Henry IV Read online

  HENRY Peter Damian! It’s no good looking to the Duchess, Peter!

  On my oath, Duchess, I’ve had a change of heart toward your daughter. I admit I wanted to divorce her and would have done if he hadn’t stopped me—because there were others who’d have played along—the Bishop of Mainz, for one, he was willing for a hundred and twenty farms . . . (He glances at Landolf, a little lost, and quickly says:) Still, I shouldn’t be speaking ill of clerics here . . . (becoming humble again with Belcredi) I’m grateful now, believe me, I’m grateful to you for stopping me. My life has been one humiliation after another . . . and now here I am in sackcloth, as you see. (suddenly changing tone) Bear up. No matter—clear head, keen eye, straight back—come what may—(resuming) I know how to correct my path where I have erred—I’ll even prostrate myself before you, Peter Damian. I take it it’s not you who’s been putting it about that my saintly mother spread her legs for the Bishop of Augsburg?

  BELCREDI Er, no, that wasn’t me.

  HENRY Ha! The nerve of it. (staring at Belcredi) No, I don’t think you’ve got it in you. (tugging the Doctor’s sleeve) It’s always “them,” isn’t that so, Monsignor?

  HAROLD (quietly prompting the Doctor) Oh yes, those grasping bishops . . .

  DOCTOR Right, yes . . . them . . .

  HENRY They’d stop at nothing. Poor little boy that I was, playing with my toys, a king and didn’t know it . . . I was six when they tore me away from my mother, an innocent to be used against her, against the dynasty itself. . . profaning, picking and stealing . . .

  LANDOLF Your Majesty . . .

  HENRY Yes, all right. But these disgraceful slanders against my mother is going too far.

  I cannot even mourn her, Duchess. I turn to you because you must have a mother’s heart. She came to see me, from her convent, a month ago. They tell me she’s dead, (smiling sadly) But I can’t grieve for her, because if you’re here and I’m in sackcloth, that means I’m twenty-six.

  HAROLD (whispering, comforting) So it follows she can’t be dead, Your Majesty.

  HENRY So I’ll grieve for her all in good time.

  Henry shows Matilda his hair colour, almost coquettishly.

  HENRY (cont.) Look!—still blond! (confidentially) For you. I don’t care for myself. Though it helps . . . a little touch . . . trim the sails of time, you follow me, Monsignor?

  Henry goes to look at her hair.

  HENRY (cont.) Oh, I see that you, too . . . Italians! Tsk! Far be it for me to criticize . . . None of us likes to acknowledge the mortality that sets limits to our will. But if you’re born you die, that’s what I say! Did you ask to be born, Monsignor? I didn’t. And between birth and death, neither of our choosing, many things happen we wouldn’t have chosen, which reluctantly—we have to live with.

  DOCTOR (studying Henry closely) True . . . sad but true . . .

  HENRY You see, when we refuse to resign ourselves, what’s the result? Wishful thinking at its most futile. A woman who wishes she were a man . . . an old man who wishes he were young . . . None of us lies or pretends—what happens is, in all sincerity, we inhabit the self we have chosen for ourselves, and don’t let go. But while you’re holding tight, gripping on to your monk’s robe, Monsignor, from out your sleeve something slips away without you noticing: your life! And how surprised you’ll be when you suddenly see it going, gone—how you’ll despise yourself—and how sorry you’ll be, oh yes, if you only knew how often I’ve grieved over mine, slithering off—it had my face but was so disfigured I had to turn away.

  Henry approaches Matilda.

  HENRY (cont.) Has that never happened to you, my lady? Do you think of yourself unchanging and unchanged? Oh God, but there was a day . . . How could you? How could you have done that?

  He stares into Matilda’s eyes.

  HENRY (cont.) Yes—that. We understand each other. Don’t worry, it’s our secret. And you, Peter Damian . . . that you could be friends with someone like that!

  LANDOLF Your Majesty . . .

  HENRY No names. I know how upset people get.

  Henry turns to Belcredi.

