by Unknown
Carry this to your prophet, O priest: Greetings from Saul to Samuel, the man of the suspicious eye. Say he has made a King of me again. Inasmuch as he dared not obey my summons hither but sent his croakings by thee from some place of hiding, now I know he fears my wrath when I thought ‘twas I feared him — and lo, is his hand lifted off me. I am delivered.
MESSENGER. This is forbidden.
SAUL. Forbidden! Tell him from me that what is forbidden, that shall I do. I dismiss him from my service. Let him not again call himself prophet, or I will put him to the saw and the lime-kiln.
MESSENGER. The Lord —
SAUL. Him shall I serve as ever when I hear His voice —
(Defiantly) — but I will not serve Him through the voice of Samuel. He must speak to this King direct.
MESSENGER. Now art thou doomed.
SAUL (sternly). Go.
(OPHIR is exultant though startled. Jonathan has been drinking it in, open-mouthed. At a sign from OPHIR the Guard returns, saul’s eyes are fixed on the messenger, who makes a cowed but not cowardly exit with the Guard.)
OPHIR (glorious). Now is Israel redeemed! (He kisses saul’s garment.)
JONATHAN. You said well, Ophir. There is none can counter my father and live.
SAUL (well satisfied with himself). A boy will rule in my place! Ay, is it so? Jonathan, are you in such undutiful haste to reign?
JONATHAN (embracing him). Looks it so, thou poor prophet?
(Horn heard.)
OPHIR.’Tis as if Israel already rejoiced with us.
SAUL. Ay, it shall be battle now — and Saul’s the first blow! Thus shall Samuel learn that I — I... (A terrible thought comes to SAUL and stops his utterance.)
OPHIR. This day is Samuel overthrown. (Coming towards saul, he is startled by the change in his face.)
JONATHAN. King! King, my father. Ophir, see his face!
(saul signs with his hand to OPHIR to come to him. When OPHIR approaches, saul speaks to him as one puzzled in a blank voice.)
SAUL. Who are you i (This should be the first intimation that something has happened to him. It comes also as a sudden shock to OPHIR and Jonathan, who look at each other. It should all be very quiet.)
JONATHAN (in apprehension). Father!
SAUL (to OPHIR, coaxingly). Come tell me who you are?
OPHIR (shuddering). I am Ophir, one of your captains.
SAUL (politely, but evidently not understanding). Captains?
(With some cunning) And I? Truly I know who I am — but how am I called?
OPHIR. You are Saul the King.
SAUL (blankly). King? Tell me, soldier, what is this anguish that has come upon me? Did I hear a voice? (He means the voice of the Lord.)
OPHIR (as in the presence of the supernatural). None spoke.
JONATHAN. Oh, father!
SAUL. And this one? Who is he?
OPHIR. This is Prince Jonathan, your son.
SAUL. Son?
JONATHAN. My father!
(As saul looks at his son, recognition comes to him, and he speaks lovingly.)
SAUL. Jonathan! (The darkness passes from him slowly and he is the King again. He clasps the boy to him.) Some voice disturbed the balance of my mind. (He remembers.) My son, this Samuel, how do I know what he meant — ? (His face becomes dreadful with malignancy — he speaks sternly) Ophir, as you would live, say to none that you have seen me thus.
OPHIR (steadily). I have seen nothing.
(saul, brooding, goes to sloped bank and sits.)
SAUL. Leave me.
(OPHIR goes off with a reluctant look at Jonathan. Jonathan nervously kneels on bank to the right of saul but close to him.)
JONATHAN. Do not send me from you. Is it that something in the prophet’s words disturbs you?
SAUL (who is staring and not looking at him). It concerns you not. (Grimly) Ay, it concerns you! But go — (Royally) — the King would be alone.
(Jonathan, disturbed, goes off behind the bank.)
(Now in sombre thought with SAMUEL’s words in possession of him)
‘A boy will rule in my place.’ How do I know that Samuel means Jonathan? (He is sitting staring, immersed in this thought and held by a fixed idea.)
(DAVID now enters, riding on his ass, and his small harp is slung on his back. He is not ‘exalted ‘at present; he is the cheery shepherd boy, and he and his ass are on the best of terms. He pulls up when he sees the figure on the bank.)
DAVID. Greeting, FRIEND.
(saul does not hear, DAVID dismounts and hesitatingly approaches the stranger, but prevents the ass following him. Evidently, as told in the first Act, he fears that here is another one who might covet the ass. He whispers lovingly into its ears unheard words. He points to some place where the ass is to keep out of sight. It signifies understanding with its ears and makes an exit, and he signs to it to go further and lie down. When he is satisfied he addresses the stranger again.)
Greeting, friend. Is it that you can say how I may get me to the camp of Saul?
SAUL. Did I not tell you to go! Yet wait. (He rises, and in his present state though he sees DAVID plainly he presumes it is still JONATHAN. He leaps as it were at DAVID, and putting a hand on his shoulder walks the astonished boy backward and forward, pouring out his emotion in a torrent.) Jonathan, know you of any in high places with sons who may be aiming at the throne? You know them better than I. Ahiab, son of Alihab — he will be great in Judah — what of him? Or Shetnel — he has a snarling lip for one so young. It might be Ishbaal the Philistine, out of my own household.
