A Two-Act Play
Hawthorne's Ghosts
By G. L. Horton
copyright © 2005
Geralyn Horton
Hawthorne's Ghosts is an operatic fantasy about the Perfect Marriage
of the First Great American Novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne and his
Muse and Helpmeet Sophia Peabody.
CHARACTERS: ALIVE AND IN THE FRAME PLAY
LEE HOWE, composer, not well known but of great promise.
JEFFERSON JEFFERS, businessman, philanthropist, member of various
Boards of Trustees.
BRUCE ABBOT, associate professor of mathematics, tenor, family
friend.
EUNICE HAUSER, TED's stepdaughter, a freshman who plans to
major in art history.
EMILY ELLIS, a junior majoring in vocal music and business.
EUNICE's friend, TED's lover.
TED COURTLAND, a poet-professor with a substantial reputation.
KATE HAUSER, TED's fourth wife, an English professor.
CHARACTERS: GHOSTS represented by puppets or multimedia
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, American novelist of the mid 1800's.
SOPHIA PEABODY HAWTHORNE, his wife.
MARGARET FULLER, intellectual and author, friend of the HAWTHORNES
CHARACTERS: WITHIN THE OPERA
THE AUTHORITY from The Scarlet Letter
UNA HAWTHORNE, the HAWTHORNE's first born daughter: later a
suicide.
ZENOBIA and HOLLINGSWORTH from The Blithdale Romance
ADA SHEPARD, LOUISE LANDER, and DOCTOR FRANCO, in Italy
MIRIAM from The Marble Faun
Opening-- Overture
Twilight. "Movie music" sets a mood of storm and yearning.
Flickering Ghost images giving the impression that fragments of
spirit are in the air. The Ghosts sing fragments of songs that
appear in completed versions later.
SOPHIA
The wind, the east wind.
HAWTHORNE
-- delusion
floating in thin air.
SOPHIA
The pain the searing pain
Howling through my brain
HAWTHORNE
Oh, my Dove, find your way through the mists to me,
my home
SOPHIA
The wind, the east wind.
HAWTHORNE
-- your radiance
SOPHIA
-- here in this place
where we embrace
without comfort.
HAWTHORNE
-- not vanish when I wake.
Twilight is deepening towards night. LEE, who has been sitting
motionless at the keyboard, switches on the light and begins to
play on her keyboard
HAWTHORNE
My Dove
See the gift that I bring to thee,
My heart
Which is wrapped in solitude.
Never made callous
By the multitude.
Never rude.
I kept the dew of my youth for thee
I kept the freshness of my soul,
To offer thee.
To offer thee, my---
The clock strikes the hour, Hawthorne effect vanishes, Lee breaks
off, backs up recorder, and glares at the clock. Resumes playing,
noodling around until finding the end of the verse. Hawthorne
effect reappears and sings.
To offer thee, my Dove.
My Love.
When I'm with you, the world is no delusion
I'm not a creature floating in thin air.
(JEFFERS enters, he responds to the music, but does not hear
HAWTHORNE or see the effect)
Oh, my Dove, find your way through the mists to me,
Mists that envelope me and keep me from my home
Illumine me with your radiance
That will not vanish when I wake.
I throw my heart open wide
To you, only to you.
Come my Dove,
Come and rest.
JEFFERS (to LEE)
I like that. What is it?
LEE
An aria for Hawthorne, I hope.
JEFFERS
There are lyrics for it?
LEE
Ted sent them-- I think they're adapted from Hawthorne's love
letters.
JEFFERS
You think?
LEE
Ted and I haven't talked much, really. We've exchanged emails
and CDs--
JEFFERS
And you're already at work!
LEE
I wouldn't call this work. I sat down and all at once I could
hear Hawthorne singing.
JEFFERS
Amazing. Does that happen a lot?
LEE
Don't I wish! But this is useless, probably. I can't just barge
ahead before we agree on a structure. Collaboration with someone
new is-- well, you can imagine.
JEFFERS
I hope I haven't got you into a pickle.
LEE
The money's good. The atmosphere's -- conducive. Why not be optimistic?
At least until we've evidence to the contrary.
JEFFERS
Small party at Ted's tonight. Informal. Will you come?
LEE
Ought I?
JEFFERS
Please. Get to know Ted and his wife.
LEE
His wife?
JEFF
Kate's a professor here-- Hawthorne's her period. I think chatting
with the two of them in a casual context might be very useful.
LEE
I only wish I had the same opportunity with Nathaniel and Sophia
Hawthorne.
LIVING ROOM--- the party
BRUCE
Why is it Ted's working here? This shrine doesn't even have Hawthorne
papers.
EUNICE
Ted's bored by papers.
