The Real Thing
Copyright © 1982, 1983, 1984 by Tom Stoppard
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ACT ONE |
Scene Four |
Annie: [...] He loves me, and he wants to punish me with his pain, but I cant come up with the proper guilt. Im sort of irritated by it. Its so tiring and so uninteresting. You never write about that, you lot.
Henry: What?
Annie: Gallons of ink and miles of typewriter ribbon expended on the misery of the unrequited lover; not a word about the utter tedium of the unrequiting.
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Henry: [...] I dont know how to write love. I try to write it properly, and it just comes out embarrassing. Its either childish or its rude. And the rude bits are absolutely juvenile. I cant use any of it. [...] Anyway, Im too prudish. Perhaps I should write it completely artificial. Blank verse. Poetic imagery. Not so much of the Will you still love me when my tits are droopy? Of course I will, darling, its your bum Im mad for, and more of the By my troth, thy beauty maketh the moon hide her radiance, do you think?
Annie: Not really, no.
Henry: No. Not really. I dont know. Loving and being loved is unliterary. Its happiness expressed in banality and lust. It makes me nervous to see three-quarters of a page and no writing on it. I mean, I talk better than this.
Annie: Youll have to learn to do sub-text. My Strindberg is steaming with lust, but there is nothing rude on the page. We just talk round it.
| Topic: Embarrassment
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Henry: [...] I love love. I love having a lover and being one. The insularity of passion. I love it. I love the way it blurs the distinction between everyone who isnt ones lover. Only two kinds of presence in the world. Theres you and theres them. I love you so.
| Topic: Love
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ACT TWO |
Scene One |
Henry: Buddy Holly was twenty-two. Think of what he might have gone on to achieve. I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course.
| Topic: History
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Annie: Youre jealous of the idea of the writer. You want to keep it sacred, special, not something anybody can do. Some of us have it, some of us dont. We write, you get written about. What gets you about Brodie is he doesnt know his place. You say he cant write like a head waiter saying you cant come in here without a tie. Because he cant put words together. Whats so good about putting words together?
Henry: Its traditionally considered advantageous for a writer.
Annie: Hes not a writer. Hes a convict. Youre a writer. You write because youre a writer. Even when you write about something, you have to think up something to write about just so you can keep writing. More well chosen words nicely put together. So what? Why should that be it? Who says?
Henry: Nobody says. It just works best.
Annie: Of course it works. You teach a lot of people what to expect from good writing, and you end up with a lot of people saying you write well. Then somebody who isnt in on the game comes along, like Brodie, who really has something to write about, something real, and you cant get through it. Well, he couldnt get through yours, so where are you? To you, he cant write. To him, write is all you can do.
Henry: Jesus, Annie, youre beginning to appal me. Theres something scary about stupidity made coherent. I can deal with idiots, and I can deal with sensible argument, but I dont know how to deal with you.
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Annie: Its his view of the world. Perhaps from where hes standing youd see it the same way.
Henry: Or perhaps Id realize where Im standing. Or at least that Im standing somewhere. There is, I suppose, a world of objects which have a certain form, like this coffee mug. I turn it, and it has no handle. I tilt it, and it has no cavity. But there is something real here which is always a mug with a handle. I suppose. But politics, justice, patriotism they arent even like coffee mugs. Theres nothing real there separate from our perception of them. So if you try to change them as though there were something there to change, youll get frustrated, and frustration will finally make you violent. If you know this and proceed with humility, you may perhaps alter peoples perceptions so that they behave a little differently at that axis of behaviour where we locate politics or justice; but if you dont know this, then youre acting on a mistake. Prejudice is the expression of this mistake.
Annie: Or such is your perception.
Henry: All right.
Annie: And who wrote it, why he wrote it, where he wrote it none of these things count with you?
Henry: Leave me out of it. They dont count. Maybe Brodie got a raw deal, maybe he didnt. I dont know. It doesnt count. Hes a lout with language. I cant help somebody who thinks, or thinks he thinks, that editing a newspaper is censorship, or that throwing bricks is a demonstration while building tower blocks is social violence, or that unpalatable statement is provocation while disrupting the speaker is the exercise of free speech... Words dont deserve that kind of malarkey. Theyre innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, theyre no good any more, and Brodie knocks their corners off.
I dont think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when youre dead.
| Topics: Writing
Words
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Scene Two |
Annie: Theres no system. People group together when theyve got something in common. Sometimes its religion and sometimes its, I dont know, breeding budgies or being at Eton. Big and small groups overlapping. You cant blame them. Its a cultural thing; its not classes or system. Theres nothing really there its just the way you see it. Your perception.
Billy: Bloody brilliant. Theres people whove spent their lives trying to get rid of the class system, and youve done it without leaving your seat.
Annie: Well...
Billy: The only problem with your argument is that youve got to be traveling first-class to really appreciate it.
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Scene Three |
Debbie: [...] Hows old Elvis?
Henry: Hes dead.
Debbie: I did know that. I mean hows he holding up apart from that?
Henry: I never went for him much. All Shook Up was the last good one. However, I suppose thats the fate of all us artists.
Debbie: Death?
Henry: People saying they preferred the early stuff.
| Topic: Artists
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Henry: It was about self-knowledge through pain.
Debbie: No, it was about did she have it off or didnt she. As if having it off is infidelity.
Henry: Most people think it is.
Debbie: Most people think not having it off is fidelity. They think all relationships hinge in the middle. Sex or no sex. What a fantastic range of possibilities. Like an on/off switch. Did she or didnt she? By Henry Ibsen. Why would you want to make it such a crisis?
