Glorious Ones by Francine Prose

drama itself is so poetic, so compelling, that I will venture to guess that none of you has ever seen anything like it before.
    “The plot is an ingenious one. It concerns a madwoman, a ravishing lunatic, whom all the men love, and who is at last restored to sanity by the God of Love himself—”
    “Why should people pay to watch such a thing on stage?” interrupted Flaminio Scala, in a bitter voice. “They see enough madness every day of their lives.”
    The others, who were dissatisfied with Andreini’s plan without quite knowing why, immediately jumped at Flaminio’s objection, and made it their own. “Exactly!” they cried. “Why should people pay money to hear about something they already know?”
    “It is true that they are familiar with madness,” argued Francesco calmly. “But we are showing it to them in a beautiful form, which they would love to see madness take. And that is the kind of drama they like best of all.”
    “But there is no room for improvisation in it,” cried the Captain. “It will have no spirit, no life.”
    “The life is in the lines,” answered Francesco. “And, once we have memorized them, we will have the freedom to give the play the spirit it deserves.
    “All I am asking,” he continued, after a brief pause, “is that we rehearse it for two weeks, learn our lines, and offer a few performances. And then, if the audience does not seem to like it, we can always return to the old improvisations.”
    The discussion went on for many hours, moving through labyrinths of logic, avenues of argument, dimensions of debate. At last, The Glorious Ones reluctantly agreed. And, the next morning, we began to rehearse The Moon Woman .
    The plot was simple, the dialogue easy to learn.
    Isabella is the beautiful, melancholy daughter of Pantalone the Miser. He keeps her locked in her room, like some wondrous, mad treasure, allowing no one to visit her but Columbina the maid. But one night, as Isabella is staring moodily out her window at the moon, the men of the town catch sight of her, and fall madly in love.
    Columbina explains to them that her mistress is in love with the moon. She is always sad, always disappointed, because her passion is hopeless. The moon will not respond, will not come close, will never be possessed.
    “Earthly men have no chance with her,” says Columbina. “And a bunch of homely fools like yourselves will have less luck than any.”
    But the suitors cannot be discouraged.
    “There are two moons in the sky tonight!” cries Andreini, the Lover, and falls to the floor in a dead faint. Immediately, the Captain begins to bluster her praises in the most grandiloquent language. Knocking loudly on Pantalone’s door, I shout out my most complicated theories, prescriptions, and formulas; I promise to cure the Jew’s unfortunate daughter. Even Brighella is so deeply moved that he cannot stop cursing and shrieking the vilest insults up at the open window.
    Still, Isabella stares at the sky, and will not notice us.
    Then, in the final scene, Armanda Ragusa appears, dressed as Cupid, in a striped silk loincloth, a beaded halter, and a feathered cap. Suspended from the scaffolding by wires, the God of Love shoots one of his golden arrows straight at the madwoman’s heart. And suddenly, Isabella begins to laugh. She takes a ring from her finger, and throws it down at the ground, at Francesco’s feet.
    “An old story,” Armanda sneered bitterly, the first time we ran through the lines. “The Princess in the Tower. Every schoolgirl knows it.”
    And she was quite correct. We had all heard the legend before. I knew it as well as the names of the nerves and bones.
    But we had never seen it played by Isabella. She learned her part perfectly, my patient. Sitting in the pasteboard window, she bore the same heartrending expression on her face which it bore most of the time. And, in the end, when Armanda appeared, dressed in that outrageous attire, Isabella laughed so naturally