The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays (24 page)

FRENCH
: Not at all, Mr. Chairman. (
He takes out his breast-pocket handkerchief, which is now the pair of knickers put on by
MADDIE
at the beginning, and wipes his brow
.) Toujours l’amour.
(
Big Ben chimes the quarter hour
.)

MADDIE
: Finita La Commedia.

DOGG’S HAMLET

INTRODUCTION

The comma that divides
Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth
also serves to unite two plays which have common elements: the first is hardly a play at all without the second, which cannot be performed without the first.

Dogg’s Hamlet
is a conflation of two pieces written for Ed Berman and Inter-Action; namely
Dogg’s Our Pet
, which opened the Almost Free Theatre in Soho in December 1971, and
The Dogg’s Troupe 15-Minute Hamlet
, which was written (or rather edited) for performance on a double-decker bus.

Dogg’s Hamlet
derives from a section of Wittgenstein’s philosophical investigations. Consider the following scene. A man is building a platform using pieces of wood of different shapes and sizes. These are thrown to him by a second man, one at a time, as they are called for. An observer notes that each time the first man shouts ‘Plank!’ he is thrown a long flat piece. Then he calls ‘Slab!’ and is thrown a piece of a different shape. This happens a few times. There is a call for ‘Block!’ and a third shape is thrown. Finally a call for ‘Cube!’ produces a fourth type of piece. An observer would probably conclude that the different words described different shapes and sizes of the material. But this is not the only possible interpretation. Suppose, for example, the thrower knows in advance which pieces the builder needs, and in what order. In such a case there would be no need for the builder to name the pieces he requires but only to indicate when he is ready for the next one. So the calls might translate thus:

Plank = Ready

Slab = Okay

Block = Next

Cube = Thank you

In such a case, the observer would have made a false assumption, but the fact that he on the one hand and the builders on the other are using two different languages need not
be apparent to either party. Moreover, it would also be possible that the two builders do not share a language either; and if life for them consisted only of building platforms in this manner there would be no reason for them to discover that each was using a language unknown to the other. This happy state of affairs would of course continue only as long as, through sheer co-incidence, each man’s utterance made sense (even if not the same sense) to the other.

The appeal to me consisted in the possibility of writing a play which had to teach the audience the language the play was written in. The present text is a modest attempt to do this: I think one might have gone much further.

Cahoot’s Macbeth
is dedicated to the Czechoslovakian playwright Pavel Kohout. During the last decade of ‘normalization’ which followed the fall of Dubcek, thousands of Czechoslovaks have been prevented from pursuing their careers. Among them are many writers and actors.

During a short visit to Prague in 1977 I met Kohout and Pavel Landovsky, a well-known actor who had been banned from working for years since falling foul of the authorities. (It was Landovsky who was driving the car on the fateful day in January 1977 when the police stopped him and his friends and seized the first known copies of the document that became known as Charter 77.) One evening Landovsky took me backstage at one of the theatres where he had done some of his best work. A performance was going on at the time and his sense of fierce frustration is difficult to describe.

A year later Kohout wrote to me: ‘As you know, many Czech theatre-people are not allowed to work in the theatre during the last years. As one of them who cannot live without theatre I was searching for a possibility to do theatre in spite of circumstances. Now I am glad to tell you that in a few days, after eight weeks rehearsals—a Living-Room Theatre is opening, with nothing smaller but Macbeth.

‘What is LRT? A call-group. Everybody, who wants to have Macbeth at home with two great and forbidden Czech actors, Pavel Landovsky and Vlasta Chramostova, can invite his friends and call us. Five people will come with one suitcase.

‘Pavel Landovsky and Vlasta Chramostova are starring Macbeth and Lady, a well known and forbidden young singer Vlastimil Tresnak is singing Malcolm and making music, one young girl, who couldn’t study the theatre-school, Tereza Kohoutova, by chance my daughter, is playing little parts and reading remarks; and the last man, that’s me … ! is reading and a little bit playing the rest of the roles, on behalf of his great colleague.

‘I think, he wouldn’t be worried about it, it functions and promises to be not only a solution of our situation but also an interesting theatre event. I adapted the play, of course, but I am sure it is nevertheless Macbeth!’

The letter was written in June, and in August there was a postscript: ‘Macbeth is now performed in Prague flats.’

Cahoot’s Macbeth
was inspired by these events. However, Cahoot is not Kohout, and this necessarily over-truncated
Macbeth
is not supposed to be a fair representation of Kohout’s elegant seventy-five minute version.

