Plays One

by Sarah Daniels

  ROSE. I wish thee luck.

  LADY H. Now I am off to hear that Quaker lady speak for I am half-way committed already. But if I might be permitted to make one last observation – it would be to note your sister’s rudeness for she has not so much as acknowledged my presence.

  ROSE. She is unaware of your presence for she cannot hear.

  LADY H. Oh then I must make my case to her face. (She taps URSULA on the shoulder. URSULA jumps with surprise.)

  ROSE. No.

  LADY H (to ROSE). You must allow your sister to do as she pleases. We have noted too much the desires of your sex and it has not served your health. (To URSULA:) How would you like to work for me child?

  URSULA (not understanding, looks at ROSE and signs). What she say?

  ROSE. Bear her no mind. (Using dismissive arm-waving gestures.) Nothing. Nothing.

  LADY H (to ROSE). Let her choose for herself. (Saying and miming to URSULA:) You want to work for me? Sewing, cooking, cleaning, looking after my children? For money.

  URSULA nods enthusiastically then looks at GRACE and then back at LADY H.

  (LADY H nods.) Aye. You may continue to nurse the sick woman also.

  ROSE. She does not want to work for you.

  LADY H. Seems you are mistaken.

  GRACE (whispers). Rose. Rose.

  ROSE (goes to GRACE.) Grace?

  GRACE. I knew you’d cam.

  LADY H (sighs). Be of no use, sir. Her mind still tricks her mouth.

  Enter the DOCTOR. The DOCTOR and LADY H sing.

  From a Dish to a Dish

  DOCTOR (sings).

  We’re here to stay, no more witches and midwives

  With potions and herbs and wasting of lives.

  We’re gaining control and refining our tools

  Creating a science, replacing these fools.

  LADY H (sings).

  Three centuries ago they started with hooks,

  But the medicine man will next control our looks -

  For they have moved on from bleeding out our life

  To creating the next generation of perfect wife.

  DOCTOR (sings).

  Fertilised in a Petri dish as a result of egg donation,

  Transplanted by the doctor, father of the future, perfect nation,

  Completed the laparoscopy, done with amniocentesis,

  Will abort if results show a less than first-rate foetus.

  Have mastered techniques of in vitro fertilisation,

  Surrogacy, ectogenesis and superovulation,

  Won’t stop now, intrauterine surgery will enrich our lives,

  And cloning will ensure that males outnumber wives.

  For women’s dispensability will not hamper surgery,

  Experiments will never end the bank of frozen embryos

  We divided at the 4-cell stage

  For chromosome analysis and sex preselection.

  We don’t admit that no one knows

  The results of trans-species fertilisation.

  And hormonal manipulation is bombing women’s ovaries

  And it’s unethical not to experiment on spare embryos.

  We’re in charge of the future, the future perfect nation,

  We’re in charge of women’s bodies, and isn’t she a sensation.

  I look at her in the Petri dish

  And I fuck her with scientists’ wish

  That I’ll create a full-grown dish

  Who’ll satisfy my every wish

  And I’ll father the perfect nation.

  LADY H (sings).

  From witches and midwives, they raped us with hooks,

  Created their science, wrote us out of their books,

  And now they’re in charge of more than our looks -

  Our future’s in the hands of their reproductive technology.

  And there’s more at stake now than the right to children and gynaecology.

  Scene Seven

  The inn.

  HELEN stands on an upright barrel, LADY H next to her. Several women crowd round. The PUBLICAN, relieved that the bar separates him, fidgets nervously.

  HELEN. I speak not of Holy Ghost.

  WOMAN 1. Thank God for that.

  HELEN. Nor spooks or superstition, nor the fear of the immortal or invisible but of those who have taken it upon themselves to think they are the God-only-wise.

  WOMAN 1. Who?

  HELEN. The wreckers of earthly beauty and nature herself.

  WOMAN 2 (to WOMAN 1). Oh, men.

  WOMAN 1. Oh aye, if my husband had another brain it would be lonely.

