A Two-Act Play

Hawthorne's Ghosts

By G. L. Horton
copyright © 2005 Geralyn Horton

Act Two

At the keyboard, LEE playing, BRUCE and EMILY singing comic HAWTHORNE duet, JEFF and KATE and EUNICE listening

HAWTHORNE (BRUCE)
I am happy to tell you that our little Una
Is remarkably happy and vigorous.
She promises, in the best opinion
Of those more experienced than I
To be a very very pretty baby.

SOPHIA (EMILY)
Thou, beloved, ought'st not to be obliged
To undergo the toils of the nursery--
It is against thy nature and thy mood.
Thou wast born to muse and to be silent
Through undisturb-ed dreams to enlighten all the world

HAWTHORNE (BRUCE)
We have linked a third spirit to our own,
From now on there is no living without her.

SOPHIA (EMILY)
Only for thee have I suffered in my babydom.
When once I can shut thee away
There safe in thy study to stay:
I'll show thee our jewel only when she's shining--
Delight unalloyed day by day.

HAWTHORNE (BRUCE)
My wife has been scribbling the news
To all her friends and all of her relations.
But-- also spreading pitiable stories
Poverty and mis'ry, 's if we're suffering for food,
No government job? We'll to the poor house!
She exaggerates.

SOPHIA (EMILY)
My dear husband's vocation's to observe
And not to be observed, or to contend.
Are there not enough persons to buy and sell,
Or pass their days in social intercourse?
My husband is an author. An Author!
My dear husband has not the gift of tongues--
He cannot talk like your Mr. Emerson.
He was not born to chat or to converse,
Or spend his words on airy persiflage.
He makes new worlds: new suns and systems.
My husband. The author.

HAWTHORNE (BRUCE)
But I admit that the office of Surveyor
Of the Port of Salem would be welcome
To the head of this hopeful family.

EUNICE (applauds, as does KATE)
It's funny, but it's sad at the same time.

BRUCE
Like life.

EMILY
Oh, better than life. It leaves you smiling.

LEE
I hoped it would. But I'm not sure that's what Ted wants.

JEFF
Where is Ted?

EMILY
Yes-- where is he?

KATE
He's been so distracted.

BRUCE
Ted's not point. You are, Lee.

JEFF
That's true. A libretto's just a passport to good music.

EUNICE
An excuse for singing like Bruces'.

(BRUCE smiles, nods to EUNICE, exits)

JEFF (exiting)
Ted will have the grace to recognize what's best for the whole.

EMILY
I thought you were my friend!

EUNICE
I am your friend. But when Bruce sings I get all wobbly.

(EMILY and EUNICE exit)

KATE
Are you and Ted at odds?

LEE
I just wish I understood what's happening.

KATE
I thought it's going well--.

LEE
It is! Whole scenes just gush out. But I don't see how we're going to get from what we've done to a resolution. It's as if the words Ted has picked from what the Hawthornes wrote are leading me on, but in a direction Ted doesn't want me to go. My feeling is Ted wants the climax to expose the Hawthornes as frauds or delusional-- but at the same time we endorse them.

KATE
Sounds like Sondheim.

LEE
But--? Well, yes: but it's not me.

KATE
That Hawthorne quote Ted uses: "they essayed to express to the world what they had not in their own souls..profound feeling and passion".

LEE
Exactly! The trouble is that in music that sounds like me, emotions add up, they don't fight each other. In an opera the intellectual content only matters to me if it's so dumb that I feel like a fool for having cared. Kate--. If you were writing this, what would be in it?

KATE
Me?

LEE
You're an expert.

KATE
Not on Hawthorne. Either or both.

LEE
But Jeff said--

KATE
Transcendentalists. I love the Transcendentalists.

LEE
That's wonderful! Love may not be ALL you need, but it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!You love them because....?

KATE
For what Henry James calls their "purity of spirit, noble credulity and faith in the perfectibility of man".

LEE (sits again at keyboard, finds music)
Doesn't sound like Hawthorne. Listen to this:
(sings. HAWTHORNE Ghost joins the song)
Has there been an unalterable evil?
Though you crowd it out with good,
Will lie corrupting there forever?
Despair, which only the innocent can know
From the certainty of existing of evil
Brings down in ruin the columns of our faith
A magic that destroys all other magic.
It annihilates color and warmth,
More especially sentiment and passion.

