The Spanish Prisoner and the Winslow Boy
Page 17
Sounds of cheering from outside.
SIR ROBERT MORTON: (Cont’d.) Could you show me out a back way?
He gets up and goes toward the hallway. CATHERINE follows.
72. INT. WINSLOW HALLWAY. DAY.
SIR ROBERT picks up his hat when RONNIE comes in. He is fifteen now, and there are distinct signs of an incipient man-about-town. He is very smartly dressed in a lounge suit and homburg hat.
RONNIE: I say, Sir Robert, I’m most awfully sorry. I didn’t know anything was going to happen.
SIR ROBERT MORTON: Where were you?
RONNIE: At the pictures.
SIR ROBERT MORTON: Pictures.
CATHERINE: Cinematograph.
RONNIE: I’m most awfully sorry. I say, we won. Didn’t we?
SIR ROBERT MORTON: Yes. We Won.
RONNIE: (To himself) How about that.… We won … (He starts out the door.)
73. ANGLE. EXT. WINSLOW HOUSE. DAY.
ARTHUR stands in front of a cheering crowd. He stills the cheering.
ARTHUR: This victory … these events … These events …
The cheering intensifies. ARTHUR turns to see RONNIE coming through the door, and he puts his arm around him.
74. ANGLE. EXT. GARDEN. DAY.
SIR ROBERT and CATHERINE can hear the cheering. SIR ROBERT shrugs and takes out a cigarette.
CATHERINE: Why are you always at such pains to prevent people knowing the truth about you, Sir Robert?
SIR ROBERT MORTON: Am I, indeed?
CATHERINE: You know you are. Why?
SIR ROBERT MORTON: Which of us knows the truth about himself?
CATHERINE: That is no answer.
SIR ROBERT MORTON: My dear Miss Winslow, are you cross-examining me?
CATHERINE: On this point. Why are you ashamed of your emotions?
SIR ROBERT MORTON: To fight a case on emotional grounds, Miss Winslow, is the surest way to lose it. Emotions cloud the issue. Cold, clear logic wins the day.
CATHERINE: Was it cold, clear logic that made you weep today at the verdict?
They stop at the garden gate.
SIR ROBERT MORTON: I wept today because right had been done.
CATHERINE: Not Justice?
SIR ROBERT MORTON: No. Not Justice. Right. Easy to do Justice—very hard to do right. Now, I must leave the witness box. I hope I shall see you again. One day, perhaps, in the House of Commons, up in the Gallery.
CATHERINE: Yes, Sir Robert. In the House of Commons, one day, but not up in the Gallery. Across the Floor. One day.
SIR ROBERT MORTON: You still pursue your Feminist activities?
CATHERINE: Oh, yes.
SIR ROBERT MORTON: A pity. It’s a lost cause.
CATHERINE: Do you really think so, Sir Robert? How little you know women. (Pause) Good-bye. I doubt that we shall meet again.
SIR ROBERT MORTON: Oh. Do you really think so, Miss Winslow? (Pause) How little you know men.
FADE OUT.
ALSO BY DAVID MAMET
THE CABIN
Reminiscence and Diversions
The pieces in The Cabin are about places and things, from the suburbs of Chicago to New York City. They are about guns, campaign buttons, and a cabin in the Vermont woods that stinks of wood smoke and kerosene—and about their associations of pleasure, menace, and regret.
Memoir/Essays/0-679-74720-6
THE CRYPTOGRAM
The Cryptogram is a journey back into childhood and the moment of its vanishing—the moment when the sheltering world is suddenly revealed as a place full of dangers. Set in 1959 and involving an insomniac boy, his anxious mother, and a family friend with a tendency toward deception, David Mamet’s play uses events as stepping stones toward a series of devastating revelations.
Drama/0-679-74653-6
THE OLD NEIGHBORHOOD
In these three short plays, a middle-aged Bobby Gould returns to the old neighborhood in a series of encounters with his past that open windows on his present. Mamet proves himself a writer who can turn the most innocuous phrase into a lit fuse and a family reunion into a perfectly orchestrated firestorm of sympathy, yearning, and rage.
Drama/0-679-74652-8
OLEANNA
A male college instructor and his female student sit down to discuss her grades and in a terrifyingly short time become participants in a modern reprise of the Inquisition. The relationship between the somewhat fatuous teacher and his seemingly hapless pupil turns into a fiendishly accurate X-ray of the mechanisms of power, censorship, and abuse.
Drama/0-679-7453 6-X
TRUE AND FALSE
Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor
In True and False David Mamet leaves no acting tenet untouched: How to judge the role, approach the part, work with the playwright. How to concentrate and think about the scene. How to avoid becoming the Paint-by-Numbers Mechanical Actor, the “How’m I Doing?” Ham Actor, the over-the-top “Hollywood Huff” Actor. The right way to undertake auditions and rehearsals, the proper approach to agents, to individual jobs, and to the business in general.
Mamet is unmistakably clear about why he thinks actors should not be taken in by such highly touted notions as “the arc” of the character of the play, “substitution,” “sense-memory,” the Method itself—in fact, by most of what is being taught in acting schools and workshops across the country today. True and False slaughters some of the profession’s most sacred cows.
Theater/Acting/0-679-77264-2
VINTAGE BOOKS
Available at your local bookstore, or call toll-free to order:
1-800-793-2665 (credit cards only).
Copyright © 1996, 1998 by David Mamet
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Vintage Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
CAUTION: These screenplays are protected in whole, in part, or in any form, under the Copyright Laws of the United States, the British Empire, including the Dominion of Canada, and all other countries of the Copyright Union, and are subject to royalty. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, radio, television, and public reading are strictly reserved. All inquiries concerning performance rights should be addressed to the author’s agent: Howard Rosenstone, 3 East 48 Street, New York, N.Y. 10017.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mamet, David
[Spanish prisoner]
The Spanish prisoner ; and, The Winslow boy : two screenplays / by
David Mamet.—1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-49118-3
1. Motion picture plays. I. Mamet, David. Winslow boy. II. Title.
III. Title: Spanish prisoner ; and, The Winslow boy. IV Title:
Winslow boy.
PS3563.A4345S63 1999
791.43′75—dc21 99-12286
CIP
www.vintagebooks.com
v3.0