text:
Video journalism/Constructing Vision

If you understand the process of editing, its visual languages and its grammar, then filming (video recording) and script writing should become more efficient, creative and thorough. A filming that is informed by a knowledge of editing will more likely provide a variety of shots and angles so the editor (perhaps you also) may work effectively. Understanding editing brings about a more organised approach to the whole process.

The audio tracks stand a higher chance of containing clean sound and the sequence of shots available on tape are likely to contain a variety of useful material from the crucial story-telling wide establishing shots, to the mid shots and close ups. Shots should be steady, well framed and should be free of amateurish zooms, pans and unstable jerky recording. This is preferable to leaving the editor with the nightmare of having no material that will tell the story.

Some poor editors have been forced to cut a documentary with studio voice-over (no field interviews) while they’ve had to apply slow motion to all the footage because there was no useable material at real time – every minute was full of zooming and panning that was jerky and amateurish.

These rules apply to scriptwriters as much as they do to those who work in the field with the camera. Scriptwriters must understand the nature of production and the levels of production that can be achieved within certain budgets. There is no use scripting a sequence that involves complex shots that cost the earth, when there is no way you can pay for it. There is no use scripting in helicopter or crane mounted shots while the production is being done on a humble freelance current affairs budget.

Editing
News story telling You might recall the typical news story structure that we outlined in Writing for Pictures, in the last topic’s notes. Every time you plan and script your TV news story, or even longer more complicated current affairs stories, you should consider that simple narrative structure, that in summary, looks like this:

First Stage, the Intro or Lead provides an Orientation: sets the scene, introduces the principle event/s and characters, places them in a context.

Second Stage – Complicating Action: introduces some challenge, danger, change or disruption which threatens the lives, safety or happiness of the characters presented in the Orientation. The second stage is underpinning and explaining, even giving the lead context.

Third Stage – Resolution: the steps taken by the primary protagonist(s) to resist the threat or resolve the problem presented in the ‘Complicating Action’.

Fourth and Final Stage – the Coda: wraps up the action, indicates that the complicating action has been finally overcome and everything in resolved and concluded within the story, the audience should be left feeling that there was complete information (in the context of the short (one and a half minute) news story.

The lead
The crucial and first factor to consider when planning the one to two minute video news story, is the Lead or Intro. To supply the best impact the Intro must convey a significant amount of information in a short space. In many cases the Intro – or possibly the Intro in combination with the second section, with its descriptive pictures, provides a complete summary or synopsis of the events in the story. This heavy informational load must be carried by a minimum of words, usually no more than 20 to 25 words for the typical video story, with just over a hundred words for the whole story. Rather, instead of words, the pictures should tell the story. Therefore, maximising impact with well sequenced pictures is critical to success in editing.

The pictures must be sequenced so that they show in vision (and more) what is being said in the voice-over. Filling the Intro with just the right amount of detail is where the most skill is needed. Too little specific content makes an intro vague; too much is bewildering.

The scriptwriter, and the editor, have to ensure that the intro is precise enough to refer to a unique happening, but the precision must not be long and boring. The Lead (Intro) should not try to achieve too much, rather it should be focussed and not necessarily adhering to the old rule that the intro should try to answer the questions Who? Why? What? Where? When? How?

The intro must concentrate on the through line, on one news idea, and this can only be constructed with available and good pictures.

The typical journalist training often compares the News Story to ‘an inverted pyramid’. In print journalism in particular, the information at the top of the pyramid – the lead – is the most important. As the reader goes deeper in the story, the value and dramatic nature of the information decreases.

There are many reservations about the validity of comparing the TV News Story to an ‘inverted pyramid’, but it is, perhaps, useful as a reminder of the informational dominance of the opening section - the Intro. It certainly doesn’t apply in video news that the body of the typical News Story can be said to have a steady, regular decrease in informational importance as suggested in the ‘inverted pyramid’ model.

But the upturned pyramid or triangle, with its base – the broadest part of the figure – at the top is a useful reminder of the dominance of the Intro, of the way it both summarises and establishes the news angle of the report, and this must be told in both pictures and words.

The Lead, or Intro, provides the up-front information, the ‘point of maximum impact’ and so it prepares the viewer for a similar process throughout the remainder of the story.

While it might easily be concluded, in viewing tabloid television news, maximum impact openings are not designed to tantalise. Rather they seek to capture the viewer’s attention, not through suspense, but by overwhelming them with the gravity of the story. Once viewers are captured in this way, they can be relied on to interact, question and continue to engage with the news story’s development. By winning over the viewer like this, the story teller no longer has to take total responsibility for structuring the story’s development. They can assume that the audience will be engaged and hence continue to interpret actively, the flow of information as the story unfolds.

In news, as opposed to the longer current affairs and documentary structure, suspense and the slow sequential build-up are impossible. Slow introduction, preamble and backgrounding is also impossible in news. The video news task is to capture viewers in one informational hit, engaging them with the gravity and overwhelming newsworthiness of the information.

Like radio journalism, video news gives a sense of immediacy, of providing its audience with the ‘freshest’ most up-to-the-minute information with pictures. With its use of ‘actuality’ (pictures and sound), video journalism now has the ability to construct a sense of real-world context. It gives the viewers a sense of direct and unmediated experience of the events being reported.

A report which begins with the pictures of flashes in the dark of night while accompanied by the sound of gunfire and the clamour of the battle field, provides the audience with a sense of actually being there, of dealing directly with reality rather than simply with what some reporter says has happened. If the pictures did not carry the clear and identifiable sound, they might not be recognisable as battlefield pictures at all.

Similarly, the video ‘grab’ – the recorded comment – or taped interview are intrinsically more ‘credible’, more suggestive of the direct witnessing of reality than are the quotations of print journalism. This ‘actuality’ is vulnerable to manipulation, to ‘creative’ editing and to being used out of context. And the selection of one background sound or one ‘grab’ ahead of others is a creative process by which the journalist constructs a sense of reality rather than reflecting it.

For this reason, surveys of mass media audiences frequently find that television is regarded as significantly more powerful, ‘credible’ and ‘reliable’ than print journalism. The use of pictures gives witness by way of ‘actuality’ inscribes TV journalism with a sense of authenticity and accuracy.

TV documentary and current affairs
Despite television journalism’s implied truthful, unproblematic and disinterested position; dramatic shaping is as endemic to documentary, news and current affairs as it is to most forms of television. Within the text, the viewer witnesses a sequence of elements through conflict to resolution, tension and release.

Through this sequencing, ideological discourses are incorporated into the text. In mainstream news and current affairs, these discourses are conversational, natural, conventional, comfortable, familiar and accessible. The viewer sees the transformation and argument as transparent, obvious, intelligible and natural.

In this sense, the shaping of narrative for dramatic effect from the point of camera to that of editing gives credence to regarding even the most factual documentaries as being fictional in form.

Video news and current affairs involves a presentation of argument, of a position coded for audiences through style of camera, framing, editing, voice-over, rhythm and soundtrack. ‘This militates against knowledge, not because of ‘bias’ or the supposition or demotion of alternative viewpoints, but because what is concealed is the notion of the text as a site for construction of meanings which should be considered and analysed in relation to the position, interests and intentions of their producers’. [Len Masterman. Media Education: Theoretical Issues and Practical Possibilities’ Metro. 1993. P. 60.]

The camera operator decides whether camera movements should be violent or peaceful. They make these decisions in response to their taste and judgement. They shoot to convey strong and meaningful messages to the audience so that the audience is kept interested in staying with the program.

This is a rich area for research, because sponsorship and advertising, fund production and product placement - all drive networks. Journalists and directors decide the spin on the story, they determine what questions should be asked and to what extent and depth. To what extent does all this negate objectivity?

Experimental editing — practice underpinned by theory
Experimental edits, different edit grammars, different cuts and rhythm help determine how the raw segments might best come to life in sequence.
 * Rather than comply with the usual demands of scholarship I want to remain sketchy and open – ’brooding’ is the word that keeps coming to mind at the moment. An interestingly feminine term for thought. Perhaps at the end of brooding–a very inward kind of process-something emerges into the world. But if so, the thing is likely to get up on its wobbly legs and run off in any direction . . . And soon start hatching out its own new schemes. [Susan Dermody. The Subjective Voice in Documentary The Pressure of the Unconscious upon the Image. in Fields of Vision, Essays in Film Studies, Visual Anthropology, and Photography. Leslie Devereaux and Roger Hillman - editors. University of California Press. 1995. 292.]

Developing a story telling by experimental video editing on a computer based non linear editing system, involves sequencing the raw segments of image and sound so that the best narrative emerges. This is best done on low cost equipment that affords you the luxury, of time to spare at little to no cost. Always back up your work on a couple of external drives.

Bill Nichols and others have shown the blurred boundaries between a scientifically accounted reality (news, reportage) and a filmic, fictional and represented reality, like a police thriller. While news must be impartial in the edit, no special effects, realities in other mass-media products like documentaries oscillate between fact and fiction, between actual and constructed. Realities or perspectives can be changed through re-editing. They will then address members of audiences differently. Filmmakers, more than journalists, are obliged to create evocative sequences with highly stylised editing. This sometimes changes the structure and form of the raw material, but is necessary in film making terms.

 * And what emerges in all of the films I would see as engaging partly or wholly with this mode is a ‘voice’ in the film that addresses the inner voice of the viewer. And that helps to release the imagery from a strictly referential function, to the point where a line is crossed and we are reading the image and sound track from the perspective of the unconscious. [Susan Dermody. The Subjective Voice in Documentary The Pressure of the Unconscious upon the Image. in Fields of Vision, Essays in Film Studies, Visual Anthropology, and Photography. Leslie Devereaux and Roger Hillman - editors. University of California Press. 1995. 292.]

 * These voices – such as those of the television anchor people and reporters – are attached to bodies that represent not personal witness, but institutional authority in anthropomorphic form.

 * This privileging of the world faces a crisis with every edit. With each cut the opportunity exists to re inscribe the filmmaker’s presence rather than excise it. Each cut opens the gap between human agency and cinematic evidence only to anneal it again through continued exclusion. Documentary convention upholds the expectation of presence, of an ethic of witnessing, of a situated view, and yet exercises the bodily evidence of presence. [Nichols, Bill. Axiographics in Representing reality. - Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Indiana University Press. 1991. 90.]

