a light change: we had not noticed
that the sun has moved away from the stained glass window. He turns toward the desk again.]
HEADLAM [with a start]. Mary! I'd
forgotten . . . .
MARY. Saving
your presence, Mister Headlam, but I must give notice. [Takes off
her apron.] I am very sorry, Sir, but . . . .
HEADLAM. That's all right, Mary. I understand.
If you need a reference . . . .
MARY. That's
all right, Mister Headlam; very kind of you, I'm sure, but a reference from you
wouldn't do me no good now. [Exits.]
[HEADLAM, now alone, paces, shaking his head. After a few moments, the first sound comes. Then the sounds of a crowd gathering come nearer. At last, a stone is thrown through the stained glass window. Headlam crouches and covers his head as the lights dim to blackout.]
ACT II
Scene 2
[The stained glass window becomes a screen. From the blackout, there slowly appears on
the screen a moving silhouette of a London hansom cab, swaying gently from side
to side; the sounds become louder--the
sounds of the cab's wheels scraping over
the paving stones, the soothing sound of the horse's clip-clop, clip-clop.
The 70-year old HEADLAM once
again mounts his pulpit and clicks on his electric light, as the sounds fade. He addresses the audience.]
HEADLAM. I wonder how many of you here in Saint Paul’s
tonight might appreciate the fact that I found the experience of having been
stoned very nearly exhilarating? Ever
since that strange conversation with Mister New Man in gaol
I was aware of wanting something . . . something new, something solitary. Perhaps it was the effect of reading Mister
Stevenson's little shocker about Dr. Jekyll, but I became aware that there were
two Stewart Headlams:
yes, the public Reverend Father has gone on as bumptiously as ever, and quite
possibly I did some genuine
good. Certainly, quite aside from the
Guild of St. Matthew and all that sort of thing, I felt that helping Mister Oscar
Wilde was clearly a good.
But I was also aware that there was another—younger?
older?—self that slowly emerged. Perhaps I was searching for God—and not the
God of my Bishop or Bernard, no, not the God of The Righteous Certainties. Perhaps—dare I say this?—I was searching for
a God within—within myself, you understand.
That boy—Mister New Man—made
me think that perhaps our publically accepted version of morality was quite
wrong—or, at the very least, that "there are more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our
philosophies." I often found the cliché,
"things are not as they seem," lurking in my mind.
Therefore, from the beginning, my sympathies favored
Mister Wilde. Surely it was right to
help free him from a monstrous injustice.
I admit I was unprepared for the aftermath—the final and complete
breakup of my household, Emma's response, Shaw's, the stone shattering my
beautiful window.
Ernest Leverson came round
to see me on the Tuesday Mister Wilde was released. He told me of the behavior of Queensberry and
his pugilists: after bail was at last secured, and the poor man released, the Marquis
and his band of ruffians followed Mister Wilde from prison and caused him to be
ejected from two hotels. They would
"raise the street" against him, they said; and I myself had good
reason to know they could and would.
Poor Wilde!
That Tuesday night he fled to his brother's house. He had literally nowhere else to go. The brothers, you see, had not been on good
terms. Willie defended Oscar by going
round saying that any woman in
So, past
At the Leversons, some few
friends paid calls and urged him to flee.
Even Ada—whom he nicknamed Sphinx—sent a note
up to the nursery and urged him to follow his own wife's advice to live
somewhere on the Continent. He came down
to dinner, as he did every evening in their home, exquisitely dressed. He handed
Only a few weeks: then, the third and final trial. To my astonishment, Ernest asked me if I could escort Mister Wilde to the Old
Bailey. There were, he said, no other
friends to ask.
Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, I
thought. So each day of that terrible
trial, I collected him from the Leversons in the
morning and drove with him to court.
There were jeers and hoots in the street. Prostitutes, perhaps including some Emma had
seen under
In gravely accompanying Mister Wilde through these
strange scenes, I had at last
achieved a kind of solitude: I was the scapegoat's shepherd.
Wilde's manner to me was quite formal—gracious,
almost regal. He certainly was not the
divine talker Shaw and I had met at that Naval Exhibit, but he was calm and
courageous. He thanked me once for the
bail and assured me that he would not leave the country. It was a simple matter of having given his
word to me and to his mother, and no more need be said.
We spoke very little on our drives to and from the
Old Bailey. When we did speak, the
subject was always immediate and practical and related to the day's proceedings
in court. Only rarely did he say
something startling. We saw a beggar
being driven off by a policeman: and he said, "Failures are always
fascinating." And, as we drove
past Newgate, he said, "Prisons are terrible
places: one should never try to reform a man." His pronunciation of reform showed what he
meant.
