Plays Political

by Dan Laurence

  This little history will explain how it actually did provide material for Breakages, Limited, and for the bitter cry of the Powermistress General. Not until Breakages is itself broken will it cease to have a message for us.

  AYOT ST LAWRENCE, March 1930

  [ ACT I ]

  * * *

  An office in the royal palace. Two writing tables face each other from opposite sides of the room, leaving plenty of room between them. Each table has a chair by it for visitors. The door is in the middle of the farthest wall. The clock shews that it is a little past 11; and the light is that of a fine summer morning.

  Sempronius, smart and still presentably young, shews his right profile as he sits at one of the tables opening the King’s letters. Pamphilius, middle aged, shews his left as he leans back in his chair at the other table with a pile of the morning papers at his elbow, reading one of them. This goes on silently for some time. Then Pamphilius, putting down his paper, looks at Sempronius for a moment before speaking.

  * * *

  PAMPHILIUS. What was your father?

  SEMPRONIUS [startled] Eh?

  PAMPHILIUS. What was your father?

  SEMPRONIUS. My father?

  PAMPHILIUS. Yes. What was he?

  SEMPRONIUS. A Ritualist.

  PAMPHILIUS. I dont mean his religion. I mean his profession. And his politics.

  SEMPRONIUS. He was a Ritualist by profession, a Ritualist in politics, a Ritualist in religion: a raging emotional Die Hard Ritualist right down to his boots.

  PAMPHILIUS. Do you mean that he was a parson?

  SEMPRONIUS. Not at all. He was a sort of spectacular artist. He got up pageants and Lord Mayors’ Shows and military tattoos and big public ceremonies and things like that. He arranged the last two coronations. That was how I got my job here in the palace. All our royal people knew him quite well: he was behind the scenes with them.

  PAMPHILIUS. Behind the scenes and yet believed they were all real!

  SEMPRONIUS. Yes. Believed in them with all his soul.

  PAMPHILIUS. Although he manufactured them himself?

  SEMPRONIUS. Certainly. Do you suppose a baker cannot believe sincerely in the sacrifice of the Mass or in holy communion because he has baked the consecrated wafer himself?

  PAMPHILIUS. I never thought of that.

  SEMPRONIUS. My father might have made millions in the theatres and film studios. But he refused to touch them because the things they represented hadnt really happened. He didnt mind doing the christening of Queen Elizabeth in Shakespear’s Henry the Eighth because that had really happened. It was a celebration of royalty. But not anything romantic: not though they offered him thousands.

  PAMPHILIUS. Did you ever ask him what he really thought about it all? But of course you didnt: one cant ask one’s father anything about himself.

  SEMPRONIUS. My dear Pam: my father never thought. He didnt know what thought meant. Very few people do, you know. He had vision: actual bodily vision, I mean; and he had an oddly limited sort of imagination. What I mean is that he couldnt imagine anything he didnt see; but he could imagine that what he did see was divine and holy and omniscient and omnipotent and eternal and everything that is impossible if only it looked splendid enough, and the organ was solemn enough, or the military bands brassy enough.

  PAMPHILIUS. You mean that he had to get everything from outside.

  SEMPRONIUS. Exactly. He’d never have felt anything if he hadnt had parents to feel about in his childhood, and a wife and babies to feel about when he grew up. He’d never have known anything if he hadnt been taught at school. He couldnt amuse himself: he had to pay oceans of money to other people to amuse him with all sorts of ghastly sports and pleasures that would have driven me into a monastery to escape from them. You see it was all ritual: he went to the Riviera every winter just as he went to church.

  PAMPHILIUS. By the way, is he alive? I should like to know him.

  SEMPRONIUS. No. He died in 1962, of solitude.

  PAMPHILIUS. What do you mean? of solitude?

  SEMPRONIUS. He couldnt bear to be alone for a moment: it was death to him. Somebody had to be with him always.

  PAMPHILIUS. Oh well, come! That was friendly and kindly. It shews he had something inside him after all.

  SEMPRONIUS. Not a bit. He never talked to his friends. He played cards with them. They never exchanged a thought.

  PAMPHILIUS. He must have been a rum old bird.

  SEMPRONIUS. Not rum enough to be noticed. There are millions like him.

  PAMPHILIUS. But what about his dying of solitude? Was he imprisoned?

  SEMPRONIUS. No. His yacht struck a reef and sank somewhere off the north of Scotland; and he managed to swim to an uninhabited island. All the rest were drowned; and he was not taken off for three weeks. When they found him he was melancholy mad, poor old boy; and he never got over it. Simply from having no one to play cards with, and no church to go to.

  PAMPHILIUS. My dear Sem: one isnt alone on an uninhabited island. My mother used to stand me on the table and make me recite about it.

  [He declaims]

  To sit on rocks; to muse o’er flood and fell;

  To slowly trace the forest’s shady scene

  Where things that own not man’s dominion dwell

  And mortal foot hath ne’er or rarely been;

  To climb the trackless mountain all unseen

  With the wild flock that never needs a fold;

  Alone o’er steeps and foaming falls to lean:

  This is not solitude: ’tis but to hold

  Converse with Nature’s charms, and view her stores unrolled.