EMILY
Unless they're in an envelope with a check.
TED
My flaws the fuel for undergraduate wit? To which of my loved
ones do I owe this notoriety?
KATE
Not me. Eunice?
EUNICE
I've cut way back on my "wicked stepfather" routine,
Ted. But don't expect me to give it up entirely. You worked hard
for notoriety: why shouldn't we cash in on it?
EMILY
Is Eunice slandering him, Kate?
KATE
Alas, it's true. Ted won't bother to look at the material I find
for him, even the things he asks me for. "Just feed it to
me in sound bites", he says.
TED
I'm just following Hawthorne's example: "My Dove, thou shalt
read these books for me, and with thy sweet voice distill all
that they contain..."
KATE
Ted and Nat share an aversion to boredom.
TED
The more a writer stuffs into his head, the less he is able to
tell a story. Shakespeare's are the best classical plays: Because
he had small Latin and less Greek.
KATE
No laundry lists for a poet.
TED
Not for love or money.
BRUCE
To my way of thinking, a big fat commission to write a Hawthorne
libretto counts as love AND money.
TED
I wouldn't call it a fat commission. The National Endowment gave
North Shore Community College $247, 600 to set up a "Hawthorne"
in Salem web site. Comparatively, we get peanuts.
BRUCE
So you won, but not enough to call it love.
EUNICE
Ted has all the love he deserves.
BRUCE
What are you adapting? "The House of Seven Gables"?
"The Minister's Black Veil"?
TED
The opera's about Hawthorne the American icon, with his wife Sophia
as Muse.
BRUCE
"Sophia" means "Wisdom". So was she soul mate
as well as research assistant?
KATE
She was President of his fan club and humble helpmeet. If he'd
wanted an eqaul, he'd have picked Margaret Fuller.
TED
Fat chance! Hawthorne hitched himself to a Patriot dream. Inspired
by an angel wife, an American could rise above sin to Literary
Immortality.
BRUCE
An angel wife sounds a bit of a bore.
TED
First rule of librettos: a soprano to suffer, lyrically and at
length.
SOPHIA
The wind, the east wind
BRUCE
So that's why Hawthorne's wife. But why work in his house?
EUNICE
To soak up atmosphere.
SOPHIA
The wind, the east wind
Encompasseth my mind
TED
For the ghosts.
EMILY
Ghosts?
EUNICE
This place is supposed to be haunted.
SOPHIA
The pain the searing pain
Goes howling through my brain
TED
I plan to work the way Robert Graves did. Summon up characters
form the dead, let their ghosts dictate.
BRUCE
You call that a plan?
EUNICE:
Is that how Graves wrote "I, Claudius"?
TED
Yup. Cuts the drudgery.
BRUCE
This place does have atmosphere-- if you like damp and drafty.
The way the wind howls, I've got goose bumps!
SOPHIA
The wind, the east wind.
Here in this place, where we embrace
without comfort.
KATE
Me, too. Haunted is not my idea of comfort.
EMILY
I wonder why the ghosts are restless? If they got everything they
wanted--,
TED
Everything that they permitted each other--
SOPHIA
Without comfort--
EUNICE
Mother, are you pretending to believe in ghosts? You banished
all that nonsense when I was very small.
KATE
Maybe I was too hasty. There is a cold spot going up the stairs.
BRUCE
Brrr. I believe, I believe.
EMILY
Is the ghost supposed to be Hawthorne?
KATE
Or Sophia Peabody.
BRUCE
Peabody! A name to reckon with in New England!
TED
I think there was a Peabody on the grant committee.
BRUCE
Given your choice, which ghost would you prefer to have haunt
you?
KATE
The cold Nathaniel, or the etherialized Sophia--?
(fade on mortals, who continue to move and talk but are dimly
lit and unheard. Ghosts appear: First Hawthorne)
HAWTHORNE aria
Beloved, I would write beautifully
Make myself famous for your sake
Because perhaps
You would like to have the world
Acknowledge me.
I invite your spirit
At any hour and as hours as you please
Especially at twilight,
Before I bend to light my lamp.
Do you hear me?
Are you conscious of my invitation?
I bid you come at the hour of vivid visions
In the dusky glow of firelight, peace overflows
from your heart into mine.
Come, O, come.
(Ghost of Sophia materializes)
Let me renew my spell
Against cruel headache,
Against the direful wind.
Fling your burden upon me, now.
For there is strength enough in me to bear it
Love enough to make the bearing happy.
(fade. lights up on mortals, conversation becomes audible)
EUNICE
Going by Hawthorne's portrait, he was incredibly handsome.
BRUCE
Not my type.
KATE
You can't choose between them. For better or worse, they shared
a soul.
TED
We don't do that any more to our spouses, eh, Kate? Equal but
Separate.
