Act 2 -- The Bridal Bed
Scene 1
(An antechamber to the laboratory of Victor Frankenstein, which has been furnished as a parlor. Stage left a door to the outside; stage right double doors, now closed but offering a view, when open, to the laboratory. Elizabeth and Victor are talking.)ELIZABETH
Am I forgiven, then, for having come
Here where my visits were forbidden?VICTOR (indicating the doors to the laboratory)
This is the sanctum to which I may admit
No visitors.ELIZABETH (teasingly)
Such advice Bluebeard would give
His latest bride: "To every room but one
My dear, the keys are yours."VICTOR
Elizabeth, I know you do but jest,
But lack of sleep has parched the fount
Where laughter has its source.ELIZABETH
In short, I am not welcome here.
VICTOR
You are as welcome as the spring
ELIZABETH
It was in spring, a year ago,
You asked if I would be your wife.VICTOR
Indeed. How quick the time has flown.
ELIZABETH
That day I sang a song for you
(prompting him)
To the South!
To the South…VICTOR (unable to remember)
To the…
ELIZABETH
To the blossoming, sun-dappled South!
VICTOR (joining in, as he begins to remember)
…sun-dappled South!
ELIZABETH (prompting him)
There…
VICTOR (trying to remember more)
There…
ELIZABETH
There, where the ancient…
VICTOR (joining in)
…where the ancient, ageless truths
Of…(Victor hesitates)
ELIZABETH
…Life's geometry…
VICTOR (joining in)
…Life's geometry are writ
Upon, upon…(Victor hesitates )
ELIZABETH
Upon the oleander's boughs.
VICTOR
…the oleander's boughs.
There, there,
There be my spouse…ELIZABETH
There be my spouse…
VICTOR
As I am yours,
As I am…(He breaks off, helplessly.)
ELIZABETH
My answer then was yes.
A year's gone by,
And still my bridal gown
Lies folded in its lavender.VICTOR (reassuringly)
A very little longer while,
I swear, Elizabeth.
My work needs but one missing element
To be complete.ELIZABETH (close to tears)
But at the latest, Victor, when?
A date, a date!(Any answer Victor might give is cut off by the sound of his friends at the door, beginning to sing.)
VICTOR'S FRIENDS (offstage)Dark was the night
And dim beyond recall
When down from heaven's awful height
Our God allowed the fire to fall.ELIZABETH (reassuring victor, who has given a little start of surprise)
It's Henry and Charlotte.
They have prepared a small surprise.(Victor's friends now enter, accompanied by Henry and Charlotte. They are carrying unlighted candles, which they light one by one as they sing, each member of the chorus after the first taking his light from his neighbor's. Thus the level of illumination grows as the music becomes more fervent, both reaching their full intensity only at the end of the hymn, when Elizabeth and Victor -- following the directions in the text -- light the two candles with which they have been supplied. Charlotte sings the hymn with the male chorus of Victor's friends. Henry, rather downcast, comes downstage and stands apart. Victor listens quietly, troubled at first but by the end deeply moved.)
CHARLOTTE
Joy fills our hearts;
The fire flows
From lamp to lamp, from friend to friend,
A gift that, being given, grows…VICTOR’S FRIENDS
…from lamp to lamp, from friend to friend,
A gift that, being given, grows;
A sun eternally reborn
From torch to torch and morn to morn.CHARLOTTE
Thus leaps the love of all mankind --
From spouse to spouse, from child to dam.ELIZABETH (going over to Henry)
Dear Henry, I see your hand in this.
HENRY (dejected)
All that is beautiful and true
Is Charlotte's work.CHARLOTTE
As one flame dies, another flares;
All of one primal fire the heirs.VICTOR’S FRIENDS
All of one primal fire the heirs.
