Plays - Susan Glaspell
(_It grows in her as_ CURTAIN _lowers slowly_.)
THE VERGE
First performed at the Provincetown Playhouse on November 14, 1921.
PERSONS OF THE PLAY
ANTHONY
HARRY ARCHER, Claire's husband
HATTIE, The maid
CLAIRE
DICK, Richard Demming
TOM EDGEWORTHY
ELIZABETH, Claire's daughter
ADELAIDE, Claire's sister
DR EMMONS
ACT I
_The Curtain lifts on a place that is dark, save for a shaft of light
from below which comes up through an open trap-door in the floor. This
slants up and strikes the long leaves and the huge brilliant blossom of
a strange plant whose twisted stem projects from right front. Nothing is
seen except this plant and its shadow. A violent wind is heard. A moment
later a buzzer. It buzzes once long and three short. Silence. Again the
buzzer. Then from below--his shadow blocking the light, comes_ ANTHONY,
_a rugged man past middle life;--he emerges from the stairway into the
darkness of the room. Is dimly seen taking up a phone._
ANTHONY: Yes, Miss Claire?--I'll see. (_he brings a thermometer to the
stairway for light, looks sharply, then returns to the phone_) It's down
to forty-nine. The plants are in danger--(_with great relief and
approval_) Oh, that's fine! (_hangs up the receiver_) Fine!
(_He goes back down the stairway, closing the trap-door upon himself,
and the curtain is drawn upon darkness and wind. It opens a moment later
on the greenhouse in the sunshine of a snowy morning. The snow piled
outside is at times blown through the air. The frost has made patterns
on the glass as if--as Plato would have it--the patterns inherent in
abstract nature and behind all life had to come out, not only in the
creative heat within, but in the creative cold on the other side of the
glass. And the wind makes patterns of sound around the glass house.
The back wall is low; the glass roof slopes sharply up. There is an
outside door, a little toward the right. From outside two steps lead
down to it. At left a glass partition and a door into the inner room.
One sees a little way into this room. At right there is no dividing wall
save large plants and vines, a narrow aisle between shelves of plants
leads off.
This is not a greenhouse where plants are being displayed, nor the usual
workshop for the growing of them, but a place for experiment with
plants, a laboratory.
At the back grows a strange vine. It is arresting rather than beautiful.
It creeps along the low wall, and one branch gets a little way up the
glass. You might see the form of a cross in it, if you happened to think
it that way. The leaves of this vine are not the form that leaves have
been. They are at once repellent and significant_.
ANTHONY _is at work preparing soil--mixing, sifting. As the wind tries
the door he goes anxiously to the thermometer, nods as if reassured and
returns to his work. The buzzer sounds. He starts to answer the
telephone, remembers something, halts and listens sharply. It does not
buzz once long and three short. Then he returns to his work. The buzzer
goes on and on in impatient jerks which mount in anger. Several times_
ANTHONY _is almost compelled by this insistence, but the thing that
holds him back is stronger. At last, after a particularly mad splutter,
to which_ ANTHONY _longs to make retort, the buzzer gives it up_.
ANTHONY _goes on preparing soil.
A moment later the glass door swings violently in, snow blowing in, and
also_ MR HARRY ARCHER, _wrapped in a rug._)
ANTHONY: Oh, please close the door, sir.
HARRY: Do you think I'm not trying to? (_he holds it open to say this_)
ANTHONY: But please _do_. This stormy air is not good for the plants.
HARRY: I suppose it's just the thing for me! Now, what do you mean,
Anthony, by not answering the phone when I buzz for you?
ANTHONY: Miss Claire--Mrs Archer told me not to.
HARRY: Told you not to answer me?
ANTHONY: Not you especially--nobody but her.
HARRY: Well, I like her nerve--and yours.
ANTHONY: You see, she thought it took my mind from my work to be
interrupted when I'm out here. And so it does. So she buzzes once long
and--Well, she buzzes her way, and all other buzzing--
HARRY: May buzz.
ANTHONY: (_nodding gravely_) She thought it would be better for the
flowers.
