CAMILLA: (Leaving Cassilda’s side to approach the stone railing hemming-in the verandah.) Such a wonderful night. The cold stars belong to Carcosa once more. The land will again shift its mood, replacing its gay mantle of day to that of evening’s magic cloak. Do you think, Cassilda, that evil days exist in other worlds, in other universes?
CASSILDA: (Smiling.) Don’t be foolish, dear Camilla; all evidence of physical phenomena, as the wise men say, are perceived through the senses. All the world is Carcosa, and Carcosa all the world. Our senses have never revealed aught but magic. Day and night in Carcosa are alike; both are eternally suffused in the aura of magic and perfection. Indeed, if evil days exist at all, there is precious little evidence for them.
CAMILLA: And yet, could they still exist, invisible, untouchable, unknowable to our limited senses even as we speak?
CASSILDA: (Drawing closer to her companion.) Invisible?
CAMILLA: (Staring in the direction of the Lake of Hali.) Like the waters of the Lake; placid and calm, but hiding currents, strong and deep, churning invisibly beneath its surface. Waiting to drag down the unwary swimmer.
CASSILDA: Ah! Like the masks we wear tonight. Hiding our true features. But could strong currents, dangerous as they are, be evil?
CAMILLA: I am not prepared to discuss the nature of good and evil, dear Cassilda, but merely ask if there could be anything in nature to mar the perfection of Carcosa. A strong current is neither good nor evil, but in dragging an unwary swimmer to his doom, effectively destroys the paradisiacal patina of Carcosa.
CASSILDA: (At the railing now, turned to her companion and leaning close.) Truly, such a thing would be unfortunate and skew the wonder of death itself. Snatching it from the beauty of cyclic Nature and casting it down to the anarchic ugliness of Chance. (A pause.) But why do we speak of such unhappy thoughts, when there is a great masque to be reveled in?
CAMILLA: (Musing as if not having heard Cassilda’s reply.) Does Carcosa possess a paradisiacal patina? Do our masks hide more than mere features?
CASSILDA: (More seriously.) I think…you may be right. I believe Carcosa itself may be perfection, but I do not speak of the King.
CAMILLA: (Excitedly.) Oh! Do not speak of the King…
CASSILDA: No, no. Carcosa may be perfection, but its citizens are merely human. Ruled by their petty lusts and simple desires. Vanity and Pride. Intellects ruled by their emotions soon are corrupted and the empty slate of perfect humanity is soon garbled in the blind desires of the flesh.
CAMILLA: (Turning and looking through the open doorways of the palace.) Then evil…
CASSILDA: Not evil. The vagaries of emotion. Kaleidoscopic. Shifting. Anarchic. As you said earlier, neither good nor evil, merely neutral with the possibility of disorder.
CAMILLA: …exists only intangibly in the hearts of men. Invisible. Manifesting itself only in the abstract.
CASSILDA: (Turning now too.) Only in the realm of ideas. Leaving it to each one of us, outside the heart of the perpetrator, to interpret its meaning.
CAMILLA: With all of these churning forces, it is a wonder we see so little evidence of it upon the faces of others.
CASSILDA: (Nodding to the revelers inside the palace.) Just as our masks tonight hide our true faces, so do our faces mask the roiling forces in our hearts. Forces which, if ever allowed to surface, would so twist our physical features that even our closest lovers would be unrecognizable to us.
CAMILLA: (With a visible shrug.) Well, I forget how our little stroll in search of fresh air could lead us so far astray, but the talk here has become too estranged from the senses to border even remotely on reality. Carcosa is magic and perfection. The Lake of Hali is quiet as ever. The Hyades are in their accustomed places. Lord Hastur is in his House. And so our conversation evaporates on the evening breeze, as ephemeral and unreal as the intangible idea of anarchy. (Taking a deep breath.) Let us rejoin
CASSILDA: You are quite right, Camilla. My mind had wandered along avenues of unaccustomed conjecture. Tonight is a night for revelry, and my Lord Guillaume awaits me within.
