GRINGOIRE: My name is Pierre Gringoire. I have the good fortune to be the author of the very beautiful Morality Play that is indeed going to be declaimed and performed before you very soon...
JEHAN FROLLO: Not very soon. Right away!
CROWD: Right away! Right away!
GRINGOIRE: His Eminence, the Cardinal of Bourbon–
CROWD: The Mystery! The Mystery!
GRINGOIRE: –And the Ambassador from Flanders.
CROWD: Burn! Burn!
GRINGOIRE: Burn? That’s enough! We will start right away. (coming down the ladder)
CROWD: Hurrah! Hurrah!
GRINGOIRE (aside): Let’s buy some time.
(He goes back between the curtain.)
PHOEBUS (approaching the three women): Hello, Gervaise.
GERVAISE (joyfully): Monsieur Phoebus! What, you dare leave your fiancée?
PHOEBUS: Oh. Her mother is too boring.
GERVAISE: Yes, but the daughter is too pretty.
PHOEBUS: Bah! I’ll have plenty of time to look at her later. All my life! Whereas you, Gervaise– (he whispers to her laughing)
MAHIETTE (to Oudarde): He is a terribly bold fellow, that Captain.
GERVAISE (low to Phoebus): What honeyed words! Meanwhile, it’s been like a century since I’ve last seen you.
PHOEBUS: It’s because I owe your husband for a coat of mail and two short swords. Ah, if it was to you I could pay them... I would go to see you no later than last week!
GERVAISE: Yes, but you stopped en route. Place Baudoyer.
PHOEBUS: Ah. You saw me.
GERVAISE: Yes. Our back room gives on the square. And on that square, whenever you arrived, the Gypsy woman danced.
PHOEBUS: What Gypsy woman?
GERVAISE: You know very well! Esmeralda!
PHOEBUS: Ah yes. The little dancer with the goat.
GERVAISE: Yes! Yes! And noticing her, you stopped your horse and she interrupted her dance.
PHOEBUS: She’s not unpleasant to look at, that little wild girl. But I swear to you, Gervaise, I’ve never said a word to her. I am amorous only of your sweet eyes. When do you want me to prove it to you?
GERVAISE: Oh. Your future mother-in-law is looking this way.
PHOEBUS: Yes. A storm’s brewing. (low and quick to Gervaise) I will come tomorrow to make my peace.
CLOPIN TROUILLEFOU (one-armed, extending his hand to Phoebus): Charity if you please!
PHOEBUS: Go to the Devil (leaving)
JEHAN FROLLO: Hey! Hey! You’re stalling, you rascals! The play!
CROWD: The play! The play!
JEHAN FROLLO: Start now or we’ll set fire to the theater!
GRINGOIRE (aside): And the Ambassador who hasn’t arrived yet! This is bad! (aloud) We’re starting, gentlemen, we’re starting! (music from inside the scaffolding)
GERVAISE (in a low voice to Mahiette, pointing to Gringoire): He’s the author, you know. The author of the Mystery.
GRINGOIRE (who has overheard): The author, yes, ladies! And we’re going to start! I’m going to wrap myself in all my glory.
OUDARDE: If you mean your frock, it needs to be seriously mended.
GRINGOIRE (casting a disdainful look at his smock coat): Bah! Why should such trivialities matter? Once my Morality Play has been performed, the Provost will count me out 12 sols.
CLOPIN TROUILLEFOU (extending his hand to him): Charity if you please.
GRINGOIRE: Sorry, my friend, I haven’t had lunch yet. But come back tonight and I’ll be rich. Tonight, I will dine. Ah, here come the actors of the Prologue.
(The curtain rises. Enter four characters in half-yellow, half-white costumes. The first, dressed in linen, holds a spade in his hand; the second, in wool, a scales; the third, in brocade, a sword; the fourth, in silk, two golden keys. One after the other, they climb onto the stage.)
CROWD: Hurrah! Hurrah!
MAHIETTE: What sort of Christians are these?
GRINGOIRE: Don’t you know how to read? Their names are sown on the bottom of their costumes.
MAHIETTE (reading): Ah yes! Labor, Commerce, Nobility and Clergy. That’s nice!
GRINGOIRE: And it’s plain, too! Go, Labor. (music inside stops.)
