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THE HARLEQUINADE

AN EXCURSION


By Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker


Published, March, 1918


[Illustration: "And what should Columbine be like? Well, she is just like
what you'd most like her to be. She has a rose in her hand."]




JUST A WORD IN YOUR EAR


Not to put too fine a point to it, this isn't a play at all and it isn't
a novel, or a treatise, or an essay, or anything like that; it is an
excursion, and you who trouble to read it are the trippers.

Now in any excursion you get into all sorts of odd company, and fall into
talk with persons out of your ordinary rule, and you borrow a match and get
lent a magazine, and, as likely as not, you may hear the whole tragedy and
comedy of a ham and beef carver's life. So you will get a view of the world
as oddly  as Harlequin's clothes, with puffs of sentiment dear
to the soul of Columbine, and Clownish fun with Pantaloonish wisdom and
chuckles. When you were young, you used, I think, to enjoy a butterfly's
kiss; and that, you remember, was when your mother brushed your cheek with
her eye-lashes. And also when you were young you held a buttercup under
other children's chins to see if they liked butter, and they always did,
and the golden glow showed and the world was glad. And you held a shell to
your ear to hear the sound of the sea, and when it rained, you pressed your
nose against the window-pane until it looked flat and white to passers-by.
It is rather in that spirit that Alice and her Uncle present this excursion
to you.

I suppose it has taken over a thousand people to write this excursion, and
we are, so far, the last. And not by any means do we pretend because of
that to be the best of them; rather, because of that, perhaps, we cannot be
the best. We should have done much better--if we could. Oh, this has been
written by Greeks and Romans and Mediaeval Italians and Frenchmen and
Englishmen, and it has been played thousands and thousands of times under
every sort of weather and conditions. Think of it: when the gardeners of
Egypt sent their boxes of roses to Italy to make chaplets for the Romans to
wear at feasts this play was being performed; when the solemn Doges (which
Alice once would call "Dogs") of Venice held festa days, this play was
shown to the people.

And here Alice interrupts and says: "Do you think people really like to
read all that sort of thing? Why don't you let me tell the story, please?
I'm sitting here waiting to." Well, so she shall.




THE HARLEQUINADE


    For some time now she has been sitting there. Miss Alice Whistler is an
    attractive young person of about fifteen (very readily still she tells
    her age), dressed in a silver grey frock which she wishes were longer.
    The frock has a white collar; she wears grey silk stockings and black
    shoes; and, finally, a little black silk apron, one of those French
    aprons. If you must know still more exactly how she is dressed, look at
    Whistler's portrait of Miss Alexander.

    What happened was this. A pleasant old Victorian art fancier (
    of) saw the child one day, and noted that her name was Whistler ("No
    relation," said her Uncle Edward, "so far as we know"), and "That's how
    to dress her," said he. And thereupon he forked out what he delicately
    called "The Wherewithal" ("Which sounded like a sort of mackintosh,"
    said Alice afterwards), for they couldn't have afforded it themselves.
    "You're still young enough to take presents," said Uncle Edward. And
    indeed Alice was very pleased, and saw that the hem was left wide
    enough to let down several times. And here she is; the dress is kept
    for these occasions.

    Here she is in a low little chair, sitting with her basket of knitting
    beside her on one side of a simply painted grey and black proscenium,
    across which, masking the little stage, blue curtains hang in folds.
    "The blue," said Miss Alice when she ordered them, "must be the colour
    of Blue-eyed Mary." The silly shopman did not know the flower. "Blue
    sky then," said Alice, "it's the blue that all skies seem to be when
    you're really happy under them." "Reckitt's blue is what you want," the
    shopman said, when nothing seemed to do. Yes; and a very good blue that
    is--by lamplight.

    On the other side of the proscenium, ensconced (and the word was made
    to express just this)--ensconced in a porter's chair is Uncle Edward.
    It is an old porter's chair, for they seem not to make them nowadays.
    This one indeed was given to Uncle Edward by a club that had no further
    use for it, having cured the draughts in its front hall by puttin
    a patent door that the fat members stuck in and that tried to cut the
    thin members in half. A cross between a sentry-box and a cradle stuck
    on end it is, and very, very suitable to sit upright in and pretend
    you're not asleep. Years of that sitting in by porters, and of leaning
    against by under-porters and messengers who keep you awake with their
    chatter, and of daily dusting and rubbing, have made its leather
    uniform softly glow and its brass buttons shine till it looks a
    comfortable piece of furniture indeed. Now the side of a stage is
    draughty at the best of times, and Uncle Edward, says he, is by no
    means so young as he was (a real live joke to him that outworn phrase
    is), and how he managed before he had it he really cannot think!

    However early you come to the performance you always find him there.
    For minutes and minutes you may only be aware of very shiny square-toed
    boots and black-trousered legs and a newspaper that hides the
    of him. On most days it will be "The Times", on Wednesday it may be
    "Punch", and on Saturdays "The Spectator." "That is a gentleman's
    reading," he says. When the paper is lowered, as he turns a page, you
    behold one of those oldish gentlemen with a rather pleasant bad temper
    who really only mean to demand by it that young people shall pay them
    the compliment of "getting round" them. As the time of the performance
    draws near he is apt, at each lowering of the paper, to count you up as
    you sit there waiting, and if there are not enough of you he looks very
    disapproving indeed.

    Alice watches you furtively almost all the time as she knits or
    crochets. For audiences make such a difference to her, and she is
    always hoping for a good one. It need not be a big one to be good
    (Uncle Edward likes them big). To be a good audience is to take your
    share of the performance by enjoying it in a simple jolly way--if you
    can. That eases the actors of half the strain, and then they can enjoy
    it, too. And if you can't do this, you'd much better go home.

    When it is quite near the time to begin, you hear the orchestra tuning
    up. This you should never miss. There is nothing like it as a t
    to rouse the theatre appetite. At the sound of it Alice puts away her
    knitting, and hopes her hair is tidy.

    Then on a single flute a little tune is played, and the child's eyes
    light up. Music excites her, sets all the gaiety in her free. If it
    wasn't for the help that music is she'd quite despair sometimes of
    getting through the play.

    "That's mine. That's my theme," she says. "I've had a piece of music to
    myself because every one in this has a piece of music. But mine is--"

    But Uncle Edward has finally put his paper down. And now--by mean
    a violent operation on his waistcoat--he produces an enormous silver
    watch, like those that railway guards have. And he turns to Alice.

    "Time," he says magnificently.

    Alice looks doubtfully at the laggards trailing to their places and
    snapping down the stalls. But Uncle Edward is adamant to her if
    tolerant to them.

    "Some of 'em always late," and his blue eye roves round. "It's their
    dinner. But go and begin your bit like a good girl."

    So then Alice comes to the middle of the stage; swallows a little from
    nervousness, and begins...

ALICE. If you please, this is going to be a Harlequinade... a real one.
And we begin it at the beginning, which is as many thousand years ago as
you like to believe. It's about how... how...

UNCLE EDWARD. Psyche.

ALICE. When I was young I would call her Fishy. It is all