by Thomas Hardy
And troublous inner strife, She Tristram of her soul besought By wringing letters rapid-wrought (The King gone hunting, knowing nought)
To come again to her Even at the cost — such was her whim — Of bringing Whitehands back with him In wifely character.
Chanters: Women
There was no answer. Rest she could not; Then we missed her, days. We would not
Think where she might have been. And, having sailed, maybe, twice ten Long leagues, here came she back again, And sad and listless — -just as when She went — abides her mien!
Chanters: M. and W.
Hist! . . . Lo; there by the nether gate New comers hail! O who should wait The postern door to enter by,
The bridge being clearly seen? The King returned? — But that way; why? Would he try trap his Queen?
Watchman (crossing without the archway) The King’s arriving! Ho!
Enter Herald. Sounds a trumpet. Enter Brangwain.
SCENE II
ENTERHerald, Brangwain, and Chanters.
Herald
The King’s at hand!
Brangwain
God’s grace, she’s home, either from far or near!
Herald
Whither plied she? Many would like to hear!
Chanters: M. and W.
We do not know. We will not know.
She took a ship from the shore below, And was gone many days.
By friending winds she’s back before him:
Extol God should she and adore Him For covering up her ways!
Enter King Mark with Sir Andret and other Knights, retinue, and rude music of ram’s - horns, crouds, and humstrums, Brangwain standing aside.
SCENE III
King Mark, Knights, Retinue, etc., Brangwain, and Chanters.
K. Mark Where is the Queen?
Drinks from silver flagon which has been standing on the hearth on a brandise. Retinue drink after him from the same.
Brangwain (advancing)
Sir King, the Queen attires To meet your Majesty, and now comes down. {Aside.) Haply he will not know!
Enter Queen Iseult the Fair attended, and followed by the hound Houdain.
SCENE IV
Queen Iseult, King Mark, Knights, Brangwain, etc., and Chanters.
(Q. Iseult has dark hair, and wears a crimson robe, and tiara or circlet.)
Mark smacks the Queen on her shoulders in rough greeting.
K. Mark Why is this brachet in the hall again?
Q. Iseult I know not how she came here.
K. Mark
Nay, my wife,
Thou dost know well — as I know women well! —
And know her owner more than well, I reckon, And that he left the beast to your regard.
He kicks the dog away.
Sir Andret [aside to K. Mark)
Aye, aye, great King, thou speakest wisely on’t
This time as ever. Wives dost thrid all through!
Exeunt severally Knights, Retinue, etc., and Brangwain.
SCENE V
King Mark, Queen Iseult, and Chanters.
Q. Iseult
I’ve not beheld of late the man you mean; Maybe, my lord, you have shut him in the
dungeon, As you did formerly!
K. Mark
You spell me better! And know he has felt full liberty for long, And that you would have seen him, and much more,
Had not debarred you one o’ those crosses which,
Happily, scotch unlawful lovers’ schemes No less than sanct intents. If that good knight
Dallies in Brittany with his good wife — So finger-white — to cheer her as he ought, ‘Tis clear he can’t be here.
Q. Iseult (with slight sarcasm)
‘Tis clear. You plead
Somewhat in waste to prove as much. But, faith, (-petulantly)
‘Twas she, times tiresome, quirked and called to him
Or he would not have gone!
K. Mark
Ah, know’st thou that!
Leave her alone, a woman let’s all out!
Well, I may know things too. I slipped in sly
When I came home by now, and lit on this:
That while I’ve sued the chase you followed him,
Vanishing on a voyage of some days,
Which you’d fain cloak from me, and have confessed
To no one, either, of my people here.
Q. Iseult (evasively)
I went to take the air, being qualmed to death.
Surely a queen is dowered with such degree
Of queenship, or what is’t to be a queen?
No foot, I swear, set I in Brittany, Or upon soil of any neighbour shore, ‘Twixt putting from the cove below these walls
And my return hereto.
K. Mark
Protests — no more!
You sailed off somewhere, — (so a sea-nath * hints me
That heeds the tidings every troubled billow
Wails to the Beeny-Sisters from Pen-Tyre) —
At risk, too, of your life, the ship being small,
And trickful tempests lurking in the skies.
A woman does not raise a mast for nought
On a cockle-shell, even be the sea-signs fair.
But I have scorned to ask the mariners
The course you bore — or north, or south, or what —
It might have been to Brittany, it might not!
Q. Iseult I have not seen him.
* nath, a puffin (Cornish).
K. Mark
Well, you might have done’t
Each sunrise, noon, or eve, for all the joy
You show in my return, or gladness wont
To a queen shore-reached in safety — so they tell me —
Since you crept cat-like home.
Q. Iseult (indignantly)
I saw him not!
