THE DWARF'S TRAGEDY: A Fragment

(Text from the MS in the Shortling Collection, with notes by Grobius Shortling, Esq.)

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                 [Enter Smallstuff.]
Small. Down, down, thou cholerick orb of yearning fire!            1
       Close, sweet sea, o'er heaven's angry red eye,
       Till bathed in brine it opes upon the morrow,
       Ere long again with lustful rage to stare
       Uppon this pox'd, once fair, now shamed land.               5
       Thou, sunne, dost hunger to devour the world;
       In furie pullst thou, strainst in futile ire,
       This melancholie Earth to grasp and rend:
       But shee to wander in the darknesse seeks,
       Alone and chill to hide her burning cheeks.                10
       Fire or ice . . . for which is my care?
       Man is but fool to think life fair.

       To business. Revenchenstein ! Hence to me, despicable creature.

                 [Enter Revenshstein.]
       Rev. Ya, leetle sir. O dese itchy tick tinks I have from   15
       my skin been pullink. If you pliz, from out mine ear? Ah!
       Small. Foul little animall, is it not? Dost know the manner
       to burst them?
       Rev. Ya, surely. Squeeze dem in fingers.
       Small. Nay, nay. They doe but flatten. Fetch fire, sirrah. 20
                 [Rev. fetches fire.]
       Oh, hee, hee, hee, see it writhe! [Burns it.]
       Both. Ha, ha, ha.
       Small. Enough, fool. [Striking him.]
       Looke there, where the sunne setts. Seest the Castle?
       Rev. Gobble, gobble.                                       25
       Small. Sir Hardwicke Fosseway is there, now, I warrant thee.
       And likewise Felini Mucciofuccio.
       Rev. Mucciofuccio. Grrr--I kill 'im. He took from me myne
       Ilsa. Ugh.
                 [Casting rocks.]
       Small. Yes, yes, yes,                                      30
                             We two shall kill 'em,
                             Thus we shall kill 'em:
                               Cut bellies and guts,
                             And spill 'em, spill 'em.
                 [They dance.]

*** End of Fragment ***

Commentary

Lines 1-12. A blank verse soliloquy at the (presumed) opening of the play; notice the skill with which the author quickly terminates the passage and its theme of cosmic psychopathology with a personal touch that links the speaker to the abstractions he has been expressing. Deftly, a note of impatience is introduced by the terse couplet, and the prose passage is led off with the admirably laconic phrase, "To business." The general tone of the verse monologue seems to me to be one of bitter cynicism; but I should not make such a statement categorically, as such complex and deeply reverberating subject matter is open to many interpretations on as many different levels of understanding. Smallstuff's desperate malcontent is universalized by the use of the pathetic fallacy.

Line 1. Smallstuff is addressing the setting sun. 2. The scene presumably overlooks the sea; the notion of the ocean as an eye bath strikes one as a highly original metaphor. 7. A foreshadowing of Newton's theory of universal gravitation; the author is half a century ahead of his times (see Ludmilla Frankincense's fascinating study, Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, Gravitation and the Imagery of the Renaissence, passim). 11. Whether the earth shall perish in the belly of the sun or in the frigidity of interstellar space is a matter to which Smallstuff is rather indifferent.

Lines 12-22.The episode of the burning of the tick. Here the author shows his highly competent skill in the art of characterization. Also evident is his marvellous low sense of humor; the scene provides comic relief from the intense emotional tour-de-force preceding. Line 13. Revenchstein is a Germanic-sounding name; had the author perhaps visited the German states? 17-21. Being an extremely elastic insect, the tick is very difficult to kill; by experiment, I have proved to my satisfaction that the tick does indeed burst with an audible pop when the blood it has imbibed vaporizes in its stomach under the influence of fire; the temperature at which an explosion of this nature can be expected is, of course, 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 Celsius), slightly lower the higher you are above sea level.

Lines 24-34.The revenge motif is deftly introduced by Smallstuff. Incorporated at the end of the fragment is a frenzied song-and-dance (Rachentanz) of spell-binding effectiveness; doubtless, the exposition would have continued to develop through the consummate skill of the author, but the vicissitudes of history have decreed that this potential gem of a play should only have survived as a charming, but all too brief, fragment. Line 25. Jawhol, jawohl(?). After his sojourn in Germany, the author apparently allowed several years to elapse before composing the play; this would explain the the deplorable state of his German. Assigning the visit to Germany to the period of the author's youth, between the time he finished his education and the time he took up the quill (a reasonable assumption), I would venture to deduce, therefore, that he was at least forty years of age when he wrote this fragment. If only I could discover the date of his birth, it would be a simple matter to date the play, and to refute once and for all the scurrilous accusations of Messrs. Bandle and le Poisson that my precious manuscript is a forgery of recent date.

--G.S.

This piece was submitted by Grobius Shortling as his first attempt at a Master's Thesis. It was rejected. (Not long enough? It certainly followed all of the necessary academic rules of the time.)

Copyright © Wyatt James