No Great Magic

No Great Magic, by Fritz Reuter
Leiber

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Title: No Great Magic
Author: Fritz Reuter Leiber
Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23162]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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MAGIC ***

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+-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's
Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has | |

been preserved. | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
For | | a complete list, please see the end of this document. | | | | This
etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction, | | December 1963.
Extensive research did not uncover any | | evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication | | was renewed. | | |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
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[Illustration]
NO GREAT MAGIC
by FRITZ LEIBER
ILLUSTRATED BY NODEL
The troupers of the Big Time lack no art to sway a crowd-- or to change
all history!
I
To bring the dead to life Is no great magic. Few are wholly dead: Blow
on a dead man's embers And a live flame will start. --Graves
I dipped through the filmy curtain into the boys' half of the dressing
room and there was Sid sitting at the star's dressing table in his
threadbare yellowed undershirt, the lucky one, not making up yet but
staring sternly at himself in the bulb-framed mirror and experimentally
working his features a little, as actors will, and kneading the stubble on
his fat chin.
I said to him quietly, "Siddy, what are we putting on tonight? Maxwell
Anderson's Elizabeth the Queen or Shakespeare's Macbeth? It says
Macbeth on the callboard, but Miss Nefer's getting ready for Elizabeth.
She just had me go and fetch the red wig."

He tried out a few eyebrow rears--right, left, both together--then turned
to me, sucking in his big gut a little, as he always does when a gal
heaves into hailing distance, and said, "Your pardon, sweetling, what
sayest thou?"
Sid always uses that kook antique patter backstage, until I sometimes
wonder whether I'm in Central Park, New York City, nineteen hundred
and three quarters, or somewhere in Southwark, Merry England, fifteen
hundred and same. The truth is that although he loves every last fat part
in Shakespeare and will play the skinniest one with loyal and inspired
affection, he thinks Willy S. penned Falstaff with nobody else in mind
but Sidney J. Lessingham. (And no accent on the ham, please.)
I closed my eyes and counted to eight, then repeated my question.
He replied, "Why, the Bard's tragical history of the bloody Scot,
certes." He waved his hand toward the portrait of Shakespeare that
always sits beside his mirror on top of his reserve makeup box. At first
that particular picture of the Bard looked too nancy to me--a sort of
peeping-tom schoolteacher--but I've grown used to it over the months
and even palsy-feeling.
He didn't ask me why I hadn't asked Miss Nefer my question.
Everybody in the company knows she spends the hour before
curtain-time getting into character, never parting her lips except for that
purpose--or to bite your head off if you try to make the most necessary
conversation.
"Aye, 'tiz Macbeth tonight," Sid confirmed, returning to his
frowning-practice: left eyebrow up, right down, reverse, repeat, rest.
"And I must play the ill-starred Thane of Glamis."
I said, "That's fine, Siddy, but where does it leave us with Miss Nefer?
She's already thinned her eyebrows and beaked out the top of her nose
for Queen Liz, though that's as far as she's got. A beautiful job, the nose.
Anybody else would think it was plastic surgery instead of putty. But
it's going to look kind of funny on the Thaness of Glamis."

* * * * *
Sid hesitated a half second longer than he usually would--I thought, his
timing's off tonight--and then he harrumphed and said, "Why, Iris Nefer,
decked out as Good Queen Bess, will speak a prologue to the play--a
prologue which I have myself but last week writ." He owled his eyes.
"'Tis an experiment in the new theater."
I said, "Siddy, prologues were nothing new to Shakespeare. He had
them on half his other plays. Besides, it doesn't make sense to use
Queen Elizabeth. She was dead by the time he whipped up Macbeth,
which is all about