The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder, Volume II

by Thornton Wilder

  ADMETUS: You must not think such thoughts!

  HERCULES: Even a son of Zeus couldn’t do that, could he? So—so you see the question? Isn’t that an important question? And who can answer it? Who is wisest in just these matters where you and I are most ignorant? You know who: she who never speaks, or speaks so little. The Silent. She is silent, isn’t she?

  ADMETUS: Yes, she is silent.

  HERCULES: But she’ll speak to me . . . to her old friend Hercules? She’ll speak for me, won’t she? (He pours himself more wine) Do you know, Admetus—do you know what your Alcestis is?

  (Admetus, in pain, rises, and sits down.)

  No, you don’t know. I journey from place to place—from court to court. I’ve seen them all—the queens and princesses of Greece. The daughters of the men we knew and the girls we courted are growing up. Oedipus of Thebes has a daughter, Antigone; and there is Penelope, who’s just married the son of Laertes of Ithaca. Leda of Sparta has two daughters, Helen and Clytemnestra. I’ve seen ’em all, talked to ’em all. What are they beside Alcestis? Dirt. Trash.

  (Aglaia comes from the palace bearing a garland of vine leaves. The Watchman follows with a jar of oil. They stand listening.

  Hercules rises and, in drunken energy close to violence, turns Admetus about, shouting:)

  Do you know? Do you know to the full?

  ADMETUS (In agony, raising his arms): I know, Hercules.

  HERCULES: Do you know all—her power to forgive, to pardon? No, you don’t know a thing. Alcestis is the crown of Greece. The crown of women.

  ADMETUS (Taking three steps backward): Hercules! Alcestis is dead.

  (Pause.)

  The servants of servants. Forgive us, Hercules!

  HERCULES (Silence. A great rage rises in him. Then with savage bitterness): Admetus . . . you are no friend. By the immortal gods, you are my worst enemy!

  (He grasps him by the throat and, walking backward, drags the unresisting Admetus with him.)

  If you were not Admetus, I would kill you now!

  AGLAIA AND WATCHMAN: Hercules! Hercules, Queen Alcestis wished it! She wanted us not to tell you until later.

  HERCULES: You have treated me as no friend. I thought I was your brother.

  AGLAIA (Pounding with her fists on his back): Hercules! Hercules!

  HERCULES: Alcestis dead—and I was not worthy to be told! You let me boast and drink and revel . . .

  AGLAIA: It was her wish, Hercules. Alcestis commanded it.

  HERCULES (Broodingly, holding Admetus bent far backward before him): You think I have no mind or heart or soul. What do I care for the thanks and praise of the world if I am not fit to share the grief of my friends?

  (Pause.)

  AGLAIA: It was for hospitality, Hercules. She wished it!

  HERCULES: Hospitality is for guests, not brothers.

  ADMETUS (Quietly): Forgive us, Hercules.

  HERCULES (Releasing Admetus): Alcestis is dead. Alcestis is in the underworld.

  (Suddenly struck by an idea; loudly) In Hell! Where is my club? My club! I shall go and get her!

  AGLAIA: Hercules!

  ADMETUS: No, Hercules. Live! She died in my place. She died for me. It is not right that still another die.

  HERCULES: My club! My club! Admetus, now I shall tell you something—something that no man knows. Now all the world may know it. (He has advanced to the top of the path) I once came near to Alcestis in violence, in brutish violence. Yes, I, Hercules, son of Zeus, did that! A god—some god—intervened in time, to save her and to save me. Alcestis forgave me. How can that be? How can any man understand that? She spoke of it to no one in the world. And when I came to Pherai there was no sign in her face, in her eyes, that I had been the criminal. Only a god can understand that—only that loving smile. Forgiveness is not within our power—we commoner men. Only the strong and pure can forgive. I never wanted that she should forget that evil moment —no!—for in her remembering it lay my happiness; for her remembering and her forgiving were one.

  ADMETUS: Hercules, I shall come with you.

  HERCULES: Stay and rule, Admetus. Your labors I cannot do; you cannot do mine. What god shall I call on? Not my father—father and no father. Who is the god you mainly worship here?

  AGLAIA: Have you forgotten, Hercules? This is Apollo’s land.

