by Tim Rayborn
By now, the whole thing was causing those backstage to burst into laughter, and probably many in the audience, as well. One of the actors onstage attempted to salvage the situation when he exclaimed that Hedda had stabbed herself, as if this somehow made it better or less funny. In the meantime, the blank was found and loaded into the pistol, and Hedda was finally able to pull the trigger and die properly, much to the relief of all at hand.
The madness of the King in Yellow
The King in Yellow is a fictitious play invented by Robert W. Chambers (1865–1933) and described in a series of his short stories that were collected in a book of the same name and published in 1895. Chambers imagined this “forbidden” work as being anonymous and written in two acts. The first act was fairly mundane, while the second contained unspeakable hidden truths about the nature of the universe that could potentially drive the reader or viewer insane. The work serves as a backdrop to several of the stories and Chambers includes his own invented “excerpts” from the play, while carefully avoiding any of the lines that might provoke madness, of course.
The play’s plot is only hinted at, but concerns at least three characters, Cassilda, Camilla, and the Stranger, the last of whom may or may not be the eponymous king. It seems that the first act details the final days of a crumbling empire in a distant, mythic world. At a masked ball, the Stranger enters, wearing a “Pallid Mask.” When Camilla asks him to remove it, he responds that he wears no mask at all. This presumably sets up the mind-bending horror of the second act, wherein the civilization falls into ruin as unspeakable truths are uttered by the one who may be the king.
Chambers’s stories are filled with creepy atmosphere; one story tells of a man who reads the play and becomes convinced that he will rule America as its monarch, but ends his days in an asylum instead. Another describes a man who dreams of a sinister church organist, only to awaken and find that death has come for him and the King in Yellow is whispering to him. Chambers created a suitable fictional background for the play, noting that it was translated into French, but that the French government seized it and banned it, fearing its effects. Chambers spent time during the 1880s and 1890s as an art student in Paris, and was witness to the changes that came along with the sometimes decadent fin de siècle culture, so the concept of a forbidden play being read or performed in secret locations fit in well with widespread interest in the shocking, the occult, and the damned.
The idea of a tome of forbidden knowledge was also found in the stories of American horror writer H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937), creator of the infamous Necronomicon, a “translation” of a seventh-century Arabic book written in Damascus that describes the horrific unseen forces of his “Cthulhu mythos.” Lovecraft admired Chambers’s work and incorporated some of the ideas into his own stories, though it seems that he read The King in Yellow later in his career and it did not initially inspire him to create his own unique visions of cosmic horror.
This fantastical play has inspired many other short stories and a whole mythos of its own that modern writers sometimes combine with Lovecraft’s dark universe and creations. One can see why Chambers’s Parisian years were the likely catalyst for it. In the world of the Theater of the Absurd and the Grand Guignol, a sanity-shattering play that reveals hidden horrors to the unwary doesn’t seem all that far-fetched.
The game show guest who saw it all
On February 9, 1956, ninety-five-year-old Samuel J. Seymour was a special guest on the CBS show I’ve Got a Secret. This was an early game show where celebrity panelists, as the title suggests, tried to guess the secret their guest was hiding, through a series of yes-or-no questions. And Seymour had a doozy of a secret.
The near-centenarian (he actually thought he was ninety-six) had been a wee lad of five when he was taken to a performance at Ford’s Theatre on the night of April 14, 1865. To those scratching their heads as to the date’s significance, this would be the evening that a disgruntled actor by the name of John Wilkes Booth shot and murdered Abraham Lincoln as the president watched the performance. Little Samuel saw it all, though he confessed that at the time, he didn’t understand the significance of what had happened, or that Lincoln was dead. He was only worried about the man (Booth) who had jumped from the balcony in his attempt to escape. Seymour was the last living witness to this history-changing event, which made him quite the remarkable guest on a show normally given to somewhat lighter fare. In the end, the celebrity panel—which included Lucille Ball—was able to figure out his secret pretty quickly.
A legend says that about a week before his death, Lincoln had a dream in which he wandered through an empty White House, entered the East Room, and saw a coffin on a platform surrounded by mourners. When he asked a nearby guard who had died, he was told, “The president.” It seems that his fate at the theater was sealed.
Exit Stage Left
Our revels now are ended. You have braved the countless dangers of the theater, both onstage and off, and now only the pale ghost light flickers in the darkened hall of this book’s finale. It’s probably not surprising that an art form that requires so much investment of emotion and the ability to present every feeling imaginable would have a decidedly dark, if not outright bloody, history. Life imitates art, more often than we realize.
But regardless of the origins of drama, skits, plays, and interludes, we can no doubt agree that the presence of theatrical entertainment has enriched our history for thousands of years, and probably always will, as long as we crave good stories and the unique opportunity to see them unfold in front of us. There’s a visceral thrill to a live performance that can’t be matched by its digital counterparts. Even in the face of movies, television, and endless online streaming services, live theater thrives, and its creators have achieved fame throughout the world.
