Pirandello's Henry IV by Luigi Pirandello, Tom Stoppard Read Free Book Online Page A

knows about that—nobody must know it.
    MATILDA    But perhaps she knows . . . and that’s why she went on her knees to the Pope for you . . .
    HENRY    And you say you love your daughter! (
pause; lightly
) Well, Monsignor! It’s all too true, about me finding out too late—far too late . . . that I had a wife . . . and still have her, there’s no doubt about that . . . and I swear I never give hera thought. It may be a sin but I feel nothing for her. What’s astonishing, though, is neither does her mother! Admit it, Duchess, you don’t give a damn about her. (
agitated
) She keeps on about that other woman! She goes on and on about her—I can’t think why.
    LANDOLF    Perhaps, Your Majesty, it’s because she thinks you’ve got the wrong idea about the Countess of Tuscany. (
embarrassed
) I mean the wrong idea just at the present time.
    HENRY    Why, do you think I can trust her, too?
    LANDOLF    At the present time I do, Your Majesty.
    MATILDA    You see? And that’s why . . .
    HENRY    Yes, I see. So, it’s not that you think I love her. I see. I see. Nobody has ever thought so. So much the better. So that’s enough about that.
    Henry stops. He turns to the Doctor with a completely different mood and expression.
    HENRY    (
cont.
) Monsignor, did you notice this?—the conditions the Pope has made for the revoking of my excommunication have absolutely nothing to do with the reason he excommunicated me in the first place. Tell Pope Gregory we’ll meet in Brixen. And you, my lady, if you happen to see your daughter in the castle courtyard of your friend the Countess . . . what can I say? Tell her she can come up here. We’ll see whether she’s the one who’ll stay by me as wife and Empress. I’ve had lots of them coming here assuring me that they were her . . . though they knew I’d already . . . and sometimes I’d . . . well, why not?—it’s my wife! But they all . . . when they’d tell me they were Bertha, and from Susa . . . I don’t know why, they’d all start giggling, (
confidentially
) You knowwhat I mean—in bed—not dressed up like this—the woman, too, naked . . . stripped down to male and female as nature made us, we forget who we are. Our clothes hanging up, watching over us like ghosts . . . (
to the Doctor
) What I think, Monsignor, is that ghosts for the most part are fragments of the unconscious escaping from our dreams. When we sometimes see them wide-awake, in broad daylight, they startle us. I’m always frightened in the night when they appear—all those disjointed images, people laughing, riders got down from their horses . . . I’m frightened sometimes by the blood pounding through my veins in the stillness of the night, like the heavy thud of footsteps in distant rooms . . . But I’ve kept you in attendance long enough. My respects, Duchess, and Monsignor, your obedient servant.
    Matilda and the Doctor bow in return, and leave. Henry closes the door and turns around, changed.
    HENRY    (
cont.
) What a bunch of wankers! I played them like a kiddy piano with a different colour for every key—it only needed the lightest touch . . . white, red, yellow, green . . . and that other one, Peter Damian!—Ha! I saw through him all right! He didn’t dare show his face again!
    Henry, in an exuberant frenzy, suddenly sees Bertold, who is both stunned and frightened. Henry stops in front of him, pointing out Bertold to his three companions, and shakes him by the shoulders.
    HENRY    (
cont.
) Look at this idiot here, with his mouth open! Do you understand now?—how I got them dressed up to perform for me?—those clowns wetting their pants in terror . . . in case I whip off their masks!—as if it wasn’t me who made them dress up for my own entertainment while I play the