Brecht Collected Plays: 1: Baal; Drums in the Night; In the Jungle of Cities; Life of Edward II of England; & 5 One Act Plays: "Baal", "Drums in the Night", "In the Jungle of Ci (World Classics) (29 page)

With a herd of peers. I’ll stand aside.

Enter Edward, Kent, Mortimer, the Archbishop of Winchester, Lancaster
.

ARCHBISHOP:

Here, my lord, hasting to say mass

For the immortal relics of your father Edward

King of England, this I say:

On his death-bed Edward took his Peers —

LANCASTER:

He was already whiter than his sheets —

ARCHBISHOP:

To oath than he would never come again

To England.

GAVESTON
behind
:

Mort Dieu!

ARCHBISHOP:

If you love us, my lord, hate Gaveston.

Gaveston whistles between his teeth
.

LANCASTER:

Comes he across the water there’ll be naked swords

In England.

EDWARD:

I will have Gaveston.

GAVESTON:

Well done, Ned.

LANCASTER:

We mean we would not break our oath.

ARCHBISHOP:

My lord, why do you thus incense your Peers

Who naturally would love and honour you?

EDWARD:

I will have Gaveston.

LANCASTER:

There may be naked swords in England

My lords.

KENT:

If there be naked swords in England, Lancaster

Brother, methinks there will be heads

Set upon poles for trespass of their tongues.

ARCHBISHOP:

Our heads!

EDWARD:

Aye, yours. Now, I pray you, scuttle.

LANCASTER:

Our hands I think may fence our heads.

Exeunt Peers
.

KENT:

Brother, leave Gaveston but bridle your peers.

EDWARD:

Brother, I live or die with Gaveston.

GAVESTON
coming forward
:

I can no longer keep me from my lord.

EDWARD:

What, Danny! Dearest friend!

Embrace me, Danny, as I do thee.

Since thou wert banished each day is parched.

GAVESTON:

And since I went from hence no soul in hell

Has felt more torment than poor Gaveston.

EDWARD:

I know it. Now rebellious Lancaster

Arch-heretic Winchester, conspire as you will

I here create thee Lord High Chamberlain

High Chancellor, Earl of Cornwall, Lord of Man.

KENT
darkly
:

Brother, enough!

EDWARD:

Brother, silence!

GAVESTON:

My lord, do not overwhelm me. What will men

Say? Perhaps: it is too much

For a simple butcher’s son.

EDWARD:

Fear’st thou thy person? Thou shalt have a guard.

Wantest thou gold? Go to my treasury.

Woulds’t thou be fear’d. Receive my ring and seal.

And in our name command, as thou wilt.

GAVESTON:

By your love am I made Caesar’s equal.

Enter the Abbot of Coventry
.

EDWARD:

Whither goes my lord of Coventry?

ABBOT:

To celebrate your father’s exequies.

EDWARD
showing Gaveston
:

My ghostly father has a guest from Ireland.

ABBOT:

What, is that wicked Gaveston returned?

GAVESTON:

Yes, knave. In London there’ll be tears and gnashing teeth.

ABBOT:

I did no more than I was bound to do.

And, Gaveston, if thou art here unlawfully

I’ll bring thy case once more before the Parliament

And thou shalt back again upon an Irish ship.

GAVESTON
grabbing him
:

Let’s to it now. Here is the channel water

And since ’twas thou, sir priest, that wrote that paper

I will plunge thee, my Lord Abbot, in the gutter

As thou plungedst me into the Irish sea.

EDWARD:

Since thou dost it, ’tis good. What thou dost is good.

Aye, plunge him in, Gaveston. Wash his face

Barber thy enemy in the filthy stream.

KENT:

O brother! Touch him not with sacrilegious hand!

For he’ll complain unto the See of Rome.

EDWARD:

Spare his life then! But seize upon his gold and rents!

Be thou Lord Abbot, be he exiled.

ABBOT:

King Edward, God will pay you home

For this misdeed.

EDWARD:

But in the meantime, Gaveston, away

And put his house and livings under seal.

GAVESTON:

What should a priest do with so fair a house?

MISGOVERNMENT UNDER THE REIGN OF KING EDWARD IN THE YEARS
1307-12.
A WAR IN SCOTLAND IS LOST BECAUSE OF THE KING’S INDIFFERENCE

Spencer, Baldock, the two poor men, soldiers
.

BALDOCK:

The Archbishop of Winchester said in the pulpit the wheat this year is worm-ridden. That means much.

SECOND POOR MAN:

But not to us. It’s Winchester eats the corn.

FIRST POOR MAN:

The provisions for the Scottish troops have just been seized by a Yorkshireman.

BALDOCK:

But in Neddy’s house they’re drinking beer at breakfast.

SPENCER:

Yesterday Ned fell into a swoon.

FIRST SOLDIER:

Why so?

SPENCER:

The Earl of Cornwall told him he was growing a beard.

BALDOCK:

Ned was sick the other day in Tanner’s Lane.

SECOND SOLDIER:

Why so?

BALDOCK:

A woman made him liverish.

SECOND SOLDIER:

Have you heard the latest on the Earl of Cornwall? Now he wears a false arse.

Laughter
.

Enter a ballad monger
.

BALLAD MONGER:

Neddy’s woman has a beard on his chest.

Pray for us, pray for us, pray for us!

And so the Scot’s war has been laid to rest.

Pray for us, pray for us, pray for us!

The Earl of Cornwall has silver at his rump

Pray for us, pray for us, pray for us!

But Pat has no arms and O’Nelly just a stump.

