SOLDIER: That’s not right. It’s for the Banana Tree to do the proving.
POLLY: But that’s just it. Now watch out. We’ve reached a particularly crucial point of the drama. As I was saying, thou must prove thine inability to murder, let’s say, the Moon. Climb up this creeper of mine and take a knife with thee. Galy Gay does so. The Moon holds the top of the rope ladder.
SOLDIERS quieten a few who want to continue singing: Quiet! It’s a tricky climb, you know, what with not being able to see out of that elephant’s head.
JESSE: So long as he doesn’t choose this moment to piss. Give it all you’ve got, Uriah. Uriah gives a cry.
URIAH: Oh, oh, oh!
POLLY: What’s the matter, Moon, wherefore thy cries?
URIAH: Because it hurteth so. Emphatically this is a murderer climbing towards me.
GALY GAY: Hang the ladder on a branch, Uriah, I’m awfully weary.
URIAH: Oh, he is tearing my hand off. My hand! My hand! He is tearing off my hand.
POLLY: There you are, there you are.
Galy Gay has Uriah’s artificial hand in his hands and shows it to the audience.
JESSE: That’s bad, Jackie. I would not have thought it of thee. Thou art no child of mine.
URIAH holds up stump of his hand: I attest him to be a murderer.
POLLY: Behold the bleeding stump with which he attesteth; nor hast thou proved that it is impossible for thee to commit a murder, Elephant Calf, for now thou hast furthermore so handled the Moon that it must needs bleed to death before first light. Curtain! Curtain. He immediately comes forward. If anyone’s interested in betting it can be done at the bar.
SOLDIERS go to place bets: A cent on the Moon, half a cent on the Elephant Calf.
URIAH: Look, they’re starting to nibble. Now, Jesse, it’s all yours with the sorrowing Mother’s speech. Curtain up.
JESSE:
Do you all know what a mother is?
Ah, her heart is tender as no other is.
Tender your mother’s heart as you lay in her
Tender the mother’s hand that fed you dinner
Tender the mother’s eye that watched you play
Tender the mother’s foot that led the way
Laughter.
And when a mother’s heart sinks beneath the sod
Laughter.
A noble soul goes shooting up to God.
Laughter.
Hear a mother, hear a mother weeping:
Laughter.
Mine is the bosom where this calf lay sleeping.
Stormy, prolonged laughter.
SOLDIERS: Encore! That alone’s worth ten cents. Bravo! Hurrah! Three cheers for the Mother. Hip, hip, hooray!
Curtain falls.
URIAH: Carry on! It’s a hit! Get on stage!
Curtain up.
POLLY: I have demonstrated that thou art a man capable of committing a murder. Now I put it to thee, Elephant Calf: art of the opinion that this is thy mother?
SOLDIERS: It’s a damned unfair business, what they’re performing up there, it absolutely goes against nature, it does. But very deep, very philosophical. They’ll have some sort of happy ending up their sleeve, you bet. Quiet!
POLLY: Far be it from me to suggest, of course, that any child in the world would touch a hair of the head of the mother that bore him in any country under traditional British rule. Hear, hear. Rule Britannia! All sing ‘Rule Britannia’. I thank you gentlemen. So long as this moving ditty resounds from rough masculine throats all will be well with England and her traditions. But on with the show! In as much as thou, O Elephant Calf, didst truly murder this universally beloved woman and great artiste – Hear, hear – it cannot possibly be the case that thou, Jackie Pall, art son or daughter of this celebrated lady – Hear, hear – moreover whatever a Banana Tree suggests he also proves. Applause. So take a piece of billiard chalk, thou Moon of Cooch Behar, and draw a firm circle in the centre of the stage. Thereupon take an ordinary rope in thy hand and wait until this profoundly stricken Mother steps into the middle of thy doubtless most incompetently drawn circle. Place the rope delicately round her white neck.
SOLDIERS: Round her lovely white mother’s neck, round her lovely white mother’s neck.
