Five Russian plays with one from the Ukrainian

Front matter

Five Russian plays with one from the Ukrainian

Nicholas Eyréinov.

From a Portrait by N. Kulbin

Translator’s Introduction

Introduction

THE plays selected for translation in this volume are, for the most part, modern. Von Vízin alone belongs to an earlier date, that of the late eighteenth century. Nevertheless it will be found that they have this in common: they are, while still Russian, at the same time European. This separation of artists into two categories, the national and the European, is quite simple of comprehension. The national author, often the favourite in his own country and one who has strengthened and enriched its language to a great degree, is nevertheless hardly to be appreciated in translation by readers of other European countries. Lomonósov, the “father of the Russian language,” poet, panegyrist and critic, is an example; so is Dr. Johnson. But a European artist can be appreciated by any foreign reader in an adequate translation, that is, a translation approximating to what the author would have written in that language.

Von Vízin, the first real Russian dramatist, comes in the rank of European artists. He is in everything Russian; his subject, characters and treatment are all Russian, but his plays are written with that “brilliant common-sense” which may be regarded as the characteristic of the European artist. It is well worth pointing out how his work, coming to an end during the first period of the French Revolution, approaches in spirit the work of the other authors in this book, who wrote a round century after him. This phenomenon is similar to much that can be observed not only in Russian art, but in Russian politics and society.

Denis Ivánovich Von Vízin (the name at Pushkin’s suggestion was Russianised into “Vonvízin” during the nineteenth century) was descended from a German prisoner of war. He was born in 1745 and educated at first by his father, his gratitude to whom he showed in the characters of Oldthought, in The Minor, and Flatternot, in The Choice of a Tutor. In 1760, after five years in a preparatory school he became a student at the Moscow University. In the next year he published a book of translations of Holberg’s fables. In 1762 he joined the Imperial Guard, but this life did not please him and he became a translator in the Foreign Office. In 1766 he finished his comedy The Brigadier, which was at once greeted as “our first comedy of manners." The Minor, written in a similar style round a character resembling Goldsmith’s Tony Lumpkin, was produced in 1782. Most of the characteristics of these five-act comedies are to be found in the little farce in this book, The Choice of a Tutor, written probably in 1792, the year of Von Vízin’s death. A significant event in his life is that in 1774 he drew up a plan of a constitution for Panin, the minister, whose secretary he had become five years before, to present to the Emperor. This constitution, with a hundred others, had to lie aside for the whole of the nineteenth century, while the political progress of Russia was at a standstill. It is usual to consider this the fault of autocratic emperors, but perhaps it was due to the horror of the nation at the apparition of Napoleon as the result of the French Revolution. It is at least the characteristic of Russian literature after the first quarter of the nineteenth century that it attempted to withdraw from the course of European progress, and to find a national path instead. The marvellous Dostoiévsky is always exotic to us, so (in a less degree, as his genius was less) is Turgéniev, so is Ostróvsky the dramatist, so are all the Russian authors of the middle and later nineteenth century, until Sáltikov, the satirist, and Chéhov. Griboyédov’s comedy Woe from Wit (1824), recently translated into English under the title “The Misfortune of Being Clever,” was the last of the early Russo-European masterpieces. The reader feels it might have been written less than twenty years ago; in the strict sense of literary chronology, it actually was written twenty years ago.

The function of Anton Pávlovich Chéhov—this transliteration has been preferred to the less correct forms, “Tschekhoff,” “Tchekhof,” “Chekhof,” etc.—has been to pioneer the return of Russian literature into the normal path of European civilization. He was born in 1860, at Taganrog, on the Sea of Azov, the grandson of a serf and the son of a grocer. He was taught Greek at a church school and then went to the local classical school. His father’s little shop came to grief and the whole family moved to Moscow, where he studied medicine at the University. He started writing, often forced to work in one room with his parents and brothers and their friends. In 1884 he qualified as a doctor, and in 1886 published a first book of stories that had already appeared in a score of newspapers and reviews. He practised as a doctor merely on occasion, but was a most prolific writer of stories and plays, in which the influence of French literature, especially de Maupassant, conflicted with the current ultra-nationalism. Some, in fact most, of his work is simply Russian, for example, The Three Sisters, of his plays, and The Duel, of his stories. At the same time there are innumerable short stories European in style and, among his plays, The Wedding and The Jubilee, here translated, show the best quality of his work and the service he was rendering Russian literature. His life was cut short by consumption, which forced him to leave the intellectual centres of the north for the warm, barbaric Crimea. In 1890, however, he travelled in Siberia to observe the conditions of the political and criminal exiles. A complete edition of his works was published in 1903, and in the next year he died quietly at Badenweiler in the Black Forest.

