The Libertine (NHB Modern Plays)
Stephen Jeffreys
THE LIBERTINE
NICK HERN BOOKS
London
www.nickhernbooks.co.uk
Contents
Title Page
Original Production
Introduction
Dedication
Characters
Author's Note
The Libertine
Music
About the Author
Copyright and Performing Rights Information
The Libertine was revived by TRH Productions and Theatre Royal Bath Productions on 31 August 2016 at the Theatre Royal Bath before transferring to the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London. The cast was as follows:
ELIZABETH MALET
Alice Bailey Johnson
TOM AlCOCK
Will Barton
HARRY HARRIS/
Cornelius Booth
JACOB HUYSMANS/
CONSTABLE
KING CHARLES II
Jasper Britton
JOHN WILMOT,
Dominic Cooper
EARL OF ROCHESTER
GEORGE ETHEREGE
Mark Hadfield
ELIZABETH BARRY
Ophelia Lovibond
BILLY DOWNS
Will Merrick
MRS WILL UFTON/
Lizzie Roper
MOLLY LUSCOMBE/
BIG DOLLY/MADAM
CHARLES SACKVILLE
Richard Teverson
JANE
Nina Toussaint-White
ENSEMBLE
Emily Byrt
Jonathan Hansler
Joseph Macnab
James Marchant
Lydia Piechowiak
Director
Terry Johnson
Set and Costume Designer
Tim Shortall
Lighting Designer
John Leonard
Composer
Colin Towns
Casting Director
Ilene Starger
The Libertine presented by Out of Joint, was first performed at the University of Warwick Arts Centre on 20 October 1994 and then on tour culminating at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on 6 December 1994. The cast was at follows:
JANE
Cathryn Bradshaw
ELIZABETH MALET
Amanda Drew
TOM AlCOCK
Bernard Gallagher
CHARLES SACKVILLE/
Barnaby Kay
HARRY HARRIS
ELIZABETH BARRY
Katrina Levon
KING CHARLES II
Tim Potter
BILLY DOWNS
Nicola Walker
GEORGE ETHEREGE
Jason Watkins
JOHN WILMOT,
David Westhead
EARL OF ROCHESTER
MOLLY LUSCOMBE/
Tricia Thorns
MRS WILL UFTON
All other parts played by the company
Director
Max Stafford-Clark
Designer
Peter Hartwell
Lighting Designer
Kevin Sleep
Music
Mickey Gallagher
Introduction
It’s now twenty-two years since the premiere of The Libertine at Warwick Arts Centre in Max Stafford-Clark’s production. In that time the play has enjoyed numerous reincarnations; an American premiere by Chicago’s Steppenwolf with John Malkovich in the lead in a production by Terry Johnson; a radio version directed by the much-missed Claire Grove with Bill Nighy; a film directed by Laurence Dunmore starring Johnny Depp; a reading to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre starring Kevin McNally; and numerous drama-school productions of which the ones at Mountview Theatre School have been the most notable. Most recently there was a splendid revival by Dominic Hill at the Glasgow Citizens Theatre with Martin Hutson in the lead, and now another Terry Johnson production with Dominic Cooper which is in rehearsal as I write.
The Second Earl of Rochester has flitted in and out of my life all this time and my fictionalisation of him has undergone various alterations with each successive version. The Glasgow production and the Bath/London one have provided me with an opportunity to arrive at a new edition of the play which I hope will be definitive.
Two factors were influential in making the journey so tortuous. The first was purely personal: while I was writing the second half of the play in 1994, my mother died and the consequent loss of focus in my life was reflected in my organisation of the material for the original production.
The second factor was a result of the abundance of incident in my subject’s life. Though Rochester was dead at thirty-three, he was involved in many more incidents than can be fitted into a single play. But even though I didn’t dramatise his abduction of a wealthy heiress, his involvement in two battles at sea and his career as a reluctant duellist, I couldn’t resist including in the first production the episode where, as a means of escaping the King’s attentions, he posed successfully for several weeks as a quack doctor in the East End. It was after an early preview of the Steppenwolf production that John Malkovich pointed out to me that I was asking him to play a man in terminal physical decline who simultaneously turns in an astoundingly energetic comic performance as the cod Italian Doctor Bendo. He asked for a new scene immediately and played it the very next evening. Without Doctor Bendo, the whole second half then fell into shape and it’s this version, with a few interpolations from the film and a number of cuts which reflect my evolving taste in dialogue style, that you can read here.
I would like to reiterate my thanks to Max Stafford-Clark, probably the greatest director of new plays the British theatre has ever seen, for commissioning The Libertine in the first place; and to the late Jeremy Lamb, one of Rochester’s biographers, who communicated to me his passion for John Wilmot and all his work. Jeremy’s life and death were appropriately Rochesterian. And I’m indebted to Terry Johnson whose enthusiasm for the play (at least as at the time of writing) seems undimmed.
Rochester was a man who was endowed with every conceivable talent and chose, deliberately and methodically, to waste each one. It is a response to life which still strikes a chord today.