You stifle speech in me, or I’d have launched,
Ere this, the tidings rife. See him no more
Shall I, or you. He’s gone. Death darkens him!
K. Mark (starting)
So much the better, if true — for us and him!
{She weeps.)
But no. He has died too many many times
For that report to hold! In tilts, in frays,
Through slits and loops, louvres and battlements,
Has he been pierced and arrowed to the heart,
Then risen up again to trouble me!
Sir Andret told, ere Tristram shunned Tintagel,
How he espied you dallying — you and he —
Near the shot-window southward. And I went
With glaive in hand to smite him. Would I had!
Yea, and I should have, had I been sustained.
But not one knight was nigh. — Where are they now?
Whence comes this quietude? — I’ll call a council:
What’s best to do with him I’ll learn thereat,
And then we’ll keep a feast. A council! Ho!
Exit King Mark.
SCENE VI
Queen Iseult and Chanters. The Queen sits in dejection.
Chanters: Men
Why did Heaven warrant, in its whim, A twain mismated should bedim The courts of their encompassment With bleeding loves and discontent! Who would not feel God favoured them, Past wish, in throne and diadem? And that for all His plaisance they would praise
Him upon earth throughout their deeds and days!
Chanters: Women
Instead, see King and Queen more curst Than beggars upon hoit or hurst: — A queen! One who each night and morn Sighs for Sir Tristram; him, gloom-born In his mother’s death, and reared mid vows Of poison by a later spouse:
In love Fate-haunted, doomed to drink Charmed philtres, melting every link Of purposed faith! Why wedded he King Howel’s lass of Brittany? Why should the wave have washed him to
her shore — Him, prone to love our Queen here more and more ?
Chanters: M. and W.
In last misfortune did he wel
l-nigh slay Unknowingly in battle Arthur! Ay, Our stainless Over-king of Counties — he Made Dux Bellorum for his valiancy! — If now, indeed, Tristram be chilled in death, Will she, the Queen, care aught for further breath?
Q. Iseult (musing)
How little he knows, does Mark! And yet,
how much? Can there be any groundage for his thought That Tristram’s not a ghost? O, no such hope!
My Tristram, yet not mine! Could it be deemed
Thou shouldst have loved me less in many years
Hadst thou enjoyed them? If in Christland now
Do you look down on her most, or on me?
Why should the King have grudged so fleet a life
Its pleasure, grinned with gall at its renown,
Yapped you away for too great love of me,
Spied on thee through his myrmidons — aye, encloaked
And peeped to frustrate thee, and sent the word
To kill thee who should meet thee? O sweet Lord,
Thou hast made him hated; yet he still has life;
While Tristram. . . . Why said Mark he doubtless lived?
— But he was ever a mocker, was King Mark,
And not far from a coward.
Enter Brangwain.
SCENE VII
Queen Iseult, Brangwain, and Chanters.
Q. Iseult (distractedly)
Brangwain, he hard denies I did not see him!
But he is dead! . . . Perhaps not. . . . Can it be?
Brangwain
Who doth deny, my Queen? Who is not dead?
Your words are blank to me; your manner strange.
Q. Iseult
One bleeds no more on earth for a full- fledged sin
Than for a callow! The King has found out now
My sailing the south water in his absence,
And weens the worst. Forsooth, it’s always so!
He will not credit I’d no cause to land For the black reason — it is no excuse — That Tristram, knight, had died! — Landed had I,
Aye, fifty times, could he have still been there, Even there with her. — My Love, my own lost Love! {She bends down.)
Brangwain You did not land in Brittany, O Queen?
Q. Iseult
I did not land, Brangwain, although so near.
{She pauses.)
— He had been long with his White-handed one,
And had fallen sick of fever nigh to death; Till she grew fearful for him; sent for me, Yea, choicelessly, at his light-headed calls And midnight repetitions of my name. Yes, sent for me in a despairing hope To save him at all cost.
Brangwain
She must, methinks,
Have loved him much!
Q. Iseult [impatiently)
Don’t speak, Brangwain, but hear me.
Yes: women are so. . . . For me, I could not bear
To lose him thus. Love, others’ somewhile dainty,
Is my starved, all-day meal! And favouring chance,
That of the King’s apt absence, tempted me;
And hence I sailed, despite the storm-strid air.
What did I care about myself, or aught?
— She’d told the mariner her messenger
To hoist his canvas white if he bore me
On the backward journey, black if he did not,
That, so, heart-ease should reach the knight full quick —
Even ere 1 landed — quick as I hove in sight.
Yes, in his peril so profound, she sent
The message, though against her. Women are so!
Brangwain
Some are, my lady Queen: some may not be.
Q. Iseult
While we were yet a two-hours’ toss from port
I bade them show the sheet, as had been asked,
The which they did. But when we touched the quay
She ran down thither, beating both her hands,
And saying Tristram died an hour before.