  HERCULES: Yes, now I remember. I have had little to do with him, but . . . (Looking to heaven) Apollo, I am Hercules, called the son of Zeus and Alcmene. All Greece says that you have loved these two—Admetus and Alcestis. You know what I’m about to do. You know I can’t do it by myself. Put into my arm a strength that’s never been there before. You do this—or let’s say, you and I do this together. And if we can do it, let everybody see that a new knowledge has been given to us of what gods and men can do together.

  ADMETUS: One moment, Hercules. (He goes down the path)

  Pytho! Pytho! This is Hercules, the loved friend of Alcestis and of me and of Epimenes. Let him pass, Pytho—going and coming.

  HERCULES: Go into the palace, Admetus—all of you. I must work as I must live—alone.

  (It is dark. The characters on the stage withdraw, except for Admetus, who stands by the palace door, covering his face with his cloak. A low beating on timpani, like distant thunder, grows louder, strikes a sharp blow, and jumps up a fourth. Hercules has disappeared into the door of the cave. Presently he returns, leading Alcestis. Over her white dress and head she wears a dark veil, which trails many yards behind her. As they reach the stage, Hercules releases her hand. She sways, with groping steps, as though drugged with sleep. Hercules shoulders his club and goes off in his solitary way. Admetus, holding his cloak before him, as before a strong light, approaches, enfolds her. She rests her head on his breast. He leads her into the palace.)

  ACT III

  Twelve years later. Again, first streaks of dawn.

  Enter left, Alcestis—old, broken, in rags. She is carrying a water jar. She descends to the spring to fill it. Noise of a crowd on the road.

  TOWNSPEOPLE (Outside the palace gates): King Agis, help us! Save us! . . . King Agis must help us . . . We want to talk to King Agis!

  (Enter hurriedly, in horrified protest, a new and younger Night Watchman. He also carries a lighted lantern and a rattle. His face is smeared with ashes. He opens the gate a crack and speaks through it.)

  WATCHMAN: You know the order: anyone who puts foot in these gates will be killed.

  TOWNSPEOPLE (Pressing in and overrunning the Watchman): Let him kill us! We’re dying already!. . . The king must do something.

  WATCHMAN (Looking over his shoulder toward the palace, in terror): The king’s doing everything he can. Pestilences and plagues come from the gods, he says, and only the gods can stop them. Bury your dead, he says, bury them the moment they fall. And smear your faces with ashes; rub your whole body with ashes and cinders. That way the plague can’t see you, he says, and it will pass you by.

  TOWNSPEOPLE: We’ve heard all that before. We want to see Queen Alcestis. Queen Alcestis! She can help us. Queen Alcestis!

  WATCHMAN (Indignantly): What do you mean—Queen Alcestis? There’s no Queen Alcestis here. She’s a slave, and the lowest of the slaves!

  (Alcestis has come up the path, her jar on her shoulder. She stands and listens. The Watchman sees her.)

  There she is! (Violently) Look at her! She brought the plague. She is the plague. It’s she that’s brought the curse on Thessaly!

  TOWNSPEOPLE (After a shocked silence, an outburst of contradictory cries): No, never! Not Queen Alcestis! What did he say? How did she bring it?

  ALCESTIS (Her head turning slowly as she looks into their faces; barely a question): I—brought the plague? I brought the plague?

  WATCHMAN: She was dead, wasn’t she? And Hercules brought her back from death, didn’t he? She brought back death with her. Everybody belonging to her is dead. Her husband killed. Two of her children killed. One of her sons got away—but who’s heard of him for a dozen
years? The king will have her killed or driven from the country.

  ALCESTIS: No, I did not bring this disease to Thessaly. Take me to these judges. If it is I who have brought misfortune to Thessaly, let them take my life and remove the disease from you and your children.

  (Alcestis moves off to the left, into the servants’ quarters. Light slowly comes up on Apollo, standing on the roof.)

  TOWNSPEOPLE: No! She could not have brought evil to Thessaly! That is Alcestis the Wise!

  WATCHMAN (Amid contradictory cries from the crowd): Go to your homes! You’ll all be killed here.

  (To those in front) What do you know about it? Ignorant boors! Away, all of you! I’ve warned you. You know what kind of man King Agis is.

  (Townspeople disappear, murmuring and grumbling, through the palace gate. The Watchman goes off left, shaking his rattle. As he goes:)

  Dawn . . . dawn . . . and all is well in the palace of Agis, King of Thessaly, rich in horses . . .

