Seven Men Part 14

Remember, please, before you formulate your impressions, that saying of Brown's: 'The thing must be judged as a whole.' I like to think that whatever may seem amiss to us in these Four Acts of his would have been righted by collation with that Fifth which he did not live to achieve.

I like, too, to measure with my eyes the yawning gulf between stage and study. Very different from the message of cold print to our imagination are the messages of flesh and blood across footlights to our eyes and ears. In the warmth and brightness of a crowded theatre 'Savonarola'

might, for aught one knows, seem perfect. 'Then why,' I hear my gentle readers asking, 'did you thrust the play on US, and not on a theatrical manager?'

That question has a false a.s.sumption in it. In the course of the past eight years I have thrust 'Savonarola' on any number of theatrical managers. They have all of them been (to use the technical phrase) 'very kind.' All have seen great merits in the work; and if I added together all the various merits thus seen I should have no doubt that 'Savonarola' was the best play never produced. The point on which all the managers are unanimous is that they have no use for a play without an ending. This is why I have fallen back, at last, on gentle readers, whom now I hear asking why I did not, as Brown's literary executor, try to finish the play myself. Can they never ask a question without a false a.s.sumption in it? I did try, hard, to finish 'Savonarola.'

Artistically, of course, the making of such an attempt was indefensible.

Humanly, not so. It is clear throughout the play--especially perhaps in Acts III and IV--that if Brown had not steadfastly in his mind the hope of production on the stage, he had nothing in his mind at all. Horrified though he would have been by the idea of letting me kill his Monk, he would rather have done even this than doom his play to everlasting unactedness. I took, therefore, my courage in both hands, and made out a scenario....

Dawn on summit of Mount Fiesole. Outspread view of Florence (Duomo, Giotto's Tower, etc.) as seen from that eminence.--NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, asleep on gra.s.s, wakes as sun rises. Deplores his exile from Florence, LORENZO'S unappeasable hostility, etc. Wonders if he could not somehow secure the POPE'S favour. Very cynical. Breaks off: But who are these that scale the mountain-side? Savonarola and Lucrezia Borgia!--Enter through a trap-door, back c. [trap-door veiled from audience by a gra.s.sy ridge], SAV. and LUC. Both gasping and footsore from their climb.

[Still, with chains on their wrists? or not?]--MACH. steps un.o.bserved behind a cypress and listens.--SAV. has a speech to the rising sun--Th'

effulgent hope that westers from the east Daily. Says that his hope, on the contrary, lies in escape To that which easters not from out the west, That fix'd abode of freedom which men call America! Very bitter against POPE.--LUC. says that she, for her part, means To start afresh in that uncharted land Which austers not from out the antipod, Australia!--Exit MACH., un.o.bserved, down trap-door behind ridge, to betray LUC. and SAV.--Several longish speeches by SAV. and LUC. Time is thus given for MACH. to get into touch with POPE, and time for POPE and retinue to reach the slope of Fiesole. SAV., glancing down across ridge, sees these sleuth-hounds, points them out to LUC. and cries Bewray'd!

LUC. By whom? SAV. I know not, but suspect The hand of that sleek serpent Niccolo Machiavelli.--SAV. and LUC. rush down c., but find their way barred by the footlights.--LUC. We will not be ta'en Alive.

And here availeth us my lore In what pertains to poison. Yonder herb [points to a herb growing down r.] Is deadly nightshade. Quick, Monk! Pluck we it!--SAV. and LUC. die just as POPE appears over ridge, followed by retinue in full cry.--POPE'S annoyance at being foiled is quickly swept away on the great wave of Shakespearean chivalry and charity that again rises in him. He gives SAV. a funeral oration similar to the one meant for him in Act IV, but even more laudatory and more stricken. Of LUC., too, he enumerates the virtues, and hints that the whole terrestrial globe shall be hollowed to receive her bones. Ends by saying: In deference to this our double sorrow Sun shall not s.h.i.+ne to-day nor s.h.i.+ne to-morrow.--Sun drops quickly back behind eastern horizon, leaving a great darkness on which the Curtain slowly falls.

All this might be worse, yes. The skeleton pa.s.ses muster. But in the attempt to incarnate and ensanguine it I failed wretchedly. I saw that Brown was, in comparison with me, a master. Thinking I might possibly fare better in his method of work than in my own, I threw the skeleton into a cupboard, sat down, and waited to see what Savonarola and those others would do.

They did absolutely nothing. I sat watching them, pen in hand, ready to record their slightest movement. Not a little finger did they raise.

Yet I knew they must be alive. Brown had always told me they were quite independent of him. Absurd to suppose that by the accident of his own death they had ceased to breathe.... Now and then, overcome with weariness, I dozed at my desk, and whenever I woke I felt that these rigid creatures had been doing all sorts of wonderful things while my eyes were shut. I felt that they disliked me. I came to dislike them in return, and forbade them my room.

Some of you, my readers, might have better luck with them than I. Invite them, propitiate them, watch them! The writer of the best Fifth Act sent to me shall have his work tacked on to Brown's; and I suppose I could get him a free pa.s.s for the second night.