Tom Stoppard Plays 1 by Tom Stoppard
(The door opens. Several men and a woman barge in as though they owned the place, chatting among themselves.)
I think you got the wrong room, buster.
DIRTY LINEN
concluded
The room is occupied by two men, both Home Office Civil Servants, both formally dressed (ARTHUR and BERNARD).
ARTHUR has a file of papers among other paraphernalia.
(The door opens and in come WITHENSHAW, COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE, MCTEAZLE, MRS. EBURY and CHAMBERLAIN, chatting. WITHENSHAW goes to confront ARTHUR at the secretary/clerk’s desk.)
WITHENSHAW: What?
ARTHUR: I’m sorry—this is a Home Office Departmental Meeting.
WITHENSHAW: What are you doing here?
ARTHUR: We are meeting here for the convenience of the Home Secretary who has to answer the Division Bell.
WITHENSHAW: Well, I’m very sorry, but as you can see this room is occupied by a Select Committee.
ARTHUR: On the contrary, as you can see, it is occupied by a Home Office Departmental Meeting.
WITHENSHAW: Yes, but we were here first.
MCTEAZLE: Hello, Bernard—still soldiering on?
BERNARD (standing up): Mr. McTeazle, isn’t it?—yes—yes—I was just showing young Arthur here—I bet you haven’t seen one of these for a while (produces £5 note).
(Meanwhile WITHENSHAW is writing another note for MADDIE. By this time COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE, MCTEAZLE, CHAMBERLAIN and MRS. EBURY have sat down. The HOME SECRETARy enters with a rush of words and sits in the Chairman’s place.)
HOME SECRETARY: Good afternoon, gentlemen—what a large gathering—difficult case?—I thought it was only that American—goodness me, let’s keep things tidy can we? (He starts stacking the mess of newspapers on the table.) An orderly table makes for an orderly meeting. (He has the Mirror in his hands.) Strewth!
Tit-tit-tut-tut-oh! (Sees WITHENSHAW whilst folding the pin-up picture away.) Hello Malcolm.
ARTHUR: This lady and these gentlemen are here for another meeting, Minister.
WITHENSHAW: Sorry, Reg, first come first served.
HOME SECRETARY: Are you Send-In-A-Gumboot?
WITHENSHAW: What?
HOME SECRETARY: Are you Rubber Goods Import Quota?
WITHENSHAW: No—no—we’re Moral Standards in Public Life.
HOME SECRETARY: Oh yes, so you are—no hard information, I hear.
WITHENSHAW: We’re not sure, Reg—something came up this afternoon.
HOME SECRETARY: Yes, well, I’m sorry to pull rank on you, Malcolm …
(The Select Committee Members stand up; ARTHUR and BERNARD sit down.)
… but I’ve got to deal with a very sensitive and difficult case——
(The HOME SECRETARY picks up WITHENSHAW’s note to MADDIE, who by this point has entered and is hanging up her coat.)
What’s this? ‘Forget Claridges, the Olden Bottle …’
(WITHENSHAW snatches it out of his hand and tears it into four and scatters the pieces.)
MADDIE (to HOME SECRETARY): Hello, what are you doing here?
HOME SECRETARY: How do you do? My name’s Jones. (To WITHENSHAW.) As I was saying you must have the room of course.
(ARTHUR and BERNARD stand up, WITHENSHAW crosses to his Chairman’s seat and the Select Committee sit down again. The HOME SECRETARY continues, the italicized words aside to MADDIE.)
Noblesse oblige—say no more—anyway I’m expected at an Intrusion of Privacy Sub-Committee of the Forget Le Coq au Vin and La Poule au Pot Departmental Committee on Rag and Bone Men, Debt Collectors and Journalists.
ARTHUR: But Minister what about …?
(ARTHUR holds out the folder. The HOME SECRETARY whips out a pen and signs with a flourish.)
HOME SECRETARY: One more American can’t make any difference.
(BERNARD approaches WITHENSHAW with the £5 note.)