HARRY: I am not a flower--true, but I too need a little attention--and a
little heat. Will you please tell me why the house is frigid?
ANTHONY: Miss Claire ordered all the heat turned out here, (_patiently
explaining it to_ MISS CLAIRE's _speechless husband_) You see the roses
need a great deal of heat.
HARRY: (_reading the thermometer_) The roses have seventy-three I have
forty-five.
ANTHONY: Yes, the roses need seventy-three.
HARRY: Anthony, this is an outrage!
ANTHONY: I think it is myself; when you consider what we paid for the
heating plant--but as long as it is defective--Why, Miss Claire would
never have done what she has if she hadn't looked out for her plants in
just such ways as this. Have you forgotten that Breath of Life is about
to flower?
HARRY: And where's my breakfast about to flower?--that's what I want to
know.
ANTHONY: Why, Miss Claire got up at five o'clock to order the heat
turned off from the house.
HARRY: I see you admire her vigilance.
ANTHONY: Oh, I do. (_fervently_) I do. Harm was near, and that woke her
up.
HARRY: And what about the harm to--(_tapping his chest_) Do roses get
pneumonia?
ANTHONY: Oh, yes--yes, indeed they do. Why, Mr Archer, look at Miss
Claire herself. Hasn't she given her heat to the roses?
HARRY: (_pulling the rug around him, preparing for the blizzard_) She
has the fire within.
ANTHONY: (_delighted_) Now isn't that true! How well you said it. (_with
a glare for this appreciation_, HARRY _opens the door. It blows away
from him_) Please do close the door!
HARRY: (_furiously_) You think it is the aim of my life to hold it open?
ANTHONY: (_getting hold of it_) Growing things need an even temperature,
(_while saying this he gets the man out into the snow_)
(ANTHONY _consults the thermometer, not as pleased this time as he was
before. He then looks minutely at two of the plants--one is a rose, the
other a flower without a name because it has not long enough been a
flower. Peers into the hearts of them. Then from a drawer under a shelf,
takes two paper bags, puts one over each of these flowers, closing them
down at the bottom. Again the door blows wildly in, also_ HATTIE, _a
maid with a basket_.)
ANTHONY: What do you mean--blowing in here like this? Mrs Archer has
ordered--
HATTIE: Mr Archer has ordered breakfast served here, (_she uncovers the
basket and takes out an electric toaster_)
ANTHONY: _Breakfast_--here? _Eat_--here? Where plants grow?
HATTIE: The plants won't poison him, will they? (_at a loss to know what
to do with things, she puts the toaster under the strange vine at the
back, whose leaves lift up against the glass which has frost leaves on
the outer side_)
ANTHONY: (_snatching it away_) You--you think you can cook eggs under
the Edge Vine?
HATTIE: I guess Mr Archer's eggs are as important as a vine. I guess my
work's as important as yours.
ANTHONY: There's a million people like you--and like Mr Archer. In all
the world there is only one Edge Vine.
HATTIE: Well, maybe one's enough. It don't look like nothin', anyhow.
ANTHONY: And you've not got the wit to know that that's why it's the
Edge Vine.
HATTIE: You want to look out, Anthony. You talk nutty. Everybody says
so.
ANTHONY: Miss Claire don't say so.
HATTIE: No, because she's--
ANTHONY: You talk too much!
(_Door opens, admitting_ HARRY; _after looking around for the best place
to eat breakfast, moves a box of earth from the table_.)
HARRY: Just give me a hand, will you, Hattie?
(_They bring it to the open space and he and_ HATTIE _arrange breakfast
things_, HATTIE _with triumphant glances at the distressed_ ANTHONY)
ANTHONY: (_deciding he must act_) Mr Archer, this is not the place to
eat breakfast!
HARRY: Dead wrong, old boy. The place that has heat is the place to eat
breakfast. (_to_ HATTIE) Tell the other gentlemen--I heard Mr Demming
up, and Mr Edgeworthy, if he appears, that as long as it is such a
pleasant morning, we're having breakfast outside. To the conservatory
for coffee.
(HATTIE _giggles, is leaving_.)