POLLY: Exactly. But thou, the alleged Jackie Pall, take the other end of this judicial rope and place thyself outside the circle over against the Moon. There; and now I ask thee, woman, didst thou give birth to a murderer? Art silent? Well, then. I just wanted to show you, gentlemen, that the mother herself, whom you see represented here, turns her back on her fallen child. But soon I shall show you even more, for soon the terrible sun of justice will be focussing its rays into the most hidden depths of this affair.
SOLDIERS: Don’t overdo it, Polly. Sh!
POLLY: For the last time, Jackie Pall, dost persist in suggesting that thou art this wretched woman’s son?
GALY GAY: Yes.
POLLY: Well, well. So thou art her son? A moment ago thou didst claim to be her daughter, but thou art not all that exact in thy statements. We shall now proceed, gentlemen, to our last and most important patent super-proof, which will not only surpass anything you have seen so far, but is guaranteed to give you total satisfaction. If thou, Jackie Pall, art this mother’s child, then thou willst have been given the strength to pull thine alleged mother out of the circle to thy side. That’s clear enough.
SOLDIERS: Crystal clear. Clear as a shithouse window. Hey, wait. He’s got it all wrong. Just you stick to the truth, Jackie.
POLLY: When I count three, pull. All count. Go! Galy Gay pulls Jesse out of the circle to his side.
JESSE: Hey! Stop! Goddam! What d’you think you’re up to? My neck!
SOLDIERS: What about it? Pull, Jackie! Stop! He’s as blue as a fish out of water.
JESSE: Help!
GALY GAY: My side! my side!
POLLY: How about that, eh? Did you ever see such crude behaviour? Now shall unnatural deception reap its reward. For thou hast clearly made a terrible mistake. By thy crude tugging hast thou proved, not what thou intendedst, but merely that under no circumstances cans’t thou be son or daughter of this wretchedly tormented Mother. Thou hast made plain the truth, Jackie Pall.
SOLDIERS: Oho! Bravo! Stinking! Nice family, I don’t think. Pack it in, Jackie, you’ve had it. Always tell the truth, Jackie.
POLLY: All right, gentlemen, I think that should do. That ought to look after our patent super-proof, I’d think. Now listen carefully, gentlemen, and I’d like those gentlemen to listen who saw fit to make a disturbance at the start of our show, and those who backed this miserable proof-riddled Elephant Calf with their good pence: this Elephant Calf is a murderer. The Elephant Calf, which is not the daughter of this honourable mother, as it suggested, but the son, as I have proved, and not the son either, as you saw, but simply no child whatsoever of this matron, whom it simply murdered, even though here she stands in full view of you all, acting as if nothing had happened, which is perfectly natural, even though previously unheard-of, as I can prove, and in fact I can now prove everything and am suggesting a great deal more and won’t let myself be put off but insist on getting my certificate and even prove that, for I put it to you: what is anything without proof? Steadily increasing applause. Without proof men aren’t men but orangutans, as proved by Darwin, and what about Progress, and just bat an eyelid, thou wretched little nonentity of a lie-sodden Elephant Calf, phoney to the very marrow, then I’ll absolutely prove – in fact this is really the point of the whole thing, gentlemen – that this here Elephant Calf is no Elephant Calf whatsoever, but none other than Jeraiah Jip from Tipperary.
SOLDIERS: Hooray.
GALY GAY: It won’t wash.
POLLY: And why not? Why won’t it wash?
GALY GAY: Because it’s not in the book. Take that back.
POLLY: Anyway, you’re a murderer.
GALY GAY: That’s a lie.
POLLY: But I can prove it. Prove it, prove it, prove it.
&n
bsp; Galy Gay hurls himself with a groan at the Banana Tree whose base gives way under the force of his attack.
POLLY falling: See that? See that?
URIAH: All right, now you are a murderer.
POLLY groaning: And I proved it.
Curtain.
URIAH: Straight into the song, now.
The four players quickly take up positions before the curtain and sing.
What a bit of all right in Uganda
Seven cents a seat on the verandah
And the poker games we played with that old tiger –
No, I’ve never played as well as that.
When we bet the hide off old Pa Krueger
He bet nothing but his battered hat.
How peacefully the moon shone in Uganda!
