Pamela Dean (34 page)

"I think he's awfully good," said Tina. "They all are. You know—maybe it's just me, but you know I had trouble understanding the Old English in that play we went to?" Janet groaned inwardly; as far as Tina was concerned, there was modern English and Old English and that was it. "Well," said Tina, "Robin and Nick and Thomas are doing this whole play in Old English, and it's a lot easier to understand them than it was to understand those professional actors."

"That's not Old English," said Molly, whose Shakespeare studies were going to her head. "It's Elizabethan English. We wouldn't understand Old English no matter how good the actors were. But you're right. They're easier to understand than most of the actors we saw in
Hamlet,
too."

"Part of it's gestures and stage business," said Janet. "And I guess the rest is just not going too fast."

"But they're not boring, either," said Molly, paging through the program book. "Good grief, look at this. All the characters' names mean something in Italian. Vindice, that's Thomas—Vengeance. The mother is Gratiana, Grace, and the sister is Castiza, Chastity."

She let out a hoot of laughter. "Robin's Lussurioso—Lust."

"Is it an allegory?" said Janet.

"It doesn't say."

"That would explain how shallow it feels, somehow, and how it keeps jumping between comedy and tragedy. If these aren't really exactly characters, but just attributes."

"Huh," said Molly. "I didn't come to watch a bunch of attributes, thank you."

"You can watch Robin's, can't you?" said Tina wickedly.

The curtain rose again on the Duchess's two older sons. They were plotting to get their brother executed before somebody pardoned him. But which brother, thought Janet.

Robin-Lussurioso was in prison for trying to kill his father the Duke. And Junior Brother was still in prison for rape.

The officers of the prison thought it was the younger brother they were supposed to be dispatching. Junior Brother, on finding that he was going to die almost immediately, waxed extremely witty. Janet realized that, under a blond wig and some rather clever makeup, she was looking at Professor Ferris; that voice was hard to disguise. He was apparently going to play all the clowns in this production.

Vindice-Thomas then returned, in a high and unhealthy state of excitement. He explained to an uneasy Hippolito that, acting his part as a pandar, he had promised to bring a lady to meet the Duke here. He went away, and returned supporting a heavily veiled and draped female figure, babbling frenziedly to it as if it were in fact a hired courtesan. He then pulled back its veil to show his ever-present companion, the skull, thickly painted with makeup. The audience made a gasp compounded about equally of amusement and shock.

Hippolito leapt back two steps, took a shaky step forward again, and said, "Why brother, brother," in a shaky tone that seemed to be trying to sound pleased.

Vindice ranted on a little about how well he had fitted out the skull, and then slid into a few remarks about the vanity of earthly wishes, to which Hippolito was able to reply more calmly, "Brother, y'ave spoke
that
aright. Is this the form that, living, shone so bright?"

At those words, spoken in Nick's voice to Thomas, Janet f elt a shiver overtake her.

Vindice, meanwhile, had taken Hippolito's theme up eagerly, and went on for some time in this vein, "Does the silkworm expend her yellow labors for thee? For thee does she undo herself?" He ended with the usual sort of abominable remark, "Here might a scornful and ambitious woman Look through and through herself; see, ladies, with false forms, You deceive men but cannot deceive worms." It was enough to make anybody take to makeup.

He then finally got around to explaining that he had poisoned the mouth of the skull.

Hippolito-Nick said, in very doubtful tones, "Brother, I do applaud thy constant vengeance, The quaintness of thy malice, above thought."

There was a brief chuckle from the audience at the pun in "quaintness," but Janet shivered again. She felt that Nick was not playing his part quite as he ought. She thought Nick was trying to say something to Thomas. Thomas, or Vindice, however, went obsessively along with his plot. And perhaps, after all, it was reasonable for the one brother to have doubts. The entire scheme was preposterous, and so very disrespectful to the murdered woman. Vindice was not entirely sane.

The doomed Duke, his mad-colored hair released from its ribbon and streaming down his red-clad back, came in, affable and grateful. He and Vindice looked oddly alike—it was the wigs, of course. Thomas-Vindice told the Duke that the woman in question was a country lady who would be bashful until the first kiss, and that she had somewhat of a grave look about her. The audience laughed; Janet heard Tina chortle; but Janet looked at Molly, who mouthed, "Shakespeare did it better."

