From Herbert Howells

261. 28th May 1953 Herbert Howells to DMF

Royal Hotel, Bristol

My dear Dora:

Here in Bristol this morning I have read with great concern and very real regret of Hubert's death, and it has come not only with disturbing unexpectedness but with added poignancy in this week of general colour and happiness. I send you and your son and daughter the very genuine sympathy of a fellowmusician to whom Hubert shewed unfailing and most heartening kindness and encouragement right through the years.

My last news of him had been so reassuring. He was, I know, destined for new and important editorial work in a post he w[oul]d have filled brilliantly: and he must have been looking forward to it keenly.

We will all be so sorry it was not to be.

And among countless others I shall bear him in mind with admiration and affection.

You yourself will be much in our sympathetic thoughts.

I beg you not to attempt any acknowledgement of this note.

Yours very sincerely

Herbert Howells

From Gordon Jacob

262. 28th May 1953 Gordon Jacob to DMF

Pine Cottage, Brockenhurst, Hants.

My dear Dora,

Sidney and I were much shocked to see the announcement of Hubert's death in the Times today.

It seems impossible that such a vital personality should have passed away at such an early age. We quite thought that he had recovered from his illness in a remarkable way. He will be very much missed by the wide circle of friends he made in the course of his varied interests to each of which he brought his always youthful and vivid enthusiasm.

Please accept our deepest sympathy,

Yrs sincerely,

Gordon Jacob

From Dora Powell

263. 28th May 1953 Dora Powell to DMF

Poels, East Grinstead, Sussex

Dear Mrs. Foss

I was so shocked and sad to see today's Times. I am so very sorry – & so sorry for you and all the trouble & anxiety that you must have been through. I have known Mr. Foss for so many years and shall never forget his kindness & encouragement over the 1st edition of my Elgar book by the Oxford Press in 1937.

I doubt if I should have got on so well as I have without his help.

A corridor in the Palace. Night.

SCENE 1

PANTALONE and TARTAGLIA, meeting; both are in nightshirts and nightcaps, and each carries a lighted candle.

Pantalone. Where the devil have you been all this time?

Tartaglia. I've been—at the Cabinet.

Pant. And you never came to see that extraordinary sight! You're as constipated as a block of wood.

Tar. And I think you're just a schoolboy of seventy—a regular Venetian, always running after the last new sensation. I'm not interested in looking at monsters. If he'd broken his chain he might have torn you into shreds—just as I've been doing with the State papers.

Pant. You dear old cuckoo, you lost a tremendous occasion by not seeing the meeting of King Fanfur with the Monster, or his meeting with that jewel of an Achmed. They were great affairs, my dear colleague. I assure you, we were all of us in floods of tears.

Tar. Floods of tears? What on earth for?

Pant. First of all, you must know that the Monster has a name; he's called Zeloù.

Tar. Zeloù? Well, that seems more a thing to laugh at.

Pant. In the second place, he can talk; in fact he talks with all the eloquence of the Public Orator.

Tar. I must say, that's rather surprising; all the same, nothing to cry about. A bit of a bore, I should imagine. (Yawns)

Pant. Thirdly, King Fanfur decided that he was to have his head chopped off.

Tar. Ha! ha! ha! (Laughs uproariously) Well, that's really good news at last. His Majesty always does the right thing.

Pant. That's more than you do. If you had heard the speech that Zelou made to the King, you'd have wept like the rest of us.