BERNARD: Mr. Withenshaw, isn’t it? Take a look at this—there’s quite a story behind it——
(WITHENSHAW snatches the note and tears it into four pieces. BERNARD is crestfallen.)
WITHENSHAW (shouts): Get out!
HOME SECRETARY: A word in your ear, Malcolm. Have you got time for a drink?
(The Home Office men leave.)
WITHENSHAW: Well …
(FRENCH enters and crosses to his place.)
… not really Reg.
HOME SECRETARY: I’ll give you a ring.
(The HOME SECRETARY leaves. An uncomfortable silence descends as the Select Committee settle down.)
WITHENSHAW: Well now … where were we …
(Pause.)
FRENCH: Mr. Chairman …
WITHENSHAW: Oh yes … you were about to make a point, Mr. French.
FRENCH: Thank you Mr. Chairman. I have been giving this matter a great deal of thought during our short adjournment. I think I can say that never has the phrase O tempora O mores come so readily to the lips.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Meaning what?
FRENCH: Meaning, ‘Oh the times Oh the——’
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: I know what it means. Why was it on your lips?
FRENCH: I am not a whited sepulchre, Mr. Chairman. I take no pleasure in crying ‘j’accuse’. But I have been talking to Miss Gotobed. She has poured out her heart to me and I may say it was a mauvais quart d’heure for the Mother of Parliaments. Not since Dunkirk have so many people been in the same boat—proportionately speaking. I am faced now with a responsibility which I would dearly like to be without, but it seems I am presented with, to put it in plain English, a fait accompli. I have struggled with my conscience seeking an honourable course and not wishing to drag this noble institution through the mud.
WITHENSHAW: A very responsible attitude, Mr. French.
FRENCH: Thank you. I think I have indeed found a way. I propose we scrap the Chairman’s Report as it stands and replace it with a new report of my own drafting. (He holds up a piece of paper. He clears his throat and starts to read.) Paragraph 1. In performing the duty entrusted to them your Committee took as their guiding principle that it is the just and proper expectation of every Member of Parliament, no less than for every citizen of this country, that what they choose to do in their own time, and with whom, is …
MADDIE (prompting): … between them and their conscience.
FRENCH (simultaneously with MADDIE): … conscience, provided they do not transgress the rights of others or the law of the land; and that this principle is not to be sacrificed to that Fleet Street stalking-horse masquerading as a sacred cow labelled ‘The People’s Right to Know’.
Your Committee found no evidence or even suggestion of laws broken or harm done, and thereby concludes that its business is hereby completed.
WITHENSHAW: Is that it?
FRENCH: It’s the best I can do.
WITHENSHAW: How am I going to spin that out until Queen’s Jubilee?
FRENCH: You can’t. This is the last meeting of this Committee, unless you want to do it your way.
WITHENSHAW: No—no——
(MADDIE throws her report and all her appendices in the waste-paper basket.)
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: You’ll have to get your peerage another way.
WITHENSHAW: The P.M. will kick my arse from here to Blackpool.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Services to sport.
MCTEAZLE: I would like to applaud Mr. French’s understanding attitude and his stroke of diplomacy.
CHAMBERLAIN: Hear, hear.
MRS. EBURY: I move that Mr. French’s report is put to the Committee.
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE: Second.
WITHENSHAW: Have you got that. Miss Gotobed?
MADDIE: Yes, Malcolm.
WITHENSHAW: All in favour.
ALL: Aye.
WITHENSHAW: Against.
(Silence.)
FRENCH: Arsenal 5—Newcastle nil.
WITHENSHAW: Thank you, Mr. French.
FRENCH: Not at all, Mr. Chairman. (He takes out his breast-pocket handkerchief, which is now the p
(Big Ben chimes the quarter hour.)
MADDIE: Finita La Commedia.
DOGG’S HAMLET,
INTRODUCTION
The comma that divides Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth also serves to unite two plays which have common elements: the first is hardly a play at all without the second, which cannot be performed without the first.
