by Tom Stoppard
any competent or, better still, eminent psychiatric expert witness would be prepared to say so. Of course, he wouldn’t be cheap, but it can be done, do you follow me?
GEORGE (puzzled): I’m not sure that I do.
BONES: Well, your wife says you can explain everything, and you say you are wholly responsible, but——
GEORGE: Are you still going on about that?—for goodness sake,
I just lost my temper for a moment, that’s all, and took matters into my own hands.
BONES: Because of the noise?
GEORGE: Exactly.
BONES: Don’t you think it was a bit extreme?
GEORGE: Yes, yes, I suppose it was a bit.
BONES: Won’t wash, Wilfred. I believe you are trying to shield her.
GEORGE: Shield who?
BONES: It’s quite understandable. Is there a man who could stand aside when this fair creature is in trouble——
GEORGE: Aren’t you getting a little carried away? The point is, surely, that I’m the householder and I must be held responsible for what happens in my house.
BONES: I don’t think the burden of being a householder extends to responsibility for any crime committed on the premises.
GEORGE: Crime? You call that a crime?
BONES (with more heat): Well, what would you call it?
GEORGE: It was just a bit of fun! Where’s your sense of humour, man?
BONES (staggered): I don’t know, you bloody philosophers are all the same, aren’t you? A man is dead and you’re as cool as you like. Your wife begged me with tears in her eyes to go easy on you, and I don’t mind admitting I was deeply moved——
GEORGE: Excuse me——
BONES (angrily): But you’re wasted on her, mate. What on earth made her marry you, I’ll never know, when there are so many better men—decent, strong, protective, understanding, sensitive——
GEORGE: Did you say somebody was dead?
BONES: Stone dead, in the bedroom.
GEORGE: Don’t be ridiculous.
BONES: The body is lying on the floor!
GEORGE (going to Door): You have obviously taken leave of your senses.
BONES: Don’t touch it!—it will have to be examined for finger-prints.
GEORGE: If there is a body on the floor, it will have my footprints on it.
(He opens the Bedroom door. In the Bedroom, no one is in view. The drapes—or screens—are round the bed. The ambiguous machine—the dermatograph—is set up so that it peers with its lens through the drapes. The camera-lights are in position round the bed, shining down over the drapes into the bed. The TV set is connected by a lead to the dermatograph.
GEORGE pauses in the doorway.)
ARCHIE (within):… There…
DOTTY (within):… Yes…
ARCHIE: There… there…
DOTTY: Yes…
ARCHIE:… and there…
DOTTY: Yes… yes.
(These sounds are consistent with a proper doctor-patient relationship. If DOTTY has a tendency to gasp slightly it is probably because the stethoscope is cold, ARCHIE on the other hand, might be getting rather overheated under the blaze of the dermatograph lights.)
ARCHIE (within): Excuse me…
(ARCHIE’s coat comes sailing over the drapes. GEORGE retreats, closing the door.)
GEORGE: Well, he’s very much alive now.
BONES: Sir?
GEORGE: My wife’s doctor.
BONES: Really? On the floor?
GEORGE: He’s a psychiatrist, notorious for his methods. And for much else. (On this bitter note, GEORGE goes into the Study, BONES, with
the trolley, cautiously enters the Bedroom. No one is in view.
BONES pauses. One of ARCHIE’s shoes comes over the drapes and falls on the floor. Another pause. The second shoe comes over, falling into BONES’s hands. The absence of a thump brings ARCHIE’s head into view, popping up over the drapes.)
ARCHIE: Ah! Good morning!
(ARCHIE moves to come out from the bed. Meanwhile DOTTY
looks over the top.)
DOTTY: Lunch! And Bonesy!
(ARCHIE picks his coat up and hands it to BONES, and then readies himself to put his arms in the sleeves, as though BONES
were a manservant.)
ARCHIE (slipping on his coat): Thank you so much. Rather warm in there. The lights, you know.
DOTTY: Isn’t he sweet?
ARCHIE: Charming. What happened to Mrs. Whatsername?
DOTTY: No, no, it’s Bonesy!
BONES: Inspector Bones, C.I.D.
DOTTY (disappearing): Excuse me!
