Masters of the Theatre

by Delphi Classics

  NIBS (who would have preferred it to be a bird). And Tootles has killed her.

  CURLY. Now I see, Peter was bringing her to us. (They wonder for what object.)

  SECOND TWIN. To take care of us? (Undoubtedly for some diverting purpose.)

  OMNES (though every one of them had wanted to have a shot at her). Oh, Tootles!

  TOOTLES (gulping). I did it. When ladies used to come to me in dreams I said ‘Pretty mother,’ but when she really came I shot her! (He perceives the necessity of a solitary life for him.) Friends, good-bye.

  SEVERAL (not very enthusiastic). Don’t go.

  TOOTLES. I must; I am so afraid of Peter.

  (He has gone but a step toward oblivion when he is stopped by a crowing as of some victorious cock.)

  OMNES. Peter!

  (They make a paling of themselves in front of WENDY as PETER skims round the tree-tops and reaches earth.)

  PETER. Greeting, boys! (Their silence chafes him.) I am back; why do you not cheer? Great news, boys, I have brought at last a mother for us all.

  SLIGHTLY (vaguely). Ay, ay.

  PETER. She flew this way; have you not seen her?

  SECOND TWIN (as PETER evidently thinks her important).Oh mournful day!

  TOOTLES (making a break in the paling). Peter, I will show her to you.

  THE OTHERS (closing the gap). No, no.

  TOOTLES (majestically). Stand back all, and let Peter see.

  (The paling dissolves, and PETER sees WENDY prone on the ground.)

  PETER. Wendy, with an arrow in her heart! (He plucks it out.) Wendy is dead. (He is not so much pained as puzzled.)

  CURLY. I thought it was only flowers that die.

  PETER. Perhaps she is frightened at being dead? (Noneof them can say as to that.) Whose arrow? (Not one of them looks at TOOTLES.)

  TOOTLES. Mine, Peter.

  PETER (raising it as a dagger). Oh dastard hand!

  TOOTLES (kneeling and baring his breast). Strike, Peter; strike true.

  PETER (undergoing a singular experience). I cannot strike; there is something stays my hand.

  (In fact WENDY’S arm has risen.)

  NIBS. ’Tis she, the Wendy lady. See, her arm. (To help a friend) I think she said ‘Poor Tootles.’

  PETER (investigating). She lives!

  SLIGHTLY (authoritatively). The Wendy lady lives.(The delightful feeling that they have been cleverer than they thought comes over them and they applaud themselves.)

  PETER (holding up a button that is attached to her chain). See, the arrow struck against this. It is a kiss I gave her; it has saved her life.

  SLIGHTLY. I remember kisses; let me see it. (He takes it in his hand.) Ay, that is a kiss.

  PETER. Wendy, get better quickly and I’ll take you to see the mermaids. She is awfully anxious to see a mermaid.

  (TINKER BELL, who may have been off visiting her relations, returns to the wood and, under the impression thatWENDY has been got rid of, is whistling as gaily as a canary. She is not wholly heartless, but is so small that she has only room for one feeling at a time.)

  CURLY. Listen to Tink rejoicing because she thinks theWendy is dead! (Regardless of spoiling another’s pleasure) Tink, the Wendy lives.

  (TINK gives expression to fury.)

  SECOND TWIN (tell-tale). It was she who said that you wanted us to shoot the Wendy.

  PETER. She said that? Then listen, Tink, I am your friend no more. (There is a note of acerbity in TINK’S reply; it may mean ‘Who wants you?’) Begone from me forever. (Now it is a very wet tinkle.)

  CURLY. She is crying.

  TOOTLES. She says she is your fairy.

  PETER (who knows they are not worth worrying about). Oh well, not for ever, but for a whole week.

  (TINK. goes off sulking, no doubt with the intention ofgiving all her friends an entirely false impression ofWENDY’S appearance.)

  Now what shall we do with Wendy?

  CURLY. Let us carry her down into the house.

  SLIGHTLY. Ay, that is what one does with ladies.

  PETER. No, you must not touch her; it wouldn’t be sufficiently respectful.

  SLIGHTLY. That is what I was thinking.

  TOOTLES. But if she lies there she will die.

  SLIGHTLY. Ay, she will die. It is a pity, but there is no way out.