  (Death comes out of the cave, ascends the path, and sniffs at the doors.)

  APOLLO: Death!

  DEATH (Who hasn’t noticed him; taken unawares): Ah, you’re here again!

  APOLLO: It is getting light. You are shuddering.

  DEATH: Yes. Yes, but I have some questions to ask you. Lord Apollo, I can’t understand what you mean by this. So many dead! Down where I live there’s such a crowding and trampling and waiting in line! And never have I seen so many children! But I confess to you, Lord Apollo, I don’t know what you mean by it: you are the God of healing—of life and of healing—and here you are, the sender of plagues and pestilence. You loved Admetus, and his family, and his people; and all you do is kill them.

  APOLLO (A smile): I loved Alcestis, and I killed her—once.

  DEATH: Contemptible, what you did!

  APOLLO: Have you mended the wall—that wall through which Hercules broke?

  DEATH: Broke? Hercules? You broke it. You broke the ancient law and order of the world: that the living are the living and the dead are the dead.

  APOLLO: Yes—one small ray of light fell where light had never fallen before.

  DEATH: You broke that law, and now you’re caught up in its consequences. You’re losing your happiness and your very wits because you can’t make yourself known to them. And you’re behaving like the rejected lover who dashes into the beloved’s house and kills everyone there.

  APOLLO: I have made myself known to them. I have set my story in motion.

  DEATH: Your lesson.

  APOLLO: Yes, my lesson—that I can bring back from the dead only those who have offered their lives for others.

  DEATH: You brought back one, and now you are hurling thousands and thousands into my kingdom.

  APOLLO: Yes, I must bring ruin and havoc, for only so will they remember the story. In the stories that are longest remembered, death plays a large role.

  DEATH (Shuddering): This light! This light! All these plague-stricken do not interest me. There is one mortal here that I am waiting for . . . she who escaped me once.

  APOLLO: Alcestis? You will never have her.

  DEATH: She is mortal!

  APOLLO: Yes.

  DEATH: She is mortal!

  APOLLO: All mortal. Nothing but mortal.

  DEATH: What are you going to do? You cannot steal her a second time?

  APOLLO: Death, the sun is risen. You are shaking.

  DEATH: Yes, but give me an answer. I am in a hurry.

  APOLLO: Start accustoming yourself to a change.

  DEATH: I?

  APOLLO: One ray of light has already reached your kingdom.

  DEATH (In headlong flight to his cave, shrieking): There’ll be no more. No second one. No more light. No more. No change!

  (Exit. The light fades from Apollo, who disappears. Enter from the road—through the palace gate, left open—Epimenes, twenty-one, and Cheriander, also twenty-one. They are holding their cloaks about their noses. Under their cloaks they wear short swords. Cheriander comes forward eagerly and looks about him with awe. Epimenes follows him, morose and bitter.)

  CHERIANDER: The Palace of Admetus and Alcestis! . . . And was Apollo here? Where did he place his feet—here, or here? (Epimenes nods, scarcely raising his eyes from the ground)

  And Hercules brought your mother back from the dead . . . where? (Epimenes indicates the cave. Cheriander goes quickly down to it)

  That I have lived to see this place! Look, Epimenes! There is your old friend Pytho guarding the door. Speak to him so that we can drink at the spring. This water, at least, is not poisoned.

  EPIMENES: You remember me, Pytho? —He scarcely stirs.

  CHERIANDER: Make the offering, and let us drink.

  EPIMENES: “Sources of life—earth, air . . .” No, Cheriander, I cannot. How can I say the prayer we said here so many hundred times? In the morning my father and mother would bring us here. How could all this have happened? The God turned his face away. My father killed. My brother and sister killed. Myself sent away by night to live among strangers. My mother a slave—or dead. And the land under pestilence and the dead bodies lying unburied under the sun. To whom do I make a prayer?

  CHERIANDER (With quiet resolution): We are leaving Pherai. We are going out of that gate now. You are not ready to do what we came to do, and I will not help you.

  EPIMENES: I can do what I have to do without prayer or offering. Justice and revenge speak for themselves. To strike! To strike into his throat. Yes, and to strike his daughter, Laodamia, too.

  CHERIANDER: Epimenes, I will not help you. This is not the way we planned it. Kill or be killed, as you wish. I have not crossed Greece with you to take part in a mere butchery.

