The Libertine (NHB Modern Plays) Page 5

  HUYSMANS. I find Lady Rochester a more elegant and interesting subject.

  ROCHESTER. You are wide of the point, sir. Elegance, interest, all very well in their way, but what do they illuminate? We can all hide underneath periwigs and extravagant dresses and discourse of the Italian gardening tradition, but what are we?

  MALET. Am I not, then, an apt partner for you to sit with?

  ROCHESTER. You have missed the thrust of my remark. It is no matter.

  MALET. Am I not apt?

  ROCHESTER. You are apt, Elizabeth, you are very apt.

  MALET. But you would prefer a monkey?

  ROCHESTER stands suddenly and snatches a glass of claret from the tray. He drinks it in one gulp and, when ALCOCK refills it, snatches the glass and carries on drinking.

  You would rather be painted with a monkey?

  ROCHESTER. Really, Elizabeth, it is of a muchness. You are both very apt in your different ways.

  MALET. And wherein does my aptness lie?

  ROCHESTER. It was a flippant observation –

  MALET. In flippant observation we may find much truth –

  ROCHESTER. We laugh at the monkey because its tricks are so close to ours. Human affairs are carried on at such a nonsensical rate that I think it a fault to laugh at the monkey when I compare his condition with mankind. We sit here in our finery so that our grandchildren can point us out to strangers, but it does not tell the truth. In this portrait I am no better than a monkey who knows the name of his ancestors.

  MALET. And I?

  ROCHESTER. A gaudy female monkey, gloating over the opulence of your cage.

  MALET goes abruptly. HUYSMANS follows.

  I love London. Everyone catches its generous spirit so quickly. I do not mean to upset people, Alcock, but I have to speak my mind, because what is in my mind is always more interesting than what is happening in the world outside my mind, and if I cannot connect the two, I will become mad, d’you see?

  ALCOCK. It makes you impossible to live with, though, d’you see?

  ROCHESTER. Alcock, did I praise you for your blunt manner?

  ALCOCK. I think it was your reason for employing me, sir.

  ROCHESTER. Good, don’t forget that. I shall endeavour to retrace the footsteps of the conversation with my wife.

  He is about to go, then turns back to ALCOCK.

  But do you not remember the way Mrs Barry looked on stage?

  ALCOCK. You should not think playhouse thoughts, my lord.

  ROCHESTER. Playhouse thoughts are all the thoughts I have.

  ALCOCK. Go to your wife, my lord.

  ROCHESTER. I’ll be obliged for the rest of that claret before I obey your orders.

  ALCOCK gives ROCHESTER the rest of the bottle.

  D’you know, a dog bit me on the leg in Covent Garden while I was reeling in this morning. I felt such ill will to the creature that I wished it married and living in the country. Alcock?

  ALCOCK. My lord.

  ROCHESTER. Do it.

  MALET comes in. ALCOCK goes.

  MALET. If I had mighty hopes of our marriage, it was because you were so impassioned that you abducted me and went to the Tower for it. I had never expected so much of a man. I was not to know that this would be the best gesture of your love.

  ROCHESTER. It was the most hot-headed.

  MALET. It was the best. It made me believe it was me you wanted and not my estate.

  ROCHESTER. I carved your name on the wall of my cell. Though had you been a pauper, my love would have been more severely tested.

  MALET. I could bear more easily the marriages of other wealthy ladies I have witnessed. For there to be no pretence of passion or affection, to be merely a housekeeper and a conduit for the noble line. But when you are away from me you write so beguilingly of how you miss me. And so my feelings are kept in play only to be shunned and spurned on our reunion. I do not think you mean to torture me, but it is a torture to be informed of passion at a distance and then in the flesh to be so reviled.

  ROCHESTER. You know I always mean it to be well when we are together. But after a few weeks I find I have no gift for it. In my mind I am somewhere else.

  MALET. Then cut me out of your heart completely and have done. I think you only hold on to me to remind yourself that you once did have such a thing as a heart. You despise the King and his politics, you hurl your lampoons at the Court and your companions and you turn your back on God. Do not exclude me from your contempt any longer, treat me the way you treat the rest of the world.

  He holds her.

  ROCHESTER. Do not command me to do something beyond my power.