The universal inner voice of viewers must be sought in filmmaking and firstly, the journalist director must establish the identity and characteristics of their audience (market). They must also be sure to keep in mind the genre the edit is constructing. If the piece is a one minute news story, then the edit must abide by those conventions, as set out in part, in the Script Template and available in this Learning Schedule. The editing process must include and anticipate the appropriate screen codes and conventions and in tern find the audience inner voice appropriate at the time of the film’s release. Therefore at this juncture you must, with active deconstruction, watch television programmes of the form that you are intending to make.

Vlogging
The following text by Leigh Blackall

So what is vlogging? Well, I don't want to limit this to text – so how about we start by watching my little video I just made: What is Vlogging.

You can probably tell by the quality of my video that it took me all of 15 minutes to make.. including recording, compressing and uploading. Ironically it will take me about an hour to prepare the supporting text!

And that's the beauty of Internet video these days. Thanks to services like Youtube and many others, you and I and everyone are able to publish video at next to no cost, in hardly any time, and with very little technical ability. That's a media revolution right there! With so many of us taking advantage of this opportunity, there is A LOT of video out there. With so much video, the chances of each of us finding something that is interesting, useful or unique becomes very likely, so we are now a lot more ready to forget about questions of quality because we have rediscovered what it means for a video to be interesting, useful or unique. That's another revolution right there! We've learned to accept that it's the content of the video that matters, regardless of the image quality and cost of production (although it's even better if the quality of the picture and audio is as best as it can be too). Even TV news is less interested in "broadcast quality" images, and seem quite happy using footage from Youtube at 320×240 compressed and at 15 frames per second. So the barrier of entry is now low on all fronts – access, cost and expectations.

If you want more to think about on this, I'd highly recommend Michael Wesch's presentation to the Library of Congress: An Anthropological Introduction to Youtube

Ok, what about vlogging?

Vlogging combines the words video and blogging. Readers here should by now know what a blog is, but in case you're new to it – here's my attempt to explain a big thing: A blog is a website that is regularly updated with new content by the same author/s. Each new addition of content is called a blog-post or post and appears at the top with old content moving down the blog. A blog provides readers with subscription features that alert them when posts are added. Most blogs today include options for readers to add comments as a way of encouraging discussion and feedback with the blog author/s. Many journalists and social commentators use blogs, as do some teachers and politicians.

A video-blog or vlog then, is simply a blog that uses video as its primary media in each post.

Ok, so now you know what a vlog is, and maybe some of you want to set one up. Well, that's easy and wont cost you a cent! (Except for something of your monthly Internet charges that is).

First step is to create an account on Youtube. It doesn't have to be Youtube, there are other video publishing services, but let's keep it simple.

Your next step is to post your first video to your Youtube account. There are 3 ways:

 * 1) Upload a video you have from your computer
 * 2) Record a video directly onto Youtube by way of your webcam
 * 3) Record a video with your mobile phone and send it to your Youtube account via its own email address.

Youtube has great help videos for learning how to do any of these things, and more.

That's it! You have created your first post to your Youtube vlog. Other people can access your vlog by going to http://youtube.com/user/YOURUSERNAME

Some people take vlogging further by setting up a blog on a service like Blogger, and then either linking their Youtube video into their blog, or uploading a video directly into their blog with Blogger's video upload features.

If you want people to be able to download your videos so they can play them off the Internet, or so you can turn your vlog into a podcast, then you'll have to use a different service than Youtube. I use Blip.tv. It offers you all the features of Youtube (less the popularity) plus some significant extras, such as file download, and cross posting your video to other sites like the Internet Archive.

So there you have it. Take the time to watch the help videos. Its a great way to learn. If you want to find out all there is to know about vlogging, then the Wikipedia article is a great place to start.

Desktop editing

 * Microsoft Windows: Windows Movie Maker
 * Apple Macintosh: iMovie
 * Linux: OpenShot Video Editor

Mobile phone editors
The so-called generation of mobile phones called Smart Phones, often come with basic in-built video editors which can edit together multiple clips and upload to sites like Youtube. Applications (Apps) such as these are always being developed, so a Google search might be a good way to research current best options if you have one of these phones and you're not satisfied with the editor that came with it.

Collaborative webbased video editing
The following text from Leigh Blackall

Web based image, audio and video editing has been making quiet but significant progress over the years. Web based editing means every day punters like you and I can edit directly on the website where we store our media - rather than having to carry around (or even own) a computer, or worry about running software on a computer. With nothing but a portable recorder like a phone, we are free to wonder the streets uploading pictures as we go, and then jumping into a cafe or onto a friends computer to edit the media straight through a standard web browser with broadband internet connection.

For example, I upload photos to Flickr and video to Youtube directly from my phone. I just snap a shot, or take a few seconds of video, and send the media up by a special email address that both Flickr and Youtube provide to your account with them. A while back Flickr quietly added web based image editing for touch ups, basic editing or even for getting post productive. Its as simple as clicking the "edit" button above your image on Flickr and then start adjusting brightness and contrast, adding colour and text, cropping and rotating.. I've been thinking to use it to create titles to add to my videos when I get around to editing them web side as well!

Speaking of which, Kaltura - now there's a promising bit of web based video editing software. Not only does it offer reasonably stable editing, it enables collaboration as well! I primarily use Kaltura as it is on the Wikieducator web site, although there are a range of other websites using Kaltura to offer web based and collaborative video editing.

When you are looking at a Kaltura player/editor (very easy to add one to a page on Wikieducator btw), you have two options: "add to this video", and "edit this video". Pretty self explanatory hey. When you click "add to this video", you have the options to add video from Youtube, photos from Flickr, and audio from CCMixter, among others. This is pretty handy seeing as I already load footage via the phone to Youtube and Flickr - not to mention the possibility of creating fancy titles and image effects on Flickr as well.. Its nice to be able to continue loading and storing on other sites, and then feed them into Kaltura when needed. (There's quite a lot of possibility in this approach to multi media, not to mention just a little bit more security in backup). When the "clips" are all feed over to your Kaltura editor/player, you're ready to get to work editing on its basic (but not too basic) editor. Other's can come in on your edits too, making Kaltura a web based video editor with collaborative potential as well.. I don't play too well with others, so I can't say much about that - always open to the chance to co-edit though :)

There's one downside to Kaltura sadly. We're still waiting for the obvious feature that enables downloading a finished video for playing offline. Unfortunately this is not offered yet so we're left with online viewing only.

Video file formats
The following text from Leigh Blackall

Video file formats are a real nightmare! And after 10 years of amateur video production, I still don't have a clear understanding on how they work. So what I am about to tell you is what works for me, considering I try to produce video that works for many.

Sites like Youtube - or specifically the Flash Video that Youtube relies on, have helped solve this compatibility problem for viewing video on the Internet, but its still a problem for those who like to download and perhaps even edit videos offline.

What format should I use?
Here are my 3 rules of thumb - that work for me:

 * 1) The master copy of your digital video should be in AVI set to play at 25 frames per second, displaying a size of 720x576 pixels.
 * 2) Use this master AVI to export Internet ready versions in MP4, WMV and Ogg Theora, all set to play at no less than 12.5 frames per second, displaying at 320x240 pixels.
 * 3) Upload the MP4 to your preferred video publishing service (eg Youtube or Blip.tv) and that service will convert your video to the Flash Video format for reliable playback on all computers.

Why AVI as the master format?
Because it is an old, long used format that is generally reliable on the widest range of computer software and players. As the Wikipedia entry for AVI says: "...the age of the AVI format, being widely supported on a vast range of operating systems and devices, and the availability of video editing and playback software ... help keep the AVI file format popular amongst amateur videographers."

Why the 3 export formats?
Video for the Internet needs to be a small file size, but not so small that it makes it unwatchable. An MP4 at 320x240 pixels gets good file compression and can play on Windows, Macintosh and Linux, not to mention most portable devices. A WMV gets very good compression, and is reliably played on Windows based computers. And Ogg Theora also gets good compression, but is the only non-commercial, open standard video format that plays on Linux, and that is accepted by Wikipedia and other free and open source initiatives - who tend to have longer term, commercial free, sustainability in mind. If you offer people the choice of these 3 formats, you have all bases covered nicely.

How do you get video into all those formats?
There are a few free to use video converters you can use. These applications can take just about any video format and convert it into any other format. I use SuperC, largely because it was one of the first to become available, and it can do so much in the one application. Its not always easy to use, so sometimes I prefer simpler tools such as Videora iPod converter, or Pazera Video Converters. Alternatively, you can upload your video to Archive.org and they will convert your video on their website for you.

More information on encoding can be found on the Wikipedia entries for each format.
 * AVI
 * MP4MP4
 * WMV
 * Ogg Theora

How to format your video
The following text from Leigh Blackall

How to get your video from a master format AVI, into an MP4, WMV and Ogg Theora.

If you can achieve and publish all of these 3 formats then you are a mighty fine video blogger. You will be providing your viewers with maximum access and reuse options - such as the kids at Warrington Primary who only use free software. If you don't go these extra few yards, well.. not everyone will notice (least of all the schools that only teach kids how to expensive commercial software) and you will be selling yourself short, setting a poor production standard, rendering yourself an average, careless video blogger without true regard for your viewers and remixers.. you're not that sort of person are you :)

So, are you ready set the standard!? Here is how you get your video into all 3 formats, and make them available online:

Upload to Archive.org

That's it! That's all you have to do. Archive.org will take your video and turn it into Mp4, Ogg Theora, and even a Flash Video (FLV) and animated Gif preview just for good measure! They'll keep it there for eva, serving it day after day, year after year. Darn they're good! Archive.org has been accepting anyone's media and making it available online for free since 1996. Its amazing what they have there now! (NZ Archives take notice - you too could be this great some day).

Ok, so if anyone's been paying attention you will have noticed this is not quite as I said it should be. Where's that pesky WMV? Archive.org didn't create that for us did they? No they didn't. They know WMV is not a very useful format, so you'll have to create it yourself to keep your Windows people happy.

So.. if you're using Window's Movie Maker then creating a WMV is easy for you. Simply select the option for exporting WMV and upload it to Archive.org and sit back and wait, you'll soon have your WMV, with an MP4 and an Ogg Theora sitting right there next to it. (Keep your AVI master to yourself for backup - it would take far too long to upload anyway).

But if you're not using Window's Movie Maker and you don't have video editing software with a WMV export option (such as iMovie or a Linux based editor like Kino) then you're in trouble. You might not be able to easily create a WMV. No matter I suppose, Windows can play the MP4 version, and for this reason you'll soon come to see that WMV is not a very useful format anyway. So just upload what you have to Archive.org and be happy with the MP4, Ogg, and FLV.