Through the cool night we sat about
Until sunrise
And then pulled out.
A man needs money to be able
To sit at the poker table
With a tiger in disguise.
(Seven cents a seat on the verandah.)
SOLDIERS: Is it all over? It’s a bloody travesty of justice. Call that a proper ending? You can’t leave off like that. Keep the curtain up. Play on.
POLLY: What do you mean? We’ve come to the end of the script. Be reasonable, the play’s over.
SOLDIERS: I never heard such a piece of cheek in all my life. It’s an absolute utter outrage, it offends every decent human instinct. A compact group climbs on the stage and says seriously: We want our money back. Either the Elephant Calf comes to a proper conclusion or else every single cent piece of ours must be on your table in two seconds, you Moon of Cooch Behar.
POLLY: It is our earnest submission that what we performed was the absolute truth.
SOLDIERS: All right, just you wait. We’ll give you absolute truth.
POLLY: The fact is that you’ve no notion of art and no idea how artists should be treated.
SOLDIERS: Don’t waste your breath.
GALY GAY: I wouldn’t like you blokes to imagine I wouldn’t stick up for what you’ve just seen, get me?
POLLY: Bravo, boss.
GALY GAY: Don’t let’s beat about the bush. Whichever of you is keenest to get his money back, let me just say I’d like to invite that particular phenomenon to step outside straight away for eight rounds with the four-ounce gloves.
SOLDIERS: Go on Towneley, see if you can wipe the floor with that Elephant Calf’s little trunk.
GALY GAY: And now I fancy we’ll see if what we performed was the absolute truth, or if it was good or bad theatre, my friends.
All off to the fight.
The Threepenny Opera
after John Gay: The Beggar’s Opera
Collaborators: ELISABETH HAUPTMANN, KURT WEILL
Translators: RALPH MANHEIM, JOHN WILLETT
Characters
MACHEATH, called Mac the Knife
JONATHAN JEREMIAH PEACHUM, proprietor of the Beggar’s Friend Ltd
CELIA PEACHUM, his wife
POLLY PEACHUM, his daughter
BROWN, High Sheriff of London
LUCY, his daughter
LOW-DIVE JENNY
SMITH
THE REVEREND KIMBALL
FILCH
A BALLAD SINGER
THE GANG
Beggars
Whores
Constables
PROLOGUE
The Ballad of Mac the Knife
Fair in Soho.
The beggars are begging, the thieves are stealing, the whores are whoring. A ballad singer sings a ballad.
See the shark with teeth like razors.
All can read his open face.
And Macheath has got a knife, but
Not in such an obvious place.
See the shark, how red his fins are
As he slashes at his prey.
Mac the Knife wears white kid gloves which
Give the minimum away.
By the Thames’s turbid waters
Men abruptly tumble down.
Is it plague or is it cholera?
Or a sign Macheath’s in town?
On a beautiful blue Sunday
See a corpse stretched in the Strand.
See a man dodge round the corner …
Mackie’s friends will understand.
And Schmul Meier, reported missing
Like so many wealthy men:
Mac the Knife acquired his cash box.
God alone knows how or when.
Peachum goes walking across the stage from left to right with his wife and daughter.
Jenny Towler turned up lately
With a knife stuck through her breast
While Macheath walks the Embankment
Nonchalantly unimpressed.
Where is Alfred Gleet the cabman?
Who can get that story clear?
All the world may know the answer
Just Macheath has no idea.
And the ghastly fire in Soho –
Seven children at a go –
In the crowd stands Mac the Knife, but he
Isn’t asked and doesn’t know.
And the child-bride in her nightie
Whose assailant’s still at large
Violated in her slumbers –
Mackie, how much did you charge?
Laughter among the whores. A man steps out from their midst and walks quickly away across the square.
LOW-DIVE JENNY: That was Mac the Knife!
ACT ONE
1
To combat the increasing callousness of mankind, J. Peachum, a man of business, has opened a shop where the poorest of the poor can acquire an exterior that will touch the hardest of hearts.
Jonathan Jeremiah Peacham’s outfitting shop for beggars.