ARCHIE: Bones…? I had a patient named Bones. I wonder if he was any relation?—an osteopath.
BONES: My brother!
ARCHIE: Remember the case well. Cognomen Syndrome. My advice to him was to take his wife’s maiden name of Foot and carry on from there.
BONES: He took your advice but unfortunately he got interested in chiropody. He is now in an asylum near Uxbridge.
ARCHIE: Isn’t that interesting? I must write him up. The Cognomen Syndrome is my baby, you know.
BONES: You discovered it?
ARCHIE: I’ve got it. Jumper’s the name—my card.
BONES (reading off card): ‘Sir Archibald Jumper, M.D., D.Phil.,
D.Litt., L.D., D.P.M., D.P.T. (Gym)’…. What’s all that?
ARCHIE: I’m a doctor of medicine, philosophy, literature and law, with diplomas in psychological medicine and P.T. including gym.
BONES (handing back the card): I see that you are the Vice-Chancellor of Professor Moore’s university.
ARCHIE: Not a bad record, is it? And I can still jump over seven feet.
BONES: High jump?
ARCHIE: Long jump. My main interest, however, is the trampoline.
BONES: Mine is show business generally.
ARCHIE: Really? Well, nowadays, of course, I do more theory than practice, but if trampoline acts appeal to you at all, a vacancy has lately occurred in a little team I run, mainly for our own amusement with a few social engagements thrown in——
BONES: Just a minute, just a minute!—what happened to
Professor McFee?
ARCHIE: Exactly. I regret to tell you he is dead.
BONES: I realize he is dead——
ARCHIE: Shocking tragedy. I am entirely to blame.
BONES: You, too, sir?
ARCHIE: Yes, Inspector.
BONES: Very chivalrous, sir, but I’m afraid it won’t wash.
(He addresses the drapes, loudly.) Miss Moore, is there any-thing you wish to say at this stage?
DOTTY (her head appearing): Sorry?
BONES: My dear—we are all sorry——
(DOTTY disappears.)
ARCHIE: Just a moment! I will not have a patient of mine brow-beaten by the police.
BONES (thoughtfully): Patient…
ARCHIE: Yes. As you can see I have been taking a dermatographical reading.
BONES (indicating the dermatograph): This? What does it do?
ARCHIE: It reads the skin, electronically; hence dermatograph.
BONES: Why is it connected to the television set?
ARCHIE: We’ll get the read-back on the screen. All kinds of disturbances under the skin show up on the surface, if we can learn to read it, and we are learning.
BONES: Disturbances? Mental disturbances?
ARCHIE: Among other things.
BONES (a new intimacy): Sir Jim——
ARCHIE: Archie——
BONES: Sir Archie, might I have a word with you, in private?
ARCHIE: Just what I was about to suggest. (He opens the Bedroom door.) Shall we step outside…?
(BONES steps into the Hall.)
DOTTY:… Things don’t seem so bad after all. So to speak.
(ARCHIE follows BONES into the Hall. Fade out on Bedroom,
ARCHIE and BONES move towards Kitchen exit.)
BONES: This is just between you and me, Sigmund. I understand your feelings only too we
ll. What decent man could stand aside while that beautiful, frail creature——(In the Study, GEORGE has resumed…)
GEORGE: The study of moral philosophy is an attempt to determine what we mean when we say that something is good and that something else is bad. Not all value judgements, however, are the proper study of the moral philosopher. Language is a finite instrument crudely applied to an infinity of ideas, and one consequence of the failure to take account of this is that modern philosophy has made itself ridiculous by analysing such statements as, ‘This is a good bacon sandwich,’ or, ‘Bedser had a good wicket.’ (The SECRETARY raises her head at ‘Bedser’.) Bedser!—Good God, B-E-D-S… (Fade on Study.
ARCHIE and BONES re-enter.)
ARCHIE: Please come to the point, Inspector. The plain facts are that while performing some modest acrobatics for the entertainment of Miss Moore’s party-guests, Professor McFee was killed by a bullet fired from the outer darkness. We all saw him shot, but none of us saw who shot him. With the possible exception of McFee’s fellow gymnasts, anybody could have fired the shot, and anybody could have had a reason for doing so, including, incidentally, myself.