Light now thy torch, Elizabeth, from ours,
And now from flame of hers take thine --
And love her, Victor Frankenstein.HENRY (aside, bitterly)
All that is beautiful and true
Is Charlotte's work.CHARLOTTE AND VICTOR’S FRIENDS
Be life engendered from the light
When, flame to flame, two lovers plight
Undying love…VICTOR’S FRIENDS
…Undying love.
VICTOR (deeply moved)
Oh, God -- that I might share
That life, and join my
Hand with theirs.(surprised, seeing his father who has entered during the hymn)
Father!
VICTOR’S FATHER (taking Victor aside)
As trapped steam turns my factories' wheels,
So Science fuels our progress.
We must have Science.
But, son, in your devotion
Do not neglect
The name of Frankenstein.
We live not for ourselves alone.
Naught can be reaped if naught be sown.VICTOR
Father !
VICTOR’S FATHER
Let me not hear that word "postpone."
It's time you made Elizabeth your own.HENRY (going up to Victor)
Victor, a word.
VICTOR
Another time!
FRIENDS (to each other)
What did his father say to him?
HENRY (masking his bitterness)
One word, good friend -- Elizabeth.
FRIENDS
See how he's pale!
What did his father say to him?HENRY
Can you love her and not see
The pain delay
Engraves in her flesh?FRIENDS
He's pale!
HENRY
You were away
A year, while she
Unremembered --VICTOR
You do me wrong!
FRIENDS
He's pale!
What did his father say to him?HENRY
Our friendship, Victor, is too strong
That ever I could do you wrong.
If I seem cruel, you surely know
It is your own heart speaking so.FRIENDS
His father, fiancée, and friends
Plead to be told what he intends.HENRY
Go to her and tell her now
You will at last fulfill your vow.
Either marriage or release:
If love is lacking, offer peace.FRIENDS
How can one man against such weight
Know his own mind or form his fate?CHARLOTTE (watching Henry)
No need to hear the sad words spoken:
He pleads to have his true heart broken.
If love would grow where it is sown,
Henry nor I would love alone.VICTOR (to himself)
Speak may I not, although she's dear.
I would but add to sorrow fear.There was a thread of love that led
Me through the labyrinth of my dread,
But then it snapped and I am trapped
In darkness love has never mapped.FRIENDS
He's pale!
How can he know his mind?
What did his father say to him?HENRY (to Victor)
If love is lacking, offer peace.
VICTOR’S FATHER (to Victor)
It's time you made Elizabeth your own.
ELIZABETH (aside, heartbroken)
I can remember when we were in love.
I can remember how he smiled.
Our speech was free, our hearts at ease;
All that we did, we did to please.
But now a shadow lies between.
Words die unspoken
Smiles unseen.
So little left of what has been;
Of what has been…VICTOR (to Elizabeth, in a tone of surrender)
You'd have me fix a date. Well then,
Let it be from Saturday a week.ELIZABETH
You're absolute? I may invite
My cousins from Lucerne
And never be disgraced?VICTOR (grimly)
Put this building to the torch
If I ask for more delay.ELIZABETH (nearly overcome)
A week from Saturday!
VICTOR’S FATHER
And if your work should once again
Resist completion?VICTOR
My work -- is through.
What's left
Can all be done tonight.VICTOR’S FATHER
Why then --
(He raises his arms.)
Your attention, please!
I am happy to announce
That my son Victor Frankenstein
And my dear ward Elizabeth
Are to be married on the Fifth of May,
One week from this coming Saturday.
May I now, although the wine
Lies still uncorked within my cellar,
Propose this toast: The happy pair!VICTOR’S FRIENDS
The pair!
VICTOR’S FATHER
Come who would our pledge redeem
With wine my cellars now shall stream.(The chorus begins to leave. Victor’s father follows them, but turns in the doorway.)
Victor? Elizabeth?
VICTOR
Momentarily.
(Victor’s father exits after the chorus. Henry and Charlotte are the last to depart. Each in turn offers imaginary glasses in toast.)
CHARLOTTE
And once again, when wine there is:
My ever dearest, lovely Liz!(Charlotte exits.)