(DAVID breaks away from him.)
DAVID. What is this? I am David, the son of Jesse.
(saul is now the bewildered one. He looks around for Jonathan and ‘comes to.’)
SAUL (roughly). You seem to be a country boy. Who are you? What do you here?
DAVID (rather frightened). I am David, son of Jesse.
SAUL. I know no Jesse.
DAVID. I did but halt to ask you how I may get me to the camp of Saul. My father is of Bethlehem, and there I do tend his sheep in the fields.
SAUL. Sheep? Ay, truly, I see them in your eyes.
DAVID (disturbed). Do you?
SAUL (who sees that he is being taken literally). And! HEAR THE SHEEP-BELLS IN YOUR VOICE.
DAVID (fearing that there must be something wrong with himself). Can it be so?
SAUL. Sheep! I too, boy, have led the sheep home, as many times as there are stones upon the road to Jericho. I was a shepherd — once — myself.
DAVID. Were you? You do not look so now. What is your name?
SAUL (introducing them, with a touch of humour). Son OF Jesse, I am — the son of Kish.
(DAVID bows.)
DAVID. Was your land fat or lean?
SAUL. Here and there were fat parcels of ground — but the barren places, David! (He begins to be amused by DAVID.)
DAVID (sympathetically). I know! How I know! And the goats in the barren places — waiting to pounce if one blade springs up. How many sheep had you?
SAUL. Five hundred, it may be, when I returned from a fray.
DAVID (astounded). Five hundred! No! And kine?
SAUL. I forget how many.
DAVID (scandalised). Forget how many!
SAUL (seating himself and speaking with apparent gravity). Listen and direct your ways. I had two camels and an olive press, and my well was bricked.
DAVID (gasping). Bricked! (Boasting) Nevertheless there is no water like to the well of Bethlehem which is by the gate.
SAUL. That may be so, but I had a fig-tree that bore twice in the year.
DAVID (who stands near him with legs wide apart and head thrust forward — impressed). Truly you were in a big way! We have a hundred sheep and twenty goats, he’s and she’s.
(Making the best of his case) My mother has a flagon shaped like a camel and two painted glasses.
SAUL (handsomely). I never had that. But, David, I had —
(saul is falling unde
r the spell of DAVID, who takes it all seriously.)
DAVID. Do not tell me you had a he-goat that danced.
SAUL. Ah me, none of my goats danced.
DAVID (proudly). Two of my father’s goats dance, as thus.
(He shows.)
SAUL. Would that I had seen them! But, David, I had three fields of onions.
DAVID (overthrown). Three — fields — of onions! (Anxiously)
But had you a vine that grew upside down?
SAUL. Never.
DAVID (ashamed of boasting). Neither had we. But my father travelleth far. Consider of this. He has seen — a bed with four legs!
SAUL. What a man is this Jesse! Now shall I learn, David, whether thou art worthy of such a father. Behold, a shepherd sits bowed over his staff in woe, the sheep lie on their backs, the kine give no milk, and your two he-goats can dance no more. Then the shepherd smells — what does he smell, David, that causes him to dance with the he-goats and the she-goats and makes the grass to arise and dance with them?
(DAVID has been listening anxiously.)
DAVID (with a shout and making several syllables of the word). Rain!
SAUL. A stream ran through my land, David.
DAVID (incredulous). With water in it?
(saul nods.)
No!
SAUL. Now tell me — (Unbelieving) — if you can — what is the tree in which there is ever a whispering as of voices in the highest branches?
DAVID (after reflecting). The mulberry! There is always a going-on in the tops of the mulberries. (He is getting wildly excited.)
SAUL. This one will defeat you. At what time of the year had I and my servants — men and women — at what season of the year had we all purple legs?
DAVID (gloriously). At the treading of the grape! (He jumps up and down to show how it is done. Then, in an outburst, he cries) Shall we be friends, O Shepherd?
SAUL (like a boy). We are.
DAVID. You do look a fine one in that cloak.
SAUL (amused). Do I, David?
DAVID (who has been leading up to this). How do you think I look in mine?
SAUL. Lo, it is good. (He puts a hand on DAVID’S shoulder and walks him back and forward.)
DAVID. My mother made my coat.
SAUL. My mother, I do remember, used to make mine!
DAVID (finding this a remarkable coincidence). Did she? We are very like each other, Shepherd.
SAUL. The likeness between us grows every moment! Did your mother also make your harp?
(They occasionally stop for a moment in their walk and talk and resume walking, DAVID is sometimes walking backwards in front of saul.)
DAVID. Oh no. My father did want to belt me for having a harp, but my mother dissuaded him.
SAUL. A good, but perhaps weak mother.
DAVID. She is not weak! She will let none belt me but herself. (Standing up for her) There is in all Bethlehem no woman who can lay on as my mother does.
SAUL. On you?
