Lord Rochester is Dying: A Comedy
Act I Scene 2.
Three weeks later. Tower Hill, Tower of London in background. “Bendo” is on a platform, and when he raises and stretches his arms, the image is suggestive of Christ on the cross. The surrounding crowd heckles and cheers. Around the platform are bottles and jars, containing unguents and powders that Bendo’s lackeys (one a Pulcinella figure) are selling at a brisk rate.
ROCHESTER (in the guise of Dr Alexander Bendo, Italian mountebank. Removes vizard): My scurvy friends, pay heed. I come to cure your ills. But first let me speak of fires that destroy and fires that purge; often they’re the same. From this elevation, I catch a glimpse of Pudding Lane, where a dozen years ago the Great Fire of London began to blaze. Those caught in the murderous inferno believed themselves consigned to the eternal fires of hell, whereas, may their souls rest in peace, they were martyrs to nature’s benevolence.
HECKLER: Damn you, Bendo. I lost my father and brother in the fire. Where’s the benevolence in that?
ROCHESTER: You have my sympathy; but I speak for the larger good. The fire took innocent lives and destroyed property, it’s true. But it also purged the city of the infection–some think it black rats—that carried the plague. You will have noticed that the incidence of that disease has diminished in London in recent years. It’s no longer the remorseless killer it once was. Yet I shall never lose employment. There will always be foul diseases requiring effective remedy.
HECKLER: You’re a quack, Bendo! You play us for fools.
ROCHESTER: Some call me quack, that’s true. I prefer, if you must abuse me, the dignity of mountebank. But quack is not bothersome to me. For what is a quack but an unlicensed physician. And what is a licensed physician but one who can brandish the royal warrant – obtained perhaps by craft and court connections.
By the exactness of my counterfeits, I account myself an honest man. I wear a precise imitation of the gown that my master Rabelais wore, when he was invested as Doctor of Medicine at Montpelier University – to which I have added some tasteful accessories (tugging on a gold pendant with a large medal set with precious stones).
Let me speak to the honour of the mountebank, in case you discover me to be one. His craft is to draw great companies to him by undertaking strange things that can never be effected. The politician – no doubt by his example – finding how the people are taken with specious, miraculous, impossibilities, plays the same game: protests, declares, promises I know not what things, which he’s sure can never be brought about. The people believe, are deluded and pleased, the expectation of a future good which shall never befall them draws their eyes off of a present evil. Thus are they kept in subjection, peace, and obedience; he in greatness, wealth, and power.
So you see the politician is and must be a mountebank in state affairs; and the mountebank — no doubt if he thrives – is an errant politician in medicine.
HECKLER: Get on with it, Bendo. My gout is killing me.
ROCHESTER: You admonish me well, ma’am. I grow tedious and forget my station. I’m here to heal the body, not the body politic.
I have a bold claim. I can cure that grand old English disease the scurvy. Your licensed physicians and apothecaries treat this most pernicious of diseases with mercury, antimony, spirits and salts. But these are dangerous remedies in which I meddle very little, and with great caution. I use more secure, gentle, and less fallible medicines, together with a few rules in diet, and perfectly cure the patient, having freed him from all the symptoms, such as looseness of the teeth, skorbutick spots, want of appetite, and pains and lassitude in the limbs and joints.
There are few distempers in this nation that don’t proceed originally from the scurvy. If rooted out, there would not be heard of so many gouts (gesturing toward the heckler), aches, dropsies, and consumptions: nay even those thick and slimy humours, which generate stones in the kidney and bladder, are for the most part off-springs of the scurvy.
HECKLER: What of the pox and the clap, Bendo? Are they the offspring of scurvy, too? Or is it not France that’s the source of infestation?
ROCHESTER: I leave venereal matters to another day, my friend. I rather talk of the animation of love than its defilement.
Enhancing a woman’s beauty is a specialty of mine, which brings benefits to both sexes. Why discard an old mistress for a young one when you can restore the former to her original beauty? Those that have travelled in Italy will tell you what a miracle art does there in assisting nature in the preservation of beauty, and how women of fifty bear the same countenance as those of fifteen. Ages are no ways there distinguished by faces, whereas here in England look a horse in the mouth and a woman in the face, you presently know both their ages to a year.