Chéhov is not a great writer; he is really a great journalist, and his work has no permanent importance. A French critic has compared his work with the cinematograph, he himself called it “sweet lemonade.” It was not vodka—there lies its significance. He was an embryo European, peculiarly of France, of the France he had come to know in his profession and his reading. Now that he had led Russian literature out of its purely Russian groove, the natural step was for it to become more and more European, without losing its national impulse. The decadence of such modern writers as Andréyev, Górki, and Sólogub lies in their refusal to recognise this fact; they continue to write in a narrow style, dwarfed even in that by the genius of their forerunners, uninspired by the renaissance of European solidarity that the war has revealed, the spirit that Von Vízin had and Griboyédov.

The first modern Russian author to work in the recovered tradition is Nicholas Evréinov, who is represented in this book by his own favourite plays A Merry Death and The Beautiful Despot. He is still a young man, being born on February 13,1879. He was educated at the aristocratic Imperial School of Law, in Petrograd, and afterwards studied music under Rimsky-Korsákov. The present translator had the pleasure of making his acquaintance at Petrograd last year and was given several volumes of his collected plays and parodies. Evréinov has not only an instinct for drama, but is professionally bound to the theatre, for, in addition to his plays, he is the author of several books on stage-craft. What this means in technique will be seen from A Merry Death, a masterpiece both of drama and of the theatre. It is the best Russian play since Woe from Wit, and, so European is it, its excellence could be reproduced and appreciated in any country. So far as the more recent works of Evréinov permit us to judge, he is unlikely to excel it in the future.

A word or two may be said of Laríssa Petróvna Kossátch (1872-1913), whose pseudonym is “Lésya Ukráinka”—“Lesya of the Ukraine.” The same influence that is visible in Chéhov and ripe in Evréinov has been felt also in the newly revived Ukrainian, or Little Russian, literature. Lésya Ukráinka gave it a depth and wealth of vocabulary it sadly needed and, by introducing the European, has countered the decadent spirit of the ultranational Ukrainians. The Babylonian Captivity, translated as an epilogue to this volume, represents the enslavement of the Ukraine by its powerful neighbours; but its style is a victory.

The translator is indebted to the Editor of The New Age for permission to reprint five of the plays in this volume. The translation of The Babylonian Captivity from the Ukrainian is due mainly to Miss Sophie Volska, of Kiev. The translations of Evréinov’s two plays, by the way, have his authorisation. In them, as in the others, stage directions have been as far as possible omitted.

C. E. Bechhofer.

A Merry Death, a Harlequonade, by Nicholas Evréinov

A Merry Death

A Harlequinade

By Nicholas Evréinov

Characters

Harlequin Pierrot

Columbine Doctor

Death

Scene: Harlequin’s House

A Merry Death

(Harlequin is sleeping. Pierrot clumsily chases the flies from his face, then turns to the Audience.)