There followed an entirely horrible scene (though half the audience thought it was hilarious) in which the Duke kissed the skull, fell down writhing, and kindly if improbably kept his murderer apprised of the progress of the poison and, like Desdemona only even less plausibly, kept talking long after he should have been utterly unable to do so. They finally put their daggers over his tongue and his heart to keep him quiet. His wife and son entered. They had a brief discussion of whether anything was sweet that was not sinful, expressed their extremely low opinions of the Duke, and departed amorously. The Duke said, "I cannot brook," and they killed him. The pool of blood that oozed from his wounds crept silently across the stage. Janet swallowed.

Hippolito and Vindice dragged out the mercifully silent Duke, and the two elder brothers returned, gloating over their brother's execution. They immediately fell to quarreling over whose idea it had all been, and were interrupted by an officer carrying a grotesque and lifelike bleeding head. They pretended to weep ("Think on some dame," said one to the other, to help him be properly sad) and were interrupted again by their older brother, Robin as Lussurioso.

There followed a flurry of exclamations and recriminations, which, since none of the characters was worth an ounce of sympathy, was in fact very funny. The wrong brother, of course, had been executed: the younger brother, whose claim to the dukedom did not have precedence over Supervacuo and Ambitioso. These two swore revenge for their younger brother's death.

Robin-Lussurioso now sought out Hippolito and began berating him for recommending Vindice in the first place. Nick-Hippolito apologized humbly with a swift glance at the audience that made them roar, and then Vindice came in. Lussurioso yelled at him, Thomas-Vindice was impudent, Lussurioso proceeded to threats, and Vindice ran away. Once again, Janet had the impression that Robin was trying to tell Thomas something. She was beginning to feel very uneasy.

Hippolito apologized for recommending Vindice. Lussurioso-Robin said he could make amends by bringing his brother to court. Either the author was crazy—entirely possible—or else Lussurioso knew perfectly well who Vindice really was, in which case Hippolito was awfully stupid for agreeing. Janet was actually grateful for this apparent blunder; otherwise she would have felt cold and apprehensive indeed. There was, after all, no reason to assume that Vindice was going to get away with all this murder. And what was Thomas trying to get away with?

Hippolito-Nick and Thomas—no, Vindice as they had first seen him, without the wig—began discussing what Lussurioso might want with Vindice. Vindice still seemed vaguely excited, and addressed the absent Lussurioso in paradoxical terms.

Hippolito—and Nick, Janet was sure of it—took him up rather sharply and advised him to consider how he would change his voice so that Lussurioso should not recognize it.

Vindice said he would bear in him some strain of melancholy, and on the word began a lugubrious, slow speech that made most people in the audience laugh but drove Janet to distraction.

Lussurioso, arriving, interviewed Vindice. Janet noticed that Thomas's lines were all in prose now, in addition to being in the melancholy voice. Lussurioso explained to Vindice what Vindice-disguised had done to Vindice's mother and sister, and suggested that Vindice should therefore wish to kill his own disguised self in revenge. Vindice gloomily agreed, in verse again, and Lussurioso left. The two brothers considered their problems for a while, and decided they would dress up the body of the already-dead Duke in the brown suit and wig used by Vindice when he impersonated a pandar; then everybody would deduce that the pandar had killed the Duke and made off with the Duke's clothing.

"Say
what?
" whispered Molly. "Nobody thinks like that."

Janet shrugged. Tourneur had. And she believed that these lunatics would. Revenge was apparently bad for the brain.

Vindice and Hippolito entered, dragging their mother Odile-Gratiana between them.

There followed a tedious and emotional scene wherein, after they threatened her like two Hamlets against one Gertrude, she repented of trying to persuade her daughter to sleep with Robin-Lussurioso. They all made a lot of sententious remarks, and the brothers left.

Then Anne-Castiza came drifting in and there was another tedious emotional scene.