KATE
But purity sounds like Hawthorne's Sophia or Phoebe, doesn't it? And Nathaniel is noble enough, if not exactly credulous. Still, I love Margaret Fuller: best of all. For her sake I hate what Ted and Mr. Hawthorne do to her.

LEE
All I know about Margaret Fuller is that she's the model for Zenobia in the scene from "The Blithedale Romance". The one we'll workshop next week.

KATE
I would have done my dissertation on Fuller, if somebody hadn't warned me: women scholars who study feminists never make tenure

LEE
How long ago was this?

KATE
The Dark Ages. But it hasn't changed, and I've dealt with all the bigoted nonsense I ever want to!

LEE
Such as?

KATE
My first husband lost his job when his department found out I'd written a mystery novel.

LEE
Really? I love mysteries, I read them by the bushel. What was yours called?

KATE
"Professor Death". It sold 8,000 copies, a long time ago.

LEE
Set in your husband's department?

KATE
Recognizably. Thus my divorce.

LEE
Why didn't you use a pseudonym?

KATE
I did, but the book won a prize and a reporter came and --

LEE
Outed you.

KATE
It was awful. You can't imagine.

LEE
Yes I can.

KATE
Writer's block for a decade.

LEE
But you've gone back to writing mysteries?

KATE
Horror and ghost stories, too. Appropriate, hmm? My agent is sworn to secrecy.

LEE
Maybe I've read one. Sometimes I think I've read them all. Tell me titles.

KATE
I've said too much already.

LEE
Kate-- we're kindred spirits.

KATE
"Poetic License-- To Kill".

LEE
Yes! That one was terrific! The scene where the poet loads poison into his pen--

KATE
The poet's Ted.

LEE
Really?

KATE
Usually, I wouldn't base a poet on a poet, I'd make him a musician or an anthropologist. Or switch gender-- that's safest. A man never sees himself in a woman.

LEE
Doesn't work the other way: A woman can always see herself in a man. Your husband the villain. How would you do Hawthorne?

KATE
Ted's used a lot of my notes.

LEE
But what's central? What's the story?

KATE
For me? Hawthorne's slander of Zenobia. It wouldn't be about a helpmeet wife at all, but the brilliant and emotional woman as Boogieman.

LEE
Boogieman has dark connotations.

KATE
I know: so did Hawthorne. Both Margaret and the pathetic Zenobia in his "Blithedale Romance" wore a flower in her hair, the way you do--

LEES
Me and Billie Holiday.

KATE
For Hawthorne the flower blooming out of season symbolizes female self-will and sexual threat.

LEES
Not a bad symbol.

KATE
To him it was! Zenobia has to come a bad end-- so Hawthorne turns Fuller's tragic drowning in a shipwreck into a soggy suicide! And Ted picked that to dramatize!

LEE (takes flower out of hair, regards it and says)
Write me your scenario.

KATE
I couldn't. Ted would be--

LEE
Just for fun.
(gives her flower; Kate refuses)
If it doesn't flow, don't plug away at it.
(goes up behind Kate and puts flower in Kate's hair, arranges it affectionately)
But you've written ghost stories. I have the feeling there are ghosts around us here, trying to tell us a story. Ted isn't willing to listen.

LEE plays some music that sounds as if it might be the accompaniment for Hawthorne's ghost's song, but it is not exact enough for us to be sure that LEE is "hearing" HAWTHORNE, and it seems even less likely that KATE does, because she responds to LEE's playing as if it were her cue to withdraw lest she interfere with the composer's work. The music may continue, fading in and out under the next section, as if the ghosts are a continuing presence.

HAWTHORNE (ghost)
I have dreams where all mankind are characters:
The living and the long cold dead discourse
They cross the voiceless gulf twixt us and them.
But in our infinite, shivering solitude,
We can not come close, not close enough,
We are not warmed.
These chilly shapes of mist leave us insatiable
Our instinct for communion starved, we pine....

(slow fade on HAWTHORNE/LEE, light picks up Kate as EUNICE finds her)

EUNICE (overlapping on entrance)
Mother! I can't believe I'm such an idiot. Mother-- You're not busy--?

