The Last Woman
George Soule
(The second of a series of three Dramatic Extravaganzas to be called “Plays for Irascibles.”)
The Sage of the Green Ears}Futurist SagesThe Sage of the Purple HairThe Sage of the Blue FaceThe Sage of the Yellow HatThe Sage of the Red SwordThe Sage of the White HeartThe Woman
The Council Room of the Futurist Sages, decorated in brilliant colors to suggest a battle of the minds at some far future date. The Sages are seated about the walls in a parabolic curve. They are costumed with appropriate inappropriateness. Green ears is in present day evening dress; Purple hair in fiery green robes; Blue face in a pink business suit; Yellow hat in a conventional futurist costume of mingled colors; Red sword in a black monk’s gown, with a sword in his rope girdle; White heart, who is young, in football armor.
Blue Face.Shall we give the woman a chance to defend herself?
Green Ears.Why should we? If her defense is good, we shall be prejudiced against her. And as we admit the rule of prejudice, the defense will lose its judicial character.
Red Sword.Judicial? Who wants to be judicial? I abolished that word last year.
Green Ears.That’s just the point. We hate the judicial; therefore if the defense loses its judicial character we may be forced to decide both ways at the same time. Acquit on the ground of illogical defense; convict on the grounds of prejudice against good defense.
Purple Hair.Red sword has abolished judicial. Well, we have also abolished the past; we have abolished all abolishments!
Yellow Hat.Above all, we must guard against precedent. Let us look up all previous trials, and take care to do the opposite.
White Heart.But again, that would entangle us in the past. I want to see the woman!
Red Sword.He wants to see the woman! He is a reactionary!
Purple Hair.Do not argue, brothers. For if we argue, we shall either settle the case by logic, which we repudiate, or by violence, so that we shall kill each other before we have a chance to decide about the woman.
Red Sword.Time server! I shall kill you all, and decide for myself.
Blue Face.Red cabbages, redness of blue cabbages, when breakfast is no cabbage in a potato. Cocoa crinkles!
Yellow Hat.He is right, brothers.
All.He is right.
Blue Face.We, who have exalted ourselves above all modes of thought, we who have cast aside all images and unfettered ourselves from all language and all sequence, we who have repudiated humanity; we have a right to fight a lower order with its own weapons. Caprice is our god; let us then have a caprice to judge this woman with logic and judicial procedure. Have you all this caprice?
All.We have.
Red Sword.I object: This is democracy.
Green Ears.We accept your objection, and act in opposition to it.
Blue Face.Then let the woman be brought in.
(White Heart goes out right and brings in the woman. She is tall, of beautiful face and figure, in a simple white Greek tunic. In her hair is a gold fillet. She is led to the center, where she is left standing, as White Heart resumes his seat.)
Blue Face.Deliver the charge, Red sword!
Red Sword(standing). You are charged, first, with being a woman. And as a woman you are the living incarnation of the past. You represent conservatism and the anti-military virtues; you clog the wheels of progress; you sap men’s energies and misdirect them from the triumphs of achievement to the service of material things—or immaterial things. Your effeminate beauty poisons art and furnishes countless photographic realists with the means of selling paintings. The love of you has vitiated poetry and music. Masquerading in the garments of caprice, you have deceived man into accepting the traditional. As Futurists we detest you. This is the first charge! (A pause.)
The Woman.You accuse me of being a woman. It is a grave charge. But first, in order that I may have a chance to disprove it, I suggest that you tell me what a woman is.
Green Ears.A woman is that whose place is in the home.
Purple Hair.A woman is that which is ruled by instinct.
Blue Face.A woman is that which is beautiful.
Yellow Hat.A woman is that which men call a mystery.
White Heart(rapturously). A woman is that which men love.
Red Sword(vehemently). A woman is that which men hate.
The Woman.These are your definitions?
Blue Face.They are.
The Woman.Then in order to prove that I am a woman you must prove that they describe me. And you must prove that there is nothing else in me.
Red Sword.We must prove nothing. We act.
