The Literati

by Justin Fleming

  Such beauty is only attached at best to a thin layer of skin,

  But the mind is deep and intrinsic; unlike a face, it has no twin;

  I have searched to find you that inner beauty which time cannot erode:

  Some knowledge to penetrate your skull and take up ardent abode,

  In the hope that thought might occur in that desert between your ears;

  Well, finally I hit on the answer, which is one of my brightest ideas:

  Namely, to attach you to a man who has a bountiful and fertile mind.

  My choice is Tristan Tosser here; through him you’ll become refined.

  By determining that he be your husband, I’ve handed you a golden cup.

  JULIET:

  You don’t mean me, Mama?

  PHILOMENA:

  Yes, of course, you. Do try to keep up.

  TRISTAN:

  In my ravishment, Juliet, the only thing I venture to say

  Is that I see this marriage as the highest honour, and, if I may—

  JULIET:

  That’s all very well, Monsieur, but this has not been settled yet.

  So don’t be so hasty—

  PHILOMENA:

  What a strange response, Juliet!

  Surely you know that if—Oh never mind; you have heard me.

  [To TRISTAN] Don’t worry, she will see reason; and what I wish, shall be.

  SCENE FIVE

  JULIET, AMANDA.

  AMANDA:

  I think our mother is brilliant to have resolved what to do:

  To find an illustrious poet as the perfect husband for you.

  JULIET:

  If the choice is so brilliant, why don’t you marry him yourself?

  AMANDA:

  He was offered to you, not me.

  JULIET:

  I worry you’ll be left on the shelf,

  So I give him all to you, as you are my elder sister.

  AMANDA:

  If mother made me so charming an offer, it would be hard to resist her;

  But as I don’t agree with marriage, it would amount to a deception.

  JULIET:

  Well, given your passion for pedants, surely you could make an exception?

  AMANDA:

  Despite the fact that each of us has a very different taste,

  It’s on our parents’ will, not ours, that all such choices are based.

  A mother has power over us, and so at her insistence,

  One simply must obey; it’s futile to offer resistance.

  Just so you know, she asked my opinion on who would be right for you,

  Of course I could have said Clinton, but I decided not to.

  Tristan seemed a better idea because, in all propriety,

  At least this marriage will establish you in educated society.

  SCENE SIX

  CHRISTOPHER, VADIUS, CLINTON, JULIET, AMANDA.

  CHRISTOPHER:

  [Presenting CLINTON] Come here, Juliet, I need you to approve my plan;

  If you consider him your soul mate and the love of your life,

  Then remove your glove, my dear, and take the hand of this man,

  For it is my earnest wish that you should become his wife.

  AMANDA:

  Sister, you look ecstatic! How crushing to have to say no.

  JULIET:

  A father has power over us, and so at his insistence

  I will echo the advice that you gave me but a moment ago:

  One simply must obey; it’s futile to offer resistance.

  AMANDA:

  But a mother also has a part to play in our obedience.

  CHRISTOPHER:

  What on earth do you mean?

  AMANDA:

  You and mother have different views;

  And therefore in this matter, I question your expedience;

  Mother settled on another man;

  CHRISTOPHER:

  Be quiet! It’s Clinton I choose!

  If you want some half-baked Latin scholar, go and live in ancient Rome!

  And stay out of our decisions, and this marriage, just for a start.

  Go and play your bloody power games until the cows come home!

  You might think your mind is alive, but you’re totally dead in the heart!

  Tell your mother that our daughter should marry out of love and respect!

  And tell her there’s no point at all in bending my bloody ear;

  We must not let some pompous pedant treat our daughter with cold neglect!

  We either make good decisions together, or I’ll piss off out of here.

  Well? What are you waiting for! Go on!

  AMANDA goes.

  VADIUS:

  That was good.

  JULIET:

  It was awesome!

  CLINTON:

  [To CHRISTOPHER] How lucky you spoke for us.

  VADIUS:

  Yes. Very wise.

  CHRISTOPHER:

  Now then, take each other’s hand, and stand here, if you would;

  Yes, I can see the happiness that shines inside your eyes.

  See her to her room, now.

  They go, stopping to kiss.

  [To VADIUS] Ah! The sweet kisses of youth.

  Look at them together; it reminds me when I was a boy:

  I’ll never forget falling in love, that summer of tender truth.

  This has really bucked me up, to witness this moment of joy.

  END OF ACT THREE

  ACT FOUR

  SCENE ONE

  AMANDA, PHILOMENA.

  AMANDA:

  Yes, nothing restrained her at all; she showed no equivocation,

  In fact she made quite a display of her lack of hesitation.

  She seemed in such a hurry to defy any obstruction

  That she hardly had time to hear her father’s instruction.

  And it wasn’t so much that she wanted to obey her father,

  But more a case of whatever it takes to disobey her mother.

  PHILOMENA:

  Well, I’ll show her a thing or two about whose rules she’ll obey;

  It’s Reason she will submit to and its laws will hold sway.