KATE (embracing her)
What is it that's upset you? Emily?

EUNICE
Emily?

KATE
What, then?

EUNICE
I made a complete fool of myself! Over Bruce.

KATE
Not that I noticed.

EUNICE
I kept saying stupid stuff to him. Just to have him look at me.

KATE
These things can be very painful.

EUNICE
"These things"! Like measles.

KATE
The later it happens, the more damage it can do. I went through it at your age.

EUNICE
I don't believe you. You're so--

KATE
It's true. The young man was playing the Gentleman Caller in a little theatre production of "Glass Menagerie". I was Laura, and he was the most wonderful creature ever to walk the earth. And his walk!

EUNICE
You make it sound romantic.

KATE
Isn't it?

EUNICE
Back before people knew about gays?

KATE
I sort of knew. Even before he explained it to me.

EUNICE
You mean this gay guy knew that you had a crush on him? God, how humiliating.

KATE
I didn't feel humiliated. I felt enlarged. Because James took me seriously enough to really talk to me. Love works in mysterious ways, darling.

EUNICE
You won't say anything? Especially not to Bruce? Mother?

KATE
Of course I won't.

EUNICE
Or to Ted-- Wouldn't he have fun.

KATE
Ted loves you, Eunice. He thinks of you as his daughter.

EUNICE
He loves storytelling more. It's pathetic. My stepdaughter the idiot. God! If I have to be a pervert, why can't I at least fall for a woman?

KATE
I've often wished that for Margaret. Why couldn't Fuller have consummated a "Boston Marriage" with one of the high minded ladies who adored her? She'd never play second fiddle: but why not a duet, on similar instruments?

EUNICE (bursting into laughter)
Mother, you're hopeless! Thanks!

(quick hug, exit. KATE sinks into a chair, turns down light)

HAWTHORNE (ghost)
Sweetest, thou dost please me very much
By funding fault with thy husband's story.
I give it up!
It deserves thy reprehension.
A mere experiment in style:
Nor heart nor mind had anything to do with it.
No, not at all!

SOPHIA (ghost)
I must liken the effect of reading his work
To a thunder storm leaping from blackness
To write with its finger of fire.
An ocean was trying to pour from my eyes
My heart was rent in twain.
At this irresistible power
All the ceremonies pale.
His elevated mind sees passions and crimes and sorrows,
All the better from his height serene.
The magnetic urgency of his voice,
Is as God's, who is speaking through him.

(fade. Slow up on JEFFERS, at KATE's side)

JEFFERS
Kate. Dear Kate. I'm so sorry. If I'd known you wanted it I would have tried to get it for you, pulled any match making tricks that I could--

KATE
Don't, Jeff.

JEFFERS
Isn't this the next best? Good for your work?

KATE
If I could remember what my work is.

JEFFERS
Kate-- Dear Kate. I can't bear to see you as back-up for that pompous blowhard--

KATE
That's what Ted calls you!

JEFFERS
Does he? Well, it takes one to know one!

KATE
I'm just in a twist over the Zenobia business. Maybe when the scene gets workshopped next week it'll bomb. Out with it, then.

JEFF
Should I organize a claque to boo?

KATE
I don't know why I get so upset over a hundred and fifty year old insult. I just wish I could go back and challenge that libelous prig to a duel!

JEFF
Are you sure you're a better shot?

KATE
Justice would guide my aim!

JEFF
What did Hawthorne say that was so terrible?

KATE (searching through notes for the reference)
He had this horrible priggish reaction to Fuller's marriage. To an Italian, 15 years younger, and followed or maybe preceded by an immediate pregnancy. When baby and all are shipwrecked, Hawthorne seems to regard it as God's judgment, and he published the most awful obituary!
(image of a nasty cartoon of Fuller)
I have it memorized, almost: "A woman of a strong, heavy, unpliable, and in any respects defective and evil nature. She sought to make herself the greatest, wisest, best woman of the age." -- Not just the best woman-- the best person! And she did a damn good job of it!-- He goes on, "She took credit to herself for having been her own redeemer, if not her own creator. And indeed, she was more a work of art than any statue. But there was something within her that she could not possibly come at to refine, and by and by this rude old potency bestirred itself, and undid all her labor." What a shit! She considered Hawthorne a friend. She loved him.