Henry: I dont know, why would I?
Debbie: Its what comes of making such a mystery of it. I was like that when I was twelve. Everything was sex. Latin was sex. The dictionary fell open at meretrix, a harlot. You could feel the mystery coming off the word like musk. Meretrix! This was none of your amo, amas, amat, this was a flash from the forbidden planet, and it was everywhere. History was sex, French was sex, art was sex, the Bible, poetry, penfriends, games, music, everything was sex except biology which was obviously sex but not really sex, not the one which was secret and ecstatic and wicked and a sacrament and all the things it was supposed to be but couldnt be at one and the same time I got that in the boiler room and it turned out to be biology after all. Thats what free love is free of propaganda.
Henry: Dont get too good at that.
Debbie: What?
Henry: Persuasive nonsense. Sophistry in a phrase so neat you cant see the loose end that would unravel it. Its flawless but wrong. A perfect dud. You can do that with words, bless em. How about What free love is free of, is love?
| Topic: Propaganda
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Henry: Its to do with knowing and being known. I remember how it stopped seeming odd that in biblical Greek knowing was used for making love. Whosit knew so-and-so. Carnal knowledge. Its what lovers trust each other with. Knowledge of each other, not of the flesh but through the flesh, knowledge of self, the real him, the real her, in extremis, the mask slipped from the face. Every other version of oneself is on offer to the public. We share our vivacity, grief, sulks, anger, joy ... we hand it out to anybody who happens to be standing around, to friends and family with a momentary sense of indecency perhaps, to strangers without hesitation. Our lovers share us with the passing trade. But in pairs we insist that we give ourselves to each other. What selves? Whats left? What else is there that hasnt been dealt out like a pack of cards? Carnal knowledge. Personal, final, uncompromised. Knowing, being known. I revere that.
Having that is being rich, you can be generous about whats shared she walks, she talks, she laughs, she lends a sympathetic ear, she kicks off her shoes and dances on the tables, shes everybodys and it dont mean a thing, let them eat cake; knowledge is something else, the undealt card, and while its held it makes you free-and-easy and nice to know, and when its gone everything is pain.
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Charlotte: There are no commitments, only bargains. And they have to be made again every day. You think making a commitment is it. Finish. You think it sets like a concrete platform and itll take any strain you want to put on it. Youre committed. You dont have to prove anything. In fact you can afford a little neglect, indulge in a little bit of sarcasm here and there, isolate yourself when you want to. Underneath its concrete for life. Im a cow in some ways, but youre an idiot.
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Charlotte: Remember what I said.
Henry: What was that? Oh ... yes. No commitments. Only bargains. The trouble is I dont really believe it. Id rather be an idiot. Its a kind of idiocy I like. I use you because you love me. I love you so use me. Be indulgent, negligent, preoccupied, premenstrual ... your credit is infinite, Im yours, Im committed... Its no trick loving somebody at their best. Love is loving them at their worst. Is that romantic? Well, good. Everything should be romantic.
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Scene Five |
Henry: [...] We start off like one of those caterpillars designed for a particular leaf. The exclusive voracity of love. And then not. How strange that the way of things is not suspended to meet our special case. But it never is. I dont want anyone else but sometimes, surprisingly, theres someone, not the prettiest or the most available, but you know that in another life it would be her.
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Henry: Yes, youd behave better than me. I dont believe in behaving well. I dont believe in debonair relationships. Hows your lover today, Amanda? In the pink, Charles. Hows yours? I believe in mess, tears, pain, self-abasement, loss of self-respect, nakedness. Not caring doesnt seem much different from not loving.
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Henry: And Im supposed to score points for dignity. I dont think I can. Itll become my only thought. Itll replace thinking.
Annie: You mustnt do that. You have to find a part of yourself where Im not important or you wont be worth loving.
| Topic: Importance
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Scene Seven |
Annie: Its Bach.
Henry: The cheeky beggar.
Annie: What?
Henry: Hes stolen it.
Annie: Bach?
Henry: Note for note. Practically a straight lift from Procol Harum. And he cant even get it right.
| Topic: Plagiarism
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Annie: Ill stop.
Henry: Not for me. I wont be the person who stopped you. I cant be that. When I got upset you said youd stop so I try not to get upset. I dont get pathetic because when I got pathetic I could feel how tedious it was, how unattractive. Like Max, your ex. Remember Max? Love me because Im in pain. No good. Not in very good taste. So. Dignified cuckoldry is a difficult trick, but it can be done. Think of it as modern marriage. We have got beyond hypocrisy, you and I. Exclusive rights isnt love, its colonization.
Annie: Stop it please stop it.
Henry: The trouble is, I cant find a part of myself where youre not important.
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Annie: You shouldnt have done it if you didnt think it was right.
Henry: You think its right. I cant cope with more than one moral system at a time. Mine is that what you think is right is right. What you do is right. What you want is right. There was a tribe, wasnt there, which worshipped Charlie Chaplin. It worked just as well as any other theology, apparently. They loved Charlie Chaplin. I love you.
| Topic: Morality
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Annie: [...] Im sorry I hurt you. But I meant it. It meant something. And now that it means less than I thought and I feel silly, I wont drop him as if it was nothing, a pick-up, it wasnt that, Im not that. I just want him to stop needing me so I can stop behaving well. This is me behaving well. I have to choose who I hurt and I choose you because Im yours.
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Annie: Please, dont let it wear away what you feel for me. It wont, will it?
Henry: No, not like that. It will go on or it will flip into its opposite.
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text checked (see note) Apr 2007
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