Anne explained that she was now content to do as her mother wished and sleep with Robin; after she had flung all her mother's arguments back in her face and reduced her to hysteria, she confessed that she had done this only to try her. The mother said, "Be thou a glass for maids, and I for mothers," with which ambiguous remark, the two Beauvais sisters swept out in a cloud of green gauze. Janet wondered why the scene had not been more moving.

Was it its predictability, or something in the way the Beauvais sisters played their parts?

Thomas-Vindice and Nick-Hippolito came in with the Duke's corpse, which they had dressed in Thomas's brown suit and the wig of black hair streaked with red. After some discussion of how Vindice would be killing himself in stabbing the disguised corpse, and considerable impatience on the part of Hippolito, they arranged t he body, and just in time, for Lussurioso-Robin came on.

Being informed that the pandar he sought was asleep, and drunk, under a tree, he told Vindice to stab him. Vindice stabbed the body of the Duke dressed in Vindice's clothes, and Janet almost jumped out of her seat.

Lussurioso, after identifying the body as the pandar's and rejoicing, suddenly noticed that it was in fact his father, and deduced that his father had been dead already, and that the pandar must have killed him. After a great flurry, Lussurioso was proclaimed Duke, and promptly arranged for some revels.

Vindice and Hippolito then decided that they would disguise themselves as the maskers ordered for the feast, and so kill anybody they still needed to kill. They got themselves up in green, with wigs of long yellow hair. They killed Lussurioso-Robin; a moment later, four more maskers, in red, all with wigs of black hair streaked with red, danced in, swords out, and paused in confusion. They were Lussurioso's brothers Ambitioso, Supervacuo, Spurio, and one of their minions, also in search of Lussurioso to kill him.

There was also confusion in the audience. Janet saw all the players looking over her head, and turned around. Somebody had trained a dim silvery light on Professor Medeous and her companions. They had all stood up, including Melinda Wolfe, who looked extremely grim. Medeous stood up last, the tallest of them all, with the black hair, streaked with red, falling around her fine-boned face, and looked at the stage for several long moments, like a teacher who has just received an answer so stupid and wrongheaded that no commentary is possible. Then she turned, and the rest of her row turned too, and they all marched out the main entrance, with the light following them and all but drowning out the red of the EXIT sign.

From the stage, Thomas called with extraordinary clarity, "The King rises. Give o'er the play. Lights, lights, lights, lights." And the curtain clapped down like a snapped neck, and all the lights came up.

Janet and Molly blinked at one another.

"What in the world was that all about?" said Molly.

"Miching mallecho,"
said Janet, in a shaking voice; quoting, as Thomas had, from

Hamlet.
"It means mischief."

"Is that the end of the play?" said Tina.

"No," said Molly. "Professor Medeous was affronted. So they quit."

"But they're not supposed to pay any attention to that sort of thing, actors aren't."

"No," said Molly, "they aren't."

"The show must go on. Right. Nick didn't want him to do it," said Janet. "Didn't you think so?"

"I did wonder," said Molly. "When he was showing his brother the painted skull? If that was the way they'd rehearsed it? Yes. I think you're right."

"What are you talking about?" said Tina.

"I'm not sure," said Molly.

"You
sound
like you're sure."

"It's the hair," said Molly. "The Duke had hair like Professor Medeous's—and how does she get it like that, I wonder—when he was killed—"

"But not at the beginning," said Janet. "It was gray. 'Gray-haired adultery.'"

"And all the bad-guy revengers had hair like that."

"Did he want to insult her?" said Tina, bewildered. "I mean, I know he was thinking of changing his major since he can't graduate anyway, but—"

"That's a very strange way to state one's intention," agreed Janet.

"And what did it
mean?
" said Tina. "She can't be an adulterer; she's not married."

Janet's parents and sister appeared before them. "Do you have to go congratulate your swains," said her father, "or would you like to come over and have cocoa and talk over the play?"

"Do you think they did that on purpose?" said Janet.

"The costuming, yes. Having Professor Medeous walk out, I've no idea."

"They must have planned it," said Molly, "because of the light."

"Unless some enterprising soul was improvising," said Janet's mother.

"What I want to know," said Janet's father, "is whose conscience young Thomas wanted to catch."

"'The play's the thing,'" agreed Janet, quoting
Hamlet
yet again, "'wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.'"