by Susan Sontag
I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world;
And, for because the world is populous,
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it.
He fired at me twice. I survived only because I changed my usual business. On I cannot do it I always buried my head in my hands for a moment. That one time, on an impulse, I stood up. [Stands.] And then what happened after the poor fellow missed me? Oh, that was a fine performance. The great tragedian—that’s myself, Marina, your humble servant—calmly advanced to the footlights and, pointing at the madman, asked that he be seized but not harmed, briefly left the stage to reassure his wife who, standing as usual in the wings, had gone quite hysterical, returned, and composedly finished his performance. [Laughs.] I was much admired for my sang-froid. Who could know that my heart was leaping around in my chest like a lion? And went on booming and banging about until another day and night had passed? I had been, well, I had seemed, so brave. But even that backfired. For it was said in several newspapers that I had arranged this attempt on my life to have more publicity for my week’s run. An advertising stunt. Good God! But a society in which everything is for sale and every worthy occasion is Barnumized has to end by making cynics out of everybody. I suppose the only way the public would be convinced I hadn’t hired a lunatic to fire on me would be to have been seriously wounded. Preferably slain. Then one could talk happily about the tragic curse of the Booth family, and all the rest. [Pours himself another drink.] Later I had one of the bullets, which had passed next to my head, pried out of the scenery where it had lodged and mounted on a gold cartridge cap inscribed ‘To Edwin Booth, from Mark Gray,’ which I wear as a charm on my watch chain. Would you like to see the sinister relic? [Takes out the watch.] Hell, it’s late. Not that I’m tired. Your presence, Marina, has quite … revived me. You first saw me, when did you say, at the California, twelve, thirteen years ago? I was much better then. Much better. You like to admire, don’t you? So do I. Let’s drink to Henry Irving. No, you’re wrong. He’s a very good actor. His Hamlet may be even finer than mine. [Lifts his glass.] You won’t drink to Irving? God, you are loyal, woman. I’m almost touched. I shall not say my Hamlet is without merit. Indeed, I have to my credit one pretty bit of stage business for the distraught Dane. When I was getting ready to do my Hamlet at the Winter Garden I bought a sword with a jeweled hilt and took it home and hung it at the foot of my bed. All night I kept getting up and lighting matches to see it, shifting its position, until it flashed on me that—Angels and ministers of grace defend us!—the sword was really a cross, and could be used, hilt raised high, to protect Hamlet against his father’s ghost. Of course, too much originality and we will destroy Shakespeare. But a leetle leetle originality, as you might say, dear Marina … I have been an original and really mad Prince of Denmark. The story is told that Mrs. David Garrick came to Kean and said, ‘Davy used to do a wonderful thing in the closet scene in Hamlet, and you don’t do it. He overturned a chair when he saw the ghost.’ Kean tried it; when he saw the ghost he rose, put his heel under the leg of the chair, and knocked it over. But he could never get it right. He was thinking, Is this right? Fatal! [Overturns a chair.] You see, you can’t repeat anything. I can overturn a chair until doomsday, and I’ll never do it the way Garrick did. [Kicks over another chair.] Would you like to try? Maybe a woman could do the gesture now. Why shouldn’t Ophelia, brokenhearted, overturn a chair? Hurry up, Marina, if you want to steal this idea from me. Everything is going faster now. That’s modern life. I shall never get used to it. But then I don’t have to. Neither do you. I remember a theatre manager in California, when I was very young, whose idea of conducting a rehearsal was to keep calling out to the company: ‘Hurry up! This don’t run smooth. More ginger! More ginger! Don’t wait for cues!’ I should like to see him rehearsing Hamlet. With Hamlet you have to go slowly. O … what … a rogue … and peasant slave … am … I. It was weakness that brought me back on the stage. After the … calamity, and given the justifiable hatred of anyone bearing the name of Booth, I had determined to abandon the stage forever. My retirement lasted less than six months. I had to make a living. Friends said I owed it to the Theatre to return. There was the imputation that I was a coward. And I did want to give people something else to think of when they heard the name Booth. I returned here, at the Winter Garden, as Hamlet. I kept everything of Johnny’s until five years later. By then I’d opened my folly, my temple of theatrical art. Of course, we shall never have a national theatre, as in France, but we could have a theatre directed by a serious actor, in which artistic values would take precedence over the business point of view. Hah. You know how long Booth’s Theatre lasted. Either I was an idiot at business or such an enterprise can’t work in America, or both. Yes, both. [Gathers some logs from the scuttle.] And very late one night, with a stage carpenter I brought down to help me, I cast all Johnny’s clothes, his books, his mementos, every last garment in his stage wardrobe (some of which were costumes inherited from Father) into a blazing furnace in the basement of Booth’s. There were Johnny’s diaries and packets and packets of letters, each in a different feminine hand, and nicely bound up in string. [Pitches the logs into the fireplace.] Women loved Johnny. The manner in which his head and throat rose from his shoulders was truly beautiful, and the ivory pallor of his skin, the blackness of his thick hair, the heavy lids of his glowing eyes, the fullness of his mouth … [Stirs the fire with a poker.] There is something Oriental about the Booths. Father boasted that we are part Jewish, his grandfather, John Booth, being a Jewish silversmith whose forebears, named Beth, had been driven out of Portugal. I should like that. It might even be true. [Turns to face Maryna.] Father was too short, as I am. He had bandy legs. That’s his portrait over there. No, don’t get up to look at it. [Takes it off the wall, brings it to where Maryna is sitting.] Father’s lips formed a straight line, not the curve shown here. His beautiful aquiline nose was said to be his best feature, but when I was ten, still at home on the farm near Baltimore with my mother and brothers and sisters, there was a brawl with the manager of a stable in Charleston, where Father was performing. [Rehangs the picture. Returns to the fireplace. Leans against the mantel.] As you saw, Father’s nose was broken at the bridge. William Winter places the deformity below it, toward the tip. But you know how accurate critics are. Crickets, my Edwina used to call them when she was little. ‘Don’t worry about the crickets, Papa.’ They’re no better than the audience. Flatter the audience, despise the audience. No. You must hate the audience. I suppose I should be grateful for the way I was welcomed back after … 1865. I’m not. They can lick your face. They blubber and dribble … I’ll wager that East Lynne has caused more tears than the Civil War … and then they’ll take your head off. [Spits into the fireplace.] Do they feel what they seem to be feeling? Then they really are idiots. All the more reason for the actor not to worry about being sincere. I hope to be inspired from time to time. But certainly not to ‘feel’ my part. What an idea! Anyway, one cannot endlessly repeat one’s own heights of inspiration without being drawn to destructive gestures. Once, I managed to piss while standing in Ophelia’s grave without anyone seeing except my thunderstruck Laertes. Once, when I lay dying in Horatio’s arms, as he with his Good night, sweet prince pressed his cheek mournfully against mine, I whispered obscenities in his ear and watched him blanch. But that is what I do with men. With women I am very chivalrous and protective. [Sits opposite Maryna and takes a cigar from the humidor on the small table beside his chair.] Would you like to try one? Are you sure? How many have you smoked in your life? [Lights the cigar.] Not more than one, yes? But that’s not the basis for an opinion. Everything takes getting used to, pleasures as much as griefs. [Drops the cigar on the rug.] No, no, don’t worry. [Jumps to his feet.] I don’t intend to set the house on fire. [Throws the cigar into the fireplace.] I’m feeling a little dizzy. Yes, I’ll sit. [Sits beside her.] You’re not afrai
d of old Ned? He’s harmless, as you see. Dear old drunken Ned. [Takes her hand.] No danger that our late evening tête-à-tête might turn into a corps-à-corps. Ah, I’ve made you smile. Is it my foolish French? I am trying to impress you. You Europeans are born speaking French, isn’t that so? But of course we have Shakespeare. Shakespeare makes us virtuous. His King Henry VIII says ’Tis a kind of good deed to say well. Shakespeare could almost make me virtuous. How low I would be without him. I can always promote myself to some better plane with his words. But then I think, This seeing myself in Shakespeare has ruined Shakespeare. Shakespeare has been poisoned by me. I have killed Shakespeare. And then I think, No, you maniac, what are you saying? [Slaps his forehead.] It’s not you, it’s Shakespeare. Shakespeare is too good for us. What can the paradise of words mean to us now, to America? What