  She needs a harsh reminder to which parent she owes a duty,

  She’ll submit to the truth of the mind, not the whimsy of bodily beauty.

  AMANDA:

  At least they should ask your opinion, which they’ve chosen to ignore,

  As that simple boy bullies his way into being your son-in-law.

  PHILOMENA:

  Well, he hasn’t got there yet, and I assure you he’s not about to;

  I found him quite attractive, when he had his eye on you,

  But his manners always displeased me; he knew my writing was divine,

  Yet never once did he ask me to read him a single line.

  SCENE TWO

  CLINTON, AMANDA, PHILOMENA.

  CLINTON enters, unnoticed, during:

  AMANDA:

  If I were in your position, Mama, I would never agree

  To Juliet taking Clinton in this mismatched matrimony.

  It would be quite unfair to suggest I bear malice under the surface,

  Or that what I say is motivated by some ulterior purpose;

  I know that by this low act, his intention is purely to vex me;

  Far from being riddled with revenge, it’s all too terrestrial to perplex me.

  Against this barbarous treachery, my soul is well fortified

  By the protective shield of philosophy, as over the sludge I glide.

  But: To treat you in this manner is to push you towards an abyss

  And take a sledgehammer to your honour; he mustn’t get away with this.

  He’s just not your kind of son-in-law; we’re talking about a man who,

  Whenever we chatted together, never once spoke warmly of you.

  PHILOMENA:

  The swine!

  AMANDA:

  Some twenty times I read to him your finest writ
ing;

  He said that watching paint dry was twenty times more exciting.

  PHILOMENA:

  The snake!

  AMANDA:

  Whenever you were praised, his response was truly heinous;

  He said that your hottest prose was ‘as cold as a penguin’s penis’.

  PHILOMENA:

  The brute!

  AMANDA:

  It gets worse: He said your posturing bordered on farce,

  And went on to claim your pretension was, quote, ‘a pain in the—’

  CLINTON:

  Ah,

  Sweet ladies, please! Go lightly! And give me a break!

  [To AMANDA] A little honesty wouldn’t go astray; I mean, for heaven’s sake:

  What wrong have I done to you? And what exactly is my offence?

  Why take up arms against me in this torrent of eloquence?

  And why do you want to destroy me, and go to so much pain

  To diss me with the people whose support I need to gain?

  So speak up, Mandy! Tell me the reason for this evil grudge.

  [To PHILOMENA] As you are so fair-minded, Madam, I’d like you to act as judge.

  I didn’t say that bit about the penguin, or call you a pain in the—

  AMANDA:

  But the malice you accuse me of does not in fact reign in the

  Heart, but if it did, I would have plenty of justification

  And you would deserve every word of my fair condemnation,

  Because First Love establishes a sacred claim over our soul

  And one would sooner lose one’s life and sink into a hole

  Than try to love another man, after your First Love’s rejection.

  And it’s an act of monstrous infidelity for a lover to shift his affection.

  CLINTON:

  What you call infidelity was me doing what you told me to.

  It was because of your lofty pride that the distance between us grew.

  And how could I offend you, when I was only obeying your orders

  That your heart was a no-go zone, with strictly protected borders?

  At first, I readily admit, I was totally head over heels,

  For two years I burned for you, with increasingly passionate appeals.

  There was no fuss I wouldn’t go to, no favour I wouldn’t perform.

  There I was totally on fire, while you didn’t crack lukewarm.

  I sacrificed everything for you, but you were hostile to my advances,

  So I transferred my love to your sister, where I seemed to have better chances.

  And it worked. So you tell me, is it your fault or mine? Be fair:

  Was my heart chasing a change, or was it you who was pushing me there?

  AMANDA:

  What you call hostile was me rejecting your vulgarity,

  Between your idea of love and mine, there was considerable disparity.

  I tried to reduce your rabid passion to a kind of Platonic purity,

  Where the beauty of Perfect Love blossoms into full maturity.

  You seemed entirely lacking in the spiritual and mental resource

  Through which one distinguishes pure love from feral intercourse.

  You had no taste whatever for the sweet union of two hearts

  Unless it also involved the exploration of bodily parts.

  You did not know how to love by being intellectually close,

  So you opened your little toolbox and proceeded to be carnal and gross;

  And to sustain the fire I lit in your heart, you got it into your noodle

  That it meant marriage, children, a dog, a mortgage, the whole kit and caboodle.

  How sick is that! With love like yours, my life was bound to worsen

  Because it’s impossible to be married and to remain a clever person.

  The physical has no role to play in the thinking woman’s passion;

  This perfect flame will only unite hearts that rise above fashion.

  It only dwells in pure thoughts, it has no interest in sexual games,

  And nothing impure can survive the heat of this most sacred of flames.

  It is love for the sake of love, as if two holy fires have kissed.

  These delights are solely for the mind, as if the body doesn’t really exist.

  All mundanities are left behind like so much flotsam and jetsam;

  You won’t know this celestial fire until you get up, go out and get some.