There are ways to make WMV from Mac and Linux.. but that would be going beyond my word count (and know how). My main purpose today was to show you the wonderful Archive.org, and to mention that if you have a Blip.tv account, you can upload to Blip and have Blip send a copy through to Archive.org for you automatically. Its a nice little backup feature.

title: Video journalism/Constructing Vision


text:
Collaborative play writing/French chronicles of the 1590s

French chronicles of the 1590s

based on Pierre de L'Estoile's "Journal in the reign of King Henry IV of France"

Dramatic characters (20)

Charles of Lorraine, duke of Mayenne

Charles of Lorraine, duke of Guise

Charles of Lorraine, duke of Aumale

Duke of Feria

Pierre d'Epinac, archbishop of Lyon

Renaud de Beaune, archbishop of Bourges

Maxime Durepain, shopkeeper

Louise, wife to Durepain

Blanchefleur, niece to Durepain

Bévue, herald

Aubry, curate of Saint-Andrew-of-the-Arts

Lincestre, curate of Saint-Gervais

Bailleton, beadle

Brin, sexton

Fouterien, stable-boy

Benoît, schoolboy

Barrière, assassin

Three parishioners

Attendants, servants, a donkey

Time: 16th century

Place: France

/Act_1/

/Act_2/

/Act_3/

/Act_4/

/Act_5/

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Collaborative play writing/French chronicles of the 1590s/Act 1

Act 1. Scene 1. A street in Paris. 1590

Enter Maxime and Louise

Maxime. Yet another laborer banished to the city, egg-less, as few weasels are.

Louise. From country dirt to city dust, filthier by far.

Maxime. What is bulging from your apron pocket?

Louise. Two clenched fists.

Maxime. Ha, very unfortunate! I was hoping for some rotten roots left from last night.

Louise. Nothing but lint to clean our teeth with.

Maxime. Inspect surgically inside my mouth without choking from the fumes if you can: teeth like newly bloomed lillies for cleanness, fed, unlike Yaweh's children, with hopes, not food.

Louise. Because of our misfortunes, we save on dental fees.

Maxime. For the famished famine-soup, or broth enriched with hide of dogs, cats, asses, horses, even rats captured in cellars where we sleep, together with- this should be whispered secretly- bones of our own dead children.

Louise. For holidays, slates softened in water, more rarely oatmeal or bran bread.

Maxime. Retrieve some grains and herbs from open fields.

Louise. To be shot for it by soldiers? I will find

No gentle Boaz sending me to glean,

Restorer of a stomach nearly squashed.

Maxime. Do not, I pray, for in such barley fields

The owners rather seek dexterity

Of lips than that of hands.

Enter the archbishop of Lyon

Lyon. Good people, are you impatient?

Maxime. No, only hungry.

Lyon. A temporary lull merely, economic transactions being clogged, as we hear, in a sluggish Lethe, to be forgotten, or at worst thought on without contumely or resentment. People of Christ, for the good of all, spend all you can.

Louise. With what, your eminence?

Lyon. Discouragement makes us discourse wildly. To help commerce rise smilingly in dismayed and filthy robes, every denizen should invest somewhat, for pennies spent will get us pennies.

Maxime. We lack any.

Louise. And hope for even less.

Lyon. (throwing coins

Thus for your lighter spendings of the day!

Maxime. Not pennies, bread! Who chews on metal?

Louise. No shopkeeper accepts money now, having nowhere to spend it.

Lyon. Thus, Paris, for your whoring! Underneath

Loose garments, in your lack of diligence,

A shameful belly swells uncomfortably.

Louise. Instead of cakes, we eat the duke of Mayenne's promises, or exhortations from Catherine de Guise.

Lyon. Lords and ladies with your most profitable welfare at heart! But there are mightier authorities in existence, though invisible to all, to whom you must submit hearts pining for deliverance.

Maxime. For our money, we eat sermons, too.

Lyon. Though from a sinner's mouth while frothing lust

In pulpit thoughts of fornication,

The words delivered from our Gospel theme

Are worthiest of the best one ever hears.

Louise. O, certainty discovered naked in her night-closet, your eminence!

Maxime. Worth ten of my tavern-keeper's most thoughtful excogitations!

Lyon. Still blessed as subjects of my prayers, if

Not more! All these of which I daily speak,

As I discover more each day a man

Survives with love, worth more than feeding sins!

Maxime. Truth from the highest, Louise, only balm in a life of pain: after death, we sin no more.

Lyon. Improve that maxim: if we sin no more,

We surely live.

Maxime. I like that better.

Louise. As true, my man, as any ever said

Or else believed.

Exit Lyon

Maxime. How will we live?

Louise. Perhaps to lie apart is best.

Maxime. I guess your pious thoughts: stealing a soldiers's knapsack without my help, as he dreams to rub your body a second time.

Louise. Can you blame an empty woman's lustless lust?

Maxime. Together live, together die, mother-no more.

Louise. See some fat ones enter church.

Maxime. Even if we get nothing from them, we can always nibble on the candles as we leave.

Louise. Or steal some vestry wine while the curate snores contendly in his pupil's arms.

Maxime. I know you now, Louise. Deny it if You conjure hopes to prosper ever more:

You wish to use your middle-hole as boys

Do their rear ones.

Louise. What remains of your body would please him better, I can swear.

Exeunt Maxime and Louise

Act 1. Scene 2. Near a farmhouse outside Paris. 1592

Enter Fouterien and Bévue, with a book

Fouterien. Pails to fetch and carry, pyramid-labor every day, with a pox to master and man!

Bévue. To every fool and philosopher his work, Fouterien!

Fouterien. Leisure is a harlot who hates the poor. If only I could wive her!

Bévue. Dream waking as you can, then talk to me

When you awake.

Fouterien. Today I wash the pigs.

Bévue. The farm would be wholesomer if they washed you.

Fouterien. News of city sins: unclothe them, I pray you. How I wish my shaft's root would disappear inside such whores!

Bévue. By the faith of the Virgin's untouched robes, would you learn from a mere herald, of no brighter distinction, of no more prestigious attainments among the laity and clergy? Mere tinsel, I imagine.

Fouterien. But city pleasures, Bévue!

Bévue. Pooh, few worthy to be reported with no ringing ecues in a wallet, Fouterien.

Fouterien. More lively than country ones, I can guess without missing with twos or threes on both throws.

Bévue. Glorious whores eyeing satin and fur. At best I savor cans of beer, as many as I please in noise and smoke, nothing sapient, a pastime trite to enumerate even to country clowns, in no fashion comparable to a philosopher's quiet moments.

Fouterien. Open ones, eh, my son? O, for noisier coins than what can be kept in pierced breeches, enough for me to lie between smudged knees!

Bévue. Right, empty your pail, to empty your pail.

Fouterien. Whereas here, in Hog Hall, I discover loneliness in kissing Snorer's rump before sleeping.

Bévue. Your calf? Take heed, boy-fool born in an unconscious hour. For such farm night-work, some have bled terribly, you know.

Fouterien. How should I do otherwise? My fingers are never so knowing on myself as some appear to be among other lads, or like a woman's when she wants to please without mussing her smock.

Bévue. Be thankfully glad for your salutary warning sooner than tomorrow: no more stall-pleasures in the presence of chickens and geese, should someone chance to spy them when you least know of it.

Fouterien. Sheep are more convenient than women. They talk less.

Bévue. I can repeat, no more hedgerow concupiscence, for I have spoken tremblingly to witches tipped from their ladder to the fire for whispering no worse heresy to their cats at twilight than you have to your cows.

Fouterien. I burn already.

Bévue. Pooh, Stoics since Seneca have quit desire behind easily enough, to skip gravely towards their proper theme.

Fouterien. The more I think of readier ones, the randier I stiffen, with a fuco to the mistress and her mustache. I split, Bévue, I rend the fork on my breeches in thinking on their white nakedness.

Bévue. By Venus' lips at either end, I weary of the subject, a common one, as I guess, in the opinion of the most cited Latin authors.

Fouterien. Spill, farm-drudge, not from your pail but somewhere longer. If caught with this bucket half full, or even half empty, I expect to look with sorrow between my thighs on my master's blushing maiden rope. On, forward and back, standing and sitting, up to the rafters and down stinking to the troughs, with a chancre on each side and in the middle for those who eat with a fuller mouth than I.

Bévue. I find no such meditation in Cicero.

Fouterien. Does he empty and sweep as I do? When I ask for some chicken, the master gives me the beak or one of the claws, in compensation of which, if you say nothing, I'll creep inside, to spurt with my animals something more pleasant for me than their fodder.

Exit Fouterien and enter Maxime

Maxime. Some road or occupation for one guiltless and his more honest belly lacking most if not all.

Bévue. Is this Maxime or his bony ghost?

Maxime. What, friend-Bévue, from straw and officers' clubs to court-splendor?

Bévue. Hush, youthful errors, I always remind friends, of little interest now to any ascending manhood.

Maxime. What are you? Some shiny beetle in a fruit-dish at least.

Bévue. A herald, cherished son of ignorance, with tabard no less emblazoned than most, thanks to which your friend is fortunately secure behind Paris gates, besides most parts of the kingdom, in the service or thraldom of gentlemen of note as they please to order me elsewhere. Before reaching the modest eminence you see me glitter in, I was the fifth of October 1582 which never was, or as closed as affliction's flower, Paradin's emblem of the queen of Navarre, which, resolutely turned towards the sun of rank, is open now to newer joys, as proof of which behold the field, enameled in metal, color, and fur, the figures intricate in dextrals and sinistrals as in the best they are, for my master's own, his tri-fold fleur-de-lys, golden, on background azured, in gules bordered, as permanent sign-post of the face of the very worshipful duke of Mayenne. And you?

Maxime. Chased from the field in my round cap and bag around the waist to Paris for lack of work, then pressed from the city to the road for lack of work, with the beadle's whip and worse adventures for discovering none of note.

Bévue. Are you alone?

Maxime. Eh? I saw my wife last- but that must be- surely- no, this past month or day, I believe so. (fainting

Bévue. Towards my house for more feeding than talk!

Exeunt Bévue carrying Maxime

Act 1. Scene 3. Before the church of St-Andrew-of-the-Arts. 1592

Enter Father Aubry and Brin, with a broom

Aubry. Apollo's happiest morrow to all true And honest sextons! Benedictions

On most of them, I say!

Brin. A better morrow to our no less true

But far more secret curate of the night.

