The Harlequinade: An Excursion Part 2

MOMUS. Yes ... here we are again.

CHARON. And in a nice state.

MOMUS. Almost almighty Mercury, take me with you. I know why Psyche went ... she was as bored as I am. I can help you find her. For if she's up to mischief, I shall soon know where she is.

[Though he looks very, very funny as he pleads, Mercury shakes his head.

Don't go thinking because you're so clever, you can do better without a fool like me. Sat.u.r.day afternoon it is. If, when Jupiter starts work on Monday, there's no one to draw the corks of the bottled lightning ... look out for trouble. Come along, too, Charon.

CHARON. I?

MOMUS. Yes, you're growing ever so dull. A week on earth will do you good ... if you're not too much of an old 'un.

CHARON. I'm not an old 'un.

MOMUS. You are an old 'un.

[And when a thing isn't really funny, say it twice and it often sounds so. Charon is tempted.

CHARON. I can't leave the boat.

HIPPONAX. Oh, take me back to earth again. They'll mock at me on the other side of this h.e.l.lish river ... play tricks on me ...

MERCURY. Charon, give him your oar. He shall mind the boat till Monday. A final and a wholesome exercise in what he calls his philosophy, to row all day from a place he has never understood to a place he doesn't believe in.

HIPPONAX. I can't row.

MOMUS. You don't know what you can do till you try. You'll have more muscle by Monday.

CHARON. Can you get good wine below?

MERCURY. To your boat, philosopher.

[What is a blind man to question the voice of a G.o.d? He turns to the hated river, tapping the ground with his pole. Now comes a joke, one of the very oldest.

MOMUS. One moment.

HIPPONAX. [As he turns back, hopeful of respite.] What is it?

MOMUS. How far would you have got if I hadn't called you back?

[Mercury hardly smiles. But Charon is abandoned to mirth. He slaps his old knees with his hands.

CHARON. He's a funny fellow.

HIPPONAX. Dull clown!

[And he starts again. But there's another joke he must be part of, just as old and just as silly.

MOMUS. No, no! Turn to the right, and to the right. Still to the right. And again to the right. That's right.

[Round and round went Hipponax until he found his path again. S ... and unkind? Yes, Nature and children with their parables of humour sometimes seem to be so ... but only if we lose all touch with them.

Then the voice of Mercury is like music...

MERCURY. Come; earthwards both of you. I smell the spring and fields and flowers. Is that Pan piping? No, a bird's song. Such little things as that does Psyche love and seek. On we go.

[Mercury is gone. You should wonder how, though it looks mere walking.

Charon is walking after, so tame an exit that it will never do.

"Give us a back, old 'un," says Momus, and leap-frogs him. Poor old back, it gives way. For Momus is a weight indeed. But if you can't laugh at your own hurts, what can you laugh at? So Charon totters after, chuckling as he rubs his bones.

And Uncle Edward and Alice draw the blue curtains. Uncle Edward's eye questions the audience. They don't so often applaud this scene. For one thing, they're still settling down. And then, applause is not the only sign they're liking it, nor yet the best. But you can tell by the feel of them.

Edward can. And if it's a friendly, happy, a sort of "home-y" feel, why then, the quieter they sit the better. But Alice only thinks of how the actors do, and she is never too pleased with this scene. It's never beautiful enough to look at. Mercury (poor dear!) is never really like a G.o.d. And so she hurries to the next.

ALICE. The next part is going to be all in dumb-show, because it's in the fifteenth century, and that's how they used to play things in the fifteenth century, when they played heaps of Harlequinades ... and Uncle and I and the actors are nothing if not correct.

UNCLE EDWARD. True.

ALICE. But first we are going to skip an awful lot, all the part about the Early Ages, and the Middle Ages and all about how the G.o.ds gradually became actors...

UNCLE EDWARD. Better tell them.

ALICE. Well, it's rather difficult to understand. But you know if you stop believing in a thing, such as fairies, or that you like chocolate, or that your Uncle's fond of you ... after a bit it somehow isn't there any longer.

That's what nearly happened to the G.o.ds. But Mercury knew that if people won't believe a thing when you say it's real, they'll just as good as believe it and understand it a great deal better when it only seems make-believe. And that's Art. And as the easiest art in the world is the art of acting ... I hope they didn't hear [She wags back her little head to the proscenium.] ... the G.o.ds became actors.

UNCLE EDWARD. Now you get back to the story. It's all they [He wags his big head at the audience.] care about.

ALICE. Yes. Momus helped Mercury find Psyche, and they all had a tremendous time and hoped it would never be Monday. For every time they got to the end of a century they wanted to stay and see what would happen in the next.

Like when you eat nuts it's so very difficult to stop at any particular nut, isn't it? Now I ...

UNCLE EDWARD. But they don't want to hear about you.

ALICE. Sorry.

UNCLE EDWARD. And don't gabble. This ain't the metaphysics, which they can't abear. This is facts. They respect facts.

ALICE. I hate facts. They're so dull. It was when they became actors they got their new names. Harlequin and Columbine and Clown and Pantaloon. And they travelled from Greece into Italy, where Charon got called Pantaloon because he acted an old gentleman of Venice, and Saint Pantaleone is a patron of Venice, and there were heaps of people called Pantaleone there in the fifteenth....

[Uncle Edward is snapping his fingers and pointing to Ms trousers.]

Yes, I know. Even to-day Pantaloon is still wearing the very Venetian clothes of the time when he first played the part. He's got on the first pantaloons ever worn, and his hair is tied in a lovelock. Clown and Pantaloon have got white faces. By this time funny actors, who acted in dumb-show, used to put flour on their faces, like Pierrot you know, because the theatres were so dark and they wanted to show their expressions. Then there's the scene. I do hope you'll like the scene. It's supposed to be Italy, and I think it's beautiful. Anyhow it's the kind of scene we have to have so as not to take up too much room. And it has beehives in it.

Columbine keeps two, one for bees and one for b.u.t.terflies.

[It is part of Alice's regret, for which she keeps a nearly secret sigh, that we couldn't have real bees and b.u.t.terflies. She thinks it would be so jolly to see the bees and b.u.t.terflies go among the audience and settle on the b.u.t.tonholes and sprays they wear and bring back the sense of gardens to the people there.

Uncle, do you know how Clown told me how to tell the difference?