Jane Austen Made Me Do It
Jane Austen made me do it
By
Deborah Mulhall
Characters:
CATHY: Jane Austen aficionado, a modern day version of the Cathy from Northanger Abbey
HENRY; her friend and finally, Austen hero. HENRY also plays DARCY, WENTWORTH, KNIGHTLY and EDMUND.
Lighting changes only are needed to indicate CATHY’S dialogues with DARCY, WENTWORTH and KNIGHTLY – these are imaginary whilst her interchanges with HENRY are reality.
At rise, CATHY is centre stage in Regency costume. HENRY, when he enters, is wearing Regency costume except for a coat. Upstage, there are four chairs – each has a different coat for HENRY to wear – one as DARCY, one as WENTWORTH, one as KNIGHTLY and one as EDMUND. There is also a collected works of Jane Austen book.
There are two lighting plots : one is the “reality” lighting of Cathy’s real world and the other is a romantic lighting of her fantasy world.
The presentation should be as light-hearted, frenetic and funny as possible!
AT rise: CATHY is standing centre-stage.
CATHY(melodramatically)
“You are mistaken Mr Darcy, if you suppose the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way than it spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner.” I would have said yes. Mr Darcy, I am just waiting for you. Where are you?(swoons)
HENRY (entering, fiddling with his cravat)
I thought he was a dick.
CATHY
Have you read Pride & Prejudice Henry?
HENRY
Well, no. But I saw a bit of it on TV. It went on for hours and hours and hours … (mutters on)
CATHY
That was the BBC version and it was the best thing I have ever seen… better than that travesty with Keira Knightly although no film versionas good as the book. Except, you know, when they put Colin Firth is as Darcy.
HENRY
I just remember some whiny girl was carrying on about Brighton.
CATHY
Brighton? That’s Lydia. Her stuff is satire.
HENRY
I thought she was annoying.
CATHY
Well, it’s poking fun at a certain type of woman.
HENRY
But why? Of all the interesting characters out there, what is supposed to be accomplished by making fun of her?
CATHY
Why satirize Lindsay Lohan? These people need to be satirized or society will take them seriously. There are Brighton-wanting bitches all around us!
HENRY
And that main guy, that Darcy person. Really rude.
CATHY
Mr Darcy. Oh no, he was just …
HENRY
… Rude. Really rude. And up himself. Worst wingman ever! His mate wants him to dance with the sister of the one he’s trying to crack on to – which is what your best bud is supposed to do for you and he sticks his nose in the air and says none of the girls is good-looking enough.
CATHY
Yes but he didn’t …
HENRY
Well, I wouldn’t lean up against a wall and sneer at everyone. I’d ask you to dance. You’d be handsome enough to tempt me.
CATHY
You’re missing the point.
HENRY
As your friend, Cathy, I have to tell you, you have to get over this Jane Austen thing. No guy can live up to it. Have you considered your life may not be a modern day version of Pride & Persuasion or …
CATHY
Pride & Persuas …? It’s Pride & Prejudice! Everyone knows that! What, are you some sort of idiot? And I am not asking any man to live up to it, Henry.
HENRY
So why are we parading around in costumes?
CATHY
I told you. Because we are going to the Jane Austen festival.
HENRY
And you don’t think that’s a little weird? You know, dressing up like English people a hundred years ago?
CATHY
Two hundred years ago! And no. (fiddling with Henry’s cravat)Anyway, I love the clothes.
HENRY
Yeah - that dress does look good on you. So we’re going to this fuckin’ festival-
CATHY(kicking him in the butt)
The Jane Austen Festival
HENRY
Where everyone will sit around discussing a woman who wrote three books…
CATHY
Oh my god! Six novels that were completed as well as two works that were unfinished at the time of her death and an epistolary novel that no one ever counts because it’s more like Dangerous Liaisons than Pride and Prejudice. And it all began with Northanger Abbey.
HENRY
Never heard of it.
CATHY
Most people haven’t. But I really like it.
HENRY
So what’s gonna happen at this festival then?
CATHY
Well, there’s exhibits and talks and dance classes and a ball and a promenade …
(HENRY , rolling his eyes, fades away to become DARCY as she continues to audience)
I just want … I just want the romance. In Jane Austen, the romance is in the way the heroines are valued for themselves. See, Darcy starts off as this rude guy who snubs Elizabeth because he thinks she isn’t pretty enough or rich enough or sophisticated enough for him. But then, he slowly falls in love with her because she is witty and intelligent and has wonderful eyes. And he can’t stop thinking about her. She sort of works her way into his consciousness to the point where he can’t stop thinking about her. So he proposes but it is all wrong because he insults her family when he does and she tells him off and says he isn’t a gentleman. Mind you, when Lizzie gets a good look at his home – Pemberley - it helps her to change her mind. Not that she’s a gold digger or anything but Pemberley is just this incredible place and his servants speak well of him and he is so nice to her and then he has to earn her love.
