all night upon a scene, and work himself up into a state of what he called soul-sweat.
He would go to bed patting himself on the shoulder and talking to himself as if he were a draught-horse and a Pegasus combined: “Good boy, ’Gene! Good work, old
Genius!”
In the morning he would wake feeling all the after-effects of a prolonged carouse2. He would reach for a cigarette and review with contempt all he had previously3 done.
“By night I write plays and by day I write criticisms,” he would say.
Lazily he would cough himself out of bed, cough through his tub and into his clothes, and go to his table like a surly butcher to carve his play with long slashes5 of
the blue pencil.
At length he had it as nearly finished as any play is likely to be before it has been read. He went to New York, where Eldon was playing, and easily persuaded him to
listen to the drama. Vickery would not explain the story of the play beforehand.
“I want you to get it the way the audience does.”
He marched his buskined blank verse with the elocution of a poet and all the sonority6 his raucous7 voice could lend him. He was shocked to note that Eldon was not
helping8 him along with enthusiasm. His voice wavered, faltered9, sank. He was hardly audible at the climax10 of his big third act.
Here the Puritan hero, who had left the Old World for the New World and liberty, discovered that the other Puritans wanted liberty only for themselves, and so abhorred
his principles of toleration that they exiled him into the wilderness11, mercilessly expecting him to perish in the blizzards12 or at the hands of the Indians. The hero,
like another Roger Williams, turned and denounced them, then vowed13 to found a state where a man could call his soul his own, and plunged14 into the storm.
Vickery closed the manuscript and gulped15 down a glass of water. He had not looked at Eldon for two acts; he did not look at him now. He simply growled16, “Sorry it
bored you so.”
“It doesn’t bore me!” Eldon protested. “It’s magnificent—”
“But—” Vickery prompted.
“But nothing. Only—well—you see you said it was a play for me, and I—I’ve been trying to like it for myself. But—well, it’s too good for me. I feel like a man
who ordered a suit of overalls17 and finds that the tailor has brought him an ermine robe and velvet18 breeches. It’s too gorgeous for me.”
“Nonsense!” said Vickery. “You don’t have to softsoap me. Why don’t you like it?”
“I do! As a work of art it is a masterpiece. The fault is mine. You see, I admire the classic blank-verse plays so much that I wish people wouldn’t try to write any
more of them. They’re not in the spirit of our age. In Shakespeare’s time men wore long curls and combed them in public, and tied love-knots in them and wrote
madigrals and picked their teeth artistically19 with a golden picktooth. The best of them cried like babies when their feelings were hurt.
“Nowadays we’d lynch a man that behaved as they did. Then they tried to use the most eloquent20 words. Now we try to use the simplest or, better yet, none at all. I
think that our way is bigger than theirs, but, anyway, it’s our way.
“And then the Puritans. I admire them in spots. My people came over in one of the early boats. But plays about Puritans never succeed. Do you know why? It’s because
the Puritans preached the gospel of Don’t! Everything was Don’t—don’t dance, don’t sing, don’t kiss, don’t have fun, don’t wear bright colors, don’t go to
plays, don’t have a good time. But the theater is the place where people go to have a good time, a good laugh, a good cry, or a good scare. The whole soul of the
theater is to reconcile people with life and with one another.
“The Puritans call the theater immoral21. It is so blamed moral that it is untrue to life half the time, for wickedness always has to be punished in the theater, and we
know it isn’t in real life.
“And another thing, Vick, why should the theater do anything for the Puritans? They never did anything for us except to tear down the playhouses and call the actors
hard names. And what good came of it all?
“Here’s a book I picked up about the Puritans, because it has a lot about my ancestors. They had a daughter named Remember and a son named Wrastle. But look at this.
” Eldon got up, found the volume, and hunted for the page, as he raged: “Now the Puritans in our country had none of the alleged22 causes of immorality—they had no
novels, no plays, no grand or comic operas, no nude23 art, no vaudeville24, no tango, and no moving pictures. They ought to have been pretty good, eh? Well, take a peek25 at
what their Governor William Bradford writes.”
He handed the book to Vickery, whose eyes roved along the page:
Anno Dom: 1642. Marvilous it may be to see and consider how some kind of wickednes did grow breake forth26 here, in a land wher the same was so much witnesed against,
and so narrowly looked unto, & severly punished when it was knowne; as in no place more, and so much, that I have known or head of . . . . . espetially drunkennes and
unclainnes; not only incontinencie betweene persons unmaried, for which many both men & women have been punished sharply enough, but some maried persons allso. . .
things fearful to name have broak forth in this land, oftener then once . . . one reason may be, that ye Divell may carrie a greater spite against the churches of
Christ and ye gospell hear, by how much ye more they endeavor to preserve holynes and puritie amongst them . . . that he might cast a blemishe & staine upon them in ye
eyes of ye world, who use to be rashe in judgmente.
Vickery smiled sheepishly, and Eldon relieved him of the book, exclaiming:
“Think of it, those terribly protected people were so bad they could only explain it by saying that Satan worked overtime27! There is one of the most hideous28 stories in
Vickery protested, mildly: “Of course the Puritans were human and intolerant. That’s the whole point of my play, the struggle of a man against them.”
Eldon opposed him still. “But why should we worry over that? The Puritans have been pretty well whipped out. Liberty is pretty well secured for men in America. Why
try to excite an audience about what they all are as used to as the air they breathe? Let Russia write about such things. Why not write a play about the exciting
things of our own days? If you want liberty for a theme, why don’t you write about the fight the women are waging for freedom? Turn your hero into a heroine; turn
your Puritans into conservative men and women of the day who stand just where they did. Show up the modern home as this book shows up the old Puritans.”
Vickery was dazed. Of all the critical suggestions he had ever heard, this was the most radical30, to change the hero to a heroine, and vice31 versa.
Eldon laughed. “You might as well ask me if I am in favor of the coming winter or the hot spell or the next earthquake. All I know is that my opposition33 wouldn’t
make the slightest difference to them and that I might as well reconcile myself to them.
“There’s nothing on this earth except death and the taxes that’s surer to come than the equality of women—in the sense of equality that men mean. The first place
where women had a chance was the stage; it’s the only place now where they are put on the same footing with the men. They have every advantage that men have, and earn
as much money, or more, and have just as many privileges, or more. The one question asked is, ‘Can you deliver the goods?’ That’s the question they ask of a
business man, or painter, or sculptor34, or architect, or soldier. Private morals are an important question, but a separate question, just as they are with men.
“So the stage is the right place for freedom to be preached by women, because that is the place where it is practised. The stage ought to lend its hand to free others
because it is free itself.”
Vickery was beginning to kindle35 with the new idea, though his kindling36 meant the destruction of the building he had worked on so hard. He made one further objection:
“You’re not seriously urging me to write a suffragette play, are you?”
“Lord help us, no!” Eldon snorted. “The suffragette is less entertaining on the stage than the Puritan, or the abolitionist, or any fighter for a doctrine37. What the
stage wants is the story of individuals, not of parties, or sects38, or creeds39. Leave sermons to the pulpits and lectures to the platform. The stage wants stories. If
you can sneak40 in a bit of doctrine, all right, but it must be smuggled41. Why don’t you write a play about the tragedy of a woman who has great gifts and can’t use
“Oh, Sheila!” Vickery sighed. But the theme became personal, concrete, real at once. He made still a last weak objection: “But I wrote this play for you. I wanted
to see you star in it.”
Eldon thought a moment, then he said: “You write the play for the woman, and let me play her husband. Give her all the fire you want, and make me just an every-day
man with a wife he loves and admires and wants to keep, and doesn’t want to destroy. You do that and I’ll play the husband and I’ll give the woman star the fight of
her life to keep me from running away with the piece. Don’t make the husband brilliant or heroic; just a stupid, stubborn, every-day man, and give him the worst of it
everywhere. That all helps the actor. The woman will be divine, the man will be human. And he’ll get the audience—the women as well as the men.”
Vickery began to see the play forming on the interior sky of his skull43, vaguely44 yet vividly45 as clouds take shape and gleam. “If only Sheila could play it,” he said.
