SEVENTH INNER SCENE
In the glow and gloom of Italian night, as high clouds intermittently obscure the moon, a palace garden lies in deep shadow. Emerging only partly into view, where soft light-floodings fall on moss-stained statue, marble bench, and balcony, there is revealed at first [on the left] nothing but a glimpse of garden wall, before which flash in the dimness two pied figures [Benvolio and Mercutio]. Calling shrilly, their young voices rain showers of fluting laughter.
PRELIMINARY SKETCH FOR SEVENTH INNER SCENE: JONES
BENVOLIO Romeo! My cousin Romeo!... He ran this way, and leap’d this orchard wall: Call, good Mercutio.
MERCUTIO Nay, I’ll conjure, too: Romeo! humors! madman! passion! lover!— I conjure thee by thy true love’s bright eyes, By her high forehead and her scarlet lip, By her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh And the demesnes that there adjacent lie, That in thy likeness thou appear to us!— He heareth not, he stirreth not, he moveth not.
BENVOLIO Come, he hath hid himself among these trees, To be consorted with the humorous night: Blind is his love and best befits the dark.
MERCUTIO If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark ... Romeo, good-night: I’ll to my truckle-bed; This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep: Come, shall we go?
[They disappear, swallowed up in black shadow. And now the shadow, shifting, leaves bare in mellow moonshine a glimpse of the garden and the balcony, where Juliet, bending forward, calls mysteriously into the dark below:]
JULIET Hist! Romeo! hist! O for a falconer’s voice, To lure this tassel-gentle back again! Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud; Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies, And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine With repetition of my Romeo’s name.
ROMEO [Emerging, below, from the shadow.] It is my soul that calls upon my name: How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night, Like softest music to attending ears!
JULIET Romeo!
ROMEO My dear?
JULIET At what o’clock to-morrow Shall I send to thee?
ROMEO At the hour of nine.
JULIET I will not fail: ’tis twenty years till then. I have forgot why I did call thee back.
ROMEO Let me stand here till thou remember it.
JULIET I shall forget, to have thee still stand there, Remembering how I love thy company.
ROMEO And I’ll still stay, to have thee still forget, Forgetting any other home but this.
JULIET ’Tis almost morning; I would have thee gone: And yet no further than a wanton’s bird, Who lets it hop a little from her hand.... Good-night, good-night! Parting is such sweet sorrow That I shall say good-night till it be morrow!
[Once more deep shadow engulfs the scene; and now, out of the dark, harmonious music sounds in strains of passionate wistfulness. So, as the music sounds, on the right, beams of the moon reveal a flowery bank, whereby Lorenzo and Jessica are discovered.]
LORENZO How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears: Soft stillness and the night Become the touches of sweet harmony. Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold: There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins, Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
[Swift shadow sweeps over them in darkness. Waning from its visionary theme to a hint of the “muddy vesture of decay,” the music flows onward then into a dance melody; moonlight touches the garden again [on the left] with its liquid glow, wherein—whirled into light from a group of shadowy dancers outside—Florizel and Perdita are disclosed.]
FLORIZEL [As Perdita withdraws shyly her hand from his, speaks to her ardently.] What you do Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet, I’d have you do it ever ... When you do dance, I wish you A wave o’ the sea, that you might ever do Nothing but that; move still, still so, And own no other function: each your doing So singular in each particular, Crowns what you are doing in the present deed, That all your acts are queens....
PERDITA O Doricles, Your praises are too large: but that your youth, And the true blood which peepeth fairly through ’t, Do plainly give you an unstained shepherd, With wisdom I might fear, my Doricles, You woo’d me the false way.
FLORIZEL I think you have As little skill to fear as I have purpose To put you to ’t. But come; our dance, I pray: Your hand, my Perdita!
PERDITA [Giving her hand confidingly.] My Florizel!
[Together they dance away into the dark and the luring music, as
[Still, after the curtains’ closing, the music continues, but now more faint, changing the idyllic strains of the dance rhythm to a minor sadness, which gradually takes form as a drear, monotonous processional. Through the faint music, Miranda speaks to Ariel.]
MIRANDA Too brief! too brief, sweet bird! O Ariel, be Time’s nightingale, and charm these lovers back To yearn immortal youth. Methinks already Their absence leaves us age’d: Dost thou not feel A waning of high powers? Doth not a pallor Creep on the glowing world?
ARIEL Yea, so I have felt After the equinox—November coming on.
MIRANDA [Starting, as she gazes at one of the Muses.] Euterpe dear! What lock of gray is this In thy bright hair?—Quick, Ariel: fetch my father, For sudden my heart aches, and I wish him near.
ARIEL Straight I will bring him, and my Spirits, too. Be merry, mistress: they shall soon restore us.
