All posts tagged Mildred

Tonight at 8.30 by Noel Coward (1936) – 3

‘Tonight at 8.30’ is a cycle of ten one-act plays by Noël Coward. It was first staged in London in 1936 with Coward himself and Gertrude Lawrence in the leading roles.

The plays are mostly comedies but three – ‘The Astonished Heart’, ‘Shadow Play’ and ‘Still Life’ – are serious. Four of the comedies include songs, with words and music by Coward.

One play, ‘Star Chamber’, was dropped after a single performance. The other nine plays were presented in three programmes of three plays each. There have been numerous revivals of many of the individual plays, but revivals of the complete cycle have been much less frequent. Several of the plays have been adapted for the cinema and television.

Background

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Coward wrote a succession of hits, ranging from the intimate comedies ‘Private Lives’ (in which Coward also starred alongside Gertrude Lawrence) and ‘Design for Living’, to the operetta ‘Bitter Sweet’ (1929) and the historical extravaganza ‘Cavalcade’ (1931).

After performing in ‘Private Lives’, Coward felt that the public enjoyed seeing him and Lawrence together on stage, and so he wrote the play cycle ‘Tonight at 8.30’ expressly as ‘acting, singing, and dancing vehicles for Gertrude Lawrence and myself’. But he also had the conscious motive of reviving the moribund form of the one-act play. As he wrote in the Preface to the printed plays:

A short play, having a great advantage over a long one in that it can sustain a mood without technical creaking or over padding, deserves a better fate, and if, by careful writing, acting and producing I can do a little towards reinstating it in its rightful pride, I shall have achieved one of my more sentimental ambitions.

Ten plays

The cycle consists of ten plays. In order of first production they are:

  1. We Were Dancing: A comedy in two scenes
  2. The Astonished Heart: A play in six scenes
  3. Red Peppers: An interlude with music
  4. Hands Across the Sea: A light comedy in one scene
  5. Fumed Oak: An unpleasant comedy in two scenes
  6. Shadow Play: A play with music
  7. Family Album: A Victorian comedy with music
  8. Star Chamber: A light comedy in one act
  9. Ways and Means: A comedy in three scenes
  10. Still Life: A play in five scenes

This blog post summarises and comments on numbers 7, 8, 9 and 10.

7. Family Album: A Victorian comedy with music

It is the evening of an autumn day in 1860. The entire 20-page play takes place in the same setting, the drawing room of a house in Kent belonging to the Featherways family. The play depicts this prosperous middle-class Victorian family, all wearing mourning and gathered after the funeral of their father. The group comprises his five children (in bold) and their spouses, if they have them:

  • Jasper Featherways, the facile flippant one, played by Coward
  • Jane, married to Jasper
  • Harriet Featherways now married to…
  • Charles Winter
  • Emily Featherways, now married to…
  • Edward Valance
  • Richard Featherways, unmarried
  • Lavinia Featherways, unmarried

They reminisce and call for madeira wine to drink a toast in. This is brought in by the ancient butler, Burrow, who is very hard of hearing which leads to utterly predictable and very enjoyable misunderstandings.

Jasper takes the lead in proposing toasts and is given a stream of comic and flippant remarks throughout. Lavinia is the most stern and Victorian of them all, strongly objecting to drinking after a funeral, and to many of the jokes and flippant remarks – ‘This is so wrong, so dreadfully wrong.’ As he proposes the toasts, Jasper breaks into song, the first of four songs in the piece:

At which point Jasper suggests it’s time to get the big old family trunk down from the attic. Jasper asks Burrows to fetch the box, to which Burrows comically replies that, yes, he’s wound them all up, to which Jasper says significantly louder, The box not the clocks.

So Jasper and Richard go up into the attic and fetch down a bog old dusty box. But when he goes to unlock it, discovers it’s already open and then realises it’s an old box full of their toys and dressing-up costumes. The Featherways offspring get these all out and start playing an old favourite game of theirs, Princes and Princesses which, again, triggers a song, ‘Princes and Princesses’, which I can’t find on the internet.

Incidentally, they have all continued drinking the madeira very liberally and have now finished the first bottle so ring for Burrows to bring another one which they pour out with gusto. This strikes me as not very 1860s behaviour, much more the drunken behaviour of Leo and Otto in ‘Design for Living’ or Elyot and Amanda in ‘Private Lives’.

They drink a toast to Burrows, who was so sweet and kind to them when they were all children. Any the next thing they find in the old trunk is a musical box which they wind up and which, of course, provides music for more songs, which they sing, amid more drinking. Here’s a medley of two of the songs, ‘Hearts and Flowers’ and ‘Music Box’.

The others are continuing uttering pious sentiments about their dead father when Lavinia amazes them and the audience by declaring she hated him.

LAVINIA: I hated Papa, so did you … He was cruel to Mama, he was unkind to us, he was profligate and pompous and worse still, he was mean.

Worst of all, he kept her at home as if imprisoned in the dark old Victorian home, counting his bills and sorting his linen and putting up with his silence or his insults. She hated him and she’s glad he’s dead.

(All this resonated with me much more since I read Virginia Woolf’s searing feminist polemic Three Guineas which, among other things, gives a horrible sense of how the Victorian home was a prison and a tomb for countless million unmarried middle class women, a plight dramatised by the case of Eleanor Pargiter in her novel, The Years.)

She then astonishes the others by telling them that the will read out to them that morning, the one which distributed family fortune equally among the five children, was not the old man’s final will. Just a week before he died he had made a new one, leaving the children nothing but dividing his fortune among his three mistresses and the rest to pay for a new church containing a grandiose memorial to himself in black marble.

This will was witnessed by Lavinia and Burrows, but now, she tells the flabbergasted family, precisely seven minutes after the old man expired, they burned it! Flabbergasted Jasper calls Burrows in to ask if all this is true but the deaf old retainer wisely and diplomatically states that his deafness is getting worse so that he will never be able to hear questions about the will.

They all realise what an excellent chap he is and invite him to join them for a (yet another) glass of madeira although it is Burrows himself who has the last toast, drinking to the whole family as, to the tune of the musical box, they dance round him hand in hand.

Comment

Immensely enjoyable because it’s one of the few Coward plays where the characters don’t spend a lot of the time shouting at each other or feeling miserable. It is wonderfully warm and happy and the plot, too, is simple but charming.

8. Star Chamber: A light comedy in one act

This is the one play in the set which was quickly dropped only being performed once. Maybe this was because it had by far the largest cast, with ten named parts.

It’s set on a West End stage around noon i.e. no question of a performance taking place. Instead one by one the ten or so characters arrive and we learn that they are all members of a ‘committee’ including its secretary. It takes a while to learn it’s the committee of the ‘Garrick Haven Fund’. The characters are:

  • Jimmie Horlick, stage manager
  • J. M. Farmer, secretary of the Garrick Haven Fund, amiable looking man between 30 and 40 carrying a briefcase stuffed with papers
  • Hester More, a vague, absent-minded and fanciful actress, ‘vague to the point of lunacy’
  • Johnny Bolton, a star comedian, middle aged, of working class origin, outlandishly dressed in ‘plus fours, a camel-hair coat, a check cap and a very bright scarf’
  • Julian Breed, the leading young actor in London
  • Violet Vibart, an elderly actress of considerable reputation
  • Maurice Searle, an exceedingly handsome virile young actor, mortally embarrassed because he’s had to grow long hair for a film role
  • Dame Rose Maitland, a grande dame of the theatre, majestic and autocratic, a vice president of the committee
  • Elise Brodie, an actress, pretty and respectable, another vice president of the committee
  • Xenia James, an actress, president of the Fund

I loved all these caricatures, very enjoyable. I loved Hester’s wild flights of fantasy (flights which I’ve noted running like a thread through so many of his plays), I loved the way the Johnnie character sticks out a mile because of his Cockney accent and the way he keeps trying to tell people long boring scenarios which everyone drifts off and ignores and so which are never finished.