BONES: And what might your motive be, sir?
ARCHIE: Who knows? Perhaps McFee, my faithful protégé, had secretly turned against me, gone off the rails and decided that he was St. Paul to Moore’s Messiah.
BONES: Doesn’t seem much of a reason.
ARCHIE: It depends. Moore himself is not important—he is our tame believer, pointed out to visitors in much the same spirit as we point out the magnificent stained glass in what is now the gymnasium. But McFee was the guardian and figurehead of philosophical orthodoxy, and if he threatened to start calling on his masters to return to the true path, then I’m afraid it would certainly have been an ice-pick in the back of the skull.
DOTTY (off): Darling!
ARCHIE: And then again, perhaps it was Dorothy. Or someone.
(Smiles.)
DOTTY (off): Darling!
BONES: My advice to you is, number one, get her lawyer over here——
ARCHIE: That will not be necessary. I am Miss Moore’s legal adviser.
BONES: Number two, completely off the record, get her off on expert evidence—nervous strain, appalling pressure, and one day—snap!—blackout, can’t remember a thing. Put her in the box and you’re half-way there. The other half is, get something on Mad Jock McFee, and if you don’t get a Scottish judge it’ll be three years probation and the sympathy of the court.
ARCHIE: This is most civil of you, Inspector, but a court appearance would be most embarrassing to my client and patient; and three years’ probation is not an insignificant curtailment of a person’s liberty.
BONES: For God’s sake, man, we’re talking about a murder charge.
ARCHIE: You are. What I had in mind is that McFee, suffering from nervous strain brought on by the appalling pressure of overwork—for which I blame myself entirely—left here last night in a mood of deep depression, and wandered into the park, where he crawled into a large plastic bag and shot himself…
(Pause, BONES opens his mouth to speak.)
… leaving this note… (ARCHIE produces it from his pocket.)… which was found in the bag together with his body by some gymnasts on an early morning keep-fit run. (Pause, BONES opens his mouth to speak.)
Here is the coroner’s certificate.
(ARCHIE produces another note, which BONES takes from him. BONES reads it.)
BONES: Is this genuine?
ARCHIE (testily): Of course it’s genuine. I’m a coroner, not a forger.
(BONES hands the certificate back, and almost comes to attention.)
BONES: Sir Archibald Bouncer——
ARCHIE: Jumper.
BONES: Sir Archibald Jumper, I must——
ARCHIE: Now, I judge from your curiously formal and some-what dated attitude, that you are deaf to offers of large sums of money for favours rendered.
BONES: I didn’t hear that.
ARCHIE: Exactly. On the other hand, I think you are a man who feels that his worth has not been recognized. Other men have got on—younger men, flashier men… Superintendants… Commissioners….
BONES: There may be something in that.
ARCHIE: I dare say your ambitions do not stop with the Police
Force, even.
BONES: Oh?
ARCHIE: Inspector, my patronage is not extensive, but it is select.
I can offer prestige, the respect of your peers and almost unlimited credit among the local shopkeepers—in short, the Chair of Divinity is yours for the asking.
BONES: The Chair of Divinity?
ARCHIE: Not perhaps, the Chair which is in the eye of the hurricane nowadays, but a professorship will still be regarded as a distinction come the day—early next week, in all probability—when the Police Force will be thinned out to a ceremonial front for the peace-keeping activities of the Army.
BONES: I see. Well, until that happens, I should still like to know—if McFee shot himself inside a plastic bag, where is the gun?
ARCHIE (awed): Very good thinking indeed! On consideration I can give you the Chair of Logic, but that is my last offer.
BONES: This is a British murder enquiry and some degree of justice must be seen to be more or less done.
ARCHIE: I must say I find your attitude lacking in flexibility.
What makes you so sure that it was Miss Moore who shot McFee?
BONES: I have a nose for these things.
ARCHIE: With the best will in the world I can’t give the Chair of
Logic to a man who relies on nasal intuition.
DOTTY (off): Help!
(BONES reacts, ARCHIE restrains him.)
ARCHIE: It’s all right—just exhibitionism: what we psychiatrists call ‘a cry for help’.
BONES: But it was a cry for help.