He was even more silent on returning from the Old
Bailey. The one exception was the
penultimate day, the last time I was to drive him back. As we
drove in silence, he suddenly said, "You know, Headlam, at one point today
I thought: the things they are saying about me are actually quite
wonderful. They make me out to be a
scarlet scoundrel, who merits vitriolic denunciation by a Cicero or a Savanorola. If I
could be someone else and listen to them, why, they would be quite
thrilling. And thus, you know, Headlam,
I discovered a great truth today: the point is never what is said about one; the point is always who says it."
Before stepping from the cab, he stopped for a
moment, shook his head, and said, more to himself than to me, "Still,
those thundering denunciations, the vile corruptions, the national disgrace . .
. and all about inter-crural intercourse." His slightly maniacal laugh indicated that
he knew it was nearly over and that the catastrophe was now full upon him.
The next morning we both knew would be the
last. There was simply no chance of
acquittal, and that evening he would be driven not to an exquisite dinner at
the Leversons but hauled away in a police van to the
ugliness of Pentonville Prison.
We said nothing on that last drive. When the cab stopped, I took his hand, shook
it, and wished him well. He brushed away
a tear and said, "Father Headlam, you have been a good friend; I am
forever grateful; I should never have endured this without your help."
The last day of the trial: more furious denunciations and appeals to the salvation of national
purity. Guilty! The judge, Mr. Justice Wills, refused to wait
so much as five minutes before sentencing.
He delivered himself of yet another
furious denunciation: this was the most terrible case he had ever heard, and he
imposed the harshest sentence he could—two years at hard labor—adding that it
was not nearly harsh enough.
I had involved myself originally because of the
principle of a fair trial, but I became revolted by what I heard in this third
trial. I was,
you understand me, revolted by the prosecution, by the state—not by the pitiful
defense. I am still proud of the fact
that, as sentence was passed, I called, "Shame!" as loudly as I
could. I am pleased: that "Shame"
has been recorded in every version of the trial.
After my "Shame," rang through the court,
Wilde said, "And I, my Lord, am I allowed to say nothing?" And Mister Justice Wills simply waved his
hand, waved the poor man away into two years' of such misery and degradation as
none in this church can imagine.
Often, very often, I thought of Wilde in those two
years. Occasionally I was introduced as the
man who went bail for Wilde; but, Emma's fears proved unfounded; for,
in actuality, everyone seemed to want to forget the whole matter. So I went on, being disapproved of by my
Bishop, suffering a loss of membership in the Guild of St. Matthew and loss of
readers to my Church Reformer.
Bernard formed his own guild—The Battalion for A
Better Morality. It sank almost
immediately. Perhaps it was the
alliteration. Angelica came to see me,
but both of us were too awkward to resume our former, er, relationship. Emma and I did actually have lunch in the
In my loneliness, I considered the possibility. And now, like that cleric in the American
Hawthorne's work, let me confess from this
pulpit: throughout Wilde's imprisonment,
I had two years of turbulent dreams of desire:
I would dream of Emma one night, Miss Smythe
the next, and Lily Langtry on the third.
There would be one night of complete rest. Then the cycle would begin again. However, to find out whether I was one of the"Unspeakables," I naturally had to look up
that word Wilde had used in the hansom cab—"inter-crural." It means between-the-thighs. Wilde was being savagely punished because he
was physically attracted to the thighs, and so forth, of young men of 20 or
thereabouts. I pondered this. And then I studied the matter: I looked—from every angle I decently could—at
the classical statues in the
Of course, during the day, I wrote my articles and
made my speeches. If anything, I became
even more insistent that Christianity means social justice. [Almost
angrily:] I mean, after all, the Lord's Prayer says, "Give us this day our daily bread." It does not say give me my daily bread: we've no right to our bread at all unless we
share it.
So the two years passed. And often I wondered if Mister Wilde should
be "reformed."
Again, it was Ernest Leverson
who called on me in May of 1897. He
asked if I could meet Wilde as he came out of prison. Again: paucity of friends.
"I realize," he said, "that Oscar
might observe that I am turning you into a ferry conveyance for criminals. But . . . can you do this?"
I agreed, and, very early in the morning and from
the very gates of Pentonville Prison I found myself once
again escorting Mister Wilde in a hansom cab.
This time he came to my own house in
[A match strikes in the
darkness. A cigarette is feelingly
inhaled. Lights come up to reveal OSCAR
WILDE sitting in a chair, in HEADLAM'S drawing room, about to drink that first
cup of coffee. His manner is regal. For some little time: silence. OSCAR audibly enjoys the cigarette: the
sounds he makes are very nearly sexual.