  MALET. Sometimes I fall to thinking. Is the fault to be laid at my door? Were I a better wife, you would have a better character. You would not need the whorehouse and the inn –

  ROCHESTER. There is no man born has no need of the whorehouse and the inn –

  MALET. It is sin, John. I know you despise me when I speak in this way, but you are daily worn away by sin and ungodliness. You turned your back on God for the same reason you turn your back on the King. Because you cannot allow of a power which is stronger than yourself.

  Suddenly BARRY bursts in. She is dressed as a ragged Ophelia and carries some mangy flowers.

  BARRY. There’s rosemary, that’s for rememberance; pray you, love, remember: and there’s pansies that’s for thoughts. (To MALET.) There’s fennel for you, and columbines; (To ROCHESTER.) There’s rue for you and here’s some for me: we may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays: I would give you some violets but they had none down the market and in any case you are not faithful, so it would not be fitting. For if you may walk into my world, I may surely walk into yours and be as great a nuisance to you as you have been to me.

  BARRY goes.

  MALET. How refreshing is the company in this town. She is a playhouse creature, is she not?

  ROCHESTER. Actress.

  MALET. And when your eyes shone the other day, they were shining for her.

  ROCHESTER. They were.

  MALET. I see that I am even more of an obstacle to your life in London than I had supposed. I shall go upstairs and set Jenny to packing right away. I will be gone by the morning.

  MALET goes. HUYSMANS returns.

  HUYSMANS. Your man asked that I return to draw you alone.

  ROCHESTER. If you are working upon my eyes, why then, my wife may take her rest.

  HUYSMANS resumes. Some moments, then ALCOCK comes on. He carries a monkey and places it next to ROCHESTER.

  Excellent fellow, Alcock. How much did the organ-grinder require?

  ALCOCK. I gave him ten pound.

  ROCHESTER. Ten pound. The fellow has parted with his lifelong companion for the price of a periwig. Is there not a lesson there, gentlemen? Please, Mr Huysmans. Immortalise us.

  HUYSMANS draws. The lights fade around him.

  HUYSMANS. The monkey would not sit still. It soiled beyond repair four handsome volumes of Pliny the Elder and shredded much of Sir Philip Sidney. It was a mean and loathsome afternoon’s work. And yet, that winter when I finally finished the portrait in my studio, I was struck by its truth. Of all those bewigged men I painted, bothering posterity with their long faces, he is the only one aware of his own absurdity.

  Blackout.

  Scene Seven – Sundial

  Midnight. Whitehall Gardens. To one side of the stage is CHARLES’s favourite sundial, an expensive, phallic object. Some drunken cavorting off, then CHARLES, ROCHESTER, SACKVILLE, ETHEREGE and DOWNS come on.

  CHARLES. So I said to her, ‘I don’t care which duchess you are, you’re not bringing my horse into your bedchamber.’

  They all laugh.

  Thus far will I go with you, gentlemen, and no further.

  ROCHESTER. The fresh air begins to dander up his cods.

  CHARLES. My wits, my sparks, we have caroused, have we not!

  DOWNS. We have.

  ROCHESTER. Poor Nelly, just drifting off and the great royal
nudger shoves you from the arms of Morphius.

  CHARLES. But you know the difference between us. At seven I’ll be on the tennis court and by eight I’ll be running the country again. Where will you all be? Goodnight, gentlemen.

  CHARLES goes.

  ETHEREGE. Goodnight, Your Majesty.

  ROCHESTER. Give Nelly one from all of us.

  DOWNS. The King! I took wine with the King!

  SACKVILLE. You talk of Nelly, but you don’t know. I had her. And before he did.

  ROCHESTER. Anon it starts.

  DOWNS. He called me Billy and talked to me on the subject of fob watches.

  SACKVILLE. Seventeen years old!

  DOWNS. And he listened to what I said. How I always wind mine up using the thumb and third finger. Nodded as if I had spluttered something sage.

  SACKVILLE. Such hair!

  ROCHESTER. The skin, lactescent in all probability.

  SACKVILLE. Her skin… how was it… lactescent!!

  ROCHESTER. Someone do something with him.

  SACKVILLE. I suckled there, like a hog at a trough!

  ROCHESTER. He’s turning my stomach.

  ETHEREGE. Come on, Charlie, let’s go to Dog and Bitch Yard. That nice Dolly Mossop’ll snatch frig you, you’ll just about manage that.

