SCENE I.
The Palace of Dreaming, in the Metropolis of Infantlonia, capital of the Island of Saxa, which with Scotia and Bernia, forms the Saxscober Sovereignty.
Time: Midnight; outside the Palace Gates.
Vergli. Solus, looking through them: “Home of my fathers, where I claim the right To live, and by the law Fair Play, to be The Prince of Scota. By that law I am My fathers heir, and the young fledgling boy, Who steals from me the title I should hold, Mocks at me, I, the Disinherited! Ay, disinherited; for he and I Are both the offspring of a common sire, Who called me son, long prior to the day When my young brother first beheld the light, And took the title which is mine alone. Does not this base injustice cast a slur Upon my most beloved mother’s name? Did she not wed my sire by Scota’s law? Am I not part of her as well as him? By what unnatural law is she denied The right to bear the title of The Queen? Does not the very act, which weds the two, And by the law of Nature makes them one, Proclaim a union most legitimate? Yet ye, Oh! Prelates, hold aloft a book, Concocted in the gloomy ages gone, By men as selfish and unjust as ye, Who flaunt the Act of Nature, and declare It wicked and unbinding, unless blest By superstitious Mummery, conceived By the immoral Prophets of the Past. They dare to call my pure-souled mother bad. Dub her a wanton, robe her name in shame! Curses upon them and the ranting Cant Which voices such a foul and hideous lie. Away with it! Perdition to its name, I will for ever be its fiercest foe; I, who love Nature, the true, only God, I, Vergli, the poor bastard son of him Who lives in legalized Adultery With the unhappy and degraded slave, Which his priest-ridden Creed has called The Queen, I swear to fight it to its very death. I vow it! I, the Disinherited.”—
Enter Maxim, who has overheard the last words. “What, Vergli here? ‘The Disinherited!’ Sighing o’er wrongs. Planning Revolution. Dost know King Hector is abroad to-night, And will return this way without a doubt? What will he say if he should find thee here? Put thee in prison, man, most probably. Oh! thou art rash to venture thus, as ’twere Into the precincts of The Lion’s den, The person of The Disinherited.”
Vergli. “Maxim, that’s why I came; I fain would speak With my liege lord and King, and Father too, I would plead just once more for my own rights And crave respect for my dear Mother’s name. She lies sore sick, sick unto very death, That Mother, dearer to me than my life, She, who should be our fair Saxscober’s Queen, Not as is poor Isola, a mere slave, But reigning all conjointly with my sire, I, the presumptive heir to him and her And not the forced usurper of her rights.”
Maxim. “Oh! these are dreams, Vergli; thou dream’st strange dreams; Woman is but the appanage of man, At least our priestly tutors tell us so. ’Tis they who have assigned that place to her. Would’st thou make her Man’s equal? Have a care, Freedom to Woman would doom Privilege, And that we have secured from ages old By help of Superstition and false gods, Who bade the Woman bow the knee to Man. Mind’st thou how in the days that have gone by Thou had’st a sister, little Merani? She was thy elder by a year or more, Did she live now, would’st put her in thy place And as the eldest born declare her heir, Princess of Scota and prospective Queen Of fair Saxscober, leaving out thyself As a nonentity and younger born?”
Vergli. “Aye, that I would. Fervently I say it, So long as Primogeniture is law, Consistency declares the eldest born, And not the male first-born alone, the heir. Saxscober’s laws do not deny the right To Woman to inherit, when no boy Stands in the way depriving her of such. Why should a Woman therefore lose this right Because a younger brother sees the light? No Maxim, if Merani were alive, I’d dub her Scota’s Princess and declare That she was the true heiress of this realm.”
Maxim. “Ah! well Vergli; I see thy point, ’tis just, But Justice is not loved by many men. He who would see it reign, is seldom found; ’Tis but a selfish creature, average man! And yet methinks he is not all to blame, Why do not Women teach him in his youth The principle of Justice to their sex?”
Vergli. “Because they know no better. They are slaves Drilled to believe the priestly fashioned laws Part of Divine instruction and command. In the dark ages gone, the prophets knew That Woman, to be held in check, must bend Prostrate before the superstitious spell Which has enveloped her with obscure mist And hidden from her sight The Promised Land. And so, poor thing, she hugs her chains and drills Her very children to believe them just, And if amidst these children, a girl child Dares to dispute this creed, the world aghast Gapes at her shouting, ‘How so miscreant! What! You say; You are disinherited? Presume you thus to question God’s decree And the most holy spouter of His Will, The Great Saint Saul, so chivalrous, so just, Who bade the Woman sanctify herself By humbly subjecting herself to man.’ ‘But,’ cries the child, and Maxim you will know I quote Isola’s words, which she has dared To fling broadcast upon a gaping world, ‘But I deny that such a God exists, And that he ever lived to say such things. He is the fabrication of those men Progenitors of Chivalrous Saint Saul! As chivalrous and just as that Good Man, Who, I declare, at every turn of speech Insults the woman and proclaims her slave.’ Thus speaks Isola, poor Isola, who Bore the young boy who holds the name I claim Of ‘Prince of Scota,’ unto my own sire; And thus assisted, though unwillingly, In rivetting upon my mother’s neck, And on that of her sex the cruel chains, Cast round them by a man-made, man-shaped God, And rivetted upon them by Saint Saul! Small wonder that Isola’s loud protest Has roused some of the disinherited, As it has spurred me also to revolt; Aye, here I stand, ‘The Disinherited,’ In spirit speaking to that lonely soul, Dwelling within that Palace’s cold Prison, And join with her my cry against foul Wrong. But hark! Voices! Maxim retire. The King.”