  HELEN. The battle of men against men is not the war of our time but the fight women have had for their lives. We have shaken their opinion of us as the weaker sex …

  WOMAN 3. Weaker sex ho ho.

  HELEN. And they have responded with ways more forceful than ever before. Now is not the time for slowing down, for our lives swing more lightly in the balance than ever before.

  PUBLICAN. Now then ‘mistress’, I’m sure your husbands must be fretting as to where you are. And fretting all the more I dare say if they knew.

  WOMAN 1. If you know what’s best for you, you’ll keep your jaws still.

  HELEN (continues). Women will flee for the lives of their unborn children from the spittle-house rather than endure birthing at the mercy of the doctors’ tools. The disease that follows will be worse than any plague yet known, except it remains unchartered for ’tis our sex alone again that will suffer and die from it.

  LADY H. Listen to her, she speaks absolute truth.

  WOMAN 2 (to WOMAN 3). If Lady Horse-face has got herself here, is not for the likes of us. Let’s make off.

  PUBLICAN. That’s right dear, you do that, you’re frightening off my customers.

  They all turn and stare at him.

  WOMAN 1. Sit down.

  PUBLICAN. Aye. Maybe I need a rest.

  WOMAN 3. Certainly your mouth does.

  The PUBLICAN sits, disappearing from view.

  LADY H. I have a pamphlet here written by two women and I’d like to read …

  WOMAN 2. Do we want a reading from her?

  WOMAN 3. Let her speak, for is not writ by her and how else can we learn of its contents?

  WOMAN 1. Who was it writ by then?

  LADY H. They couldn’t use their own names for front page, but ones they chose were better than any family name in the land. ‘Mary Tattlewell’ and ‘Joane Hit-him-home Spinster’.

  PUBLICAN puts his face above the bar.

  WOMAN 2. How does ‘Ann Hit-him-over-the-brain-pan-with-a-tankard’ sound?

  The PUBLICAN promptly disappears from view.

  WOMAN 3. Tell us what they have to say then.

  LADY H. If women were ever allowed to be taught singing and dancing ’twas only to please men’s licentious appetites. That women are taught nothing than to get a husband, and what life could a woman ever expect if marriage was the be all and end all of existence. At same time they cite how female character is preferable to the male.

  WOMAN 2. What did you do when we was begging and them refused was cursing?

  WOMAN 1 (to WOMAN 2). She didn’t so much as lift a chicken leg off her table, that’s what she did.

  HELEN. The hanging and butchering of women is part of the same hatred. We must make certain that we be the last generation to bear witness to the wrongs done to us in name of science. That our daughter’s daughter and her daughter too will know what we know.

  WOMAN 3. She is right and ’tis not only labourers’ daughters what need telling. I say Lady H should join us.

  LADY H. We will be despised, ridiculed and deemed mad but I vouchsafe that I am prepared to forgo my privilege in the name of truth.

  WOMAN 1. Aye let her be part of us for we can no longer do nothing but pray.

  WOMAN 2. And not rest until we have won back our bodies for ourselves.

  Scene Eight

  GRACE’s home.

  Physically weak but mentally alert, GRACE i
s reading ROSE’s play. ROSE paces the floor.

  GRACE (puts down the play having finished). Rose, this is more than reward enough for teaching you to write.

  ROSE. What did you like best? I saw you grinning like your mouth would crack.

  GRACE. A fine story Rose. Aye and funny.

  ROSE. Perhaps the best thing you have read by one of our sex?

  GRACE. Rose, it is the only thing. But that makes it no less wonderful.

  ROSE. Talk to me more about it, Grace.

  GRACE. Presently. First, while it is just you and I, I want to tell you to take it on yourself to let Ursula know who you are. Well, you don’t have to tell her you write plays but the least you can say is you’re no man.

  ROSE. I’ll think on it. Now what did you think of your character?

  GRACE. No you will not think on it, you’ll do it. It’s not fair to abuse her trust in this way.

  ROSE. Trust, ha, took her time enough to reveal to me her understanding of healing.

  GRACE (coldly angry). Rose, she saw her own mother hung for her pains. Do you think she’d want any part of that knowledge?