I love the lofty way the grande dame ignores everyone and fails to hear anything she doesn’t want to. It takes a while for all these thespians to arrive and settle down and it’s funny how they’ve just agreed that, in the absence of the chair, Xenia James, Dame Rose will chair the meeting when the very same Xenia James makes a grand entrance dragged along by a vast great Dane, who she’s named after a fellow actor who passed away, Atherton.

Synopsis

Anyway, on the bare stage of a West End theatre the stage manager, Jimmie Horlick, is arranging chairs round a large table in preparation for a meeting of the committee of the Garrick Haven Fund. The committee members arrive in dribs and drabs.

First, Mr Farmer, Secretary of the Fund, briefcase packed with papers, methodical and harassed. Next Hester More, a dizzy young actress; Johnny Bolton, ‘a star comedian of middle age but perennial youthfulness’; Violet Vibart, an elderly actress of great distinction; Julian Breed, a popular juvenile lead; Maurice Searle, a character actor who has grown his hair to shoulder length for an historical role and feels self-conscious about it; the majestic Dame Rose Maitland; the preoccupied Elise Brodie; and finally, and very late, Xenia James, chairman of the committee, with her dog, Atherton.

The whole thing from start to finish is characterised by all the characters’ complete inability to concentrate, focus or obey rules. Instead the continually gossip, talk over each other, interrupt whoever else is speaking, undermine the chair and ignore Farmer’s long boring presentation.

In a nutshell, this is a meeting of the Garrick Haven fund, established in 1902 to provide a home for destitute actresses. The fund is well off, with a balance of £58,000, largely generated by the annual fun fair. Mention of this characteristically triggers all present to wander off into memories of the fair and complaints about all aspects of its management.

With difficulty, Farmer tries to quieten them down and get their attention back onto the issue the meeting’s been called for which is to give formal consent for much-needed structural alterations to the retirement house (notably an extra bathroom and inside toilet).

At this point Atherton starts farting and Xenia gets nice Mr Horlick to take him (very gingerly) off to the props room. Farmer reads a letter from the residents politely asking for the extra loo and bathroom and then proceeds to read out, at very great length, the precise and exact quote for the building works which he’s received from the builders (Messrs Joyce and Spence) and the committee has to sign off on, amounting to £3,082, 17 shillings and fourpence.

The comedy derives from the way it’s like herding cats: the actors are completely incapable of concentrating on anything without wandering off into digressions and lots of private conversations, in one instance a suggestion that the new buildings be decorated with framed posters from old play productions.

Xenia sneaks off to check on Atherton and finds her darling fast asleep and twitching as though chasing rabbits in a dream.

Farmer attempts to read out a further quote for the plumbing work but by now the actors have had it. A press photographer arrives and they are all instantly distracted by this, As Farmer drones valiantly on all the others arrange themselves with much fussing for a group photo.

The actors start to leave in ones and twos as they arrived, Julian and Maurice leaving with the photographer. Xenia makes a speech appealing for donations and promises to give £100 to set the ball rolling not having really grasped that donations are not at all needed, what was needed was attention and responsibility. Then, without formally closing the meeting, she too dashes off, forgetting her dog.

Johnny gets to his feet to second Xenia’s fine sentiments and is droning on about what a worthy cause it is, and how we may all suffer poverty one day etc but he is drowned out by the sound of the remaining thespians all saying goodbye to each other, giving air kisses, promising to meet again soon etc until he becomes utterly demoralised and gives up.

Only valiant Mr Farmer is left to Johnny, with no-one else to snare, invites him to lunch at his club and Farmer is incautious enough to accept. As they walk off he tells Jimmie to turn off the lights, thus providing a mirror of the opening of the play (lights on, enter Jimmie, then Johnny, then Farmer).

And, in a last gag, after everyone has exited the bare stage and the lights have gone off, we hear the mournful howling of the dog Atherton, locked up and abandoned in the props room.

Maybe I’m in a relaxed mood today, but I found this as entertaining and funny as Victorian Album.

9. Ways and Means: A Light Comedy in Three Scenes

We are in the South of France, on the fashionable Cote d’Azur. We are in the house of the very well-off Mrs Lloyd-Ransome. The curtain opens to reveal a bedroom and in the bed, having breakfast off a tray, are the unhappy married couple Toby and Stella Cartwright.

Briefly: he has gambled away all their money. They’re in debt to their banks and everyone they know including their hostess in this house. The dialogue mostly consists of despair at being so broke, alternately flippant / humorous and genuinely despairing.

Toby tells their Nanny (‘a capable looking, middle-aged woman’) to pawn Stella’s jewellery and the gold buttons off his waistcoat. They then go back to the casino to gamble with the cash but in the second scene we find them a few hours later, back in the bed, and utterly despairing, since they have lost everything they got from the pawnbrokers in four minutes flat. Toby had got a place at the big table and was feeling lucky when he was asked to give up his place by an American lady, Mrs Irving Brandt. Ever the gentleman, he gave up his place when a lady requested it and Mrs Irving Brandt went on to ‘run the bank’ 17 times and win 175,000 francs. When she had utterly cleaned up she graciously let Toby have the seat and he promptly lost everything.

Angry, he goes into the bathroom where he manages to bang his head on the mirror and cut himself. There’s a big song and dance while Stella tells him not to be such a baby and gets some iodine to dress the wound.

After much more fuss and flippancy and lamenting, they go to bed and put the lights out. This sets the scene for the third and final scene in which they’re awakened by a burglar. When they call out and put the lights on he pulls a gun on them. However, he’s not a very good burglar and they first demoralise him by telling him they have no money and then manage to disarm him, seize the gun and turn the tables.

When they take his mask off they discover it’s the chauffeur of posh people in their circle, a man named Stevens. Now we understand why there’d been some chat in the first scene, among their posh friends, about some scandal involving this chauffeur. He had been dismissed for having a fling with his employer (Mrs Bainbridge)’s daughter, May. Now he explains that, thus thrown out of work, he decided to try his hand at crime.

So, as in these posh comedies, as for example in P.G. Wodehouse, the posh protagonists turn out to be on good terms with their would-be burglar, and have a civilised chat and a drink. Suddenly a plan occurs to Toby. Remember the 175,000 francs won by Mrs Irving Brandt? Toby suggests Stevens sneaks down the hall and into her room and steals that 175,000 francs.

Despite Stevens’ and Stella’s initial objections, this is what he ends up doing, returning five minutes later not only with all the cash but with some diamonds he pinched as well. They secrete the money in their clothes to look like it’s theirs, then get Stevens to tie them up.