Eldon tossed his hands in despair.
Vickery began to babble46 as the plot spilled down into his brain in a cloudburst of ideas: “I might take Sheila for my theme. To disguise her decently she could be—
say—Let me see—I’ve got it!—a singer! Her voice has thrilled Covent Garden and the Metropolitan47 and she marries a nice man and has some children and sings ’em
little cradle-songs. She loves them and she loves her husband, but she is bursting with bigger song—wild, glorious song. Shall she stick to the nursery or shall she
leave her babies every now and then and give the world a chance to hear her? Her mother-in-law and the neighbors say, ‘The opera is immoral, the singers are immoral,
the librettos48 are immoral, the managers are immoral; you stay in the nursery, except on Sundays, and then you may sing in the choir49.’
“But she remembers when she sang the death-love of Isolde in the Metropolitan with an orchestra of a hundred trying in vain to drown her; she remembers how she
climbed and climbed till she was in heaven, and how she took five thousand people there with her, and—Oh, you can see it! It’s Trilby without Svengali; it’s Trilby
as a mother and a wife. It’s all womankind.”
His thoughts were stampeded with the new excitement. He picked up the play he had loved so well and worked for so hard, and would have tossed it into the fire if Eldon
’s room had not been heated by a steam-radiator. He flung it on the floor with contempt:
“What to call my play?” he pondered, aloud. “It’s always easier for me to write the play than select the name.” As he screwed up his face in thought a memory came
to him. “My mother told me once that when she was a little girl in the West her father wounded a wild swan and brought it home. She cared for it till it got well,
then he clipped one of its wings so that it could not balance itself to fly. It grew tame and stayed about the garden, but it was always trying to fly.
“One day my grandfather noticed that the clipped wing was growing out and he sent a farm-hand to trim it down again. The fellow didn’t understand how birds fly, and
he clipped the long wing down to the length of the short one. The bird walked about, trying its pinions51. It found that, short as they were, they balanced each other.
“She walked to a high place and suddenly leaped off into the air; my mother saw her and thought she would fall. But her wings held her up. They beat the air and she
sailed away.”
“Did she ever come back?” Eldon asked.
“She never came back. But she was a bird and didn’t belong in a garden. A woman would come back. We used to have pigeons at home. We clipped their wings at first,
too, till they learned the cote. Then we let them free. You could see them circling about in the sky. Pigeons come back. I’m going to call my play ‘Clipped Wings.’
How’s that for a title?—‘Clipped Wings’!”
Eldon was growing incandescent52, too, but he advised caution:
“Be easy on the allegory, boy, or you’ll have only allegorical audiences. Stick to the real and the real people will come to see it. Go on and write it, and don’t
forget I play the husband; I saw him first. Don’t write a lecture, now; promise me you won’t preach or generalize. You stick to your story of those two people, and
let the audience generalize on the way home. And don’t let your dialogue sparkle too much. Every-day people don’t talk epigrams. Give them every-day talk. That’s as
great and twice as difficult as blank verse.
“Don’t try to sweeten the husband. Let him roar like a bull, and everybody will understand and forgive him. I tell you the new wife has it all her own way. She’s
venturing out into new fields. The new husband is the one I’m sorry for.
“I hate Winfield for taking Sheila off the stage, and I hate him for keeping her away. But if I were in his place I’d do the same. I’d hate myself, but I’d keep
her. The more you think of it, the harder the husband job is.
“The new husband of the new woman is up against the biggest problem of the present time and of the future: what are husbands going to do about their wives’
ambitions? What are wives going to do about their husbands’ rights to a home? Where do the children come in? It doesn’t do the kids much good to have ’em brought up
in a home of discontent by a broken-hearted mother raising her daughter to go through the same tragedy. But they ought to have a chance.
“There’s a new triangle in the drama. It’s not a question of a lover outside; the third member is the wife’s ambition. Go to it, my boy—and give us the story.”
Vickery stumbled from the room like a sleep-walker. The whole play was present in his brain, as a cathedral in the imagination of an architect.
When he came to drawing the details of the cathedral, and figuring out the ground-plan, stresses, and strains, the roof supports, the flying buttresses53, the cost of
material, and all the infernally irreconcilable54 details—that was quite another thing yet.
