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ORIGINAL PLAYS

BY

W. S. GILBERT.

New York:
SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG, & CO.
1876.

Stereotyped and printed by
Rand, Avery, and Company,
117 Franklin Street,
Boston.

[NOTE.]

The Story upon which ‘The Palace of Truth’ is founded is probably as old as the ‘Arabian Nights.’ ‘The Princess’ is a respectful parody of Mr. Tennyson’s exquisite poem. It has been generally held, I believe, that if a dramatist uses the mere outline of an existing story for dramatic purposes, he is at liberty to describe his play as “original.”

W. S. GILBERT.

London, Nov. 18, 1875.

[CONTENTS.]

THE WICKED WORLD:

An Original Fairy Comedy,

IN THREE ACTS.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

SCENE: IN FAIRY LAND.

⁂ The action is comprised within the space of twenty-four hours.

PROLOGUE.

Spoken by Mr. Buckstone.

The Author begs you’ll kind attention pay

While I explain the object of his play.

You have been taught, no doubt, by those professing

To understand the thing, that Love’s a blessing:

Well, he intends to teach you the reverse—

That Love is not a blessing, but a curse!

But pray do not suppose it’s his intent

To do without this vital element—

His drama would be in a pretty mess!

With quite as fair a prospect of success,

Might a dispensing chemist in his den

Endeavor to dispense with oxygen.

Too powerful an agent to pooh-pooh,

There will be Love enough I warrant you:

But as the aim of every play’s to show

That Love’s essential to all men below,

He uses it to prove, to all who doubt it,

How well all men—but he—can do without it.

To prove his case (a poor one, I admit),

He begs that with him you will kindly flit

To a pure fairy-land that’s all his own,

Where mortal love is utterly unknown.

Whose beings, spotless as new-fallen snow,

Know nothing of the Wicked World below.

These gentle sons and daughters of the air,

Safe, in their eyrie, from temptation’s snare,

Have yet one little fault I must confess—

An overweening sense of righteousness.

As perfect silence, undisturbed for years,

Will breed at length a humming in the ears,

So from their very purity within

Arise the promptings of their only sin.

Forgive them! No? Perhaps you will relent

When you appreciate their punishment!

But prithee be not led too far away,

By the hack author of a mere stage-play:

It’s easy to affect this cynic tone,

But, let me ask you, had the world ne’er known

Such Love as you, and I, and he, must mean—

Pray where would you, or I, or he, have been?

THE WICKED WORLD.

ACT I.

Scene—Fairy Land. A beautiful, but fanciful landscape, which is supposed to lie on the upper side of a cloud. The cloud is suspended over the earth, a portion of which (representing “a bird’s-eye view” of a mediæval city), is seen, far below, through a rent or gap in the cloud.

As the curtain rises Zayda is discovered standing in a thoughtful attitude, contemplating the world at her feet. To her enters Darine.

Dar. My sister, Zayda, thou art deep in thought,

What quaint conjecture fills thy busy brain?

Zay. Oh! sister, it’s my old and favorite theme—

That wonderful and very wicked world

That rolls in silent cycles at our feet!

Dar. In truth a fruitful source of wonderment!

Zay. Fruitful indeed—a harvest without end!

The world—the wicked world! the wondrous world!

I love to sit alone and gaze on it,

And let my fancy wander through its towns,

Float on its seas and rivers—interchange

Communion with its strange inhabitants:

People its cities with fantastic shapes,

Fierce, wild, barbaric forms—all head and tail,

With monstrous horns, and blear and bloodshot eyes,

As all should have who deal in wickedness!

Enter Phyllon.

Oh, Phyllon! picture to thyself a town

Peopled with men and women! At each turn,

Men—wicked men—then, farther on, more men,

Then women—then again more men—more men—

Men, women, everywhere—all ripe for crime,

All ghastly in the lurid light of sin!

Enter Selene.

Phyl. In truth, dear sister, if man’s face and form

Were a true index to his character,

He were a hideous thing to look upon;

But man, alas! is formed as we are formed.

False from the first, he comes into the world

Bearing a smiling lie upon his face,

That he may cheat ere he can use his tongue.

Zay. Oh! I have heard these things, but heed them not.

I like to picture him as he should be,

Unsightly and unclean. I like to pair

Misshapen bodies with misshapen minds.

Sel. Dost thou not know that every soul on earth

Hath in our ranks his outward counterpart?

Dar. His outward counterpart!

Sel.Tis even so;

Yes, on that world—that very wicked world—

Thou—I—and all who dwell in fairy land,

May find a parallel identity:

A perfect counterpart in outward form;

So perfect that, if it were possible

To place us by these earthly counterparts,

No man on earth, no fairy in the clouds,

Could tell which was the fairy—which the man!

Zay. Is there no shade of difference?

Phyl.Yes, one;

For we are absolutely free from sin,

While all our representatives on earth

Are stained with every kind of infamy.

Dar. Are all our counterparts so steeped in sin?

Phyl. All, in a greater or a less degree.

Zay. What, even mine?

Phyl.Alas!

Zay.Oh, no—not mine!

Phyl. All men and women sin.

Dar.I wonder what

My counterpart is doing now?

Sel.Don’t ask.

No doubt, some fearful sin!

Dar.And what are sins?

Sel. Evils of which we hardly know the names.

There’s vanity—a quaint, fantastic vice,

Whereby a mortal takes much credit for

The beauty of his face and form, and claims

As much applause for loveliness as though

He had designed himself! Then jealousy—

A universal passion—one that claims

An absolute monopoly of love,

Based on the reasonable principle

That no one merits other people’s love

So much as—every soul on earth by turns!