The plan is to look like he broke into their room, tied them up, burgled them, then onto Mrs Brandt, before returning to their room and escaping. So this is what he does, ties them to their chairs and finally ties gags over their mouths. Up to that point they’d been conducting a comic Wodehouse-style conversation in which they promised to help him out with his choice of a new career and he answered all their requests with yes sir, yes ma’am.

He bows politely and leaves them tied to their chairs, gagged, and laughing hysterically.

The way the whole thing is a kind of conspiracy or scam which leaves the actors hooting with laughter is identical with the end of ‘Design for Living’ where the more the outraged husband preaches old-fashioned morality, the more Leo, Otto and Gilda fall about laughing.

In one sense his plays are a kind of conspiracy by imaginative tricksters against the conventional values and morality of the older generation and the poor saps among the current generation who still believe them.

Thoughts

His fans and blurb writers endlessly praise Coward for the wit and stylishness of his writing and dialogue. The plays certainly are almost entirely about posh upper-middle-class people, and they contain much 1) posing and prancing and characters drawing attention to their own poshness with their drawling flippancy and ‘wit’. But this summary or cliché ignores two other major elements of his approach or style or schtick, which are 2) arguments and abuse and 3) flights of fantasy.

1. Wit

STELLA: You seem to forget that one a certain bleak day in 1928 I gave my life into your keeping.
TOBY: Marriage is a sacrament, a mystic rite, and you persist in regarding it as a sort of plumber’s estimate.

TOBY: You play bridge too merrily, Stella.
STELLA: My merriment is entirely a social gesture. I loathe bridge.
TOBY: That is no excuse for playing it as if it were lacrosse.

TOBY: From now onwards I intend to live in the past – the present is too unbearable. I intend to go back to the happy scenes of my boyhood.
STELLA: I’m sorry I’m not a rocking horse.
TOBY: You underrate yourself, darling.

2. Abuse

It had previously been axiomatic that a gentleman never lost his temper and was chivalrous and respectful to woman. The Coward male is neither of these things. The Coward male loses his temper all the time, every few minutes flies into a frothing spitting rage, see ‘Private Lives’ or ‘Design for Living’ or Toby, here.

The furious Coward male also doesn’t mince his words, hurling the most astonishing abuse, insults and threats at his woman. The level of hatred, cursing and threats in ‘Private Lives’ staggered me.

The couple at various moments say:

STELLA: Be quiet… Oh shut up!.. Don’t be so idiotic… Don’t be so silly… Don’t be so childish… Shut up… Toby, don’t be such a fool…

TOBY: Shut up!.. Be quiet, Stella… Don’t be an idiot Stella…

A bit more elaborately:

STELLA: You have the moral values of a warthog… You have a disgusting mind, Toby…

3. Fantasy

The really characteristic thing about Coward, I think, is when his lead characters go off on wild imaginative flights of fancy. Mad frivolous fantasies were Elyot’s distinguishing feature in ‘Private Lives’ and all three protagonists in ‘Design for Living’ cook up fantastical scenarios, and it crops up again here, as Toby in particular expresses his unhappiness in terms of far-fetched similes and scenarios.

TOBY: It is possible, in my present state of splendid detachment, that I might go off into a yogi trance and stay upside down for several days.

Or ridiculous plans:

TOBY: Let’s go quietly but firmly along the passage and murder Pearl Brandt.

Stella’s suggestion that maybe she could do a little light prostitution to earn the money they need. Or her absurd exaggeration:

STELLA: We’ll deliver ourselves over to Olive bound and gagged in the morning.

Coward’s imaginative characters are always overflowing with absurd and fantastical scenarios. It’s this, I think, the vein of fantasy which pops up, a smaller or larger ingredient of each play, much more than the alleged ‘wit’, which makes his plays so entertaining. (Cf ‘Shadow Play’ which is one big fantasy.)

10. Still Life: A play in five scenes

Executive summary

The play portrays the chance meeting at a suburban railway station, the subsequent love affair and eventual parting of a married woman, Laura Jesson, and a doctor, Alec Harvey. The sadness of their secretive affair is contrasted throughout the play with the boisterous life of the tea shop and station staff. ‘Still Life’ differs from most of the plays in the ‘Tonight at 8.30’ cycle by having an unhappy ending. It was also, of course, the basis of the 1945 film, ‘Brief Encounter’, directed by David Lean and starring Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson, which is regularly cited as one of the top ten British films of all time.

Synopsis

The five scenes are set in the same location, namely the tea room at Milford Junction railway station, which is dominated by the elaborate refreshments counter / station buffet, overseen by the strict Myrtle Bagot who bosses around her downtrodden assistant Beryl Waters, and flirts in an imperious dismissive way with Albert the ticket inspector. The action takes place in five scenes across the span of a single year, from April to March.

Scene 1 5.30 on an April afternoon. Myrtle’s character is established as she bosses around her assistant Beryl and rebuffs the attempts of Albert, the ticket-inspector, to flirt with her. Laura is waiting for her train home after shopping. She goes out onto the platform as an express races by with an enormous noise and re-enters moments later complaining of having a smut of grit in her eye. Myrtle gets some water and Albert offers advice but it’s the handsome young Alec introduces himself as a doctor and uses his hankie to remove it for her. She thanks him and goes to catch her train, he goes back to his cup of tea.

Scene 2 Three months later, in July. The ‘rude mechanicals’ i.e. the working class characters provide a foil or backdrop for the main love story. (The phrase ‘rude mechanical’ comes from Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ where it refers to the working class artisans who have their own farcical love story which parallels the love story of the main protagonists who are lords and ladies. Three hundred and forty years later Coward is still using much the same device.)

And so the scene opens with Myrtle telling Beryl about a fortune teller who told her love life accurately before Albert breezes in wanting tea and cakes for some travellers on the platform. Against this bright and breezy background, enter Alec and Lara together. He buys two teas and two bath buns.

It becomes clear that after their first meeting they encountered each other a second time by chance and like each other’s company and have had lunch and gone to the pictures together. He took an afternoon off work. Now he’s praising her as ‘awfully nice’, but she feels guilty. When she was a girl living in Cornwall, she and her sister used to sneak out the house at night to go swim in the sea but always felt guilty. Now she feels the same. She’s ‘a respectable married woman with a husband and a home and three children.’

They ask each other to describe their spouses, as people having affairs often do, out of guilt and also to make it seem more homely, more real. She gets him to talk about his work and he explains his passionate interest in preventive medicine, and then goes into more detail about his interest in lung diseases. She sits entranced until it’s time for his train. Suddenly he wants more than to bump into each other by accident but begs that she’ll meet him the following Thursday, in a week’s time, and after initial reluctance, as he takes his hand and prepares to run for his train, she agrees.

Scene 3 Another three months have passed so it’s October. As usual the scene opens with the proles, Albert and Myrtle, flirting. They seem to have reached a new level of intimacy, as he asks her for a kiss over the counter and, on entering, slaps her behind as she’s bent over. She scolds him but permits it. In his tussle to get a kiss they know some cakes on the floor and are picking them up when Alec and Laura come in.