EMILY
Is Hawthorne Ted's type?
KATE
The type Ted is, or the type he's attracted to?
EUNICE
Is he yours, Mom?
BRUCE
What is the mysterious reason you're writing about Hawthorne?
KATE
Nothing mysterious. When a Foundation hires somebody to cobble
up a multimillion dollar entertainment, the subject had better
be a pre-sold Name.
TED
For this particular Foundation, a New England Name. Wait: let
me put on my "Show and Tell" for you! (sets up slide
show) But if not Nat, who would you suggest?
EUNICE
Calvin Coolidge? (greeted by boos)
KATE
Nobody's heard of my heroine Fuller. Robert Lowell?
TED
Not practical: his stuff's in copyright.
(TED has readied his slides: he shows lurid popular paperback
covers of Hawthorne novels and stories, sexy or scarey)
KATE
And there are still people around who knew him, who might object.
(murmurs of appreciation for slides)
BRUCE (reacting to "Show and Tell")
Yes, I see that Hawthorne's perfect. High minded, yet simple enough
to be assigned in junior high school. A dash of Stephan King shivers.
No politics to speak of, at least not in the stories--
EMILY
Except sexual politics.
TED
Always, Emily. Always. Jeff! Glad you could make it. Is Lee...?
JEFF
Coming right along.
TED (turns off the slides)
We started without you.
JEFF
I suppose everyone knows?
BRUCE
We've heard, yes. But we're dumbstruck -- or at least I am.
JEFF
It's a very exciting project.
BRUCE
I never pictured Ted as a librettist.
TED
Jeff was the one who pictured it. Convinced me to give it a try.
JEFF
But your lyrics convinced Lee, and Lee's setting of them convinced
the Foundation.
TED
Here's to the Foundation, eh, Jeff? Long may they Fund! They're
the only true romantics. They throw money, and male and female,
cast and outcast, mingle their arts and their hearts.
EUNICE
Who's the outcast?
BRUCE
Who, indeed?
TED
Shouldn't Lee be here by now?
EMILY
The name sounds familiar, but I don't know for what...
JEFF
In a few months, for the "Toil and Trouble" cantata.
Which is going to win the Pulitzer. I think. If you'll excuse
me, I'll see if I can locate.... (exit)
BRUCE
I heard that what made that cantata boffo was that on opening
night, the librettist dropped dead.
KATE
Ted! Don't you dare!
TED
Suicide by Pulitzer? Never. Not even for a Nobel.
EUNICE
Too late for you, anyway, Ted. You've got to die tragically young.
BRUCE
How young?
KATE
Before 50, anyway.
BRUCE
Less stringent than tenure, though. One career path still open
to me.
EUNICE
How can you say that, Bruce? Even as a joke?
BRUCE
The Times has it that this is the era of gay privilege, but I
have my doubts. Since my dear colleague Leo outed me in the campus
newspaper, I've noticed a definite falling off. As if my concerns
were not sufficiently serious for real men.
TED
Not what I'd deduce by looking at what's playing on or Off- Broadway.
BRUCE
Ah-- but who goes to the theatre? The men of the University and
their Amazonian partners are revving up their computers for War,
trade or shooting.
TED
Hawthorne felt like that. Rejected by the brutal burghers, incapacitated
by his sensibility--
BRUCE
Are you painting him queer?
TED
Weird, yes: but gay...?
KATE
He married late. Till then he shared a bed with his uncle, or
with his college friends...
TED
Everybody did, back then. Lincoln--
EUNICE
That's so gross!
EMILY
All the opera queens will buy tickets-- A gay angle's good!
EUNICE
I hate that.
KATE
Gay?
(LEE AND JEFF appear at entrance)
EUNICE
Like some people are only one thing, one mood---
TED
Half the delicate love lyrics of the past are now jokes in poor
taste.
BRUCE
People can call me what they like, so long as they give me a job,
a mortgage, health insurance, and cast me in the annual Gilbert
and Sullivan.
LEE (enters)
Sticks and stones may break my bones/ But words can really screw
me.
JEFF
Lee Howe, your support team. Ted's wife, Kate.
KATE
Delighted.
JEFF
Daughter Eunice, friends Bruce and Emily--
EUNICE
I'm not really support-- except moral, of course.
BRUCE
Nor are we, yet. Though we have hopes.
KATE
Bruce and Eunice sing.
EUNICE
You should have seen Bruce as Nankipoo! He's to die for.
BRUCE
I'm just your basic diva, but if I can make myself useful...
EUNICE
I'm a killer at sight reading. Ted seems to think there are work-study
funds.
LEE
We're scarcely at the stage-- are we?