And let's see, have we got everything? (_takes the one shaker, shakes a
little pepper on his hand. Looks in vain for the other shaker_) And tell
Mr Demming to bring the salt.
ANTHONY: But Miss Claire will be very angry.
HARRY: I am very angry. Did I choose to eat my breakfast at the other
end of a blizzard?
ANTHONY: (_an exclamation of horror at the thermometer_) The temperature
is falling. I must report. (_he punches the buzzer, takes up the phone_)
Miss Claire? It is Anthony. A terrible thing has happened. Mr
Archer--what? Yes, a terrible thing.--Yes, it is about Mr
Archer.--No--no, not dead. But here. He is here. Yes, he is well, he
seems well, but he is eating his breakfast. Yes, he is having breakfast
served out here--for himself, and the other gentlemen are to come
too.--Well, he seemed to be annoyed because the heat had been turned off
from the house. But the door keeps opening--this stormy wind blowing
right over the plants. The temperature has already fallen.--Yes, yes. I
thought you would want to come.
(ANTHONY _opens the trap-door and goes below_. HARRY _looks
disapprovingly down into this openness at his feet, returns to his
breakfast_. ANTHONY _comes up, bearing a box_.)
HARRY: (_turning his face away_) Phew! What a smell.
ANTHONY: Yes. Fertilizer has to smell.
HARRY: Well, it doesn't have to smell up my breakfast!
ANTHONY: (_with a patient sense of order_) The smell belongs here. (_he
and the smell go to the inner room_)
(_The outer door opens just enough to admit_ CLAIRE--_is quickly closed.
With_ CLAIRE _in a room another kind of aliveness is there_.)
CLAIRE: What are you doing here?
HARRY: Getting breakfast. (_all the while doing so_)
CLAIRE: I'll not have you in my place!
HARRY: If you take all the heat then you have to take me.
CLAIRE: I'll show you how I have to take you. (_with her hands begins
scooping upon him the soil_ ANTHONY _has prepared_)
HARRY: (_jumping up, laughing, pinning down her arms, putting his arms
around her_) Claire--be decent. What harm do I do here?
CLAIRE: You pull down the temperature.
HARRY: Not after I'm in.
CLAIRE: And you told Tom and Dick to come and make it uneven.
HARRY: Tom and Dick are our guests. We can't eat where it's warm and
leave them to eat where it's cold.
CLAIRE: I don't see why not.
HARRY: You only see what you want to see.
CLAIRE: That's not true. I wish it were. No; no, I don't either. (_she
is disturbed--that troubled thing which rises from within, from deep,
and takes_ CLAIRE. _She turns to the Edge Vine, examines. Regretfully
to_ ANTHONY, _who has come in with a plant_) It's turning back, isn't
it?
ANTHONY: Can you be sure yet, Miss Claire?
CLAIRE: Oh yes--it's had its chance. It doesn't want to be--what hasn't
been.
HARRY: (_who has turned at this note in her voice. Speaks kindly_) Don't
take it so seriously, Claire. (CLAIRE _laughs_)
CLAIRE: No, I suppose not. But it _does_ matter--and why should I
pretend it doesn't, just because I've failed with it?
HARRY: Well, I don't want to see it get you--it's not important enough
for that.
CLAIRE: (_in her brooding way_) Anything is important enough for
that--if it's important at all. (_to the vine_) I thought you were out,
but you're--going back home.
ANTHONY: But you're doing it this time, Miss Claire. When Breath of Life
opens--and we see its heart--
(CLAIRE _looks toward the inner room. Because of intervening plants they
do not see what is seen from the front--a plant like caught motion, and
of a greater transparency than plants have had. Its leaves, like waves
that curl, close around a heart that is not seen. This plant stands by
itself in what, because of the arrangement of things about it, is a
hidden place. But nothing is between it and the light_.)
CLAIRE: Yes, if the heart has (_a little laugh_) held its own, then
Breath of Life is alive in its otherness. But Edge Vine is running back
to what it broke out of.
HARRY: Come, have some coffee, Claire.
(ANTHONY _returns to the inner room, the outer door opens_. DICK _is
hurled in_.)