  HENRY (cont.) Do you agree? We all hug our idea of ourselves to ourselves. As our hair turns greyer, we keep pace with the colouring bottle. It’s of no consequence that I fool nobody. You, Duchess, don’t fool yourself or anybody else—perhaps the image in your mirror, just a tiny bit. I do it to amuse myself. You do it in earnest. But no amount of earnestness stops it being a masquerade, and I’m not referring to your cloak and coronet. I’m talking about a memory of yourself you want to hold tight, the memory of a day gone by when to be fair-haired was your delight—or dark-haired if you were dark: the faded memory of being young. With you, it’s different, Peter Damian. The memory of who you were, what you did, is no more than a dream that’s safe with you—isn’t that so?—a bad dream. It’s the same for me. Dreams, many of them, now I think of it, with no meaning I can explain. Oh, well!—nothing to be done, and tomorrow will be more of the same.

  Henry flies into a sudden fury, grabbing the sackcloth he’s wearing.

  HENRY (cont.) This sackcloth . . . !

  Then with a wild joy, Henry makes as if to rip the sackcloth off, while Harold and Ordulf, frightened, rush to stop him.

  HENRY (cont.) Oh God!

  (backing away, shouting, taking off his sackcloth) Tomorrow in Brixen, twenty-seven bishops from Germany and Lombardy will sign my petition for the removal of that impostor Gregory VII!

  ORDULF Your Majesty, please, for God’s sake . . .

  HAROLD (urging him with signs to put his sackcloth back on) Don’t say that Your Majesty . . . The Abbot’s here with the Duchess to intercede on your behalf.

  Surreptitiously Harold makes signs to the Doctor, urging him to say something quickly.

  DOCTOR (confused) Ah—yes—that’s it—we’re here to intercede . . .

  Henry allows the three Counsellors to put the sackcloth back on his shoulders.

  HENRY Yes—forgive me . . . God be my witness, it’s the burden of excommunication lying on me like a dead weight . . . Forgive me . . . my lady . . . Monsignor . . . (quietly to Landolf, Harold, and Ordulf) I don’t know what it is, but I just can’t bring myself to grovel to that man.

  LANDOLF That’s because, Your Majesty, you’ve convinced yourself he’s Peter Damian when he isn’t!

  HENRY He isn’t?

  HAROLD No, he’s just some poor monk, Your Majesty.

  HENRY We’re none of us the best judge of our actions when we act on instinct. Perhaps it takes a woman to understand me. Think of your daughter, Duchess—think of Bertha—I told you how my heart has changed.

  Henry suddenly turns to Belcredi and shouts in his face, as if he had denied it.

  HENRY (cont.) Changed—changed—by the love and devotion she has shown me at this terrible time!

  Henry stops, shaken by his own outburst of fury, and tries to contain himself, with a cry of exasperation in his throat; then he turns back to Matilda, in gentle and sorrowful humility.

  HENRY (cont.) She’s come with me, my lady, she’s waiting in the courtyard. She chose to follow me like a beggar, and she’s frozen from two nights out in the snow! You’re her mother, doesn’t it stir you to pity?—to go with him (He points at the Doctor.) and implore the Pope to receive me and grant forgiveness?

  MATILDA (shaking) Oh, yes . . . yes . . . and at once . . .

  DOCTOR We’ll do it! We’ll do it!

  HENRY And another thing! One more thing!

  Henry calls them all round him and whispers in great secret.

  HENRY (cont.) Receiving me is not enough. The Pope can do . . . anything. Even raise the dead. (beating his chest) Well, here I am. As you see me. There’s no magic he can’t overcome. My real punishment is this—

  Henry points at his picture on the wall, almost fearful.

  HENRY (cont.) That!—look at it—to be shackled to that apparition! I’m a penitent now and a penitent I’ll remain, I swear to God, until His Holiness
receives me. But once the anathema has been lifted, please, both of you, beg the Pope to do this one thing, because he can do it: set me free from that, there, so that—wretched as it is—I can live my own life. (pointing at the picture on the wall) You can’t stay twentysix forever! I’m asking this for your daughter, too—so I can love her as she deserves to be loved.

  There. That’s it. I am in your hands.

  (bowing) My lady! Monsignor!

  Henry heads back still bowing, but then he notices Belcredi, who has come closer to listen: he fears he may want to steal the imperial crown, which is sitting on the throne. Henry rushes to pick it up and hide it under his sackcloth. Then, with a sly smile he bows repeatedly and exits. Matilda is so shocked she collapses into a chair, almost fainting.

  ACT TWO

  Another room in the villa, adjoining the throne room, furnished in a plain antique style. Late afternoon of the same day. Onstage are Matilda, the Doctor, and Belcredi. Matilda is keeping apart, preoccupied and on edge.