TED
I'd hoped to ply you with drinks before bringing this up, Lee--
JEFF
The funding people want to have a little kickoff thing. Hear the
scene you two sent in with the application....
TED
A cozy little student faculty workshop kind of thing.
Transition to Onstage. TED is in the middle of his introductory
remarks.
(Some awkwardness, paper shuffling. He's using his "Show
and Tell" slides)
Hawthorne was nearly middle aged when the reading public finally
bought enough copies of a story of his to give some credit to
the idea circulated by his friends and relations that he was The
First Great American Writer.
(slide of lurid "Scarlet Letter" paperback or movie
poster)
The Scarlet Letter was Hawthorne's first big hit, and of course
it's the work he's known by today. The book incorporated Hawthorne
himself as the American voice speaking for and to his fellow citizens,
showing the Old World the peculiar virtues and misdeeds of New
England. His public notion was that his ancestor hung the Salem
witches out of greed. Incurring a lasting curse. Hawthorne and
his widowed mother and sisters lived off grudging charity, and
were subject to the genteel humiliations visited on the pretentious
who have slipped into poverty.
(lurid image for "Seven Gables")
As a student at Bowdoin college Hawthorne's pedigree, prose style,
and high moral tone made him a person of substance, but once graduated
he felt as if he were fading away, his only vocation that of an
idle and obscure scribbler of trifling tales.
(lurid paperback or poster of a Tale)
His tales center on a guilty secret, whether of commission or
fantasy, a sin that itself may be a source of identity and redemption.
(image of "The Minister's Black Veil")
In the Scarlet Letter, the bright red sin is adultery, and it
emerges from the depths to take center stage in the person of
Pearl,
(illustration of Pearl)
the child born to Hester and the Reverend Dimmesdale,
(illustration of Dimmesdale)
the lover she refuses to name. The literate public fixed its
eyes on Hawthorne as intently as on Hester and Pearl. What makes
him an expert on sin?
(Hawthorne portrait)
Here's the scene where The Authorities threaten to take Pearl
away from her unfit mother.
AUTHORITY (sung by????)
Your child! She does not know God made her!
She says you plucked her from a rose bush
That grows by the prison door.
In the dark as to her soul,
And its depravity.
Her future destiny--
She must be taken up, and to the light!
She must be shown the way from wrong to right.
HESTER -- EMILY
God gave me the child!
In requital of all else.
She is my scarlet letter:
My happiness, my torture,
The Pearl of price that keeps me here in life.
Ye shall not take her,
Unless you mean to give me to my death.
AUTHORITY
Poor woman!
Your child shall be cared for--
far better than thou cans't.
HESTER
God gave her to me!
I will not give her up!
Dimmesdale: Speak thou for me:
Thou wast my pastor,
Hads't charge of my soul.
Thou knows't what's in my heart,
Thou knows't a mother's rights--
How much stronger they are when they are all she has--
Her child and her scarlet letter!
DIMMESDALE - BRUCE
There is truth in what she says
And in the feeling which inspires her.
God gave her the child,
And instinct for its nurture.
An awful sacredness there is in this!
AUTHORITY
Ay? how is that?
Make it plain , good Master Dimmesdale.
DIMMESDALE
This child of its father's guilt and its mother's shame
Was meant to be a blessing;
Was meant to be a retribution, too.
A pang, a sting, in the midst of a troubled joy.
This boon was meant, above all else,
To preserve her from Satan,
To teach her to live by her Creator's pledge,
That if she should bring her difficult child to heaven,
That child will also bring her mother there.
Herein is she happier than the case of the sinful father.
Oh, leave them together,
As Providence hath seen fit.
AUTHORITY
You have pleaded well--
leave the matter as it stands
So long as there's no more scandal.
And every good Christian man
show a father's kindness
To the poor deserted babe.
The singers bow, LEE acknowledges applause, family and friends
greet them as they walk off stage.
EUNICE
That was so beautiful, Bruce! You made me cry.
BRUCE
Thank you, my dear.
EUNICE
You gave that hypocrite real depth.
BRUCE
Guilt's not that hard. We all know guilt.
EUNICE
It was the love underneath that moved me.
BRUCE
One gives one's all for Art, you know. More, if one can fake it.
EMILY
Eunice, want to go get a burger? I'm starved!
(Hawthorne's Ghost materializes, sings)
HAWTHORNE
Unconscious of anything wicked that went along
without jostling or impeding her,
No more than any gross substance hinders the spirit's wanderings.
KATE
That went quite well. Are you pleased, Bruce?
BRUCE
I would be if I thought Ted had a clue. Has he?
KATE
What do you mean --?
BRUCE
Has he ever written a play? Or so much as a song?
KATE
Ted's poems have been set---.