I will therefore give you such remedies, that without destroying the complexion — as most of your paints and daubings do — shall render it purely fair, cleaning and preserving it from all spots, freckles, heats and pimples – nay even the marks of the small pox.
FEMALE HECKLER: And what of your own sex, Bendo? Can you restore a handsome face? Can you spirit away my husband’s scars and blotches, or replace a nose that the pox has eaten away?
ROCHESTER: I cannot work miracles, ma’am, but I can certainly recommend a reliable retailer of spare noses (fiddling with his own nose). And madam, your praiseworthy concern for your husband’s appearance should not cause you to neglect your own. I see much potential for improving nature’s generous endowment. I could, if you wish, at small expense, cleanse and preserve your teeth white and round as pearls, fastening those that are loose. Your gums shall be kept entire and red as corral, your lips of the same colour and soft as you could wish your lawful kisses.
Crowd noise dims. Two figures are spotlighted at front corner of stage.
APHRA BEHN: I see your master is at play again, Baptiste.
BAPTISTE: His lordship is always at play, Mrs Behn.
BEHN: And his disguises are ever more shameful. A while ago the Town reported that he had dressed as a beggar to pursue some mean amour. Now he adds an extra layer of deceit by the pretence of being a pretender. How long has he been plying the mountebank’s trade?
BAPTISTE: Near a fortnight, ma’am. He has a laboratory nearby where his assistants mix soot and lime and piss and oils to provide a continual supply of balms and medications.
BEHN: A noxious industry! Once our lordship was content with out-swilling Bacchus. Now he adds Prometheus to his private pantheon. Our Lord Rochester is of noble birth, so why does he besmirch himself in such a vulgar commerce?
BAPTISTE: Perhaps it amuses him to step out of his station. (Crashing noise. Rochester has fallen off the platform.) Mon dieu! What’s happened?
Behn and Baptiste rush over to Rochester. Baptiste cradles him in his arms, pieta fashion, while Behn looks at his face with an expression of concern.
BAPTISTE: My lord…
ROCHESTER (reviving briefly, before relapsing into unconsciousness): I made ten pounds today. That’s near a hundred for the week. This is a lucrative trade.
ACT 1, Scene 3, Following morning; Rochester’s apartment, in Whitehall palace. On stage: Rochester, Baptiste, Elizabeth Barry, Will Fanshawe.
BAPTISTE: You must rest, sir. It was a severe distemper. You’re still fevered.
BARRY: The mood is melancholy in Drury Lane; Mrs Behn sent me ahead to let you know. The story is now abroad that you’re dying.
ROCHESTER: I’d be much obliged if you and Mrs Behn would deny these false reports. The truth is I am much revived and ready to reclaim the existence that Dr Bendo stole from me.
BAPTISTE: Why do you like to disguise yourself, my lord?
ROCHESTER: My pretty page, think of it as a family trait. My father was the master of disguise. During our civil war he dressed the king as a common labourer and hid him in an oak tree – all 6 foot 2 of him — so he could evade Oliver Cromwell’s cavalry patrols and flee to safety in France.
FANSHAWE: But that was disguise in the king’s service, Johnnie, not to indulge a fantasy that you’re a mountebank.
ROCHESTER: Yet is there such a great difference, Will? As Thomas Hobbes tells it, a person is the same as an actor is, both on the stage and in common conversations. To act is to personate and to personate is to act. So if we’re always acting anyway, why not adopt a variety of roles to satisfy both necessity and whim. Why be stuck as one person and, worse, with the delusion that this person is your authentic self, when you might merely be obeying the customs and dictates of authority – in your case Will, the restless and tyrannical demands of fashion? Or, to move from the comic to the tragic, consider the case of our late king, who found his best role just seconds before having his head cut off after a mockery of a trial. To quote the words of the poet, Andrew Marvell: “That thence the Royal Actor born / The Tragic Scaffold might adorn // He nothing common did nor mean / Upon that memorable scene.” Much for you to ponder there, Will.
FANSHAWE: And ponder it, I shall. My genewal wule is never to ponder before noon, because that can wuin the rest of the day; but I’m inclined to ponder this one, with urgency.
BARRY: May I ponder it, too. I like to ponder. Perhaps the king found at last his true self, not just his best role. Perhaps we’re all searching for our true selves, sometimes without knowing we’re engaged in such a quest.