(Lighting change)
DARCY(entering)
Which is somewhat ridiculous, you must admit.
CATHY
It isn’t ridic … Oh! Mr Darcy!
DARCY
Well, I was right, you know. I mean, we can hardly be equals.
CATHY
You are a gentleman, I am a gentleman’s daughter!
DARCY
Ah! But who is your mother? What are your connections? So vulgar, just like your younger sisters.
CATHY
Hang on! No, that’s Lady Catherine de Burgh’s lines. You don’t feel like that.
DARCY
I told you what I felt when I first proposed. I always knew I was doing you a favour. Big step up for you.
CATHY
How relentlessly arrogant you are! Hah! If you had married that awful Caroline Bingley you would have become even more stuck up and rude than you were to begin with. I brought out the best in you.
DARCY ( fading away to come back as HENRY)
And didn’t I pay for it. What your family cost me first and last…
(lighting change)
CATHY
No. No no no no! (to audience )Our first fight! He wouldn’t say stuff like that, would he? I mean, he might have when he first fell for me - I mean Elizabeth - but men can change, (Henry laughs derisibly)can’t they? Darcy did. He learned humility and how to be a true gentleman.And she learned to not be so quick to judge. Then they got married and lived …. Happily ever after. I know.
HENR
And he changed?
CATHY
Yes … (she takes the book from him). Look – here, read what it says.
HENRY
“ I was spoilt by my parents, who, though good themselves (my father, particularly, all that was benevolent and amiable), allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing; to care for none beyond my own family circle; to think meanly of all the rest of the world; to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! “ .
Yeah, I don’t know. Seems to me money has a lot to do with. Her Mum was always going on about money.
CATHY
It wasn’t about the money …
HENRY (entering, with book)
It’s always about the money, Cathy. I’ve been reading bits of your Jane’s books. Seems like it’s always about the money.
CATHY
Not in that way. Things were different then.
HENRY
I got to admit it though, Janey’s got a pretty good handle on it. But I don’t know about a guy waiting eight yearsfor sex (CATHY reacts, horrified)… er .. a girl… to make love! No … I mean true love!
CATHY
Captain Wentworth didn’t exactly wait around for Anne. He went off in a huff when Anne was persuaded to break her engagement.And he was angry that she allowed other people to influence her. That’s why it’s called Persuasion!
HENRY (fading away to become CAPTAIN WENTWORTH)
Not the strongest of characters, was she? I mean, if she loved him …
CATHY
She was only twenty and they had no money1 (to audience) She loved him and really, if she had married him he probably would not have gone to war so readily and made his fortune on the high seas. But that’s the point. It is all about revolutions in feelings. Second chances! A chance to correct a mistake …
(lighting change)
CAPTAIN WENTWORTH(entering)
A mistake? So you admit it was a mistake when you broke up with me the first time?
CATHY
Yes. No. I mean …
CAPTAIN WENTWORTH
What do you mean? Eight years Anne! You really screwed me up, you know. After you promised to love me forever and then when some neighbour persuades you to break up with me … pouf! It’s over!
CATHY
But we are together now.
CAPTAIN WENTWORTH
Eight wasted years.
CATHY
You don’t seem to have wasted your time! Made a pile of money in the war, elevated to Captain.
CAPTAIN WENTWORTH
What did you expect of me!
CATHY
Well, you don’t seem to have been pining for me. And then the way you carried on after those Musgrove sisters, Frederick Wentworth! It was frankly embarrassing.
CAPTAIN WENTWORTH
Hey! You wouldn’t give me the time of day. Wouldn’t speak to me!
CATHY
I was nonplussed. And your sudden appearance!
CAPTAIN WENTWORTH
You wouldn’t speak to me for weeks!
(lighting change)
CATHY
This simmering resentment – you’ve just got to build a bridge and sail under it! I am sorry, OK? Geez! Anyway, what about that letter you wrote?(to audience as WENTWORTH exits )You know, I was a train when I read that letter…
BOTH:
“You pierce my soul”.
CATHY (cont)
That’s what he wrote. What Wentworth wrote. I cried, right there on the train! The people around me stared so. One girl even asked me what was wrong. “You pierce my soul”! What girl could resist that? I thought … I thought the letter meant absolute forgiveness.
HENRY(entering)
See, you can’t keep a guy hanging on forever. He’s bound to carry a grudge.
CATHY
Then he should speak up. How’s a girl to know if a guy doesn’t say anything?