BRUCE
I can't imagine that he has any sympathy at all with Transcendentalism--.
KATE
You're right about that! He calls it "that earnest Puritan
effort to substitute hot air for hot pants." But at least
he cares enough to call it something. Most modern writers would
rather clean latrines than contemplate Nathaniel, or old Ralph
Waldo-- much less their saintly wives.
BRUCE
Saintly wives! Were they Bores? Or hypocrites?
KATE
No two saints are truly alike, any more than happy marriages are,
really--
BRUCE
You're not a bore, Saint Kate.
KATE (with a 19th century curtsy)
Thank you.
BRUCE
So are you a Hypocrite?
KATE
Because I quail at the thought of being outed, and forced to resign
--
BRUCE
That'd never happen.
KATE
It happened before! At the very least, I'd be cut dead at faculty
tea. I'd lose my source of material. Gossip would cease when I
enter a room.
BRUCE
It does. Don't tell me you haven't noticed.
KATE
What do you mean?
BRUCE
Oh, please. I've never breathed a word about your writing trash
all these years, so you know I can be trusted.
KATE
Trusted with what?
BRUCE
Or are you planning to use it as a plot? Who'll be the corpse?
The sexy student, or the philandering professor? And will the
murderer be the betrayed wife, or a friend who loves her and can't
bear to see her made a fool of?
KATE
Now I haven't a clue. What are you talking about?
BRUCE
Katie Hauser, alias Katje Herrik, girl detective: you haven't
a clue that Ted's snogging a student? Right under your nose?
KATE
Oh, Bruce! Ted's a charm addict. Seduction's his habit, but he
doesn't really--
BRUCE
So you're not a hypocrite. You're just invincibly ignorant. Too
bad. I thought better of you.
KATE
Bruce--
BRUCE
What's that Hawthorne quote you gave me? "She had faculty
which pure women often have of ignoring-- ignoring all-- all moral---?"
KATE
"-- all moral blotches in a character that won her admiration."
If you're applying that to me---
BRUCE
It makes me so angry. Your husband ought to bow to Mecca to give
thanks five times a day, for being blessed with your looks, and
your intelligence, and your goddam blind loyalty!
BRUCE walks in to where LEE and TED are working at the piano.
BRUCE sings
HAWTHORNE aria
Beloved, I would write beautifully
Make myself famous for your sake
Because perhaps
You would like to have the world acknowledge me.
I invite your spirit
At any hour and as many hours as you please
Especially at twilight,
Before I bend to light my lamp.
Do you hear me?
Are you conscious of my invitation?
I bid you come at the hour of vivid visions
In the dusky glow of firelight,
Overflowing from your heart into mine.
Come, O, come.
(Ghost of Sophia materializes, sings "The Wind" in
counterpoint)
Let me renew my spell
Against cruel headache,
Against the direful wind.
Fling your burden upon me, now.
For there is strength enough in me to bear it
Love enough to make the bearing happy.
LEE
Thanks, Bruce. You really caught it. (to TED) Well?
TED
I like it.
LEE
Good. that's great. But I'm not sure how it fits your scenario.
Is this a love story?
TED
As far as the Hawthornes are concerned, it is: sweet and simple.
But from our perspective--,
BRUCE
What is "our" perspective?!
TED
Post Freudian, postmodern, post Stravinsky, Post--Post. I envision
that the frame includes musical vocabulary, as well. The core
being tonal, sort of sappy romantic.
LEE
I think I'm getting a headache. In twenty five words or less--
TED
Set up: lonely, reclusive, impoverished and artistic, Nat and
Sophie fall in love.
(image of Nat and Sophie on a Romance Novel cover)
An Extended engagement full of idealized yearning, followed by
ecstatic honeymoon. Middle: Nathaniel toils towards greatness,
writing his wife into his guilt-drenched stories as a pure and
selfless heroine;
(image of Sophie as Phoebie from Seven Gables)
while Sophia, as she so quaintly puts it, "crowns their union
with children." As New World celebrities they carry their
triumph to Old Rome, where they're threatened by malaria and adulterous
temptation. Finis: the pair, having exhausted the Marriage Plot,
have little left to say, either to each other or to posterity.
BRUCE
Then why should posterity bother with them?
TED
There's the mystery! But at the moment, biography,-- particularly
gutter biography, that exposes all the hero's flaws--, is our
most popular narrative form. Modern narcissism loves looking back
at "greats", the better to look down on them. (image)
LEE
And you want this looking-down commentary to be carried by the
score.
TED
Not just the looking down. The soaring and aspirational, too.
Music equals emotion, right?
BRUCE
Umm... don't mean to dash, but are you going to need me? I have
a class to prep.
LEE
Sorry. Thanks so much.