As usual, Alec buys two teas and takes them to their usual table. From their conversation it becomes clear that they have seen a good deal more of each other and have fallen in love. He accepts it and wants her to but Laura is fighting against it, says it’s wrong, ‘dreadfully wrong’. He wants to arrange an afternoon at a friend, Stephen’s, house, presumably to have sex. She, of course, thinks it’s horrible and squalid and will be spoiled by the fear hanging over them. He tells her they’ve both been in love before but neither of them have known this ‘something lovely and strange and desperately difficult’ and, as usual, when she listens to him she is entranced.

As with so many of these Coward plays it’s a question of hermeneutics, of clashing and competing interpretations. They both feel a tremendous attraction to each other but whereas Alec argues strongly for giving into it, Laura bridles and argues against it. She vividly describes going home after their Thursday meetings, and feeling adrift and alien in her house, weirdly detached from all the humdrum objects of her normal domestic life. He becomes more ardent and passionate, holding her hand, saying how he counts the hours till Thursday comes round again.

This intense conversation is completely overshadowed by two loud soldiers entering the room and asking Myrtle for some alcohol. She can’t serve it because it’s out of hours and this develops into an extended argument with them making all kinds of reasons why they need a nice drop, why can’t she put it in the tea etc, while she absolutely refuses to break the law. Eventually she tells Beryl to fetch Norman who takes charge of the situation and tells the two squaddies to ‘op it, before saying he has to return to his gate. Myrtle asks Beryl to get her a glass of brandy for her nerves and tells Beryl that Norman Godby may be on the short side ‘but ‘e’s a gentleman.’

After this extended interruption we return to Alec and Laura at their table. He delivers a speech about how they have to be strong enough to live up to their love, ‘clean and untouched’ by other people’s knowledge, ‘something of our own forever’.

He scribbles the address of his colleague’s flat on a piece of paper for her, says he’s going to miss his train and go to the flat and he’ll be waiting for her and leaves. Laura stares at the paper, then we hear a train steaming in and Myrtle comments on the time, making it quite clear that it’s Laura’s train. Laura gets up, goes to the platform door, pauses, the whistle blows and the train starts to puff out, while she slowly exits the tea room.

I.e. she is going to keep her rendezvous with Alec at his friend’s flat. Presumably to have sex and thereby break her fidelity to her husband, and also the law.

Scene 4 It’s December. As usual the scene opens with comic business among the working classes. If tea room boss Myrtle is carrying on with Norman the ticket collector, Beryl is continuing to be wooed by the man who carries a tray of refreshments round the platforms, Stanley. He asks if he can walk Beryl home, asks her to lock up early, so they can have an extra five minutes, presumably for snogging. Thus the mating game, played at every level of society. In all three relationships, it’s the men who are constantly pushing for more, and the women who, in their various ways, are reluctant or refuse. Is that true of ‘real life’? Or just the convention of the time, and of many times, but not of our modern liberated age?

Laura comes in looking pale and anxious, asks for a brandy, and a pen and paper, which Beryl reluctantly gives her, then sits down to write – presumably an important message to Alec – but breaks down in tears and then Alec comes in anyway. We quickly learn that they were together (presumably for the umpteenth time) at this friend of Alec’s flat, when he came home unexpectedly early and caught them. At least, Alec darted out to chat to the fellow while Laura had to get dressed in a hurry and nip out the back, feeling like a prostitute. She bets they chatted and had a good laugh about her, like men of the world.

He apologises then we get to the heart of the matter, the clash of worldviews or values. Because Alec claims that nothing else matters except their love, except their knowledge that they love each other. But Laura says that other things matter too, such as self respect and decency. So he is the voice of unbridled passion, she, as so often, embodies the weight of social convention, conventional morality etc.

Alec walks over and faces a picture on the wall because he can’t face her as he agrees that this thing will have to end: not their love, he will go on loving her to the end of his life; but their being together. He returns to the table and tells her he is going away. He’s been offered a post at a hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa. It’s a golden opportunity. He’s been agonising for weeks but now he can see this thing is ending and so… Should he go or should he turn it down? This, of course, is cruel of him, handing the whole responsibility of ending the affair to her, specially as she’s shown how vulnerable and conflicted she is. Of course she tells him to go.

He asks her to meet him one last time. Not at the flat, that’s now out of bounds, but at a café in town and they’ll go for a drive in the country. His train chuffs in and he has to go. He apologises for ever meeting her, falling in love with her, for causing her so much misery and she apologises back.

Even this scene, obviously designed to be heart-wringing, is interwoven with comedy from the proles because, before the moments, Alec has to bribe stroppy surly Beryl not to close the café at 10pm as she ought to do, but leave it open for just a few minutes more, so that he can have these final words with Laura.

In other words, this device, of paralleling the main love affair with the shenanigans of the rude mechanicals does a number of things: it provides comic relief for the high emotion of the central couple; but it also sets off and heightens their emotional moments; and it creates a vivid sense of the pressure and constraints under which an affair is carried out. The mechanicals are emblematic not only of society’s moral constraints but of the busyness of life, all the timetables of work and spouses and children and responsibilities and duties which any affair has to find time amid, stolen moments, always limited, which eventually come to seem sordid and sneaky, and make the protagonists, like Laura, feel cheap and miserable.

Scene 5 The fifth and final scene is set in March. Albert is more cocky and confident with Myrtle and sends Beryl into the back room ready to steal a kiss, when Alec and Laura enter. It’s a lovely touch that the station staff have, of course, noticed their romantic trysts, and have taken to calling them Romeo and Juliet. To ourselves, in our own minds, we live intense and tragic lives. To other people, we barely register or only as comic figures of fun.

Obviously this is the last scene between Alec and Laura and meant to be intensely moving but it is typical of the play that almost half of it is taken up with a great palaver among the proles. Mildred, who keeps the newspaper and bookstall comes running in to bring the message that Beryl’s mum’s been taken ill again and they’ve rushed her off to hospital. This leads to a cascade of consequences as Beryl is told, gets in a fret, Myrtle says she’d better go to the hospital straightaway, Mildred better go with her for moral support, she (Myrtle) will stay till locking up time (10pm). Which irritates Albert because he’d bought them tickets to see a show, Broadway Melody of 1936, and he slams his teacup down in exasperation.

Only after this extended palaver do we get to Alec and Laura. This is the last time they’ll meet before he leaves for South Africa and she has come to see him off. He asks if he may write but she says no, better not.

He tells her he loves her with all his heart and she quietly whispers that she wants to die. God. Tortured illicit love.

It is their last few minutes together and they are utterly ruined by the entrance of a friend of Laura’s, the fussy and talkative Dolly, who is overjoyed to bump into her old friend, joins them at their table, and sets about telling her all about her day’s doings, while Laura and Alec can only stare into each other’s eyes.

With the result that their last few minutes together before his train arrives are completely swamped and their goodbye is cruelly limited to a formal handshake. And so Alec goes out while Laura remains, trapped listening to prattling Dolly, who now whitters on about a couple they know who are getting divorced because he had a mistress up in town, the wife spotted it then it all came out etc.

You can imagine how this is daggers to the heart of Laura who has always been more conscious of how society sees these things i.e. crudely, dismissively, heartlessly.

They all hear the express through train approaching and Dolly goes to the counter to buy some chocolate for her son, when Laura suddenly snaps and rushes out onto the platform. Dolly turns and notices her missing and Myrtle says she didn’t see her go.

For a moment there is the strong implication that Laura has run out onto the platform to kill herself by throwing herself in front of the train. For a minute. But then the café door opens and she comes back in, looking ‘very white and shaky’.