  PETER. Yes, there is. Let us build a house around her! (Cheers again, meaning that no difficulty baffles PETER.) Leave all to me. Bring the best of what we have. Gut our house. Be sharp. (They race down their trees.)

  (While PETER is engrossed in measuring WENDY so that the house may fit her, JOHN and MICHAEL, who have probably landed on the island with a bump, wander forward, so draggled and tired that if you were to ask MICHAEL whether he is awake or asleep he would probably answer ‘I haven’t tried yet.’)

  MICHAEL (bewildered). John, John, wake up. Where is Nana, John?

  JOHN (with the help of one eye but not always the same eye). It is true, we did fly! (Thankfully) And here is Peter. Peter, is this the place?

  (PETER, alas, has already forgotten them, as soon maybe he will forget WENDY. The first thing she should do now that she is here is to sew a handkerchief for him, and knot it as a jog to his memory.)

  PETER (curtly). Yes.

  MICHAEL. Where is Wendy? (PETER points.)

  JOHN (who still wears his hat). She is asleep.

  MICHAEL. John, let us wake her and get her to make supper for us.

  (Some of the boys emerge, and he pinches one.)

  John, look at them!

  PETER (still house-building). Curly, see that these boy shelp in the building of the house.

  JOHN. Build a house?

  CURLY. For the Wendy.

  JOHN (feeling that there must be some mistake here). ForWendy? Why, she is only a girl.

  CURLY. That is why we are her servants.

  JOHN (dazed). Are you Wendy’s servants?

  PETER. Yes, and you also. Away with them. (In another moment they are woodsmen hacking at trees, with CURLY as overseer.) Slightly, fetch a doctor. (SLIGHTLY reels and goes. He returns professionally in JOHN’S hat.) Please, sir, are you a doctor?

  SLIGHTLY (trembling in his desire to give satisfaction).Yes, my little man.

  PETER. Please, sir, a lady lies very ill.

  SLIGHTLY (taking care not to fall over her). Tut, tut, where does she lie?

  PETER. In yonder glade. (It is a variation of a game they play.)

  SLIGHTLY. I will put a glass thing in her mouth. (He inserts an imaginary thermometer in WENDY’S mouth and gives it a moment to record its verdict. He shakes it and then consults it.)

  PETER (anxiously). How is she?

  SLIGHTLY. Tut, tut, this has cured her.

  PETER (leaping joyously). I am glad.

  SLIGHTLY. I will call again in the evening. Give her beef tea out of a cup with a spout to it, tut, tut.

  (The boys are running up with odd articles of furniture.)

  PETER (with an already fading recollection of the Darling nursery). These are not good enough for Wendy. How Iwish I knew the kind of house she would prefer!

  FIRST TWIN. Peter, she is moving in her sleep.

  TOOTLES (opening WENDY’S mouth and gazing down into the depths). Lovely!

  PETER. Oh, Wendy, if you could sing the kind of house you would like to have.

  (It is as if she had heard him.)

  WENDY (without opening her eyes).

  I wish I had a woodland house,

  The littlest ever seen,

  With funny little red walls

  And roof of mossy green.

  (In the time she sings this and two other verses, such is the urgency of PETER’S silent orders that they have knocked down trees, laid a foundation and put up the walls and roof, so that she is now hidden from view. ‘Windows’ cries PETER, and CURLY rushes them in, ‘Roses’ and TOOTLES arrives breathless with a festoon for the door. Thus springs into existence the most delicious little house for beginners.)


  FIRST TWIN. I think it is finished.

  PETER. There is no knocker on the door. (TOOTLES hangs up the sole of his shoe.) There is no chimney, we must have a chimney. (They await his deliberations anxiously.)

  JOHN (unwisely critical). It certainly does need a chimney.

  (He is again wearing his hat, which PETER seizes, knocks the top off it and places on the roof. In the friendliestway smoke begins to come out of the hat.)

  PETER (with his hand on the knocker). All look your best; the first impression is awfully important. (he knocks, and after a dreadful moment of suspense, in which they cannot help wondering if any one is inside, the door opens and who should come out but WENDY! She has evidently been tidying a little. She is quite surprised to find that she has nine children.)

  WENDY (genteelly). Where am I?

  SLIGHTLY. Wendy lady, for you we built this house.