ROCHESTER (ignoring Barry): …but returning to the subject of my father…the only time I remember seeing him was during one of his furtive visits to England when the country was held in the vice of Cromwell’s major-generals. I think I was ten years of age. My father spoke to me kindly, but was so fearful of detection that he kept his face hidden under a greatcoat and a felt hat. But I ramble. I bore my sweet Baptiste with my reminiscences. Let’s address the present. How stands the kingdom, Will?
FANSHAWE: Wumours still fly of a Popish Plot to assassinate the king. It’s now said that Andwew Marvell, was poisoned by the Jesuits.
ROCHESTER: Marvell was a most excellent poet – I can acknowledge that now he’s dead – but incautious in his diet. The only Popish plot is the one hatching in the mind of the king, who, mark it well, follows his brother in pursuit of the Whore of Rome. Unlike his fool of a brother, however, the King bides his time in declaring his allegiance.
But since these are dangerous times for England’s Catholics, I will urge my lady to renounce her allegiance to the Catholic Church. It’s the politic thing to do now, just as it seemed politic for her to join the Roman Church when the country’s drift seemed in that direction.
But let’s get to matters more specific, Will: what’s the twitter of the town since my disappearance?
FANSHAWE: Let me see… Well, John Dwyden was bludgeoned, near to death, by thwee men in Rose Alley.
ROCHESTER: God’s eyeballs! And have the bludgeoners been apprehended?
FANSHAWE: No, but you are wumoured to be a suspect.
ROCHESTER: (amused) Am I indeed? I concede that Dryden is my equal in poetry and wit. I have on occasion claimed his writing as my own. Our rivalry requires that he be attacked viciously at every opportunity — but with malicious satire and brazen libel, not cudgels. A bludgeoning is too crude and likely to win him sympathy. Besides, as a general principle, the beating up of poets is to be discouraged. Our bludgeoners should be directed to other targets like pastry chefs or furriers. Yet, for all that, I’m flattered that the Town reckons I still have enough fire in my belly to lead an affray.
But to yet more important matters. How is my standing at court since my most recent disappearance?
FANSHAWE: The king smiles on you, Johnnie.
ROCHESTER: That is no longer guaranteed, I fear. I had advantages. My father was an unflinching cavalier. Our king honours the memory of those who gave their lives for his cause with his generous support of their children. Even the heavens seemed to be on my side. On the occasion of my presentation at court, a brilliant comet flashed across the sky. The king was much taken with the symbolism, declaring it no ordinary star. But the star’s brilliance was short lived, and now I go up and down in the king’s estimation like a whore’s knickers.
BARRY: Perhaps that’s because the king can’t decide whether to be a stern father or your companion in drunken revels. And perhaps you don’t know whether to be an obedient son or a defiant and mischievous one. Look, from this window I can see the wreckage of the sundial in the Privy Garden that you and your merry gang smashed in a mad frolic, while shouting “down with time; time fucks.” Why doesn’t the king have the sundial removed, or have it repaired? Perhaps he leaves it there to reproach you, or maybe to reproach himself.
Rochester and Fanshawe glare at Barry, surprised and a bit annoyed at her acute intervention.
FANSHAWE: This I believe is the pattern. Your standing is high when you disappear. Your pwesence lowers it. It’s as if the king can abide the image, but not the weality.
ROCHESTER: A suspiciously neat formulation. Surely there’s more to this story.
FANSHAWE: Well, there is just a possibility that your bawdy and satirical weferences to the king’s “woyal sceptre” (exaggerated air quotes), embawess his majesty, especially when uttered in the pwesence of the Fwench ambassador.
ROCHESTER (with heavy irony): Ours is an exquisitely delicate king.
BARRY: What’s a woyal sceptre?
ROCHESTER: I pray you never need to find out, Elizabeth. Suffice it to say that sometimes a woyal sceptre is just a woyal sceptre.
BARRY: I think you make fun of me, sir.
FANSHAWE: Well, at least your woyal pension and perquisites, like these splendid chambers, are constant, Johnnie, however much your weputation wobbles.
ROCHESTER That’s because my father, in whose honour I receive the king’s favours, is constantly dead.
(Hubbub outside. A voice yelling “A cloak, a cloak, my kingdom for a cloak.”)
