Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Arcadia Read online

  The room looks bare despite the large table which occupies the centre of it. The table, the straight-backed chairs and, the only other item of furniture, the architects stand or reading stand, would all be collectable pieces now but here, on an uncarpeted wood floor, they have no more pretension than a schoolroom, which is indeed the main use of this room at this time. What elegance there is, is architectural, and nothing is impressive but the scale. There is a door in each of the side walls. These are closed, but one ofthefrench windows is open to a bright but sunless morning.

  There are two people, each busy with books and paper and pen and ink, separately occupied. The pupil is thomasina coverly, aged 13. The tutor is SEPTIMUS HODGE, aged 22. Each has an open book. Hers is a slim mathematics primer. His is a handsome thick quarto, brand new, a vanity production, with little tapes to tie when the book is closed. His loose papers, etc, are kept in a stiff-backed portfolio which also ties up with tapes.

  Septimus has a tortoise which is sleepy enough to serve as a paperweight.

  Elsewhere on the table there is an old-fashioned theodolite and also some other books stacked up. thomasina: Septimus, what is carnal embrace? Septimus: Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one's arms

  around a side of beef. thomasina: Is that all?

  Septimus: No ... a shoulder of mutton, a haunch of venison well hugged, an embrace of grouse . . . caro, carnis; feminine; flesh.

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  thomasina: Is it a sin?

  Septimus: Not necessarily, my lady, but when carnal embrace is

  sinful it is a sin of the flesh, QED. We had caro in our Gallic

  Wars - 'The Britons live on milk and meat' - 'lacte et carne

  vivunf. I am sorry that the seed fell on stony ground. thomasina: That was the sin of Onan, wasn't it, Septimus? Septimus: Yes. He was giving his brother's wife a Latin lesson

  and she was hardly the wiser after it than before. I thought you

  were finding a proof for Fermat's last theorem. thomasina: It is very difficult, Septimus. You will have to show

  me how. SEPTIMUS: If I knew how, there would be no need to ask you.

  Fermat's last theorem has kept people busy for a hundred and

  fifty years, and I hoped it would keepjyow busy long enough for

  me to read Mr Chater's poem in praise of love with only the

  distraction of its own absurdities. thomasina: Our Mr Chater has written a poem? Septimus: He believes he has written a poem, yes. I can see that

  there might be more carnality in your algebra than in Mr

  Chater's 'Couch of Eros'. thomasina: Oh, it was not my algebra. I heard Jellaby telling

  cook that Mrs Chater was discovered in carnal embrace in the

  gazebo. Septimus: (Pause) Really? With whom, did Jellaby happen to say?

  (thomasina considers this with a puzzled frown.) thomasina: What do you mean, with whom? Septimus: With what? Exactly so. The idea is absurd. Where did

  this story come from? thomasina: Mr Noakes. Septimus: Mr Noakes! thomasina: Papa's landskip gardener. He was taking bearings in

  the garden when he saw - through his spyglass - Mrs Chater in

  the gazebo in carnal embrace. SEPTIMUS: And do you mean to tell me that Mr Noakes told the

  butler? thomasina: No. Mr Noakes told Mr Chater .Jellaby was told by

  the groom, who overheard Mr Noakes telling Mr Chater, in

  the stable yard.

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  Septimus: Mr Chater being engaged in closing the stable door.

  thomasina: What do you mean, Septimus?

  Septimus: So, thus far, the only people who know about this are Mr Noakes the landskip architect, the groom, the butler, the cook and, of course, Mrs Chater's husband, the poet.

  thomasina: And Arthur who was cleaning the silver, and the bootboy. And now you.

  Septimus: Of course. What else did he say?

  thomasina: Mr Noakes?

  Septimus: No, not Mr Noakes. Jellaby. You heard Jellaby telling the cook.

  thomasina: Cook hushed him almost as soon as he started. Jellaby did not see that I was being allowed to finish yesterday's upstairs' rabbit pie before I came to my lesson. I think you have not been candid with me, Septimus. A gazebo is not, after all, a meat larder.

  Septimus: I never said my definition was complete.

  thomasina: Is carnal embrace kissing?