Pray for us, pray for us, pray for us.

Ned louses his Gavy and never has time.

Pray for us, pray for us, pray for us.

So Johnny fell in the bog at Bannockbride.

Pray for us, pray for us, pray for us.

SPENCER:

That song is worth a ha’penny, sir.

Enter Edward and Gaveston
.

EDWARD:

My dearest Gaveston, thou hast me for thy friend.

Let them be! We’ll to the pond at Tynemouth

Fishing, eating fish, riding, shooting

On the catapult walls, knee to knee.

SPENCER
grabbing the ballad monger
: This is high treason, sir. And if you ripped to pieces my aunt’s nephew yet my mother’s son could never once endure his dearest Earl of Cornwall to be slandered.

GAVESTON:

What would’st thou, good friend?

SPENCER:

My lord, I am always well inclined to pretty couplets; but high treason plainly goes against my stomach.

GAVESTON:

What is it?

SPENCER:

This worm-eaten peg-leg, my Lord.

The ballad monger runs out
.

GAVESTON
to the King
:

Calumniare audacter, sempèr aliquid haeret.

SPENCER:

In your language: hang him the lower.

GAVESTON
to Spencer
:

Come follow me.

He goes off with the King. Spencer signs to Baldock and they go off together. Those left behind laugh
.

Enter the Archbishop and Lancaster
.

ARCHBISHOP:

All London mocks us. Tax farmers ask how long the Parliament and Peers can let things be. In every alley ‘Civil war’ is spoken.

LANCASTER:

One strumpet does not make a war.

MORTIMER
in his house, alone among his books
:

Plutarch tells of Gaius Julius Caesar

That he could at the same time read and write and dictate to

His clerk and beat the Gauls. It seems

That people of his stature owe their

Fame to a particular lack

Of insight into the vanity of man’s

Concerns and deeds; coupled with an

Amazing lack of seriousness; in short, to their

Shallowness.

Enter archbishop and barons
.

ARCHBISHOP:

You, Roger Mortimer, feed apart

On classic writings, meditations

Of times now dead

While like a seething ant-hill

London needs you.

MORTIMER:

London needs flour.

ARCHBISHOP:

If God should leave a hundred pigs to die

For lack of flour in Saint James’s Hospital

We would not, certainly, for that

Mortimer, disturb you at your books.

But when this pig wallows in Westminster

Suckled with the milk of the land by him

Who is the guardian of the land, a king

Then it is truly time to leave the classics

To be classics.

MORTIMER:

The classics tell us: Great Alexander

Loved Hephaestion, Alcibiades was loved

Of grave Socrates and for

Patroclus Achilles drooped. Must I

For such freaks of nature drag my countenance

Into the market-place amid the sweaty rabble?

ARCHBISHOP:

Ned’s long arms, the catapults

May bring to pass that you, head topped

May not enjoy this hard-defended leisure.

You step from the rain and drown in the flood.

You are cold in passion, at an age

For well-considered deeds, skilled and

Sharp in knowledge of man’s frailty

Hardened by books and an active life

Great in name, goods, troops

Made to raise your voice in

Westminster.

MORTIMER:

Would you warm your soup on Etna?

You have mistook. He who sets himself

To pluck a cock, to eat it, or because

Its crowing jarred, to such a man the urge may come

At last, his hunger sated, out of love of skinning

To take the hide from the tiger. Have you

Thought of this?

ARCHBISHOP:

Let Westminster be rased to the ground

This peasant shall no longer plague us.

MORTIMER:

My lords, for your relief, this I propose:

We demand his exile, signed and sealed.

ARCHBISHOP
hastily
:

You speak to it in Parliament. In England’s

Name we thank you, Earl Mortimer.

That you have sacrificed your learned studies

To England’s weal.

Exeunt archbishop and peers
.

MORTIMER
solus
:

Because some bonnets scrape the mud

Before a hound

These men will thrust our island

Underground.

Mortimer, Archbishop, Lancaster, the two lords
.

LANCASTER:

The King of England shows the Earl of Cornwall

His catapults.

ARCHBISHOP:

It is to
us
he shows them.

LANCASTER:

Are you afraid, Archbishop?

MORTIMER:

Ah, this betrays our baseness, Lancaster.

Were the ancients present at this play

He’d long been out the bosom of the king

This butcher’s son and hanged on a cur-gibbet

Swollen with venom, toothless.

LANCASTER
after a catapult shot
:

Well-aimed, Edward. That shot gives us

Pause for thought. The catapults

Are Edward’s long arms. He’ll reach

You in your Scottish castles, Winchester

With his catapults.

Enter Queen Anne
.

MORTIMER:

Whither walks your majesty so fast?

ANNE:

Deep into the forest, gentle Mortimer

To live in grief and baleful discontent

For now my lord the king regards me not

But dotes on Gaveston.

He hangs about his neck and when I come

He frowns as who should say, ‘Go whither thou wilt

Seeing I have Gaveston.’

MORTIMER:

My lady, you are widowed by

A butcher’s son.

ARCHBISHOP:

How Mortimer consoles my lady!

LANCASTER:

She is devoted to this wicked Edward.

It is a piteous lot. God save her.

ANNE:

Oh Mortimer, can there be greater bitterness

Than this: the French king’s sister is a widow

Yet no widow; since her husband lives

More wretched than a widow; it were better

For the earth to cover her, her steps are shadowed

By abuse, wife and yet no wife:

For her bed is cold.

MORTIMER:

Madame, too much weeping spoils the skin.

Widowed nights are ageing. Rank feelings