ROCHESTER: Hell’s Bell’s. Speak of the devil. It’s the king. Something must have vexed him. He never pays me the honour of a visit unless he’s in an ill humour.
KING (bursting in): The knaves have sold every cloak in the royal wardrobe.
ROCHESTER: Knaves of economy, a most dangerous breed. A king uncloaked is a king dangerously exposed. It must be remedied. Baptiste –fetch a cloak for his majesty. (Baptiste leaves room.)
KING: I believe the English are the most intractable people upon earth. I yearn for France.
ROCHESTER: Come, come, sir.
KING: You would find the English so were you in my place and obliged to govern.
ROCHESTER: Were I in your majesty’s place I would not govern at all.
KING: How so?
ROCHESTER: I would send for my good Lord Rochester and command him to govern.
KING: But the singular modesty of that nobleman –
ROCHESTER: He would certainly conform himself to your Majesty’s bright example. How gloriously would the two social virtues flourish under his auspices!
KING: And these are?
ROCHESTER: The love of wine and women.
KING: God bless your Majesty!
ROCHESTER: These attachments keep the world in good humour, and that’s why I say they are social virtues. Let the bishops deny it if they can.
KING: Talking of the bishops, the Bishop of Salisbury died last night. How would you like to succeed him?
ROCHESTER: From king to bishop, that’s a giddying plunge. Your offer is in jest, of course. However, as your loyal subject, I’m obliged to take seriously your every utterance, coming as it does from god’s annointed. Mmm, a bishopric, eh?… Very well. I accept on condition that I shall not be called upon to preach on the thirtieth of January, the date of your father’s beheading, nor on the twenty ninth of May, the date of your majesty’s blessed restoration to the throne.
KING: These conditions are curious. You object to the first, I suppose, because it would be a melancholy subject, but the other …
ROCHESTER: Would be a melancholy subject too.
KING: Have a care, Rochester. This is too much …
ROCHESTER: I only mean that the official business of commemoration would be too grave for the day. Nothing but the indulgence of the two grand social virtues would be a proper testimony of my joy upon that occasion.
KING (pauses, then suddenly energized): Ah, ha. You are the happiest fellow in my dominions. Let me perish if I do not envy your impudence. (spots Elizabeth Barry). And who’s this one?
ROCHESTER: Allow me to introduce Mrs Elizabeth Barry, the actress.
BARRY: At your service, your majesty.
KING: Well I am the king, so that goes without saying. But it’s good to have it so prettily acknowledged. And when, pray, did you first alight upon the stage, Elizabeth?
BARRY: I have been on the stage for as long as I can remember, sir. My guardian, Sir William Davenant, the playwright, kept a theatre nursery in his home and encouraged the young children of the family to play upon it.
KING (musing): Davenant, eh? Sound royalist family. Well, it takes all sorts I suppose. I hope our bullies of the London stage, like my Lord Rochester here, are giving you the respect appropriate to your station. Anyway, gotta go. Nell Gwyn awaits for rumpy pumpy. She began her career in theatre selling oranges in the pit, before mounting the stage to great acclaim. Now I’m mounting her. Remember, folks, we’re going to make England merry again. Carry on my loyal subjects. Ciao.
King leaves abruptly. Baptiste returns holding the “Rabelais” cloak as if to drape it on him.
BAPTISTE: Where’d he go?
Voices from off. Aphra Behn enters.
BEHN: Good-day. I have just seen the king – cloakless and bragging about his royal sceptre. He seems intent on rumpy pumpy.
FANSHAWE: With you, ma’am?
BEHN: You are bold my foppish friend! But no. Nell Gwyn is the current object of the king’s carnal attention. My service to the crown is of a different kind.
ROCHESTER: You mean acting as the king’s spy in Holland.
BEHN: It was meant to be a secret mission.
ROCHESTER: And therefore the talk of the town.
BAPTISTE (aside, eyes rolling): So much for disguises.
ROCHESTER: It would be impossible for a person of your shining quality and vivacity to stay anonymous for long.
BARRY: How very true.
BEHN: Spare me the oily compliments. I thought those were the exclusive specialty of your pet fop here. (Fanshawe feigns fierce indignation.) My purpose in coming is to enquire of your health. When I last saw you yesterday, you were lying senseless at the base of a scaffold.
