“That is our power–our people, and to so order things that they, under sway of just and kingly law, may make and trade all the free goods of the earth. We do not make war, but hides.” Act II-Scene 2
“Now, you are delicate and keen, kind as Rosalind, the Cleopatra who neither withers nor grows stale, like Beatrice, wise, and Portia, bold. Your flesh brings light, your heart a warmth to the dampening soul and your words, reason. You are Queen in all your ways and Captain of our courage.” Act II-Scene 3
I am an unlikely anglophile. As an American of Irish-Catholic descent I should shun all things English. I don’t because, like Edmund Burke, an Irishman born of a Catholic mother and a Protestant father, I recognize that “the people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen…They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas and English principles.” England is the source not only of the constitutional and representative principles that govern modern democracy, but also of modernity itself–the industrial revolution, the scientific method and the habits of free thought and expression required for its pursuit, the ambition for personal and social betterment. I love England. I love what it represents, what Churchill called “the broad, sunlit uplands.” Love of, a perhaps imaginary, England is the genesis of Queen Di. When Princess Diana died, suddenly and shockingly in 1997 at just 36, I was deeply moved. I followed subsequent events in London in much the same way, and with much the same sentiment, as in 1963 when John F. Kennedy, the American president of Irish-Catholic descent who revered English ways and English speech, was taken from us at the zenith of his charm and power. Diana’s death tapped into the same fonts of longing and ambition. She had served not one purpose in her life, but many. To each English man and woman, she was a different Diana, a Diana both molded and reflected in the daily lives of millions. Queen Di is a full-length play in two Acts, written in heightened speech, for 17 characters. Look for King Charles’s speech on thought (“What is ‘thought’ but another name for certain actions of the flesh? And is not the movement of the flesh but the fruit of thoughts, yet thoughts themselves conceived in a bony womb and moved by flesh?”), Lady Audrey’s speech on man and nature (“We are alike to nature in all things, now base, now noble. Even in our ashes we return to dumb nature, our wise and silent twin.”), Juno’s screed on “the dogs of war” and Diana’s speech on religious belief (“I do not propose to die for Christ, but to live for him”). Find first scene of Queen Di below.
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ACT I
Scene 1
SETTING: The Throne Room at Windsor. At center stage, KING CHARLES occupies the rough-hewn wooden throne of England with the Scottish Stone of Scone visible beneath. Decoration suggesting a royal precinct is Spartan. A curtain, next to an ornate chair, suggests a window and balcony at stage right. Another chair occupies a similar position at stage left. CHARLES appears to be middle aged. His apparel is rich but understated. He wears a crown without ostentation or jewels. A shawl covers his legs. He shows no emotion.
AT RISE: A subdued sound of bells. King and throne only are bathed in light as CHARLES addresses invisible auditors.
CHARLES
Greetings. I am the man who never was. I am King and condemned, therefore, to eternal life as name, as King—King Charles—but not as man. The King lives on in history but Charles will vanish. My manhood, harnessed to a crown, will die a sullen death but my name will go on forever, rolling off schoolboy tongues in rhyming verse and sounding, to ears of men and women both, a fathomed depth of envy, mirth, or hatred till the last of English soil is hastened to the sea. Oh, they will say, he was King from this day in May to that in August. He reigned in piping spring and dread of winter in the years of Our Lord, or the years of Our Cur, or the years of Our Whore, this-one-to-that one, King of England! And all the lands that are washed by her oily seas! He was King! But he was never Charles. (Lowering his tone) You may see, for yourselves, how I occupy a seedy throne, rotted by damp, cleft by knife and gnawed by insects. We regard it as sacred. There are, in the Palace here, steps so ancient no wax need make them shine. Servants see their faces in the stones that gleam like moonbeams, crisp, pale and alluring, under the canopy of night. England has had too many Kings for one to reign alone. As ghosts, they flit and gyre about their ancient seat and offer beastly counsel to confound and mock successors. England’s starry crown is a ring of thorns, its scepter a spear that splits the heart. Uneasy are the buttocks that shine the throne. You have come here to grieve with me for the dead, and deathless, Diana. But root and nature of our grief are not the same. I am the man who never loved. You grieve for the Queen, I for the hollow-hearted King. One cannot grieve for a lost love when there was no love, a broken heart where no heart hath dwelt in a hollow breast. I grieve for the love that never was, its only remnant this (he demonstrates), a blood-stained linen rag. ‘Tis a greater grief than yours. There’s a pall that clings to the soulless breast and cries, “Oh, my Lords, my long lost Kings, my brethren, were that I breathed as a man does and not a Monarch.”