Pierrot: Shhh! Quiet! Take your seats quietly and try to talk and turn in your seats less. Even if an ingenuous friend has dragged you in and yourselves are too serious to be interested in a harlequinade, it’s quite superfluous to hint of it to the public, which in the main has no affair with your personal tastes. Besides, Harlequin’s asleep—you see him! Shh! I’ll explain it all to you afterwards. But don’t wake him up, please! And when Columbine comes on, don’t applaud her like mad, just in order to show your neighbours that you know her, had a little intrigue with her, and can appreciate certain talents. I beg and entreat you! It’s no joke. Harlequin’s terribly ill! Just think, he’s been raving about my Columbine, although, of course, there’s nothing in common between him and my Columbine; there isn’t, because Columbine’s my wife, and there’s an end of it! I strongly suspect that Harlequin won’t live till to-morrow; a fortuneteller told him that the day he sleeps longer than he revels he will die exactly at midnight. Look, it’s just eight o’clock of the evening, and he’s still asleep! I’ll tell you even more—I know, perhaps for sure, that Harlequin will soon die. But what decent actor will tell the audience the end of the play before it begins? I’m not one of those who give away the management, and I thoroughly understand that the audience goes to the theatre not for any idea in the piece, or masterly dialogue, but simply to know how the play ends, and all the same I can't help sighing and weeping in my long sleeves and saying (sobs): “Poor, poor Harlequin, who ever could have thought it?” I used to like him very much! He was my first friend; though, by the way, this never prevented me from envying him a little, because, as everybody knows, if I’m Pierrot, it’s only because I’m not a successful Harlequin. However, I’m not as simple as my clothes, and, I assure you, I’ve managed already to go for a doctor, although it’s useless, because Harlequin can die quite all right without a doctor; but—nice people always do it, and I’m not inferior to them; for, if I didn’t behave like everybody else, I should be a bold, merry Harlequin, for whom there are no laws; but I—I’m only silly, cowardly Pierrot, whose character, by the way, will be quite clear to you in the further course of the drama, if only you stop till the end of the performance and don’t run away now from my chatter. So I’ll stop it, informing you only of the following plan which came into my head entirely without outside influence: if Harlequin is fated to die exactly at midnight by this clock, then won’t it be a comradely service on my part to put back the hands, even for—well, only two hours? I always liked taking people in; but when it’s a matter of taking in death and Harlequin at the same time, and, as well, for the harm of the first and the good of the second, I don’t think you can call this plan anything but a genius’s. Well, to work! The performance begins! (Climbs on a stool and, stretching over the bed on which Harlequin is sleeping, puts the clock back two hours.) Poor, poor Harle2 (Falls down on the floor.) Poor Pierrot! (Rubs his back. Harlequin, waking, smiles, pulls Pierrot towards him by the chin, and tenderly kisses him.)

Pierrot (naïvely): I seem to have waked you.

Harlequin: Why didn’t you do it earlier?

Pierrot : What for?

Harlequin: My hours are numbered.

Pierrot : Rubbish!

Harlequin: I want to live them.

Pierrot : And you will.

Harlequin: You nearly let me sleep them away.

Pierrot : I thought 2

Harlequin: What’s the time?

Pierrot : Six.

Harlequin: Only.

Pierrot : Yes. How do you feel?

Harlequin: Dying.

Pierrot : You’re frightening me. (Weeps.)

Harlequin: Stop! Why, I’m alive! What have you done? Isn’t my clock wrong?

Pierrot : I went for a doctor. Lie down quietly. I must take your temperature.

Harlequin: For a doctor? (Giggles.) Will, what of it, if he cures me 2

Pierrot : Lift up your arm. That’s the way. (Applies a thermometer.) Is that someone coming? (The thermometer begins to burn.)

Harlequin: It shows the exact temperature.

(Pierrot takes away the thermometer and puts out the flame. Harlequin jumps up and circles about snapping his fingers.) Haha! Harlequin’s not dead yet!

Pierrot: Only a thermometer spoiled.

Harlequin: Yes, I’ve not long to live; but (taking down a lute) look, how many strings are broken and the rest are frayed! But does that stop me playing the introduction to a serenade? (Plays. Steps are heard to the left)

Pierrot: D’you hear? The doctor! Stop playing and lie down quickly. It’s he. I can tell people at once by their step. That could only be someone hurrying to help a friend.

Harlequin (stops playing and lies down): To get money. (A knock.)

Pierrot: Come in!