Solid practical Dolly asks if she’s alright and when Laura says she feels a bit sick, persuades Myrtle to pour some brandy for Laura (tenpence). They hear the sound of their train, the stopping suburban train coming, Dolly gathers up her parcels and accompanies Laura out as the curtain falls. Masterpiece.

Brief Encounter

Various of the plays were adapted for TV or cinema. Coward himself adapted ‘Still Life’ for the screen as ‘Brief Encounter’, one of the most famous British films of all time.

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Posted by Simon on June 11, 2025

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2025/06/11/tonight-at-8-30-noel-coward-3/

Eastward Ho! by George Chapman, Ben Jonson and John Marston (1605)

Six salient facts:

1. Eastward Ho and Westward Ho were the cries of the watermen who plied on the Thames, telling customers which way they were headed.

2. Eastward Ho! was a collaboration between three leading playwrights of the era, George Chapman, Ben Jonson and John Marston. Scholars have been arguing for centuries about who wrote which bit.

3. Eastward Ho! was staged at the Blackfriars Theatre by a company of boy actors known as the Children of the Queen’s Revels, granted a patent by King James I in 1604. Boy actors! So imagine everything that follows being played by boys! All the double entendres and jokes about pricks and purses, Gertrude making eyes at Quicksilver, Sindefy the whore, all the vamping… boys.

4. Eastward Ho! was performed at the Blackfriars Theatre. This was an enclosed theatre which catered to a financial elite, charging sixpence admission, compared to 1 pence at the more popular and open-to-the-elements Globe Theatre.

5. Eastward Ho! includes references to and parodies of popular contemporary plays such as The Spanish Tragedy, Tamburlaine and Hamlet. Even the play’s title is a reference, a riposte to the recently performed Westward Ho! by Thomas Dekker and John Webster, who then went on to write Northward Ho! as a response to Eastward. Jacobean theatre was a tightly packed, highly competitive, self-referential little world.

6. The play contained scathing satire on all manner of subjects to do with contemporary London life, but one of these was the widespread animosity against the many Scots who had accompanied the new king, James VI of Scotland who became James I of England upon the death of Queen Elizabeth in March 1605, down to London. Chronically poor from the start of his reign, James quickly became notorious for selling knighthoods for £40. 900 were sold in the first year of his reign. This created a mercenary atmosphere of corruption, that all that mattered was money, a sense that you could get rich and climb the social ladder overnight by clever scams. This is the corrupt vision which lures Quicksilver, Petronel and Security, the play’s three baddies, who all hope to get rich quick by various scams – and who are balanced by Touchstone, standing for the bourgeois virtues of hard work, and Golding, who stands for loyalty and honesty.

Having read the play I’m surprised that the handful of satirical references to the Scots and the selling of knighthoods are relatively trivial, you could blink and miss them.

1. When Sir Petronel Flash is washed up on the Isle of Dogs two passing gentlemen mock him, and then one – out of tune with his preceding remarks – says something in a Scots accent:

FIRST GENTLEMAN: On the coast of Dogs, sir; y’are i’th’ Isle o’ Dogs, I tell you, I see y’ave been washed in the Thames here, and I believe ye were drowned in a tavern before, or else you would never have took boat in such a dawning as this was. Farewell, farewell; we will not know you for shaming of you. I ken the man weel; he’s one of my thirty pound knights.
SECOND GENTLEMAN: No, no, this is he that stole his knighthood o’ the grand day for four pound given to a page; all the money in’s purse, I wot well.

It’s peculiar the way this one-off remark and its odd Scottish impersonation sticks out from the text around it, as if it’s been cut and pasted onto the rest of his speech in English. It’s an oddly random moment in the text

2. In the pub, the gentlemen who are joining the expedition to Virginia ask Captain Seagull what it’s like and he sets off on a long deceitful description of how it’s overflowing with gold,m in the middle of which he suddenly segues into a passage about Scots, and the jokey idea that it would be lovely if all the Scots in London could be magically transported to America.

SCAPETHRIFT: And is it a pleasant country withal?
SEAGULL: As ever the sun shined on; temperate and full of all sorts of excellent viands: wild boar is as common there as our tamest bacon is here; venison as mutton. And then you shall live freely there, without sergeants, or courtiers, or lawyers, or intelligencers, only a few industrious Scots, perhaps, who indeed are dispersed over the face of the whole earth. But as for them, there are no greater friends to Englishmen and England, when they are out on’t, in the world, than they are. And for my part, I would a hundred thousand of ’hem were there, for we are all one countrymen now, ye know, and we should find ten times more comfort of them there than we do here.

Someone reported the playwrights to the authorities as disrespecting the new king. Marston got wind of it and went into hiding, but Jonson and Chapman were briefly imprisoned for lèse majesty.

Ten years later, Jonson told Drummond of Hawthornden (a Scots writer who he stayed with on a visit to Scotland) that they thought they might have their ears and noses slit.

It’s very difficult for us to really assimilate the casual violence and casual death of the Elizabethan/Jacobean period. Tens of thousands died of the periodic outbreaks of plague. There were plenty of other ailments to die of in between. You were liable to be conscripted for one of the endless wars. Jonson is known to have killed a fellow actor in a duel. The plays refer to the common punishment of being whipped. And here are a couple of poets in gaol for a few weeks wondering if they’ll publicly have their ears cut off or noses slit! As I say, difficult for us to really imagine what life was like.

What happened to Jonson and Chapman? The pair wrote letters to every influential patron and person they knew asking for their intercession. These letters are included as an appendix in the New Mermaid edition of the play and very interesting reading they make, too. Eventually, they were released, whereupon they threw a big banquet for their friends and supporters.

Cast

There’s quite a large cast (all played by boys!):

Touchstone, a goldsmith.
Quicksilver, and Golding, apprentices to Touchstone.
Sir Petronel Flash, a shifty knight.
Security, an old usurer.
Bramble, a lawyer.
Seagull, a sea-captain.
Scapethrift, and Spendall, adventurers bound for Virginia.
Slitgut, a butcher’s apprentice.
Poldavy, a tailor.
Holdfast, and Wolf, officers of the Counter.
Hamlet, a footman.
Potkin, a tankard-bearer.

Mistress Touchstone.
Gertrude, and Mildred, her daughters.
Winifred, wife to Security.
Sindefy, mistress to Quicksilver.
Bettrice, a waiting-woman.
Mrs. Ford, Mrs. Gazer, Coachman, Page, Constables, Prisoners, &c.

Eastward Ho! plot summary

Master Touchstone is an honest but tetchy goldsmith. He has two daughters and two apprentices. The elder daughter, Gertrude, is ‘of a proud ambition and nice wantonness’, the younger, Mildred, ‘of a modest humility and comely soberness’. So with the apprentices who are nicely paired & contrasted, Quicksilver is a graceless unthrift ‘of a boundless prodigality’, but Golding is ‘of a most hopeful industry’, a model of industry and sobriety.