JEFF
Sounds like jealousy to me.

KATE (after a pause)
Jealousy?

JEFF
Sour grapes? Margaret loved him, but she had a baby with an Italian.

HAWTHORNE (ghost, as the scene changes to the Workshop and singers file in)
A woman who writes the naked truth
May be beautiful, brave and astonishing--
A kind of miracle of art.
But she offends against womanhood,
Necessarily modest and veiled,
And is as shamed as she would be
By a public stripping off of all her clothes.

My dearest, I cannot enough thank God,
That with the highest of intellects,
Thou hast never-- forgive me the idea!
Never prostituted thyself.
Never gone naked to the public
As a thousand others do.
Women are too good for authorship,
That's why it spoils them.

MARGARET/ ZENOBIA ghost does a furious dance to drums only that echoes Sophia's earlier one.
(It obscures Ted's introduction to the Workshop scene. We can see that he is speaking, but not hear what he is saying.)
Tell him I'll haunt him!
He's a cold, a heartless,
Self beginning and self ending piece
of machinery! I'll haunt him!

TED (in mid-speech)
-- Hollingsworth's lost interest in her because she's lost her money. Zenobia's devastated: she thought Hollingsworth a paragon, and herself the ideal mate for the founder of a Utopia -- a Utopia with the many of the characteristics of Brook Farm. Question?

MAN FROM AUDIENCE
Hawthorne was part of the Brook Farm experiment?

TED
Yes, he was: but he didn't stick with it.

FROM AUDIENCE
So he was the part of the experiment that failed!

TED
They all failed, those Transcendentalists. In theory, the communal farm was Heaven on earth. But faced with a manure shovel--

(image of anti-Brook Farm cartoon)

WOMAN FROM AUDIENCE
Don't tell me. They put their wives on to it.

KATE
Hawthorne wasn't married, then. He had hoped to be, but when he saw how hard the wives had to work, he knew his Sophy couldn't -

EMILY
Like Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

KATE
The Hawthornes actually met Barrett and Browning. In Rome, during the time their daughter Una was sick with malarial fever. Barrett sent broth.

(image of swooning B&B)

MAN FROM AUDIENCE
Were they all sickly, those poetic ladies? Repressed sexuality? Or tight corsets?

TED
I'm say repression, because it makes a better plot. Kate says tight corsets. She has statistics.

KATE
It's my field.

TED
A veritable treasure-trove of period trivia, my wife Kate. But you'll have a chance to ask questions afterward. Let's get on with the first scene:

ZENOBIA (EMILY)
It is too hard upon me
that judge jury and accuser
should all be one man.
I appeal-- let the poet hear our case.

HOLLINGSWORTH (BRUCE)
You forced this upon me.
Did I call you hither?
True, I have judged you,-
But not before the world.
Neither do I pass sentence.

ZENOBIA:
What strange beings men are.
It is a simple thing with you
To judge and condemn unheard.
No sentence?
A verdict not acquittal is my death!

(HOLLINGSWORTH turns away)

ZENOBIA
Ah, do we part so?

HOLLINGSWORTH
Is there further to be said?

ZENOBIA
I would question you.

HOLLINGSWORTH
I have nothing to conceal

ZENOBIA
I would inquire:
You supposed me to be wealthy?

HOLLINGSWORTH
I shared the world's opinion.

ZENOBIA
As did I, till three days since.
You knew I meant to give it all to you,
My imaginary fortune,
To realize your dream
Asking nothing in return.
But you thought
Your dream to be bought
And sold.
For my fool's gold.
Even then, you didn't love me:
Did you love my sister, Priscilla?

HOLLINGSWORTH
I would have said I love her
Like a brother

ZENOBIA
Yes, Till three days since.
But now: you love her?

HOLLINGSWORTH
I do. Yes, I realize I do.
I love Priscilla.

ZENOBIA:
Are you a man?
A monster!
Cold heartless self beginning
And self ending machine!

HOLLINGSWORTH
With what do you charge me?
Show me a selfish deed,
I'll cut it out with a knife!

ZENOBIA
I see it now.
I am awake:
Disenchanted
Disenthralled!
We are all but tools to you
To use or to cast aside--
Even your own heart,
Even my sweet sister,
This loving girl,
Whom God put in your charge!
Take your deadened heart and leave me,
Done with me, as I am done with you.
Farewell. I am weary.
Sick of philanthropy and sick of progress,
Done with the one true system:
Your bright foolish dream.