  SEMPRONIUS. Now you have hit the really funny thing about my father. All that about the lonely woods and the rest of it—what you call Nature—didnt exist for him. It had to be something artificial to get at him. Nature to him meant nakedness; and nakedness only disgusted him. He wouldnt look at a horse grazing in a field; but put splendid trappings on it and stick it into a procession and he just loved it. The same with men and women: they were nothing to him until they were dressed up in fancy costumes and painted and wigged and titled. To him the sacredness of the priest was the beauty of his vestment, the loveliness of women the dazzle of their jewels and robes, the charm of the countryside not in its hills and trees, nor in the blue smoke from its cottages in the winter evenings, but of its temples, palaces, mansions, park gates, and porticoed country houses. Think of the horror of that island to him! A void! a place where he was deaf and dumb and blind and lonely! If only there had been a peacock with its tail in full bloom it might have saved his reason; but all the birds were gulls; and gulls are not decorative. Our King could have lived there for thirty years with nothing but his own thoughts. You would have been all right with a fishing rod and a golf ball with a bag of clubs. I should have been as happy as a man in a picture gallery looking at the dawns and sunsets, the changing seasons, the continual miracle of life ever renewing itself. Who could be dull with pools in the rocks to watch? Yet my father, with all that under his nose, was driven mad by its nothingness. They say that where there is nothing the king loses his rights. My father found that where there is nothing a man loses his reason and dies.

  PAMPHILIUS. Let me add that in this palace, when the king’s letters are not ready for him at 12 o’clock, a secretary loses his job.

  SEMPRONIUS [hastily resuming his work] Yes, devil take you: why did you start me talking before I had finished my work? You have nothing to do but pretend to read the newspapers for him; and when you say “Nothing particular this morning, Sir,” all he says is “Thank Heaven!” But if I missed a note from one of his aunts inviting herself to tea, or a little line from Orinthia the Beloved marked “Strictly private and confidential: to be opened by His Majesty alone,” I should never hear the end of it. He had six love letters yesterday; and all he said when I told him was “Take them to the Queen.” He thinks they amuse her. I believe they make her as sick as they make me.

  PAMPHILIUS. Do Or
inthia’s letters go to the Queen?

  SEMPRONIUS. No, by George! Even I dont read Orinthia’s letters. My instructions are to read everything; but I take care to forget to open hers. And I notice that I am not rebuked for my negligence.

  PAMPHILIUS [thoughtfully] I suppose—

  SEMPRONIUS. Oh shut up, Pam. I shall never get through if you go on talking.

  PAMPHILIUS. I was only going to say that I suppose—

  SEMPRONIUS. Something about Orinthia. Dont. If you indulge in supposition on that subject, you will lose your job, old chap. So stow it.

  PAMPHILIUS. Dont cry out before Orinthia is hurt, young chap. I was going to say that I suppose you know that that bull-roarer Boanerges has just been taken into the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade, and that he is coming here today to give the King a piece of his mind, or what he calls his mind, about the crisis.

  SEMPRONIUS. What does the King care about the crisis? There has been a crisis every two months since he came to the throne; but he has always been too clever for them. He’ll turn Boanerges inside out after letting him roar the palace down.

  Boanerges enters, dressed in a Russian blouse and peaked cap, which he keeps on. He is fifty, heavily built and aggressively self-assertive.

  BOANERGES. Look here. The King has an appointment with me at a quarter to twelve. How long more am I to be kept waiting?

  SEMPRONIUS [with cheerful politeness] Good morning. Mr Boanerges, I think.

  BOANERGES [shortly, but a little taken aback] Oh, good morning to you. They say that politeness is the punctuality of kings—

  SEMPRONIUS. The other way about, Mr Boanerges. Punctuality is the politeness of kings; and King Magnus is a model in that respect. Your arrival cannot have been announced to His Majesty. I will see about it. [He hurries out].

  PAMPHILIUS. Be seated, Mr Boanerges.

  BOANERGES [seating himself by Pamphilius’s writing-table] A nice lot of young upstarts you have in this palace, Mr—?

  PAMPHILIUS. Pamphilius is my name.

  BOANERGES. Oh yes: Ive heard of you. Youre one of the king’s private secretaries.

  PAMPHILIUS. I am. And what have our young upstarts been doing to you, Mr Boanerges?

  BOANERGES. Well, I told one of them to tell the king I was here, and to look sharp about it. He looked at me as if I was a performing elephant, and took himself off after whispering to another flunkey. Then this other chap comes over to me and pretends he doesnt know who I am! asks me can he have my name! “My lad” I said: “not to know me argues yourself unknown. You know who I am as well as I do myself. Go and tell the king I’m waiting for him, d’ye see?” So he took himself off with a flea in his ear. I waited until I was fed up with it, and then opened the nearest door and came in here.