ROCHESTER: An appropriate resting place for me, some might say. But your concerns are as much unwarranted as they are appreciated. I find myself nearly fully recovered.
Behn glances over at Baptiste, who is shaking his head. She nods discretely in acknowledgment.
BEHN: I am relieved to hear it. We will take our leave now. Come Elizabeth.
ROCHESTER: Please stay a while, I await the arrival of the Reverend Doctor Gilbert Burnet. You might wish to make his acquaintance.
FANSHAWE: Burnet? The fashionable pweacher from Aberdeen? You’re seeking out unusual company, Johnnie.
ROCHESTER: I’m aware that Burnet is currently a darling of the town, which is not a point in his favour. But I find him a person of learning and character. I’m reading his three-volume History of the English Reformation. You might wish to give it a try Will. (Fanshawe has a “you gotta be kidding” expression.) He’s brave, too. He once wrote to the king chiding him for his lewd behaviour, saying that it set a bad example for his subjects. The king crumpled the letter and threw it in the fire, but he took no further measures, such is the reverend’s standing.
BEHN: I can hardly wait to meet this paragon in person.
ROCHESTER: One small matter; he’s a little sensitive about his humble Aberdeen origins. I beg you to tread carefully around that issue.
FANSHAWE, BEHN, BARRY: Of course, of course…
BAPTISTE: The Reverend Dr Burnet is here. (Burnet enters.)
ROCHESTER: Welcome, Dr. Burnet. Allow me to introduce my friends, Aphra Behn, Elizabeth Barry and Will Fanshawe.
FANSHAWE: I’m delighted to make your acqwaintance, sir. Your awival is timely. I would be much obliged if you could settle a question that is currently hotly debated in polite circles. Is it twue that Our Lord’s miwacle of the fishes is weenacted daily in Aberdeen?
Burnet makes as if to reply, but is interrupted by Rochester.
ROCHESTER: Very droll, Will, very droll. I’m sorry you can’t stay longer. Baptiste — Fanshawe is leaving now.
Fanshawe gestures in mild protest but is ushered out by Baptiste. Heard yelling: Go toss your caber, Burnet!
BURNET: So Mrs Behn, I hear much of your adventures: your secret service in the Dutch Republic; your travels to the New World, where, I’m told, you observed primitive savages in their original habitation and witnessed the loathsome institution of Negro slavery. You pursue dangerous courses.
BEHN: But none, I warrant, so treacherous as the road from Aberdeen to London.
ROCHESTER (exasperated): Aphra!
BEHN: Gentlemen, we leave now, so you can pursue your theological discussions without womanly distraction. (to Rochester) I pray you continue to recover. And please, no more mad japes. They’re sucking the life out of you. Come Elizabeth.
BURNET (bowing): Mrs Behn, Mrs Barry.
(exeunt Behn, Baptiste, Barry)
ROCHESTER: So, please sit down, Burnet. (Burnet sits) And how stands our cherished Anglican Church? Keeping a steady middle course, I trust, between the zealous presbyters of the Scottish kirk and the flaunting glitterati of Rome.
BURNET: Quite so, my lord, quite so. But I understand I am here to examine your spiritual condition, not the Church’s.
ROCHESTER: Indeed, sir. However, my condition, let me be clear, is not that of a miserable penitent. In my experience that condition is usually found in those who have lost all power to commit mischief.
I do confess though to a vexation of spirit. During my recent illness my memory was drawn back, against my will, to the horrors of the Dutch Wars. I experienced a sharp and powerful recollection of the sea battle when the brother of Sir Hugh Middleton died in my arms. The image haunts me still. I believe it was to erase the memory that for five years I was continually drunk. I passed for sober at my desire, but my blood was so inflamed that I was never cool enough to be fully master of myself.
BURNET: I understand the need for spiritual intervention, but I confess to some puzzlement. You send for me, yet you’re hardly known as a friend of the clergy. In your estimation, we are, let me recall: “blown up with vain prelatick pride.” Our “talents lie in Avarice, Pride, Sloth and Gluttony.” “We hunt good livings, but abhor good lives.” “From the pulpit we vent more peevish lies, more bitter railings, more scandals than are thrown about at a gossiping when the good wives get drunk.”