Aubry. I, secretive, Brin? Why so? Can you tell?

Brin. An unknown pupil in the sacristy

Was seen last night, your mouthless witness says,

The boy with weeping shaken as you helped

To find his breeches underneath the sheets.

Aubry. Ha, you refer no doubt to wee Palin,

That forward one, whom I, against my will,

Though with a gravest fatherhood's consent,

Was forcibly constrained in my worst hour

With soggy twiglets nicely to correct.

Brin. True, culpability's own at the age

Of twelve or less, whose well-instructed arse

Bears what it never hoped to find so soon,

A new religion learnt with rods of flesh,

His rounded mouth aquiver, limping hot

And sore, with crying weary, rubbing parts

Never constrained as yet at front or back.

Aubry. A mildew on your conscience! Thoroughly

I pray you to abandon at this time

Such themes for merrier hours between two friends.

Brin. While I, unenvied sexton no one sees,

As certain as the travels of the earth

Around the sun- I read somewhat, you know-

Am sorely afflicted day and night

With boys of darkness, blushless girlhood, too,

When cheerfully I sweep our sins outside.

Aubry. Afflicted, Brin?

Brin. Do you never spy out, when none of our

Parishioner's knees modestly advance

On stones for prayer meant, that gaper-band

Slide up and down along the aisles, make mouths

At stations of the cross, steal pictures, gems,

And vessels of the saints, prick leisurely

Into the poor-box?- Ha, one victim more.

Exit Brin

Aubry. Have you discovered him? Is it Palin?

Brin. (within

No, father, this one wears breeches, at least for the moment.- I have catched you, young sir, in such a way that guilt will sooner feel to his torment on defenseless muscle a sexton's distress against dishonesties than any child's pleasure aimed at. You will be fingered well.

Aubry. What, mocking, stealing, hacking, harrying,

With usual boyhood merriments and filth?

Re-enter Brin with Benoît, without his breeches

Brin. (striking him

Watch how a boy of fourteen skips and moans.

For senseless tampering this, warmer fare

For breaking locks and frames regardlessly.

Benoît. Ha! Lower, sexton, should it please you so,

More miseries, I pray, on thigh and calf,

Or death, should I be worthy of that boon!

Brin. Bind up the legs together like bean-poles

Nailed, lest a naughty gamin spills this day

To his despair all seeds of progeny.

Benoît. Ha! Ha! I'm always thankful, as I hope

To thrive one day, for any sound advice.

Aubry. Sound this Benoît, too tender-arsed by far,

For gibbets only good.- Hail-Maries on

Both arms for that at least!- Who saw a mouth

So wide? But should the parents stare nearby!

Brin. I little fancy childhood's coddled fools.

Foh, how your urchin reeks of wax! Quite hot

For candles, coins, wine-bowls, and chalices

None of his own or of his brotherhood!

Aubry. That last one lands him flatly on his nose.

Brin. For twacking call me king among these brats.-

Stay, cannon-shot in miniature, up

With more of what at sixty you will be

More thankful for. I ever hear it said:

Who knows but thieving loudest in his throes

Of punishment? One breechless in his pains,

Yet breachless to the shot of honesties,

Unless he suffers more than he deserves.

Benoît. Ha! Never will I enter church again.

Brin. Why? To sin with the monarch of the world?

Benoît. Ha! Terrible afflictions for a boy

So young as yet, unknowing of the world,

Perplexed before the mysteries of life!

Brin. Felicity! That one I best like, sure

As any blow was felt or heard about.

Aubry. May benedictions flow on these assaults

If branching robbery can be cut down.

Brin. From both our altar-pieces he has lopped

Saint Peter's halo from his naked head.

Aubry. What wayward Protestant can better that?

I'll wager all my beads and missals that

Our Tupi sacrilege at breakfast eats

Worse than his brother's genitals in fun.

Brin. For careless robbers, not one pair to sit

On laughing, but four quarters freshly bled.

Benoît. Some Christ-born pity, if you wish the same

While coldly sweating on your final bed!

Aubry. He'll surely be rubbing till next week,

Unless each stroke's diameter offends

In quarter-circles infidels adore.

Brin. With fingers in each socket, out with you!

Benoît. O! O! O! O!

Brin. A disobedience that can howl: good, good.

I only wish he had two more to burn

With at this hour, in hot reprisal's name.

Aubry. He will forget tomorrow, I dare pray.

Exit Benoît, limping and weeping

Brin. The uses of a broom! I am obliged

Towards what forceless instruments obtain,

Unlike the dangers sometimes seen in those Which penetrate.

Aubry. Again that topic? Have I said enough?

I'll have his father next at afternoon

Confession for adulteries unblamed

For, only sorrowful in lacking smocks

Of lovelier sheen to pitch his filth beneath.-

What brains I keep, forgetting to keep mum

About night-whispers of man's turpitudes!

Brin. You sweep away all front-end sins as fast

And merrily as I do autumn leaves.

Enter Bévue

Bévue. Say, Father Aubry: are you free to shrive?

Confession I crave after ere I sleep.

Aubry. As surely as we stand before the house

Of pardon, should it pleasure you to heed

That with less undeserving prejudice.

Bévue. Should not the sexton leave before we start?

Aubry. True, as I strive for mercies on my soul.

What fetid matter warps my brain today?

Go, Brin, restoring to our satisfaction

Outrageous damages committed by

The little losels we both hate and love,

In their amendment loving, hating sins

In vilest boyhood prompter to be shown.

Brin. As I may, father, I'll obey at once.

Exit Brin

Aubry. Reveal in hope of mercies what you have

Regretfully to sigh for at this hour.

Bévue. Sins recognized as mine this very day.

Aubry. Now in the tempest while we shake and groan.

Bévue. How? Should I not in darkness kneel within?

Aubry. Why? To the sun of France pull out those teeth

Of death in torment grinding half your soul.

It knows too little of our sins, or else

They all would die. Make known what liberates

Forever as we speak to open air.

Bévue. It is for sins of darkness, barely

Heard of before, I come to speak about,

Contritely, cheerlessly, with little hope

To find thrice-bolted filth remitted when

I waver so in speech, but worse in deed.

Aubry. Onward and forward!

Bévue. A man I found, too pale and ill to speak-

My friend, Maxime, a friend.

Aubry. Another of your deeds of charity,

Bespeaking well of what may follow. Good.

Bévue. My friend- known- cherished- sleeping I found him-

Aubry. Say.

Bévue. After twice feeding- still the man looked pale

And weakening- asleep I seemed to look,

In sleep I gaze, and, as I thought, I longed.

Aubry. Ha?

Bévue. Forbiddenly.

Aubry. Man in a bed asleep, yourself a man?

What then?

Bévue. Nothing.

Aubry. Two dozen benedictions on a word

All saints adore today!

Bévue. But yet tomorrow?

Aubry. Let him go. Never see such men again.

Bévue. I cringe in telling it. What if desires

I never fathomed in a sea of sleep

Return to weed my senses in the night?

Aubry. Tomorrow come. Much further should we speak

Of this, a plague of death disguised as love

Environing men hardier than ourselves,

Achilles, as I read, Patroclus caught,

Large stoutness unprevailing, to be thought

On with excess of fear, but yet with hope.

Bévue. I thought so.

Aubry. Let mankind's second apple rot away.

Bévue. True, certainly. Then to let go is all

A man needs to do? Father, I thank you.

Exeunt Aubry and Bévue

Act 1. Scene 4. A street in Paris. 1592

Enter Maxime and Louise

Maxime. At last I find today a sort of wife.

Louise. Twice in one lifetime to improve our joys.

Maxime. No gadding?

Louise. No. Maxime. Not once?

Louise. At worse.

Maxime. Can you not hold, and I without one crust

A day to scrape my teeth with?

Louise. I have no belly, I suppose. Call me

Goose carried to the market upside down

Alive on poles if I must always eat

With your permission.

Maxime. Yes, surely, I recommend eating, but in what state do you lie in now? Is it your wish to live? Good. Consider then your mind. Is it a whore's?

Louise. Insulted, baffled, and afflicted still!

Maxime. So you should be and worse, unless my brows,

To head and eyes a torment, teach me what I cannot be and live.

Louise. For such a pheasant, I dare swear, you would

Have opened twice each hour two of your holes

As widely as mine, too thankful for

That boon among all others on that day. Maxime. Are you a wife or my assassin-bug,

Blood-sucking on blood-sucking bedbugs? Brows

Like lead-pipes on my head and growing down

In antler-wide arborizations!

Louise. That should least trouble us, while yet we bear

Two bellies to be cared for at all times.

Maxime. Yours should be kicked if to my face of shame

It carries what I cannot think of yet.

Louise. I kick with legs as well.

Enter Bévue

Bévue. Ha! Fortunate unlooked-for meetings still!

Maxime. My friend! Look wondering, my only love:

It is Bévue.

Louise. Who?

Bévue. How, you, Maxime, with her!

Maxime. My friend you surely remember. No?

Louise. Somewhat, I think.

Maxime. Not my Bévue? That heinous culprit who

Sneaked in the master's orchard, to be caught

By Fouterien and his dog, in dungeons clapped,

And for an apple whipped on back and arse

As red and raw as it, then shot away

At court, who, saving wretches from a doom

Not to be thought on, is pronounced at last

The man a man embraces in one life!

Bévue. Maxime, and with a woman! Sudden news!

Maxime. My honest- what is he you once called me,

That Greek's name- he kens all antiquities,

Good proper wife-

Bévue. My more than Pylades, my astrolabe,

With whom I measure time by starlight, he!

Maxime. My wife, Bévue.

Bévue. Your wife, Bévue, not guessed at, as I live.

Maxime. No, not Bévue, my wife, Louise, met in

An hour most fortunate of all I know.

Louise. Well pleased to view a man with means to save.

Bévue. To my house for some larger banquet-fare!

Maxime. How, to impose importunates so soon?

Bévue. Till fortune kisses two who best deserve

To crush a bone or two in these dog-times.

Maxime. They say, she whores.

Louise. As everyone, from king to peasant, do.

Maxime. No matter for that.- You have work to do

No doubt, Bévue, and we to spoil your day

With such a trifle as most desperate

And imminent starvation without hope!

Bévue. I go at once to help a constable

In capturing that great unfortunate,

Fouterien of painfullest remembrances.

Maxime. Why?

Bévue. The strangest story of a monstrous birth

Of calfhood at a farm-house! Too soon learned,

Too late grieved for!

Maxime. For this time I retire, and quickly, too!

