Three Dramas - Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (best biographies to read TXT) 📗

as for my persecution of your father--I am not going to make any excuses for myself; I will only ask you to remember that a king has no control over the law and its judgments. I feel the sincerest respect for your father.

Clara. Thank you.

The King. And it is just part of the falsehood I was speaking of, that he should be condemned for saying of me what I have said a thousand times of myself!

Clara (softly). Dare I believe that?

The King. Ah, if only you had read one of my letters! Or even the little book of poems I sent you last! I thought that, if you would not receive my letters, perhaps a book--

Clara. I do not accept anonymous gifts.

The King. I see you are on your guard--although I don't admit that the poems were mine! May I read it to you?

Clara. I don't understand--.

The King. One that I marked--for you. It will prove to you what you refuse to believe.

Clara. But if the poem is not yours?

The King. The fact that I have marked it shows that its sentiments apply to me. Will you let me read it to you? (CLARA looks up.) Do not be too much surprised, Miss Ernst! (Takes a slim volume from his pocket.) I found this somewhere. (Turns over the leaves.) It won't take long to read. May I?

Clara. If only I understood--

The King.--why I want to read it? Simply for the reason that you have forbidden me to speak to you--or to write to you; but not, as yet, to read to you! (CLARA smiles. A pause.) Do you know--a little event has just happened in my life?--and yet not such a little one, after all!

Clara. What is that?

The King. I have seen you smile for the first time.

Clara. Your Majesty!

The King. But, Miss Ernst, is it an insult, too, to see you smile?

Clara (smiling). If I consent to hear the poem, shall not the Baroness--

The King.--hear it also? With pleasure; but not at the same time! Please! Because I am a very bad reader. You can show it to the Baroness afterwards, if you like. (CLARA smiles.) May I?

Clara. You are sure there is nothing in it that--

The King. You can interrupt me, if you think fit. It is called "The Young Prince;" and it is about--no, I won't tell you what it is about unless you will be so good as to sit down, so that I can sit down too. If I stand up I shall be sure to begin declaiming, and I do that shockingly badly!--You can get up again when you like, you know! (CLARA smiles and sits down. The KING sits down beside her.) Now, then! "The Young Prince." (To himself.) I can scarcely breathe. (He begins to read.)

Full fed with early flattery and pride--

(Breaks off.) Excuse me, Miss Ernst! I don't feel--

Clara. Is your Majesty not well?

The King. Quite well! It is only--. Now, then!

Full fed with early flattery and pride, His sated soul was wearied all too young; Honour and kingly pomp seemed naught to him But whimsies from the people's folly sprung.

From such pretence he fled to what was real-- Fair women's arms, laughter and love and pleasure, All the mad joy of life; whate'er he craved, He found was given him in double measure.

Whate'er he craved--until one day a maiden To whom he whispered, like a drunken sot, "I'd give my life to make thee mine, my sweeting!" Turned from him silently and answered not.

He sought by every means to win her to him; But when his love with cold _contempt_ was met, It was as if a judgment had been spoken Upon his life, and doom thereon were set.

His boon companions left him; in his castles None seemed to be awake but he alone, Racked with remorse, enshrouded in the darkness Of dull despair, yet longing to atone.

Then through the darkness she appeared! and humbly, Emboldend by her gentleness of mien, He sued once more: "If only thou wouldst listen! If still 'twere not too late--"

(His emotion overcomes him, and he stops suddenly, gets up, and walks away from CLARA. She gets up, as he comes back to her.) Excuse me! I had no intention of making a scene. But it made me think of--. (Breaks of again overcome by emotion, and moves a little way from her. There is a pause as he collects himself before returning to her.) As you can hear, Miss Ernst, it is nothing much of a poem--not written by a real poet, that is to say; a real poet would have exalted his theme, but this is a commonplace--

Clara. Has your Majesty anything more to say to me? (A pause.)

The King. If I have anything more to say to any one, it is to you.

Clara. I beg your pardon.

The King. No, it is I should beg yours. But I am sure you do not wish me to lie to you.

Clara (turning her head away). No.

The King. You have no confidence in me. (Control, his emotion.) Will you ever, I wonder, come to under stand that the only thing I crave for now is--one person's confidence!

Clara. Any one who speaks as your Majesty has done to-day surely craves for more than that.

The King. More than that, yes; but, first of all, one person's confidence.

