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THE PHEASANT-HEN
[To CHANTECLER.] Come, dearest, come away!
CHANTECLER
[Resisting.] No, I must sing where Destiny placed me. I am useful
here, I am beloved--
THE PHEASANT-HEN
[Remembering what she overheard the night before in the farmyard.] Are
you so sure?--Come away to the woods, where we shall hear real pigeons
cooing tenderly to each other!
THE TURKEY
[At the back.] Ladies, the great Peacock--
THE PEACOCK
[Modestly.] The Super-peacock--who supervenes, and supersedes--
THE GUINEA-HEN
Will spread his tail for us! He has expressed his amiable willingness so
far to favour us.
[The company falls into groups of spectators, the outlandish COCKS
forming a wreath around their patron.]
THE PEACOCK
[Preparing to spread his tail.] I am, by precious natural gift, in
addition to my multifarious accomplishments something of a--shall I say
artist in firework?
THE GUINEA-HEN
[Effervescently.] Yes!
THE PEACOCK
No. Pyrotechnist. For the choicest piece in urban gardens, where
Catharine-wheels on festival nights spurt sidereal spray, and rockets
shot into gold-riddled skies fall back in prismatic showers, is less
sapphirine, smaragdine, cuprine--
CHANTECLER
Zounds!
THE PEACOCK
--than, I venture to say, ladies, am I--
THE PHEASANT-HEN
Oh, I understood that last word!
THE PEACOCK
--when I unfurl the union of fan, jewel-case, and screen, upon which I
offer to the self-same sunbeams that redden the reed all the joyous gems
you now may contemplate!
CHANTECLER
What a silly bill!
[The PEACOCK has spread his tail.]
A COCK
[To the PEACOCK.] Master, which of us will you make the fashion?
THE PADUA COCK
[Quickly coming forward.] Me! I look like a palm-tree!
A CHINA COCK
[Pushing the PADUA COCK aside.] I look like a pagoda!
A BIG FEATHER-FOOTED COCK
[Pushing the CHINA COCK aside.] Me! I have cauliflowers sprouting at
my heels!
CHANTECLER
Each is in one the show and Mr. Barnum!
ALL
[Parading and filing past the PEACOCK.] See my beak! See my feet! See
my feathers!
CHANTECLER
[Suddenly shouting at them.] Lo! While you hold your costume contest,
a Scarecrow gives you his blessing!
[Behind them, in fact, the wind has lifted the arms of the SCARECROW,
which loosely wave above the pageant.]
ALL
[Starting back.] What?
CHANTECLER
Behold this dummy talking to that lay-figure! [While the wind blows
through the flapping rags.] What say the trousers, dancing their limp
fandango? They say, "We were once the fashion!" And, terror of the
titlark, what says the old hat which a beggar would none of? "I was the
fashion!" And the coat? "I was the fashion!" And the tattered sleeves,
that no one has care to mend, try to clasp the Wind, whom they take for
the Fashion, and drop back empty--The Wind has passed, the Wind is far!
THE PEACOCK
[To the animals slightly dismayed by this address.] You poor-spirited
creatures, that thing cannot talk!
CHANTECLER
Man says the same of us.
THE PEACOCK
[To the birds nearest to him.] He is vexed because of those Cocks whom
I introduced. [To CHANTECLER, ironically.] What, my dear sir, do you
say to these resplendent gentlemen?
CHANTECLER
I say, my dear sir, that these resplendent gentlemen are manufactured
wares, the work of merchants with highly complex brains, who to fashion
a ridiculous Chicken have taken a wing from that one, a topknot from
this. I say that in such Cocks nothing remains of the true Cock. They
are Cocks of shreds and patches, idle bric-a-brac, fit to figure in a
catalogue, not in a barnyard with its decent dunghill and its dog. I say
that those befrizzled, beruffled, bedeviled Cocks were never stroked and
cherished by Nature's maternal hand. I say that it's all Aviculture, and
Aviculture is flapdoodle! And I say that those preposterous parrots,
without style, without beauty, without form, whose bodies have not even
kept the pleasing oval of the egg they were hatched from, look like so
many desperate fowls escaped from some hen-coop of the Apocalypse!
A COCK
My dear sir--
CHANTECLER
[With rising spirit.] And I add that the whole duty of a Cock is to be
an embodied crimson cry! And when a Cock is not that, it matters little
that his comb be shaped like a toadstool, or his quills twisted like a
screw, he will soon vanish and be heard of no more, having been nothing
but a variety of a variety!
A COCK
I protest--
CHANTECLER
[Going from one to the other.] Yes, Cocks affecting incongruous forms,
Cocks crowned with cocoa-palm coiffures--Hear me talk like the Peacock!
I lapse into alliteration! [Finding his fun in bewildering them with
cackling guttural volubility.] Yes, Cockerels cockaded with cockles,
Cockatrice-headed Cockasters, cock-eyed Cockatoos! Not content to be
common Cocks, your crotchet it was to be what but crack Cocks? Yes,
Fashion, to be accounted of thy flock, these chuckle-headed Cocks craved
to be Super-cocks. But know ye not, ye crazy Cocks, one cannot be so
queer a Cock, but there may occur a queerer Cock? Let some Cock come
whose coccyx boasts a more flamboyant shock, and you pass like childish
measles, croup or chicken-pox! Consider that to-morrow, high
Cockalorums, fancy Cocks, consider that day after to-morrow,
cheese-capped goblet-crested Cocks, in spite of curly hackle and
cauliflowered hocks, a more fantastic Cock than ever may creep out of
a--box! For the Cock-fancier, to diversify his stock, may more
fantastically still combine his Cutcutdaycuts and his Cocks, and you
will be no more--sad Cuckoos made a mock!--but old rococo Cocks beside
this more coquettish Cock!
A COCK
And how, may one learn from you, can a Cock secure himself against
becoming rococo?
CHANTECLER
One royal way there is: to think only of crowing like a right and proper
Cock!
A COCK
[Haughtily.] We are well known, I beg to state, for our exceptionally
fine crowing!
CHANTECLER
Known to whom?
SCENE FIFTH
THE SAME, three CHICKENS, noticeable among the rest for a certain
jaunty pertness of gait and demeanour, who for a minute or so have been
moving among the artificial COCKS.
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Rostand, Edmond, 1868-1918 - Chantecler