  BELCREDI Well . . . pretty straightforward so far, wouldn’t you say? a) He’s off his trolley and b) he smelled a rat. He wasn’t fooled . . . He told us himself in so many words, (to Matilda) You heard him, didn’t you?

  MATILDA What . . .? Yes, but it wasn’t what you think.

  DOCTOR He responded to our costumes the way a child would.

  MATILDA A child? What are you talking about?

  DOCTOR On one level. On another it’s more complicated than you can imagine.

  MATILDA Not to me—it was plain as day.

  DOCTOR To you, perhaps, but we must bear in mind the peculiar psychology of the mad—they can see right through any pretence, while at the same time suspending their disbelief, like children at play believing in their make-believe. That’s why I say he is in one sense like a child while in another it’s complicated—because, you see, his make-believe—and he is well aware of it—is that he is the image of that image in the picture frame.

  BELCREDI He did say that.

  DOCTOR There you are. Then what happens?—his image is joined by other images: us, do you follow me? And with that shrewd insight of the madman, he immediately spotted the difference between us and him; he spotted the pretence, which made him suspicious. But he kept his suspicions to himself. That’s what madmen do. And that’s all there is to it! Of course, he didn’t see that we were doing it all for his sake. What made the game all the more pitiful is that he kept trying, in his coy, obstinate way, to tell us it was only a game—his game—hence the makeup and how he only puts it on for fun, and so on.

  MATILDA No, you haven’t got it.

  DOCTOR What do you . . . ?

  MATILDA The plain fact is he recognised me.

  DOCTOR That’s impossible.

  BELCREDI (at the same time) He couldn’t have.

  MATILDA I’m telling you he recognised me. When he looked into my eyes, he knew me.

  BELCREDI But he was talking to you about Bertha, your daughter.

  MATILDA He was talking about me—me!

  BELCREDI Well, yes, he did mention . . .

  MATILDA My dyed hair, exactly—and how quickly he added—didn’t you notice?—“or dark-haired if you were dark.” He remembered perfectly well that back then my hair was dark.

  BELCREDI No, no . . .

  MATILDA (to the Doctor) My hair is naturally dark, like Frida’s. That’s what got him talking about my daughter.

  BELCREDI What daughter? He’s never seen your daughter.

  MATILDA That’s my point, you idiot—everything he said about my pretend daughter now, he was saying about me then!

  BELCREDI It’s catching!

  MATILDA Oh, don’t be so stupid.

  BELCREDI Excuse me but when were you ever his wife? He’s got a wife—in his mad mind she’s Bertha of Susa and you’re her mother.

  MATILDA I’m not denying that I came to him as Adelaide—being blond and not dark anymore, the way he remembered me, I decided to be the mother-in-law. But the daughter doesn’t exist for him. He’s never seen her. He doesn’t even know I’ve got a daughter—so how can he know what colour her hair is?

  BELCREDI He didn’t say he knew. He was just speaking generally . . . Good God, he was only making a point about people colouring their hair to look younger than they are—blondes, brunettes . . . and as usual you go off at a tangent.

  MATILDA No . . . no . . . I don’t care what you say, he was talking to me about me, everything he said . . .

  BELCREDI I couldn’t get a word in edgeways, and it was all about you!—what?—even when he was talking to Peter Damian?

  MATBLDA Indirectly, yes. Or perhaps you have another explanation why he took an instant dislike to you?

  DOCTOR (after an awkward pause) Well, perhaps it was simply that it was only Duchess Adelaide and the Abbot of Cluny who were announced . . . and seeing there was a third person there made him mistrustful.

  BELCREDI There you are. His mistrust made him leery of me, and she has to insist it was because he recognised her.

  MATILDA Well, he did! You know that look where you just know. It was just a flash . . . I don’t know how to put it . . .

  DOCTOR A moment of lucidity . . .

  MATILDA Yes! And from then on everything he said seemed to be steeped in regret, for his youth, and mine, because of the awful thing that happened to him, that froze him in that mask he longs to be free of.

  BELCREDI Oh, yes!—free to love your daughter, as he said—or, in your version, to love you—touched by your compassion perhaps?

  MATILDA And compassion is very much what I’m feeling, believe me.

  BELCREDI Oh, I do!—it’s like a miracle.