  CLINTON:

  Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m a body as well as a soul

  And I’m equally attached to both as a kind of united whole.

  The dizzy heights of philosophy I don’t pretend to understand,

  But I do know that my body and soul pretty much go hand in hand.

  True, there’s nothing more beautiful, as you yourself have said,

  Than all those genuine feelings which we hold inside our head,

  Those tender little thoughts that bring two like minds together

  Like a horse and a carriage; like a hat and a feather,

  Free from physical interaction; but, by way of rebuttal,

  I have to say: Love that pure is, to me, way too subtle.

  Okay, I am a bit gross, as you so politely put it,

  I love with my whole self, which shouldn’t surprise, should it?

  Because that’s how I like to be loved, i.e., with the entire person;

  To make love to half a human sounds like a kind of perversion.

  I mean, surely that kind of chastity can’t be good for us, can it?

  You might as well kiss a cadaver, if the sparkle has left the planet.

  You’re entitled to your opinion, weird and whacko as it may be,

  But I have to tell you that the rest of the world pretty much agrees with me

  That marriage is still in fashion, and it’s a decent and loving bond,

  And yes, I wanted to be your husband, but you failed to respond.

  Your reasons for rejecting me were ethereal and extensive,

  But it was never my intention to seem vulgar or offensive.

  AMANDA:

  Oh, well, little man!

  CLINTON:

  Oh well, what, big woman?

  AMANDA:

  Oh well, now I see!

  Since you obviously are determined not to listen to me,

  You win! I will give in to your bestial inclinations

  And your crude idea of faithful love with all its limitations.

  I will succumb to the flesh, and anoint myself with unctions

  And prepare to yield completely to all bodily functions.

  If my mother gives me permission, I will overrule my mind

  And agree to be your wife, leaving all misgivings behind!

  CLINTON:

  It’s too late. The position’s taken; I’m afraid you’ve been replaced,

  And for me to return to you would show an appalling lack of taste,

  I would never abuse the refuge that saved me from your cruel pride

  By hurting Juliet’s feelings; it is with her my heart will reside.

  PHILOMENA:

  But you would need to have my support, which I assure you, you don’t.

  So if you think you will marry Juliet, let me be clear: You won’t.

  In the midst of all your delusions, I consider it only fair

  To tell you she’ll marry Tristan; a fact of which you seem unaware.

  CLINTON:

  Oh, Madam, please change your mind! Don’t inflict this indignation!

  Don’t plunge me into a living hell with so cruel a humiliation,

  To see myself fall so low as to be Tristan Tosser’s rival;

  I know you worship writers, which works against my survival,

  But when choosing my opponent, did you have to go as low as that?

  He’s so low he could walk under a snake while wearing a top hat.

  Bad taste has a lot to answer for, treating him like Socrates
r />   And calling such men genius, who in fact are mediocrities.

  Tristan Tosser fools no-one; his writing is universally panned,

  Apart from in this house, that is, and I fail to understand

  How I must have heard twenty extracts fall from his lofty height

  Which you elevate to heaven and which you beg him to recite

  And you go on as if they’re marvels, which you say are rightly acclaimed,

  When I know that if you had written them you would be deeply ashamed!

  PHILOMENA:

  If you judge him so differently from the way in which we do,

  Then it follows that we see him through different eyes than you.

  SCENE THREE

  TRISTAN, AMANDA, PHILOMENA, CLINTON.

  TRISTAN:

  I come to announce spectacular news, which has rendered me agape!

  While we were asleep, Madam, we had a very narrow escape:

  A comet, which was passing beside us, fell across our vortex

  And came within dangerous proximity of our planet’s outer cortex!

  If, in its blazing trajectory, it had been unable to pass,

  It would have collided with us, and shattered the Earth like glass!

  PHILOMENA:

  How deeply discombobulating; but we must defer that conversation,

  As our friend here is utterly clueless on astrophysical devastation.

  He has no scientific curiosity, his mind being a vacuous chasm,

  And he cherishes his ignorance with disturbing enthusiasm.

  CLINTON:

  Against this character assessment, I plead a right of reply:

  No-one respects knowledge and science more sincerely than I;

  In themselves, they are good and beautiful; no-one denies this;

  But when knowledge ruins people, then ignorance is bliss;

  I’d rather be completely ignorant, with all the shame it implies

  Than be like certain people, who know everything, but are not wise.

  TRISTAN:

  I must say, for my part, that this argument rings feeble

  As I cannot imagine how knowledge could ever ruin people.

  CLINTON:

  My point is: You have to look exactly where this knowledge leads;

  In the wrong hands, it can make great fools, both in words and deeds.

  TRISTAN:

  That strikes me as a paradox.

  CLINTON:

  Sorry, I didn’t mean to be clever,

  But without much trouble I reckon I could prove this point, however,

  I couldn’t give you actual reasons, or quote chapter and verse on this,

  But there are living examples of well-read fools who are hard to miss.

  TRISTAN: