Isabel
You’re a child.
Young King
No I am king.
Isabel
What is behind the curtain?
Young King
What do you want, Mummy, to be behind the curtain?
Isabel
Oh –
a low summer moon.
Your father – my innocence.
Young King
My father’s dead.
On no side of this curtain
Mummy
are we innocent.
Short pause.
Let me explain to you
the entertainment.
In a deep pit
under the earth
a man and a woman
murder a king.
On the vacant throne
to gratify the people
they install the woman’s child
and plan to conceal the murder –
Isabel
Young King
– but from under the earth
echoes and echoes out
the king his father’s agony.
The child learns –
Isabel
– I said to you where is Mortimer? –
Young King
– and offers dead man Mortimer no mercy.
An audience files on silently to sit facing the closed curtain.
The name of his crime
Mummy
is cut
into his body –
Isabel
No – stop – spare him –
Young King
– and – when he has read its name –
Mummy –
Isabel
– no – spare him –
Young King
– we cut out his eyes.
The onstage audience have settled into their seats.
With a scene then of a human being
broken and broken
by the rational application
of human justice
our entertainment begins.
About the Author
Martin Crimp was born in 1956. His play Attempts on Her Life (1997) established his international reputation. His other work for theatre includes When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other, Men Asleep, The Rest Will be Familiar to You from Cinema, In the Republic of Happiness, Play House, The City, Fewer Emergencies, Cruel and Tender, The Country, The Treatment, Getting Attention, No One Sees the Video, Play with Repeats, Dealing with Clair and Definitely the Bahamas. He is also the author of three texts, Into the Little Hill, Written on Skin and Lessons in Love and Violence, for operas by George Benjamin. His many translations of French plays include works by Genet, Ionesco, Koltès, Marivaux and Molière.
By the Same Author
PLAYS ONE
(Dealing with Clair, Play with Repeats,
Getting Attention, The Treatment)
PLAYS TWO
(No One Sees the Video, The Misanthrope,
Attempts on Her Life, The Country)
PLAYS THREE
(Cruel and Tender, Fewer Emergencies,
The City, Play House, Definitely the Bahamas,
In the Republic of Happiness)
THE HAMBURG PLAYS
(The Rest Will Be Familiar to You from Cinema
and Men Asleep)
WHEN WE HAVE SUFFICIENTLY
TORTURED EACH OTHER
THREE ATTEMPTED ACTS
(in Best Radio Plays of 1985)
translations
THE CHAIRS (Ionesco)
RHINOCEROS (Ionesco)
THE MISANTHROPE (Molière)
ROBERTO ZUCCO (Koltès)
THE MAIDS (Genet)
THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE (Marivaux)
THE SEAGULL (Chekhov)
PAINS OF YOUTH (Bruckner)
texts for music
INTO THE LITTLE HILL
WRITTEN ON SKIN
LESSONS IN LOVE AND VIOLENCE
Copyright
First published in 2019
by Faber & Faber Limited,
74-77 Great Russell Street,
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2019
All rights reserved
© Martin Crimp, 2019
Martin Crimp is hereby identified as author of this work in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This collection © Martin Crimp, 2019
‘Stage Kiss’ copyright © Martin Crimp 1990
First published in the London Review of Books
Vol. XII No. 14 (26 July 1990)
‘The Play’ copyright © Martin Crimp 2010
All rights whatsoever in this work are strictly reserved. Applications for permission for any use whatsoever including performance rights must be made in advance, prior to any such proposed use, to Judy Daish Associates Ltd, 2 St Charles Place, London W10 6EG. No performance may be given unless a licence has first been obtained
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–35401–6