The Greeks are not quite heroes by this light.
It shows the playwright is a sharp young chap.
He saw the vein of the preposterous
That ran through this old saga and perceived
That it was starved of true nobility.
Adultery, a wrangle, jealous gods,
Two nations welded into leaden siege:
These were the real components of the tale.
I took the Prologue’s part, but if you will
I’ll not down to the tavern just quite yet.
Forgive me if I loiter in the wings
And act a kind of Chorus to our play.
Imagine me on foot across the plains,
But keeping clear from loftier terrain.
I’m not a mountain goat and I prefer
Walking to it any day. (And I hate
Climbing!) But I fall from my text, I fear.
Let me revert to what I have writ here:
“Now expectation, tickling skittish spirits,
On one and other side, Trojan and Greek,
Sets all on hazard: and hither am I come
A prologue arm’d, but not in confidence
Of author’s pen or actor’s voice, but suited
In like conditions as our argument,
To tell you, fair beholders, that our play
Leaps o’er the vaunt and firstlings of those broils,
Beginning in the middle, starting thence away
To what may be digested in a play.
Like or find fault; do as your pleasures are:
Now good or bad, ’tis but the chance of war.”
A further fragment from later in the play also appears in the Notebooks:
ACT II, SCENE II – TROY. A ROOM IN PRIAM’S PALACE
PROLOGUE appears within an urn.
PROLOGUE
I beg you, do not titter, if you please.
Your Prologue is within the Trojan walls.
And he is desirous not to be seen
Particularly by Priam, King of Troy –
Unmanly creature that I can’t abide! –
A churl who dines on peacock’s breast and fills
The luckless air with boring anecdotes.
Soft, here he comes, in noble company.
Let me remain cabin’d within this urn.
Enter PRIAM, HECTOR, TROILUS, PARIS, and HELENUS
PRIAM
After so many hours, lives, speeches spent,
Thus once again says Nestor from the Greeks:
“Deliver Helen, and all damage else –
As honour, loss of time, travail, expense,
Wounds, friends, and what else dear that is consumed
In hot digestion of this cormorant war –
Shall be struck off.” Hector, what say you to’t?
PROLOGUE (Aside)
He would do well to heed these generous words
If not, before this fateful week is out,
He’ll look some other gift horse in the mouth.
And now speaks Hector, champion of Troy.
HECTOR
Though no man lesser fears the Greeks than I
As far as toucheth my particular,
Yet, dread Priam,
There is no lady of more softer bowels,
More spongy to suck in the sense of fear,
More ready to cry out “Who knows what follows?”
Than Hector is.
PROLOGUE (Aside)
Soft bowels? Is this good?
He gallops to his point.
HECTOR
Let Helen go:
Since the first sword was drawn about this question,
Every tithe soul, ’mongst many thousand dismes,
Hath been as dear as Helen; I mean, of ours:
If we have lost so many tenths of ours,
To guard a thing not ours nor worth to us,
Had it our name, the value of one ten,
What merits in that reason which denies
The yielding of her up?
PROLOGUE (Aside)
Nay, and thrice nay!
Hector has his contention by the reins.
Yield up Helen of Sparta to the Greeks?
Perhaps the horse, now stabled in the trees.
Will never now be loosed upon the plains.
I must confess a feeling of dismay:
The blueprint of this equine strategy
Flowed from my pen within a Grecian tent –
Once I had been obliged to set aside
A better strategy founded upon
Catapulting the Greeks over the wall.
So now this fellow Troilus speaks.
TROILUS
Fie, fie!
Weigh you the worth and honour of a king
So great as our dread father in a scale
Of common ounces? Will you with counters sum
The past proportion of his infinite?
And buckle in a waist most fathomless
With spans and inches so diminutive
As fears and reasons? Fie, for godly shame!
Brother, she is not worth what she doth cost
The holding.
CASSANDRA
[Within] Cry, Trojans, cry!
PRIAM
What noise? What shriek is this?
PROLOGUE (Aside)
Now this I know, I met her by the walls.
Cassandra is she called. A lady who
Can gaze into the future’s murky glass.
Or so she says. (Or shouts, I ought to say.)
TROILUS
’Tis our mad sister, I do know her voice.
CASSANDRA
[Within] Cry, Trojans!
HECTOR
It is Cassandra.
Enter CASSANDRA, raving
CASSANDRA
Cry, Trojans, cry! Lend me ten thousand eyes,
And I will fill them with prophetic tears.
HECTOR
Peace, sister, peace!
CASSANDRA
I heard a sound like thunder from the gods,
And from Troy’s walls I gazed upon the plain.
There I beheld an unexpected sight:
A wooden tent, surmounted by a lamp.
And when its light ceased streaming o’er the sand
A strange old man came tripping from within.
