John Ferguson, a play in four acts

Preface

The issue of a new edition of John Ferguson gives me an opportunity to do something that I have long wished to do: publicly to thank the actors and actresses who performed the play at the Garrick and Fulton Theatres in New York from May until October, 1919. Circumstances prevented me from witnessing the performance, but the praise of my friends, English and American, who saw it convinced me that it must have been remarkably good; and, indeed, after seeing the production of Tolstoy's " The Power of Darkness " at the Garrick Theatre in January of this year, I feel certain that all of the plays performed by the Theatre Guild of New York will be well acted and beautifully produced. I am pleased to think that I have had a share in helping to establish a gallant enterprise, and I gladly subscribe myself the debtor and grateful friend of the good servants of art who belong to the Guild.

The peculiar success of this play in America ... a tragic piece of foreign origin produced at an unfashionable theatre by an unfashionable company . . . seems to have upset many established beliefs about the kind of play the public wants. There is a curious faith held by theatrical managers that the more empty a play is, the better will the generality of audiences like it, and large sums of money are expended annually by these managers in the

vii viii Preface

production of puerile plays in the hope that one of them will be sufficiently silly to make the fortune of its producer. It is not my business to teach the theatre-manager his business, but I sometimes wonder whether his theory would be supported by a study of theatrical balance-sheets. We are often told of the great sums of money made out of this or that drivelling revue, but are told singularly little of the bankruptcies that have also been caused by drivelling revues. I imagine that if an accurate financial statement covering the history of the theatre either in America or in England were prepared, it would be found that the amount of money irretrievably lost on " popular " pieces would be far in excess of the amount lost on " unpopular " pieces, having regard to the capital invested in each; and I should not be astonished to discover from such a balance-sheet that the " high-brow " drama had more or less paid its way while the " lowbrow " or " no-brow-at-all " drama had not done so. But these are matters of opinion — there are no statistics available on which to found arguments — and I do not doubt that the commercial theatre-manager who reads these words ... if he troubles to read them at all . . . will at this point become convulsed with laughter. Nothing but bankruptcy and the hell that has been specially prepared for those who spend their lives in debasing the public taste ... a hell in which, for all eternity, they will be compelled to witness their own theatrical entertainments . . . will convince them that this is no laughing matter.

As for me, I am content. My belief that any sincerelywritten play, however gloomy it may be, will gain the support of the general public, provided that it does not dis-

Preface ix

gust them with their kind and bears a clear and indisputable relationship to human life, is supported by my experience of the reception given in America to John Ferguson. I have no illusions about my play. I do not regard it as a v^rork of genius nor do I imagine that I am the greatest of all dramatists, living or dead. There are many flaws in this play, and I sometimes wish that I were again a dramatic critic so that I might point them out. But it has at least this merit, that it is an honest and, I hope, skilful attempt to put human beings upon the stage as human beings, and not as stuffed dummies hired from a theatrical costumer. I define a bad dramatist as a man who goes into the theatre and never comes out again; and I define a good dramatist as a man who is constantly checking the creatures of his imagination with the creatures who live around him. Imagination, unchecked by experience, becomes violence or sentimentality, and the vn-iter who does not frequently renew his contacts with human beings is in desperate danger of substituting rhetoric for speech and opinions for feelings; and the end of such men is written in oblivion.

John Ferguson is a tragic play, but I think I may claim that it is not a depressing play. It does not disgust with humanity those who read it or see it performed. An audience should leave a theatre, after seeing a tragedy, in a state of pride . . . proud that they are human and of the same species as the tragic figures; and it is interesting to find that tragedy has been the main fore of the Heroic Ages. We think of Greece more as the home of Euripides than of the home of Aristophanes, and we think of Elizabethan England as the home of the Shake-

X Preface

speare who wrote Hamlet and Lear and Romeo and JuUet rather than the home of the Shakespeare who wrote As You Like It and Twelfth Night and The Merry Wives of Windsor. The most certain of all the signs of decadence in a nation is the fact that it cannot witness the performance of tragedy but must ever be titillated by comic entertainments. My experience as a soldier showed me that men whose lives were passed in danger were less easily satisfied by trivial performances than were the civilians living in comfort and security. Home on leave from France, I saw expyensively-mounted entertainments in London theatres, immensely satisfying to civilians, which, had they been produced by a Concert Party at the Front, would have caused the officers in charge to be courtmartialed. Soldiers got very little pleasure from these things, to which they were taken by their civilian feminine relatives, and I have often heard officers in France, newly back from leave, answer, when asked what sort of plays were to be seen in town, "Oh, the usual damned rot! " And in time, all these puerile revues and cheap plays became known among soldiers as civilian stuff. Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw, driven out of the commercial theatre during the war, found a home in the soldiers' theatres in France; and it is only since the Armistice and the demobilization of the fighting men that decent drama has contrived to get back to the English stage. Mr. John Drinkwater's noble play, Abraham Lincoln, Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and The Merchant of Venice and Julius Ccesar, Sheridan's The School for Scandal, Mr. Lennox Robinson's The Lost Leader, Mr. Shaw's Arms and the Man, and lastly, but most remarkably of all, The Trojan

Preface xi

Women of Euripides have all drawn large and enthusiastic audiences to the theatre in London, since the signing of the Armistice, and in spite of heat waves and railway strikes, at a time when " popular " pieces were failing to pay the cost of their advertisements. The Trojan Women was actually performed with success in a London music-hall !

I am not a prophet and I cannot interpret signs; but surely I am not over-optimistic in believing that there is a public which will support intelligent and sincere drama and is not unwilling to see the work of the master - dramatist decently done. The fact that John Ferguson was able to draw large audiences for six months, including the period of the hot weather and the Actors' Strike, indicates, does it not, that there are many people in New York who will pay to see such plays as mine? And will not these people pay to see much better plays than mine? I think they will. I think that the commercial manager does an injustice to the play-going public when he assumes that nothing is too silly or vulgar for them; and the wish of my life is that the success of my play in America will induce the commercial managers to give the American people a chance to see performed in a public theatre that vital, native drama which is, I am quite certain, being produced somewhere in this great continent. I like to think that a young man, disregarding discouragements, is writing American plays ... in some remote village, perhaps . . . that will reveal his country not only to his countrymen but to the world with that degree of intimacy and understanding that I find in the books of Mr. Winston Churchill, " O. Henry," Mrs. Edith Wharton and Mr. Ernest Poole. There must be in Amer-

Xll

Preface ica, many dramatists who can write plays that are on the level of Mr. Poole's great novel, The Harbor. Why will the commercial manager not let these dramatists prove that they exist and have the power and the skill to do what Vaughn Moody did in The Great Divide, what the novelists I have named have done in fiction. People tell me that the reception given to John Ferguson has caused the commercial manager to re-consider his theory, and even as I write, I hear the praises of Mr. Eugene O'Neill's play, Beyond the Horizon. If I could feel that I had cleared the way for that young American dramatist whom I imagine in a remote village or in some college hall striving to express himself greatly in drama, I should feel proud and happy, and my play would have a merit in my mind surpassing any other merit it may possess.

St. John Ervine.

Chicago, February 7, 1920.

CHARACTERS

John Ferguson, a farmer.

Sarah Ferguson, his wife.

Andrew Ferguson, his son.

Hannah Ferguson, his daughter.

James Caesar, a grocer.

Henry Witherow, a farmer and miller.

" Clutie " John Magrath, a beggar.

Sam Mawhinney, a postman.

Sergeant Kernaghan, R.I.C.

Two Constables.

A Crowd of Men and Women, Boys and Girls.

The Scene is laid in the kitchen of a farm-house in County Down.

The Time is in the late summer of the year 188-.

" Clutie " is a slang expression meaning " left-handed."

There is an interval of an hour between the First and Second Acts; of a night between the Second and Third; and of a fortnight between the Third and Fourth.