(they take bows)

TED
Thank you. Thank you all for coming. We'll do the Italian scene when we come back after intermission, from the end of the Second Act where it all falls apart. If you're leaving early, be sure you fill out your response cards, and drop them in the box to the left of the door as you go. Your comments are very very helpful, so please do write them!

KATE (taking TED aside)
I am very upset, Ted.

TED
I'm not exactly serene, myself.

KATE
I've never taken exception to your -- flirtations. I suppose if I'd let myself think about it, I would have realized that you had affairs. But a student? Young enough to be your daughter?

TED
Who isn't, these days? I feel like Methuselah. But Emily's not my student, I think of her as more of a colleague, a family friend--

KATE
She's Eunice's friend, Ted! It's practically incest!

IMAGE OF HAWTHORNE as Puritan preacher, sings
Incest! It's incest!
Dare I lay my hand upon her lily brow
Knowing what I know?

TED
My God, my God, it is. I can't bear to think about it.

KATE
You're going to have to. A public pregnancy?

TED
It's appalling. What can I do? I've bribed. Threatened. Repudiated. Emily doesn't care. She's got what she wanted.

KATE
Your baby?

TED
I told her there's no question of divorce.

KATE
Oh, isn't there?

TED
Not on my side.

KATE
Which side is that?

TED
As far as I am concerned, I'm marriaged to you till death do us part.

KATE
Just not forsaking all others.

TED
Dammit, Kate. I never claimed a total transformation--

KATE
"Till death do us part"' is a good title for a mystery. Used, of course, but not recently, not by anyone famous--. I suppose I could have an affair.

IMAGE of MIRIAM from "The Marble Faun" sings
Tis a mistaken idea that nature
Has made women especially prone
To throw their whole being into what's called love.
We have no more necessity than you.
Only we have nothing else to do.

KATE
For the scales of justice to balance, fidelity has to become less important to me, or more to you. Or we divorce. Otherwise I'll become all steaming rage. Rage'll shrill out of me like whistling from a teakettle.

TED
Kate, don't leave me. Don't turn away, even long enough to even the score.

KATE
Give me one good reason.

TED
I'm drowning. I'm writing about marriage, and I don't know what I'm talking about. I need to you, to save me from the goddam Hawthornes, and from goddam Priscilla, because I don't know what--

KATE
Priscilla in "The Blithedale Romance", or Priscilla your second wife?

TED
Both of them! Help me! Kate, I can't get them to talk to me.

KATE
Who?

TED
Hawthornes. Nathaniel.

KATE
He's dead.

TED
That never stopped anyone from talking to bloody Robert Graves!

KATE
When you spoke about that at the party---.

TED
They talk to you, don't they? I know they sing to Lee! They present her with the melodies they want people to hear. They squelch what I want to say.

KATE
What do you want to say?

TED
I don't know any more! I thought I knew, certainly I had a glimpse of it, and then it got all mixed up with -- Hawthorne's a parasitical patriarchal fraud and a failure, isn't he? He fooled us for 200 years, but his day is done. His Master Narrative is on a collision course with all that we've learned since. Even if we have to banish Authors, all, we should do it! To get rid of him! To tear down his Immortality!

KATE
Ted, get hold of yourself. The audience is waiting.

TED (Onstage)
Welcome back, all. The scene is in Italy, where the Hawthorne family has joined the colony of artistic Anglo-American expatriates. He'll use them for the last of his novels, "The Marble Faun". Louise Landor, a well known sculptor of celebrities, is working on a bust of the great American writer. This section is mostly dance and pantomime, which we're indicating in a really simplified form: please, piece it out with your imaginations.

Louise works on her bust of Hawthorne, who muses as he poses. There is sexual tension between them.

HAWTHORNE
It is especially singular that Americans
Should care about perpetuating themselves in art.
In portraiture.
Our brief durations, as families hereditary:
Certain our great-grandchildren won't know who we are.

Who can trust the religious sentiment of Raphael?
How sensual the artist must have been
To paint such a trollop as the Fornarine!
Done of his own accord, and done so lovingly.