  Septimus: Yes.

  thomasina: And throwing one's arms around Mrs Chater?

  Septimus: Yes. Now, Fermat's last theorem-

  thomasina: I thought as much. I hope you are ashamed.

  Septimus: I, my lady?

  thomasina: If you do not teach me the true meaning of things, who will?

  Septimus: Ah. Yes, I am ashamed. Carnal embrace is sexual congress, which is the insertion of the male genital organ into the female genital organ for purposes of procreation and pleasure. Fermat's last theorem, by contrast, asserts that when x,y and z are whole numbers each raised to power of n, the sum of the first two can never equal the third when n is greater than 2. (Pause.)

  thomasina: Eurghhh!

  Septimus: Nevertheless, that is the theorem.

  thomasina: It is disgusting and incomprehensible. Now when I am grown to practise it myself I shall never do so without thinking of you.

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  Septimus: Thank you very much, my lady. Was Mrs Chater down this morning?

  thomasina: No. Tell me more about sexual congress.

  Septimus: There is nothing more to be said about sexual congress.

  thomasina: Is it the same as love?

  septimus: Oh no, it is much nicer than that.

  (One of the side doors leads to the music room. It is the other side door which now opens to admit JELLABY, the butler.) I am teaching, Jellaby.

  jellaby: Beg your pardon, Mr Hodge, Mr Chater said it was urgent you receive his letter.

  septimus: Oh, very well, (septimus takes the letter.) Thank you. (And to dismiss jellaby.) Thank you.

  jellaby: (Holding his ground) Mr Chater asked me to bring him your answer.

  septimus: My answer?

  (He opens the letter. There is no envelope as such, but there is a 'cover" which, folded and sealed, does the same service. septimus tosses the cover negligently aside and reads.) Well, my answer is that as is my custom and my duty to his lordship I am engaged until a quarter to twelve in the education of his daughter. When I am done, and if Mr Chater is still there, I will be happy to wait upon him in - (he checks the letter) - in the gunroom.

  jellaby: I will tell him so, thank you, sir.

  (SEPTIMUS folds the letter and places it between the pages of 'The Couch of Eros'.)

  thomasina: What is for dinner, Jellaby?

  jellaby: Boiled ham and cabbages, my lady, and a rice pudding.

  thomasina: Oh, goody. (jellaby leaves.)

  septimus: Well, so much for Mr Noakes. He puts himself forward as a gentleman, a philosopher of the picturesque, a visionary who can move mountains and cause lakes, but in the scheme of the garden he is as the serpent.

  thomasina: When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like

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  the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backward, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?

  SEPTIMUS*. No.

  thomasina: Well, I do. You cannot stir things apart.

  Septimus: No more you can, time must needs run backward, and since it will not, we must stir our way onward mixing as we go, disorder out of disorder into disorder until pink is complete, unchanging and unchangeable, and we are done with it for ever. This is known as free will or self-determination.

  (He picks up the tortoise and moves it a few inches as though it had strayed, on top of some loose papers, and admonishes it.) Sit!

  thomasina: Septimus, do you think God is a Newtoni
an?

  Septimus: An Etonian? Almost certainly, I'm afraid. We must ask your brother to make it his first enquiry.

  thomasina: No, Septimus, a Newtonian. Septimus! Am I the first person to have thought of this?

  Septimus: No.

  thomasina: I have not said yet.

  Septimus: 'If everything from the furthest planet to the smallest atom of our brain acts according to Newton's law of motion, what becomes of free will?'

  thomasina: No.

  Septimus: God's will.

  thomasina: No.

  Septimus: Sin.

  thomasina: (Derisively) No!

  Septimus: Very well.

  thomasina: If you could stop every atom in its position and

  direction, and if your mind could comprehend all the actions thus suspended, then if you were really, really good at algebra you could write the formula for all the future; and although nobody can be so clever as to do it, the formula must exist just as if one could.

  Septimus: (Pause) Yes. (Pause.) Yes, as far as I know, you are

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  the first person to have thought of this. (Pause. With an effort.) In the margin of his copy of Arithmetical Fermat wrote that he had discovered a wonderful proof of his theorem but, the margin being too narrow for his purpose, did not have room to write it down. The note was found after his death, and from that day to this -

  thomasina: Oh! I see now! The answer is perfectly obvious.