  SACKVILLE. I don’t want Dolly Mossop, I want my Nell.

  DOWNS. I’ll have Dolly Mossop. Has anyone got any money?

  ROCHESTER. George’ll pay, George makes money out of writing. Not exactly something a real gentleman should do, of course –

  SACKVILLE. It’s too late to go and fuck Dolly Mossop.

  DOWNS. How can it be too late?

  SACKVILLE. By now she’ll be into double figures. I hate it when they smell more of man than they do of woman.

  DOWNS. Late? It’s not late.

  SACKVILLE. It is late.

  ETHEREGE. Johnny!! What time is it?

  SACKVILLE. You’re standing next to the most sophisticated timepiece in Europe, you tell me.

  ROCHESTER. It’s a sundial, shufflehead, we’re in the dark.

  ETHEREGE. M’Lord Buckhurst does a good impression of the sun. Go on, Chas, spread your little beams.

  SACKVILLE imitates the sun. He improvises verse.

  SACKVILLE. ‘Behold I am Phoebus, light’s speedy chariot:

  Harbinger of day, I put dark night to rout:

  My silver beams that speed through night’s thick cloak

  Do something something in that realm of smoke.’

  ROCHESTER. And he thinks Dryden’s bad.

  SACKVILLE. ‘Creatures of earth, I bring thee heat and light

  I make the milkmaid and the king alike seem bright – ’

  DOWNS. Brighter, brighter.

  ETHEREGE. Still can’t tell the time.

  SACKVILLE. ‘Great though thou art, pale moon – ’

  ROCHESTER. Chas!

  ETHEREGE. It’s not working, Chas. You did well, but –

  ROCHESTER (approaching the sundial). Let me peruse this device, I am not so much in addled alley as the rest of you… quarter past, five and twenty… I can’t read it…

  ETHEREGE. Johnny –

  ROCHESTER. What the fuck is wrong with this sundial?

  ETHEREGE. Steady, Johnny.

  ROCHESTER. He calls himself King!! The greatest patron of the arts and sciences in Europe. The nimble mind, bounding with ease from subject to subject. Cunt spends sixty thousand pounds on a clock and it doesn’t work in the dark.

  ETHEREGE. Come on, Johnny.

  ROCHESTER snaps a bit of the sundial off. There is an awful, sobering silence.

  Look, we’ll slip away, it’s just a bit of metal, could have been anyone –

  SACKVILLE. Could have been a gust –

  ETHEREGE. Johnny –

  ROCHESTER. I hate this thing. I hate the way it stands here fucking the sky, fucking time. So you’ve got a big dick, Charlie, why ram it down our throats all the time? Isn’t it enough that you’re the King? Must there be nothing left for anyone else?

  DOWNS. He wants the lot.

  ETHEREGE. Look, I’m off home, got this committee tomorrow morning –

  ROCHESTER. ARE WE GENTLEMEN OR ARE WE NOT? Are we prepared to see our monarch ravishing the rosy maiden time with his big glass whatsit?

  DOWNS. I’m with you.

  ROCHESTER. Tumble it down!

  ETHEREGE. No.

  ROCHESTER. TUMBLE IT DOWN!!

  ROCHESTER draws his sword and launches it at the sundial. DOWNS joins in.

  DOWNS. Tumble the King down!

  ROCHESTER. Down with Time and Kings!

  SACKVILLE picks up the mood and slashes at the sundial.

  SACKVILLE. King Time, down!!!

  ROCHESTER. Kings and kingdoms tumble down and so shall thou!

  ETHEREGE joins in. They all start jumping up and down on the smashed bits.

  ALL. Kings and kingdoms tumble down, tumble down,

   tumble down,

  Kings and kingdoms tumble down,

  AND SO SHALL THOU!!!

  The alarm is raised off. A GUARD shouts.

  ETHEREGE. Someone’s seen us.

  SACKVILLE. Johnny? Come on, Johnny.

  SACKVILLE runs off. DOWNS follows. ROCHESTER seems oblivious. ETHEREGE tries to drag him off.

  ETHEREGE. Come on, Johnny, end of caper.

  ROCHESTER. I haven’t finished!

  ETHEREGE. The guard’s spotted us.

  ROCHESTER. I wish to trample his dick to dust, George, don’t interrupt me!