John Ferguson was performed for the first time in America at the Garrick Theatre, New York, by the Theatre Guild, on May I2th, 1919. It was produced by Mr. Augustin Duncan with the following cast:

John Ferguson Augustin Duncan

Sarah Ferguson Helen Westley

Andrew Ferguson Rollo Peters

Hannah Ferguson Helen Freeman

" Clutie " John Magrath Henry Herbert

Henry Witherow Gordon Burby

Sergeant Kernaghan Michael Carr

Sam Mawhinney Walter Geer

Act I

It is the afternoon of a warm day in the late summer of the year 188-, and soft sunlight enters the kitchen of John Ferguson's farm through the windows and the open door. The kitchen is comfortably furnished, although the Fergusons are no longer prosperous, for Mrs. Ferguson, who is now sitting by the door, mending socks, takes great pride in maintaining the appearance of fortune. She is a short, stout, healthy woman, pleasant and agreeable even when she is as harassed as she now is, and her mind is moulded in the kindliness of an Ulster woman. She is not a very intelligent woman, and so her sympathies are sometimes flattened by her lack of perception, but, within her limitations, she is an excellent wife and a very good mother.

Her husband, John Ferguson, is sitting in front of the turf fire, with a rug wrapped round his legs. He is reading a large Bible to himself, and his lips move as if he were silently pronouncing each word to himself. He is an elderly, tired, delicate-looking man, and his dark beard is turning grey. His eyes are set deeply in his head, and they are full of a dark, glowing colour. His voice is slow but very firm, although his words are gentle. He looks like a portrait of Moses — not that Moses who led the Israelites out of Egypt and was a great captain of hosts, but the 7

Moses who surveyed the Promised Land from Mount Neho in the Plains of Moab.

The furniture of the kitchen is good and substan^ tial, and of the sort that one sees in a decent homestead. The door leading to the loaning (" loanie ") or lane in front of the house is in the wall at the back of the scene. A person entering the kitchen from the " loanie " would have a large window on his right hand in the same wall as the door, and a staircase on his left hand. Beyond the staircase, near the front of the scene, is a door leading to other rooms and also to the scullery and back of the farm. The fireplace is in the wall opposite that in which the staircase is set. Under the window is a large sofa. A dresser is set between the foot of the staircase and the door leading to the yard. A large table sits in the centre of the room. John Ferguson's chair now stands against one end of this table, so that he can place his Bible on it easily when he is tired of holding it. The ornaments are those customary in such a house. Over the fireplace a gun is suspended.

Sarah Ferguson. I wonder where Hannah is. I haven't seen her for an hour past.

John Ferguson {without looking up). She's mebbe in the fields with Andrew. Listen to this, Sarah! {He raises his voice as he reads from the thirtieth of the Psalms of David.) " I will extol thee, O Lord; for thou hast lifted me up, and hast not made my foes to rejoice over me. O Lord, my God, I cried unto thee, and thou hast healed me. O Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave : thou hast kept me ali^f , that I should not go down into the pit. Sing unto the Lord, O ye saints of his, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness. {He emphasises what follows.) For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." {He turns to his wife. ) Do you hear that, Sarah ? There's great comfort for you !

Sarah Ferguson. Well, indeed, I hope it will, for we have need of joy in tliis house. We've bore enough trouble. Here's the farm mortgaged up to the hilt, and you sick and not able to do no work this long while, and Henry Witherow bothering you for the money you owe him! . . .

John Ferguson {holding up the Bible so that she can see it). " Weeping may endure for a night," Sarah, " but joy cometh in the morning." Them's grand words! Don't be complaining now, for sure God never deserts His own people. We have His word for that, Sarah. We're tried a while, and then we're given our reward.

Sarah Ferguson. Well, we've earned ours anyway! It's a great pity Andrew's such a poor hand on the farm.

John Ferguson. The lad was never meant for the land, Sarah. You know rightly I dedicated him to the ministry the day he was bom. It was a sore blow to the lad when I told him it couldn't be managed, but it was a sorer blow to me.

Sarah Ferguson. Ay, indeed, it was, John. You were always quaren set on Andrew.

John Ferguson {proudly). He's my son! I have great hopes of Andrew.

Sarah Ferguson. Well, well, you would have done better, mebbe, to let him go on with his learning, for he's no use at all on the farm. I hope to my goodness his uncle Andrew'll send the money to pay the mortgage. It's quare him not writing this long while.

John Ferguson. He's mebbe had bother. He'll write if he has the money by him. You may be sure of that.

Sarah Ferguson. He never was much of a one for giving anything away, your brother Andrew, and mebbe he'll disappoint you the same as he's disappointed many another person.

John Ferguson. I know he's near with money, but all the same I think he'll be willing to lend me the price of the mortgage. Him and me was bom in this house, and we played here together as wee lads. Our da was born here too, and his da before him. Andrew couldn't let the farm go out of the family after all them generations.

Sarah Ferguson. I trust, indeed, he'll not, but it's a quare poor look-out when you think he's never answered your letters to him this long time, and him knowing'-well you were sick and helpless. Dear knows what'll become of us all if he doesn't send the money! Henry Witherow's a hard man, John, and he'll not be willing to wait long. {She rises and looks out of the door.) Here's Hannah now! I wonder is the mail in yet!

John Ferguson. We'll know in a wee while. {He takes up the Bible again and resumes his reading.)

[Hannah Ferguson, a beautiful girl of twenty, enters the kitchen from the " loanie." Her thick black hair is uncovered.

.Sarah Ferguson. Is the mail in yet?

Hannah Ferguson {wearily). The long-car only went by a minute or two ago. I met " Clutie " John at the end

John Ferguson ii

of the loanie, and he said the mail would be late the day. {She goes to the window-seat and sits downs.) It's like Sam Mawhinney to be late the time we want him to be early.

John Ferguson (with gentle rebuke in his voice). Hannah, child! You don't know what trouble the man may have had. It might not be his fault the mail's late. Sometimes there's a storm at sea, and that keeps the boats back. Mebbe the train was delayed. Many's a thing might have happened. You shouldn't be blaming Sam for what's mebbe not his fault.

Hannah Ferguson (going to her father, and putting her arms round his neck). Da, dear, aren't you the quare one for making excuses for people !

Sarah Ferguson. Well, sure, a lot of them needs it.

[She has resumed her seat by the door and is again busy with her work of mending socks.

Hannah Ferguson. How're you now, da? Are you better nor you were a while ago?

John Ferguson (cheerfully). Ah, boys-a-boys, Hannah, what did you mind me of it for? I was near forgetting I was sick at all. That shows I'm better in myself, doesn't it now?

Hannah Ferguson (looking anxiously at him). You're not letting on, are you, da ?

Sarah Ferguson. Letting on, indeed! Did you ever know your da to let on about anything?

John Ferguson. Indeed, now, and I let on many's a time! There's whiles, when I'm sitting here before the fire, or mebbe there in front of the door when the days is warm, I pretend to myself I'm better again and can go out and do a day's work in the fields with any man. (His voice drops into complaint. ) I 'haven't been in the fields this long time.

Sarah Ferguson {sharply). Now, don't be going and making yourself unhappy, 'John!

John Ferguson. No, woman, I .won't. But it's hard for a man to be sitting here with a rug wrapped round his legs, and him not able to do a hand's turn for his wife and family.

Hannah Ferguson {fondling him). Ah, da, dear!

John Ferguson {complaint now controlling his voice). And me the man that was always active ! There wasn't a one in the place could beat me at the reaping, not one. . . . {He remembers the consolations of his faith, although his voice falters as he speaks the next sentence.) But it's the will of God! {He pauses for a moment, and then his mind wanders again to his illness.) Sometimes, when I hear the men in the fields, cutting the com and gathering the harvest, and them shouting to one another and laughing hearty together, I near cry. Me not able to go out and help them to bring in the harvest . . . tied here like a wee child! . . .