Thanks to your feeding, far too pressing at

The rim of crackhood!

Exit Maxime

Louise. I see the crocodile, with nostrils, eyes

And ears above the stream.

Bévue. Near wife twice honored, never doubt my faith.

Louise. Never let him know I blow on your flute.

Bévue. The husband should reward my industry:

Enlarging your purse, I enlarge his own.

Louise. A spouse's loyalty should not depend

On money. There are other reasons, too,

Why we should heretofore avoid, since all

Venerian dangers are the deadlier feared.

Bévue. How, no more climbing on your forked tree-branch?

Do you deny you love my pheasant, wench?

Louise. No further blessing of my husband's head

With strange excrescences!

Bévue. To spare him raising foreign progeny,

I can be made to enter not like troups

Of cardinals through the main-entrance, but

Like monks content behind the chapel-door.

Louise. Both sides of fucade I hope to resist.

Exeunt Louise and Bévue


text:
Collaborative play writing/French chronicles of the 1590s/Act 2

Act 2. Scene 1. A street in Paris. 1592

Enter Father Aubry, Bailleton, and Fouterien, bound

Aubry. Extravagances virtue groans against,

In faggots to be thrown with bone and fat!

Bailleton. No doubt the gravest fault an officer

Of law has ever heard of anywhere!

Aubry. What was your thought in leading by a rope

With laughter such a human-animal

Monstrosity as many cannot boast

To see and live? His calf with human head

In eating much like us, in locomotion

As any beast we look on! In such pates,

Do souls aspire? Take warning, populace,

Yon horror treads and breeds to strike our sins

Dead with a flail worth fifty known before.

Fouterien. In knee-deep humbleness of defecation,

Thus tremblingly before the sight of all,

I beg from you a pardon for my fault.

Aubry. For such a cruelly extreme offense,

No. I'll exert whatever force condign

For condemnation I can muster, though

In absolutes alone. I'll place some wood

Around it, grieving in black air. Sometimes,

A doctor's lancet draws blood from the eye

Of ill, the better to decorpselate

The wholesome in the parish from worse ills.

Bailleton. Who ever heard the like? A monster-calf

With eyes like babies-

Aubry. Too fearful!

Bailleton. A nose like my dead aunt's-

Aubry. Atrocious deeds atrociously to be

Met with, as leniently averred by all

Interpreters of law I hopefully

Consulted in the charges on this man,

Both civic and ecclesiastical.

Bailleton. Which prompts us to consider from where did

That thingless cloddish thing originate.

Aubry. The very question damning him to broil!

Fouterien. Should I be saved, I'lI reverence your shoes.

Bailleton. I greatly fear with calf-rump he conspired,

To monster us with visions.

Aubry. A birth too hairy-unblest in the eye

Of saintliest converts I have ever known!

Enormities for which green-fire is

Too cool, not come of nature freely borne.

Fouterien. A pardon for this time!

Bailleton. If you repent, your pardon sings above,

Beyond the scope of eye or ear.

Fouterien. Hah! Hah! Hee! Hee!

Aubry. Do you shriek now? This might have been wept for

When keenest member met cows to play with,

Hereafter doomed, for burning only good!

Bailleton. What of the man-calf neither man nor calf?

Aubry. On evil meat may no one gormandize.

To fires together with the beastly man

And manly beast!

Bailleton. What of the mare he lightly ambled with

During that awful walking show of hell?

Aubry. All three incorperate in smoke, with those

Defending them in freshest leaves of fire.

Bailleton. Come forward, loon. You may not lie aground

To bother French saints passing by this way.

Aubry. No thump of genuflection heard but once

From him inside my church: what comes of this?

A body ripe for roasting, Satan's friend

On mounds of straw in pains extreme condemned!

Fouterien. A caught fly sins much more than I have done.

Aubry. Fly-sins wing safest to Beelzebub,

But you have bred what our traditions, sick

And faint, with loathing cough and spit against.

Fouterien. Why cut the patient with the tumor, friends?

Bailleton. Forward with foot before and not with mouth!

Exeunt Aubry, Bailleton, and Fouterien

Act 2. Scene 2. A palace in Paris. 1593

Enter the dukes of Mayenne, Guise, and Aumale

Aumale. In these commotions where no faction wins,

States-general should now elect our king.

Mayenne. So, for these reasons we are suddenly

Found waiting.

Guise. For otherwise Navarre's king becomes

The king of France and ours. Is it not this

Which armed my father's Catholic heart, this

For which abomination, purple-clad,

Half-man, half-woman in a demon shape,

Pronounced a king, in secret massacred

Him, on whose blood-stains France in dishcloths weep?

Aumale. At Ivry France is fallen, almost lost

To view in grovelling against her fate.

Guise. No king of Protestants will enter France

As king of all. No, rather let her foot,

Half rotted from the boils of heresy,

Be ligatured for amputation.

Aumale. My lord of Mayenne says but little here.

Guise. Come, uncle, smile so that a Protestant

May die. What Ivry's battle lost for us

Stout Paris may restore, should she hold down

Her robes from lancers avidly upright.

Mayenne. We'll see what we may do or yet undo

At our new meeting of the three estates.

Aumale. The cardinal-legate to the pope is here.

Guise. So is the duke of Feria, thanks to whom

Spain may do something violent in our cause.

Aumale. Say, as lieutenant-general of all

Our forces, say, intrepid son of war,

Of Francis, duke of Guise, and Anna d'Este,

What should be told or done against the slave

The Bearnese slaves call the king of France.

Mayenne. At that same conference, we'll see.

Guise. As son of Henry, duke of Guise, I swear

My father was not murdered so that heads

Of heretics can bluster on his throne,

To kill religion in all parts of of France.

Aumale. From Claude of Lorraine and Louise of Brézé

I fetch a glorious pedigree, from whose

Veins not one drop of angry blood once beat

For Calvin or his creed, and ever will.

Mayenne. Navarre's king declares our conference

Null and illegal. What of that, my lords?

Guise. Nothing of that nothing.

Aumale. Should virtuous Paris stop the king's approach.

Guise. For Paris and my armor! Or else let

The duke of Guise like rotten apples drop

In brownish heaps below the tree of Guise.

Mayenne. So.- Herald!

Enter Bévue

Advise the lords the duke of Mayenne comes.

Bévue. At once, your eminence.

Exit Bévue

Mayenne. The king of France is not the king of France.

Aumale. Or any, if three dukes impose their will.

Exeunt Mayenne, Guise, and Aumale

Act 2. Scene 3. Maxime's shop in Paris. 1593

Enter Maxime with a bellows and Louise

Maxime. As bellows-mender I breathe life again

Into the cinders of our destinies.

Louise. You mend more.

Maxime. I mend what other menders badly miss.

Louise. Especially two broken livelihoods.

Maxime. Especially one broken reputation.

Louise. A hit! Mine you frown on most, I suppose.

The poor care little of the miseries

Of mind if their lean bellies are filled up.

Maxime. The Durepains crush some kind of bread at last,

After much scraping at the bottom of

The hollow bowl for lean potato-skins.

Louise. Yet since your brother's death, we profit less.

A difference in pains beat on our brains

When a quick niece's deeds escape our view.

Maxime. Instead of quiet famine, anguished search

Of where she is, with whom, why, slippery

Behaviors understood by youth alone!

Louise. At fitful fourteen how our worries jump

At our throats in surprises all the time!

Maxime. How plentifully must an uncle sweat

So that his niece avoids perdition's end!

Louise. To wean the hope not shame of womankind!

For her a nest of purity, not pitch!

Maxime. May she never become the salad on

Which couch the hard tomatoes of men's lust!

Louise. I watch each gallant in our neighborhood,

How secretly they spy her entrances

And exits from our house, all their intent

Being to lap up soups of women, and,

When they have done, to wipe their beards of them!

Maxime. With her that will not be.

Louise. Normandy's salmon is not fatly fresher on the palate than she to a a man's eye.

Enter Blanchefleur

Maxime. Comes lightness skipping at the start of day!

Louise. Here, careless Blanchefleur. What, so soon abroad?

Blanchefleur. When lillies turn their faces to the sun,

So does Blanchefleur.

Louise. Have you finished sweeping and washing, mending, cutting, and baking?

Blanchefleur. Floors, clothes, potatoes. Yet I swear a girl

Is meant for more than rubbing half the day.

Maxime. In due time, pleasure comes.

Blanchefleur. When?

Louise. With marriage sometimes.

Blanchefleur. A thought best pleasing to a spring-time wench,

Provided she, without befouling back

Or arse with compromising greenery,

Will be allowed to choose her favorite.

Maxime. O, certainly.

Louise. But you must keep within, not seen so much

By braggart anglers hoping to net fools.

Blanchefleur. Untried virginity is honor lost.

Let Blanchefleur therefore be assaulted, so

That priests or sadder mankind contemplate

The lilly thriving best in April gusts.

Louise. First weep in joy's tang on a heaving breast,

Then, if caught, weep in sorrow on your hands.

Blanchefleur. Behold a virgin steeled to combat men.

Let them all nestle underneath my breasts

Of myrtle-berries overtopping snow.

I'll potter them and laugh at their behests

While noting faces shining as I go.

Louise. Never expect we will let even once

Our charge to lubricate abroad at will,

Respecting nothing of the honor couched

Between her legs.

Blanchefleur. I gaze at it while seeing nothing yet.

Maxime. Once cut, come moaning and repining still

On a lost flower.

Blanchefleur. Some lillies twice in the same season bloom.

Maxime. I'll have you bloom without being blown.

Blanchefleur. A lilly bound and choked in brackish ponds!

I am amazed I am allowed to piss.

Louise. Just to improve on happiness, my child.

Blanchefleur. Is no girl to be trusted? Firmest still:

I roll my virtue like a bowling ball

Outside the holy borders otherwise.

Louise. First a round lifetime uncircumscribed by lusts,

Then marriage to a man one should belove!

Maxime. In such a way as you need not resolve

Within your mind the need to antler him.

Blanchefleur. How hard I guess a man is! Here I sit,

Plunged unawares in dangers much longed for,

Ashamed at what I miss.

Enter Bévue with a broken jug and two cups

Bévue. I guess a mending place is what I need.

Maxime. My friend, Bévue!

Louise. Our friend, Bévue!

Bévue. Three handsome friends, of two beloved at least.

Blanchefleur. Some sparrow-lover, of no sprightlier note!

Maxime. Your jug is leaking?

Louise. Worse than his jug, I fear.

