by Unknown
COLONEL (perturbed). I haven’t given Barbara a wedding present, Ellen. I should like —
BARBARA. Indeed you have, dear, and a lovely one. You haven’t forgotten?
(Granny signs to the COLONEL and he immediately says, with remarkable cunning;)
COLONEL. Oh — that! I was just quizzing you, Barbara. I hope you will be as happy, dear, staid Barbara, as if you had married —
(He sees that he has nearly given away the situation. Ht looks triumphantly at granny as much as to say, ‘Observe me; I’m not going to say a word about him.’ Granny comes to his aid.)
ELLEN. Perhaps Captain Dering has some little things to do: and you, too, Barbara. They are leaving in an hour, John.
(For a moment the colonel is again in danger.)
COLONEL. If you would like to take Barbara into the garden, Captain Dering — (He recovers himself instantly.)
No, not the garden, you wouldn’t know your way about in the garden.
DERING (smiling). Wouldn’t I, Colonel?
COLONEL. No, certainly not. I’ll show it you some day.
(He makes gleeful signs to granny.) But there is a nice meadow just beyond the shrubbery. Barbara knows the way; she often went there with — (He checks himself. Granny signs to them to go, and BARBARA kisses both the COLONEL’S hands.)
The Captain will be jealous, you know!
BARBARA. Let me, dear (arranging his cushions professionally.)
ELLEN. She is much better at it than I am now, John.
(The colonel has one last piece of advice to give.)
COLONEL. I wouldn’t go down by the stream, Barbara — not to the pool where the alder is. There’s — there’s not a good view there, sir; and a boy — a boy I knew, he often — nobody in particular — just a boy who used to come about the house — he is not here now — he is on duty. I don’t think you should go to the alder pool, Barbara.
BARBARA. We won’t go there, dear.
(She and her husband go out, and the colonel scarcely misses them, he is so eager to hear what his wife thinks of him.)
COLONEL. Did I do all right, Ellen?
ELLEN. Splendidly. I was proud of you.
COLONEL. I put them completely off the scent! They haven’t a notion! I can be very sly, you know, at times. Ellen, I think I should like to have that alder tree cut down. There is no boy now, you see.
ELLEN. I would leave it alone, John. There will be boys again. Shall I read to you; you like that, don’t you?
COLONEL. Yes, read to me — something funny, if you please. About Sam Weller! No, I expect Sam has gone to the wars. Read about Mr. Pickwick. He is very amusing. I feel sure that if he had tried to catch the bulltrout he would have fallen in. Just as Barbara did this morning.
ELLEN. Barbara?
COLONEL. She is down at the alder pool. Billy is there with that nice German boy. The noise they make, shouting and laughing!
(She gets from its shelf the best book for wartime.)
ELLEN. Which bit shall I read?
COLONEL. About Mr. Pickwick going into the lady’s bedroom by mistake.
ELLEN. Yes, dear, though you almost know it by heart. You see, you have begun to laugh already.
COLONEL. You are laughing too, Ellen. I can’t help it!
THE BOY DAVID
Produced at the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, on November 21, 1936, and at His Majesty’s Theatre, London, on December 14, 1936, with the following cast:
Jesse...Wilson Coleman
Wife of Jesse...Jean Cadell
Sons of Jesse:
Eliab…Basil C. Langton
Amnon…Peter Bull
Aminadab… Eric Elliott
Shammah...Robert Eddison
David…Elisabeth Bergner
The Prophet Samuel...Sir John Martin-Harvey
Jonathan (Son of Saul)...Bobby Rietti
Ophir (Captain in the army of Saul)..Leon Quartermaine
Saul (King of Israel)...Godfrey Tearle
A Guard...William D’Arcy
Nathan....Ion Swinley
Abner (Captain of the Slingers)..Join Boxer
Armour-Bearer of Goliath...Ellis Irving
Woman of Endor...Margaret Chatwin
The play ran for 55 performances.
CONTENTS
ACT I
ACT II
SCENE I
SCENE II
SCENE III
ACT III
SCENE I
SCENE II
ACT I
THE HOUSE OF JESSE IN BETHLEHEM
THE Scene is in Bethlehem, and is the dwelling-house of Jesse, a small farmer. The time is about three thousand years ago. The action of the play is almost continuous. Bethlehem (of which in Act I we see only this room) was a small place in those days, but of a certain importance chiefly for its wool. It was on a hill, protected from enemies by a stout stone wall, and beneath it were the sheep-fields. Jesse’s home, like its neighbours, was a one-storey flat-roofed building of stone and bricks which were made of mud. It had an earthen floor in which no doubt his domestic animals scraped for sustenance. This room, which to modern eyes would seem less inviting than the living-room of an agricultural labourer to-day, is strikingly bare of furniture such as to us seem necessities, though there is no real poverty. There are no tables or chairs. There is no carpet, everybody sits on the floor. Here and there are sheepskins and goat-skins. The ceiling must be as low as possible and the room as small as the exigencies of the stage allow. This is important, as it is to be an intimate scene. The ceiling is raftered and there are some lower rafters on which agricultural implements, sheep-pelts, etc., are obviously stowed away. From the rafters hang a few smoked haunches of mutton and beef. The fire is in the middle of the room. This fire is a large open one of stone and sods sunk into the ground and surrounded by an irregular circle of clay.