Doctor (in huge spectacles, bald, with a big red nose and a syringe in a bag, comes in, stops, and sings to the audience):

You’ve only got to call me here, And at once I'm near, at once I’m near, At once I’m off to the invalid To care for him and for his need. My medicines I vary at The rich man’s house and proletariat; But there’s no need to be obscure, I only care, but do not cure.

And grind the poor I never did, O God forbid, O God forbid! For wealth from him who’d scrape any? You take his only ha’penny. fly medicines I vary at The rich man’s house and proletariat; But there’s no need to be obscure, I only care but do not cure.

Good-day, my dear Harlequin. What’s the matter with you?

Harlequin: That’s for you to judge.

Doctor: You’re quite right. (In Pierrot's ear.) There’s never any need to contradict a patient. (To Harlequin.) Temperature been taken?

Pierrot (shaking his hand): Don’t inquire!

Doctor: How do you feel?

Harlequin: An attack.

Doctor: Of coughing?

Harlequin: Of laughing.

Doctor: What are you laughing at?

Harlequin: You! (Bursts with laughter.)

Doctor (to Pierrot): He doesn’t believe in medicine?

Pierrot: No, apparently only in you.

Doctor: What a curious invalid! Your pulse, please. Oho, I can't count quickly enough! Show your tongue.

Harlequin: To whom?

Doctor: To me!

Harlequin: Oh, to you? Delighted! (Shows his tongue.)

Doctor: Thank you.

Harlequin: Please. (Shows his tongue again.)

Doctor: Enough, enough!

Harlequin: Oh, that's quite all right! (Shows it again.)

Doctor: I’ve seen it already.

Harlequin: Just as you like. (Puts in his tongue.)

Doctor: I’ve got to listen to you.

Harlequin: What shall I talk about?

Doctor: No, I say: I’ve got to listen to you.

Harlequin: Well, and I ask you, what about?

Doctor: You don’t understand me.

Harlequin: You? No, no, no, never! People like me can see right through you; but people like you, I’ll eat my hat, can never understand people like me!

Doctor: He’s raving. Very well! Now, allow me to lay my head upon your heart! It’s necessary in order to 2

Harlequin: But your wife isn’t jealous?

Doctor: He’s got a strong fever. If my ears aren’t burned, it’ll be a piece of luck. Yes, yes, you’re very ill; but let’s hope you’ll soon be well. (To Pierrot.) There’s no hope; the machine is spoiled. (To Harlequin.) You’ll live a long time yet. (To Pierrot.) He'll die very soon. (To Harlequin.) You did very well to send for me. (To Pierrot.) You’d better have sent for a coffin-maker. (To Harlequin.) You’ve a healthy system. (To Pierrot.) And that won’t help him. (To Harlequin.) You’ve only got to be cured. (To Pierrot.) And that’s no use.

Harlequin: What do you advise me?

Doctor: You must go to bed early. No excitements. Drink absolutely nothing. Don’t eat anything sharp, salt, fat, spiced, bitter, milky, over-cold, over-hot, very, very sweet, or very, very filling. Quiet habits, mustn’t get roused. Always mind draughts. Keep quite away from frivolity.

Harlequin: Very well; but is a life like that worth living?

Doctor: That’s your affair.

Harlequin: What illness have I got?

Doctor: Old age.

Harlequin: Why, I could be your son!

Doctor: You’re too impudent for that. Good-bye. (To Pierrot.) And who pays for the visit ? (Pierrot nods towards Harlequin.)

Doctor (again to Harlequin): Good-bye.

Harlequin: Good-bye. (Doctor goes out undecidedly and stops.) Have you forgotten anything?

Doctor: Have you forgotten anything?

Harlequin: No, nothing; I thoroughly remember all your instructions. Don’t be uneasy.

Doctor: No, no; I’m not uneasy about that.

Harlequin: Then about what?

Doctor: H’m. Speaking between ourselves, you’ve forgotten to pay me for my visit.

Harlequin: Impossible! How curious!

Doctor: But please don’t be angry with me.

Harlequin: Good heavens, no!

Doctor: Then good-bye.