Envy—that grieves at other men’s success,

As though success, however placed, were not

A contribution to one common fund!

Ambition, too, the vice of clever men

Who seek to rise at others’ cost; nor heed

Whose wings they cripple, so that they may soar.

Malice—the helpless vice of helpless fools,

Who, as they can not rise, hold others down,

That they, by contrast, may appear to soar.

Hatred and avarice, untruthfulness,

Murder and rapine, theft, profanity—

Sins so incredible, so mean, so vast,

Our nature stands appalled when it attempts

To grasp their terrible significance.

Such are the vices of that wicked world!

Enter Ethais, Locrine, Neodie, Leila, and other Fairies.

Eth. My brothers, sisters, Lutin has returned,

After a long delay, from yonder earth:

The first of all our race who has set foot

Upon that wicked world. See! he is here!

Enter Lutin.

Sel. Good welcome, Lutin, back to fairy land!

So thou hast been to earth?

Lut.I have indeed!

Sel. What hast thou seen there?

Lut. Better not inquire.

It is a very, very wicked world!

I went, obedient to our King’s command,

To meet him in mid-earth. He bade me go

And send both Ethais and Phyllon there.

Eth. Down to mid-earth?

Lut.Down to mid-earth at once.

He hath some gift, some priceless privilege

With which he would endow our fairy world;

And he hath chosen Phyllon and thyself

To bear his bounty to this home of ours.

Zay. Another boon? Why, brother Ethais,

What can our monarch give that we have not?

Eth. In truth, I can not say—’twould seem that we

Had reached the sum of fairy happiness!

Sel. But then we thought the same, before our King

Endowed us with the gift of melody;

And now, how tame our fairy life would seem

Were melody to perish from our land!

Phyl. Well said, Selene. Come, then, let’s away, (going)

And on our journey through the outer world

We will take note of its inhabitants,

And bring you fair account of all we see.

Farewell, dear sisters!

[Exeunt Phyllon and Ethais.

Sel.Brothers, fare-you-well.

(To Lutin.)And thou hast really met a living man?

Lut. I have indeed—and living women too!

Zay. And thou hast heard them speak, and seen their ways,

And didst thou understand them when they spake?

Lut. I understand that what I understood

No fairy being ought to understand.

I see that almost every thing I saw

Is utterly improper to be seen.

Don’t ask for details—I’ve returned to you

With outraged senses and with shattered nerves,

I burn with blushes of indignant shame.

Read my experiences in my face,

My tongue shall wither ere it tell the tale.

It is a very, very wicked world!

Dar. But surely man can summon death at will;

Why should he live when he at will can die?

Lut. Why, that’s the most inexplicable thing.

I’ve seen upon that inconsistent globe—

With swords and daggers hanging at their sides,

With drowning seas and rivers at their feet,

With deadly poison in their very grasp,

And every implement of death at hand—

Men live—and live—and seem to like to live!

[Exit Lutin.

Dar. How strangely inconsistent!

Sel.Not at all.

With all their misery, with all their sin,

With all the elements of wretchedness

That teem on that unholy world of theirs,

They have one great and ever glorious gift,

That compensates for all they have to bear—

The gift of Love! Not as we use the word,

To signify mere tranquil brotherhood;

But in some sense that is unknown to us.

Their love bears like relation to our own,

That the fierce beauty of the noonday sun

Bears to the calm of a soft summer’s eve.

It nerves the wearied mortal with hot life,

And bathes his soul in hazy happiness.

The richest man is poor who hath it not,

And he who hath it laughs at poverty.

It hath no conqueror. When death himself

Has worked his very worst, this love of theirs

Lives still upon the loved one’s memory.

It is a strange enchantment, which invests

The most unlovely things with loveliness.

The maiden, fascinated by this spell,

Sees every thing as she would have it be:

Her squalid cot becomes a princely home;

Its stunted shrubs are groves of stately elms;

The weedy brook that trickles past her door

Is a broad river fringed with drooping trees;

And of all marvels the most marvelous,

The coarse unholy man who rules her love

Is a bright being—pure as we are pure;

Wise in his folly—blameless in his sin;

The incarnation of a perfect soul;

A great and ever glorious demi-god!

Dar. Why, what have we in all our fairy land

To bear comparison with such a gift?

Zay. Oh! for one hour of such a love as that;

O’er all things paramount! Why, after all,

That wicked world is the true fairy land!

Loc. Why, who can wonder that poor erring man

Clings to the world, all poisoned though it be,

When on it grows this glorious antidote?

Zay. And may we never love as mortals love?

Sel. No; that can never be. Of earthly things

This love of theirs ranks as the earthiest.

’Tis necessary to man’s mode of life;

He could not bear his load of misery

But for the sweet enchantment at his heart

That tells him that he bears no load at all.

We do not need it in our perfect land.

Moreover, there’s this gulf ’twixt it and us:

Only a mortal can inspire such love;

And mortal foot can never touch our land.

Zay. But—is that so?

Sel. (surprised).Of course.

Zay.Yet I have heard

That we’ve a half-forgotten law which says,

That when a fairy quits his fairy home

To visit earth, those whom he leaves behind

May summon from the wicked world below

That absent fairy’s mortal counterpart;

And that that mortal counterpart may stay

In fairy land and fill the fairy’s place

Till he return. Is there not some such law?

Sel. And if there be, wouldst put that law in force?(horrified).

Zay. No; not for all the love of all the world!(equally horrified).

Sel. A man in fairy land! Most horrible!

He would exhale the poison of his soul,

And we should even be as mortals are,

Hating as man hates!

Dar. (enthusiastically). Loving as man loves!