The Woman.Then why do you talk?
Red Sword(heatedly). I deny that you are beautiful. And if you are beautiful, I deny beauty.
Yellow Hat.Is it not our caprice to be judicial? Come, Red Sword, do not descend to flattery!
Purple Hair.All our definitions have been proved a million times. They are unprovable.
The Woman.I admit them. What then? I will leave the home, I will learn logic, I will cut off my nose, I will tell you my mystery, and I will let your love and your hate kill each other. And I shall still be here.
White Heart.Then you will not be a woman, you will be a feminist!
The Woman.But I shall be I instead of what you think I am.
Red Sword.You can not be you unless you are what we think you are.
Blue Face.Brothers, can we kill the woman and spare the feminist?
White Heart.If you kill the woman you will make the feminist.
Yellow Hat.No; the feminist is more female than the woman. The feminist would inflict domesticity on the world. She wants all men for her husband. She wants to tie pink ribbons on siege guns and abolish the mountains to make room for the nursery. If we let the feminist live, man can no longer find a place in which to be alone with his adventure. If we let the feminist live we shall make the woman a giant. If we kill the woman we shall kill them both at the same time.
Green Ears.Show us the feminist without the woman.
The Woman.I will do so if you will cease to be men.
Blue Face.We have ceased to be men. We are supermen.
The Woman.Then you see the subwoman.
Red Sword(fiercely). We must kill what we see.
The Woman.But have I not shown you that I am something besides a woman?
Red Sword.You might show us that you are everything, and still I would hate you. Hate is not hate unless it exists for its own sake.
The Woman.At last you have spoken the truth. I am everything. And you hate me because you hate me.
Blue Face.Gentle pickles in a vacillating pink mound. Inkwell is not ink. Ink is not inkwell. Flying postman leathers purple letters.
The Woman.But I have reserved my best defence to the last. I am a descendant of Gertrude Stein!
Red Sword.Descendant! What heresy! Gertrude Stein had no descendants. She has ascendants!
Yellow Hat.Deliver the rest of the charge.
Red Sword.Be it known unto you that we are the sole surviving members of the human race. By a process of selection we have killed all except the best stock. You alone remain of the female sex. We charge you not only in your capacity as woman, but in your capacity as mother. In order to prove your right to live, you must justify mankind. We accuse you of being the perpetuator of human beings! Defend yourself!
The Woman.You are the sole surviving males?
Yellow Hat.We are.
The Woman.Then you may let me live. I shall not perpetuate the race.
White Heart.Do not despair;Iwill marry you!
Green Ears.Where are your manners? Has not Shaw taught us that women do the wooing?
Blue Face.What have we to do with Shaw? Let us be serious about frivolous matters.
Red Sword.She is not to be trusted. It is necessary for her to defend the race. Speak, woman!
The Woman.Now indeed you have given me a heavy burden. What could be brought forward as a defence for humanity? Why should anything exist?
Yellow Hat.Why, indeed? That is for you to show. For aeons life has perpetuated itself through a mere animal instinct. Yet through all that time consciousness has been growing; will has at last come into the ascendancy. Now for the first time man’s ego is really on the throne. For the first time man, with power to extinguish himself, can demand an adequate reason for his existence. And man is ready to hear the secret of the sphinx. We have come to you, madam, as the last and most perfect woman, as the final manifestation of the eternal mystery, to force you on pain of death to divulge yourself.
The Woman.But I thought mankind existed for the purpose of creating the superman.
Purple Hair.He did; but now he has created the superman. We are the embodiment of the purpose. What next?
Blue Face.As futurists we refuse to accept the old answer. If our existence merely pushes the problem forward a few generations, it is futile. If, on the other hand, we are the crowning goal of man’s endeavor, there is no need to create further.
The Woman.You are superchildren using superlogic. How can a reason come out of one who is ruled by instinct? How can a conservative satisfy a futurist? But I will answer you, and my answer is this: I am a female so that you may be males. I am a holder of traditions so that you may smash them. And I perpetuate the race so that you may ask the reason.
