The Piper

Excerpt

ACT I

SCENE: The market-place of Hamelin. Right, the Minster, with an open shrine (right centre) containing a large sculptured figure of the Christ. Right, farther front, the house of KURT; and other narrow house-fronts. Left, the Rathaus, and (down) the home of JACOBUS. Front, to left and right, are corner-houses with projecting stories and casement windows. At the centre rear, a narrow street leads away between houses whose gables all but meet overhead.

It is late summer afternoon, with a holiday crowd. In the open casements, front (right and left, opposite each other), sit OLD URSULA and OLD CLAUS, looking on at men and things. —In the centre of the place now stands a rude wooden Ark with a tented top: and out of the openings (right and left) appear the artificial heads of animals, worn by the players inside. One is a Bear (inhabited by MICHAEL-THE-SWORD-EATER); one is a large Reynard-the-Fox, later apparent as the PIPER. Close by is the medieval piece of stage-property known as 'Hell-Mouth,' i.e. a red painted cave with a jaw-like opening into which a mountebank dressed in scarlet (CHEAT-THE-DEVIL) is poking 'Lost Souls' with a pitchfork.

BARBARA loiters by the tent. VERONIKA, the sad young wife of KURT, watches from the house steps, left, keeping her little lame boy, Jan, close beside her.

Shouts of delight greet the end of the show, a Noah's Ark miracle-play of the rudest; and the Children continue to scream with joy whenever an Animal looks out of the Ark.

Men and women pay scant attention either to JACOBUS, when he speaks (himself none too sober)—from his doorstep, prompted by the frowning KURT,—or yet to ANSELM, the priest, who stands forth with lifted hands, at the close of the miracle-play.

ANSELM
And you, who heed the colors of this show,
Look to your laughter!—It doth body forth
A Judgment that may take you unaware,—
Sun-struck with mirth, like unto chattering leaves
Some wind of wrath shall scourge to nothingness.

HANS, AXEL, AND OTHERS
Hurrah, Hurrah!

JACOBUS
  And now, good townsmen all,
Seeing we stand delivered and secure
As once yon chosen creatures of the Ark,
For a similitude,—our famine gone,
Our plague of rats and mice,—

CROWD
  Hurrah—hurrah!

JACOBUS
'Tis meet we render thanks more soberly—

HANS the Butcher
Soberly, soberly, ay!—

JACOBUS
  For our deliverance.
And now, ye wit, it will be full three days
Since we beheld—our late departed pest.—

OLD URSULA [putting out an ear-trumpet] What does he say?

REYNARD [from the Ark] —Oh, how felicitous!

HANS' WIFE
He's only saying there be no more rats.

JACOBUS
[with oratorical endeavor]
Three days it is; and not one mouse,—one mouse,
One mouse, I say!—No-o-o! Quiet. . . as a mouse.

[Resuming]
And now. . .

CROWD
  Long live Jacobus!—

JACOBUS
  You have seen
Noah and the Ark, most aptly happening by
With these same play-folk. You have marked the Judgment.
You all have seen the lost souls sent to—Hell—
And, nothing more to do.—

[KURT prompts him]
  Yes, yes.—And now....