Brangwain
But O, dear Queen, didst fully credit her?
Q. Iseult
Aye! Sudden - shaken souls guess not at guile. —
I fell into a faint at the very words. —
Thereon they lifted me into the cabin,
Saying: “ She shall not foot this deadly land! “
When I again knew life I was distraught,
And sick with the rough writhing of the bark. —
They had determined they would steer me home,
Had turned the prow, and toiled a long league back;
Strange that, no sooner had they put about,
The weather worsed, as if they’d angered God
By doing what they had done to sever me
Even from my Love’s dead limbs! No gleam glowed more,
And the seas sloped like houseroofs all the way.
We were blown north along the shore to Wales,
Where they made port and nursed me, till, next day,
The blinding gale abated: we returned,
And reached by shifts at last the cove below.
The King, whose queries I had feared so much,
Had not come back; came only at my heels;
Yet he has learnt, somewise, that I’ve been missed,
And doubtless I shall suffer — he’s begun it!
Much I lament I put about so soon.
I should have landed, and have gained his corpse.
Brangwain
She is his wife, and you could not have claimed it.
Q. Iseult
But could I not have seen him? How know you?
Brangwain
Nay: she might not have let you even see him:
He is her own, dear Queen, and in her land You had no sway to make her cede him up. I doubt his death. You took her word for it, And she was desperate at the sight of you. Sick unto death he may have been. But — dead? (Shakes her head.)
Corpses are many: man lives half-amort; But rumour makes them more when they run short!
Q. Iseult
If he be not! O I would even condone His bringing her, would he not come without; I’ve said it ever since I’ve known of her. Could he but live: yes, could he live for me!
Q. Iseult sings sadly to herself, Brangwain having gone to the back of the hall’. Could he but live for me A day, yea, even an hour, Its petty span would be Steeped in felicity Passing the price of Heaven’s held-dearest dower:
Could he but live, could he But live for me!
Exit Q. Iseult, followed by Brangwain.
Chanters: Women
Maybe, indeed, he did not die! Our sex, shame on’t, is over prone To ill conceits that amplify. Maybe he did not die — that one, The Whitepalmed, may in strategy Have but avowed it! Weak are we, And foil and fence have oft to seek, Aye, even by guile, if fear so speak!
Chanters: Men
Wounded in Ireland, life he fetched, In charge of the King’s daughter there, Who healed him, loved him, primed him fair For the great tournament, when he stretched Sir Palomides low.
Chanters: Women Yet slight
Was King Mark’s love for him, despite! Mark sent him thither as to gain Iseult, but, truly, to be slain!
Chanters: Men
Quite else her father, who on sight Was fain for Tristram as his son,
Not Mark. But woe, his word was won!
Alas, should wrong vow stand as right?
Chanters: Women
And what Dame Brangwain did to mend,
Enlarged the mischief! Best have penned
That love-drink close, since ‘twas to be
Iseult should wed where promised: wretched she!
Chanters: M. and W.
Yet, haply, Tristram lives. Quick heals are his!
He rose revived from that: why not from this?
Watchman (without)
One comes with tidings! — (to the comer) Bear them to the hall.
Enter a Messenger (at back), -pausing and looking round. Queen Iseult, attended, re-enters (at front) and seats herself.
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SCENE VIII
Queen Iseult, Attendant-Ladies, Messenger, and Chanters.
Messenger (comingforward) Where is Iseult the Queen?
Q. Iseult
Here, churl. I’m she.
Messenger
I’m sent here to deliver tidings, Queen, To your high ear alone.
Exeunt Attendants.
Q. Iseult (in strung-up tones)
Then voice them forth. A halter for thee if I find them false!
Messenger
Knight Tristram of the sorry birth is yet
Enrolled among the living, having crept
Out of the very vaults of death and doom!
— His heavy ails bedimmed him numb as night,
And men conceived him wrapt in wakeless rest;
But he strove back. Hither, on swifter keel
Lie has followed you; and even now is nigh.
(Queen Iseult leans back and covers her eyes.)
Iseult the Pale-palmed, in her jealousy,
With false deliverance feigned your sail was black,
And made him pray for death in his extreme,
Till sank he to a drowse: grey death they thought it,
And bells were bidden toll the churches through,
And thereupon you came. Scared at her crime
She deemed that it had dealt him death indeed,
And knew her not at fault till you had gone.
— When he aroused, and learnt she had sent you back,
It angered him to hot extremity, And brings him here upon my very stern, If he, forsooth, have haleness for the adventure.
Exit Messenger.
Q. Iseult
O it o’erturns! . . . “Black” told she! Cheat unmatchable!
Enter Brangwain.