  DOCTOR May I speak? We doctors don’t deal in miracles. I listened very carefully to everything he said, and, as I would put it, there’s a relaxation in the coherence typical of systematised delusion; it’s clearly, how can I put it, relaxed; the coherence of the delusion isn’t er, cohering as before. He can’t quite find the point of equilibrium between ego and superego . . . A sudden memory deflects him, not—and this is very encouraging—not into incipient inertia but rather into a melancholic reflex, which indicates . . . yes, significant cerebral activity. As I say, very encouraging. Now, with the shock tactic we have decided on—

  MATILDA Why isn’t the car back? It’s over three hours . . .

  DOCTOR What?

  MATILDA The car! It’s been over three hours!

  DOCTOR (looking at his watch) Four, actually.

  MATILDA It should have been back ages ago. But as usual . . .

  DOCTOR Maybe they can’t find the dress.

  MATILDA I told them exactly where it was. And where’s Frida?

  BELCREDI In the garden with Carlo.

  DOCTOR Calming her nerves.

  BELCREDI It wasn’t nerves, it was a tantrum.

  MATILDA Don’t try to force her, believe me, I know her.

  DOCTOR Let’s not rush things. We have to wait till it’s dark, and it won’t take a minute to set up. If we can give him a shock and snap the thread which binds him to his delusion, give him back what he longs for—he said it himself; you can’t stay twenty-six for ever!—and free him from his prison—that’s the way he sees it—

  BELCREDI —he’ll be cured! Saved by the alienation technique!

  DOCTOR His clock stopped, and we’re checking our watches for the critical moment when . . . with a quick shake, we might get his clock ticking again, after all this time.

  Di Nolli enters.

  MATILDA Carlo! Where’s Frida?

  DI NOLLI She’s coming.

  DOCTOR Is the car back?

  DI NOLLI Yes.

  MATILDA It is? With the dress?

  DI NOLLI It’s been back a while.

  DOCTOR Excellent!

  MATILDA Well, where is she? And the dress . . . ?

  DI NOLLI You’ll see in a moment. Here she comes.

  BERTOLD (entering) Her Highness the Countess of Canossa!

  Frida enters, th
e image of the portrait.

  FRIDA Of Tuscany, if you don’t mind. Canossa is just one of my castles.

  BELCREDI Just look at her! Look at her! She’s a different person.

  MATILDA She’s me! My God, can you see? Stop there, Frida! She’s my portrait come to life!

  DOCTOR Yes . . . Perfect!

  BELCREDI It’s amazing.

  FRIDA Don’t anybody make me laugh or I’ll burst. Was your waist really so tiny, Mummy? I’m having to hold my stomach in.

  MATILDA Wait . . . Hold still . . . These creases, is it really that tight on you?

  FRIDA I can barely breathe. You better make it quick . . .

  DOCTOR But we have to wait till dark . . .

  FRIDA I can’t hold myself in till dark!

  MATILDA Why did you put it on so early?

  FRIDA I couldn’t resist. The minute I saw it . . .

  DOCTOR Would you stand over there . . . here . . . not quite so close . . . now forward just a little . . .

  BELCREDI For the full effect of twenty years between.

  MATILDA What a disaster, eh?

  BELCREDI Oh, I wouldn’t go as far as that.

  DOCTOR No, not at all! I only meant the dress . . . I meant . . . to compare . . .

  BELCREDI As for the dress, it’s not twenty years; more like a thousand. That’s some shake for anybody’s clock. (pointing first at Frida and then at the Countess) From there to there? You’ll have to pick him up with a spoon. Think about it. Seriously: for us it’s twenty years, two dresses, a masquerade . . . but if time stopped for him nearly a thousand years ago . . . Oh, you don’t think so?

  DOCTOR No. Because life doesn’t stop. When the illusion is stripped away, you’ve caught up—the jump is not a thousand years, it’s only twenty.

  BELCREDI I’ve had a thought. Look at Frida and her mother. Who’s leading the way? The older generation, that’s who. The young think they’re in the lead but they’ve got it backwards. We’re years ahead of them, because we’ve been at it longer.

  DOCTOR Ah, if only time didn’t come between us like a wedge!

  BELCREDI It doesn’t. Young people still have to go through what we went through . . . get older, make more or less the same mistakes. It’s an illusion that death is a doorway somewhere ahead of the door you came in by. You’re dying the moment you’re born . . . those who started first are beating the path for those who follow. Look at her! (He points at Frida.)—centuries ahead of us, the Countess Matilda of Tuscany.