CAMILLA: (Knowingly.) As a lover, Lord Guillaume possesses many fine attributes…
CASSILDA: (Casually.) Certainly he is handy with the lash and more than proficient in the art of pain.
CAMILLA: You see, I am completely free of cuts and scars and I do not walk with a visible limp.
CASSILDA: (Sincerely, as sister to sister.) And I thank you so much for directing him to me!
CAMILLA: No need for thanks! Are we not friends and lovers? (The two women embrace affectionately and rejoin the masque within the palace. The ballroom occupies the majority of stage right. Inside, laughter, music, the movement of the dancers, musicians, and servants lend an aura of vigorous activity to the scene. Everyone wears different costumes from varying periods and eras with appropriate masks of silver, gold, and elaborately painted plaster. The two women weave their way through the crowd to stage right where Cassilda is greeted by a tall figure in the uniform of an executioner. A black hood drapes his head and a flay trails from his hand.)
CAMILLA: Ah! There is no need to peer beneath this mask to learn the wearer’s identity.
CASSILDA: Lord Guillaume?
GUILLAUME: Not so loudly, Ladies, lest those without the knowledge overhear. (So saying, Guillaume reaches to Camilla, touching her in some secret place and eliciting a barely repressed groan of pain from the girl.)
CASSILDA: (Observing her friend’s softened features as they register a mix of pleasure and pain.) It is wonderful to see how the two of you retain your sense of intimacy.
(Camilla, still unable to speak, smiles and leans momentarily against her friend. A single drop of perspiration shines along her cheek.)
GUILLAUME: I hope to share the same comforting relationship with you, my Lady. (Stooping to kiss her hand.)
CAMILLA: (Suddenly fully recovered and straightening.) Look, did either of you see that man?
CASSILDA: (Looking about.) Which man?
CAMILLA: (Searching.) There, by the entrance. He wears a mask larger than any other, with features of exaggerated contours.
CASSILDA: Yes, the mask is…different.
GUILLAUME: Hideous. But for what reason, I do not know.
CAMILLA: He frightens me.
CASSILDA: (Repressing a shudder.) He is frightening. But it does not lie in the mask alone. Perhaps in what it implies?
CAMILLA: See! He comes this way!
GUILLAUME: Who is that, with the mirror?
(As the man in the strange mask becomes hidden in the movement of the partyers, the women’s attention is turned toward a foppish young man as he crosses the dance floor, his gaze fixed on his own visage in a hand held mirror.)
CASSILDA: Such a strange young man…
CAMILLA: His name is Pierrot and I am told he is seeking Truth.
GUILLAUME: In a mirror?
CAMILLA: Where else?
GUILLAUME: But he sees only himself.
CAMILLA: Then he is fortunate; for who could embrace Truth if they ever had the opportunity?
CASSILDA: (Shuddering.) Then perhaps it is we who should be envying him; faced only with his own visage, he must be forever trapped in a circularity that will spare him the unpleasantness of his desires. He need not seek any farther.
GUILLAUME: We, however, must continue to seek Truth in a more obtuse manner, albeit delightful…
(Guillaume slips two fingers deftly into Cassilda’s mouth.)
CAMILLA: (Smiling.) Take care, Guillaume; my Lady Cassilda has unusually sharp edges to her back teeth…
GUILLAUME: (Expertly manipulating his fingers.) So I see. And does my Lady Cassilda take advantage of her blessings?
(Guillaume removes his fingers and sucks them clean of saliva.)
CASSILDA: (Licking her lips.) If you would care to…
(Before Cassilda can fully reply, Constance, a friend of Cassilda’s enters excitedly from stage right. She is about thirteen years old.)
GUILLAUME: The King you say?
CASSILDA: Hush, Constance, speak not of the King in such a cavalier fashion.