Act 1 scene 1

The play opens with Touchstone and Frank Quicksilver arguing, the latter insisting he is the son of a gentleman and is off to the pub to hang out with gallants and gull them out of money. Crossly, Touchstone says that he rose by hard work and repeats his catchphrase, ‘Work upon it now!’ Touchstone exits and Golding is left alone with Quicksilver, who insults Touchstone for being a flat-capped bourgeois, swears a lot and it is in this speech that Quicksilver says Golding shouldn’t face West to the setting sun, but look out for himself and fare Eastward Ho!

As the play develops East is associated with:

  • the rising sun
  • the mythical castle in the country which Sir Petronal Flash claims to own
  • the direction down the Thames the ship to America will take

Act 1 scene 2

Proud Gertrude is impatiently awaiting the arrival of her suitor, Sir Petronel Flash, while meek and mild sister Mildred watches her dress up in pretentious finery, mock the lowly origins of her own parents, and look forward to becoming a fine lady. Her tailor, Poldavy, encourages her to prance and bob like a ‘fine lady’. She is a type of the pretentious bourgeois.

Enter Sir Petronel Flash who quickly comes over as a superficial fool. Mistress Touchstone is as keen to be rich as Gertrude and the two of them, plus Flash, make a bevy of pretentious fools. Mistress T explains that Sir Petronel is one of the new knights, a reference to James I’s innovation of selling knighthoods. Gertrude wishes him to take her away from all this to his big house in the country. She uses the affected pronunciation of city-dames, namely saying ‘chity’ and ‘chitizen’.

The pretentious threesome exit leaving the stage to Touchstone, Mildred and Golding. Rather surprisingly Touchstone marries Golding to Mildred. She is all filial loyalty and so meekly agrees, Golding swears his devotion to his master and they go in to have a little wedding meal. Touchstone, alone on stage, explains that he is running a little experiment:

This match shall on, for I intend to prove
Which thrives the best, the mean or lofty love.
Whether fit wedlock vow’d ’twixt like and like,
Or prouder hopes, which daringly o’erstrike…

There is no mention of any love or affection whatsoever between the young couple. It is a striking example of Jonson’s didactic theatre, utterly lacking either the magical romance of Shakespeare’s comedies, or the innocent mirth of Dekker’s Shoemakers’ Holiday.

Act 2 scene 1

Next morning outside Master Touchstone’s shop. He calls Quicksilver to him, who is hungover and explains he got smashed at the party to celebrate Gertrude and Sir Petronel’s wedding. He staggers off to drink some more. Touchstone retires and listens to the conversation of Golding and Mildred which is exemplary for love and devotion. At this point Quicksilver staggers back on stage, positively drunk and asks first Golding, then Touchstone if he can borrow money.

Touchstone has had enough and throws him out, giving him his indenture and all other belongings. Very drunk, Quicksilver quotes the opening speech from Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, then swears at Touchstone:

Quicksilver: Sweet Touchstone, will you lend me two shillings?
Touchstone: Not a penny.
Quicksilver: Not a penny? I have friends, and I have acquaintance; I will piss at thy shop-posts, and throw rotten eggs at thy sign.

As Quicksilver staggers offstage, Touchstone abruptly frees Golding from his apprenticeship, offers him a handsome dowry and promises to host a marriage feast even more spectacular than Petronel’s. Golding, modest and sober, demurs, saying it would be profligate and wasteful and he and Mildred will be happy to have a small ceremony with just Touchstone present, and then consume the cold leftovers from Petronel’s feast. Touchstone remarks that his daughter is now impatient to seat off Eastward to her knightly husband’s country pile.

Act 2 scene 2

At Security’s house. Security has a little soliloquy in which he introduces himself as Security, the famous usurer, who keeps people’s belongings, in this case the fine clothes of Quicksilver, who in the past has nipped in here to swap his prentice clothes for fancy togs to go meeting his gallant mates.

Enter hungover Quicksilver climbing into his swagger clothes. The notes explain the business relationship between the two: Quicksilver pretends friendship to city rakes and gallants, lends them money, then pretends to be in debt, persuades them to sign a bond for a commodity or an exorbitantly high-interest loan payable to Security, for which they are responsible. In other words, Quicksilver dupes his ‘friends’ into getting into deep debt with Security: which is why Security keeps his clothes and minds his affairs for him.

Security is married to a young woman, Winifred but has a sexy servant, Sindefy, ‘Sin’ for short, who comes bearing the rest of Quicksilver’s posh clothes. Quicksilver calls Security ‘Dad’. After lengthy speeches about how they rely on no trade, preferring to make money out of money, (which are designed, I think, to make the audience despise them) Security lays out their latest plan: Quicksilver will get Sir Petronel Flash into his debt. They’ve learned that Flash married Gertrude to get his hands on her inheritance, to convert it to cash and take ship for Virginia as a ‘knight adventurer’.

They devise a Plan: Gertrude has not yet gone down to the country to visit her husband’s (fictional) castle, but is still in London. Quicksilver will visit her and will help the introduction of Sindefy who will take on the character of a gullible young woman just up from the country – you can just imagine this will lead to an orgy of ridiculous social pretentiousness.

Just before they pack up, Security is called offstage by his wife (?) Winnie, leaving Quicksilver alone. Out of Quicksilver’s mouth oozes pure, malicious evil, as he insults Security behind his back and says he hopes to live to see dog’s meat made of his flesh. This sounds like Ben Jonson. It is exactly the tone of vicious hatred which animates Mosca in Volpone. Coming from the bonhomie of The Shoemakers’ Holiday, this kind of thing is like treading in dog poo.

Act 2 scene 3

Quicksilver is at Petronel’s London lodging as the latter prepares to set off. He wants to flee London to escape his wife, who he can’t stand. He readily admits he has no castle in the country, something Gertrude will shortly find out. With what I think of as typical Jonsonian heartlessness, Petronel hopes Gertrude will hang herself in despair.

Quicksilver persuades Petronel to stay and get Gertrude to sign over her inheritance, give it in bond to Security who will increase its value. Enter Gertrude now dressed grandly and swanking with grand manners, telling the men when to doff their hats and when to put them back on.

Security presents to her Sindefy, demurely dressed, and preposterously describes her as a simple country girl who intended to become a nun but has come up to the big city seeking advice. In her pretentiously lofty manner, Gertrude agrees to employ her as her personal maid.

Security invites Petronal to come and dine with him but Gertrude is hen-pecking him, and refuses to let him go, insisting they dine at home so she can quickly take him to bed. Quicksilver and Security make cheeky asides about her being bossy. Finally it is agreed that Petronel will visit Security the following morning.

Act 3 scene 1

The next morning at Security’s house, he has just given Petronel a fine breakfast feast. They exchange extravagant compliments, Security promising to make Petronel godfather to his first child, while Petronel gives him a diamond to give his first-born, and Security makes his young wife, Winifred, kiss him. Security’s lawyer, Bramble, has drawn up documents.

Enter the captain of the ship taking Petronel, Captain Seagull and Spendall who say they must haste and leave under cover since the ship is taken out in a false name.

Act 3 scene 2

An inn-yard where the harassed coachman and servant makes haste to prepare Gertrude’s coach. She is obsessed with being the wife of a knight and having a coach. Two city women, Mistresses Gaze and Fond, line up to watch the show and shout encouragement to Mistress Gertrude, who is accompanied by her mother, Mistress Touchstone, equally impatient to be a Great Lady.

