Dernier Acte

London, February 1677.

That was one rainy Monday, chilling you to the marrow. Wrapped in fog, the moon, mistress of dreams and illusions, illuminated with opaline grace the cloudy welkin. On the front blown by the wind, a placard indicated in red frivolous letters the play that was to be played the next day. Nothing else indicated that on the morrow, the same nightly hour would see the place crammed with the life that was dreadfully missing now.

Amidst the shades of the building, she was there, as if ready to enter the stage again. Here still, since at least two hours, riveted behind the green velvet of the heavy embroidered curtains. But noone was here to listen to her, except for sprites riding the draughts that insinuated between the cracks of the dirty bare walls.

Mondays were the classical days of closing for the theater, and the last rehearsals were over since all the time she had stayed here. Rustlings and noises rising from the parquet had ceased shortly in the aisles, and she probably was the only living soul remaining in the place.

She wanted to stay here, finding a pretext to stay behind the others. Communing with the place, and what it symbolised, she has found in it a mystic dimension, much unlike the pomp and vibrant laughters of the spectators.

Patterns of the curtains themselves were taking a life of their own, dimly lit by the frail and shaking light of the candles that were left, as much for superstition as for practical means. Their unbridled dance seemed to tell her of tragic pageants displayed on these boards, exalted feelings, scythed destinies and the infinite waltz of petty sorrows of ordinary lives.

After that last trial, that occurred without any issue nor the slightest skirmish, the last scene seemed easy. Still, it would not stop coming back to her, with an unnerving vividness.

Was that stage fright that made her so nervous? At barely seventeen years of age, that would have been understandable. But no, that would be too easy to use this word ; one of many finely cut-out words, ready-to-wear, but worn out, meaningless. Improper to deliver the manifold feelings that ran into her.

Faceless excuses casually thrown on her self fallibility like white drapes on a corpse, blank gaze too unsettling to face. Except that the corpses were not dead. Perhaps even they were not corpse at all. One could have felt them breathe, oh so slowly it was barely audible. Eidolons² murmuring on their shrines, speaking of their creator, who had locked them away.

What did they tell her rightly? She tried to hear, mais would not listen what she feared she already knew.

She ran her hand on the moth-pricked velvet curtains that surrounded her.

No wonder that noone wanted to be wearing of green. With all the pastoral sets, it would have been uneasy to spot an actor wearing such colours. Blending in the set, or in the folds of the curtain, did it make any difference? Yet another doublure³ , a phantom, an other unlike one’s self…

That scene was the denouement of the play of course, the untying of the tension. She had read it and interpreted it so much that she ignored none of the subtle implications. Was that simply that she wished for the imbroglio to endure everlastingly? How long would she have to play herself into covering up?

After all, that was what did enthrall the spectators ever and ever. That Viola was parading as a boy, and was so easily successful in her deceiving others, too prone to blind acceptation of illusions —as if of keenness on adding a new role to theirs, either too conventional or too bland to be played mirthfully.

In actuality, it had been almost fifteen years that men did play female roles no longer, and as such, Viola’s role. Fifteen years which had allowed for a new generation of “she-actors” to rise, her own generation. The beginnings had been quite enthousiastic, especially for the spectators always lighthearted about renewal. For actors, that was a shift somewhat difficult to accept, with new conventions to invent and others withering away, having become useless, dropped like a reptile’s dead skins.

She truly felt that a part of the wittiness of Shakespeare’s play was gone with it.

Ambiguïty did matter for the jocundity of the play. It enhanced the upheaval in social conventions —Twelfth Night where fools became Kings for sheer pleasure of the fun.

But the play was clear: either one fully embraced folly, for fun and the moment,… or one was ridiculed, as the servant, the only one bothering about vain conniving, imagining his Lady enamoured with him.

For her, Viola did not make all the sense if not played by a man.

Indeed, she could not be so far from truth. What other reason would have had her chosen for the part, but her callowness and lack of feminity? So that the doubt could endure even after the exit? How unfair for Viola who was wonderful, adorable even!

Her voice was truly elsewhere, she knew it. She was not fated to slip docilely into a grotesque vision of women, subject of ridicule so as to make her innocuous.

Her most secret weapons, who could prevent her from using them? She knew how powerful her emotions could be. Her voice was powerful, their perfect conveyor. She could have easily moved the audience through tears, if everything was not dictating her to be lighthearted.

Shalth she invent that tragic role she was longing to interpret, and that would not fail to bring her spectators to their knees? If so many plays had been created by authors inspired by their favourite actors, how could she inspire the role of her life while she hindered herself in her display of talents?

Like in the play, there would be other Sebastian, twin brothers, or rather, twin sisters, eager to take on all the male and gibed aspects of her persona.

But for the clown to say his song, and for the curtain to fall, the true Viola needed to appear.

² Eidolon comes from Greek eidôlon εἴδωλον, meaning image, or phantom, double : that which is seen as true shape, but which is a mere double.

³ French word doublure either means “lining” or “body double”.

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