TOM STOPPARD
August 1980

Dog’s Hamlet
is
dedicated to
Professor Dogg
and The Dogg’s Troupe
of Inter-Action

CHARACTERS

BAKER
ABEL
CHARLIE
EASY
DOGG
LADY
FOX MAJOR
MRS DOGG
SHAKESPEARE
HAMLET
HORATIO
CLAUDIUS
GERTRUDE
POLONIUS
OPHELIA
LAERTES
GHOST
BERNARDO
FRANCISCO
GRAVEDIGGER
OSRIC
FORTINBRAS

The first stage performance of
Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth
was at the Arts Centre of the University of Warwick, Coventry, on 21 May 1979, by BARC, British American Repertory Company. The cast of BARC was:

John Challis
Alison Frazer
Ben Gotlieb
Peter Grayer
Davis Hall
Louis Haslar
Ruth Hunt
Stanley McGeagh
Stephen D. Newman
John Straub
Alan Thompson
Sarah Venable
Gilbert Vernon

The play opened for a season at the Collegiate Theatre, London, on 30 July 1979.

Translation from ‘Dogg’ language into English is given in square brackets where this seems necessary
.

Empty stage
.

BAKER:
(
Off-stage
) Bride! [*Here!]
(
A football is thrown from off-stage left to off-stage right
.
BAKER
receiving ball
) Cube. [* Thanks]
(
ABEL,
off-stage, throws satchel to stage left
,
ABEL
enters. He is a schoolboy wearing grey flannel shorts, blazer, school cap, etc., and carrying a satchel. He drops satchel centre stage and collects the other which he places with his own
.
ABEL
exits stage right and returns with microphone and stand which he places down stage. The microphone has a switch
.)

ABEL:
(
Into the microphone
) Breakfast, breakfast… sun—dock—trog … [* Testing, testing … one—two—three … ] (
He realizes the microphone is dead. He tries the switch a couple of times and then speaks again into the microphone
.) Sun—dock—trog—pan—slack … [*One—two—three—four—five … ]
(
The microphone is still dead
,
ABEL
calls to someone off-stage
.)
Haddock priest! [*The mike is dead!]
(
Pause
,
BAKER
enters from the same direction. He is also a schoolboy similarly dressed
.)

BAKER
: Eh? [*Eh?]

ABEL
: Haddock priest.

BAKER
: Haddock?

ABEL
: Priest.
(
BAKER
goes to the microphone, drops satchel centre on his way
.)

BAKER
: Sun—dock—trog—
(
The mike is dead
,
BAKER
swears
.) Bicycles!
(
BAKER
goes back off-stage. Pause. The loud-speakers crackle
.)

ABEL
: Slab? [*Okay?]

BAKER:
(
Shouting off-stage, indistinctly
.) Slab!

ABEL:
(
Speaking into the mike
.) Sun, dock, trog, slack, pan.
(
The mike is live
,
ABEL
shouting to
BAKER,
with a thumbs-up sign
.)
Slab! [*Okay!]
(
Behind
ABEL, CHARLIE,
another schoolboy, enters backwards, hopping about, the visible half of a ball-throwing game
,
CHARLIE
is wearing a dress, but schoolboy’s shorts, shoes and socks, and no wig
.)

CHARLIE
: Brick!… brick! [*Here!… here!]
(
A ball is thrown to him from the wings
,
ABEL
dispossesses
CHARLIE
of the ball
.)

ABEL
: Cube! [*Thanks!]

VOICE:
(
Off-stage
) Brick! [*Here!)
(
CHARLIE
tries to get the ball imt
ABEL
won’t let him have it
.)

CHARLIE
: Squire! [*Bastard!]
(
ABEL
throws the ball to the unseen person in the wings—not where
BAKER
is
.)
Daisy squire! [*Mean bastard!]

ABEL
: Afternoons! [*Get stuffed!]

CHARLIE:
(
Very aggrieved
.) Vanilla squire! [*Rotten bastard!]

ABEL:
(
Giving a V-sign to
CHARLIE
.) Afternoons!
(
ABEL
hopping about, calls for the ball from the wings
.) Brick! [*Here!]
(
The ball is thrown to
ABEL
over
CHARLIE’;
head
.
DOGG,
the headmaster, in mortar-board and gown, enters from the opposite wing, and as the ball is thrown to
ABEL, DOGG
dispossesses
ABEL.
)