[Ariel hastens off, left. As he does so, the Muses, with downcast looks, file off right into the shrine.]
MIRANDA Nay, darling Muses! do not leave me, too. What, must you all go hence? Still I must tarry To greet my father. Friends, good-bye! [They depart.] Ah me! What voices make their dirge within my heart?
[While she has spoken, the mouth of Caliban’s cell, emitting a ghastly glow, fills with dim Shapes, which pour outward, and swarm slowly upward over the steps, covering the stage with a moving, huddled grayness, out of which two cloaked Figures rise distinct in the dusk. As they come forth and hover nearer to Miranda, a cold dirge issues with them from below.]
THE DIRGE [As before.] Gray—gray—gray: Joy be unholy and hidden; Wan be the rainbow of wonder, frozen the tide! Blind—blind—blind: Passion be pale and forbidden; Dumb be the lips of the soul to Beauty denied!
[Slowly the gray hosts surround Miranda, who stares at them, only half believing their presence, till the dusk, growing lighter, reveals their long Puritan cloaks and peaked hats, and the two muffled Ones in Gray towering before her. Then faintly she speaks to them:]
MIRANDA What are you? Why are you come? Ah, you—’tis you: Priest of Setebos!—Caliban! [She sways and falls.]
CALIBAN Ha, she swooneth.— O Death, unfasten thy spell!
DEATH Nay, thou hast failed.
[Lifting the scroll of Prospero, which he has taken from Caliban, Death makes a gesture to his followers.]
Bear her to Setebos!
[Then, laying his hand upon Caliban, he turns with him backward, as a group of the gray-cloaked Shapes raise the limp form of Miranda to a cloth-draped bier, and thus bear her downward toward the cell’s mouth. In dim processional, as they go, they raise again their dirge:]
THE DIRGE Gray—gray—gray: Love, be sin-born of Misgiving! Life, be a garment of dullness, drab from the loom! Bleak—bleak—bleak: Death, Death is lord of the living: Not in the clay but the heart of man lies the tomb.
[Disappearing in the cell below, their chant dies away. Above them, from the left, Ariel returns, alone. Searching in the dusk, half fearfully, he calls:]
ARIEL Miranda—mistress: He hath vanished. Nowhere Can I find trace of him. Yea, and my Spirits They, too—they, too, are gone, lost in the grayness: All have deserted us! Miranda—mistress! Where art thou? Gone, thyself?—and I alone! O gray, that hast engulfed a world of beauty, Where shall I find them ever more—my master, My star-bright mistress? Hear me, Yellow Sands! If you have beheld them, answer now my prayer! [Outstretching his arms toward the Sands.] Prospero! Prospero!—Master!
[From far across the Sands bursts a mellow radiance, and the rich voice of Prospero calling in answer:]
PROSPERO Ariel! Ariel! Ho, bird!
[Springing into light upon the farthest wave-lines of the Yellow Sands, Prospero comes returning, surrounded by the Spirits of Ariel, clad all in green and bearing in their midst a garlanded May-pole. Marching joyously across the circle toward Ariel, all in radiant glow, they come shouting a choral song:]
THE SPIRITS OF ARIEL
“Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing cuccu! Groweth sed, and bloweth med, And springth the wude nu.—Sing cuccu!
“Awe bleteth after lomb Lhouth after calve cu! Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth, Murie sing cuccu!
“Cuccu, cuccu, well singes thu, cuccu: Ne swike thu naver nu; Sing cuccu, nu, sing cuccu, Sing cuccu, sing cuccu, nu!”
[Leaping up the steps, they plant the May-pole at the centre, where Ariel greets them.]
ARIEL Dear Master! O blithe hearts: Have welcome home!
PROSPERO Welcome our May-pole back!—Where is thy mistress?
ARIEL [Startled.] Alas! You know not?
PROSPERO [Reassuringly.] Nay, I know. But cheerly, My birdlings! Now that ye are flocked once more Round this enchanted tree, I’ll conjure you Out of mine art such joyous rites, that they Shall draw your Mistress even from the tomb To join our revels. Come now, gather round And watch my antic rites of Merry England!
THIRD INTERLUDE[19]
Now through the Interlude gates, and from all sides, a jocund festival pours into the illumined space of the ground-circle: the folk festival of Elizabethan England.
Simultaneously, in different parts, as in a merry rural fair, various popular arts and pastimes begin, and continue together: Morris dancers and pipers, balladists and play-actors, folk dancers, fiddlers, clowns, and Punch-and-Judy performers romp, rant, parade, and jingle amongst flower-girls and gay-garbed jesters spangling by the bright venders’ booths.
Central, at a point of vantage, above a gaping crowd of lumpkins and children, Noah’s wife harangues the heavens from the old play.
So they pursue their merriment, till the low rumble and lowering of a thunder-cloud disperses them with its passing shadow.