Last night this man came wandering through my dreams
With hair like snow from Mount Olympus’ peak,
And brow as stern as Zeus when angered.
Quoth he, “I have been drawn down from the stars,
– The sphere in which I seek my destiny –
And all the world about me now displayed
Is as a scene created for the stage.
Can this be Ulysses? Agamemnon?
The heroes of a thousand picture books?
I marvel at invention’s power to draw
Such noble art from poor material.”
And off he went, pocking the plains of Troy
With the end of his little wooden staff.
Wherefore do I harp on this old man’s words?
I sense he brings destruction to us all,
In concert with the theft that sparked this war.
Troy must not be, nor goodly Ilion stand;
Our firebrand brother, Paris, burns us all.
Cry, Trojans, cry! A Helen and a woe:
Cry, cry! Troy burns, or else let Helen go.
Exit
PROLOGUE (Aside)
A narrow squeak! I thought she meant to lift
The lid of my disguise, exposing me
Like a stuffed partridge ’neath a silver cloche.
’Tis time for me to quit King Priam’s halls,
Before the siege comes to a fiery end
And Agamemnon’s flames have the effect
Of boiling me inside this goodly pot.
The lady whom her brothers said were mad,
She speaks the hardest truth; o
ld Troy will burn
And nobody will ask: what’s a Greek urn?
PERICLES
This sequence from the play Pericles again appears with no explanatory notes within the Notebook. The introduction of the character ‘Romana’ has given rise to various theories as to why the sequence was reworked for the final version of the play.
SCENE V – MYTILENE. A HOUSE OF ILL-REPUTE
Enter, from the house, two Gentlemen
FIRST GENTLEMAN
Did you ever hear the like?
SECOND GENTLEMAN
No, no. Come, I am for no more bawdy-houses: shall’s go hear the vestals sing?
FIRST GENTLEMAN
Aye. I’ll do any thing now that is virtuous.
Exeunt
SCENE VI – THE SAME. A ROOM IN THE HOUSE
Enter PANDAR and BAWD
PANDAR
Well, I had rather than twice the worth of her had she ne’er come here.
BAWD
Fie upon her! She would make a puritan of the devil!
PANDAR
’Faith, is there no way to be rid of her?
BAWD
Soft. Here comes the Lord Lysimachus disguised.
Enter LYSIMACHUS
LYSIMACHUS
How now! What wholesome iniquity have you that a man may deal withal?
BAWD
We have here one, sir, if she would – but there never came her like in Mytilene.
LYSIMACHUS
Well, call forth, call forth.
BAWD
Never plucked yet, I can assure you.
Re-enter PANDAR with ROMANA
PANDAR
Is she not a fair creature?
LYSIMACHUS
’Faith, she would serve after a long voyage at sea.
Well, there’s for you: leave us.
BAWD
Come, we will leave his honour and her honour together. Go thy ways.
Exeunt BAWD and PANDAR
LYSIMACHUS
Now, pretty one, how long have you been at this trade?
ROMANA
What trade, sir?
LYSIMACHUS
Why, I cannot name’t.
ROMANA
I should think not. I hear say you are of
Honourable parts. Here’s no part of honour.
I hear you are this country’s governor.
How you should rule it that can’st not rule thyself.
LYSIMACHUS
How’s this?
ROMANA
Your mask is but a masque, trust me.
A stranger here, most ungentle fortune
Has placed me in this sty. I’m used to it,
Not this place, but my sad condition.
I travel on time’s seas, and often am
Washed up roughly on ungentle shores and
Trapped in vile dungeons. But this is a first.
LYSIMACHUS
You claim you are a gentlewoman?
ROMANA
Lady Romanadvoratrelundar.
And you rule Mytilene?
LYSIMACHUS
I do.
ROMANA
Then check thy privilege and rule better.
Dos’t hold thee in thy prisons a Doctor?
LYSIMACHUS
Need you physic?
ROMANA
Not so much as he will.
He is my companion, a wand’ring fool.
LYSIMACHUS
Oh, him.
ROMANA
I thought as much. Fetch him hither.
LYSIMACHUS
Shall I take commands of you?
ROMANA
I think so.
Someone needs to tell thee how to rule.
We came here by mischance but it can serve
Its turn. We search for a precious jewel.
LYSIMACHUS
I had hoped to take that from you.
ROMANA
Stop that.
Clearly it’s a dead end. Fetch the Doctor,
Let me out, nail these bawds and mend thy ways.
Your cloak needs a press and there’s egg upon thy cuff.
In the market lies a girl, Marina.
She leads a simple life, but her head’s screwed on.
And she really is a princess. She’ll do.
LYSIMACHUS
A princess? ’Tis said I’m quite the catch.
ROMANA
You’d be lucky to have her. She’s got style.