ROCHESTER: You have a good memory for injury.
BURNET: I have a good memory for matters of consequence, sir; our disputatious times require it. Your poem Tunbridge Wells now enters my head: “From hence unto the upper end I ran, where a new scene of foppery began. A tribe of curates, priests, canonical elves, fit company for none beside themselves, were got together. Each complained of some disease: scurvy, stone, strangury. But none had modesty enough t’complain their want of learning, honesty, and brain, the general diseases of that train. These call themselves ambassadors of heaven, And saucily pretend …”
ROCHESTER (interrupting): Enough, sir. Your point is made. I say in my defence that these scribblings were intended only for a few like-minded friends of quality, not for the vulgar gaze.
BURNET: Then your friends are little obliged to you. And surely your lordship is aware that your scribblings as you call them are much sought after in London and beyond. There is a profitable trade in copying them. And once in the hands of the people they corrupt morals and destroy respect for the church, upon which loyalty to the crown is most securely based. Are the lessons of our Civil Wars, when the world turned upside down, so soon forgotten? The church and aristocracy must stand together for the preservation of monarchy, order, and religion.
ROCHESTER: But sir…
BURNET: I have a further point.
ROCHESTER (groaning): I feared you might.
BURNET: A clear danger of your witty satires on the clergy is their sharpness and accuracy.
ROCHESTER (brightening): A surprising turn. You do me honour, sir.
BURNET: But your censures are too broadly applied. You appear to condemn our entire profession, or “trade”, as it’s now vulgarly put.
ROCHESTER: I’m sure there are exceptions.
BURNET: But none specified, my lord, none specified.
ROCHESTER: Let me put this case to you from my friend, John Dryden, our excellent poet laureate: “He who writes honest satire,” Mister Dryden says, “is no more an enemy to offenders, than the physician to patients, when he prescribes harsh remedies for an inveterate disease.”
BURNET: So, out of charity, we must pour harsh medicines down the gullets of men whose only fault is to have associates who might carry a sickness?
ROCHESTER: I believe Dryden was referring to individuals, not professions.
BURNET: So we come, at last, to satires against the person.
ROCHESTER: I suppose you object to these, too.
BURNET: Not on principle. But such a weapon must be used with great caution. And why resort to malicious satire, which can scar a man for life, while neglecting the charity of admonition?
ROCHESTER: A man can’t write with spirit unless heated by revenge. To make a satire without resentments, upon cold notions of philosophy, would be as if a man in cold blood cuts the throats of those who had never offended him.
Besides, malice is an ornament that cannot be spared without spoiling the beauty of my poetry.
BURNET: You dart, sir, between the serious and the playful in a bewildering way.
ROCHESTER: Such is my habit, I’m told. But I’m consistently earnest in my defence of satire.
BURNET: You mean in defence of the absolute liberty and immunity of the satirist.
ROCHESTER: As you wish it, sir.
BURNET: There are some larger issues here. What is it that drives a man to act, and what constraints and limitations is he obliged to recognize?
ROCHESTER: I say Nature is the flawless guide.
BURNET: Indeed sir, I come part of the way with you. I reject the maxim of our stoic philosophers, who preach the subjugation of all natural appetites and passions. If such were accomplished, life’s troubles would be easily borne. But Nature is not so easily denied. And Nature is the mainspring of our affections and friendships. And of our industry, too, which moves dully without an inner heat.
ROCHESTER: I extend the proposition. Pleasure, being the gratification of natural appetites, can be freely indulged unless it injures others. I’ll specify. I have in mind the free use of wine and amorous women. It seems unreasonable that these appetites were put into a man only to be restrained.
BURNET: We part company here, sir. It is impossible for a man to indulge his vagrant lusts without committing injury either to a father, whose daughter is corrupted, or to a husband, whose wife is defiled.
ROCHESTER: Your god is a stickler for property rights, it seems.
BURNET: Our covenant with god values preservation of social order, that’s true. And that requires the defence of property against violators. And consider this. There is a different but equal injury to those whose sexual appetites run riot. Nothing darkens the understanding and depresses the mind more than ungoverned lust. Nothing brings in its wake such a variety of other immoralities, like violent oaths against our maker. Think on this, sir. God populated his creation with wild beasts to be managed and tamed for man’s usage. Likewise god gave man Reason to tame the brutish instinct within himself.