CLAIRE: (_going to the door, as he gasps for breath before closing it_)
How dare you make my temperature uneven! (_she shuts the door and leans
against it_)
DICK: Is that what I do?
(_A laugh, a look between them, which is held into significance_.)
HARRY: (_who is not facing them_) Where's the salt?
DICK: Oh, I fell down in the snow. I must have left the salt where I
fell. I'll go back and look for it.
CLAIRE: And change the temperature? We don't need salt.
HARRY: You don't need salt, Claire. But we eat eggs.
CLAIRE: I must tell you I don't like the idea of any food being eaten
here, where things have their own way to go. Please eat as little as
possible, and as quickly.
HARRY: A hostess calculated to put one at one's ease.
CLAIRE: (_with no ill-nature_) I care nothing about your ease. Or about
Dick's ease.
DICK: And no doubt that's what makes you so fascinating a hostess.
CLAIRE: Was I a fascinating hostess last night, Dick? (_softly sings_)
'Oh, night of love--' (_from the Barcorole of 'Tales of Hoffman'_)
HARRY: We've got to have salt.
(_He starts for the door._ CLAIRE _slips in ahead of him, locks it,
takes the key. He marches off, right_.)
CLAIRE: (_calling after him_) That end's always locked.
DICK: Claire darling, I wish you wouldn't say those startling things.
You do get away with it, but I confess it gives me a shock--and really,
it's unwise.
CLAIRE: Haven't you learned that the best place to hide is in the truth?
(_as_ HARRY _returns_) Why won't you believe me, Harry, when I tell you
the truth--about doors being locked?
HARRY: Claire, it's selfish of you to keep us from eating salt just
because you don't eat salt.
CLAIRE: (_with one of her swift changes_) Oh, Harry! Try your egg
without salt. Please--please try it without salt! (_an intensity which
seems all out of proportion to the subject_)
HARRY: An egg demands salt.
CLAIRE: 'An egg demands salt.' Do you know, Harry, why you are such an
unseasoned person? 'An egg demands salt.'
HARRY: Well, it doesn't always get it.
CLAIRE: But your spirit gets no lift from the salt withheld.
HARRY: Not an inch of lift. (_going back to his breakfast_)
CLAIRE: And pleased--so pleased with itself, for getting no lift. Sure,
it is just the right kind of spirit--because it gets no lift. (_more
brightly_) But, Dick, you must have tried your egg without salt.
DICK: I'll try it now. (_he goes to the breakfast table_)
CLAIRE: You must have tried and tried things. Isn't that the way one
leaves the normal and gets into the byways of perversion?
HARRY: Claire.
DICK: (_pushing back his egg_) If so, I prefer to wait for the salt.
HARRY: Claire, there is a _limit_.
CLAIRE: Precisely what I had in mind. To perversion too there is a
limit. So--the fortifications are unassailable. If one ever does get
out, I suppose it is--quite unexpectedly, and perhaps--a bit terribly.
HARRY: Get out where?
CLAIRE: (_with a bright smile_) Where you, darling, will never go.
HARRY: And from which you, darling, had better beat it.
CLAIRE: I wish I could. (_to herself_) No--no I don't either
(_Again this troubled thing turns her to the plant. She puts by
themselves the two which_ ANTHONY _covered with paper bags. Is about to
remove these papers_. HARRY _strikes a match_.)
CLAIRE: (_turning sharply_) You can't smoke here. The plants are not
used to it.
HARRY: Then I should think smoking would be just the thing for them.
CLAIRE: There is design.
HARRY: (_to_ DICK) Am I supposed to be answered? I never can be quite
sure at what moment I am answered.
(_They both watch_ CLAIRE, _who has uncovered the plants and is looking
intently into the flowers. From a drawer she takes some tools. Very
carefully gives the rose pollen to an unfamiliar flower--rather
wistfully unfamiliar, which stands above on a small shelf near the door
of the inner room_.)
DICK: What is this you're doing, Claire?
CLAIRE: Pollenizing. Crossing for fragrance.
DICK: It's all rather mysterious, isn't it?
HARRY: And Claire doesn't make it any less so.