There is no chimney, and such smoke as there is travels up the walls into a smoky roof and has blackened them. The fire is alight and a big pot stands upon it. There are other culinary utensils near by, mostly of clay blackened by soot. There are two practical doors, namely the entrance upstage and a door upstage which leads (though they are not seen) to the store closets, the manger, and other important parts connected with the farmer’s occupation. The entrance door is of wood and hard mud and sunk deep into the thick wall. The other door is more slightly made of wood and skins. Both doors are much smaller than those of to-day. They are more like holes in the wall and everyone has to stoop to enter. There are no pictures on the walls (which are roughly plastered) but here and there again the skins of sheep and goats are hanging, the goat-skins being mostly black. A homemade ladder is against the wall. To reduce the size and height of the room the back part is a loft, stored with sacks and old agricultural gear. The only window is at the back and is a tiny thing rather high up. It should not seem to be more than two feet square and it has horn in it instead of glass, though there were even in those days glass-blowers in Bethlehem. The walls of this house are very thick, as is evident from various deep recesses in them which are used as cupboards, or for storage. One of them at back, which comes into prominence in the action, has various foods in it in dishes and jars, some of which are made of copper or brass and the common red clay. This red pottery is to be seen to a limited extent in other recesses, but they are not in use.
(The curtain rises on a bright summer afternoon, and there are present eliab, AMNON, and aminadab, three sons of the house, aged respectively about nineteen, eighteen, and seventeen. They are pleasantly if rather greedily eating their supper in different parts of the room, though with the pot on the fire as the centre of attention. All are seated on the floor except eliab, who is lolling against the ladder, eliab is a soldier, at home on leave from the army of Saul. His soldierly attire, which is of gay skins, gives a martial touch of colour to the scene. He is fair, the others are dark. They are in thin skins of leather and linen drawers, stockings, and sandals, and are labourers such as tanners, millers, or
hewers of wood, and their soiled though coloured garments betray their callings. Their sandals are of undressed leather. All the three are tall country striplings and tend to gesticulate and shout when in dispute as if ready to tear each other to pieces, THOUGH it passes in a moment. This emotional exuberance is TO be shown at moments by all the characters in the play. They are supposed to tingle with vitality and stress far more than in modern plays. Thus their manners are very unlike the genteel domesticity of our day. In the opening scene, though they are only gossiping, they do it with as much excess of word and gesture as if the house was on fire. All have wooden bowls in their hands and chunks of homemade bread and they drink from the bowls, occasionally dipping their bread therein. The food is the thick soup of many vegetables, still called Minestrone. The entrance door opens and shammah, another son of eighteen, enters, balancing two old water-skins on his shoulders. He is conscious that this is effeminate employment and scowls at them for implying with mimicry that the water-skins may fall. He, however, carries them successfully through door.
AMNON slips round to look into the bowl of eliab. About a minute should be filled in thus before there is any talk, AMNON points accusingly and dramatically at eliab.)
AMNON. In the name of Israel I call all the world to witness that there is a piece of flesh in Eliab’s bowl! (He shouts as if it were the most dreadful charge.)
(There is immediately wild commotion in the Israelite manner, except from eliab who remains provokingly calm.)
ELIAB (placidly superior and holding up the meat in his fingers). I claim it as my due — as a soldier of the king. Observe, Amnon!
(He devours it.)
AMINADAB (passionately). We husbandmen must suffer so that the soldier be overfed!
ELIAB (gnawing). Ay, it is the law.
AMNON. The other piece of flesh for me! (He rushes to the pot and is stirring it, probing it for the meat.)
AMINADAB. It is mine!
SHAMMAH. Mine!
AMNON (pushing him aside violently). The hewer of wood and the baker of bread before the tanner!
(There is about to be a fight for the meat, but all the youths except AMNON withdraw from the pot as their mother enters. The name of Jesse’s wife I cannot discover, for there seems to be no record of it. She is a little woman of many cares, somewhat of a drudge, for women were not esteemed of value in Israel; but this one can nevertheless give blows to her progeny as well as take them from the august Jesse, and is a determined housewife, harsh, and without any sentimentality. She is garbed in her ‘working day’ — a short gown with her sleeves rolled up, an apron of linen, and in her hand a wooden roller, all to suggest that she has been baking bread. She stops to see what AMNON is doing. He does not see her, but the others do and they await his discomfiture with pleasure. He is stirring the pot with a short wooden rod which stands in the pot for this purpose.)
MOTHER (like a judge pronouncing sentence). Amnon!
(He leaps, and she looks as if she could leap at him.)
All of you ravening at your food like wolves in the morning.
