Free Pirandello's Henry IV by Luigi Pirandello, Tom Stoppard Page A

room of the Emperor’s Palace at Goslar!
    ORDULF    Or could be Hartzburg . . .
    HAROLD    . . . or Worms, depending.
    LANDOLF    Depending on where we are in the story—he keeps us on the hop.
    ORDULF    Saxony . . .
    HAROLD    Lombardy . . .
    LANDOLF    The Rhine . . .
    ORDULF    Keep your voice down.
    LANDOLF    He’s asleep.
    BERTOLD    Hang about. I’m confused. I thought we were doing
Henry IV
.
    LANDOLF    So?
    BERTOLD    Well, this place, these getups—it’s not him.
    ORDULF    Who?
    BERTOLD    The King of France, Henry IV.
    LANDOLF    Whoops.
    ORDULF    He thought it was the French one.
    LANDOLF    Wrong country, mate, wrong century, wrong Henry.
    HAROLD    It’s the German Henry IV, Salian Dynasty.
    ORDULF    The Holy Roman Emperor.
    LANDOLF    The Canossa one—walked to Canossa to get absolution from the Pope. Church v. State, that’s the game round here, day in, day out.
    ORDULF    Emperor at home to Pope—
    HAROLD    Pope away to Anti-Pope—
    LANDOLF    King away to Anti-King—
    ORDULF    Like war with Saxony—
    HAROLD    Plus with revolting barons—
    LANDOLF    His own kids . . .
    BERTOLD    Now I know why I’ve been feeling wrong in these clothes; these are not your French 1580s.
    HAROLD    Forget the 1580s.
    ORDULF    Think the ten hundreds.
    LANDOLF    Work it out; if Canossa was January 1077 . . .
    BERTOLD    I’m fucked.
    ORDULF    Royally.
    BERTOLD    I’ve been reading up the wrong . . .
    LANDOLF    Sad. We’re four hundred years behind you. Ahead of you. You’re not even a twinkle in our eye.
    BERTOLD    (
angered
) You got any idea how much stuff I read in the last two weeks about Henry IV of France?
    HAROLD    Didn’t you know Tony was our Adalbert, Bishop of Bremen?
    BERTOLD    What Adalbert?—no one told me anything!
    LANDOLF    Well, when Tony died, at first the young Count . . .
    BERTOLD    The Count Di Nolli? He’s the one who gave me the job. Why didn’t he . . . ?
    ORDULF    He must have thought you knew.
    LANDOLF    . . . first he thought the three of us would do. Then Himself started moaning—“They’ve driven out Adalbert!”—he didn’t realise “Adalbert” had died on us, he thought the bishops of Cologne and Mainz had booted him out, Tony I mean—all clear so far?
    BERTOLD    Wait. Bishop Tony of what?
    ORDULF    You’re fucked.
    HAROLD    Forget the bishops. The bishops are not the problem, the problem is we don’t know who you are.
    BERTOLD    So what am I playing?
    ORDULF    Um, Bertold.
    BERTOLD    Bertold who? Why Bertold?
    LANDOLF    Himself kept yelling, “They’ve driven out Adalbert, so get me Bertold! I want Bertold!”
    HAROLD    We eyeballed each other—who dat?
    LANDOLF    Never heard of him.
    ORDULF    And here you are.
    LANDOLF    You’ll be great.
    BERTOLD    No, I won’t, which way’s out?
    HAROLD    No, no, relax.
    LANDOLF    This’ll cheer you up—we don’t know who we are either. He’s Harold, he’s Ordulf, I’m Landolf, that’s what he calls us so that’s who we are, you get used to it, but it’s a puppet show. Who are we really? . . . Just names of the period. Same with you, I suppose, Bertold. Tony was the only one with a proper character, the Bishop of Bremen. He was a good bishop, too, God rest him.
    HAROLD    Always reading himself up.
    LANDOLF    And he bossed Himself about,