Bévue. It is, most plentifully. Maxime. Trust me to bung up holes.

Louise. I once thought sharp Bévue the readier man

For those, most happy to oblige at will.

Bévue. Your husband, as I hear, improves on me.

Louise. True.

Maxime. Expect in me, Bévue, the man to mend

Whatever fails in you, whatever burns

Or turns awry, as you shift from one side

To others in your pleasures.

Bévue. I trust in yours, most plentifully, too.

Louise. They say you study ancient authorships.

Bévue. In sciences and arts I keep informed,

As best a herald in his travels can,

In hopes to better wit and conversation.

Maxime. Most often have I seen him pondering

On arduous questions of geometry.

Bévue. Especially on triangles, both male And female.

Louise. I too by candlelight have watched him wear

His longing eyes on those to weariness.

Bévue. I also study bird-lore in the fields:

I take it out, however large it swells

Before me, to place it in warmer nests.

Blanchefleur. Can you view yellowhammers? Here the male

Jets brightest yellows, gobs down cheerfully

Seeds, nettles, grasses, clover. What if man

Shone so refulgently, so easily

To feed? How cheerful he would be! Instead,

Like earwigs knocked from ceilings he drops on

Our pillows, feeding scrunchingly on what

Could feed me twice.

Bévue. I'll be your earwig flying towards you,

Though rarely so in nature's course, at least

While flattening its body snugly in

Your tiniest crevices.

Blanchefleur. Oh no, I'll not be fitted quite so soon.

Bévue. What, never marry? Will you let time freeze

Advantage into blocks of icy snow?

Blanchefleur. O, never. To go naked with a man

Is what I mean to do in best of times.

It was Eve's glory, to be mine as well.

Maxime. Ha! How? Is it as suitor you arrive?

Louise. No, no, no, no, impossible at best!

Bévue. I banter, surely. This cup you may

Drink on, even by virgin lip untouched.

Blanchefleur. I thank you.-

Ha, it has given me the bellyache.

Bévue. Then dance away your pains.

Blanchefleur. Where is your hat of peril, sorcerer?

(He leads her to dance

Maxime. For dancing truly Christ-like in their rounds!

Louise. Is it May-day? I wish he had not come.

Bévue. Whoop! Whoop! This wenching is most jolly, too!

Maxime. A girl for boyhood-frisking only keen!

Blanchefleur. O, O, my prettiest gown!

Maxime. What now?

Louise. Why do you stop and stare?

Blanchefleur. I have most horribly beshat myself.

Bévue. How is this? From the contents of the cup,

I leap and bellow.

Blanchefleur. Still more of man's concoctions that destroy!

I'll brew my own loose-bowelled counter-plot.

Exit Blanchefleur, weeping

Bévue. The beverage was innocently tried

On horses, dogs, and children wanting more.

Maxime. Here is your jug repaired, though in that time

You aim against my almost-daughter's hopes

Of a good marriage.

Bévue. I dare not.

Louise. It is best for her hopes and ours at least

To herald off awhile away quite soon.

Exit Louise

Maxime. How was I caught? Will it be forests dark,

A clump of briars, hurried tossing off

Of clothes, to kiss when our beloved thinks tha t We are asleep or dead?

Bévue. More comfort in the warming of the turf

Beneath our loves than roasting in the square

With vicars chanting aves over us!

Maxime. Not yet quite dark enough?

Bévue. (kissing him

Lips joining lips too like midsummer days!

Maxime. I long to press on more. Perhaps the back

Of Hercules can hold my needs awhile.

Bévue. Tonight we try that. Otherwise, I miss

Half of my life with pining breathlessly.

Maxime. Your arse as hollow for the compost I

Intend to throw in it!

Bévue. The gladder to receive it burningly.

Exeunt Maxime and Bévue

Act 2. Scene 4. Before the church of St-Andrew-of-the-Arts. 1593

Enter Father Aubry and Brin

Aubry. More benedictions flowing towards me

As never hoped before! I thank myself.

Brin. As heaven's laborer, none should begrudge

A curate prizes and rewards on earth.

Aubry. But yet since seeing Fouterien burnt alive,

I have not stirred much on behalf of church-affairs.

Much more may yet be done, much more by me,

Or those of my opinions.

Brin. Why are you grinning? By the virgin's face

After chilbearing, I wish the world to be

Always much sadder than I always am.

Aubry. I dreamt Navarre had broken off his neck.

Brin. If crownless kings can beat down Paris gates,

I'll see priests enter larger breaches than

They heretofore have done so secretly.

Enter Benoît above with a tile

Aubry. From bed to table: what a happy life!

Brin. Mixed with one or two prayers in-between.

(Benoît throws down his tile on Father Aubry's head and exits

Aubry. O, I am slain by hosts of Protestants.

Brin. Boy-nightmare on the roof. Benoît unblessed

I'll take between my knees to watch him wince.

Aubry. O! O! O! O!

Brin. When first I met his father to explain

The uses of my broom, up to the clouds

Reverberating with a cyclop's hand

He clapped like thunder: "Disobedience's son,

Not mine," exclaimed he. As we often note,

Lack of respect for one commandment leads

To loss in all, even to slaughtering.

Aubry. O! O! O! O!

Brin. Come. Ointments good enough for cuts within!

Exeunt Brin bearing Aubry

Act 2. Scene 5. A street in Paris. 1593

Enter Maxime, leading a donkey, and Bévue

Maxime. As laborer I daily used such modes

Of locomotion as we walk along.

Bévue. I leave you on convenient travels to

Ride post-haste with my Perseus-stirring duke.

Maxime. Where? To the meetings of the three estates?

Bévue. Indeed. I see his guard impatient at

Our muddy-footed pace of tardiness.

Maxime. The foolishness of greatest ones! Will they

Select a king when we already know

Rejoicefully King Henry as our own?

Bévue. Speak without moving either lip or tongue.

Enter the duke of Mayenne, attended

Mayenne. Is not a duke accompanied with men

In retinues?

Bévue. Assuredly, your eminence.

Mayenne. To Andrew-of-the-Arts, then to Suresne

In coaches drawn with wings of Pegasus!

Maxime. Come, duke among the beasts, for France's sake,

To conferences of the three estates

We plod along, though slower than our wills.

Bévue. Ha, is this wise?

Mayenne. Ho, officer!

Enter Bailleton

Mayenne. Whip that man twice with wires till they fray off.

Exeunt Mayenne, Bévue, and attendants

Maxime. Is this French justice? Huh!

Bailleton. I seize your eminence, although averse

Against my will, but more especially

Yours, duke of Mender, to mend you as few

Have been, in my own fashion, by

The signs of my profession, known to most.

Maxime. One harmless mimic-piece: are skins off back

And arse to be unmercifully undressed

Because of it?

Bailleton. Past any question in these days of spies

And danger, lashings worse than what receives

The gait of donkey-sloth when men wax mad.

Enter Louise and Blanchefleur, pregnant

Louise. What, is my man taken?

Bailleton. Yes, madam, doubtless for the good of state

Affairs too deep for us to ponder on.

Louise. You will not use him very cruelly?

Bailleton. As he deserves for mocking Mayenne's duke,

No more than that, I'm certain, by this hand.

(Louise and Blanchefleur weep

Maxime. Come, sooner suffered, soonest to my rolls

Of bloody plasters moaning half the night!

Bailleton. If we stay here for women's floods to dry,

We will stand fixed as statues in affairs

Of state and lose the profits of each day.

Louise. With gentlest handstrokes, kindest oficer,

For we are out of bandages and oils.

Enter Benoît, limping

Maxime. However I may fare, no further jest

Against the duke of Mayenne or the duke

Of Folly on my life.

Bailleton. I'll print that oath on many body parts

To make it far more certain, by this rod.

Benoît. I curse my luck on being born a boy

With buttocks. For the sake of wisest seers

Of what we never see, or never has

Been seen except in dreams, to make us live

Beneath their power, I am deeply cut.

Blanchefleur. Ha, not that limplet Benoît halting forth?

Are we to be spectators of his parts

Of sorrow, like the zebra's merited?

Benoît. Hoy, is our mender's arse to be repaired?

I'll rub mine with red faces for a while.

Bailleton. Come, duke of Payforall, I own a robe

Of scarlet that should snugly fit your ribs

And shoulders in a dungeon of Bastille.-

Not yet?

Exeunt Bailleton and Maxime

Louise. Though in the lowest regions of Bastille,

We hear the wretched cry lamentably.

Benoît. That donkey-trotting lord will wear his robe

Of shame without one crown among you all.

Blanchefleur. Out, earth-born Scylla of all boyhood pranks!

Benoît. Great-bellied Mary with your bastard imp

To Judah's manger go. Hah-yah, na, na!

Blanchefleur. He'll wear a dozen pairs on his backside

If once I catch a dripping gutter-piece.

Exeunt Blanchefleur and Benoît running

Louise. More trouble than we are worth, Mayenne, no?

Exit Louise with the donkey

Act 2. Scene 6. The church of St-Andrew-of-the-Arts. 1593

Enter the dukes of Mayenne, Guise, and Aumale, with Bévue and attendants

Aumale. We find no bullet of religion fit

To make a crowd yell for enemies

As this same curate.

Guise. A truer coinage of our Catholic

And universal metal is not found

Among the Paris clergy at this hour.

Aumale. A gift from Michael if found on our side,

If not, boils from a plague-wound festering.

Mayenne. We'll hear that priest without once checking him.

His sermon is not penned, but yet for us,

Before our conference, he has agreed

To offer samples of the salted bits,

Enough to whet our Sunday appetites.

Guise. No man to genuflect before the masks

Of heresy, though on a royal face

Inscribed with marks of power's circumstance.

Aumale. Some say a band of Protestants let loose

On him a sleet of tiles.

Mayenne. Nevertheless, his head seems still unhurt.

Guise. His head is like religion's helmet placed

To scare away all Protestants near us.

Aumale. Expect no miracle from a dog's mouth.

Mayenne. Hear what fanatic capers can express.

Enter Father Aubry in the pulpit

Aubry. Dukes of renown and lords by most revered,

Your conference is worth a devil's fart.

(Aumale rises with a knife, but is restrained by the others

No mouth-air can defeat the Calvin-sore

But scalpels, knives, and saws. In haste prepare.