But they are as nothing compared to his addressing the coffee. He raises the cup reverently to his lips and
sips. There is a catch in his breath.]
OSCAR.
Oh! Oooooh.
[He attends completely to
the coffee. He finishes, almost licks,
the cup.]
OSCAR. Oh
brave new world that hath such caffeine in it!
[He looks about the room, sighs, says to himself:] So was Adam on the first day of creation.
[The 40-year old HEADLAM
enters.]
OSCAR. Ah,
Father Headlam, yours is a beautiful home, and your drawing room is
divinely—or, perhaps, it's diabolically—red.
Thank you, my friend, for your succor and for offering it in such
enchanting surroundings. You are
positively showering the blessings
from your priestly office upon me.
HEADLAM. Not at all, Mister Wilde. I am honored and happy to be of service.
OSCAR. I can
scarcely believe it was but yesterday that I was in residence at Reading Gaol. You know, the Governnor is a good man and we became quite fond of each
other at the last. His wife is a
charming creature. She asked me to stay
on through the summer: she thought I was the gardener. I explained that, alas, in this, I was unable
to oblige her: I required a change of
scene.
HEADLAM. Even in such a place as Reading Gaol, Mister Wilde, I am certain that you could not remain
for long unknown.
OSCAR. Well,
it was yesterday when I was leaving
Later, that day, as we approached the Twysford Railway Station, I saw a rose bush, just breaking
into bud. It glowed with life. I spread my arms out and said, "Oh
beautiful world, oh beautiful world!"
One of the good officers, concerned that notoriety might precipitously
fall upon me, restrained my arms, and said, "Now, then, Mister Wilde, you
mustn't give yourself away like that.
You're the only man in
I thanked him sincerely and we went on.
Do you know one of the punishments that happens to people who have been away? They are not allowed the read the Daily Chronicle. Now a warder called Martin was a good,
good man and wonderful friend to me in those last several months. [Suddenly serious.] He told me that a poor prisoner called
Prince, whom all the other prisoners could see was
obviously a poor half-wit, had been sentenced to twenty-four lashes for
malingering. On my last night in Reading,
that is what I heard—piercing shrieks, howls—and I knew that either I was going
mad at last or that some wretched man was being flogged. Martin explained that it was indeed this poor
Prince! Martin also helped me pay the
fines for three small children thrown in gaol because
they had no money. They'd been caught
snaring rabbits on a rich man's preserve. Think of it! Martin
was quite wonderful. He even slipped,
unseen, a little biscuit to the smallest of the children as they were about to
be put into their cells. They were quite
terrified. I knew their feeling.
[Recovering his lighter tone.] But it was the wonderful Martin who also gave me,
most days, the Daily Chronicle. For me, it was the every-other Daily Chronicle. But if he had not done that, I should
have emerged this morning like Rip Van Winkle.
Thanks to Martin, I am An Informed
On the train, however, the two good officers were
aghast at my request that I be allowed to read the Daily Chronicle. "No!" they thundered together. "No!"
Well, I then requested that I be allowed to remain
shadowed from prying eyes by hiding behind the Daily Chronicle. I suggested
to them that their plain duty—to keep the Daily
Chronicle out of the hands of the criminal classes—could be accomplished
while allowing me to hold the newspaper upside
down. Though puzzled, they agreed to
this. And so I read the Daily Chronicle all the way from Twysford to
HEADLAM [holding up a paper with a huge headline]. WILDE RELEASED. This can certainly be read at any angle.
OSCAR. Well,
you see, that is the only way to remain in the memory of the reading classes.
HEADLAM. Mister Wilde, is there anything else I might
get for you?
OSCAR. Not at all, my dear Headlam, you wonderful, wonderful man. Tell me, speaking of wonders, do you believe
in the miracles of Jesus?
HEADLAM [promptly]. I believe they are the most
profound symbols for our age.
OSCAR. Ah,
yes. But did they happen? I thought of little else while I was
away.
HEADLAM. Really!
You were thinking of . . . Jesus
the redeemer? Jesus
the reformer?
OSCAR. Of Jesus the
individual. Was this a personality beautiful enough to persuade people that
water became wine? Did this most individualist
of men inspire all the Saint Francis's of the world—men whose beings were so
light and clear and beautiful that the very birds trusted and were
charmed? There is the true ideal: each
of us must realize ourselves completely.
What we truly bring forth from ourselves—that will be our true
salvation. What is deeply ours but
which we fail to bring forth—that will be our destruction.