LABOR: Good folks, I am Labor. I come to give–
CLOPIN TROUILLEFOU (in a screeching voice): Charity, if you please! (laughter)
JEHAN FROLLO: Hey! That’s Clopin Trouillefou! Heavens! It must tire you to be bandy-legged, my friend, just as you are one-armed? (more laughter)
GRINGOIRE: The Philistines! Speak, Commerce!
COMMERCE: I am Commerce. Good city bourgeois that I am. We are returning–
USHER (at the door to the left, announcing): Monseigneur the Cardinal de Bourbon! (all eyes turn toward the door)
GRINGOIRE (aside): He couldn’t get here sooner, the Cardinal!
(The Cardinal climbs on the dais.)
USHER: The Rector of the University.
JEHAN FROLLO (thumbing his nose): Hey! The Rector! Hey!
USHER: Monseigneur Louis de Graville, Admiral of France. The Ambassador of Flanders.
(Everyone turns their back to the stage to observe the new arrivals.)
GRINGOIRE: To have worked for faces and to see only backsides. To be a poet and to have only the success of an apothecary! Nobility! Try to speak! Very forcefully! Loudly! Very Loudly!
NOBILITY (in a loud voice): I am Nobility. We are looking, in the hills and the valleys, everywhere, for our dauphin...
USHER (announcing): Monsieur Jacques Coppenole, Clerk of the Alderman of the Illustrious City of Ghent!
COPPENOLE (entering): No, by the Cross! Jacques Coppenole, shoemaker. Nothing more, nothing less. Shoemaker. By the Cross, that’s fine enough.
JEHAN FROLLO: Long Live Master Coppenole!
(Coppenole thanks Jehan with a wave of his hand.)
ALL: Vivat!
COPPENOLE (noticing Clopin Trouillefou): Ah, if I’m not mistaken, it’s Clopin Trouillefou. Good meeting you, my friend! (giving him his hand)
ROBIN POUSSEPAIN (with admiration): Ah! He’s not proud, that merchant.
ALL: Long Live Master Coppenole!
(Coppenole takes his place on the dais.)
GRINGOIRE: Your turn, Clergy. Carry the dullards off for me!
CLERGY: Our Dauphin, proud and handsome, true son of the Lion of France wanted–
COPPENOLE (rising): Hola! Excuse me, bourgeois and squires of Paris! What are those folk doing there on that stage? Are they going to speak words?
GRINGOIRE: Words! (pained) Oh, to call my verse mere words.
COPPENOLE: They’d do better to give us a Moorish dance or some other mummery. This is not what they told me. They promised me a Festival of Fools with the election of a Fools’ Pope.
GRINGOIRE: The Mystery first! The Mystery!
JEHAN FROLLO: No! No! We want the Festival of Fools!
GRINGOIRE (running back and forth in different tones of voice): The Mystery! We demand the Mystery! The Mystery!
THE STUDENTS: The Festival of Fools!
COPPENOLE: Listen. We, too, have our Fools’ Pope in Ghent. And in this, we are not behind, by the Cross! But, here, as we are–
GRINGOIRE: Don’t listen to him! We want the Mystery!
JEHAN FROLLO: Let Master Coppenole speak!
(Coppenole sends him a gesture of thanks.)
ALL: Speak! Speak!
COPPENOLE: Amongst us, a crowd assembles like here, then each in his turn goes and puts his head through a hole and makes a face at the others. The one who is seemed to be the ugliest by the acclaim of all is then elected Pope. That’s all. It’s very diverting. Would you like to make your Pope after the manner of my country? That would be less tedious than listening to these chatterers. There’s a sufficiently grotesque sample of both sexes here so as to have us a real Flemish guffaw. And we have ugly enough faces so as to hope for a really pretty grimace.
ALL: Yes! Yes! Hurrah! Let’s elect a Pope!
GRINGOIRE
(exasperated): No! No! No!
JEHAN FROLLO (pointing): There’s a round stone window over that door which seems to be made expressly for it.
ALL: Yes! Yes!
MADAME DE GONDELAURIER (rising): Come, child, Phoebus. I don’t want to be present at such a gross spectacle.
PHOEBUS (aside): Just when it was becoming amusing!
(He withdraws with his relatives.)
MAHIETTE: Must we stay for this farce?
GERVAISE: That’s something to see. And since you came all the way from Reims for that–
(The first grimacing face appears in the window.)
THE THREE WOMEN: Ah! How horrible! (shouts and laughter)
JEHAN FROLLO: He’s not ugly enough! Let’s have another!