(Before Constance can reply, there is a hubbub of excited whispers as suddenly, the King appears. He is tall and garbed in a tattered mantle of fantastic colors. The Yellow Sign is emblazoned on its back. Covering the King’s face is a featureless Pallid Mask. In his entourage are the two Phantoms of Truth and the Past and a few steps to the rear is the beautiful-yet-tragic figure of Genevieve. She is naked and her hands are bound loosely before her in filaments of gold. As the King advances, the guests bow or curtsy but give way before the Phantom of Truth.)
CAMILLA: Oh, it is the King!
GUILLAUME: Where is Pierrot, the Truth he seeks has arrived.
CASSILDA: It would be useless, he would never recognize it.
CONSTANCE: Is not the Lady Genevieve most fair to look upon?
CAMILLA: It is said she dwelt upon a world most strange and far from the wonders of Carcosa. That she had seen what was not meant for her to see and so, the King took her as his own.
GUILLAUME: (Admiring Genevieve’s form, her golden hair that trails below her back, her dainty feet that never seem to rest upon the floor at the same time, her eyes that glitter behind drooping lids.) Her beauty is wonderful and terrible.
CASSILDA: Careful, my Lord…
GUILLAUME: There is not a mark upon her…
CONSTANCE: Look! Truth has hesitated. It turns…
GUILLAUME: Genevieve…!
(Truth turns to face Genevieve, whose face lifts for the first time to return Truth’s gaze. Truth steps closer, placing a hand on Genevieve’s hip. The two look into one another’s eyes.)
GUILLAUME: She does not flinch!
CONSTANCE: What? What?
CASSILDA: (Terrified.) This is impossible! What kind of awful creature can this be?
DEATH: (Who has been standing nearby, his back turned and thus unidentified up to this point.) One who understands.
CONSTANCE: Death, you are a friend, tell us, what does it mean?
DEATH: To see Truth, is to understand. To understand, is to become aware of one’s identity. To know one’s identity, is to know purpose. To know purpose, is to know contentment. To know contentment, is to be at peace at all times, in all places. Genevieve is equally comfortable as a slave or as a queen.
CAMILLA: And with the King, she is both.
CONSTANCE: Who can compare with him in his white mask?
DEATH: Who can compare with me, for I am paler still.
CONSTANCE: You are very beautiful.
DEATH: So I am. (He holds out an arm and Constance takes it.)
GUILLAUME: (Watching Death and Youth leave the room arm in arm.) They make a charming couple.
CAMILLA: (Still watching the beautiful Genevieve, now sipping wine from a glass held to her lips by the Past.) I would someday like to embrace Death.
CASSILDA: (Crooking a finger into Camilla’s bodice and pulling her lips to hers.) It is too soon to consider that sort of love, my Lady.
GUILLAUME: (Parting the women and sweeping Cassilda into his arms.) Aye, let the young Constance flirt with Death; we three will yet explore Life. (He presses his mouth to Cassilda’s, but never takes his eyes from the figure of Genevieve who now passes close to them as she slowly follows the King from the hall. Guillaume’s nostrils flare as he catches the musky aroma left in her wake and, aroused, clutches more desperately to Cassilda.)
CASSILDA: My Lord!
(Suddenly there is movement from the orchestra that quiets the revelers.)
MAN IN THE HIGHWAYMAN’S GARB: Ladies and Lords, as you can see, the moons are at their apogee and the King has paid his call. It is midnight and time at last to rid ourselves of these false façades. Let every face be bared.
(So saying, the revelers begin to remove their masks amid general laughing and rustlings of clothing. Cassilda and Camilla lower their masks and Guillaume pulls the hood from his head. The trio do not notice the figure they had spied earlier with the strange mask at Camilla’s elbow. Making no motion to remove his mask, he comes to Cassilda’s attention. Overcoming her initial uneasiness at the man’s appearance with the reflexive desire of curiosity and the general relief and gaiety of the moment, she speaks.)
CASSILDA: You sir, should unmask.
STRANGER: Indeed?
CASSILDA: Indeed it’s time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
STRANGER: I wear no mask.
CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!