Dogg’s Hamlet is a conflation of two pieces written for Ed Berman and Inter-Action; namely Dogg’s Our Pet, which opened the Almost Free Theatre in Soho in December 1971, and The Dogg’s Troupe 15-Minute Hamlet, which was written (or rather edited) for performance on a double-decker bus.
Dogg’s Hamlet derives from a section of Wittgenstein’s philosophical investigations. Consider the following scene. A man is building a platform using pieces of wood of different shapes and sizes. These are thrown to him by a second man, one at a time, as they are called for. An observer notes that each time the first man shouts ‘Plank!’ he is thrown a long flat piece. Then he calls ‘Slab!’ and is thrown a piece of a different shape. This happens a few times. There is a call for ‘Block!’ and a third shape is thrown. Finally a call for ‘Cube!’ produces a fourth type of piece. An observer would probably conclude that the different words described different shapes and sizes of the material But this is not the only possible interpretation. Suppose, for example, the thrower knows in advance which pieces the builder needs, and in what order. In such a case there would be no need for the builder to name the pieces he requires but only to indicate when he is ready for the next one. So the calls might translate thus:
Plank = Ready Block = Next
Slab = Okay Cube = Thank you
In such a case, the observer would have made a false assumption, but the fact that he on the one hand and the builders on the other are using two different languages need not
be apparent to either party. Moreover, it would also be possible that the two builders do not share a language either; and if life for them consisted only of building platforms in this manner there would be no reason for them to discover that each was using a language unknown to the other. This happy state of affairs would of course continue only as long as, through sheer co-incidence, each man’s utterance made sense (even if not the same sense) to the other.
The appeal to me consisted in the possibility of writing a play which had to teach the audience the language the play was written in. The present text is a modest attempt to do this: I think one might have gone much further.
Cahoot’s Macbeth is dedicated to the Czechoslovakian playwright Pavel Kohout. During the last decade of ‘normalization’ which followed the fall of Dubcek, thousands of Czechoslovaks have been prevented from pursuing their careers. Among them are many writers and actors.
During a short visit to Prague in 1977 I met Kohout and Pavel Landovsky, a well-known actor who had been banned from working for years since falling foul of the authorities. (It was Landovsky who was driving the car on the fateful day in January 1977 when the police stopped him and his friends and seized the first known copies of the document that became known as Charter 77.) One evening Landovsky took me backstage at one of the theatres where he had done some of his best work. A performance was going on at the time and his sense of fierce frustration is difficult to describe.
A year later Kohout wrote to me: ‘As you know, many Czech theatre-people are not allowed to work in the theatre during the last years. As one of them who cannot live without theatre I was searching for a possibility to do theatre in spite of circumstances. Now I am glad to tell you that in a few days, after eight weeks rehearsals—a Living-Room Theatre is opening, with nothing smaller but Macbeth.
‘What is LRT? A call-group. Everybody, who wants to have Macbeth at home with two great and forbidden Czech actors, Pavel Landovsky and Vlasta Chramostova, can invite his friends and call us. Five people will come with one suitcase.
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‘Pavel Landovsky and Vlasta Chramostova are starring Macbeth and Lady, a well known and forbidden young singer Vlastimil Tresnak is singing Malcolm and making music, one young girl, who couldn’t study the theatre-school, Tereza Kohoutova, by chance my daughter, is playing little parts and reading remarks; and the last man, that’s me …! is reading and a little bit playing the rest of the roles, on behalf of his great colleague.
‘I think, he wouldn’t be worried about it, it functions and promises to be not only a solution of our situation but also an interesting theatre event. I adapted the play, of course, but I am sure it is nevertheless Macbeth!’
The letter was written in June, and in August there was a postscript: ‘Macbeth is now performed in Prague flats.’
Cahoot’s Macbeth was inspired by these events. However, Cahoot is not Kohout, and this necessarily over-truncated Macbeth is not supposed to be a fair representation of Kohout’s elegant seventy-five minute version.