ARCHIE: Perhaps I’m not making myself clear. All exhibitionism is a cry for help, but a cry for help as such is only exhibitionism.
DOTTY (off): MURDER!
(BONES rushes to the Bedroom, which remains dark, ARCHIE
looks at his watch and leaves towards the Kitchen. In the Study GEORGE resumes.)
GEORGE:… whereas a spell with the heavy roller would improve it from Bradman’s point of view and worsen it from Bedser’s…
Likewise, to say that this is a good bacon sandwich is only to say that by the criteria applied by like-minded lovers of bacon sandwiches, this one is worthy of approbation. The word good is reducible to other properties such as crisp, lean and unadulterated by tomato sauce. You will have seen at once that to a man who likes his bacon sandwiches underdone, fatty and smothered in ketchup, this would be a rather poor bacon sandwich. By subjecting any given example to similar analysis, the modern school, in which this university has played so lamentable a part, has satisfied itself that all statements implying goodness or badness, whether in conduct or in bacon sandwiches, are not statements of fact but merely expressions of feeling, taste or vested interest.
But when we say that the Good Samaritan acted well, we are surely expressing more than a circular prejudice about behaviour. We mean he acted kindly—selflessly—well. And what is our approval of kindness based on if not on the intuition that kindness is simply good in itself and cruelty is not. A man who sees that he is about to put his foot down on a beetle in his path, decides to step on it or not to. Why? What process is at work? And what is that quick blind mindless connection suddenly made and lost by the man who didn’t see the beetle but only heard the crunch? (Towards the end of this speech, ARCHIE re-enters and quietly lets himself into the Study.)
It is ironic that the school which denies the claims of the intuition to know good when it sees it, is itself the product of the pioneer work set out in his Principia Ethica by the late G. E. Moore, an intuitionist philosopher whom I respected from afar but who, for reasons which will be found adequate by logical spirits, was never in when I called. Moore did not believe in God, but I do not ho
ld that against him—for of all forms of wishful thinking, humanism demands the greatest sympathy—and at least by insisting that goodness was a fact, and on his right to recognize it when he saw it, Moore avoided the moral limbo devised by his successors, who are in the unhappy position of having to admit that one man’s idea of good is no more meaningful than another man’s whether he be St. Francis or—Vice-Chancellor! (For he has noticed ARCHIE in the mirror, ARCHIE comes forward.)
ARCHIE: An inept comparison, if I may say so. I’m very fond of animals. (He picks up PAT.) What do you call it?
GEORGE: Pat.
ARCHIE: Pat!… what a lovely name.
GEORGE: It’s a good name for a tortoise, being sexually ambiguous. I also have a hare called Thumper, somewhere…. By the way, I wasn’t really comparing you with——
ARCHIE: Quite understand. You were going to say Hitler or
Stalin or Nero… the argument always gets back to some lunatic tyrant, the reductio ad absurdum of the new ethics, and the dog-eared trump card of the intuitionists.
GEORGE (rising to that): Well, why not? When I push my convictions to absurdity, I arrive at God—which is at least as embarrassing nowadays. (Pause.) All I know is that I think that I know that I know that nothing can be created out of nothing, that my moral conscience is different from the rules of my tribe, and that there is more in me than meets the microscope—and because of that I’m lumbered with this incredible, indescribable and definitely shifty God, the trump card of atheism.
ARCHIE: It’s always been a mystery to me why religious faith and atheism should be thought of as opposing attitudes.
GEORGE: Always?
ARCHIE: It just occurred to me.
GEORGE: It occurred to you that belief in God and the conviction that God doesn’t exist amount to much the same thing?
ARCHIE: It gains from careful phrasing. Religious faith and atheism differ mainly about God; about Man they are in accord: Man is the highest form of life, he has duties he has rights, etcetera, and it is usually better to be kind than cruel. Even if there is some inscrutable divinity behind it all, our condition for good or ill is apparently determined by our choice of actions, and choosing seems to be a genuine human possibility. Indeed, it is surely religious zeal rather than atheism which is historically notorious in the fortunes of mankind.
GEORGE: I’m not at all sure that the God of religious observance is the object of my faith. Do you suppose it would be presumptuous to coin a deity?