  EPIMENES: You want me to make a prayer? To whom? To Apollo, who has blasted this house with his hatred?

  CHERIANDER (He descends, and putting his hands on Epimenes’s shoulders, shakes him in solemn anger): Are you the first man to have suffered? Cruelty, injustice, murder, and humiliation—is it only here that those things can be found? Have you forgotten that we came here to establish justice? That you yourself said that men of themselves could never have arrived at justice—that it was planted in their minds by the gods?

  (They gaze sternly at one another.)

  EPIMENES (Quietly, looking down): I do not deserve to have such a friend.

  (Enter Alcestis, left, carrying the water jar on her shoulder.)

  CHERIANDER: Are you ready to make the offering?

  (Epimenes recites the ritual, solemnly, but all but inaudibly. They both drink. Cheriander starts up the path, vigorously.)

  I am ready to knock at the palace doors.

  (He sees Alcestis. He hurries back to the spring, and says to Epimenes) There is an old woman here. We will see what we can learn from her.

  (Alcestis has taken a few steps down the path, but seeing the men, draws back. Cheriander comes up the path to her.)

  Old woman, is this the palace of Agis, King of Thessaly?

  (Her eyes go at once to the gate. Cheriander returns to Epimenes.)

  She seems to be a slave. Perhaps it is your mother.

  EPIMENES (Goes quickly up the path, looks closely at Alcestis, then says brusquely): No.

  CHERIANDER: You are sure?

  EPIMENES (Shortly): Sure. Certain.

  CHERIANDER: Tell me, old woman, has this pestilence taken lives in the palace? (She shakes her head)

  King Agis lives here with his family—with a young daughter, Laodamia? (She nods)

  Tell me: the guards he has about him—did he bring them from Thrace, or are they of this country? (No answer)

  EPIMENES: Perhaps she is deaf, or dumb.

  (Louder) Does he often make journeys back to his own country—to Thrace?

  ALCESTIS: You are in danger here. You must go—you must go at once.

  EPIMENES: Oh, she can speak. Tell me, old mother, were you here in the days of King Admetus and Queen Alcestis?

  ALCESTIS: Who are you? From where have you come?
/>
  EPIMENES: Did you know them? Had you talked with them? (She nods) King Admetus is dead? (She nods) Is Queen Alcestis alive? (No sign) Here in the palace? (Her eyes return again to the gate)

  (He adds impatiently) By the immortal gods, since you can speak, speak!

  ALCESTIS: You must go at once. But tell me . . . tell me: who are you?

  CHERIANDER (Staring at Alcestis, but urgently striking Epimenes’s forearm): Look again. Look closely. Are you sure?

  EPIMENES: Sure! These mountain women are all the same. They all have this silence, this slyness.

  ALCESTIS: How did you come in at that gate? King Agis will certainly have you killed.

  CHERIANDER: No. We bring a message to King Agis that he will be glad to hear.

  ALCESTIS (Repeatedly shaking her head): There is no message now that will save your lives, young man. Go. Take the road to the north and go quickly.

  EPIMENES: The message we bring will make us very welcome. We have come to tell him of the death of an enemy—of his greatest enemy.

  CHERIANDER: There is no need to tell it now.

  EPIMENES: Whom he lives in dread of.

  (Shaking her head, Alcestis passes him and starts down the path.)

  We come to tell him of the death of Epimenes, the son of King Admetus and Queen Alcestis. He will be glad enough to hear of that.

  (Alcestis is near the spring. She stops, lifts her head, and puts her hand to her heart, letting her jar slip.)

  CHERIANDER (Going to her and taking her jar): Let me carry your jar, old woman.

  ALCESTIS (Suddenly): You are Epimenes!

  CHERIANDER (Short laugh): No, old woman. Epimenes is dead.

  ALCESTIS: You have proof of this?

  CHERIANDER: Yes, proof.

  (He has filled the jar and is starting up the path.)

  ALCESTIS: We have always thought that he would return . . . in secret, or disguise. My eyes are failing.

  (Eagerly) You are Epimenes!

  CHERIANDER: No, mother, no.

  ALCESTIS: You knew him—you talked with him?

  CHERIANDER: Yes, many times. Where can I carry this for you?

  ALCESTIS (At the top of the path, peers into Epimenes’s face): Let me look at you.