Harlequin (shaking his hand feelingly): Good-bye, doctor, good-bye.

Doctor: H’m. You’re just as forgetful again.

Harlequin: Yes, yes. There’s a coincidence! You’re quite right. It would be impudent of me to maintain the opposite.

Doctor: Well, there you are; I’m reminding you.

Harlequin: I’m heartily grateful.

Doctor: There’s no need for gratitude.

Harlequin: No! Good heavens!

Doctor: And so—my fee?

Harlequin: You’ll get it when I get well, when you’ve cured me.

Doctor: Yes; but I ought to tell you that I reckon to cure all illnesses except the incurable; but yours 2

Harlequin: Well, then, when an improvement comes, when your advice begins to work. But then, who knows? Perhaps you lied. Why should I pay then?

Doctor: In that case I must inform you that—that, judging from the condition of your system, you won’t live even till to-morrow.

Harlequin (jumping out of bed) : What! In that case, why the devil should I pay?

Doctor: But when you die, who’ll pay me?

Harlequin: But for what, let me ask you?

Doctor: How, for what?

Harlequin: If I actually die to-day, then what’s the use of your art that can’t save me from death? And if I survive, then again it’s no use if it knows less than an ignorant fortune-teller.

Doctor: I didn’t come here to talk philosophy.

Harlequin: I know why you came.

Doctor: No insinuations, if you please.

Harlequin: He calls that insinuations. (Pulling out a purse from under his pillow.) Here’s what you came for. (Goes to the door and holds out the money.)

Doctor (reaching out) : Thank you. (Harlequin laughs, and runs out at one side and in at the other, the Doctor after him. He does this three times, and then gives the Doctor the money.)

Harlequin: What do you say to my playfulness?

Doctor: You know, sir—here’s the best of luck in the other world—it’s the first time I’ve seen a dying man like you. What’s that noise you’re making?

Harlequin: That’s my heart beating. (Noise of a steam-engine.)

Doctor: And that?

Harlequin: My breathing.

Doctor: And you're still on your legs?

Harlequin: Oh, yes! And I’ve kept fairly merry, so as to meet boldly the death I desire.

Doctor: Why do you desire it?

Harlequin: Oh, it's just coming at the right time! The man that lives wisely always desires his death.

Doctor: You’re talking in riddles.

Harlequin: Yes, for people like you. (Laughs.)

Doctor: How do you know?

Harlequin: If you like, I’ll tell you how you’ll die.

Doctor: Interesting.

Harlequin (lies on bed and shivers with all his body, then groans): Oh! Ah! Ugh! I’m still so young. I haven’t been able to live yet as I ought. Why have I been so abstinent all my life? I’ve still got all sorts of things I want to do. Turn me to the window. I’m not tired yet of looking at the world. Help! I’ve not been able to do half I wanted. I was never in a hurry to live because I always forgot about death. Help, help! I haven’t been able to enjoy myself yet; I’ve always kept my health, my strength, and my money for the morrow. I filled it with beautiful hopes, and it rolled on like a snowball, growing bigger and bigger. Has that morrow rolled for ever beyond the bounds of the possible? It has rolled down the slope of my mortal wisdom. Oh! Ah! Ugh! (Twists for the last time, extends, and dies. The Doctor weeps. Harlequin, with a laugh, gets up and applauds himself.) No! Not so dies Harlequin!

Doctor (weeping): What must I do?

Harlequin (holds out his hand): For the advice, please. I take in advance.

Doctor: How much?

Harlequin: As much as you.

Doctor (gives back his fee): Well?

Harlequin (with importance): Go and live. Nothing else.

Doctor: What does that mean?

Harlequin: Well, if you don’t understand, you’re incurable. I tell you, go and live, but live, not like an immortal, but like a man that may die to-morrow.

Doctor (shakes his head doubtfully): H’m. I’ll try it. (Wipes his eyes.) Good-bye, Mr. Harlequin.

Harlequin: Good-bye, Mr. Doctor. (Exit Doctor, finger on brow.) Well, what have you got to say of it, Pierrot?