SOPHIA
You see in your beloved the ideal,
Or the monster under the mask.
You co-create the thing that you perceive.

HAWTHORNE moves LOUISE away so that he can she what she's done. He is shocked by the representation, and sweeps it off the pedestal.

HAWTHORNE
You've made me sensual, a kind of Dimmesdale!

LOUISE runs off. HAWTHORNE stalks out. Scene shifts

DOCTOR FRANCO
The young Shepard lady is so beautiful.
Why not snatch any moment to be gay?
Gather thee roses, as the poets say.

ADA
Dr. Franco, I warn you, I am protected
Living within the Hawthorne's household, here.

LOUISE returns with a charger. She puts the head of HAWTHORNE on it, fondles and kisses it, begins an erotic Salome dance in counterpoint to the FRANCO-ADA scene.

DOCTOR FRANCO
Hawthorne wants you all for himself, my dear? How cruel. How inconsiderate.

ADA
You misunderstand me, Doctor.
He never would consider it. Never touch me.

DOCTOR FRANCO
Ah! That is much as I have thought.
He's a man of the sort very cold, Is he not?

ADA
Mr. Hawthorne is a gentleman,
And at that, an American gentleman.
It is a point of pride with democracy's citizens
To ever to take advantage of seigniorial power
Over those in a position of dependency--
Besides--

SOPHIA enters, threatens LOUISE, who runs off. SOPHIA takes up the charger with the head of HAWTHORNE on it, does an erotic Salome dance of her own that echoes the one she danced in Act I.

When UNA is mentioned, SOPHIA deserts the head and runs to UNA's bedside, still dancing hysteria and sexualized panic, but now in a flirtatious maternal mode.

ADA
I am here to care for Una
As, Doctor, you are, too.
The child at this moment
Lies wretched with fever,
While you play games of --

SOPHIA
Doctor, doctor! You are my St. Peter
And hold the key to everything.
I believe that we must pack up and take her
To Albano-- Doctor, are you listening?

ADA
Una, Una, dearest child!
Will you not wake from your fever wild?
Come home to us
Dearest Una

UNA
Mamma. I think I am dying now.

FRANCO
The fever, such fever....

SOPHIA
Here is Doctor Franco with his magic wand.
Doctor, make her better if you please.

ADA
Cure her, Doctor
We will give you anything.

DOCTOR FRANCO
Senora, we have here a dreadful disease:
Quick consumption: too late for Albano.
Make her comfortable in bed:
In twelve hours she may be dead.

ADA
Just to sing a lullaby
Not a last goodbye
Una, don't die

DOCTOR
Too late for Albano.

ADA
Miss Una? Our angel Una!

UNA
Mamma! Hold my hand.

TED (singing, now)
Topple his pedestal, destroy his pretensions!
He can't face the wife who worships a lie!

SOPHIA
I'm here, my precious. Here, and I'm holding you.
O my darling dovelet, do not fly!
(reprise)
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.

(HAWTHORNE enters, silently.)

Oh, Una, Una, Una
The union of my Love and his Dove.

HAWTHORNES TOGETHER
Do not leave us. There is no living without her!

(HAWTHORNE falls to his knees in despair)

SOPHIA
He never knew such suffering before.
A sorrow that's far too deep for tears.
He would not allow himself to hope
But took his refuge in despair
We could not dare to talk together,
We were driven into deserts of dismay.

HAWTHORNE attacks the bust of himself, then covers it with a black veil.

UNA in bed crosses her arms on her breast as if dead.

TED (sings softly)
She's left me. I've lost her
She's gone. Or I never knew her
The one for me
The one and only other for my soul.

UNA springs back to life. She dances with the veil and her father's bust, sweetly, mischievously, like an innocent imp. She kisses her mother and father, everyone looks at her with wonder.

ALL
If I took off the veil I'd see
What they may have meant to me
If we together made each other whole.
You touched me ---I am utterly changed.
I've lost myself: But what I've gained
Is bigger than both of us
Better than most of us
And links us all
Hand in hand and word by word
down the generations
those who serve hold those who rule in thrall
And they link us all.
Walking together, we can walk in darkness
Moving forward we can bear the light.
We can care. We can bear the caring.
Dare to share, even as we die.
You and I. You and I.

THE END

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