  NIBS and TOOTLES. Oh, say you are pleased.

  WENDY (stroking the pretty thing). Lovely, darling house!

  FIRST TWIN. And we are your children.

  WENDY (affecting surprise). Oh?

  OMNES (kneeling, with outstretched arms). Wendy lady, be our mother! (Now that they know it is pretend they acclaim her greedily.)

  WENDY (not to make herself too cheap). Ought I? Of course it is frightfully fascinating; but you see I am only a little girl; I have no real experience.

  OMNES. That doesn’t matter. What we need is just a nice motherly person.

  WENDY. Oh dear, I feel that is just exactly what I am.

  OMNES. It is, it is, we saw it at once.

  WENDY. Very well then, I will do my best. (In their glee they go dancing obstreperously round the little house, and she sees she must be firm with them as well as kind.) Come inside at once, you naughty children, I am sure your feet are damp. And before I put you to bed I have just time to finish the story of Cinderella.

  (They all troop into the enchanting house, whose not least remarkable feature is that it holds them. A vision of LIZA passes, not perhaps because she has any right to be there; but she has so few pleasures and is so young that we just let her have a peep at the little house. By and by PETER comes out and marches up and down with drawn sword, for the pirates can be heard carousing faraway on the lagoon, and the wolves are on the prowl. The little house, its walls so red and its roof so mossy, looks very cosy and safe, with a bright light showing through the blind, the chimney smoking beautifully, and PETER on guard. On our last sight of him it is so dark that we just guess he is the little figure who has fallen asleep by the door. Dots of light come and go. They are inquisitive fairies having a look at the house. Any other child in their way they would mischief, but they just tweak PETER’S nose and pass on. Fairies, you see,can touch him.)

  ACT III

  THE MERMAIDS’ LAGOON

  It is the end of a long playful day on the lagoon. The sun’s rays have persuaded him to give them another five minutes, for one more race over the waters before he gathers them up and lets in the moon. There are many mermaids here, going plop-plop, and one might attempt to count the tails did they not flash and disappear so quickly. At times a lovely girl leaps in the air seeking to get rid of her excess of scales, which fall in a silver shower as she shakes them off. From the coral grottoes beneath the lagoon, where are the mermaids’ bedchambers, comes fitful music.

  One of the most bewitching of these blue-eyed creatures is lying lazily on Marooners’ Rock, combing her long tresses and noting effects in a transparent shell. Peter and his band are in the water unseen behind the rock, whither they have tracked her as if she were a trout, and at a signal ten pairs of arms come whack upon the mermaid to enclose her. Alas, this is only what was meant to happen, for she hears the signal (which is the crow of a cock) and slips through their arms into the water. It has been such a near thing that there are scales on some of their hands. They climb on to the rock crestfallen.

  WENDY (preserving her scales as carefully as if they were rare postage stamps). I did so want to catch a mermaid.

  PETER (getting rid of his). It is awfully difficult to catch a mermaid.

  (The mermaids at times find it just as difficult to catch him, though he sometimes joins them in their one game,which consists in lazily blowing their bubbles into the air and seeing who can catch them. The number of bubbles PETER has flown away with! When the weather grows cold mermaids migrate ‘to the other side of the world, and he once went with a great shoal of them half the way.)

  They are such cruel creatures, Wendy, that they try to pull boys and girls like you into the water and drown them.

  WENDY (too guarded by this time to ask what he means ‘precisely by ‘like you,’ though she is very desirous of knowing). How hateful!

  (She is slightly different in appearance now, rather rounder, while JOHN and MICHAEL are not quite so round. The reason is that when new lost children arrive at his underground home PETER finds new trees for them to go up and down by, and instead of fitting the tree to them he makes them fit the tree. Sometimes it can be done by adding or removing garments, but if you are bumpy, or the tree is an odd shape, he has things done to you with a roller, and after that you fit.

  The other boys are now playing King of the Castle, throwing each other into the water, taking headers and so on; but these two continue to talk.)

  PETER. Wendy, this is a fearfully important rock. It is called Marooners’ Rock. Sailors are marooned, you know, when their captain leaves them on a rock and sails away.

  WENDY. Leaves them on this little rock to drown?

  PETER (lightly). Oh, they don’t live long. Their hands are tied, so that they can’t swim. When the tide is full this rock is covered with water, and then the sailor drowns.