Pierrot: Nothing good. (It grows dark.)

Harlequin: The old ape imagined I don’t feel death coming. As if a man, sleeping longer than he revels, could still have doubts about the approach of death. But what’s the time? (The clock shows eight.) Hasn’t the clock stopped? It always went in step with me, but now 2

Pierrot: You’re too nervous.

Harlequin: We can’t all be like you.

Pierrot: What do you mean?

Harlequin: You’ll soon see. Help me to lay the table for supper.

Pierrot (going to the clipboard): With great pleasure.

Harlequin: We must lay for three.

Pierrot: Three?

Harlequin: Yes.

Pierrot: Whom’s the third for?

Harlequin: For Death.

Pierrot: She’ll sit down with us?

Harlequin: If you’re not afraid of her.

Pierrot: Two glasses are enough; I won’t have supper with you.

Harlequin: Come, come! I was joking. Death will sup on me. That’s sufficient for her. But, all the same, lay for three. (Lights the lamp.)

Pierrot: But whom’s the third for ?

Columbine’s voice (sings):

I from my husband unsuspected Steal to another ’neath the moon; When desire’s interdicted, Doubly ’tis desired soon. Ah, my heart is trembling, Fainting, beating slow— If my spouse should see me, Should hearken, and should know.

Pierrot: What’s that? Columbine’s voice! My wife’s voice!

Harlequin: Now you know whom the third place is for.

Pierrot (tragically): A-ah! Traitor! A-ah! Demon! This is your friendship!

Harlequin: Be calm. Why, nothing’s happened yet!

Pierrot: It only wants that!

Harlequin: And if I were to say that it doesn’t even want that?

Pierrot: And you dare pretend that you love me!

Harlequin: I love you both. But you want it to be only you, and so you’re jealous.

Pierrot: You know very well how, of whom, and why I’m jealous.

Harlequin: Be sensible. If you love me and love Columbine, you ought to be happy for both our sakes. Besides, you know we both love you. So what is there to be sad about? Lay a third place.

Pierrot: No, I’m not so simple. Nice people don’t behave like that, and there’s nothing else left for me than to revenge myself on you.

Harlequin: In what way?

Pierrot: By death.

Harlequin: But it’ll come soon anyhow—my hours are numbered. Who will prevent you afterwards from telling everybody that it was the work of your hands?

Pierrot: Suppose 2

Harlequin: Come, what is there to talk about! Lay a third place.

Pierrot (considering): Yes, but 2

Harlequin: Come, come. Time’s precious. (Pierrot fetches the plates and drops them.) Butterfingers! You were bound to smash ’em.

Pierrot (pathetically) : It’s not for you to reproach me! You’ve destroyed my happiness.

Harlequin (laying the third place): No phrases, please! You’ve been cold with Columbine for a long time, and you’re only jealous because it’s good manners. But, shh!

Columbine’s voice:

Columbine has donned her mask And is clad in motley gear, O, Wants to see her Harlequin But’s afraid of meeting Pierrot. Ah, her heart is trembling, Fainting, beating slow— If her spouse should see her, Should hearken, and should know.

Harlequin: I’m going to meet Columbine; you look after the lamp. (Exit.)

Pierrot: H’m. Look after the lamp! (Suddenly strikes his forehead.) Wouldn’t it be better to look after the clock? Well, if Harlequin’s death ought to be the work of my hands, very well! Ladies and gentlemen, you are my witnesses! I don’t leave that sort of things unpunished—I’ll put the hands on two hours. (Does so.) Ah! Harlequin, evidently no one can escape his fate. Now I’m quite calm: I’m revenged. Interesting to see how she’ll look at me. This way, please, Madame Traitress.

Harlequin (off): Don’t be afraid, Columbine! Go in fearlessly. I’ve persuaded him, and, word of honour, he’s consented.

Columbine (enters): Consented?! Here’s a fine thing! Consented! What, you little beast, that’s all you think of your wife! You don’t care if she betrays you? You don’t care? Answer! (Beats Pierrot.)

