Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays Part 221

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PERSONS OF THE DRAMA.

FLORIO [_a poet_].

OLIVIA [_Florio's mistress_].

VIOLANTE [_a Florentine n.o.blewoman_].

LIZZIA [_Florio's serving-woman_].

DIONEO [_a member of Boccaccio's party_].

ONE VOICE.

ANOTHER VOICE.

VARIOUS PROCESSIONS BEARING THE DEAD.

TIME: _The year of the Great Plague, A. D. 1348_.

PLACE: _Florence_.

Published by permission of and special arrangement with Harry Kemp.

Applications for the right of performing BOCCACCIO'S UNTOLD TALE must be made to Mr. Harry Kemp, in care of Brentano's, New York.

BOCCACCIO'S UNTOLD TALE

A PLAY BY HARRY KEMP

[SCENE: _A lower room in Florio's house. It is wide and simply furnished._

_In the center, at back, is a large doorway, hung with great black arras. In the right-hand extreme corner is a small altar to the Virgin._

_In wall, at back, high up on left, a small window._

_A smaller doorway, hung with arras of black, is on the left, well toward the front. This doorway gives on the study of the poet._

_At rise of curtain the stage is lit with the uncertain light of tapers._

_Lizzia, the old servant, is discovered kneeling at the altar._

_Soon she rises, crossing herself devoutly._

_Demurringly and with deprecating shakes of the head, she begins hanging wreaths about the walls of the room._

_After the hanging of each wreath she crosses herself, and, with agitated piety verging on superst.i.tion, she bends the knee briefly before altar._

_Now the wreaths are all in place.... Through the small window the grayness that comes before dawn begins to glimmer in._

_One by one Lizzia snuffs out the tapers._

_For a moment everything is left in the gray half-darkness._

_But now Lizzia draws aside the large black arras in the back.

There is revealed a magnificent panoramic view of medieval Florence, flus.h.i.+ng gradually from pearl-gray to soft, delicate rose, then to the full gold of accomplished sunrise._

_Again the old woman kneels at the altar._

_Enter, through the open doorway at back, Violante--rather tall, good-looking, quite dark._

_Violante stands silent for a moment. One can see that it is in her thought to wait till Lizzia finishes her devotions ... then she becomes impatient and breaks in on them._]

VIOLANTE

Lizzia, where bides your master, Florio?

I sped a servant hither yesterday, To bid him come to me, and now, this morning, I come myself.

LIZZIA

For three days he has looked upon no one.

Even I, who wait upon him, have not seen him.

VIOLANTE

Where keeps he, then?

LIZZIA [_indicating the small doorway_].

Yonder, within that arras.

VIOLANTE

Summon him forth!

Say the Lady Violante waits his presence.

LIZZIA

He will grow wroth with me--nor will he greet you.

VIOLANTE

Fears he, then, the Plague so? Is he too such As dare not walk abroad nor breathe the air Lest he should drink infection?