Petronel himself arrives and asks her to wait, but she says she is impatient to decorate his castle for his arrival. Quicksilver also enters and tells Gertrude her father has just officiated at the wedding of Golding and Mildred. Gertrude is disgusted at her father for marrying her sister to a common apprentice: henceforth he (her father) will have to call her ‘Madam’.

Enter Touchstone, Mildred and Golding. Gertrude is appalled her sister got married in such a common hat. Touchstone disowns her for snobbery. Gertrude insults Golding for marrying her sister. Golding is tactful and considerate of his master.

Enter Security and his lawyers and they cozen Gertrude into signing away her inheritance, she thinking it’s a minor property in town and the money will be used to beautify the castle. She and Mistress Touchstone and Sindefy, her maid, depart in the coach. Petronel and Quicksilver discuss the very great disappointment Gertrude is going to have when she discovers he has no castle – but by then Petronel will have fled the country.

Petronel expects Security to bring him the money they’ve discussed at Billingsgate. There then follows a complicated sequence during which Petronel reveals to Security that he is in love with the wife of Security’s lawyer, Bramble. He would like, as a favour, Security to take Bramble out for a drink, while he steals Bramble’s wife away. Security enters into the spirit of the plot and exits. Only then do Petronel and Quicksilver reveal that, while Security is out with Bramble, Petronel will steal away Security’s wife, Winifred. Quicksilver and Petronel are fretting about how to disguise her, when Security unexpectedly re-enters and says the best disguise will be his wife’s cloak and hands it over.

Act 3 scene 3

Captain Seagull and his men (Spendall and Scapethrift) are at the Blue Anchor tavern, Billingsgate, awaiting Petronel. His dim men ask about Virginia and Seagull confidently tells them the streets are paved with gold, says the expedition there of 1579 was a great success and the Englishmen intermarried with the natives.

Petronel arrives and they toast the success of the voyage. Security and Bramble arrive, impressed with the toasting and confidence of the crew. Quicksilver arrives with Security’s wife in disguise and wearing a mask. Petronel explains, ostensibly for the benefit of Bramble, that it is a cousin come to see him off who doesn’t want to be recognised in a low tavern.

She is crying and so Petronel asks Security, as a favour, to comfort her. This is designed to elicit howls of laughter from the audience, as Security is all unknowingly comforting his own wife, telling her she is well shot of ‘an old jealous dotard’ and will soon be in the arms of a young lover! About six times various characters make the joke that the ship is bound that night for Cuckold’s Haven, a real place, on the Thames below Rotherhithe.

Increasingly drunk, Petronel suggests to the company that they hold their farewell feast aboard Sir Francis Drake’s old ship, and they dance round the silent, disguised woman to celebrate the idea. Bramble tells Security the mystery woman is wearing Security’s wife’s clothes, but Security just laughs at him, confident that she is Bramble‘s wife – everyone in the audience, of course, laughing at him.

Security and Bramble go their ways but the rest of the company calls for a boat to take them to Sir Francis Drake’s ship, where they’ll get even more drunk, before setting off to be put aboard their final ship. The pub’s drawer watches them go, remarking that the tide is against them and a storm is brewing and it is a fool’s errand.

Act 3 scene 4

A very brief scene, just long enough for Security to return home, find his wife not there, discover that she is at Billingsgate, make the deduction that she is the mystery woman and is sailing with Petronel, and run off yelling for a boat.

THE STORM

Act 4 scene 1. Cuckold’s Haven

There’s a storm blowing and the Thames is turbulent, A fellow named Slitgut is climbing up a tree at Cuckold’s Haven to attach cuckold’s horns to it, after an ancient tradition when he spies a ship going down in the river. He gives a running commentary of a man struggling through the waves who comes ashore and proves to be Security, who moans his wretched luck and crawls away. He has been crushed down to the earth.

The Slitgut sees another person wallowing in the weltering wave, a woman, and describes how she is rescued by a man who brings her to shore. It is the drawer from the Blue Anchor tavern who came down to visit a friend at St Katherine’s and he has rescued Winifred. She asks him to go fetch her bundle of clothes which she left at the pub, but begs him to keep quiet about her or it will ruin her reputation. A would-be whore, she has washed ashore by St Katherine’s monastery.

Next out of the water is Quicksilver, washed ashore capless by the gallows reserved for pirates. He bewails the fact the storm has sunk the ship and ruined all his plans.

Next to stagger ashore are Petronel and Seagull who are drunkenly, confusedly convinced they have washed ashore in France until two men passing by assure them they are on the Isle of Dogs and briskly make off, but not before making the joke that one of them (i.e. Petronel) looks like a thirty-pound knight.

I ken the man weel; he’s one of my thirty pound knights.

This is obviously written to be said in a Scots accent and was the most obvious bit of anti-Scots satire, which caused its authors to be thrown into gaol. Petronel and Seagull are now united with Quicksilver and all bewail their fate. They had not, in fact, made it as far as the main ship which was to take them to America, but worry that that ship will now have been seized (there was something illicit about it which I didn’t quite understand).

Petronel is all for giving in, but Quicksilver suddenly changes the subject by declaring he has the specialist knowledge to make copper look like silver: he’ll restore their fortunes yet. The other two adore him and they depart.

Enter the Drawer and Winifred now dressed in dry clothes. He has brought her near to the pub where he works, and very nobly leaves her to continue alone i.e. uncompromised by being seen with a strange man. Which is when she bumps into her husband, Security! Quickly Winifred ad libs and lies that she has come out expressly to look for him, that she was fast asleep when he returned to see her (at the end of act 3) and his shouting stirred her and she was about to call back but he ran off in such a hurry. Thus, lying her head off, she is restored to her husband and he ends up apologising, promising that every morning he will go down on his knees and beseech her forgiveness. They exit.

At which point Slitgut, who has been up his tree watching each of these encounters, climbs down saying he won’t continue the ridiculous pagan custom, and bids the cuckold tree farewell.

Act 4 scene 2. A room in Touchstone’s House

Touchstone has heard that Petronel and Quicksilver’s ship was sunk. He tells us he has also heard that his ungrateful daughter, Gertrude, and his wife and the maid, discovered there was no castle anywhere and so ended up sleeping in the famous coach until they crept back to London, repentant.

Golding appears and in his guileless way reports that he has been voted Master Deputy Alderman. He had already been taken into the livery of his trade, so Touchstone is thrilled that he is progressing in his career and doubts not that he will soon be more famous than Dick Whittington.

Then Golding tells Touchstone that the rascally crew were shipwrecked as they took a ferry boat down towards Blackwall, were washed ashore and are returning in dribs and drabs to London and Golding has organised a reception committee of constables. Touchstone’s reaction is what I think of characteristically Jonson, and the reason I didn’t like this play:

TOUCHSTONE: Disgrace ’em all that ever thou canst; their ship I have already arrested. How to my wish it falls out, that thou hast the place of a justicer upon ’hem! I am partly glad of the injury done to me, that thou may’st punish it. Be severe i’ thy place, like a new officer o’ the first quarter, unreflected.

Revenge, the fiercer and severer the better, is the Jonson theme. A mood continued when Gertrude and her mother and Sindefy enter. Mistress Touchstone is thoroughly mortified by the discovery that Petronel was a liar, but Gertrude remains comically obstinate, persisting in the belief she is a lady and owes nothing to her father who ought to bow to her. She flounces out.