HEADLAM. That is quite an original view of Our Lord.
OSCAR. Thank
you, Father Headlam. We spoke, on an earlier
occasion, of reform: such was my reformation while I was away.
HEADLAM. A Protestant Reformation of your own?
OSCAR. Well,
I think all the religions of the world to be like the colleges of a great university. But the grandest of these is the Roman
Catholic. It is the most romantic, the
most mysterious, the most beautiful.
HEADLAM. Well, I grant you the beauty, certainly.
OSCAR. You're
Anglo-Catholic. What precisely is the
difference between that and
HEADLAM. Aside from the Pope, not
very much.
OSCAR. Oh, I
think I rather like the Pope, you know.
When in
HEADLAM. Mister Wilde, may I inquire as to your plans?
OSCAR. Ah,
well, I have two of them, you know. One:
I travel to
But I wonder if I am quite ready for
HEADLAM. Yes, I know it.
WILDE. Might
I have a letter taken to
HEADLAM. Certainly.
[HEADLAM puts writing materials on his desk. OSCAR rises, goes to the desk, and begins
writing.]
OSCAR.
"Dear Reverend Fathers . . . . " [Pauses.] Ah, I love
the pomp and circumstance of the Church!
A thousand times more wonderful than "glorious war." [He
scribbles.] Six months, I
think. Yes, a six month stay to help me
bring my thoughts and emotions together, to help me realize as profoundly as I
can the religious vision I have seen while I was away. And then
will I be ready for the world, the flesh, and the devil. [He puts
the note in an envelope.] My dear friend, have you one who might convey
this to
HEADLAM. Of course, Mister Wilde.
OSCAR.
"Mister Wilde." How long it has been since anyone has called
me "Mister Wilde." Simple
courtesy and respect: I learn to savor them.
HEADLAM. Excuse me, Mister Wilde. I'll have this taken to
OSCAR. Well,
perhaps just one more cup of that delicious coffee?
HEADLAM. Of course. [He
exits.]
OSCAR [lights
another cigarette, inhales deeply, exhales in a long sigh]. Ahhhhh. Pity they've no
opium in these. Ah, well, ahead:
HEADLAM [returning with
HEADLAM. Ah.
Your husband displays a little of Mister Wilde's own wit.
OSCAR [entering, pauses a moment in surprise]. Why, my dear
OSCAR. Oh, the heavenly, heavenly sound of laughter. That reveals the divinity of our human destiny.
OSCAR. Thank
you, Sphinx. The circumstances of one's
life are today changed, certainly. But
Destiny may run deeper than even the astounding alternation of prison and
freedom.
HEADLAM. Tell me, Mr. Wilde, were you able to achieve
any sort of inner freedom while you were in solitude . . .
while you were away?
OSCAR. Eventually, Father Headlam.
Eventually, I believe I did. In
the beginning, however, I was as one of the lost souls in the Inferno.
In my second year, when I was permitted to read and
then to write again, I read and re-read Dante. There was an artist who
understood the human condition!
[He rises and declaims the
opening.]
Nel mezzo
[He then recites the following with passionate
clarity.]
"Midway in my life's journey, I went astray
from the straight
road and woke to myself
what wood that was! I never saw so drear,
so rank, so arduous a wilderness!
Its very
memory gives a shape to fear.
Death could scarce be more bitter
. . . . "
[There is a long silence.]
HEADLAM. Is there anything, anything at all, my dear friend, that we can do for you?
OSCAR. Ah,
life itself is only what we do for each other.
HEADLAM. That's very beautiful, Mister Wilde, but, er,
weren't you just saying rather the reverse—about realizing oneself?
OSCAR
[recovering, somewhat, his airiness]. Ah,
well, you forget, my dear Headlam, that in the world of art a thing can be true
. . . and its opposite can be true. Of
course, all the great Romantic artists know this. "I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself." Or this: "Consistency is the hobgoblin
of little minds."
HEADLAM. Waldo Emerson?
OSCAR. Quite so. You are a
perfect brace of scholars. Now, tell me,
dearest Sphinx, how things are with you.
OSCAR. And Ernest? I long to see him.
Both of you have been such good and loyal friends.
OSCAR. Ah,
Sphinx, I now know what "missing" truly
means. From the
heights to the depths. I have
experienced exaltations and depressions such as I hardly knew existed. De profundis: Out of the depths, I cry unto you, O
Lord. You know, I used to think that the
secret of life is pleasure. Now I know
that the secret of life is suffering. I
should have gone mad, truly mad I think, had it not
been for the smallest scrap of human sympathy.