Let us all kneel with eyes and mouths of fear

So that the duke of Mayenne splits in two

The heads of heretic slaves. Merchant turds,

Greased in their fat, store grains in garners to

Starve out the people in submission to

The whoreson-king and evil tiger. May

His phallus enter in his belly with

Much pain and sorrow should one of his type

Be present here, or should one hope that

A truce be promulgated, after France,

In bushes creeping, unprotected, cries

With mouth of blood against ten thousand hounds

Of Luther's brood. To Seine's stream in a bag

For gainsayers expecting gifts from kings,

Or let them hang alive at Montfaucon!

Exit Aubry

Aumale. Can one doubt that this priest can trumpet forth

Seditions in three kingdoms with three words?

Guise. I like the sermon well.

Mayenne. To Suresne all, with hearts of hope not fear!

Exeunt Mayenne, Guise, Aumale, with Bévue and attendants

Act 2. Scene 7. A palace in Paris. 1593

Enter the archbishops of Lyon and of Bourges

Lyon. At all costs our religion!

Bourges. At all costs peace, at all costs the welfare of the people, should the king of Navarre be converted as a Catholic and son of the highest shepherd.

Lyon. Unlikely even when we sleep awake!

Bourges. He witnessed slaughters on his wedding-night,

Yet think of this, religious lion, to

Be king of France alone, while saying much

And candidly: "I love Christ best of all."

Lyon. To be converted once lays out the rug

To help the foot along respectlessly,

As if one could in true religion shift

From one sex to another while one prays.

Relunctantly, a villain murderer

And virgin-violator kneels in church

To cloud the eye amid unnoticed crowds.

Bourges. In our age, only quiet atheists live

Securely, beyond the arm of militants.

With Jesus quite unthought of, who can halt

A king or groom from murdering us all?

Lyon. A king can be prevented by the law.

Bourges. Law-texts are scarecrows, which he pushes down.

Lyon. Lincestre speaks with Christ's peace we wish on all.

Bourges. Unlike our Andrew's Aubry in his flames.

Lyon. We'll cool one to heat up the other one.

Exeunt Lyon and Bourges


text:
Collaborative play writing/French chronicles of the 1590s/Act 3

Act 3. Scene 1. At the conference in Suresne. 1593

Enter the dukes of Mayenne, Guise, and Aumale

Guise. Confusions in faith, one or two articles of worth multiplied by nothing, yielding nothing, not like Christ's bread of sustenance but lucubrations to impress, sugar-constructions dissolved in religion-famished mouths by the next disputant: why do we speak in Suresne halls instead of fighting in Suresne fields?

Aumale. Impatient riders on the other side

Fall as soon as they foot the stirrup first.

Guise. I'll go or spend my anger on myself,

So foolishly we strike with tongues when we

Should strike with swords.

Aumale. Archbishops worry us, to worry us,

Who, pleasing everybody, please no one.

Guise. Are they not bound as shepherds of our faith?

Aumale. True, though they seem so far only to baa.

Guise. What should by Christ's impatience be done?

Aumale. None of us knows that.

Guise. What does the Spaniard say?

Aumale. Against our Salic law, the duke of Feria proposes the Spanish king's daughter, being the grandaughter of Henry the Second, as the queen of France.

Mayenne. Her future husband as the king of France!

Guise. Will that idea please? Can she excite

The duke of Mayenne with that dowry, ha?

Aumale. You send an uncle's desires rubbing between Spanish-French legs.

Mayenne. In good faith, I do not know what is best.

Guise. Come, uncle, say at once you are resolved

To be a king.

Aumale. No doubt and certainly.

Guise. No?

Aumale. Yes, truly, as I thrive amain in France,

Or else he's maddened silly by our talk.

Guise. The duke of Mayenne, king! For that I could

In blindness with one quarter of a stump

Fight with my hands and win.

Aumale. Your uncle, monarch! Then yourself as what?

Guise. Of no more important style when rising in the morning than saluting myself as nephew to the king!

Aumale. Admit that this idea pleases you,

My honorable lord.

Mayenne. As answered, I fail to know which is best.

Guise. Again their lordships of Lyon and Bourges.

Aumale. Two mitered toothaches pining for relief.

Enter the archbishops of Lyon and of Bourges

Lyon. What, he? No, I dare swear, though I should not,

No candidate the people will allow.

Bourges. True, since the death of Charles, the cardinal

Of Bourbon, favored by the Holy League,

Pawns miss on every square to take a crown.

Lyon. Salic law forbids the choice of Henry the Third's sister as our queen.

Bourges. Which is why the king passed his crown to Navarre, as the agnatic descendant of Louis the Ninth.

Lyon. Navarre? No, let Elizabeth the queen

Rage all she can, though armies overturn

France into loathsome marshlands general.

Bourges. May France stay Catholic, but peace again

At any cost!

Lyon. Who speaks of peace when our religion faints

Amid our quarrels when she ought to strike?

Bourges. Peace seldom prized, even seldom thought of!

Lyon. Navarre?

Guise. O, never will the Guise behold Navarre

As sumpter for his baggage, much less king.

Lyon. Should we elect one to turn Seine and Loire

As channels of his lust, outlandishly?

Bourges. He may not, should he choose instead to lie

His head on pillows of our faithful church.

Lyon. He loosens governments into naked Trinidad liberties Colombus never gaped at.

Guise. O, no, O, no! We fight against Navarre.

Your eminence tugs reason with the rope

Of faith. I'll place a dam against that stream.

Thus heaven-puissant arms of dukes of Guise,

Thanks to the fount of strength, accomplish much.

Lyon. I rather choose the Guise as our next king.

Mayenne. Hah?

Lyon. My thoughts are lifted by that royal theme.

Bourges. How, how, the Guise, king?

Lyon. Of what worth is the Holy League if not

To make and unmake kings?

Guise. A king?

Mayenne. He, he, a king?

Aumale. I totter without drinking.

Lyon. If right, so, if not, so.

Bourges. Not he.

Lyon. Do you keep secrets, eminence of Bourges?

Bourges. Navarre assures me of his imminent Conversion to our faith.

Lyon. I doubt that, so does the Council of Sixteen.

Bourges. The would-be king appears to lean his cheek,

As bridegrooms ought and John did, on the breast

Of honor, smilingly because desperately.

Mayenne. A view proposed by many councillors

Of state when nobles seek to vie for peace.

Lyon. With tears of fear so does the third estate.

Aumale. Will it please their graces the archbishops to retire awhile with cordials?

Lyon. We thank Aumale.

Bourges. Thanks to Aumale.

Guise. Will Spain approve of your choice, my loved lord?

Aumale. Their king lifts to our view Isabella Clara Eugenia as France's queen.

Bourges. How desperately shameful would it be

For France to yield her crown of eminence

To sun-burnt strangers!

Lyon. How, Spaniards rule our state, as Rome must do

Inside our churches partly?

Mayenne. Our neighbor flocks, the better to prevent

Us to be shorn away by English curs.

Bourges. Navarre-

Guise. Navarre? A beard-louse in my presence named

As king? A barber's comb is fit for him,

Or else my steel.

Aumale. Let us retire, lords, till the next session.

Exeunt Mayenne, Guise, and Aumale

Lyon. What of Aumale?

Bourges. An ingle merely.

Lyon. A tiler or a thatcher, not the man

To keep our safeties below one roof.

Bourges. The Guise as king?

Lyon. If so, good.

Bourges. If not, better.

Exeunt Lyon and Bourges

Act 3. Scene 2. The church of St-Andrew-of-the-Arts. 1593

Enter Father Aubry and Brin

Aubry. Blanchefleur gave birth last night to a new monster devoid of arm or leg, a phallus in the middle of his belly, with a face as large and hairy as a man at thirty, and a nose like his phallus dangling near the ground.

Brin. O, horror never seen at Andrew yet!

Aubry. An emblem of the Béarnais, all prick,

Nose ever pendant towards earth and sin,

Not savoring at any time with us

The sweetnesses of heaven and its peace.

Brin. What an age to sin in!

Aubry. Thanks to our prayers. thoughts, and homelies,

The blot is quite unlikely to survive.

Brin. I think she runs about too much: thus wawls

A putrid-sick blob-monster born in France.

Aubry. As wholesome as the errors Protestants

Hug with their families.

Enter Blanchefleur

Brin. She comes, to give you juicy raisins of A girl's confession.

Aubry. Repentances too many for a wench

So lively: not to sin would seem a sin

When one is young.

Brin. Ah, had I studied farther, for your seat!

Aubry. Dig a grave or prepare my dinner: I

Do not know which smells cleanlier.

Exit Brin

Kneel, child. Some curates would be angry at

Your freest never-ending copulations,

The seed-ground of disgrace, when wildest buds

By ragweeds of intransigence are smothered quite,

But I sit pensively, awaiting to

Hear patiently and too forgivingly

What girls of fourteen are so sorry for.

Blanchefleur. My breach is always open: that must be

Because wise nature never meant to close

It. Say I sin,- demented peasants in

The parish know so much as that- yet in

Birth-weakness, with hopes of salvation's stream,

I come to feel the breezes sought nearby,

As ready to confess as I was glad

To drop in pain my burden yesternight.

Aubry. Then speak. Where is abomination's fount

Of viciousness who makes you desperate?

Blanchefleur. I do not know.

Aubry. Hah?

Blanchefleur. Two have I loved together, or else thought

I loved, no more, twice have I spurned away.

Aubry. Already nibbling on side-dishes, hah?

Later on a new one's face every week,

And not only a face. What thoughts are these?

Two? twice too many. What a sluttish phrase

But far more sluttish deed, with mellow thigh

Before my face caught dangling prettily!

Blanchefleur. More than that I cannot for shame reveal.

Aubry. Absolved as soon as spoken! As your prick

Of penance, think of me, a sinner much

Like you, but, as I age, far more disguised.

Blanchefleur. And so I will.

Aubry. Do.

Exit Blanchefleur and re-enter Brin

Brin. Some hopes for her?

Aubry. No doubt a lazy creature meant for straw

And fumigations in the market-place.

Brin. A girl dripping with it.

Aubry. Indeed, my brain always whirls on the Charybdis gulf of her lubricity.

Brin. Never inticing with her Circe's cloud of hair, peanut-rounded hips, buttocks like gently sloping hillocks with a view of fen and heath, any parishioner more pious than Bévue or his like.

Aubry. No thinker wonders with your open mouth

Why he is pleasant to her Phrynic eye,

Whose dress no new Hypereides dares to

Cast off, for fear she will not flinch or blush.

I always smell on him the elephant

Trunk of his fornications, very wrought

That after whispering confessions some

Would put a fire to in effigy,

Hell's candidate refuses to see me.