Publisher’s Note: This presentation of the fragment, The King in Yellow, a drama for the stage by Charles Vaughan, is printed here in its entirety. No deletions, additions, corrections, or tampering of any kind have been made in the work. It is complete and unchanged as the day it was discovered in 1966.
The King in Yellow is copyright © 1987 by the New York Public Library, The Charles Vaughan Memorial Collection, and cannot be reproduced in full or in part without the explicit permission of the members of the board in unanimity. Any resemblance of characters or situations in full or in part to real persons, alive or dead, is strictly coincidental. Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that the above mentioned play, being fully protected under copyright laws, is subject to license and royalty. Particular emphasis is laid on the matter of readings and performance rights (professional, stock, amateur), permission for which must be obtained in writing.
Afterword
by Paul Bastienne
Since Mallarme, language and universe are always to be read in the same words, and one in the other: mystery of mysteries framed by letters, adventure of the madman losing himself in the incessant throw of the dice where his wandering trajectory is gradually undone; adventure of the linguist eager to deny chance; adventure of the poet who, on the contrary, seminated in it or to triumph over it, word by word, inciting fiction.
–Michel Pierssens
La Penultieme…est morte
–Stephane Mallarme
Charles Vaughan’s work, for the sake of clarification, can best be divided into two distinct groups: the political and the spiritual/metaphysical; although Vaughan, as Edmund Wilson pointed out, did not abhor mixing both when the need arose. The one thematic concern which can be traced from his earliest Sketches to his final artistic testament, Metaphysique which, indeed, can be seen as a bridge that spans the gap between the political and the mystical, is a quest for faith. Or, to be more precise, the need for a belief in the fact of its antithesis, unbelief or nothingness.
In Vaughan’s earliest works, such as the execrable Rhine Sketches, we begin to see the young poet toying with the existential fact of human mortality. Vaughan sees this fact on the one hand as being horrific, and on the other subtly seductive; the young man had shrewdly learnt that man is attracted to the unknown. With Vaughan’s more mature work his concern for the blissful sleep of quietus comes to the forefront; but always in conjunction with a sublimated quest for a belief system which will posit a philosophy in which death is not the final end, but a new beginning. I feel that Vaughan’s most effective creations dealing with the issue of faith are his unjustly ignored poems from the late thirties and early forties. Especially in his poem “Schliemann at Troy” (1939), where he uses the metaphor of the quest for the mythical city, as actualized by Schliemann’s unerring faith, as a superb parable for the need to believe in the presence of doubt and fatalistic denial:
Some may say
That Revelation is the debt
Of the faith to the faithless;
Stigmata of flesh
And blood for Thomas
And of bread and wine
For Judas. Some must partake
The waters of the Jordan.
Yet others reach
The walls of Jerusalem as
Schliemann found
The gates of Troy!
If we go beyond the obvious analogies
of the poem we find that Vaughan is saying that he is determined to reach a state of grace through the creative act, to grasp salvation “as Schliemann found/The gates of Troy.” This quixotic search for a kind of linguistic redemption would, ironically, lead to Vaughan’s downfall in the coming decades. This conflict was to become a central part of Vaughan’s later work. In such memorable scenes as the brilliant soliloquy of the condemned man in The Age of Bronze, and the third act of Hadrian’s Wall when the incorporeal voices of the forest night taunt the lost soldiers, he showed this tension between denial and affirmation. This inner conflict is perhaps most poignantly presented in the dialogue from the final act of Descartes when the mocking shade of Protagoras the skeptic comes to deny truth, while the aged philosophe lies on his deathbed, racked by pain and doubt.
Vaughan’s tragic undoing came in the 1950s when his ongoing search for the true reality on the one hand, and his unrelenting need for faith on the other crashed head-on. As a result, it seems, of that very language to which Vaughan had turned for salvation. It is safe to say that Vaughan, at least initially, had an interest in finding the essential meaning of words simply to expedite the instrument of his salvation; this inexorably grew into an interest in semiotics: the ways the words themselves “meant;” and, finally, a growing realization of the ways that words failed to “mean.” For Vaughan this was the supreme irony.
Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois Page 37