TOM STOPPARD
August 1980
Dogg’s Hamlet is
dedicated to
Professor Dogg
and The Dogg’s Troupe
of Inter-Action
CHARACTERS
BAKER
ABEL
CHARLIE
EASY
DOGG
LADY
FOX MAJOR
MRS DOGG
SHAKESPEARE
HAMLET
HORATIO
CLAUDIUS
GERTRUDE
POLONIUS
OPHELIA
LAERTES
GHOST
BERNARDO
FRANCISCO
GRAVEDIGGER
OSRIC
FORTINBRAS
The first stage performance of Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth was at the Arts Centre of the University of Warwick, Coventry, on 21 May 1979, by BARC, British American Repertory Company. The cast of BARC was:
John Challis
Alison Frazer
Ben Gotlieb
Peter Grayer
Davis Hall
Louis Haslar
Ruth Hunt
Stanley McGeagh
Stephen D. Newman
John Straub
Alan Thompson
Sarah Venable
Gilbert Vernon
Designed by Norman Coates
Directed by Ed Berman
The play opened for a season at the Collegiate Theatre, London, on 30 July 1979.
Translation from ‘Dogg’ language into English is given in square brackets where this seems necessary.
Empty stage.
BAKER: (Off-stage) Brick! [*Here!]
(A football is thrown from off-stage left to off-stage right. BAKER receiving ball) Cube. [*Thanks]
(ABEL, off-stage, throws satchel to stage left. ABEL enters. He is a schoolboy wearing grey flannel shorts, blazer, school cap, etc., and carrying a satchel. He drops satchel centre stage and collects the other which he places with his own. ABEL exits stage right and returns with microphone and stand which he places down stage. The microphone has a switch.)
ABEL: (Into the microphone) Breakfast, breakfast … sun—dock—trog … [*Testing, testing … one—two—three …] (He realizes the microphone is dead. He tries the switch a couple of times and then speaks again into the microphone.) Sun—dock—trog—pan—slack … [*One—two—three—four—five …]
(The microphone is still dead. ABEL calls to someone off-stage.) Haddock priest! [*The mike is dead!]
(Pause, BAKER enters from the same direction. He is also a schoolboy similarly dressed.)
BAKER: Eh? [*Eh?]
ABEL: Haddock priest.
BAKER: Haddock?
ABEL: Priest.
(BAKER goes to the microphone, drops satchel centre on his way.)
BAKER: Sun—dock—trog—
(The mike is dead, BAKER swears.) Bicycles!
(BAKER goes back off-stage. Pause. The loud-speakers crackle.)
ABEL: S
BAKER: (Shouting off-stage, indistinctly.) Slab!
ABEL: (Speaking into the mike.) Sun, dock, trog, slack, pan.
(The mike is live. ABEL shouting to BAKER, with a thumbs-up sign.)
Slab! [*Okay!]
(Behind ABEL, CHARLIE, another schoolboy, enters backwards, hopping about, the visible half of a ball-throwing game. CHARLIE is wearing a dress, but schoolboy’s shorts, shoes and socks, and no wig.)
CHARLIE: Brick! … brick! [*Here! … here!]
(A ball is thrown to him from the wings. ABEL dispossesses CHARLIE of the ball.)
ABEL: Cube! [*Thanks!]
VOICE: (Off-stage) Brick! [*Here!)
(CHARLIE tries to get the ball but ABEL won’t let him have it.)
CHARLIE: Squire! [*Bastard!]
(ABEL throws the ball to the unseen person in the wings—not where BAKER is.)
Daisy squire! [*Mean bastard!]
ABEL: Afternoons! [*Get stuffed!]
CHARLIE: (Very aggrieved.) Vanilla squire! [*Rotten bastard!]
ABEL: (Giving a V-sign to CHARLIE.) Afternoons!
(ABEL hopping about, calls for the ball from the wings.) Brick! [*Here!]
(The ball is thrown to ABEL over CHARLIE’s head. DOGG, the headmaster, in mortar-board and gown, enters from the opposite wing, and as the ball is thrown to ABEL, DOGG dispossesses ABEL.)
DOGG: Cube! [*Thank you!] Pax! [*Lout!]