A constable enters to announce the arrival of Petronel and Quicksilver. Touchstone is gleeful. He insists that Golding (in his new rank of deputy alderman) judges the rascals. The Shoemakers’ Holiday was about forgiveness and festivity. Eastward Ho! is about judgement and punishment. Golding lays out the accusations against both Petronel and Quicksilver in detail, and is seconded by a vengeful Touchstone. Then they instruct the constable to take them away pending further judgement.

Act 5 scene 1. At Gertrude’s lodgings

Gertrude and Sindefy bewail the hard times they’ve fallen on. Gertrude has pawned her jewels, her gowns, her red velvet petticoat, and her wedding silk stockings and all Sin’s best apparel. She wishes she could sell her ladyship. She fantasises about finding a jewel or gold in the street, anything which could save her from poverty.

Her mother enters and laments all her ambitions and decisions to become a lady, but Gertrude blames her and asks how much she’s stolen from her cursed father. But she weeps bitterly. It’s not a funny scene. Eventually Mistress Touchstone advises that she goes and throws herself on the mercy of her good sister Mildred.

Act 5 scene 2. Goldsmith’s Row

Wolf comes who is a gaoler of ‘the Counter’ where Petronel, Quicksilver and Security are imprisoned. He has brought letters from them begging for help and then describes their reformations. Touchstone is tempted to forgive but exists rather than give way to pity. Golding, true to his immaculate character as Good Man gives Wolf some money and messages of hope to take back to the prisoners.

Act 5 scene 3. The Counter

I.e. prison. Lawyer Bramble visits Security who has gone half mad in captivity and can’t stand the light. Two anonymous gentlemen comment on the extent of Quicksilver’s reformation, who gave away all his fancy clothes, has penned a wonderful apology for his life and helps the other prisoners write petitions.

Wolf arrives back from Golding with the message of hope and a little money. Quicksilver has completely changed. He genuinely thanks Golding, then asks Wolf to distribute the money to other prisoners. The two gentlemen who have observed this noble gesture, remark on Quicksilver’s reformation.

Next, Golding himself arrives in disguise. He has a Plan. He asks Wolf to let him into the prison, then take his ring to Touchstone and say that he, Golding, has been imprisoned for a debt to some third party, can he (Touchstone) come quickly. Then they will work some kind of resolution. Wolf agrees, lets Golding into the prison, sets off with the message to Touchstone.

Act 5 scene 4. Touchstone’s house

Mildred and Mistress Touchstone try to intercede on behalf of Gertrude but Touchstone insists his ears are stoppered like Ulysses’ against the sirens. Until Wolf arrives with the token, with Golding’s ring, which Touchstone recognises and instantly promises to come to his aid.

Act 5 scene 5. The Counter

Touchstone enters with Wolf. Petronel and Quicksilver enter, and a prisoner and two gentlemen are present to listen to Quicksilver’s sincere and moving song of repentance. It’s a long doggerel poem and various bystanders applaud, ask for more and, at every interval. In an aside, Touchstone tells us that his hard heart is melting. By the end he is quite convinced of Quicksilver’s reformation and forgives him. He goes bail for Quicksilver, Petronel and half-mad Security and they are all released.

Gertrude, Mildred, Mistress touchstone, Sindefy and Winifred all arrive i.e. all the main characters are on stage. Gertrude finally repents and asks Touchstone’s forgiveness, and also her husband’s forgiveness and he begs her forgiveness for deceiving her. Is anything missing? Only that Quicksilver should marry his punk, Sindefy, and make a decent woman of her. Which he instantly volunteers to do.

Bad tastes

I didn’t like this play for at least three reasons:

  1. The contrasts set up right at the start between Dutiful Daughter and Haughty Daughter, and Conscientious Apprentice and Spendthrift Apprentice, feel too mechanical, to put it mildly. Like many other aspects of the play the characters of Golding, who is Peter Perfect, and Mildred, who barely exists as an individual, feel schematic and lifeless.
  2. The rascal characters are all too inevitably riding for a fall and, when they hit it, are judged very inflexibly and harshly. They don’t just fall, they are crushed into the dirt and ground underfoot, reduced to miserable penury in prison. Security goes mad. The harshness of their fate feels cruel.
  3. And at countless incidental moments along the way, the characters are vile. Gertrude’s haughtiness to her father is meant to be funny, but can easily be read as just horrible. Much worse is the way Quicksilver and Security conspire against Petronel, but then Quicksilver and Petronel conspire against Security. They’re all scum. The basic attitude was epitomised for me by the way Petronel said that, once his deceived wife discovers there is no castle, she will be so angry, that she’d be doing Petronel a favour if she hanged herself. A kind of Tarantino level of heartlessness and hate underlies the whole thing. It left a bad taste in my mouth.

The quality of justice

Feels contrived. The rascals’ repentances have no real psychological validity. Gertrude in particular is a bitch up to the last moment – and believable and funny as such, probably the funniest character in the play – till she suddenly turns up in prison right at the last minute, a changed woman. It is literally unbelievable.

In my opinion there is something necessarily shallow about Jonson’s entire view of human nature, shallow and extreme. He sees people as viciously cynical and wicked right up to the last few pages… when they suddenly undergo miracle conversions. The cynicism is unpleasant and the conversions are insultingly shallow and contrived.

But the cardboard stereotypes are an inevitable result of the strictness of his theory of comedy. He thinks comedy should hold up folly and vice to ridicule. But this is a very ideological and schematic ambition, and explains the metallic inflexibility of the play. The precise details may be unpredictable but the ultimate outcome – the crushing humiliation of the rascals and fools – is never in doubt and feels profoundly unconvincing.

As C.G. Petter points out in his introduction to the New Mermaid edition of the play, there is a marriage at the play’s end, the rather tediously inevitable requirement of any comedy – but it is the marriage of an upstart social pretender (Quicksilver) to a whore (Sindefy) whose dowry is paid by a usurer (Security). Gertrude and Petronel’s marriage is a sham from the start, he only marries her for her money. And the marriage of Golding and Mildred in the first act has absolutely no romance or emotion about it whatsoever because it is the union of two wooden puppets.

The intellectual and psychological crudity of so much of this is typified by the thumpingly crude final moral, delivered by Touchstone. Having forgiven Quicksilver after the latter has read out his very poor, doggerel poem of repentance, Touchstone offers Quicksilver decent clothes to change into from his prison rags. But the newly penitent Quicksilver nobly turns down the offer, preferring to walk through the streets of London in his prison clothes to set an example to the children of Cheapside. At which Touchstone intones the final lines of the play:

TOUCHSTONE: Thou hast thy wish. Now, London, look about,
And in this moral see thy glass run out:
Behold the careful father, thrifty son,
The solemn deeds which each of us have done;
The usurer punish’d, and from fall so steep
The prodigal child reclaim’d, and the lost sheep.

Could anyone seriously expect that plays as wooden and contrived and stereotypical and obvious as this would ‘reform’ vice and folly? What a ludicrous idea. They’re a night out at the theatre, full of jokes, lots and lots of sexual innuendo, absurd farce, ironic reversals, sentimental speeches and a big round of applause at the end.

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by Simon on September 16, 2020  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on September 16, 2020

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2020/09/16/eastward-ho-george-chapman-ben-jonson-john-marston/