(A face appears in the window with enormous cheeks. The shouts and laughter redouble.)
JEHANN FROLLO: Ah, that’s cheating. He’s got to show his full face.
(The face opens its mouth and shows its teeth.)
JEHANN FROLLO: That’s quite a face! He’s got a good chance.
(Quasimodo’s face appears in the window.)
ALL: Hurrah! Hurrah!
COPPENOLE: Ah, that’s a true Pope of Fools! (thunderous applause) Bring in the winner!
(Quasimodo comes in from the rear. At his appearance, the applause redoubles.)
COPPENOLE: Friends, he’s superb. He’s got what it takes to cause Proserpina, the Devil’s wife herself, to have a miscarriage. But it must be very tiring for you to hold your face in that pose. Put it back in its usual condition. You will be ugly enough, still! He doesn’t budge! Ah! Prodigy! The grimace is his true face! (exclamations and acclamations)
(Jehann Frollo comes down from his cornice.)
JEHAN FROLLO: Hey! Why, I recognize him! It’s the bell ringer of Notre-Dame. It’s Quasimodo.
OUDARDE: Oh! The horrifying hunchback!
GERVAISE: And as evil as he is ugly!
COPPENOLE: By the Cross, I’ve never in my entire life seen more magnificent ugliness! (striking Quasimodo on the shoulder) You are a character with whom I have had the desire to feast since I first heard of you–were it to cost me a dozen crowns. What do you say? Shall we dine together? Ah, indeed. I forget. You’re deaf.
JEHAN FROLLO: Eh, yes. He has become deaf from the noise of the bells.
COPPENOLE: Oh! Devil of a man! It seems he’s a hunchback as well. Yet he walks. He’s a one-eyed, bandy-legged hunchback. He looks at you. You speak to him, but he’s deaf. By the Cross, he’ll make a wonderful Pope.
JEHAN FROLLO (yelling in Quasimodo’s ear): Quasimodo! You’ve been proclaimed Pope of the Fools!
QUASIMODO (laughing): Ah, yes! Fine! Fine!
JEHAN FROLLO: Friends, the procession must be splendid and worthy of our monstrous new Pope. A true Triumph!
ALL: A Triumph! A Triumph!
(Everybody presses around Quasimodo for whom they quickly improvise a makeshift throne at the back of the stage.)
GRINGOIRE: Malediction! They’re all going to leave. (to the three women) You aren’t planning to be part of this abominable cortege?
MAHIETTE: No, certainly not.
GRINGOIRE: Then you are true friends of the muses. We’ll start the Mystery all over again.
A STUDENT (looking through the window into the square): Esmeralda! Esmeralda!
GERVAISE: Esmeralda. The dancer with the goat! Come, come, Mahiette. We can’t miss this!
(The three women leave. Gringoire watches them go in despair.)
GRINGOIRE (with sadness): O Apollo! They’ve taken away my glory. And my supper.
(Meanwhile, Quasimodo is raised on a kind of platform and they carry him laughing and dancing around him with cries of “Hurrah!”)
CURTAIN
Scene II
The Fools’ Pope
The Place du Petit Pont, opposite side of the Seine River from Notre-Dame. To the left, there is a house supported by wood pillars. At the corner of the street, one notices a pretty statue of the Virgin Mary inside a niche behind an iron grille; below it, a commemorative candle is burning. At the back of the stage, the crowd mills around, hiding Esmeralda and her goat.
GERVAISE (to Oudarde and Mahiette, who enter left from the back): Come on! Hurry up! Esmeralda has started her performance, but I think she’s only doing her card tricks so far. What kept you so long?
OUDARDE: It’s Mahiette! At the corner of the Rue Mouton, she stopped in front of the Tour Roland. I was unable to tear her away from it.
MAHIETTE (looking behind her): What was that face I saw behind the bars of a lower window and which disappeared immediately?
OUDARDE: Why, I told you. It’s Sachette, the Recluse from the Rat-Hole.
MAHIETTE: Is she a prisoner?
GERVAISE: No. She shut herself up there voluntarily. She took a vow of penitence.
MAHIETTE: Has she been there a long time?
OUDARDE: It’s been 15 years.
MAHIETTE: Why is she called Sachette?
GERVAISE: Because all she wears for clothes is an old sack.
MAHIETTE: Even in the winter?
OUDARDE: Even in the winter.