HENRY (magnanimity overcoming his disappointment)
And yet another draught of wine
For my friend, Victor Frankenstein!(When Henry exits, Victor and Elizabeth kiss; he rather dutifully, she clingingly.)
ELIZABETH
Victor, I feel…
Happy…chiefly that…
And yet…I can't explain.VICTOR
In my heart too mere happiness
Is mixed with sentiments
I cannot name. Let us explore
These deeper water of our love
When I am home tonight. But now --ELIZABETH
You must work, I know. And I must join
Our friends below. Until tonight!(She exits, looking at him longingly.)
VICTOR’S FRIENDS (offstage)
Be life engendered from the light
When, flame to flame, two lovers plight
Undying love.VICTOR (grimly)
An hour since
My creation's bride took breath.
Now she must breathe her last.
I am resolved;
It’s for your sake, Elizabeth!(He opens the locked doors and enters his laboratory.)
VICTOR’S FRIENDS (offstage, further away)
Light now thy torch,
Elizabeth, from ours,
And now from flame of hers take thine --
And love her, Victor Frankenstein!(A terrible scream comes from the laboratory as Victor kills the female Creature. Curtain.)
Scene 2
(A bridal chamber in a rustic northern style, with a carved bed decked with flowers. Candles burning near the bed are the only source of illumination. The back of the room is deeply shadowed.(The curtain rises toward the end of an instrumental prelude. Elizabeth is discovered just within the candles’ effective range of illumination, wearing her bridal gown and veil. She has been married that day to Victor Frankenstein. Lost in her thoughts, she runs her hands nervously down her body from her face to below her heart. The touch of the bridal veil is her cue to sing.)
ELIZABETH
A bride,
And not Lavenza now,
But Frankenstein.Through how many nights alone
Have I longed for his plighted word
To be fulfilled?
And now, in a moment, it will.Not Lavenza now, but Frankenstein
And yet, alas,
Within the chambers of my heart
All is darkness absolute.
No tapers burn of joy,
Or bridal blytheness,
And I must feel my way alone,
As down a lightless corridor,
Guided only by the touch
Of fingertips on sweating stone.An hour more, and then we…
(She laughs uncomfortably.)
Doubtless -- doubtless all brides
Have known such fear.
Each time a woman's joined
In wedlock to a man
An ancient sacrifice
Is reenacted,
Fearful to think of
But in the act
Harmless as the sacrifice of Isaac.
No more than Isaac
Have I cause to fear.(She pauses, lost in thought.)
These repinings are unworthy
Of the bride of Victor Frankenstein.(She continues, first with determination, and then with awe.)
School your heart, Elizabeth,
To its conjugal duty,
Be a wife true and welcoming.Tonight, in darkness,
Let Victor discover
That reason to rejoice
You have heard whispered of.
Receive the amazement
Of a man's love.
Through you, by his kiss,
New life shall enter the world.(Elizabeth sits quietly, lost in thought. From the deep shadows at the back of the stage the Creature enters -- or rather emerges. With a knife in its hand it advances confusedly towards Elizabeth, who turns toward it, putting her back to the audience, at the first utterance of' her name. By the third repetition it has come next to her.)
CREATURE
Elizabeth Lavenza? Elizabeth Lavenza? Elizabeth Lavenza?ELIZABETH (frightened)
My name is Frankenstein!
CREATURE (stabbing her as she says the name)
That name is your death.
(A pause. Elizabeth is shocked, hurt, weak, bleeding; she cannot react. The Creature is angry, upset, and confused; it watches her, nearly panting with dismayed emotion. Finally it gains some measure of composure and speaks.
CREATURE
This, Elizabeth, I bring
From your bridegroom,
The man whose fatal name you bear,
Victor Frankenstein.This to my bride
He brought as dower gift.
He sends it with a love
In which there is no pity.
Such a love he taught to me.(He stabs her again.)