ROCHESTER: Then god made Reason a tyrant, sir. I don’t dismiss Reason, but I see it as a servant to my senses, not their dictator.
BURNET: Think of Reason as a communication of Divine Light, to make us understand those propositions of which some hints were born within our souls. We must conduct ourselves in such a way that this light is not obscured.
ROCHESTER: Sounds dangerously Quakerish. I trust you haven’t been consorting with that fanatic of modesty, William Penn. I’ll be damned if he doesn’t immortalize his Quaker humility by having an American colony named after himself – New Pennland or Willsylvania or some such.
BURNET: You misconstrue, sir. The Divine Light originates from without, not from within, as Mister Penn and his Quakers wrongly believe. It’s an important distinction well explained by the Cambridge Platonists.
ROCHESTER: Ah, Cambridge. What fantastical ideas emanate from that boggy fen. I’m an Oxford man myself; Wadham College.
BURNET: Wadham? As in Wadham and Gomorrah? I’m told that Wadham’s curriculum consists of science and sodomy. While being an Oxford man may be grounds for sympathy, my lord, it’s no excuse for errant opinion. But I see you grow fatigued. I must, in any case, take my leave. Lady Tesla has some issues with the concept of the Holy Trinity that require my urgent attention.
ROCHESTER: I’m reluctant to deprive myself of your Aberdonian drollery, but you must, of course, hasten to her ladyship’s side. I release you on the condition that we continue this conversation soon.
BURNET: Indeed we shall, my lord.
(The two grip shoulders in a manly kind of way. Burnet exits.)
ROCHESTER: Ah, ha. I have it now.
He goes to his desk, picks up a quill pen and writes, mouthing the words as he does so:
Huddled in dirt the reasoning engine lies,
Who was so proud, so witty, and so wise.
Baptiste enters, carrying a letter.
BAPTISTE (giving Rochester the letter): From Woodstock Lodge, sir.
ROCHESTER (reading): Hmm, from my mother and my wife. Usually the two are quarrelling, which diverts their attention from me. But when they’re in agreement our two ladyships make a formidable alliance. They’ve learned of my illness and summon me to Woodstock to convalesce. I balk at summonses, but a spell in the country is an agreeable prospect. I am weary of this noisy, mucky town and its false promises of pleasure. We’ll leave tomorrow.
(Aphra Behn arrives)
BAPTISTE: Mrs Aphra Behn.
ROCHESTER: Aphra. You give me the joy of two visits in one day. How so?
BEHN: The first was out of concern for your body. This time I come out of concern for your soul. I know Burnet by reputation, and the reports trouble me.
ROCHESTER: You surprise me. He’s known as a favourite with the ladies.
BEHN: Among ladies of the town who embrace their status as chattels of quality, no doubt. But he finds no favour with me.
ROCHESTER: What are your objections?
BEHN: His loyalty to the crown is suspect.
ROCHESTER: Come now, Aphra, he speaks strongly in support of monarchy.
BEHN: Of monarchy in the abstract, I’m sure. What’s in doubt is his allegiance to the person of our king, and to James his heir and successor. True, you won’t find Burnet swearing traitorous oaths with the drunken Whig louts of the Green Ribbon Club. But I believe him to be a covert supporter of their shabby cause. As we speak, he’s likely heading off to scheme with the Whig leader, Lord Shaftesbury, about how to deprive James of his rightful inheritance.
ROCHESTER: In favour, I suppose of the king’s senior bastard, the Duke of Monmouth, a stout Protestant when he’s not boozing and wenching.
BEHN: For the weasily Whigs, his boozing and wenching only add to his lustre.
ROCHESTER: Well Aphra, your origins might be obscure, but your destination is marked out. You’re headed for the Tory fold.
BEHN: There are worse places in which one might find oneself.
ROCHESTER: Surrounded by the bedraggled remnants of cavalier gallantry? You deserve better, Aphra. Let me say that one of the unambiguous benefits of an early death, should that be my fate, is that I will escape the horrors of party politics. However, you alert me to my duty. I will inform the king that, if my ailing health permits, I will speak in the House of Lords against Shaftesbury’s treasonous scheme. But surely Aphra, haven’t the royal brothers created the problem through James’s conversion to Catholicism and Charles’s flirtation with it?