MAHIETTE: Poor woman!
GERVAISE: It’s said that she locked herself in there after some kind of great sorrow, but it’s as if it gives her pleasure to retain her sorrow.
MAHIETTE: But what was this sorrow? Does anyone know?
OUDARDE: No. No one knows.
MAHIETTE: Well, perhaps I know... We will return to see her.
GERVAISE: Whenever you like.
(Suddenly, the crowd applauds. We hear Esmeralda tune up her drum.)
GERVAISE: Ah! The Basque drum. Esmeralda has finished her card tricks. She’s going to sing.
(The crowd opens to let Esmeralda through. The goat is at the back, squatting on a mat.)
ESMERALDA (singing in Spanish): Un cofre de gran riqueza / Hallaron dentro un pilar / Dentro del nuevas banderos / Con figuro de espantar. * Alarabes de cavallos / Sin poderse menear / Con espades y los cuellos / Bellestas de buon echar.
(More applause from the crowd.)
MAHIETTE: Oh. What a sweet charming voice.
GERVAISE: She’s going to dance and her dance is better than her singing.
(Esmeralda begins to dance to the accompaniment of the Basque drum. After a moment, Claude Frollo enters and, hidden in the crowd, casts a deep contemplative glance over the dancer.)
CLAUDE FROLLO (in a dark voice): Look. Look at her. Hell’s very own daughter.
MAHIETTE: Who was that talking?
OUDARDE: I don’t know. Someone who wanted to annoy the girl.
GERVAISE: He really succeeded. See, she’s stopped. But she’s starting again.
(The crowd applauds. Gringoire arrives.)
GRINGOIRE: They are applauding? Alas, not my Mystery. (looking) No, it’s a dancing girl. (admiringly) What was I saying? Not a girl, a goddess.
CLAUDE FROLLO: A witch!
MAHIETTE: That voice again!
(The dance ends in the midst of applause.)
ESMERALDA (to her goat, presenting him her Basque drum): You turn, Djali.
GERVAISE: Watch carefully now, Mahiette. Here is the goat’s number.
ESMERALDA (to the goat): Djali, what month are we in?
(Djali paws the drum four times with his hoof.)
OUDARDE: It’s true. We are in April.
GRINGOIRE: See what they prefer to poetry!
ESMERALDA: Djali, what day of the month are we?
(The goat raps five times.)
ESMERALDA: What time of day is it?
(The goat raps six time; at the same time, the bells ring six. Applause.)
MAHIETTE: It’s marvelous.
CLAUDE FROLLO: There’s some witchcraft behind it.
ESMERALDA (to herself, shivering): Oh! I fear that voice is as sinister as the man behind it.
CROWD: The goat again. One more time!
ESMERALDA: How does Master Charmolue, the King’s Prosecutor, p
lead in Court?
(The goat starts bleating and waving his front hoof. More laughter and applause.)
CLAUDE FROLLO: Sacrilege! Blasphemy!
ESMERALDA (with terror): Ah! It’s that evil man again.
(The applause continues. She collects the audience’s money in her drum.)
GRINGOIRE: Oh! The fire spirit! The nymph! The Bacchante of Mount Menaleen! (Esmeralda presents her drum to him. He puts his hand in his jacket and shakes his head) Alas, I lack the gold.
(Jehan Frollo, Quasimodo and their entourage enter.)
JEHAN FROLLO: Make way! Make way! Come, fools! Follow me, wenches! Shout Hurrah! Sing Hallelujah! If not, may the Devil take you and may our Pope bless you!
(The cortege moves in: musicians playing strange instruments, vagabonds, students, etc. In the center, the “Pope”’s guards, with candles on their shoulders, bear the platform upon which Quasimodo sits, with cross, cape and mitre!)
CLAUDE FROLLO (recognizing Quasimodo): Quasimodo!
(He rushes into the crowd and tears the mitre and the cross from the Hunchback’s hand.)
CLAUDE FROLLO: How dare you! Take these off at once!
GRINGOIRE: Dom Claude Frollo! The Archdeacon of Notre-Dame!
JEHAN FROLLO: My brother!
(Quasimodo, furious, jumps off the platform.)
MAHIETTE: Ah, my God! The monster’s going to tear him apart.
(Quasimodo lunges towards Claude Frollo, but at the last minute, recognizes him, then stops.)
Frankenstein vs The Hunchback of Notre-Dame Page 7