  ROSE (sulkily). Then she went to work for Lady H.

  GRACE (abruptly). Aye and have you not stopped to wonder on why? For why would a man buy her? She is working to repay the debt. And is for you to tell her money was hers by right. (Then with warmth:) And what of Jane – when she breezes in her confusion will know no bounds, and trick even I into believing my mind is blown away again.

  ROSE (quietly). Grace, I know not if she is still living.

  GRACE (gently). You would know if she were dead.

  ROSE. I never felt Mary and Ann were anything but alive.

  GRACE. You knew when death had all but closed in on me.

  ROSE. I had but one dream, Grace. Only that.

  GRACE. But, I knew you’d cam.

  ROSE. Several events cam between you and the dream. I do not now want to dwell on Jane, for all manner of ills my running off may have caused her.

  GRACE. Cam, that one could talk herself into the King’s privy and out again. There are enough causes of death in war besides yourself. So you’d be as well not to beset yourself with guilt.

  ROSE. Supposing?

  Pause.

  Oh let us talk about my play.

  GRACE. Aye. Well, I have several recommendations that may improve it.

  ROSE (defensively). What is wrong with it?

  GRACE. Don’t take on like a child. Is not in the writing, Rose. Though story is apt, like its mistress, to wander. But the ideas.

  ROSE. Like what?

  GRACE. If you keep interrupting I cannot collect my thoughts. Firstly I am very proud of my part. Is a very generous picture you paint of me, but you give impression that I was able to cure all manner of ills which is more like the story of son of God than me.

  ROSE. But …

  GRACE. I wasn’t able, nor am I still. True I have perfected the use of some herbs and given some advice but I have no power over life and death. Your portrait of cunning women is too glowing for truth. So many have been killed in this purge who didn’t know a sprig of dill from a cauliflower. They were chosen because they were women not because they were special. When we have received foul attentions from lord and from farmhand alike, ’tis because we are women. It’s a danger to claim it is because we are different in some way.

  ROSE. Who did they start on first, old women, cunning women, women alone, Mary and Ann. They were independent and did not carry on as men wished them to.

  GRACE. But it didn’t stop there, did it?

  ROSE. No.

  GRACE. Our sex with its single power to give birth, pose a threat to men’s power over whole order of villages, towns, counties and countries. That control depends on women cur-tailing to men’s ideals of how they should behave.

  ROSE. So, if it is fact you want from me, happen there was women enough to cause trouble against each other.

  GRACE. Because not only are men set against the woman named wicked, but also the women and children whose livelihood depends on the approval of men.

  ROSE. So the condemned woman is special. She has freed herself as much as is possible and will not keep her mouth still about it.

  GRACE. What I am saying is that the tests and methods by which they decide who is evil are without two solutions. They are designed only to condemn. When they look for a witch they are looking for a woman and do not mistake thyself, any one of us will do.

  ROSE (impatiently). Is a story, Grace, not a pamphlet nor a broadsheet. Is a story.

  GRACE. Religion has given us enough martyrs and saints. Is for us to do away with them, not create our own.

  ROSE. Is not s’posed to be a list of facts and dates. There must be other women interested in recording exact history. I cannot do all. Is a story I have written, out of my imagination, to entertain. Not a bible.

  GRACE. That leads me to other thing I want to say.

  ROSE. Oh no, will mean I will have to start whole thing over.

  GRACE. There is too many scenes of hanging and swimming and is not for us to present as entertainment.

  ROSE. But that is the truth! One breath you say ‘not accurate’ the next you want women to sprout wings and fly out of the ponds. And next, no doubt, you’ll tell me that the pricker’s character is not light enough. Well, I care not. He is writ as he is. And what difference if he suffered from corn-toes or was kind to his dog. It does not lift weight off his wrongs.

  GRACE. I have no quarrel with pricker’s character. Though there will always be those who refuse to believe the worse has been done to us. But, Rose, do not give him all the weight. What of the fight back?

  ROSE. But we’ve not stopped it. (Then:) I put bit about the bear in.