BEHN: They are not blameless, to be sure. They give the seditious-minded Whigs, Cromwell’s progeny, an opportunity to parade what Puritan rhetoric brands as the scarlet woman of Rome, as if she alone were the source of the country’s ills.
ROCHESTER: Careful, Aphra. These are confusing times. If you make light of the threat from the Catholics, some might suspect you of being one.
BEHN: I’m a creature of the theatre, John, and Rome does offer the grandest theatre of all.
ROCHESTER: With more than enough blood and gore to satisfy the pit! But back to Burnet. Surely he should be judged as a man of religion, not as a politician.
BEHN: I’m surprised that you make the distinction. Burnet is one of our new men, a subtle reasoner, not some hellfire and misery bible-thumper, whose day is passing. He’s political and ambitious, too. And some choice deathbed conversions among the fallen flowers of the aristocracy would serve his ambition well. He crawls like an insect upon their troubled days.
ROCHESTER: I find his company and conversation agreeable, but I yield nothing to him on matters of belief. But tell me Aphra, since you have consigned me to my deathbed, how should I meet my maker? — in the unlikely event that such a meeting ever occurs.
BEHN: As Strephon the noble swain, my immaculate lover.
ROCHESTER: My lost authentic self, I suppose, since which I have lived as an imposter.
BEHN: You do like disguise.
ROCHESTER: I stand before you as a poxed debauchee, broken beyond repair. There’s no disguise in that.
BEHN: The boisterous child who suckles at your mistress Elizabeth Barry’s breast indicates otherwise.
ROCHESTER: My former mistress; I’ve been supplanted. The sweet brat was a lucky parting shot.
BEHN: There are few prerogatives for my sex in our entanglements with yours, so at least allow me the privilege of joyous memory.
ROCHESTER: I fear you hanker for an age of innocence that never was.
BEHN: Not so, my lord. In Surinam I glimpsed a Garden of Innocence. It confirmed to me that simple Nature is the most inoffensive and harmless mistress. ’Tis she alone, if she were permitted, that better instructs the world than all the inventions of man. Religion would here destroy that tranquility the natives possess by ignorance; and laws would but teach them to know offense, of which now they have no notion.
ROCHESTER: Bravo. Tell that to Dr. Burnet.
BEHN: Yet I know that the garden is now despoiled, and we ourselves have long since left it never to return.
ROCHESTER: Or we remain in a garden blighted by consciousness and anticipation. (declaiming) We poor slaves to hope and fear / Are never of our joys secure: / they lessen still as they draw near / and none but dull delights endure.
BEHN: You speak for your sex, sir, not mine. Would you have us feel pity for you even as you enjoy our bodies? Sappho’s beckoning call grows louder. Farewell, Lord Rochester. (leaves suddenly)
ROCHESTER (puzzled): Good day, Aphra
Stage darkens. Spotlighted: Rochester with a monkey.
ROCHESTER (reading): A Satire on Reason and Mankind
Were I (who to my cost already am
One of those strange prodigious creatures, man)
A spirit free to choose, for my own share,
What case of flesh and blood I pleased to wear,
I’d be a dog, a monkey, or a bear,
Or anything but that vain animal
Who is so proud of being rational.
The senses are too gross, and he’ll contrive
A sixth, to contradict the other five,
And before certain instinct, will prefer
Reason, which fifty times to one does err,
Reason, an ignis fatuus in the mind,
Which, leaving light of nature, sense, behind,
Pathless and dangerous wandering ways it takes
Through errors’ fenny bogs and thorny brakes,
Whilst the misguided follower climbs with pain
Mountains of whimseys, heaped in his own brain
Stumbling from thought to thought, falls headlong down
Into doubt’s boundless sea, where, like to drown,
Books bear him up awhile, and make him try
To swim with bladders of philosophy;
In hopes still to o’ertake th’ escaping light,
The vapor dances in his dazzling sight
Till, spent, it leaves him to eternal night.
Then old age and experience, hand in hand,
Lead him to death, and make him understand,
After a search so painful and so long,
That all his life he has been in the wrong.
Huddled in dirt the reasoning engine lies,
Who was so proud, so witty, and so wise.
End of Act 1