CLAIRE: Can I make life any less mysterious?
HARRY: If you know what you are doing, why can't you tell Dick?
DICK: Never mind. After all, why should I be told? (_he turns away_)
(_At that she wants to tell him. Helpless, as one who cannot get across
a stream, starts uncertainly_.)
CLAIRE: I want to give fragrance to Breath of Life (_faces the room
beyond the wall of glass_)--the flower I have created that is outside
what flowers have been. What has gone out should bring fragrance from
what it has left. But no definite fragrance, no limiting enclosing
thing. I call the fragrance I am trying to create Reminiscence. (_her
hand on the pot of the wistful little flower she has just given pollen_)
Reminiscent of the rose, the violet, arbutus--but a new thing--itself.
Breath of Life may be lonely out in what hasn't been. Perhaps some day I
can give it reminiscence.
DICK: I see, Claire.
CLAIRE: I wonder if you do.
HARRY: Now, Claire, you're going to be gay to-day, aren't you? These are
Tom's last couple of days with us.
CLAIRE: That doesn't make me especially gay.
HARRY: Well, you want him to remember you as yourself, don't you?
CLAIRE: I would like him to. Oh--I would like him to!
HARRY: Then be amusing. That's really you, isn't it, Dick?
DICK: Not quite all of her--I should say.
CLAIRE: (_gaily_) Careful, Dick. Aren't you indiscreet? Harry will be
suspecting that I am your latest strumpet.
HARRY: Claire! What language you use! A person knowing you only by
certain moments could never be made to believe you are a refined woman.
CLAIRE: True, isn't it, Dick?
HARRY: It would be a good deal of a lark to let them listen in at
times--then tell them that here is the flower of New England!
CLAIRE: Well, if this is the flower of New England, then the half has
never been told.
DICK: About New England?
CLAIRE: I thought I meant that. Perhaps I meant--about me.
HARRY: (_going on with his own entertainment_) Explain that this is what
came of the men who made the laws that made New England, that here is
the flower of those gentlemen of culture who--
DICK: Moulded the American mind!
CLAIRE: Oh! (_it is pain_)
HARRY: Now what's the matter?
CLAIRE: I want to get away from them!
HARRY: Rest easy, little one--you do.
CLAIRE: I'm not so sure--that I do. But it can be done! We need not be
held in forms moulded for us. There is outness--and otherness.
HARRY: Now, Claire--I didn't mean to start anything serious.
CLAIRE: No; you never mean to do that. I want to break it up! I tell
you, I want to break it up! If it were all in pieces, we'd be (_a little
laugh_) shocked to aliveness (_to_ DICK)--wouldn't we? There would be
strange new comings together--mad new comings together, and we would
know what it is to be born, and then we might know--that we are. Smash
it. (_her hand is near an egg_) As you'd smash an egg. (_she pushes the
egg over the edge of the table and leans over and looks, as over a
precipice_)
HARRY: (_with a sigh_) Well, all you've smashed is the egg, and all that
amounts to is that now Tom gets no egg. So that's that.
CLAIRE: (_with difficulty, drawing herself back from the fascination of
the precipice_) You think I can't smash anything? You think life can't
break up, and go outside what it was? Because you've gone dead in the
form in which you found yourself, you think that's all there is to the
whole adventure? And that is called sanity. And made a virtue--to lock
one in. You never worked with things that grow! Things that take a
sporting chance--go mad--that sanity mayn't lock them in--from life
untouched--from life--that waits, (_she turns toward the inner room_)
Breath of Life. (_she goes in there_)
HARRY: Oh, I wish Claire wouldn't be strange like that, (_helplessly_)
What is it? What's the matter?
DICK: It's merely the excess of a particularly rich temperament.
HARRY: But it's growing on her. I sometimes wonder if all this
(_indicating the place around him_) is a good thing. It would be all
right if she'd just do what she did in the beginning--make the flowers
as good as possible of their kind. That's an awfully nice thing for a
woman to do--raise flowers. But there's something about this--changing
things into other things--putting things together and making queer new
things--this--
DICK: Creating?