use has a democracy for the beautiful and the noble in art? Nothing, nothing at all. What matters is that I have been ponderously successful. I have made lots of money, and paid it out as fast as I could in various foolish ventures, like my theatre. I have been eye-deep in the quicksand of popular favor and I have dreamt my life away. There, Marina, you have a panorama of my mind. [Stands.] I’m better. No, I can stand. Marina, I have a grown daughter. You have a son at university. I trust he does not want to become an actor. Don’t let the talent tree flourish. Cut it down, woman. Cut it down. [Begins to sway.] No, I’m all right. You don’t think of returning to Poland, do you? One must never go back. Never. No, no … I just need to lean against something. [Goes to the mantel.] Here’s a topic for us! Can a woman be a great actor? And Ned opines: Not as long as she wants to be a paragon of womanliness. There is something bland, appeasing, in you, Marina. Perhaps there is in all great actresses, with the possible exception of Bernhardt, don’t wince, woman, except that her efforts not to be bland seem trivially theatrical. Pet lions, for God’s sake! Sleeping in a satin-lined coffin. Not that I believe she does it. But she says she does it. No, a great actor is turbulent, rarely affable, profoundly … angry. Where is your vein of rage, Marina? [Picks up the poker, holds it threateningly.] There’s nothing dangerous about you, Marina. You have not accepted your catastrophe. You have toyed with it, you have bargained with it. You have sold your soul so as to be able to think, from time to time, that you are happy. Yes, sold your soul, Marina. How perceptive you are, Edwin. [Waves the poker.] Of course that’s not what you’re thinking. You feel I am attacking you. And I am. That is the right of someone who has accepted his catastrophe. [Replaces the poker.] Ah, Marina, I should teach you how to curse. It might add character to those serene features. [Begins to pace.] Don’t be so afraid of failing, Marina. It does the soul good. Lord, what a corrupting profession we exercise. We think we are upholding the beautiful and true, and we are merely propagating vanity and lies. Oh, you think I sound verr-rree American now. Well, I am an American. And so are you now, O abdicated Polish queen, and if you’re not careful, the old New England verities will get you, too. You won’t even notice your wits have gone astray, and you’ve become gloomy and censorious. However, you like California, a good sign in a European. So perhaps you’re exempt. I doubt if I shall ever accept your invitation to visit you at your ranch. I have not the temperament for California anymore. I need to be cooped up, contained, citied. Tell me about that husband of yours out there. When he turned up during our week in Missouri, you were charming with each other. [Picks up a small photograph from the top of the desk.] Here’s another picture. Edwina’s mother. Mary. My first wife was an angel. You know what an angel is: a woman who thinks only of her husband. My second wife went insane. In the last years of her miserable life she was certain I had another wife hidden somewhere, with whom I was really happy. Would that I had! My father had two wives. The one he deserted in England and our mother. [Sets the photograph down.] Do you like happy endings, Marina? I crusade against ’em. Yes, I do. You probably like the way King Lear was mangled for a hundred years in England and America, with the Fool banished, a romance between Edgar and Cordelia, and Cordelia and Lear allowed to live. One of the few things I’m proud of is that I put a stop to that. I don’t like happy endings. Not at all. But only because they don’t exist. [Sits. Takes Maryna’s hand.] The last act has to be an anticlimax, don’t you think? As in life. Getting old is an anticlimax. Dying is, if one is lucky, an anticlimax. Who would fault a play for not ending on its highest note? Hamlet cannot end with Hamlet’s dying words, can it, Marina? Fortinbras must come on and detach the audience from Hamlet’s pitiable fate. We may then mourn for him, if we like. Or not. [Stands again.] It’s late, does this feel like an anticlimax? It is nearly midnight. What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by, as King Dick says when the ghosts come after him at Bosworth Field. I don’t feel like letting you go, Marina. We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow!… but an American has never heard them. You must have heard chimes at midnight, Marina, back in Poland. We don’t have chimes at midnight in America. I would like to go through one day, one day, when I do not think of a line of Shakespeare! Time for one last, anticlimactic drink. [Pours out more whiskey.] It’s not true that Shakespeare’s lines are always tumbling about in my head. Days go by in which I think of nothing when I’m not speaking, reciting. I drink. I sleep. I pace. I look moody. Give me your hand, Marina. No, I have a better idea. Close your eyes, Marina. Don’t be afraid. And presto change-o! abracadabra! and other mountebank cries and gibberings. Open your eyes. Here’s the skull! [Flourishes it.] My Yorick-skull. This is no ordinary wretch’s skull, Marina, dug up from a potter’s field and sold to a theatre. This is the skull of a criminal. I even know his name. Philo Perkins. Hanged for stealing a horse. No mercy for him dropping like the gentle rain and so forth. Now when the poor fellow mounted the scaffold and was asked for his last request, what was it? Why, that afterward, his head being likely to be almost wrenched away from his neck, would they please sever it, and peel it nice and clean, and send the skull as a gift, with his compliments, its use would be obvious, to the great tragedian Junius Brutus Booth. Yes, the horse thief was an ardent theatregoer. A particular admirer of Father, whom he went to see perform whenever he could. And so his executioners gallantly fulfilled his request, and this grey woody thing was Father’s Yorick-skull for many years, and then passed to me. And people say Americans don’t really care about serious theatre! Well, well, well … [Places the skull in the center of the rug. Stands back to gaze at it.] Am I suffering? I hear people whispering behind my back. Poor Edwin Booth. Poor Edwin Booth. And I don’t want to disappoint them. So I do suffer. It’s my role. A lifetime of looking moody, tormented, harrowed by grief. I’d be the worst of monsters if I were not suffering. But I wouldn’t mind being the worst of monsters. Mary’s death. Johnny’s … death. Maybe I did not suffer at all. I only became very thin, like a page in a book. If you can say ‘I am suffering,’ you are not really suffering, Marina. You are an actor. [Places a lamp on the rug beside the skull.] Sometimes I think I am simply becoming my father. That all those processes which are making me more and more like my father are gathering strength, gathering speed, rushing to the edge, like a waterfall, and then they will throw me over into the murk and dark water, and I shall drown in his madness. Except that I shall die first. I’ll make sure of that. Even if the Everlasting has fixed His canon ’gainst self-slaughter … I’m acting, Marina. You must have noticed. Naughty Ned. Hardly means a word he says. I shall not kill myself. I’m too afraid. Father was alone when he died, completely alone. I was already nineteen. He had left me in San Francisco. In New Orleans he boarded a Mississippi riverboat bound for Cincinnati; on the fifth day out, he fell over, like this. [Collapses on the floor.] No, don’t help me up. I have lost the level run of time and events, and am living in a mist. I am told I am better than I ever was. That can’t be true. Eh, Philo? [Stands with difficulty.] But we were quite good tonight, I think. And you consented to come back to the club with me. I can invite a respectable woman back to my quarters because I live in an actors’ club. But it
is my house, as you know, and you are in my private apartment. May I touch your face? I will touch your face, whether you like it or not. I see you do like it. You’re damned attractive, Marina. [Hiccups.] I told you that I am no Romeo. [More hiccups.] There is just so much suffering you can endure, and then it is time for the comedy of desire. Or not. Was ever woman in this humour woo’d? Was ever woman in this humour won? Sometimes I wish I had given as much time to learning the names of the constellations as I have to committing to memory the Bard’s great roles. When you are falling into the dark, Marina, it becomes hard to imagine that, after you are gone, the light will still exist. Yes, once we understand, really understand, that we are going to die, astronomy is the only consolation. Look at the celestial theatre, Marina. [Throws open the window.] Let’s be cold. It’s snowing. You shall want to be back at the Clarendon soon. Look at the stars, Marina. And the trees, and the lights going up the avenue. Are you cold? Do you need someone to warm you? Come into the bedroom, Marina. I shall show you a secret. I keep a framed picture of Johnny beside my bed. You can come into the bed with me. Perhaps I am not too drunk to make love to you. [Maryna stands.] Yes, lean on me. No, damn it, I shall lean on you. Wait, wait. How do I know so much about you, you may wonder. Why, I’ve acted with you, woman. I’ve seen how you pretend. Nothing more revealing than that. You are as naked to me as if you were my bride. And I am your husband in art. Your elderly husband. Your decrepit, demented husband. Your squat, thin-lipped, lank-haired, mad—”