Hannah Ferguson {tearfully). Da, da, don't go on that way!

Sarah Ferguson {impatiently). Ah, quit, the two of you! Hannah, I'm surprised at you coming in and upsetting your da, and him keeping his heart up all day !

Hannah Ferguson. I didn't mean to bother you, da.

John Ferguson (patting her hair). No, daughter, you didn't. I know that rightly. (Stirring himself and speaking more briskly.) Ah, well! "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." God always has a word to comfort you when your heart's down. Mebbe there's a letter in Sam Mawhinney's bag this minute that'll cheer us all up. I'm a poor, mealy man to be complaining like that, Hannah, when there's many is worse off nor me . . . only I can't help it sometimes. It's when the men are coming down the " loanie " in the evening with their scythes over their shoulders, and then tired and sweating and hungry for their suppers! . . . Well, God knows His own ways best, and there's many in the world has a harder time nor I have.

Hannah Ferguson (trying to take his mind off his illness). I was letting on too, da!

Sarah Ferguson. Well, indeed, you might have employed your time to better advantage, Hannah. You can let on till you're tired, but you'll never alter anything that way.

John Ferguson. What were you letting on, daughter?

Hannah Ferguson. I was letting on that my Uncle Andrew had sent you all the money you need !

Sarah Ferguson. Well, I hope your pretence will come true, for if he doesn't, we'll have to flit out of this. It'll break your da's heart to go, and it'll break my heart too. (She rises and puts her work on the dresser.) I come here as a young girl, no older nor yourself, Hannah, to be married on your da, and I've lived here ever since. I'll never be happy nowhere else.

John Ferguson (ruminatingly) . Ay, it'll be hard to

go-

Sarah Ferguson. There's no sense or purpose in it, God forgive me for saying it!

John Ferguson. There's a meaning in it, whatever happens. I can't see God's purpose, but I know well there is one. His hand never makes a mistake.

Hannah Ferguson (bitterly). It's quare and hard to see what purpose there is in misfortune and trouble for people that never done nothing to deserve it !

Sarah Ferguson. Ah, quit it, Hannah! If God was to hear you saying the like of that, he'd mebbe strike you dead.

John Ferguson. Daughter, dear, you're a young slip of a girl, or you'd never talk that way. (Sternly.) Do you think God doesn't know how to look after His own world ? ( The severity of his voice relaxes. ) Everything that happens is made to happen, and everything in the world, the commonest wee fly in the bushes before the door there, has a purpose and a meaning. There's things hid from you and me because we're not fit to know them, but the more we fill ourselves with the glory of God, the better we get to understand the world. It's people that's full of sin, Hannah, that can't see or understand. That's sin — not knowing or understanding ! Ignorance is sin. Keeping your mind shut is sin. Not letting the sun and the air and the warmth of God into your heart — that's sin, Hannah !

[He sinks hack in his chair, fatigued by his outburst.

Sarah Ferguson. There, now, you've made yourself tired.

John Ferguson (weakly). I'm all right, woman!

Hannah Ferguson (going towards the door). I wish to my goodness that man Mawhinney would come with the letters !

John Ferguson. He'll soon be here now.

Hannah Ferguson (looking out). He's never in sight) yet! (She speaks the next sentence petulantly, returning to her seat on the sofa as she does so.) Och, here's that man, Jimmy Caesar! I wonder what he wants!

Sarah Ferguson. I wouldn't be surprised but it's you he's after! This isn't the first time he's been here lately, nor yet the second.

Hannah Ferguson (crossly). Och, ma, quit talking! I wouldn't marry him if he was the last man in the world.

Sarah Ferguson. Well, dear bless us, if he was the last man in the world, and I wanted him for myself, I wouldn't like to run the risk of making you an offer of him! Sure, what's wrong with the man?