BRUCE
My pleasure. It's beautiful stuff.
LEE
Maybe Tuesday afternoon? Around two?
BRUCE (exits)
Sure. See you. Ted? Behave yourself!
TED
Bruce?
LEE
So. The love arias for Nathaniel and Sophia , --- you're thinking
more or less Puccini?
TED
Transcendentalized? What you were playing--?
LEE
More or less. Puccini's a little late, but I can imagine him setting
a Belasco "Marble Faun" or "Blithedale Romance".
TED
Sounded right on-target to me. And I liked what you did with the
"Scarlet Letter" scene, though I'd imagined more echoes
of hymn tunes. Less lush and more Puritan.
LEE
You mean foursquare hymns, no African or Handel? (plays sample)
TED
I guess I do. Yes.
LEE
This makes me a little uncomfortable.
TED
Oh, dear. Is that what Bruce ...? "Uncomfortable" how?
LEE
I'm enough of a puritan myself that I feel awkward, parading in
borrowed clothes. I like to think I have my own-
TED
As do I! My God, as a poet, I--! But my libretto quotes Nathaniel
and Sophy, it's so much Hawthorne that our creation is in putting
the swatches together, in the artistry of the quilting--
LEE
I've heard that Hawthorne was a racist.
TED
That may be true.
(image of Hawthorne recoiling from a freedman's handshake)
LEE
He cut off Sophia off from the Peabodys because they were Abolitionists,
and he was not.
TED
Hawthorne hated slavery. But when his friend and patron Franklin
Pierce came out for extending States Rights to the territories,
he defended that--. He loved Franklin Pierce like a brother.
LEE
I think what Hawthorne hated about slavery was black people. He
didn't want them around.
TED
He would rather have let the South succeed than fight a Civil
War, but....
LEE
What is our opera going to say about this?
TED
(image of handshake as above, but with Hawthorne airbrushed
out)
Nothing-- unless you can think of a way to put it in. Hawthorne
did his best to avoid it. He left for England in 1853, just as
the issue was boiling over, and from England he went to Italy.
He forbade Sophia to discuss abolition, and it was never alluded
to in his novels.
LEE
So racism's not part of the material out of which we're to make
patchwork? Huh! There are plenty of composers who work in pastiche,
but I've never been one. "Swatches", "quilting"!
When I'm working well, my music sings itself. Speaks through me.
I don't stitch it.
TED
That's fine. That's perfectly OK.
LEE
How is it ok? If it contradicts--?
TED
That sense of being situated in a world far more various than
the one Hawthorne acknowledged?-- that may be the key! Sexism,
racism, imperialism-- your score, will frame and place the stories.
LEE
For instance?
TED
Hawthorne says of Sophia: "She has come to me from the midst
of many friends, to live in solitude, the snow untrodden by any
footstep save mine! Yet she is always cheerful"!
Think what a little discord can do for that cheerfulness! When
Sophia dances, to the wind-up music box: what's the tune?
LEE
It goes like this......
(music, LEE playing. Ghost scene of SOPHIA, dancing for HAWTHORNE)
TED
Sophia's like Salome before King Herod, or a slave placating her
owner--, which might have been happening at that very moment!
In 1845! We'll hear the undercurrents, though our lovers don't.
That effusion of Sophia's that I lined out for an aria: "Thou
only hast revealed me to myself. Without thy aid---."
LEE
Wait a minute. I've been working on that one.
(LEE plays and sings)
Thou only hast revealed me to myself.
Without thy aid, I'd only have known my shadow,
Just watched it as it flickered on the wall,
Mistaking those fantasies for my reality
My life the thinnest substance of a dream.
Until my heart was touched.
Until you touch me.
Then we began
We began
To be! To be inheritors
Claiming our Eternity, Felicity,
Deeply and mutually interfused-
TED
This from a woman on a diet of migraines and morphine! God knows
what kind of self-hypnosis Sophy used to rhapsodize over her perfect
babies, hand-raising them for their perfect father, who grew like
Pearl, like the return of the repressed-- grew into madness and
suicide.
(fade out. Ghost of Sophia materializes)
SOPHIA (LEE sings, in duet with Ghost)
Before our marriage I knew nothing
My body no more than a stranger to me.
The truly married alone can know
How wondrous the body is,
the instrument of the heart.
Now, too, I understand
The unholiness of a union formed
on any other ground than oneness,
Entire oneness of heart.
The profane never taste the truest joys of Elysium.
(Ghost fades)
TED
Nathaniel Hawthorne was notorious for being estranged from his
own body. He couldn't stand to be touched. Was Sophia his exception?
LEE
An angel sent to heal him.