Indeed, the names of those theatrical greats live on, but not everyone has been so optimistic about their prospects for immortality. I’ll leave you with the words of French playwright and humorist Alphonse Allais (1854–1905), who was once asked to speak about his profession:
I have been asked to talk to you on the subject of the theater, but I fear that it will make you melancholy. Shakespeare is dead, Molière is dead, Racine is dead, Marivaux is dead—and I am not feeling too well myself.
Suggestions for Further Reading
So, you’d like to learn more, but where to start? There is a bewildering number of books, resources, websites, and assorted other theatrical goodies out there. Here is but a small list that may help you get started on learning more.
Online Resources
Drama Online. A treasure trove of theater information: plays and playwrights, genres, eras, videos, criticism, the art of acting, and much more. The catch is that the majority of it can only be accessed by subscription. The second catch is that individual subscriptions are not available, but many libraries and universities do subscribe, so ask yours if they do, and if they don’t, bug them about it until they do (www.dramaonlinelibrary.com).
The WWW Virtual Library, Theatre and Drama. A free resource with links to sites and organizations all around the world, though some are broken or have expired. It contains links to everything from acting schools and audition notices to theaters, libraries, organizations, and online texts (www.vl-theatre.com).
World Shakespeare Bibliography. This site has over 117,000 resources available at the time of writing. If you’re interested in researching in the area, it’s a gold mine. This site offers individual annual subscriptions (www.worldshakesbib.org).
Also check out the Folger Shakespeare Library at: www.folger.edu.
And Shakespeare’s Globe at: www.shakespearesglobe.com.
Approached with a bit of caution, Wikipedia can also be a useful starting point, if you remember that anyone can edit its content, and the more controversial the subject, the more likely that things will change often. Some references are poor and out of date, but it’s worth a try to learn more about any of the topics discussed in the book, and entries oft
en have useful bibliographies.
Books
A good number of general theatrical introductions are very long and very expensive university textbooks, so here are some more specific options that make for very good and informative reading.
Pierre Louis Ducharte, The Italian Comedy (New York: Dover, 1966). This classic from the 1920s may still be the last word on the Commedia, and certainly is the first place you should look.
Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakespeare (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004). An excellent biography that also looks at the era as a whole. Very enjoyable!
Richard Hand and Michael Wilson, Grand-Guignol: The French Theatre of Horror (Exeter: UK, University of Exeter Press, 2002). A very good English-language study, which includes scripts for some of the plays, if you dare to read them!
Brad Schreiber, Stop the Show! (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006). A fun collection of theatrical anecdotes (mostly twentieth-century), covering costumes, stage sets, private lives, audiences, and other fun things.
James Shapiro, Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010). Oxfordians hate Shapiro, so read this and decide for yourself. A fascinating history of Shakespeare skeptics, putting advocates for both Bacon and Oxford in the context of their times.
Acknowledgments
This is my second excursion into the history of the weird and freakishly wonderful in the arts, and as before, several people deserve thanks for their help and encouragement.
Many thanks to my editor, Olga Greco, and to Skyhorse Publishing for being willing to take another trip into the realms of artistic madness. Olga’s close reading and edits make my work better, and I’m very grateful for the input and support. Thanks again to my agent Maryann Karinch, who continues to be enthusiastic about such unusual subject matter. Various people agreed to read drafts of the work in progress, and their feedback was most appreciated. Thanks to: Allan J. Cronin, Joshua Lapan, Gilbert Martinez, Keith Spears, and Samara Metzler.
And again, my thanks and love to Abby, and to those house felines who somehow have a way of helping to make certain projects take longer than they should.
About the Author
Tim Rayborn was bitten by the acting bug at a young age. Unfortunately, he made a full recovery and went on to be a musician and writer instead. Still, he has dipped one or two toes into the world of theater since then, including improvisational work at historical recreations (having donned an Elizabethan doublet and slops on more than one occasion) and once playing a very well-roared lion in an intimate (i.e., a college class) production of the immortal Pyramus and Thisbe, as retold in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
He has a PhD from the University of Leeds in England and is devoted to history and music in equal measure, with a special emphasis on the medieval period and England in particular. He finds that theatrical presentations of early music are quite effective at bringing very old sounds to life in a meaningful way for our modern age. With that in mind, he plays dozens of obscure instruments and has been fortunate enough to gallivant around the world sharing little-known medieval music with bewildered audiences. He has appeared on dozens of recordings and has written at least five books that he’ll admit to. Future projects include more of the same (why mess with what works?) and continuing to improve both his cat parenting skills and his knowledge of food and other epicurean delights.
For more information, see www.timrayborn.com.