It is the most important thing in life, this ability to feel the pain of
others. My good friend Martin . . . .
HEADLAM. Mister Wilde is referring to one of the
warders in . . . where he has been away.
OSCAR. Yes,
the wonderful Martin. He quite saved my
life. Well, perhaps not: quite possibly
my life has not been saved; I am told
that no prisoner unused to manual labor ever survives a two-year term at hard
labor. I live, but I do not know if I
thrive. Martin, however, saved far more
than my life: he saved my sanity, my belief in the possibility of human
goodness.
OSCAR. Yes?
OSCAR.
Dismissed! Martin?
OSCAR. No,
no. It cannot be! Martin was the one human . . . . You say he was dismissed for giving a
prisoner food?
ERNEST. Yes.
OSCAR. Oh,
great God in Heaven! It must be those
little children. He gave a biscuit to
the smallest of them, a small child.
OSCAR [profoundly
disturbed]. There will never be a
day such as that for me ever again, Sphinx.
Do you know that everyday for the past year, I have wept for one half of
an hour, exactly between two and two-thirty?
That was the very time when, a year ago, I was transferred from Wandsworth to
HEADLAM [responding to a soft knock at the door]. Excuse me. [He
returns with a letter, which he gives to OSCAR.]
OSCAR [seizes
and opens the letter]. Ah, it is the
Church! Let us see . . . "we feel
that a decision to live a religious life cannot be made on short notice" .
. . . My God, they have refused
me! [He
collapses in a chair.] The
OSCAR [quite unembarrassed by the tears that flow down his cheeks]. Thank you, dear Sphinx. Thank you.
[HEADLAM hands ADA a
handkerchief, which she applies to OSCAR'S wet face.]
OSCAR. You
know, upon reflection, when I was in the Old Bailey, perhaps I ought not to
have said that I wouldn't kiss that boy because he was ugly.
HEADLAM [after a slightly awkward silence]. Well . . . it was a turning point, certainly.
[Suddenly] You know, Mister Wilde, although that is the
most famous line to emerge from your trials, there is another which struck me much more forcefully.
OSCAR.
Yes? There were so many.
HEADLAM. Yes!
And you were asked, Mister Wilde, if this deep affection of an elder
toward a young man were the case with the young men you met at
OSCAR.
Yes? I don't quite remember . . .
.
HEADLAM. Well, you said, "Certainly not! One feels that once in one's life, and once
only."
OSCAR. Why,
yes, I did. That is true.
OSCAR. Bosie, of
course.
OSCAR. Ah, it
so difficult to explain. Even one's
closest friends do not quite understand the great love we share. Well, I am now once again an outcast. I go to
Perhaps I should now prepare for
OSCAR [rising and donning a light overcoat, keeping his bulky envelope in
hand]. Ah, I know you do not entirely
understand. No one can, really. But I appreciate your friendship, your
loyalty, and your offer of transit to Victoria Station.
[He hands HEADLAM the
letter.] My dear Father Headlam, you may keep this
letter as proof that I tried—tried to cast myself upon the bosom of Holy Mother
the Church. But I have had the secular
life thrust upon me. I accept my
destiny. Thank you, my friend.
HEADLAM [shaking hands]. Mister Wilde: it has been an honor.
OSCAR. I am
touched, Father Headlam, that you remembered my description of a true and deep
love. Love!
Oh, I have been to the depths of the Inferno.
Yet, I have studied and sought
"I yearned to know just how our image merges
into that circle, and how it
finds its place."
Oh, that thrilling finale of Dante’s great Commedia!
“Tearing my mind in a great flash of light—
already I could feel my being
turned—
by the Love that moves the Sun
and the other stars."
[Exiting with
HEADLAM. Mister Wilde!
OSCAR [turning back]. Yes, my dear reverend friend?
HEADLAM. Mister Wilde, would you, before you go, be
willing to give me your blessing?
OSCAR [tears
again brighten his eyes]. Oh, my
dear Headlam! Nothing astonishes me—excepting,
of course, the daily press—but you have succeeded in astonishing me. [He
raises his right hand.] But, you know, I don't quite know how to do
it. I never learnt. Well . . . here. [He raises his hand, from his heart to his forehead, then blows a
sort of kiss as a blessing;
he smiles and exits.]
[HEADLAM, once more 70, mounts his pulpit
and clicks on his little light as the other lights begin to fade. He begins to say something, stops, shakes his
head, as if to suggest that there is nothing more to say. He raises his right hand and passes on
OSCAR'S blessing to the audience. He
smiles, gives a small bow, and clicks off the light. Fade to black.]
THE END