I...only I. I’m still alive, and my spouse loves me. My country glorifies me, the ballads that have been dedicated to me are witness to that. The people jeer... (coughs) cheer whenever they see me on the balcony. “To own the country, you must occupy the woman,” a Norwegian general once said, or perhaps it was the other way round. Nevertheless, I have both the country and the woman! I sometimes think while sitting in the green garden, what might they be doing? The country....
QUEEN
(frivolously) How big it is!
KING
Indeed. So far the Norwegians have taken about ten thousand square miles from us, but I haven’t had the time to take care of that. I will think....
QUEEN
He is very clever. He’s passed a number of clever laws. There was the Law of Nourishment, the Law of Censorship, the Law of Gravitation....
BOOGEYMAN
Man would rather die from the hammer of the idle than the whip of the pest! Look at them, sitting comfortably in the green garden while I, Boogeyman, am not! They wear crowns and ties while I don a hat and pullover!
KING
I hosted this man in my house, I treated him decently, I made him the way we are, I cheered him up....
QUEEN
I cheered him too, in his shyness, in his unrevealed manhood. He gained my entire.... (draws a circle in the air) confidence!
KING
Until one day when....
BOOGEYMAN
The King was sleeping in the green garden. I had with me, as if by chance, the hemlock can. (miming) I poured every drop of it into his ear. Indeed, the King looked more sensitive to what was going into his ear than to the delineations of his spies.
QUEEN
An hour later he was cold. Colder than usual. I can tell you now that he was a tyrant. We buried him. Well.
BOOGEYMAN
With pomp. Then we had the wedding meal. The best counsellor of the loathsome monarch and the mourning Queen. We had tiny partridges, suckling pigs in sharp sauce, caviar, champagne from the French....
KING
(dying on the ground, moaning): One thousand ducats a cup!
QUEEN
Very, very good cocktails and music. Oh, how I suffered and grieved!
BOOGEYMAN
Now everything is changed in Denmark. The country is happy. The Norwegians have taken another twenty thousand square miles, but who cares? We’ve got toasting and dancing to do.
QUEEN
He’s clever.
BOOGEYMAN
That’s right. I hate my predecessor’s diplomacy: even our life has completely changed.
QUEEN
We’re sitting in the green garden.
KING
(rising, shaking off the dust) That was our sad story. You know the end now, have heard it a dozen times before. Everybody, I mean every good body sooner or later dies, then the Norwegians come and “liberate” us.
BOOGEYMAN
This has, indeed, been everything—the official version. When the living evidence is lost, destroyed, stolen or locked fearfully away, historians will finally reconstitute an approximate, fictionalised account of these events. A little later, an Englishman will write a play about the customs of the ruling classes in today’s Denmark, and all will laud it.
The actors bow, the curtain falls and, after a pause in which the three of them look at one another uncertainly, they hear a clap. The curtain rises a little then falls again. Silence, broken in upon by the confused, discontented murmur of those who are leaving.
ACT I
SCENE 2
The same, DAISY, coming from upstairs. She bends her head to pass under the curtain.
DAISY
OK, they’re all gone, you can wipe your make-up. Prince Hamlet is waiting in the dressing room to congratulate you. He seems a little nervous, though!
BOOGEYMAN
I hope he enjoyed our improvisation. We took the script and scented it with rumours from the crowd, exactly as the Prince ordered us to, but the audience, dear madam, looked undeservedly hostile to some poor actors!
KING
I’ve heard he’s violent. I do hope we came up to the mark.
QUEEN
(aside) He seems a delicate person....
DAISY
The King got angry when they told him...the Queen fainted! But the words about Hamlet’s father made the Prince go crazy too. I think you’re in trouble! You don’t know him! I wish you could hear him, screaming whole passages from Shakespeare along the corridors of the castle, looking so prudish you feel like sanctifying him, then, all of a sudden—bang! He slaps your buttocks or pricks you with his sword, to have fun! I complained to my superiors, but how much does a servant’s life matter when it comes to the young prince’s entertainment? The guards adore him, though. He speaks well, the rake: about martyrs, saints, golden futures, the rain that’s going to come and flood it all, their time, the time of the youth of pure race...bla-bla-bla!
KING
Could he be mad?
DAISY
We all get paranoid. Those at the top, how can they avoid going completely crazy. Generals slaughter their armies for a historical victory that has brought along only hunger and lice. Princes rummage through history to find a nice berth in the neighbouring country. Lawmen believe the world starts and ends with them. But you can’t call your rulers “crazy.” You call them “eccentric,” and the people love their eccentrics—the more royal they are, the better! And, generally speaking, the people love Hamlet because he is handsome.
BOOGEYMAN
The people are sentimental—they bear anything as long as there are photos in the paper, and the leader’s smile is sweet enough....
DAISY
Look out!
ACT I
SCENE 3
The same, POLONIUS coming from upstairs.
POLONIUS
Champagne for the actors!
KING
Oh—oh!
DAISY
Forget it.
POLONIUS
Our agreement stands broken, sirs! Prince Hamlet reported to the King that he had meticulously checked the script of this charity performance. I myself, whom Their Highnesses trust unswervingly, checked the checking and everything seemed correct! His Majesty is furious at the impudence of your performance!
BOOGEYMAN
If you’ll allow me....
POLONIUS
But...he is satisfied. Prince Hamlet is, in his turn, as hysterical as a bitch with a gelded lover, ha-ha (waits for the others to laugh—the others laugh). Well, for the time being, as you’re foreign citizens, you’ve a chance, but in this country things change—maybe you’ve already heard that....
BOOGEYMAN
If you’ll allow us, we started from a legend, not knowing how nostalgic it was, and we endeavoured to observe the whole truth....
POLONIUS