I’m Coming Down
G. K. Chesterton has written
a two-act play entitled “The
Surprise,” one of only two plays he
composed. It’s virtually unknown and
rarely enacted.
The play is cast in the
Middle Ages and opens with a friar wandering through a forest. He sees a large
rolling caravan (a trailer with a stage) with handsome life-size puppets lying
about on the stage. The puppeteer stands above the structure.
The friar asks where the
puppeteer is giving his show for he would like to see it. The puppeteer tells
him to sit down and he will give him a private performance.
The man picks up the puppets’ strings and begins to spin
out a romantic tale in which a swashbuckling hero and his friend determine to
rescue a fair damsel in distress. They carry it off with a certain amount of
panache, and the play ends.
The friar applauds, but the
puppeteer confesses that he is very unhappy because he loves his puppets and
they cannot reciprocate his love. He can only manipulate them from above. “If only they were alive,” he muses. The friar falls to
his knees and prays that the puppeteer’s wish will be granted. The curtain falls on the first act.
The second act begins with
the puppets lying on the stage amid their loose strings, but then the
characters begin to stir on their own. They rise and start reenacting the play.
But this time everything goes
wrong. The hero and his friend get drunk and quarrel; they show jealousy over
the heroine; they arrive too late to rescue her—at which point, the puppet master stands up on the roof of
the caravan and shouts, “Stop!
I’m coming down.” And he drops down onto the
stage to save his puppets from themselves.
The play ends at this point,
and Chesterton offers no explanation.[1]
I leave that to you...
DHR
[1] Good metaphors need no explanation. George
MacDonald said, “If I draw a picture of a horse and must explain, “This is a horse,”
I have not drawn a very good picture of a horse.”