(Light bathes the Throne Room as WARWICK, in understated military apparel, bounds on stage. CHARLES flings away the shawl and stands. He is more animated than before and seems younger. First, he addresses the audience, then WARWICK directly.)
CHARLES
Let us dwell, for a moment, in the high excitement of youth–the spring I chose my bride with the aid of Warwick here. (To Warwick) Thou hath scoured England, Warwick?
WARWICK
From Cornwall to Cumbria.
CHARLES
And found what? How are the English girls?
WARWICK
They are comely, sir.
CHARLES
Good. And as to the rest? My warrant, hath thou secured my warrant?
WARWICK
‘Tis a noble warrant, my lord. As to pedigree, all have been examined by the Royal Herald.
CHARLES
In a garden, those with shallow roots are weeds.
WARWICK
The Herald hath yanked them up by their green-y tops.
CHARLES
And of those remaining…has the…you know…
WARWICK
The Royal Surgeon has done his duty. He was heard to remark, “Virgins are in short supply in England.” They are as green as the green-y weeds.
CHARLES
You discourage me.
WARWICK
Not at all, sir! They are here that you may gaze at them. They are full of pink cheeks and unchecked laughter. They are, as ordered, utterly uncovered so you my pick from them…and…they all fit terms of the warrant, milord. Look! A garden…of delights.
(WARWICK parts a curtain at stage right, unveiling a bucolic scene in the middle distance with a half dozen naked young women at play to the muted sound of music and laughter. CHARLES peers at the scene.)
CHARLES
I prefer deep roots…and long stems.
WARWICK
Pluck the one that suits you.
CHARLES
(Aside) But how shall I know? (Addressing Warwick) What do you advise? Are you married , Warwick?
WARWICK
Yes.
CHARLES
And what is she like?
WARWICK
She’s pretty!
CHARLES
And what else? What else is there about her?
WARWICK
(Puzzled) Why…Why, she’s…She’s pretty, sir, very pretty!
CHARLES
Is there no more to it than that?
WARWICK
Oh, much more, sir. She drops a baby every year and half survive. Half those will survive me, as I judge. She’s a pretty wench, sir, pretty and prolific. I love her as I love my land and the dogs and sheep that tread it.
(CHARLES points to the scene as WARWICK observes attentively.)
CHARLES
That one, Warwick, the one prancing by the stream. She’s the prettiest.
WARWICK
She is that, sir, the prettiest by far. I’ll bring her up.
(WARWICK hastens to leave but is interrupted by CHARLES, who gradually retreats to his throne.)
CHARLES
Warwick, what is her name?
WARWICK
Diana, sir. Her name is Diana.
CHARLES
She is unknown to me, Warwick.
WARWICK
Good! You will shape her like a topiary.
CHARLES
But she will branch out, spread, and distort her shape.
WARWICK
Then you will trim her once again…and again, in each new season…and she will always be the same.
CHARLES
And I will age, and rot, while she will bloom.
WARWICK
‘Tis an ideal, sir, to be wished by every man!
(WARWICK rushes out to fetch DIANA as CHARLES slumps in his throne. CHARLES is bathed in light while the rest of the royal chamber dims. As CHARLES speaks, two ghostly figures, a man and a woman, enter from opposite sides of the stage. The man takes a seat at stage left, the woman stage right, to the muted sound of bells.)