Tar. Oh, (yawns) and may I ask what this – er – Zeloù did say to His Majesty? (Yawns)

Pant. Well now – er – what did he say? let me think – I shall remember directly – wait a moment – yes, I remember, yes, yes—

ITALIAN drama is a subject unfamiliar to English playgoers, even to those who have some acquaintance with the classical drama of France and Spain; the only name they are likely to know is that of Carlo Goldoni (1707—93), a few of whose sixty comedies have occasionally been acted in this country. Count Carlo Gozzi (1720–1806), Goldoni's contemporary in Venice and his embittered rival, is little known even to Italians at the present day unless they are serious researchers into theatrical history. Both of these two dramatists were described by Vernon Lee as far back as 1881 in her Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy (second edition, 1907), a book which can still be read with delight for its wonderful charm and imaginative insight; but modern research has shown it to be not altogether reliable on factual details. No play by Gozzi was ever acted in English until the Young Vic produced The King Stag in the autumn of 1948; but the English version used was made from a free French adaptation, and the present version of The Blue Monster is the first which has been made direct from the Italian.

The conflict between Gozzi and Goldoni arose from their fundamentally different attitudes towards the theatre, and more especially towards the Commedia dell'Arte, generally called in English the Comedy of Masks. Goldoni made it his life-work to destroy it; Gozzi adored it and was the last Italian playwright who succeeded in keeping it alive. The Comedy of Masks, which dominated the Italian theatre for some three and a half centuries and at a quite early date spread from Italy to Germany, France, Spain and England, survives still on our own stage, though in forms far removed from the original—the harlequinade of our christmas pantomime and the sophisticated affectations of certain modern ballets. Current criticism often talks vaguely about it, but most writers seem to have derived their knowledge from French sources instead of Italian ones.

The mediaeval drama in Italy as in other countries was acted by amateurs. It had begun with liturgical plays acted by clergy in churches; the first recorded in Italy took place at Padua in 1244, a Resurrection play, probably in Latin, although it was acted out of doors.

Throne room in the royal palace at Nanking. King FANFÙR, very old and decrepit, is seated on the throne. PANTALONE and TARTAGLIA, as his Ministers of State, stand at his right and left hand. The MAGNATES of the Realm are seated in two rows below.

In the middle of the stage is an urn, with a small boy sitting near it. There is also a rostrum from which the name drawn from the urn is called out.

SCENE 1

Pantalone. Your Majesty, I most deeply regret to state that wine this year will be in very short supply. This morning at day-break that accursed Monster destroyed more than ten thousand of our vineyards. Your Majesty might think it impossible, but that abominable creature then proceeded to amuse himself by flaying all the sheep and oxen in the suburbs, and throwing them into the river. In fact, this year there will not be a single hair of wool either for the mattress-makers or the weavers, unless we shear our own bodies, nor a single drop of wine. My lords and gentlemen, that's the long and short of it.

A corridor in the Palace.

SCENE 1

Enter from opposite sides SMERALDINA and TRUFFALDINO.

Smeraldina. Who are you? Haven't I seen you before somewhere?

Truffaldino (vaguely remembering). Oh yes, you're the girl who smacked my face.

Smer. (vaguely remembering). Smacked your face, did I? Served you right, too. Yes—in the forest, wasn't it? You thought you could take liberties with me. Well, I'm sorry I lost my temper. Let's forget about it. Have you got a job here in the palace?

Truff. (importantly). Of course I have.

Smer. Then perhaps you could help me to one. I don't know how I'm going to live.

Truff. You want a job? Then you've come to the right man. I'm a person of great influence at Court, very great influence, I can assure you. I have the private ear of Her Majesty, Queen Gulindì; in fact I may say that I am admitted to her most intimate confidence. But hush! that's a State secret. What's your name, young woman?

Smer. Smeraldina, sir, if you please. I come from Bergamo. I'm poor but honest and I'm looking for work.

Truff. Smeraldina? The virgin Smeraldina?

Smer. (primly demure). Yes, sir, of course.

Truff. Then you've no need to ask me for a job; you've got one already.

Smer. Where? The Queen wouldn't so much as look at me, and I don't know what to do for a living!

Truff. Haven't you heard about the lottery? Don't you know you've made your fortune?

Smer. The lottery? I never heard anything. Have I really won a fortune?

Truff. Here's Captain Brighella. He'W. tell you about it. Now you're at the end of all your troubles.