Pierrot (agonised): But listen, Columbine.

Columbine: What? I must listen to you? Listen to the worst little beast of a husband of all little beasts of husbands? 2

Pierrot: But, Columbine.

Columbine: Blockhead!

Pierrot: You don’t let me utter a word.

Columbine (beats him): You’ve got no excuse! And I, poor thing, married a little beast like you! Gave you all the best there was in me! And he can’t even stand up for my conjugal honour! Take that, and that, and that, you good-for-nothing!

Pierrot: But that’s too much! Harlequin, protect me.

Harlequin: This is your own business.

Pierrot: Yes, but, dear old chap 2

Harlequin: I haven’t been brought up to interfere in other people’s private matters.

Columbine (to Pierrot): There, that’s how you love me! That’s how jealous you are of me! Where are your vows, you pagan?

Pierrot (coming to himself): Oh, to Hell with this, I never heard of such a thing! Why, you impudent woman, you came here yourself to a rendezvous and yet you dare say 2

Columbine: That’s enough! Be quiet! I know the little ways of rogues like you: when you’re found out you start to find fault with the innocent, so as to get out of the difficulty. But you don’t deceive me, you good-for-nothing.

Harlequin (interposing): Friends, don’t let’s waste precious time! When supper’s waiting, is it worth while spoiling one's appetite?

Columbine and Pierrot: But it is irritating!

Harlequin: I don’t like to see quarrels starting.

Columbine and Pierrot: It’s not my fault.

Harlequin: Better make friends!

Columbine and Pierrot: Not for anything.

Harlequin: What obstinacy!

Columbine and Pierrot: I’ve been wounded in my finest feelings.

Harlequin: Come, enough.

Columbineand Pierrot: No.

Columbine: First he ought to be punished.

Harlequin: In what way?

Columbine: Kiss me, Harlequin! Dear, sweet Harlequin.

Harlequin: Not to offend you with a refusal—(kisses her). I was always an obliging cavalier. (Kisses her.) Besides that, I’ve got a tender heart. (Kisses her.) Even children know it. (Kisses her.) And finally, as host—(kisses her)—I ought to be polite to my guests—(kisses her)—especially when it concerns—(kisses her)—the fair sex. (Kisses her.)

Pierrot: Wretches! They don’t suspect that I’m already revenged and so can be absolutely calm.

Columbine (to Harlequin): Kiss me more warmly, more strongly, more painfully, almost biting me, without losing breath. (Is kissed as she desires.)

Pierrot: They imagine they’re mortally provoking me.

Columbine (to Harlequin): Once more! Once more! (To Pierrot.) Oh! you unfeeling log!

Pierrot: Please do what you like. (To Audience.) My conscience is clean; I have vindicated my honour and have nothing to worry about.

Columbine (to Harlequin): Kiss my eyes, my forehead, my cheeks, my chin, my temples. (Harlequin does not wait to be asked a second time.)

Pierrot (to Audience): Gentlemen, you are witnesses that I’ve taken my revenge.

Columbine (to Harlequin): Kiss my neck where the hair ends and where a sweet shivering comes from your kisses.

Pierrot: I don’t care. Let them do as they want. I have fulfilled the duty of an affronted husband and never felt better in my life.

Columbine (stamping at Pierrot): There, you brute! Is all this nothing to you?

Pierrot (to Audience): I’m wearing them out with my nonchalance.

Columbine (to Harlequin): Well, shall we celebrate our Dance of Love, in spite of him.

Harlequin: I don’t dare refuse you, but 2

Columbine: What “but”?

Harlequin: But if Pierrot isn’t such a lover of dancing as to forget everything in the world!

Pierrot: Please, don’t mind me? (To Audience.) I’m revenged for everything in advance and needn’t be disturbed, whatever happens.

Harlequin (giving him the lute): Perhaps you’ll accompany us?

Columbine: Of course! Is he to do nothing?

Pierrot: With the greatest pleasure, if it helps you. (To Audience.) I hope you understand what a matter of indifference this is to a husband who can vindicate his wounded honour.