HENRY IV. Ah, a little light! Sit there...

HENRY IV. Ah, a little light! Sit there around the table, no, not like that; in an elegant, easy, manner!... (To Harold): Yes, you, like that (poses him)! (Then to Berthold): You, so!... and I, here (sits opposite them)! We could do with a little decorative moonlight. It's very useful for us, the moonlight. I feel a real necessity for it, and pass a lot of time looking up at the moon from my window. Who would think, to look at her that she knows that eight hundred years have passed, and that I, seated at the window, cannot really be Henry IV. gazing at the moon like any poor devil? But, look, look! See what a magnificent night scene we have here: the emperor surrounded by his faithful counsellors!... How do you like it?

LANDOLPH (softly to Harold, so as not to break the enchantment). And to think it wasn't true!...

HENRY IV. True? What wasn't true?

LANDOLPH (timidly as if to excuse himself). No ... I mean ... I was saying this morning to him (indicates Berthold)—he has just entered on service here—I was saying: what a pity that dressed like this and with so many beautiful costumes in the wardrobe ... and with a room like that (indicates the throne room)....

HENRY IV. Well? what's the pity?

LANDOLPH. Well ... that we didn't know....

HENRY IV. That it was all done in jest, this comedy?

LANDOLPH. Because we thought that....

HAROLD (coming to his assistance). Yes ... that it was done seriously!

HENRY IV. What do you say? Doesn't it seem serious to you?

LANDOLPH. But if you say that....

HENRY IV. I say that—you are fools! You ought to have known how to create a fantasy for yourselves, not to act it for me, or anyone coming to see me; but naturally, simply, day by day, before nobody, feeling yourselves alive in the history of the eleventh century, here at the court of your emperor, Henry IV.! You Ordulph (taking him by the arm), alive in the castle of Goslar, waking up in the morning, getting out of bed, and entering straightway into the dream, clothing yourself in the dream that would be no more a dream, because you would have lived it, felt it all alive in you. You would have drunk it in with the air you breathed; yet knowing all the time that it was a dream, so you could better enjoy the privilege afforded you of having to do nothing else but live this dream, this far off and yet actual dream! And to think that at a distance of eight centuries from this remote age of ours, so coloured and so sepulchral, the men of the twentieth century are torturing themselves in ceaseless anxiety to know how their fates and fortunes will work out! Whereas you are already in history with me....

LANDOLPH. Yes, yes, very good!

HENRY IV. ... Everything determined, everything settled!

ORDULPH. Yes, yes!

HENRY IV. And sad as is my lot, hideous as some of the events are, bitter the struggles and troublous the time—still all history! All history that cannot change, understand? All fixed forever! And you could have admired at your ease how every effect followed obediently its cause with perfect logic, how every event took place precisely and coherently in each minute particular! The pleasure, the pleasure of history, in fact, which is so great, was yours.

LANDOLPH. Beautiful, beautiful!

HENRY IV. Beautiful, but it's finished! Now that you know, I could not do it any more! (Takes his lamp to go to bed). Neither could you, if up to now you haven't understood the reason of it! I am sick of it now. (Almost to himself with violent contained rage): By God, I'll make her sorry she came here! Dressed herself up as a mother-in-law for me...! And he as an abbot...! And they bring a doctor with them to study me...! Who knows if they don't hope to cure me?... Clowns...! I'd like to smack one of them at least in the face: yes, that one—a famous swordsman, they say!... He'll kill me.... Well, we'll see, we'll see!...

Pirandello, Luigi. Henry IV (Enrico Quarto). Act 2.

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