Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays Part 273

A PLAY

BY WALLACE STEVENS

Copyright, 1916, by Wallace Stevens.

All rights reserved.

Reprinted from "Poetry" (Chicago) by permission of Mr. Wallace Stevens and Miss Harriet Monroe. Applications for permission to produce this play should be addressed to Mr. Wallace Stevens, 125 Trumbull Street, Hartford, Conn.

THREE TRAVELERS WATCH A SUNRISE

A PLAY BY WALLACE STEVENS

[_The characters are three Chinese, two negroes and a girl._

_The scene represents a forest of heavy trees on a hilltop in eastern Pennsylvania. To the right is a road, obscured by bushes.

It is about four o'clock of a morning in August, at the present time._

_When the curtain rises, the stage is dark. The limb of a tree creaks. A negro carrying a lantern pa.s.ses along the road. The sound is repeated. The negro comes through the bushes, raises his lantern and looks through the trees. Discerning a dark object among the branches, he shrinks back, crosses stage, and goes out through the wood to the left._

_A second negro comes through the bushes to the right. He carries two large baskets, which he places on the ground just inside of the bushes. Enter three Chinese, one of whom carries a lantern.

They pause on the road,_]

SECOND CHINESE. All you need, To find poetry, Is to look for it with a lantern. [_The Chinese laugh._]

THIRD CHINESE. I could find it without, On an August night, If I saw no more Then the dew on the barns.

[_The Second Negro makes a sound to attract their attention. The three Chinese come through the bushes. The first is short, fat, quizzical, and of middle age. The second is of middle height, thin and turning gray; a man of sense and sympathy. The third is a young man, intent, detached. They wear European clothes._]

SECOND CHINESE [_glancing at the baskets_].

Dew is water to see, Not water to drink: We have forgotten water to drink.

Yet I am content Just to see sunrise again.

I have not seen it Since the day we left Pekin.

It filled my doorway, Like whispering women.

FIRST CHINESE. And I have never seen it.

If we have no water, Do find a melon for me In the baskets.

[_The Second Negro, who has been opening the baskets, hands the First Chinese a melon._]

FIRST CHINESE. Is there no spring?

[_The negro takes a water bottle of red porcelain from one of the baskets and places it near the Third Chinese._]

SECOND CHINESE [_to Third Chinese_].

Your porcelain water bottle.

[_One of the baskets contains costumes of silk, red, blue and green. During the following speeches, the Chinese put on these costumes, with the a.s.sistance of the negro, and seat themselves on the ground._]

THIRD CHINESE. This fetches its own water.

[_Takes the bottle and places it on the ground in the center of the stage._]

I drink from it, dry as it is, As you from maxims, [_To Second Chinese._]

Or you from melons. [_To First Chinese._]

FIRST CHINESE. Not as I, from melons.

Be sure of that.

SECOND CHINESE. Well, it is true of maxims.

[_He finds a book in the pocket of his costume, and reads from it._]

"The court had known poverty and wretchedness; humanity had invaded its seclusion, with its suffering and its pity."

[_The limb of the tree creaks._]

Yes: it is true of maxims, Just as it is true of poets, Or wise men, or n.o.bles, Or jade.

FIRST CHINESE. Drink from wise men? From jade?

Is there no spring?

[_Turning to the negro, who has taken a jug from one of the baskets._]

Fill it and return.

[_The negro removes a large candle from one of the baskets and hands it to the First Chinese; then takes the jug and the lantern and enters the trees to the left. The First Chinese lights the candle and places it on the ground near the water bottle._]

THIRD CHINESE. There is a seclusion of porcelain That humanity never invades.

FIRST CHINESE [_with sarcasm_]. Porcelain!

THIRD CHINESE. It is like the seclusion of sunrise, Before it shines on any house.

FIRST CHINESE. Pooh!

SECOND CHINESE. This candle is the sun; This bottle is earth: It is an ill.u.s.tration Used by generations of hermits.

The point of difference from reality Is this: That, in this ill.u.s.tration, The earth remains of one color-- It remains red, It remains what it is.

But when the sun shines on the earth, In reality It does not shine on a thing that remains What it was yesterday.

The sun rises On whatever the earth happens to be.

THIRD CHINESE. And there are indeterminate moments Before it rises, Like this, [_With a backward gesture._]