TED
But how much? Enough to sire children? To want no one else to
touch her? Detaching her from her Peabody world, to dwell with
him in his private kingdom. Every place that they moved, she put
all their treasures into his study, and screened out the distracting
sounds of her toil and their troublesome children--
LEE
Go away, please.
TED
I beg your pardon?
LEE
I beg yours, but I need to be left alone, please. I need to hear....
what's ....
TED (backing out)
Oh. All right. I'll--I'll be--
(Ghost of Sophia materializes)
SOPHIA
He loves not power!
He cares as little
For power as any mortal I ever knew.
His rule is not a question of will, but right.
I am a queen, more a queen than ever,
For now I have a king to my servitor.
Our love so wide and deep & perfectly equal
That there could never be a difference between us.
His heavenly nature, O! So ethereally delicate.
Never at balls should I walk in silk attire,
but in the shelter of this home
in the shelter of this home,
I put on a velvet robe,
daily, daily,
to gratify my husband.
HAWTHORNE ---aria
Beloved, I would write beautifully
make myself famous for your sake
because perhaps
you would like to have the world
acknowledge me.
Make pilgrimage to my shrine when we are gone.
(mimics tour guide)
Come in, come in.
Move right in, stranger.
But!--Put off your shoes.
Don't desecrate the carpet
Look here, look here
He slumbered in this very bed
Here the visions filled his head,
Ethereal, to be fixt in eternal worth.
Here the washstand where he cleansed off all of earth
Here the mirror, which reflects his noble brow
Don't ask me how!
Now the chest that kept his shirts --a few-
Here hung his suit of black -'twas far from new.
And at this desk, this humble desk of pine
He wrote, in agony, his works divine.
LEE
He's is working. Sophia's homesick, lonesome. She goes to knock
at his study door, but stops herself, stricken. Genius must not
be disturbed!
SOPHIA (sings)
I'm desolate. I'm nervous.
I feel I could weep me a river.
The wind all the while confusing, confounding my brain.
LEE
She can't bear it, she knocks and enters and pleads with him.
SOPHIA
Beloved. Husband.
Let me sit silent in the study
While you work.
So very still you won't know I'm there.
HAWTHORNE
I'll know. My dearest Dove --
SOPHIA
I know. I'll go away....
LEE
But when she quietly goes to pull down a book from the shelf--,
his bust of Ceres comes crashing down. Sophia has hysterics.
SOPHIA
Nightmares, nightmares!
Women having fits.
Demanding, destructive women.
(dark agitated music, vocalized expressions of dismay)
Sophia's Ghost gradually dematerializes, while singing the Act
I love aria first sung by LEE.. TED and EMILY are revealed in
bed making love.
SOPHIA
Thou only hast revealed me to myself.
Without thy aid, I'd only have known my shadow,
Just watched it as it flickered on the wall,
Mistaking those fantasies for what is real,
My life the thinnest substance of a dream.
Until my heart was touched.
Until you touched me.
Then we began.
We began
To be! To be inheritors
claiming our Eternity, Felicity,
Deeply and mutually interfused- (faded)
EMILY pulls away, sits up and pushes at her hair
TED
Emily, darling-- from this angle you look quite plump!
EMILY
I'm putting on weight.
TED
In some ways, you're more desirable dressed. Like Hawthorne's
Phoebe, " as if her clothes had lain among rosebuds -fresh,
airy, and sweet, -"
(image of ghostly Phoebe from 7 Gables)
EMILY
Phoebe's airy, all right.
TED
Your back's a miracle, though. Your shoulder bone, the pearly
sheen where it catches the light--
EMILY
Prefer to do it doggie style?
TED
Don't be crass. You're my nymph. But maybe it wasn't a good idea
to give up your swim class. We could find another time: Thursday
afternoons-- ?
EMILY
Too late, Ted. I'm pregnant.
TED
Good God! Since when?
EMILY
April.
TED
Four months! Well, it can't be mine--
EMILY
Sorry, Professor. Wrong answer.
TED
But I've always worn protection. Four months ago, we were barely--
EMILY
That very first time?
(Image of Emily as Hester on the scaffold, with scarlet "A"
and baby)
TED
I see. So, when were you planning to tell me?
EMILY
I wasn't.
TED
Whether or not it's mine, we're involved.
EMILY
Want to marry me, Ted?
TED
Number five--?
EMILY
Divorce Kate? Raise the baby?
TED
--I have a son I never see, two daughters who never see me, and
Eunice.
EMILY
Eunice'll be really pissed at her wicked stepfather.
TED
I'll pay, of course. You won't have to go through the University,
and I'll be there for you when--
EMILY
"Can't be mine", you said. Your first reaction.
TED
That was the shock talking.
EMILY
Well, try this for shock, Professor. I'm going to keep this baby.
