Fannys First Play | Page 2

necessary part of the play. In so far
as it was effectual, it operated as a measure of relief to those critics and
playgoers who are so obsessed by my strained legendary reputation that
they approach my plays in a condition which is really one of
derangement, and are quite unable to conceive a play of mine as
anything but a trap baited with paradoxes, and designed to compass
their ethical perversion and intellectual confusion. If it were possible, I
should put forward all my plays anonymously, or hire some less
disturbing person, as Bacon is said to have hired Shakespear, to father
my plays for me.
Fanny's First Play was performed for the first time at the Little Theatre
in the Adelphi, London, on the afternoon of Wednesday, April 19th
1911.

FANNY'S FIRST PLAY

INDUCTION _The end of a saloon in an old-fashioned country house
(Florence Towers, the property of Count O'Dowda) has been curtained
off to form a stage for a private theatrical performance. A footman in
grandiose Spanish livery enters before the curtain, on its O.P. side._
FOOTMAN. [announcing] Mr Cecil Savoyard. [Cecil Savoyard comes
in: a middle-aged man in evening dress and a fur-lined overcoat. He is
surprised to find nobody to receive him. So is the Footman]. Oh, beg
pardon, sir: I thought the Count was here. He was when I took up your
name. He must have gone through the stage into the library. This way,
sir. [He moves towards the division in the middle of the curtains].
SAVOYARD. Half a mo. [The Footman stops]. When does the play
begin? Half-past eight?
FOOTMAN. Nine, sir.
SAVOYARD. Oh, good. Well, will you telephone to my wife at the

George that it's not until nine?
FOOTMAN. Right, sir. Mrs Cecil Savoyard, sir?
SAVOYARD. No: Mrs William Tinkler. Dont forget.
THE FOOTMAN. Mrs Tinkler, sir. Right, sir. [The Count comes in
through the curtains]. Here is the Count, sir. [Announcing] Mr Cecil
Savoyard, sir. [He withdraws].
COUNT O'DOWDA. [A handsome man of fifty, dressed with studied
elegance a hundred years out of date, advancing cordially to shake
hands with his visitor] Pray excuse me, Mr Savoyard. I suddenly
recollected that all the bookcases in the library were locked--in fact
theyve never been opened since we came from Venice--and as our
literary guests will probably use the library a good deal, I just ran in to
unlock everything.
SAVOYARD. Oh, you mean the dramatic critics. M'yes. I suppose
theres a smoking room?
THE COUNT. My study is available. An old-fashioned house, you
understand. Wont you sit down, Mr Savoyard?
SAVOYARD. Thanks. [They sit. Savoyard, looking at his host's
obsolete costume, continues] I had no idea you were going to appear in
the piece yourself.
THE COUNT. I am not. I wear this costume because--well, perhaps I
had better explain the position, if it interests you.
SAVOYARD. Certainly.
THE COUNT. Well, you see, Mr Savoyard, I'm rather a stranger in
your world. I am not, I hope, a modern man in any sense of the word.
I'm not really an Englishman: my family is Irish: Ive lived all my life in
Italy--in Venice mostly--my very title is a foreign one: I am a Count of
the Holy Roman Empire.

SAVOYARD. Where's that?
THE COUNT. At present, nowhere, except as a memory and an ideal.
[Savoyard inclines his head respectfully to the ideal]. But I am by no
means an idealogue. I am not content with beautiful dreams: I want
beautiful realities.
SAVOYARD. Hear, hear! I'm all with you there--when you can get
them.
THE COUNT. Why not get them? The difficulty is not that there are no
beautiful realities, Mr Savoyard: the difficulty is that so few of us know
them when we see them. We have inherited from the past a vast
treasure of beauty--of imperishable masterpieces of poetry, of painting,
of sculpture, of architecture, of music, of exquisite fashions in dress, in
furniture, in domestic decoration. We can contemplate these treasures.
We can reproduce many of them. We can buy a few inimitable
originals. We can shut out the nineteenth century--
SAVOYARD. [correcting him] The twentieth.
THE COUNT. To me the century I shut out will always be the
nineteenth century, just as your national anthem will always be God
Save the Queen, no matter how many kings may succeed. I found
England befouled with industrialism: well, I did what Byron did: I
simply refused to live in it. You remember Byron's words: "I am sure
my bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the
earth of that country. I believe the thought would drive me mad on my
deathbed could I suppose that any of my friends would be base enough
to convey my carcase back to her soil. I