Stephen Jeffreys,
August 2016
For Sue Edwards
Characters
JOHN WILMOT, Second Earl of Rochester
GEORGE ETHEREGE, a playwright
CHARLES SACKVILLE, Earl of Dorset and Middlesex
HARRY HARRIS, an actor
BILLY DOWNS, a young spark
JANE, a prostitute
MOLLY LUSCOMBE, a stage manager
MRS WILL UFTON, a coffee-house proprietor
TOM ALCOCK, a servingman
ELIZABETH BARRY, an actress
ELIZABETH MALET, a country wife
CHARLES II, a monarch
JACOB HUYSMANS, a portrait painter
And PLAYGOERS, WHORES, CLIENTS, GUARDS, WATCH
The action moves continuously from scene to scene without any breaks except for the interval.
Author’s Note
For dramatic reasons I have slightly compressed and rearranged events in Rochester’s life without, I hope, distorting the historical record. In the original production the parts of Sackville and Harris were doubled: I would prefer these parts to be played by two different actors, but if this is not possible, lines ascribed to Sackville in scenes where Harris appears should be taken by Etherege or Downs.
S.J.
Prologue
Lights up. ROCHESTER comes forward.
ROCHESTER. Allow me to be frank at the commencement: you will not like me. No, I say you will not. The g
entlemen will be envious and the ladies will be repelled. You will not like me now and you will like me a good deal less as we go on. Oh yes, I shall do things you will like. You will say ‘That was a noble impulse in him’ or ‘He played a brave part there’, but DO NOT WARM TO ME, it will not serve. When I become a BIT OF ACHARMER that is your danger sign for it prefaces the change into THE FULL REPTILE a few seconds later. What I require is not your affection but your attention. I must not be ignored or you will find me as troublesome a package of humanity as ever pissed into the Thames. Now. Ladies. An announcement. (Looks around.) I am up for it. All the time. That’s not a boast. Or an opinion. It is bone-hard medical fact. I put it around, d’y’know? And you will watch me putting it around and sigh for it. Don’t. It is a deal of trouble for you and you are better off watching and drawing your conclusions from a distance than you would be if I got my tarse pointing up your petticoats. Gentlemen. (Looks around.) Do not despair, I am up for that as well. When the mood is on me. And the same warning applies. Now, gents: if there be vizards in the house, jades, harlots (as how could there not be) leave them be for the moment. Still your cheesy erections till I have had my say. But later when you shag – and later you will shag, I shall expect it of you and I will know if you have let me down – I wish you to shag with my homuncular image rattling in your gonads. Feel how it was for me, how it is for me and ponder. ‘Was that shudder the same shudder he sensed? Did he know something more profound? Or is there some wall of wretchedness that we all batter with our heads at that shining, livelong moment?’ That is it. That is my prologue, nothing in rhyme, certainly no protestations of modesty, you were not expecting that, I trust. I reiterate only for those who have arrived late or were buying oranges or were simply not listening: I am John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester and I do not want you to like me.
ROCHESTER goes. Lights come up on Scene One.
Scene One – Coffee
WILL’s coffee house. ETHEREGE and SACKVILLE sit over coffee at a long wooden table. Each has a pile of pages from a manuscript in front of him. It is a pirated copy of Dryden’s latest play. They rustle and pick their way through it like scavengers. At another table, JANE sits staring into space.
ETHEREGE. Any good bits yet?
SACKVILLE. Couldn’t write a laundry list.
ETHEREGE. Good bits or bad bits, sound the alarm.
SACKVILLE. Couldn’t write the menu at Lockett’s.
ETHEREGE. Be fair, the menu at Lockett’s isn’t posted up in rhymed couplets.
SACKVILLE. And Dryden’s supposed to be the Laureate.
ETHEREGE (rummaging). Good bits, bad bits.
SACKVILLE (stopping). I don’t believe this.
ETHEREGE. Bad bit?
SACKVILLE. Tom’s not really going to put this on, is he?
ETHEREGE. He put the last one on, what was it called?
SACKVILLE. Amboyna.
DOWNS, a fresh-faced young man, comes in nervously.
ETHEREGE. Billy!
SACKVILLE. Amboyna. A propagandist tragedy in blank verse.
ETHEREGE. Billy, join us. Coffee ho!
SACKVILLE. Put more people off fighting for their country than the invention of chain shot.
ETHEREGE. Billy Downs, this is Charles Sackville –
DOWNS (overawed). My lord, I am obliged to –
ETHEREGE. – Lord Buckhurst, Earl of Dorset.
SACKVILLE. And Middlesex.
ETHEREGE. And Middlesex –
SACKVILLE. You left out poxy Middlesex.
ETHEREGE. His Earlship is touchy this morning –
SACKVILLE. It’s a big county.
ETHEREGE. We’ve got the original copy of Dryden’s new play.
SACKVILLE. Friendly actor.
ETHEREGE. Here, have a wadge. Good bits and bad bits, that’s what we’re after.
ETHEREGE doles out a helping of the play to DOWNS,then notices JANE.
(To JANE.) Madam. We are living through a golden age of the Arts and Sciences. Your grandchildren will want you to have partaken. You can’t just sit there cleaning the gubbins out of your ears. Have some of this. (Doles out pages.) Act Four. Find a good bit, find a bad bit, give us a ‘Hola’.
JANE. How do I tell the difference?
ETHEREGE. These days everyone’s a critic. No training required.
JANE. Can’t read much.
ETHEREGE. Look at the shape. It tends to be bad when the characters start conversing in ten-line slabs.
DOWNS. Doesn’t Mr Dryden come in here sometimes?
ETHEREGE. That’s the point. We find the good bits and the bad bits, knock up a quick parody and have it circulating the tables when he makes his entrance this afternoon.
MRS WILL UFTON comes in with dishes of coffee.
MRS WILL. Coffee, gents.
SACKVILLE. Excuse me, Mr Downs, but Dryden doesn’t come in. He slithers in. Like a sewer man entering a blocked privy. He is a squidgy, sanctimonious, shifting sort of gent, the Laureate. I’ll wager any odds he’ll turn Catholic in time for the next reign.
MRS WILL. He always puts his dish back on my tray when he has done with supping. I think that shows distinction.
ETHEREGE. To work, we’ve only got a couple of hours.
SACKVILLE. It ain’t no caper without Johnny.
ETHEREGE. Charlie –
SACKVILLE. Don’t Charlie me. It ain’t no caper and you know it. I can make a stab at Dryden, you can make a stab at Dryden, but no one brings him off like Johnny.
ETHEREGE. Well, he’s banished. Short of bowling down the Palace and begging the King on our benders to bring him back there’s nothing we can do. So bear up.
SACKVILLE. It’s dull without him. We didn’t get Old Rowley back on the throne so he could make things dull.
ETHEREGE. Just keep rallying, good bits and bad bits.
MRS WILL (to JANE). You. Out.
JANE. I ain’t doin’ nuthink.
MRS WILL. I stand for a lot on these premises, but not jades touting for custom.
ETHEREGE. Leave her be, Mrs Will.
MRS WILL. She’s taking up space.
ETHEREGE. I’ll get her a coffee. Here’s a penny.
DOWNS. What’s this play called?
ETHEREGE. Aureng-Zebe.
DOWNS. Aureng-Zebe?
ETHEREGE. He’s the hero. Give all the characters funny names, set it in a place no one’s ever been to and talking in blank verse don’t seem so damned silly.
MRS WILL. Costumes come cheaper too. They get them towels out.
SACKVILLE. Bad bit, got a bad bit, got a very, very bad bit.
ROCHESTER comes in and stands at the back, watching.
ETHEREGE. That’s the spirit!
DOWNS. Let’s have it, my lord.
SACKVILLE. This is Arimant, Governor of Agra.
SACKVILLE stands and declaims in the heroic manner.
‘I come with haste surprising news to bring:
In two hours’ time since last I saw the king,
The affairs of Court have wholly changed their face:
Unhappy Aureng-Zebe is in disgrace;
And your Morat, proclaimed the successor,
Is called, to awe the city with his power.
Those trumpets his triumphant entry tell,
And now the shouts waft near the citadel.’
The WITS hoot and thump.
Now you have to admit, George –
ETHEREGE. I do, I do, that is an absolute –
DOWNS. It is a turd of a speech.
SACKVILLE. Some poor toss of an actor will have to soldier through that.
ROCHESTER. Gents, the speech is out of date:
The affairs of Court have wholly changed their tack:
Wronged Aureng-Zebe now is summoned back.
SACKVILLE. Johnny!
ETHEREGE. We were pining for you, even now we were pining!
The WITS greet ROCHESTER, but he keeps his distance.
ROCHESTER. Dryden is the quarry, is he?
Good bits and bad bits.
ETHEREGE. Are we so easy to fathom?
ROCHESTER. When I wake up in the country I dream of being in London. Then when I come to London I hate it. Except for Jane.
ETHEREGE. Put her down, this ain’t Dog and Bitch Yard.
MRS WILL. I’ll fetch coffee for you, my lord.
ROCHESTER. And one for my Jane too.
MRS WILL goes.
SACKVILLE. Come on, John, tell us about Old Rowley, why did he bring you back?
DOWNS. Why did he banish you in the first place, my lord?
ROCHESTER. Who is this beardless youth who has been allowed out to hear my corrupting conversation?
ETHEREGE. This is Mr Downs, Mr Downs, the Earl of –
ROCHESTER. How old are you, Mr Downs?
ETHEREGE. Sixteen, my lord.
ROCHESTER. Young man, you will die of this company, no, don’t laugh I’m serious. But what does it matter if you die? This is only conversation, you understand, it is not to be confused with religion or philosophy, we talk like this because we are bored, our boredom is so intense we make dangerous things happen. (Pause.) Well, I have warned you and you have not escaped so let the consequences be on your head.
ETHEREGE. Johnny?
ROCHESTER. This reign is a shambles, do you not think? Coffee ho! My father risked life and limb hiding that thing Charles up an oak tree, trudged by night WITH A HAWK ON HIS WRIST– sophisticated notion of disguise my pater had – TRUDGED through some particularly swampy bits of England on a third-rate horse in the company of tedious people and to what purpose?