Anyone who wants to ask, I'll tell them you're its dad.
(Image of Ted in the stocks, wearing scarlet "A")
TED
Emily, please--
EMILY
End of discussion. New topic: Your squash game? Your opera?
TED
Emily, be reasonable! You're twenty years old, you're ruining
your life!
EMILY
This isn't Puritan Salem. Girls aren't "ruined". But
your concern is really touching.
TED
Why would you do this? You've seen what a baby does. No time to
study, or for fun. Not to mention the money--
EMILY
Right. I'm entitled to support.
TED
Now, I'm not trying to deny that I have some responsibility, here.
But in the long run... What we've had together, good as it's been,
--- times it's been spectacularly good!-- should slip into its
natural place as part of your growth process.
(Image of Ted as Puritan minister, preaching)
EMILY
You are so full of it, Ted.
(Image of Ted wearing The Minister's Black Veil)
TED
All right, Emily. Explain this to me.
EMILY
I can't. I just want it.
TED
Why now? Why mine? You don't seem to be in love with me-.
EMILY
I was! For about three weeks. I loved you the way you love a sonnet.
(sings softly)
My life the thinnest substance of a dream.
Until my heart was touched.
Until you touched me.
Then we began.
(speaks again)
I look back now and it's embarrassing: "FOR 'E'", for
Christ sakes! I wasn't a person, I was your latest draft. Are
you working on one about angelic shoulder blades? It's all just
hormones-
TED
Hormones aren't trivial, Emily. That which we share with our fellow
primates is in some ways deeper and truer than
EMILY
Shut up, Ted. I have hormones by the gross. The changes they're
putting me through--! I thought you were a genius --
TED
Don't put me on a pedestal, I said. Spiritually--
EMILY
Spiritually, you're a fake. But that's OK. Genetically, that doesn't
matter. You're intelligent, that's for real -- though not as smart
as you think you are. You're healthy, you'll do fine.
TED
Just the ticket in your evolutionary lottery? An artist thrives
on the belief that his experience is unique, or universal -- but
statistics? If you're doing this to punish me--
EMILY
Better you than the baby.
TED
No! It's not better. You may think that visiting the sins upon
the children went out with The Scarlet Letter. But even as acute
a psychologist of guilt as Hawthorne --
EMILY
Stop with the Hawthornes! You can afford this, Ted. Think of it
as patronage.
TED
I speak from sad experience--
(image of devasted Ted as Dimmesdale)
EMILY
Just you? My mother was almost fifty when she had me--an "oops"
baby. My half sister is 28 years older than I am: an "oops"
on the other end, Mom being 20 in a marriage lasting a year. My
stepbrothers are 40 and and 42. Know what? I'd rather be the early
oops than the late one.
TED
My first wife and I had nothing in common.
EMILY
While you're hustling the girl into bed, you're a soul mate. You're
Nat and Sophy--
TED
Emily, will you listen? I was young, I was in love.
EMILY
You were accident prone ---- Or, when you're prone, you have accidents.
TED
We, Emily! We, the two of us, had the accident. We tried to act
responsibly. Not that there was much choice: abortion wasn't legal.
But I did my duty, I tried to be faithful--
EMILY
You're such a shit.
TED
Emily, I'm trying to warn you. Things done carelessly, or out
of spite--. My second wife, Priscilla, was large-minded, literary,
generous, moral. The wife a man hopes to grow old with. We had
two daughters, on schedule, and I wrote and published three books
before the poems dried up. So. I - I got involved with a student
who took my metaphors literally and decided to be my muse forever.
Priscilla divorced me and took my children where I never see them.
And I married that awful girl, because I couldn't admit how badly
I'd bolloxed up. Two years of pure hell.
EMILY
After which Kate. Perfect Number Four. But perfection's not enough.
TED
Hawthorne understands: the power of the guilty secret. But I've
been honest with you--
EMILY
You have an impressive vocabulary, Ted. But honest? You don't
know what the word means.
TED
I'll never leave my wife. Didn't I say that?
EMILY
Uhhuh. Some time in May.
TED
You're determined to punish me.
EMILY
Kate's too good for you.
TED
Emily. Don't. The first time was a tragedy, a fifth would be farce.
(EMILY laughs)
(bed scene fades, SOPHIA materializes)
SOPHIA (sings)
Thou art my lasting satisfaction.
My present felicity,
My pride and my glory and my support
My sufficiency.
The dovelet is nestled at my side.
The joys of motherhood are rich and sweet
Although difficult to comprehend.
When I wake and hear my breathing Dovelet
I am filled with wonder and with awe.
Oh, Una, Una!
The union of my Love and his Dove.
END of Act One.
Go to Act Two of Hawthorne's
Ghosts.
|
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