ELIZABETH
Who…are you?
CREATURE
I was born without a name,
A being begotten
By man alone.
I am his son
Whose wife you would have been.(Elizabeth regains a measure of strength. She turns away from the Creature to face the audience, revealing bloodstains covering the front of her clothing.)
ELIZABETH (defiantly)
While there is blood
To stain this gown,
Still can I be his wife.
But you, monstrous miscreant,
Can be no son of his.
Even dying, I can deride
A claim so false.
Those vacant eyes,
Those twisted lips,
'That cankered and discolored flesh --(She musters all of her waning strength to hurl these next words at the Creature with one supreme effort.)
Never could such
Have sprung from a root
Healthy and whole.
The son of Frankenstein?
Before a glass
You could not tell such lies.CREATURE (with bitter derision)
A glass? A glass?
My creator had no use
For mirrors, Madam.
He made me with this knife!(It stabs her again, and then continues gloomily.)
From parts of men
Exhumed from paupers' graves,
From organs cut from guts
Of malefactors left to rot
On gallows, from meat gone bad
And blood grown cold --
These materials
He made reanimate in me.
In me you see a man
God had no share in making.
I am the product
Of the mind of Victor Frankenstein.
Has he never spoken
Of his great work?
I am that work.
I am his high ambition.
I am his high ambition realized.ELIZABETH (as if to herself)
He whispered once, he hinted of
Some secret.
I did not wish to hear.
His work, his ambition
Were not concerns of mine.
I was to be his wife,
To bear his children,
To shape for him a human happiness,
To sing as evening
Draws its draperies of shadow
About us close,
A favorite song.
To trust implicitly,
To answer love for love.CREATURE (still derisive, but with growing tenderness)
Yes, yes -- those were your crimes.
I'm glad you can confess them
As you die.
Tell me, Elizabeth,
Was there room within
That human happiness
For such as I?(He stabs her again.)
Look at me, Elizabeth.
The despair in your eyes --
How it feasts,
How it nourishes my soul.ELIZABETH (almost light-headed with weakness, but still with determination)
There's no despair
When love can be
Remembered.
Nor can you, though you rend
My heart, still living, from my breast,
Rob me of love's sublimity.(The Creature, furious, stabs her again.)
I have loved. You have no soul
(These next lines are sung simultaneously.)
For love to enter,
It is you who should despair,
And I, even now,
As I part this life,
Who have reason to rejoice.
For still, as it leaves my veins
My blood is warm,
And still my lips
Remembering his kiss
Have strength to insist
That I have loved
And you can only hate.CREATURE (sadly, almost to himself)
Oh, I could have loved,
Elizabeth Lavenza.
I could have loved
A woman
Formed like myself
By the knife of Victor Frankenstein.
I longed for that with all the soul
You tell me I don't have.I would have lived
With such a one
Happy as beasts
That graze and forage
On the mountainsides.
I woulld have gone with her
To forests men have never reached
And lived as happily as you,
If you had been allowed to live.ELIZABETH (becoming weaker and weaker)
Perhaps. Perhaps.
What might have been
Will never be.
We cannot even guess
What might have been.
If I had lived
We might have gone
To Italy. He promised
That we would.
There is nowhere in the world
So beautiful. So full
Of our humanity.
I would have loved
To live in Italy.I would have loved
I would have loved…(She dies. During the last part of the duet, she has been supported in the Creature's arms. Her death is scarcely perceptible at first. After she dies there is a pause as the Creature looks at her.)
CREATURE (very softly)
I could have loved…
(The Creature lifts her in his arms solemnly and carries her slowly toward the bed. It places her on the bed, composes her limbs with grave deliberation, and spends a long while looking down at her. Its features should suggest some degree of tender regard. Then, without warning, and very quickly, it lifts the knife above his head and plunges it violently into her corpse. Without haste it turns to the back of the stage and merges, in a few strides, into the shadows, as the curtain falls.)