Red Sword.Come, come, this will not do. We are above the fogs of mysticism. We are talking of final things, and we must have a definite answer.
The Woman.Then make a definite accusation.
Purple Hair.We hold the human race guilty until it is proved innocent. We assume the position of an all-wise intelligence, as aloof from the earth as the farthest star. And we see a race of ant-things crawling on two legs and going through all sorts of meaningless antics. Why is one ant exalted? Because he has led an army which has killed a million other ants. Because he has discovered how to make ants live a few seconds longer. Because he has written a rhyme with ant-words or put a few senseless daubs on ant-canvas. And when the ant asked himself what his purpose was, he answered first, “To exist.” And his second answer was like the first: “To create something more like myself than I am.” There is no validity in these which a superior intelligence can recognize. What is the third answer?
Red Sword.Woman, defend yourself!
White Heart.Stop! I love the woman and I demand her (He jumps from his seat and embraces her).
The Woman.Here, O supermen, is your answer! Man exists for that which cannot be spoken, for that which cannot be thought. He exists for his mystery, for that which he loves, for that which he hates. Man exists for me!
Green Ears.And if he denies you?
The Woman.You cannot have your future without your past.
Red Sword.You see, I was right; we shouldn’t have listened to her. She is her own argument; and she has to bring in the past. Away with her!
Yellow Hat.Away with her; we exist for ourselves!
Blue Face.Remarkable apples, apple black, apple pink, blossom apples in squirming shrieks. Skyrockets deserve apples. Bang!
Red Sword.Stop using that antique language! I’m sick of it. It’s too obvious.
Purple Hair.Yes, we have proved that we can be more obscure in good English.
Red Sword.And now, brothers, the sentence! The execution!
All.The sentence, the sentence!
Red Sword.Stand aside, White Heart, or I will kill you both at the same time!
White Heart.I shall die with her!
Red Sword.You are not yet superman. We shall execute the last man and the last woman together. (To the woman) Have you any last words? It is traditional to have last words.
The Woman.I will match my silence against your silence, my eternity against your eternity!
Red Sword.Come with me! (He leads them out, right. There is an oppressive silence. In a moment he returns, wiping his sword on his gown. He takes his seat without a word. The light begins to fail, and the room grows rapidly darker until the last few sentences are spoken in an enveloping blackness.)
Green Ears.Man has produced the superman, and the superman has put an end to mankind.
Blue Face.Brothers, we stand on an icy mountain peak in the twilight of time.
Yellow Hat.We experience a breathless emotion which no one has had before, which there will be no more to have.
Purple Hair.No longer do we feel the drag of the past; no longer do we feel the lure of the future.
Red Sword.We are the future. We are the goal of consciousness.
Blue Face.For this moment has mankind dragged out a million weary years.
Green Ears.For this moment have been the countless joys of love, the countless pangs of death.
Yellow Hat.The thing-in-itself for which philosophers have sought—that is here.
Purple Hair.We have broken the spell of cause and consequence.
Red Sword.Will has won its first and its last victory over fate.
Green Ears.The stupid serpent of wisdom swallowing its own tail has grown great and finished the task.
Blue Face.Grubbing logic has looked into the mirror and discovered itself to be gigantic caprice.
Yellow Hat.Infinity has turned inside-out and become nothingness.
Purple Hair.The great contradiction has annihilated itself.
Red Sword.Let us keep silence before the solution of the ancient riddle.
(A long, dark silence. Slow curtain.)
There is something transitory in the moods evoked by rhyme. For rhyme shimmers on the surface of language like sunlight on the surface of a shallow stream; it conducts the mind as in a circle; its sphere is a world of harmonious delights. Rhyme is to the mind what sentimentality is to art.—Francis Grierson.
There is something transitory in the moods evoked by rhyme. For rhyme shimmers on the surface of language like sunlight on the surface of a shallow stream; it conducts the mind as in a circle; its sphere is a world of harmonious delights. Rhyme is to the mind what sentimentality is to art.—Francis Grierson.