  GRACE (impatiently). We? We’ve not stopped it? Look at you. What are you still doing in men’s clothes?

  ROSE. And how else am I to hold down job as shipping clerk and how else are we to be afforded protection. My clothes are of no matter. You don’t like my play. Nothing matters.

  GRACE. You will have to learn to take criticism with a little more dignity. Do you think they’ll not be shouting at you from all sides?

  Enter JANE.

  JANE. I’m back. (Sees GRACE.) Christ Jesus, Grace, you look far from the best of health.

  GRACE (dryly). Still got the same sweet, sensitive nature I perceive.

  ROSE rushes to JANE and hugs her, JANE lifting ROSE off the ground and swinging her round. Enter URSULA, her expression of agitation turns to confusion on seeing ROSE and JANE. ROSE wriggles out of JANE’s grasp. An embarrassed silence ensues.

  JANE. I don’t mind you have a new love, Rosie, but didn’t you ever speak of me to her?

  ROSE. Ursula is not my love as you term it.

  JANE. Notice she’s not jumped to a denial.

  GRACE. She cannot hear Jane – she is deaf.

  JANE (casually). Oh Aye?

  (Signs to URSULA and says.) Is not Rose a wonderful woman?

  URSULA (signs). Woman? Woman?

  GRACE. Where on earth did you learn to do that girl?

  ROSE. The one time I thought your big mouth could go unheeded.

  JANE. Just because I can’t read and write, Grace, doesn’t mean I can’t converse in other ways.

  (To ROSE.) You daft cony – is a wonder, your modesty’s not brought bladder trouble on yourself.

  URSULA (signs to JANE). If I’d known, she could have come to the meeting by the pond.

  JANE (to ROSE). If she’d known, you could have come to the meeting.

  ROSE. Oh we all been there before.

  JANE (to ROSE). By the pond. (Pause.) Oh no, the man of hanging tree is yet alive and pricking.

  ROSE (agitated). When? Who was swam? What was her name? Is she alive?

  GRACE. Keep your clacker still, Rosie. Let Ursula tell us in her own way.

  The others have made a model pricker by stuffing straw into a spare jerkin and a pair of breeches. They perform a ‘dumb
’ show which URSULA narrates in sign language. (It should be accompanied by a taped voice over.)

  URSULA (with voice over). We met the night before. Women from near and far and a very long and angry meeting it was; only one thing was agreed on by all – that we would meet in the morning and no woman that day would lose her life. So now we are stood at the pond. Our blood tingling and the pricker preening himself on drawing such a large crowd.

  GRACE stands the dummy pricker up and makes it take a bow.

  Everything still and I had half a thought of worry that we would take root in the ground. The feeling vanished when her body hit the water, we joined hands and by a force unspake floated through the crowd, each silent till she was set free.

  The other three mime pulling the woman from the water.

  ROSE (to imaginary woman). Take off there that wet cloth. Pass me those blankets. Who will take this woman home?

  GRACE. I will, I be her sister.

  JANE. And what will we do for him?

  ROSE. Smash his brain-pan and have done.

  GRACE. Nay, we agreed not to do that. He must take his own medicine.

  JANE. Cam on. Help me put this sheet over him.

  They put the sheet over the struggling man.

  GRACE. No, he must be prepared in same detail. Left thumb tied to right toe and right thumb tied to left toe.

  JANE. Should be right thumb tied to left stone.

  ROSE. I, for one, wouldn’t be disappointed, if he were two stones lighter even if it did mean he did float.

  They mime throwing him into the pond.

  GRACE. Seems he has floated.

  GRACE and JANE pull the dummy pricker up and drag him out of the action.

  ROSE. And he is yet living.

  JANE. Then who amongst us is agreed that he should complete the course of punishment?

  URSULA (voice over). We did not kill him. We are not the same as him. We left him, still tied, in the place where women’s bodies are left to be claimed by their loved ones at night.

  End of show.

  ROSE (shouts). Aye bodies. Bodies of dead women. Deemed then innocent for an invented crime. Dead to be collected and buried! How many of us will have to die while our good natures get the better of us?