LYSIMACHUS
How came she to land on fair Mytilene?
ROMANA
Oh, bad luck. Same as everyone else.
LYSIMACHUS
Harsh.
ROMANA
But fair.
LYSIMACHUS
You’ve a good point there, I fear.
ROMANA
Woo the girl, and then we’ll see. Your state
Is in a state, but it’s not up to me.
Mytilene needs Marina, as do you.
So chop chop. Fetch her forth, get the Doctor
Then come back here. I haven’t got all day.
LYSIMACHUS
Will there be anything else?
ROMANA
Oh, bring gold.
They seem to like that here. The food’s not bad.
I owe them that at least.
LYSIMACHUS
I’ll pass that on.
ROMANA
Do get a move on, there’s a dear. This dress
Is thin and there’s a nip in the night air.
LYSIMACHUS
You have spoke most well; I never dream’d thou couldst.
Had I brought hither a corrupted mind,
Thy speech had alter’d it. Hold, here’s gold for thee:
Persever in that clear way thou goest,
And the gods strengthen thee!
ROMANA
Please hurry! Spit-spot!
LYSIMACHUS
Fare thee well. Thou art a piece of noble virtue
Hold, here’s more gold for thee.
A curse upon him, die he like a thief,
That robs thee of thy goodness! If thou dost
Hear from me, it shall be for thy good.
Enter PANDAR
PANDAR
I beseech your honour, one piece for me.
LYSIMACHUS
Avaunt, thou damned door-keeper! Away!
Exit
PANDAR
How’s this? Another one? Oh, Romana,
We must take another course with you
We’ll have no more gentlemen driven away.
Re-enter Bawd
BAWD
How now! what’s the matter?
PANDAR
Worse and worse, mistress; she has here spoken holy words to the Lord Lysimachus.
BAWD
O abominable! Marry, hang her up for ever!
PANDAR
She sent him away as cold as a snowball;
Saying his prayers too.
BAWD
Would she had never come within my doors!
ROMANA
I am still here, you know. Hello!
PANDAR
What now?
ROMANA
Just that rescue will be here in an hour.
I wonder if I could have some more stew?
It’s rather good. Why not close up thy stew
And find something else to do?
PANDAR
What, prithee?
ROMANA
Have you heard of a good restaurant?
With linen on the tables, a menu
Printed, a fire, and lovely cosy chairs.
It’s easy work and I think you’ll clean up.
Let me show you how to fold a napkin . . .
BAWD
Marry, hang you! She’s born to undo us.
Marry, come up, my dish of chastity
I’ll serve thee up with rosemary and bays!
ROMANA
The day’s been long. That had better be a ye
s.
Exeunt
* * *
We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and the Mara rounds on us in sleep.
* * *
CORIOLANUS
The extant version of Coriolanus is an account of the Roman military hero, Coriolanus, who is raised, unwillingly, to the highest office – then loses his political power and goes into exile in the country of his former enemies, the Volsces.
This previously unknown version from the Notebooks is set in another territory entirely, referred to in the text as Tara, a possible allusion to the kingdom of ancient Ireland.
ACT II, SCENE II
Enter Thorvald, nobleman of Tara; the Archimandrite, an official; Kurster, captain of the guard; Till, a retainer.
THORVALD
Proceed, Archimandrite.
ARCHIMANDRITE
I shall lack voice: the deeds of Coriolanus
Should not be utter’d feebly. It is held
That valour is the chiefest virtue, and
Most dignifies the haver: if it be,
The man I speak of cannot in the world
Be singly counterpoised. At sixteen years,
When Grendel sought to seize the Taran throne
By keeping good Prince Reynart in his cell
And Princess Strella too, endungeon’d there,
He swam the moat to bring a message through,
Conveyed from royalist conspirators
Who plotted at their lodge among the trees.
He braved the guards of Gracht; he dodged their bolts
And the amours of Madame Lamia,
The secret consort of the wicked count.
He faced the perils of the Taran night
And slew a knot of Wood Beasts with his blade.
And when the great alarums fiercely broke
On hated Grendel’s fateful nuptial night
He loosed his crackling sword out of its sheath
And battled bravely on. In that day’s feats,
When he might act the woman in the scene,
He proved best man i’ the field, and for his meed
Was brow-bound with the oak. His pupil age
Man-enter’d thus, he waxed like a sea,
And in the brunt of seventeen battles since
He lurch’d all swords of the garland.
In these dark times, now Reynart’s kingdom finds
It has new enemies beyond the trees,
He lent our troops a spark of his great fire
And by his rare example made the coward
Turn terror into sport: as weeds before
A vessel under sail, so men obey’d
And fell below his stem. As if one mass,
They surged across the bloodied plains
Of Thorvald and Mortgarde, and thence rode on