HARRY: Give it any name you want it to have--it's unsettling for a
woman. They say Claire's a shark at it, but what's the good of it, if it
gets her? What is the good of it, anyway? Suppose we can produce new
things. Lord--look at the one ones we've got. (_looks outside; turns
back_) Heavens, what a noise the wind does make around this place, (_but
now it is not all the wind, but_ TOM EDGEWORTHY, _who is trying to let
himself in at the locked door, their backs are to him_) I want my _egg_.
You can't eat an egg without salt. I must say I don't get Claire lately.
I'd like to have Charlie Emmons see her--he's fixed up a lot of people
shot to pieces in the war. Claire needs something to tone her nerves
_up_. You think it would irritate her?
DICK: She'd probably get no little entertainment out of it.
HARRY: Yes, dog-gone her, she would. (TOM _now takes more heroic
measures to make himself heard at the door_) Funny--how the wind can
fool you. Now by not looking around I could imagine--why, I could
imagine anything. Funny, isn't it, about imagination? And Claire says I
haven't got any!
DICK: It would make an amusing drawing--what the wind makes you think is
there. (_first makes forms with his hands, then levelling the soil
prepared by_ ANTHONY, _traces lines with his finger_) Yes, really--quite
jolly.
(TOM, _after a moment of peering in at them, smiles, goes away._)
HARRY: You're another one of the queer ducks, aren't you? Come now--give
me the dirt. Have you queer ones really got anything--or do you just put
it over on us that you have?
DICK: (_smiles, draws on_) Not saying anything, eh? Well, I guess you're
wise there. If you keep mum--how are we going to prove there's nothing
there?
DICK: I don't keep mum. I draw.
HARRY: Lines that don't make anything--how can they tell you anything?
Well, all I ask is, don't make Claire queer. Claire's a first water good
sport--really, so don't encourage her to be queer.
DICK: Trouble is, if you're queer enough to be amusing, it might--open
the door to queerness.
HARRY: Now don't say things like that to Claire.
DICK: I don't have to.
HARRY: Then _you_ think she's queer, do you? Queer as you are, you think
she's queer. I would like to have Dr Emmons come out. (_after a moment
of silently watching_ DICK, _who is having a good time with his
drawing_) You know, frankly, I doubt if you're a good influence for
Claire. (DICK _lifts his head ever so slightly_) Oh, I don't worry a bit
about--things a husband might worry about. I suppose an intellectual
woman--and for all Claire's hate of her ancestors, she's got the bug
herself. Why, she has times of boring into things until she doesn't know
you're there. What do you think I caught her doing the other day?
Reading Latin. Well--a woman that reads Latin needn't worry a husband
much.
DICK: They said a good deal in Latin.
HARRY: But I was saying, I suppose a woman who lives a good deal in her
mind never does have much--well, what you might call passion, (_uses the
word as if it shouldn't be used. Brows knitted, is looking ahead, does
not see_ DICK_'s face. Turning to him with a laugh_) I suppose you know
pretty much all there is to know about women?
DICK: Perhaps one or two details have escaped me.
HARRY: Well, for that matter, you might know all there is to know about
women and not know much about Claire. But now about (_does not want to
say passion again_)--oh, feeling--Claire has a certain--well, a
certain--
DICK: Irony?
HARRY: Which is really more--more--
DICK: More fetching, perhaps.
HARRY: Yes! Than the thing itself. But of course--you wouldn't have much
of a thing that you have irony about.
DICK: Oh--wouldn't you! I mean--a man might.
HARRY: I'd like to talk to Edgeworth about Claire. But it's not easy to
talk to Tom about Claire--or to Claire about Tom.
DICK: (_alert_) They're very old friends, aren't they?
HARRY: Why--yes, they are. Though they've not been together much of late
years, Edgeworthy always going to the ends of the earth to--meditate
about something. I must say I don't get it. If you have a place--that's
the place for you to be. And he did have a place--best kind of family
connections, and it was a very good business his father left him.
Publishing business--in good shape, too, when old Edgeworthy died. I
wouldn't call Tom a great success in life--but Claire does listen to
what he says.