Clara (turning away). I don't understand--

The King (interrupting her, with emotion). Your life has not been as empty and artificial as mine.

Clara. But surely you have your task here to fill it with?

The King. I remember reading once about the way a rock was undermined, and the mine filled with gunpowder with an electric wire leading to it. Just a slight pressure on a little button and the great rock was shattered into a thousand pieces. And in the same way everything is ready here; but the little pressure--to cause the explosion--is what I am waiting for!

Clara. The metaphor is a little forced.

The King. And yet it came into my mind as unconsciously as you broke off that twig just now. If I do not get what I lack, nothing can be accomplished--there can be no explosion! I shall abandon the whole thing and let myself go under.

Clara. Go under?

The King. Well, not like the hero of a sensational novel--not straight to the bottom like a stone--but like a dreamer carried off by pixies in a wood, with one name ever upon my lips! And the world would have to look after itself.

Clara. But that is sheer recklessness.

The King. I know it is; but I am reckless. I stake everything upon one throw! (A pause.)

Clara. Heaven send you may win.

The King. At least I am daring enough to hope that I may--and there are moments when I almost feel certain of victory!

Clara (embarrassed). It is a lovely morning--

The King.--for the time of year; yes. And it is lovelier here than it is anywhere else!

Clara. I cannot really understand a course of action which implies a want of all sense of responsibility--

The King. Every one has their own point of view. A scheme of life, to satisfy me, must have its greatest happiness hidden away at its core; in my case that would be to have a house of my own--all to myself, like any other citizen--from which I should go away to my work, and come back to as to a safe refuge. That is the button on the electric wire, do you understand? It is the little pressure on it that I am waiting for. (A pause.)

Clara. Have you read my father's book, _Democratic Monarchy_?

The King. Yes.

Clara. He wrote it when I was a child; and so I may say that I grew up amongst ideas like--like those I have heard from you to-day. All the friends that came to our house used to talk to me about it.

The King. Then no doubt you heard the crown prince talked about, too!

Clara. I think I heard his name oftener mentioned at home than any one's. I believe the book was written expressly for you.

The King. I can feel that when I read it. If only I had been allowed to read it in those days! Do you remember how in it your father maintains, too, that all reform depends on the beating down of the hedge that surrounds royalty?--on a king's becoming, as he says, "wedded to his people" in the fullest sense of the word, not irregularly or surreptitiously? No king can share his people's thoughts if he lives apart from them in a great palace, married to a foreign princess. There is no national spirit behind a complicated court life of outlandish ceremonial.

Clara (turning away her head). You should have heard how vehemently my father used to assert those ideas.

The King. And yet he abandoned them.

Clara. Became a republican, you mean?

The King. Yes.

Clara. He was so disappointed. (A pause.)

The King. I sometimes wonder every one isn't a republican! It must come to that in the end; I can see that. If only royalties nowadays thought seriously enough about it to realise it!

Clara. It is made so difficult for them by those who surround them.

The King. Yes, you see, that is another reason why any such reform must begin at home. Do you think that a king, who went every day to his work from a home that was in every respect like that of one of his people, could fail in the long run?

Clara. There are so many different kinds of homes.

The King. I mean a home that holds love instead of subservience--comfort instead of ceremony-truth instead of flattery; a home where--ah, well, I need not teach a woman what a home means.

Clara. We make them what they are.

The King. Surely; but they are especially what women make them. (A pause.)

Clara. The sun is quite strong now.

The King. But it can scarcely pierce through the screen of leaves here.

Clara. When the sun shines down like this and the leaves tremble--

The King. The sunshine seems to tremble too.

Clara. Yes, but it makes one feel as if everything were trembling--even deep down into our hearts!

The King. That is true.--Yes, its homes are the most precious things a nation makes. Their national characteristics mean reverence for their past and possibilities for their future.

Clara. I understand better now what you meant.

The King. When I said I wanted to begin at the beginning?

Clara. Yes. (A pause.)

The King. I cannot do otherwise. My heart must be in my work.

Clara (smiling). My father had his heart in his work, too.

The King. Forgive me--but don't you think it was just the want of an object in his life that led your father to push his theories too far?--an object outside himself, I mean?

Clara. Perhaps. If my mother had lived--. (Stops.)

The King.--he might have taken it differently; don't you think so?

Clara. I have sometimes thought