  (WENDY is uneasy as she surveys the rock, which is the only one in the lagoon and no larger than a table. Since she last looked around a threatening change has come over the scene. The sun has gone, but the moon has not come. What has come is a cold shiver across the waters which has sent all the wiser mermaids to their coral recesses. They know that evil is creeping over the lagoon. Of the boys PETER is of course the first to scent it, and he has leapt to his feet before the words strike the rock —

  ’And if we ‘re parted by a shot

  We ‘re sure to meet below.’

  The games on the rock and around it end so abruptly that several divers are checked in the air. There they hang waiting for the word of command from PETER.When they get it they strike the water simultaneously, and the rock is at once as bare as if suddenly they had been blown off it. Thus the pirates find it deserted when their dinghy strikes the rock and is nearly stove in by the concussion.)

  SMEE. Luff, you spalpeen, luff! (They are SMEE and STARKEY, with TIGER LILY, their captive, bound hand and foot.) What we have got to do is to hoist the redskin on to the rock and leave her there to drown.

  (To one of her race this is an end darker than death by fire or torture, for it is written in the laws of the Piccaninnies that there is no path through water to the happy hunting ground. Yet her face is impassive; she is the daughter of a chief and must die as a chief’s daughter; it is enough.)

  STARKEY (chagrined because she does not mewl). No mewling. This is your reward for prowling round the ship with a knife in your mouth.

  TIGER LILLY (stoically). Enough said.

  SMEE (who would have preferred a farewell palaver). So that’s it! On to the rock with her, mate.

  STARKEY (experiencing for perhaps the last time the stirrings of a man). Not so rough, Smee; roughish, but not so rough.

  SMEE (dragging her on to the rock). It is the captain’s orders.

  (A stave has in some past time been driven into the rock, probably to mark the burial place of hidden treasure, and to this they moor the dinghy.)

  WENDY (in the water). Poor Tiger Lily!

  STARKEY. What was that? (The children bob.)

  PETER (who can imitate the captain’s voice so perfectly that even the author has a dizzy feeling that at times
he was really HOOK). Ahoy there, you lubbers!

  STARKEY. It is the captain; he must be swimming out to us.

  SMEE (calling). We have put the redskin on the rock,Captain.

  PETER. Set her free.

  SMEE. But, Captain ——

  PETER. Cut her bonds, or I ‘ll plunge my hook in you.

  SMEE. This is queer:

  STARKEY (unmanned). Let us follow the captain’s orders.

  (They undo the thongs and TIGER LILY slides between their legs into the lagoon, forgetting in her haste to utter her war-cry, but PETER utters it for her, so naturally that even the lost boys are deceived. It is at this moment that the voice of the true HOOK is heard.)

  HOOK. Boat ahoy!

  SMEE (relieved). It is the captain.

  (HOOK is swimming, and they help him to scale the rock. He is in gloomy mood.)

  STARKEY. Captain, is all well?

  SMEE. He sighs.

  STARKEY. He sighs again.

  SMEE (counting). And yet a third time he sighs. (With foreboding) What’s up, Captain?

  HOOK (who has perhaps found the large rich damp cake untouched). The game is up. Those boys have found a mother!

  STARKEY. Oh evil day!

  SMEE. What is a mother?

  WENDY (horrified). He doesn’t know!

  HOOK (sharply). What was that?

  (PETER makes the splash of a mermaid’s tail.)

  STARKEY. One of them mermaids.

  HOOK. Dost not know, Smee? A mother is —— (He finds it more difficult to explain than he had expected, and looks about him for an illustration. He finds one in a great bird which drifts past in a nest as large as the roomiest basin) There is a lesson in mothers for you! The nest must have fallen intothe water, but would the bird desert her eggs? (PETER, who is now more or less off his head, makes the sound of a bird answering in the negative. The nest is borne out of sight.)

  STARKEY. Maybe she is hanging about here to protect Peter?

  (HOOK’S face clouds still further and PETER just manages not to call out that he needs no protection.)

  SMEE (not usually a man of ideas). Captain, could we not kidnap these boys’ mother and make her our mother?

  HOOK. Obesity and bunions, ’tis a princely scheme. We will seize the children, make them walk the plank, and Wendy shall be our mother!