CHARLES
Warwick leaves me to my thoughts, but I do not know them, and so I do not know my mind. Destiny is served not by gods and stars but flesh and fortune. And what is ‘thought’ but another name for certain actions of the flesh? And is not the movement of the flesh but the fruit of thoughts, yet thoughts themselves conceived in a bony womb and moved by flesh? To you, I am naught but my sum of actions, to myself those acts summed to the actions called my thoughts. A man is not a ghost but flesh, sinew, bone and nerve tied up and treated in such a fashion as to gain the name of action and, in doing so, rebuke or approbation of the world, what we call his ‘fate.’ As I do not know my thoughts, I do not know my mind and there is, from the world and all the people in it, neither rebuke nor approbation. As I have no faith, I have no fate. Warwick makes a ‘pretty’ speech but there are no thoughts behind it. Marry the ‘pretty one,’ he says, but is there no more art to it than that?
(The seated figures to stage left and stage right are suddenly visible as the Throne Room is again bathed in light. They are the ghosts of the DUKE and DUCHESS OF WINDSOR, dressed in elegant white robes.)
DUCHESS
You give it too much thought…
DUKE
…and too little action.
CHARLES
Who goes there? (Aside) Figures bathed in pure white! They are shades and yet inspire no fear and must therefore be familiar. I will address them again. (Calling out) Who goes there?
DUCHESS
Your great aunt, the Duchess of Windsor…and your not-so-great uncle.
DUKE
(Pointing, sarcastic) The woman I love.
CHARLES
You come to advise me. I am grateful.
DUKE
You’re King. You may love whom you will.
DUCHESS
And marry whom you must.
CHARLES
But, sir, you gave up a crown for the woman you love.
DUKE
The fault was not mine but England’s. King and man are oft divorced but I was Edward and a King. A monarch by both nature and design was lost.
DUCHESS
(Addressing Charles) For you the question’s this—does she marry Charles or the King of England?
(WARWICK emerges with DIANA on stage right. They stand behind the DUCHESS but seem unaware of her presence. DIANA is clad only in a white bath towel, which she clutches with both hands. She is as flush and radiant as the DUKE and DUCHESS are pale and ghostly.)
CHARLES
How will I know?
DUKE
(Standing) You won’t and ‘woman’ will remain a mystery.
DUCHESS
(Standing) Why do men set siege to a woman’s heart, as with catapult and levee before the castle keep? Do they think we love their bloodied hands? The blood we crave is that which primes the heart. For a man to love a woman there must be something of the woman in the man.
(DUKE and DUCHESS turn and exit, separately. With some ceremony, WARWICK presents DIANA to CHARLES then stands aside. The King remains seated on the throne. LADY-IN-WAITING AUDREY enters discreetly on stage left and waits. She is dressed in crisp but plain servant’s garb.)
CHARLES
You are…Diana?
DIANA
I am, sir.
CHARLES
I am Charles, unaccustomed to laying siege when it comes to a woman’s heart. (Aside) Hitherto, they’ve come with little effort on my part. (To Diana) Though my blood’s enriched by French and German kings, the heart that beats is English.
DIANA
As mine, sir.
CHARLES
Good. I’m in need of a bride and she must be English. Have you conferred with the Royal Herald?
DIANA
I have, sir.
CHARLES
And?
DIANA
I am Lady Diana Spencer, sir, heir to the Earl of Althorp, descended from Bedfords and Fermoys. And before that…
CHARLES
(With a wave of his hand) Yes, quite…
(CHARLES stands and signals to LADY AUDREY, who approaches DIANA at center stage, then he signals to WARWICK that he will join his adviser. Before walking to stage left to join WARWICK, he addressed DIANA as an afterthought.)
CHARLES
And you, do you know your mind?
DIANA
I do not know my mind, sir. I think my mind shall always be my husband’s.
CHARLES
Not a bad start!
(CHARLES joins WARWICK and they exit.)
AUDREY
He will have you, miss.
DIANA
(Looking toward the departing figures of the King and his adviser) And with no more art to it than that? (Turning toward her new Lady-in-Waiting) And who are you?
AUDREY
I am Audrey, your Lady-in-Waiting.
DIANA
And I am Lady Diana Spencer, heir to the Earl of Althorp and late of Bedford and Fermoy and, before that…
AUDREY
(Taking her new charge by the arm) Pleased to meet you. Now you will come with me and do as I say.
(Blackout)
END OF SCENE
Photo credit: Coat of Arms of Diana, Princess of Wales (Sodacan)