(To AMNON) You have had your share. (She takes his bowl from him and signs to him to leave the pot. They all know that she must be obeyed.)
AMNON (with offended dignity). I desired merely to lick the stir-pot (indicating it in his hand). It is my workmanship — with my own knife I fashioned it — and I claim this small privilege.
(He licks the stick with as much hauteur as is compatible with the incident and sits again.)
(The mother sits near fire and partakes of his bowl.
shammah returns with an empty bowl and approaches the pot.)
MOTHER (stopping him). First, Shammah, have you filled the water-skins?
SHAMMAH. Ay, and brought them back — to my shame, for all the maidens at the well jeered at me — a man carrying water like a maid. (He shouts it like one appealing to the Gods.)
MOTHER. Have you tended the kine?
SHAMMAH. It is done. Also I again showed the calf where his legs are, and for what purpose.
MOTHER. Then make thyself heavy.
(The mother signs to him that he may fill his bowl, and he does so.)
SHAMMAH (with another outbreak). Even the beasts have to be fed before Shammah approaches the dregs!
ELIAB. But assuredly, brother.
SHAMMAH (shouting). It is the part of the youngest to fill water-skins. Why should / have to do the tasks of David as well as my own? I — I — Shammah!
MOTHER (snapping). Cease your clatter! David is keeping the sheep.
AMINADAB (excitedly). Shammah, hearken to the things Eliab has been telling us of life in the camp! He drinks the blood of the grape!
MOTHER (with spirit). Your father also drinks wine.
ELIAB (contemptuous). From a little gourd!
AMNON (who considers himself the wit of the household). While Eliab, the soldier, drinks it like a horse!
ELIAB (imperturbable). Even so! (He rises and saunters about.) The old home! The old pot! (He surveys the recess that contains his father’s supper.) Behold, Father’s supper awaiteth his return as of yore, kept coyly within our reach; but which of us would dare to touch? Behold, even his cake of figs. Figs! (Suggestively and wistfully) Mother? (He is craving to eat of his father’s repast.)
MOTHER. Touch not! You dared once, Eliab, to venture upon your father’s supper.
AMNON. Did his staff hurt, Eliab?
ELIAB. You know better than I, Amnon.
AMINADAB. It is his belt now.
AMNON. Watch him strutting — Eliab the slinger of the king!
ELIAB (fiercely). Scoff not, Amnon, at the slingers of Israel. We are now fifteen hundred men, and the sling we know to be the deadliest of all the weapons of war. (He takes off his sling, which was carried round the waist like a belt, and makes play with it.)
AMINADAB. As I shall show them when I too am of the army.
AMNON (displaying his sling). And I.
ELIAB. You!
AMNON. With this sling can I already bring thine to shame.
ELIAB. Thus says Amnon!
AMNON. Furthermore, some hold that the bow of the Philistines is more deadly than our sling. So it is said.
ELIAB. Never by Saul.
MOTHER (as loud as they). No brawling!
(They subside, but glare at each other.)
Eliab, even David has now a sling.
ELIAB. It is no weapon for babes.
AMINADAB. He made it himself.
ELIAB. Ah, that kind of sling.
MOTHER. TO be fair to the little worthless, he brings back many a straying goat with his pebbles.
AMNON. Fear not that he will do you injury with it, proud soldier, for the pebble ever falls behind him, though he points as if it were speeding toward the horizon.
(They are all sitting again. Throughout this Act there should be much sitting on the floor.)
ELIAB. Mother, is David as much a craven as ever?
MOTHER (shamed). Alas, I cannot deny it.
(They become quieter for a time, and, though they disparage DAVID, there is no real ill-will to him. They are really a good-natured family despite their clamour, and we should like, not dislike, them.)
SHAMMAH. At his age we others could have helped to fence the walls of Bethlehem.
ELIAB. The seven sons of Jesse, as we are called, for none speaks of the eighth. You who began so well with me, mother, why did you not desist before David?
MOTHER. I know to my shame that the child is timid and backward. (Contemptuously) The best that can be said of him is that the sheep like him.
AMNON. Yes, he plays to them, Eliab, on his harp, and they gather round him. They take him for one of their lambs!
(They laugh over this.)
AMINADAB. Even our ass is of more account than he.
AMNON. Yea, and David knows it. Hearken, Eliab, when David is from home on it and strangers approach, quickly he dismounts and shows the ass where to hide, for he thinks all covet the ass bu
t that he need not hide himself, for none covets him.
SHAMMAH. I have seen him at such times whisper where it is to hide into the ears of the ass, and lo, that ass does as he directs, so kin are the twain, the one to the other.
MOTHER. I know not what to make of the miserable.
ELIAB (-patting her with kindly intent). Poor soul! Yet grieve not overmuch. Is not the laying fowl well content if out of many eggs she sits on but one that is addled?
MOTHER. Talk not of him before me.
AMNON (mockingly). Let us rather speak about our soldier brother! Eliab the Great!