  ETHEREGE does his best to manhandle ROCHESTER off, but ROCHESTER shoves him away. ETHEREGE escapes.

  Kings and kingdoms tumble down and so shall thou!

  The sundial is dust.

  And so shall thou. And so shall thou.

  A GUARD comes on with sword drawn.

  No use waving your porker now, fellow, you’ve missed them! That way, that way.

  The GUARD looks bemused for a second, then rushes off in pursuit of the WITS.

  Time is but dust, and kings, and me also, the body maggoting so soon, so soon after I was godlike and sturdy. My legs ache in the morning and my brain is the dinner of a slow ruminating beast.

  A noise off. ROCHESTER hears but doesn’t look.

  Take me away in chains. I admit. I did it. I must always go too far, you see, it is my genius to go too far.

  A cloaked figure comes on. It’s BARRY.

  BARRY. My lord. (Pause.) What passed between us this afternoon when I came as Ophelia. If I surprised you and made as if to push you away, it was only a try at coming towards you.

  She wraps her cloak and herself around him.

  ROCHESTER. Lizzie!

  BARRY. Cold. Are you not cold?

  ROCHESTER. No longer.

  BARRY. Was there not something here at one time? Some monument?

  ROCHESTER. No, not here. There was nothing here till now.

  They embrace voluptuously.

  Blackout.

  Interval.

  Scene Eight – Sodom

  Lights up on a CHORUS OF WOMEN:all hold enormous dildoes. They sing and dance the following:

  WOMEN. You ladies all of merry England,

  Who have been to kiss the Duchess’s hand,

  Pray, did you lately observe in the show,

  A noble Italian called Signior Dildo?

  You would take him at first for no person of note,

  Because he appears in a plain leather coat,

  But when you his virtuous abilities know,

  You will all fall and worship Signior Dildo.

  Ohh, ahh, Signior Dildo; Ooh, aah, Signior Dildo.

  At the sign of the cross in St James’s Street,

  When next you go thither to make yourself sweet,

  By buying of powder, gloves, essence, or so,

  You may chance to get a sight of Signior Dildo.

  The good Lady Sandys burst into a laugh,

  To see how the bollocks
came wobbling aft,

  And had not her wit retarded the foe,

  ’Twould indeed had gone hard with Signior Dildo.

  Ohh, ahh, Signior Dildo; Ooh, aah, Signior Dildo.

  Our dainty fine Duchesses have got a trick

  To dote on a fool for the sake of his prick.

  The fops were undone, did their graces but know

  The discretion and vigour of Signior Dildo.

  The Signior is sound, safe ready and dumb,

  As ever was candle, carrot or thumb,

  Then away with these nasty devices and show,

  How you rate the just merits of Signior Dildo.

  Ohh, ahh, Signior Dildo; Ooh, aah, Signior Dildo

  Lights up on Windsor Great Park. ROCHESTER is rehearsing his play Sodom. BARRY, JANE and HARRIS stand by. ALCOCK looks on. LUSCOMBE makes notes.

  ROCHESTER. Now. We have a bare four hours before we present my Major Work of Literature to the King, so let us not sloven. Act Two, Scene Three: ‘The scene changes and discovers the Queen in a chair of state.’

  LUSCOMBE. What kind of chair was that you were wanting?

  ROCHESTER. Molly, I am trying to rehearse the actresses.

  LUSCOMBE. And I am making sure that you have what you want, because if you don’t, then I know there will be roaring, swearing and breaking of furniture and heads which I would not like to be mine.

  ROCHESTER. Four legs, a seat, a back. Now, Lizzie, you will please continue in the part of the Queen.

  BARRY settles on a bench.

  ‘ – and is frigged by the lady Officina’ – that’s you, Jane.

  JANE takes up a position close to BARRY.

  ‘ – all the rest pulling out their dildoes and frig in point of honour.’

  LUSCOMBE. Who is to be all the rest?

  ROCHESTER. Mr Downs and Mr Etherege are even now recruiting some young women of Windsor to fill these trifling parts. For the moment, Molly, you will play Fuckadilla –

  LUSCOMBE. I am not a visible person, my lord. I am a behind-the-scenes, invisible kind of person.

  ROCHESTER. It’s only for this rehearsal, my dear Moll. Heaven cannot have provided two more assiduous procurers than Mr Etherege and Mr Downs and they will shortly arrive laden with Berkshire beauties.