  Septimus: This time you may have overreached yourself. (The door is opened, somewhat violently. CHATER enters.) Mr Chater! Perhaps my message miscarried. I will be at liberty at a quarter to twelve, if that is convenient.

  chater: It is not convenient, sir. My business will not wait.

  Septimus: Then I suppose you have Lord Croom's opinion that your business is more important than his daughter's lesson.

  chater: I do not, but, if you like, I will ask his lordship to settle the point.

  Septimus: (Pause) My lady, take Fermat into the music room. There will be an extra spoonful of jam if you find his proof.

  thomasina: There is no proof, Septimus. The thing that is perfectly obvious is that the note in the margin was a joke to make you all mad. (thomasina leaves.)

  Septimus: Now, sir, what is this business that cannot wait?

  chater: I think you know it, sir. You have insulted my wife.

  Septimus: Insulted her? That would deny my nature, my conduct, and the admiration in which I hold Mrs Chater.

  chater: I have heard of your admiration, sir! You insulted my wife in the gazebo yesterday evening!

  Septimus: You are mistaken. I made love to your wife in the gazebo. She asked me to meet her there, I have her note somewhere, I dare say I could find it for you, and if someone is putting it about that I did not turn up, by God, sir, it is a slander.

  chater: You damned lecher! You would drag down a lady's reputation to make a refuge for your cowardice. It will not do! I am calling you out!

  Septimus: Chater! Chater, Chater, Chater! My dear friend!

  chater: You dare to call me that. I demand satisfaction!

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  Septimus: Mrs Chater demanded satisfaction and now you are demanding satisfaction. I cannot spend my time day and night satisfying the demands of the Chater family. As for your wife's reputation, it stands where it ever stood.

  chater: You blackguard!

  Septimus: I assure you. Mrs Chater is charming and spirited, with a pleasing voice and a dainty step, she is the epitome of all the qualities society applauds in her sex - and yet her chief renown is for a readiness that keeps her in a state of tropical humidity as would grow orchids in her drawers in January.

  chater: Damn you, Hodge, I will not listen to this! Will you fight or not?

  Septimus: (Definitively) Not! There are no more than two or three poets of the first rank now living, and I will not shoot one of them dead over a perpendicular poke in a gazebo with a woman whose reputation could not be adequately defended with a platoon of musketry deployed by rota.

  chater: Ha! You say so! Who are the others? In your opinion? -no-no -! - this goes very ill, Hodge. I will not be flattered out of my course. You say so, do you?

  Septimus: I do. And I would say the same to Milton were he not already dead. Not the part about his wife, of course -

  chater: But among the living? Mr Southey?

  Septimus: Southey I would have shot on sight.

  chater: (Shaking his head sadly) Yes, he has fallen off. I admired Thalaba' quite, but 'Madoc', (he chuckles) oh dear me! - but we are straying from the business here - you took advantage of Mrs Chater, and if that were not bad enough, it appears every stableboy and scullery maid on the strength -

  Septimus: Damn me! Have you not listened to a word I said?

  chater: I have heard you, sir, and I will not deny I welcome your regard, God knows one is little appreciated if one stands outside the coterie of hacks and placemen who surround Jeffrey and the Edinburgh -

  Septimus: My dear Chater, they judge a poet by the seating plan of Lord Holland's table!

  chater: By heaven, you are right! And I would very much like to know the name of the scoundrel who slandered my verse

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  drama 'The Maid of Turkey' in the Piccadilly Recreation, too!

  Septimus: The Maid of Turkey'! I have it by my bedside! When I cannot sleep I take up The Maid of Turkey' like an old friend!

  CHATER: (Gratified) There you are! And the scoundrel wrote he would not give it to his dog for dinner were it covered in bread sauce and stuffed with chestnuts. When Mrs Chater read that, she wept, sir, and would not give herself to me for a fortnight - which recalls me to my purpose -

  Septimus: The new poem, however, will make your name perpetual -

  chater: Whether it do or not -

  Septimus: It is not a question, sir. No coterie can oppose the acclamation of the reading public. The Couch of Eros' will take the town.

  chater: Is that your estimation?

