William Kennedy - The Flaming Corsage

It was agreed yesterday by seasoned theatergoers who saw the play that it is little more than a self-exculpation by the playwright, an apologia for his involvement in the Love Nest Scandal of 1908 in Manhattan, whose events closely parallel those of the play, with names of the characters changed so slightly from their real-life counterparts that all are recognizable. And so the old scandal is rekindled to a bright flame.

Dear Sir,

I rush to correct the general misapprehension of the play The Flaming Corsage , which closed after a single performance on Saturday. The play is seen as a violation of our Magnificent Municipal Moral Code (would that it were!). But it was not that at all, and judgment of it on that basis should be left to the philistines. The play will have, most certainly, a secure place in the history of American theater, as a curiosity. It has kinship with dreadful Ibsen’s one great achievement, Peer Gynt , and may be as great a literary benchmark as Beowulf , that ossified ostrich egg of fictional narrative, though the Daugherty play resembles neither work.

The Flaming Corsage must be judged a failure, a great botch of a work that should probably have been a novel, just as Chekhov’s plays, overstuffed with characters and incident, would have shone as novels. Daugherty, the playwright, was, potentially, a novelist of the first rank, but abandoned the genre for playwriting, a major mistake, the success of his last play notwithstanding. That play, The Masks of Pyramus , owed its success to its paralleling of Romeo and Juliet , just as the Shakespeare work owed its nucleus to Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbe. Plagiarism in the arts continues apace.

But The Flaming Corsage does have its merits. It casts aside the weeping and wailing of our mouldy melodrama and the contrived realism of our present potpourri of pygmy playwrights, and instead it offers up scenes rich with raw realism, as well as stinging satire of a high order. The bovinish women of the piece, and their hopeless husbands and lovers, all struggle between lofty intentions and hidden animal instincts, much the way Peer Gynt confronts the evil trolls of his life in the Ibsen play.

No one in American theater has ever written with as much insight into the dark quotidian reality as Edward Daugherty. It is a great pity that he is such a paltry buffoon when it comes to organizing his play, and sorting out the fates of his characters. He creates fine china, then destroys it all with his unruly hindquarters.

Like Beowulf , which was fated to be unreadable, this play is fated to be judged unplayable by future generations. But it will also be studied as a grotesque curiosity that broke new theatrical ground. It does not surprise me that it was closed, but it was closed for the wrong reasons.

THEATER LOVER

(Name withheld)

EDWARD SAT NOW in a long pause, staring out the second-floor window of his workroom at another grotesquely shadowed evening that had become abominably hot. The pages of his nameless play-in-progress lay on the desk beside the marble bust of Persephone, the only artifact of value to survive the fire. And beside that lay Emmett’s loaded.32-caliber revolver.

Emmett had bought the pistol to defend himself during labor trouble at the Fitzgibbon foundry, protection against men he’d fought for all his life; for when he became foreman, he became their enemy. Rise in the world and count your friends on your thumb.

“I could shoot it and hit what I shot at,” Emmett said, “but I never pulled the trigger in anger, or in fear. It was a useless damn gadget and I knew that the day I bought it.”

Edward looked at the pistol. He looked at his pages. He picked up his first page, read the opening scene. Sweat dropped from his forehead onto the paper.

Scene One

(The execution chamber of Sing Sing prison. Six WITNESSES sit on folding chairs facing the empty electric chair. EXECUTIONER stands near large-handled switch that will activate electric current.

WARDEN and PRIEST enter with THOMAS MAGINN, the prisoner. Two GUARDS, escorting MAGINN, seat him in electric chair, strap him into it, apply one electrode to calf of his right leg, another to cover his forehead and shaved temples.

DR. GILES FITZROY enters, walking ahead of stretcher wheeled in by another guard, and upon which lies the pale corpse of EDWARD DAUGHERTY. GILES motions to GUARD where to put stretcher: GUARD tips stretcher on its end so that DAUGHERTY corpse stands upright, facing the electric chair.)

GILES ( TO WARDEN): Is the condemned ready?

WARDEN ( TO PRIEST): Is he ready, Father?

PRIEST: Frankly, I don’t think he has a prayer.

WARDEN: Are you ready, Mr. Maginn?

( MAGINN breaks into hysterical laughter, which continues as he speaks.)

MAGINN: My father collected dead horses for pig food. My mother was a one-armed bitch who took in washing for cowboys. My sister was a whore at age six. My kid brother tortured cats with hatpins. My uncle gouged eyes for a dime. My family was saintly in the extreme.

(His laughter subsides somewhat.)

I’m a lucky man, the first in my family to be executed for his intelligence. The world will mark today as the day they uselessly martyred a beloved hero, and it will await my resurrection. There’s no doubt I’m the smartest man on the North American continent, given to humility at all hours, ready to play the fool for any woman with pubic hair. I also admire them shorn.

( MAGINN ’s laughter is gone, his face saddens gradually. He weeps, then cries openly.)

The worth of my being is proportionate to the weight of my written work. The essence of all power in this life is defiance, malfeasance, the pox, the smile, the dollar, and comprehension of the nature of time, which is running short. In sum, I’m as unprepared for death as I was for life. But let’s get on with it.

( MAGINN is now sobbing, breathing with difficulty.)

Red pig blood, orange sunset and evening star, pale-yellow pig shit, lime-green urine, blue sky and meadow, indigo clouds, violet pussy, white horses, whiteness whitening the white white. .

(He stops sobbing, laughs hysterically.)

WARDEN ( TO GILES): The condemned is ready.

GILES: Are you ready, Mr. Daugherty?

DAUGHERTY: I am.

GILES: Let it be noted for the record that the eyes of the dead Daugherty have been sewn open to enable him to witness the execution of his murderer, the fugitive whoremonger, the unrequited narcissist. Now, let us proceed. (He waves his hand to executioner, who pulls switch, sending current into maginn, who stiffens. Steam rises from his skull and from his leg. giles, checking his pocket watch, waves to executioner, who turns switch off. giles examines maginn with stethoscope and holds thermometer against his leg.)

GILES: Let it be noted that auscultation indicates the condemned still has a pulse, and the temperature of the skin is one hundred eighty degrees. All skin contacts show notable burn marks. How are you feeling, Mr. Maginn?

MAGINN: Tip-top.

GILES: Then let us continue.

(He gestures again to EXECUTIONER, who pulls switch, with same reaction from MAGINN. Not steam but smoke rises from burned flesh. GILES times this jolt with his watch, waves to EXECUTIONER, who turns off current. GILES examines MAGINN .)