PEACHUM’S MORNING HYMN
You ramshackle Christian, awake!
Get on with your sinful employment
Show what a good crook you could make.
The Lord will cut short your enjoyment.
Betray your own brother, you rogue
And sell your old woman, you rat.
You think the Lord God’s just a joke?
He’ll give you His Judgement on that.
PEACHUM to the audience: Something new is needed. My business is too hard, for my business is arousing human sympathy. There are a few things that stir men’s souls, just a few, but the trouble is that after repeated use they lose their effect. Because man has the abominable gift of being able to deaden his feelings as well, so to speak. Suppose, for instance, a man sees another man standing on the corner with a stump for an arm; the first time he may be shocked enough to give him tenpence, but the second time it will only be fivepence, and if he sees him a third time he’ll hand him over to the police without batting an eyelash. It’s the same with the spiritual approach. A large sign saying ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’ is lowered from the grid. What good are the most beautiful, the most poignant sayings, painted on the most enticing little signs, when they get expended so quickly? The Bible has four or five sayings that stir the heart; once a man has expended them, there’s nothing for it but starvation. Take this one, for instance – ‘Give and it shall be given unto you’ – how threadbare it is after hanging here a mere three weeks. Yes, you have to keep on offering something new. So it’s back to the good old Bible again, but how long can it go on providing? Knocking. Peachum opens. Enter a young man by the name of Filch.
FILCH: Messrs Peachum & Co.?
PEACHUM: Peachum.
FILCH: Are you the proprietor of The Beggar’s Friend Ltd.? I’ve been sent to you. Fine slogans you’ve got there! Money in the bank, those are. Got a whole library full of them, I suppose? That’s what I call really something. What chance has a bloke like me got to think up ideas like that; and how can business progress without education?
PEACHUM: What’s your name?
FILCH: It’s this way, Mr Peachum, I’ve been down on my luck since a boy. Mother drank, f
ather gambled. Left to my own resources at an early age, without a mother’s tender hand, I sank deeper and deeper into the quicksands of the big city. I’ve never known a father’s care or the blessings of a happy home. So now you see me …
PEACHUM: So now I see you …
FILCH confused: … bereft of all support, a prey to my baser instincts.
PEACHUM: Like a derelict on the high seas and so on. Now tell me, derelict, which district have you been reciting that fairy story in?
FILCH: What do you mean, Mr Peachum?
PEACHUM: You deliver that speech in public, I take it?
FILCH: Well, it’s this way, Mr Peachum, yesterday there was an unpleasant little incident in Highland Street. There I am, standing on the corner quiet and miserable, holding out my hat, no suspicion of anything nasty …
PEACHUM leafs through a notebook: Highland Street. Yes, yes, right. You’re the bastard that Honey and Sam caught yesterday. You had the impudence to be molesting passers-by in District 10. We let you off with a thrashing because we had reason to believe you didn’t know what’s what. But if you show your face again it’ll be the chop for you. Got it?
FILCH: Please, Mr Peachum, please. What can I do, Mr Peachum? The gentlemen beat me black and blue and then they gave me your business card. If I took off my coat, you’d think you were looking at a fish on a slab.
PEACHUM: My friend, if you’re not flat as a kipper, then my men weren’t doing their job properly. Along come these young whipper-snappers who think they’ve only got to hold out their paw to land a steak. What would you say if someone started fishing the best trout out of your pond?
FILCH: It’s like this, Mr Peachum – I haven’t got a pond.
PEACHUM: Licences are delivered to professionals only. Points in a businesslike way to a map of the city. London is divided into fourteen districts. Any man who intends to practise the craft of begging in any one of them needs a licence from Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum & Co. Why, anybody could come along – a prey to his baser instincts.
FILCH: Mr Peachum, only a few shillings stand between me and utter ruin. Something must be done. With two shillings in my pocket I …
PEACHUM: One pound.
FILCH: Mr Peachum!
Points imploringly at a sign saying ‘Do not turn a deaf ear to misery!’ Peachum points to the curtain over a showcase, on which is written: ‘Give and it shall be given unto you!’