  Septimus: It is my intent.

  chater: Is it, is it? Well, well! I do not understand you.

  Septimus: You see I have an early copy - sent to me for review. I say review, but I speak of an extensive appreciation of your gifts and your rightful place in English literature.

  chater: Well, I must say. That is certainly . . . You have written it?

  Septimus: (Crisply) Not yet.

  chater: Ah. And how long does . . . ?

  SEPTIMUS: To be done right, it first requires a careful re-reading of your book, of both your books, several readings, together with outlying works for an exhibition of deference or disdain as the case merits. I make notes, of course, I order my thoughts, and finally, when all is ready and I am calm in my mind. . .

  chater: (Shrewdly) Did Mrs Chater know of this before she -before you -

  Septimus: I think she very likely did.

  chater: (Triumphantly) There is nothing that woman would not do for me! Now you have an insight to her character. Yes, by God, she is a wife to me, sir!

  Septimus: For that alone, I would not make her a widow.

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  chater: Captain Brice once made the same observation!

  Septimus: Captain Brice did?

  chater: Mr Hodge, allow me to inscribe your copy in happy anticipation. Lady Thomasina's pen will serve us.

  Septimus: Your connection with Lord and Lady Croom you owe to your fighting her ladyship's brother?

  chater: No! It was all nonsense, sir - a canard! But a fortunate mistake, sir. It brought me the patronage of a captain of His Majesty's Navy and the brother of a countess. I do not think Mr Walter Scott can say as much, and here I am, a respected guest at Sidley Park.

  Septimus: Well, sir, you can say you have received satisfaction. (CHATER is already inscribing the book, using the pen and ink-pot on the table. NOAKES enters through the door used by chater. He carries rolled-up plans, chater, inscribing, ignores noakes. noakes on seeing the occupants, panics.)

&n
bsp; noakes: Oh!

  Septimus: Ah, Mr Noakes! - my muddy-mettled rascal! Where's your spyglass?

  noakes: I beg your leave -1 thought her ladyship - excuse me -(He is beating an embarrassed retreat when he becomes rooted by CHATER's voice. CHATER reads his inscription in ringing tones.)

  chater: To my friend Septimus Hodge, who stood up and gave his best on behalf of the Author - Ezra Chater, at Sidley Park, Derbyshire, April ioth, 1809.' (Giving the book to Septimus.) There, sir - something to show your grandchildren!

  Septimus: This is more than I deserve, this is handsome, what do you say, Noakes?

  (They are interrupted by the appearance, outside the windows, of lady croom and captain edward brice, rn. Her first words arrive through the open door.)

  lady croom: Oh, no! Not the gazebo!

  (She enters, followed by BRICE who carries a leatherbound

  sketch book.)

  Mr Noakes! What is this I hear?

  brice: Not only the gazebo, but the boat-house, the Chinese bridge, the shrubbery -

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  chater: By God, sir! Not possible!

  brice: Mr Noakes will have it so.

  Septimus: Mr Noakes, this is monstrous!

  lady croom: I am glad to hear it from .you, Mr Hodge.

  thomasina: (Opening the door from the music room) May I return now?

  SEPTIMUS: (Attempting to close the door) Not just yet -

  lady croom: Yes, let her stay. A lesson in folly is worth two in wisdom.

  (brice takes the sketch book to the reading stand, where he lays it open. The sketch book is the work a/MR noakes, who is obviously an admirer of Humphry Reptoris 'Red Books'. The pages, drawn in watercolours, show 'before' and 'after* views of the landscape, and the pages are cunningly cut to allow the latter to be superimposed over portions of the former, though Repton did it the other way round.)

  brice: Is Sidley Park to be an Englishman's garden or the haunt of Corsican brigands?

  SEPTIMUS: Let us not hyperbolize, sir.

  brice: It is rape, sir!

  noakes: (Defending himself) It is the modern style.

  chater: (Under the same misapprehension as Septimus) Regrettable, of course, but so it is. (thomasina has gone to examine the sketch book.)

  lady croom: Mr Chater, you show too much submission. Mr Hodge, I appeal to you.