Exeunt Aubry and Brin

Act 3. Scene 3. The church of St-Andrew-of-the-Arts. 1593

Enter Maxime, Louise, Blanchefleur, Benoît, and parishioners

1 Parishioner. The very tinderbox religion needs.

2 Parishioner. Yes, to set fire to your house.

3 Parishioner. And mine.

1 Parishioner. Fires purge to renew vegetation.

2 Parishioner. But older dogmas thrive the best.

3 Parishioner. Provided my house stays upright.

1 Parishioner. Hear Father Aubry mow down houses, good or bad, for the good of France.

2 Parishioner. He usually fires first, but, since the start of the conference, he shoots first and last.

3 Parishioner. Words that make entire neighborhoods tremble.

1 Parishioner. Hear him take down conferences.

2 Parishioner. And patience with them.

3 Parishioner. Together with our houses.

1 Parishioner. When fighting on the side of goodness, bad is sometimes better.

2 Parishioner. I'll keep my patience rather.

3 Parishioner. And I my house and garden.

Enter Father Aubry in the pulpit

Aubry. Not dukes or archbishops, wolves! Too favorable by far to the Béarnais, known by many to sing white-eyed psalms in his privy. They say he enters our churches now: so do dogs, to piss. Should he be converted, expect no more masses or sermons in France, look for no church to pray in, except taverns and brothel-houses. Let him be converted, if sincere, but not as king of France, being the son of relapsed and heretic falsehood. The fox bends his head to dig for chickens. At the conference, I do not believe that princes wish to favor a truce. Peace with the excommunicated? No, for them no pardon, but ropes and water! Politiques, to you I hammer: do not laugh, for the Seine is near. Patience! Parishioners peacefully entering Saint-Denis with Navarre begrime their faces with the devil's spit. Peace: the hope of an infant-bugger and hippopotamus-atheist fit to be drowned in his own mud! Such likes frog their peace-chants in the night to the scandal of all good Christians, a question to be resolved with nets and sword-points. Against the teeth of Moraines, Saint-Merry's curate, I say this: let no Christian suck teets of the angry wolf, as recently pronounced by the cardinal-legate, lest you have your heads ripped away. Seditious priests chew on thistles, they say. What do they, frowning on their diets, speak of? The Béarnais, a king, that sacrilegeous prevaricator and fornicator, that empestified- I lose myself- that pestiferous virgin-eater? No anointed head, but one greased with kingdoms of his imagination. Thus for my first volley! I'll begin mass after changing.

Exit Aubry

1 Parishioner. He pours it out.

2 Parishioner. Over his cassock, too.

3 Parishioner. Pitch on our roof-tops I greatly fear worse than ever.

1 Parishioner. For religion, we are allowed to break church-chairs and even church-heads.

2 Parishioner. No.

1 Parishioner. No?

2 Parishioner. Except your own.

1 Parishioner. Or yours.

(They fight

3 Parishioner. First fires here and then inside my house.

Benoît. (breaking chairs

Good, good, good, good, good, good.

1 Parishioner. Here's for you.

2 Parishioner. Varlet, and yours.

Maxime. Sirs, are you not shamed?

Louise. In churches now?

Blanchefleur. More of your fists on Benoît.

Exit Benoît

1 Parishioner. Outside, for further contention.

2 Parishioner. I follow that advice with reverence.

Exeunt parishioners

Maxime. What, not ended yet, when you already grieve any Christian with such heat? O! O!

Louise. Can you not sit yet?

Maxime. Neither sitting nor leaning on a chair will do, nor barely standing when any speak of heating.

Blanchefleur. Should he sit with us, my uncle would warm our pew.

Louise. A pitiable ending to your prank!

Blanchefleur. Indeed, the backside of his jest is turned

Almost into a jelly.

Louise. How! Did you watch your uncle miserably undress last night?

Blanchefleur. With blushing, inadvertently.

Maxime. I blush at both ends now.

Louise. I need not ask Blanchefleur to warm our pans

Today, if only you could sit on them.

Blanchefleur. Or light the fire with feet on andirons,

Like chilly devils, sitting on a log.

Maxime. O! O! I could crown my lips with laughing once, if only, rebel-like, back and buttocks did not scheme behind.

Louise. With your body glowing in the dark, we no longer need a candle in the bedroom.

Blanchefleur. Save time at work by heating iron-bars

On your own backside.

Maxime. O! O! I could answer with more than words, if not for behind-hand traitors.

Louise. We can be pleasant as long as pains last.

Blanchefleur. He would be more comfortable in a cool rainfall, if standing naked like a poppy.

Louise. See when the fighting ends.

Exeunt Maxime, Louise, and Blanchefleur, re-enter Aubry with Brin

Aubry. The duke of Guise is king inside my dreams,

Bemoaning that he is not yet achieved.

Brin. Spoken more in the manner of the Gospels than state-councillors do.

Aubry. A church and state both equal and the same!

Brin. Can it be so since the advent of the reformed religion?

Aubry. If not in this world, I would rather not be in this world.

Brin. Some type of quarrel outside.

Aubry. No doubt because of a fool's hasty words.

Brin. Unless your fire, though heavenly kindled, inspired men to these riots, with dust in the air, beards pressed and wracked, words, and fists.

Aubry. I hope so.

Brin. By Paul's uproar in Jerusalem, a rightly commendable outcome if faces be beaten in for religious reasons!

Aubry. A sexton's comment on our works is unnecessary at best. This way resolutely, to greet the people as smilingly as we can!

Exeunt Aubry and Brin

Act 3. Scene 4. The church of St-Gervais. 1593

Enter Maxime and Father Lincestre

Lincestre. Not of this parish?

Maxime. No, father, I come here to see whether

Some controversies hold as they do there.

Lincestre. Who sent you to spy?

Maxime. I assure you, no one.

Lincestre. Your curate?

Maxime. Father Aubry.

Lincestre. Of Saint-Andrew-of-the-Arts, in reputation powder and smoke.

Maxime. You have our story.

Lincestre. In preparing for my next sermon, I'll briefly expose ours.

Maxime. I'll gladly hear.

(Lincestre ascends the pulpit

Lincestre. I'm sent to Denis for the sake of peace.

The king, too mildly lenient on our spills,

Comes forth to claim his own, as regent, lord,

And Catholic at last.

Maxime. I thought so.

Lincestre. Thereby stirs over dissension's dustheaps perhaps some compost to help us reattain former prosperities, in subjects lacking those since King Louis the Twelfth's time. Some deny our king will be religious. I say he will, for his safety may depend on that, irrespective of conversations among the dukes and lords, while he acts his royal part, likely to batter his way in, and, unless I err, crowned as he ought to be.

Maxime. Sincere?

Lincestre. So far he is.

Maxime. And thereby may we miss that thing of fear:

Religion as the cloak to strangle France.

Lincestre. Return to us as often as you can.

Two Sunday masses never come amiss.

Exeunt Maxime and Lincestre

Act 3. Scene 5. The Durepain house in Paris. 1593

Enter Louise and Blanchefleur with a bundle

Louise. A husband would best please at this juncture.

Blanchefleur. Especially on mine, which longs for that.

Louise. Should I elaborate with reasoning?

Blanchefleur. Do, aunt, while I look down to squirt somewhat

Into what reasonably can be fed.

Louise. With a man near, you may get money, girl.

Blanchefleur. As necessary as our wish to feed

And clothe ourselves, demanding little, though

Sufficient to care for my monster's mouth.

Louise. You will have company with Sunday fare.

Blanchefleur. Good, when I need someone to mark my wit.

Louise. Perhaps he will possess some learning, keen

To demonstrate the goings in the world.

Blanchefleur. At present very necessary, aunt.

A distaff, spoon, and needle are to us

As Cicero to them.

Louise. So that you need not know more than you should.

Blanchefleur. I see where he aims at: I'll have my broom,

To be kept busy in blank ignorance.

Louise. How, raging in our school of drudgery?

Blanchefleur. It somewhat strains my head to be seen as

A doctor read in scouring, dusting, basting.

My students will be plum-pastes and baked meats.

Louise. I'll have you clap hands at once with Cousin.

Blanchefleur. That ancient one?

Louise. At twenty-two!

Blanchefleur. Much better, if I thrive, to hold in hand

And elsewhere fervent Benoît for my needs.

Enter Benoît

Louise. Do, if you wish to queen it on road-sides

Or smoky taverns.

Benoît. Excellent if I somehow see some of that!

Louise. Out, gibbet-morsel!

Benoît. Unless I miss my aim, before I rise

Up to that post of shame and be let down,

I will first feed on what way feed on me. Louise. I violently suspect you as the one who thickened my niece's sides.

Benoît. Some do worse than create life.

Louise. Have you ever smelled such a garlick-eyed rascal?

Benoît. No worse than you when squatting after meat.

Louise. I can see you in a year or more, dining with your wife on a fat oyster or two.

Benoît. Enough to make your niece swell with fatter monsters.

Louise. Already in despair of what is yet

Achieved, what burdens on her youth and mine!

Blanchefleur. It cries little, and therefore may easily die.

Benoît. Good.

Louise. I could catch you and beat you, rotted spigot.

Benoît. Not after all your eating and farting.

Louise. He kills my bowels.

Exit Louise

Benoît. Will we live together now? Can you play the wife?

Blanchefleur. I can make cassoulet with haricot beans.

Benoît. Moreover, I easily dive into chicken, trout, capon, and woodcock.

Blanchefleur. But first you must purvey.

Benoît. In the way of a husband's duties, I do more.

Blanchefleur. Or else I stir you to it, whenever my rabbit's tongue thaws your frozen carrot.

Benoît. You'll find it sturdy.

Blanchefleur. Never sagging too soon before expectation, I hope.

Benoît. As ready as a bell next to your hand.

Blanchefleur. Yet see what becomes of me when I dally with your clapper.

Benoît. Very quiet now, I think.

Blanchefleur. Dead, it seems.

Benoît. Ha? Then throw it down.

Blanchefleur. Stow it somewhere.

Benoît. Bury it in this trasheap.

Enter Bailleton

Bailleton. How is this? Caught in a heinous act of crime? Casually disposing of the results of levity?

Blanchefleur. No, officer, this was my own but now.

Bailleton. I believe you, but how did it die?

Blanchefleur. Just in my arms as I was feeding it.

Bailleton. That should be proven.

Benoît. I am the witness of this glad event.

Bailleton. Then both along together side by side

Before my staff of office willingly.

Exeunt Bailleton, Blanchefleur, and Benoît