HENRY
Maybe … if a guy feels that he might ruin what he has if he speaks up. What if, what if the girl you fancy sees you only as a brother?(CATHY beings to overtalk HENRY) What’s a guy supposed to do?(fades away to become KNIGHTLY ad lib as he does)
CATHY
Of course a girl sees a guy as a brother if she has known him all her life. And if all he does is tell her what she is doing wrong. What woman wants to be lectured all the time? And if you mean Knightly, well, at least he is chivalrous and courteous and has really good values. The whole brother/sister thing dissolves when it hits Knightly like a ton of bricks how he feels as he watches Frank Churchill flirt with Emma. It’s pretty interesting that even someone as smart as Georg Knightly doesn’t figure out how he feels until Frank comes to town. But then on the other hand … you’ve have to admit he’s really self-righteous.
(lighting change)
KNIGHTLY(entering, takes her hand as though in a country dance)
You can be very rude. Your treatment of Miss Bates. The Frank Churchill thing. Not to mention Harriet Smith. Badly done, Emma, badly done indeed.
CATHY
Well really! Is that what married life would be? You going to spend our time together telling me what to do and how to do it?
KNIGHTLY
Not if you are sensible. Men of sense do not want silly wives.
CATHY
Are you calling me silly?
KNIGHTLY
Not at all. You are a young woman of uncommon sense when you choose to exercise it.
CATHY
And what was that then, your idea of a proposal?
KNIGHTLY(fading to become EDMUND)
It is difficult when one knows someone for years and years and the relationship is more like that of siblings.
(They look at each other and sigh. Lighting change)
CATHY (to audience)
I suppose so. I mean, think of Edmund in Mansfield Park. If you can get past the whole cousin thing, Edmund is really nice to Fanny but he is sort of shallow. He has done a sort of Pygmalion thing with Fanny – he’s “formed her mind”. So of course, Fanny thinks like him. But he doesn’t stand up for Fanny when his father wants to pack her off to live with her Aunt Norris or when she refuses Henry Crawford. Only ever sees things in terms of his own desires. And in the meantime he is flirting like mad with Mary Crawford.
(lighting change)
EDMUND(entering)
You must admit she is beautiful Fanny. Really hot. Sizzling.
CATHY
Well, I suppose. But I thought you were above being taken in by looks.
EDMUND
A man is a man after all. And Mary played hard to get – something you were never good at. Everyone knew you fancied me!
CATHY
Hey! You were the best of a bad situation. I was taken away from my own family and forced to live with yours and everyone was mean to me except you and I was like what … seven when it all happened.
(to audience as EMUND fades to become HENRY)
(lighting change)
(to audience)He was the only person ever nice to Fanny for years and years. Of course she loved him. Not that he really deserved it. I mean, it isn’t as though he was witty. Or charming. And in the end, even though he and Mary seemed to have loved each other, he eventually falls in love with Fanny. Which is all a bit icky. I guess the best you can say is that he wasn’t a hypocrite.
HENRY (appearing)
So what, Fanny was like what, the silver medal?
CATHY
No. She was right for Edmund. If ever there was a silver medal, it was Colonel Brandon. I mean, after Willoughby!
HENRY
I thought it a bit strange, you know. Brandon has the hots for Marianne because she reminds him of his long lost dead love. Bit morbid, isn’t it?
CATHY
No!
HENRY
Oh yeah!
(They argue a few no/yes)
CATHY
Shutup! Shutup! Anyway, what creature couldn’t swoon when he says “The air is full of spice”. (sighs; eyes closed. As HENRY goes in for the kiss, she moves away so he falls flat on his face)) But like Marianne “ I require only that a man’s taste coincides at every point with mine! He must enter into all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both! He must be –“
HENRY
Perfect?
CATHY
Yes! No!
HENRY
Yes, well, I read Sense and Sensibility and it seems to me that Marianne was a runner up, sloppy seconds …
CATHY (appalled, blustering)
No! Jane got it right … she matched up the right women with the right men.
HENRY
What about Northanger Abbey?
CATHY
Henry Tilney? You know, he was the first hero Jane Austen ever created and I think in some ways, he was her ideal man. Yes … Henry … wasn’t proud or righteous or priggish or resentful or uptight. (dawning realisation as she states his qualities)He was just nice and funnyfrom the beginning and asked Cathy to dance and knew about clothes and entered into her passions and read her favouriteauthor and …
(HENRY has been trying to get CATHY’S attention and finally, frustrated, he is about to hit CATHY over the head with the book …)
Oh! Henry?
(He hits her with the book and she collapses to the group. Initially shocked at what he has done, HENRY panics and runs away.)
(RAPID BLACKOUT)
THE END
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