  PAMPHILIUS. Young rascals! However, my friend Mr Sempronius will make it all right for you.

  BOANERGES. Oh: that was Sempronius, was it. Ive heard of him too.

  PAMPHILIUS. You seem to have heard of all of us. You will be quite at home in the palace now that you are a Cabinet Minister. By the way, may I congratulate you on your appointment—or rather congratulate the Cabinet on your accession?

  SEMPRONIUS [returning] The King. [He goes to his table and takes the visitor’s chair in his hand, ready for the king’s instructions as to where to place it].

  Pamphilius rises. Boanerges turns to the door in his chair without rising. King Magnus, a tallish studious looking gentleman of 45 or thereabouts, enters, and comes quickly down the middle of the room to Boanerges, proffering his hand cordially.

  MAGNUS. You are very welcome to my little palace, Mr Boanerges. Wont you sit down?

  BOANERGES. I am sitting down.

  MAGNUS. True, Mr Boanerges. I had not noticed it. Forgive me: force of habit.

  He indicates to Sempronius that he wishes to sit near Boanerges, on his right. Sempronius places the chair accordingly.

  MAGNUS. You will allow me to be seated?

  BOANERGES. Oh, sit down, man, sit down. Youre in your own house: ceremony cuts no ice with me.

  MAGNUS [gratefully] Thank you.

  The King sits. Pamphilius sits. Sempronius returns to his table and sits.

  MAGNUS. It is a great pleasure to meet you at last, Mr Boanerges. I have followed your career with interest ever since you contested Northampton twenty-five years ago.

  BOANERGES [pleased and credulous] I should just think you have, King Magnus. I have made you sit up once or twice, eh?

  MAGNUS [smiling] Your voice has shaken the throne oftener than that.

  BOANERGES [indicating the secretaries with a jerk of his head] What about these two? Are they to overhear everything that passes?

  MAGNUS. My private secretaries. Do they incommode you?

  BOANERGES. Oh, they dont incommode me. I am ready to have our talk out in Trafalgar Square if you like, or have it broadcast on the wireless.

  MAGNUS. That would be a treat for my people, Mr Boanerges. I am sorry we have not arranged for it.

  BOANERGES [gathering himself together formidably] Yes; but do you realize that I am going to say things to you that have never been said to a king before?

  MAGNUS. I am very glad indeed to hear it, Mr Boanerges. I thought I had already heard everything that could possibly be said to a king. I shall be grateful for the smallest novelty.

  BOANERGES. I warn you it wont be agreeable. I am a plain man, Magnus: a very plain man.

  MAGNUS. Not at all, I assure you—

  BOANERGES [indignantly] I was not alluding to my personal appearance.

  MAGNUS [gravely] Nor was I. Do not deceive yourself, Mr Boanerges. You are very far from being a plain man. To me you have always been an Enigma.

  BOANERGES [surprised and enormously flattered: he cannot help smiling with pleasure] Well, perhaps I am a bit of an enigma. Perhaps I am.

  MAGNUS [humbly] I wish I could see through you, Mr Boanerges. But I have not your sort of cleverness. I can only ask you to be frank with me.

  BOANERGES [now convinced that he has the upper hand] You mean about the crisis. Well, frank is just what I have come here to be. And the first thing I am going to tell you frankly about it is that this country has got to be governed, not by you, but by your ministers.

  MAGNUS. I shall be only too grateful to them for taking a very difficult and thankless job off my hands.

  BOANERGES. But it’s not on your hands. It’s on your ministers’ hands. You are only a constitutional monarch. Do you know what they call that in Belgium?

  MAGNUS. An indiarubber stamp, I think. Am I right?

  BOANERGES. You are, King Magnus. An indiarubber stamp. Thats what you have got to be; and dont you forget it.

  MAGNUS. Yes: thats what we are most of the time: both of us.

  BOANERGES [outraged] What do you mean? both of us?

  MAGNUS. They bring us papers. We sign. You have no time to read them, luckily for you. But I am expected to read everything. I do not always agree; but I must sign: there is nothing else to be done. For instance, death warrants. Not only have I to sign the death warrants of persons who in my opinion ought not to be killed; but I may not even issue death warrants for a great many people who in my opinion ought to be killed.

  BOANERGES [sarcastic] Youd like to be able to say “Off with his head!” wouldnt you?

  MAGNUS. Many men would hardly miss their heads, there is so little in them. Still, killing is a serious business: at least the person who is to be killed is usually conceited enough to think so. I think that if there were a question of killing me—

  BOANERGES [grimly] There may be, someday. I have heard it discussed.

  MAGNUS. Oh, quite. I have not forgotten King Charles’s head. Well, I hope it will be settled by a living person and not by an indiarubber stamp.

  BOANERGES. It will be settled by the Home Secretary, your duly constituted democratic minister.

  MAGNUS. Another indiarubber stamp, eh?

  BOANERGES. At present, perhaps. But not when I am Home Se
cretary, by Jingo! Nobody will make an indiarubber stamp of Bill Boanerges : take that from me.