(Exit)

SCENE 2

Enter BRIGHELLA with soldiers.

Brighella (looking at SMERALDINA). Oh Lord, oh Lord, this is a bad business!

Smeraldina (very excited and happy). Your humble servant, my lord.

Brig, (aside). Just the same, only a few sizes larger. The very spit of my old mother! Oh, I'm all of a palpitation!

Smer. I don't know what to say, to thank you for all the good news your lordship has come to bring me.

A forest with a mountain at the back and a cave.

SCENE 1

ZELOÙ (the Blue Monster) comes out of the cave.

SCENE 2

Enter TRUFFALDINO and SMERALDINA, singing a popular tune. They are both dressed in Chinese costume. TRUFFALDINO holds an umbrella over SMERALDINA's head. This scene (improvised in the original) should be acted as much as possible in mime, and free use may be made of the song at odd moments.

Smeraldina. Oh, I'm so tired, I'm so tired! Do you think we shall ever get to Nanking? Riding, riding, riding, all the way from Georgia, for days and days on end! I'm ready to drop, and the horses are too.

Truffaldino. We can let them graze a bit; there's plenty of time. The Prince and Princess are a long way behind. Let's sit down.

SCENE 1

Corridor in the Palace.

PANTALONE and TARTAGLIA.

Tartaglia (fussed). Now, now, don't worry me any more. I did everything I possibly could.

Pantalone (much worried). But it's just unthinkable! I'm sure, if I could have been there, I should have been able to persuade him to run away and save his life. That would have been something at least. The King is as obstinate as a pig. We shall certainly have a revolution. Call yourself a Minister! You're no use whatever!

Tar. I can only tell you, Captain Brighella and I between us kept him in the guard-room up to this very moment, and I talked to him like Scipio Africanus to induce him to make his escape. More than that, I pressed two half-crowns into his hand, which I was most reluctant to part with, so that he might go away well provided for. It wasn't a bit of good; he's a most obstinate young fool; he positively insisted on going to the Monster's prison, and Brighella has just escorted him there.

Pant. Brighella knows his job anyway. Well, since that's the case, we must get out of it as best we can. His Majesty has given orders that the execution is to be carried out, and that he intends to be present himself; it's to take place towards sunset behind locked doors, because I think the King himself sees the danger of the situation. There'll be the devil to pay for all this, I'm certain of it. You and I, Tartaglia, will see Achmed put on the throne this very evening, and the old King turned out to cry rags and bones in the gutter. I'm certain of it, certain of it.

Tar. I always keep on the winning side. I have a right and proper reverence for authority—whatever it happens to be.

Pant. Well, well, we must go and wait upon that tiresome old gentleman. But it's really too much of a good thing, too much much of a good thing. To have the chance of saving his life, and run away with two half-crowns in his pocket, and then not want to! Too much of a good thing, too much of a good thing altogether.

The age of Shakespeare was one in which music, both in England and in other countries, reached an extraordinarily high artistic level. Not merely is it an age of great composers all over Europe, but it is an age in which music was widely cultivated and appreciated. In mediaeval days music had been centred mainly in the courts of princes, in the cathedrals and the monasteries. Outside these environments domestic life had been neither secure nor comfortable enough to permit of any serious and continuous cultivation of the art by ordinary people. The English, it is true, had always been a music-loving nation since the twelfth century, if not before; but in days when no music was printed and comparatively little written down, musical education apart from professional circles (in which we can include both the wandering minstrels and the church musicians) must have been very irregular. During the whole of the fifteenth century there was a very large production of ecclesiastical music, but our records of secular music during that period are of the scantiest. Church music was written down and preserved for regular use; secular music, composed for the entertainment of people who had few books and comparatively little occasion for either reading or writing, was learned largely by ear. There was no reason to preserve it in writing; when audiences were tired of one song or dance musicians were always ready to provide new ones.