But he plunged into it as into a brier-patch and floundered about with a desperate enthusiasm. His health ebbed55 from him like ink from his pen. His doctor ordered him
to rest and to travel, and he sought the mountains of New York for a while. But he would not stop work. His theme dragged him along and he hoped only that his zest56 for
writing would not give out before the play was finished. If afterward57 his life also gave out, he would not much care.
He had lost Sheila, and Sheila had lost herself. If he could find his work, that would be something at least.
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收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
toiled
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的过去式和过去分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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carouse
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| v.狂欢；痛饮；n.狂饮的宴会 | |
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previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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reviled
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| v.辱骂，痛斥( revile的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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slashes
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| n.（用刀等）砍( slash的名词复数 )；（长而窄的）伤口；斜杠；撒尿v.挥砍( slash的第三人称单数 )；鞭打；割破；削减 | |
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sonority
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| n.响亮，宏亮 | |
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raucous
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| adj.(声音)沙哑的，粗糙的 | |
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8
helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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faltered
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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10
climax
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| n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点 | |
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11
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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12
blizzards
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| 暴风雪( blizzard的名词复数 )； 暴风雪似的一阵，大量（或大批） | |
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13
vowed
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| 起誓，发誓（vow的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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14
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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15
gulped
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| v.狼吞虎咽地吃，吞咽( gulp的过去式和过去分词 )；大口地吸（气）；哽住 | |
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16
growled
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| v.（动物）发狺狺声， （雷）作隆隆声( growl的过去式和过去分词 )；低声咆哮着说 | |
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17
overalls
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| n.（复）工装裤；长罩衣 | |
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18
velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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19
artistically
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| adv.艺术性地 | |
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20
eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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21
immoral
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| adj.不道德的，淫荡的，荒淫的，有伤风化的 | |
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22
alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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23
nude
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| adj.裸体的；n.裸体者，裸体艺术品 | |
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vaudeville
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| n.歌舞杂耍表演 | |
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25
peek
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| vi.偷看，窥视；n.偷偷的一看，一瞥 | |
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26
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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overtime
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| adj.超时的，加班的；adv.加班地 | |
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28
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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29
scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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30
radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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31
vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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32
suffrage
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| n.投票，选举权，参政权 | |
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33
opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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sculptor
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| n.雕刻家，雕刻家 | |
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35
kindle
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| v.点燃，着火 | |
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kindling
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| n. 点火, 可燃物 动词kindle的现在分词形式 | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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38
sects
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| n.宗派，教派( sect的名词复数 ) | |
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creeds
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| （尤指宗教）信条，教条( creed的名词复数 ) | |
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40
sneak
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| vt.潜行(隐藏,填石缝)；偷偷摸摸做；n.潜行；adj.暗中进行 | |
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41
smuggled
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| 水货 | |
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42
throttled
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| v.扼杀( throttle的过去式和过去分词 )；勒死；使窒息；压制 | |
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skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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44
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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46
babble
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| v.含糊不清地说，胡言乱语地说，儿语 | |
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metropolitan
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| adj.大城市的，大都会的 | |
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48
librettos
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| n.（歌剧等的）剧本( libretto的名词复数 ) | |
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49
choir
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| n.唱诗班，唱诗班的席位，合唱团，舞蹈团；v.合唱 | |
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50
trampled
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| 踩( trample的过去式和过去分词 )； 践踏； 无视； 侵犯 | |
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51
pinions
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| v.抓住[捆住]（双臂）( pinion的第三人称单数 ) | |
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52
incandescent
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| adj.遇热发光的， 白炽的，感情强烈的 | |
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53
buttresses
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| n.扶壁，扶垛( buttress的名词复数 )v.用扶壁支撑，加固( buttress的第三人称单数 ) | |
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54
irreconcilable
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| adj.（指人）难和解的，势不两立的 | |
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55
ebbed
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| （指潮水）退( ebb的过去式和过去分词 )； 落； 减少； 衰落 | |
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56
zest
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| n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣 | |
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57
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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