Hannah Ferguson (contemptuously). He's an old collie, that's what he is ! He has no spirit in him at all ! Look at the way he goes on about Henry Witherow and what he'll do to him when he gets the chance ! He's had many a chance, but he's done nothing.

Sarah Ferguson. Would you have him kill the man?

Hannah Ferguson. He shouldn't go about the place threatening to have Witherow's life when he doesn't mean to take it.

John Ferguson. Daughter, dear, I don't like to hear you speaking so bitterly. It's foolish of Jimmy Caesar to talk in the wild way he does, though, dear knows, he's had great provocation. But he doesn't mean the half he says!

Hannah Ferguson. Well, he shouldn't say it then!

Sarah Ferguson. Ah, now, Hannah, if we were all to say just what we meant, more nor half of us would be struck dumb.

i6 John Ferguson

John Ferguson. Ay, you're right, woman! You are, indeed ! Henry Witherow's a hard man, and he put many an indignity on Jimmy Caesar's family. If you knew all he's had to bear, Hannah, you'd pity him, and not be saying hard words against him.

Sarah Ferguson. Ay, indeed, John! Witherow '11 not) be soft on us if we can't pay him what we owe him, and then, Hannah, you'll mebbe understand what Jimmy Caesar's feelings are.

Hannah Ferguson. I'll never understand the feelings of a collie. I like a man to have a spirit and do what he's said he'd do, or else keep his tongue quiet in his head.

Sarah Ferguson. Now, it's brave and hard to be having a spirit in these times. Sure, the man must have some pluck in him to turn round and make a good business for himself after him losing near every halfpenny he had, and that man Witherow near bankrupting him, and killing his old da and ma with grief. That's not a poor, paltry spirit, is it?

John Ferguson. You'd better quit talking about him now. He'll step in the door any minute. Where was he when you saw him, Hannah?

Hannah Ferguson. He was at the foot of the " loanie."

Sarah Ferguson. It's a credit to him the way he's slaved and saved. I daresay he has a big bit of money saved up in the Ulster Bank. (She goes to the door and looks out.) Ay, here he's coming! (She calls out to Caesar.) Is that you, Jimmy? (Caesar is heard to shout in response.) If Hannah was to marry him, the way he wants her. . . .

Hannah Ferguson. I wouldn't marry him if he was rolling in riches and had gallons of gold!

Sarah Ferguson (returning to the kitchen). Och, wheesht with you! Sure, the man's right enough, and anyway one man's no worse nor another !

[James Caesar comes to the door. He is a mean-looking man, about thirty-five years of age, and his look of meanness is not mitigated by his air of prosperity. His movements are awkward, and his speech is nervous. He is very eager to please Hannah, whom he pretends not to see. James Caesar. Good-day to you all !

John Ferguson. Good-day to you, Jimmy! James Caesar (hesitating at the door). Can I come in? Sarah Ferguson. Sure, do! You know you're always welcome here, Jimmy!

James Caesar (entering). It's kind of you to say that! (He puts his hat on the dresser.) It's a brave day! Sarah Ferguson. It's not so bad.

James Caesar. It'll do good to harvest. (Pretending to see Hannah for the first time.) Is that you, Hannah? I didn't see you when I come in first. I hope you're keeping your health?

Hannah Ferguson (coldly). I'm bravely, thank you! James Caesar. I didn't see you this while back, and I was wondering to myself were you not well or something. I'm glad to see you looking so fine on it. ( To John Ferguson.) Did you hear from your brother Andrew, John? Sarah Ferguson. Sam Mawhinney's not got this length yet. Did you see him as you were coming up?

i8 John Ferguson

James Caesar. I did not. Are you keeping well, John?

John Ferguson. I'm as well as can be expected, Jimmy.

James Caesar. That's good. I'm glad to hear it. It'll be a great blow to you if you have to leave the farm.

John Ferguson. It will.

James Caesar {bitterness growing into his voice). Ay, it's a quare blow to any man to have to leave the house he was born and reared in, the way I had to do. It's Witherow has your mortgage, isn't it ?