DAVID. Verily. (Gloomily) It is my appetite. Sometimes she does slip food into my mouth before it is due; and then she is angered, for behold when I have eaten heartily there is nothing about my person to show for it. Then does she at a time lay on.
SAUL (laughing). Son of Jesse, I have a drawing to you.
DAVID (who is often getting in front of him to look up in his face happily). Have you, Shepherd?
SAUL (jestingly reproving). But this appetite of yours —
DAVID (recklessly). I do also drink! Hearken! Coming hither I did see some kine in a field, and I milked one — but my mother has told me never to take without paying, so I did tie half of my bag of provender on to the tail of the cow.
SAUL (delighted). Now is this like an hour of my youth in Benjamin come back to me! David, you should first have bound her hind legs together lest she was with calf, and treacherous. I always did that.
DAVID (victoriously). She was with calf. And so I did bind her hind legs, even as you did! Assuredly we are as one.
SAUL. Even so.
(saul so evidently enjoys this that DAVID is prompted to say, after a manner of his own:)
DAVID. Now you tell me why you like me, and then will I tell you why I like you.
SAUL. Let me see. I believe you are close to me because I was such as you when a boy. (Adopting his manner) Now do you tell me why you like me.
DAVID. I think it must be because I want to be such as you when I am a man.
SAUL (laughing). Oh, artful one! But I had forgotten. Tell me, what brings you to seek your way to the camp of Saul?
DAVID (regretfully). Now do I become subtle.
SAUL (smiling). Oho!
DAVID. Do you now ask why I become subtle, and lo, I will tell you.
SAUL. Why have you become subtle, son of Jesse?
DAVID. I have become subtle because my mother did say: ‘Tell naught of why you have set forth to any who may question you on the way, lest they make merry and despoil you of your belongings.’ SAUL (amusedly). I am rebuked. (He sits again.) David, we are two subtle ones, you and I!
DAVID (gleeful). Are you also subtle?
SAUL. Ay, but it is not subtle of you to come hither. All these paths lead to the camp of Saul, and the neighbourhood of camps is ever dangerous.
(DAVID nervously goes and sits close to him.)
Why do you do that?
DAVID. Because if there is danger to me, I feel safe if I am near you, Shepherd.
SAUL (grimly). All have not found safety so close to me, David. But take this token with you and show it to any guard who would bar your way. (He gives him the token, which is a metal disc about two inches long and one broad.) It will clear all paths for you.
DAVID. How do you know? Does Saul say this?
SAUL. Saul says this.
DAVID. Have you ever seen Saul?
SAUL. I have seen him.
DAVID (old-fashioned). How is it with him? Is he in good health? Sleeps he well? Are kings like men?
SAUL. I sometimes think, David, that Saul is like two men.
DAVID. Are there two of him because he is a king?
SAUL. Ay, so it must be with kings. There are two within Saul — the one good — the other a roaring lion.
DAVID (pricking his ears at the word). A lion! Why does not the good one in him slay the lion?
SAUL. I wonder! Perhaps Saul rather likes his lion!
DAVID. Does he? Do all the people love Saul?
SAUL. Nay! He has his enemies, David, and there is talk of a new unknown one. You have made me forget him. Now we must part. (He pats the head of DAVID and rises.) Fare you well, son of Jesse, and fortune attend you.
DAVID. So also may it be with you, son of Kish. And may that enemy of Saul be rooted up and cast among the slime!
SAUL (grimly). As my soul liveth, he shall be!
(DAVID goes off, waving a hand. His voice is heard offstage: ‘Shepherd Man!’)
Thou Child of Dew!
(He communes fiercely with himself.)
Was it Ahiab Samuel meant — or Shetnel or Ishbaal? ‘A boy will rule in thy place.’ It must be one of those three. (He rises.) Not this time, Samuel, shall your prophecy come to pass. Saul shall wax greater and greater. (His hand closes on the javelin.) There is naught like being a King, and King I will abide.
(He goes off, muttering: ‘Ahiab, Ishbaal, or Shetnel.’)
SCENE II
DAVID AND GOLIATH
THE scene is an outpost of the slingers in advance of the Israelite army. They occupy rocks on stage. The rocks on stage are presently to be occupied by Philistines, but are at present empty. They should be more sloped and grassy. Between the opponents is a glade which covers the centre of the stage. This glade is still pointed out in Palestine to the credulous as the scene of the fight with Goliath, so that it can be reproduced to some extent on the stage. It was called the Vale of Elah, which means ‘oak’ (so there were probably oaks there in those days). The time is the same day about noon, and the su
n is hot. At back the outlook is partly cut off by rock, but there is an opening and on the back-cloth is a suggestion of Saul’s innumerable tents — which were mostly of black goat-skin. They are some distance away and are mere dots in the landscape. We should realise that there is a small plain behind the rocks at back. All the rocks are ‘practical.’ It is a scene where characters can come and go variously, i e from the opening at back, up and down the rocks, or down stage on both sides. There should be, wherever it is most convenient scenically, a trickle of water falling into a pool.
