HENRY II - The Hell Monologue
King Henry II despairs and imagines a vision of Hell that might await him.
HENRY II - The Hell Monologue
This scene is taken from the middle of a tragedy that I may never finish, but I believe that the central speech stands on its own, and I wanted to share it with y’all. It’s almost Halloween, so I felt like uploading something spooky, and there is nothing scarier than the grim reality of Hell.
If you want to read my introduction to the characters and the story, you can find it here. The complete first scene from act one of the play can be found here.
The Great Hall - Normandy
HENRY
‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’
Oh, will nothing rid me of that turbulent speech!
Willingly, aye, but unwittingly
I spoke the infernal words,
And every syllable proved evil,
Every sound a curse.
Now I owe Thomas
To tear out my vicious, guilty tongue,
Like the eyes of oblivious Oedipus,
When he saw what he had done!
[Casts aside crown and mantle, and EXIT.]
ARNULF
First we bewailed our one lord,
And now I fear we shall mourn the other.
Does Heaven so soon with one death order
The death of both our masters adored?
RANULF
Things go ill indeed.
To save the king, we must act soon,
Or under the power of the lunatic moon,
Sorrow may more sorrow breed!
[picking up mantle]
Come, come! Let’s away.
ARNULF [picking up crown]
God bring the day.
[EXEUNT.]
[ENTER HENRY, dressed in sack-cloth and covered in ashes.]
HENRY
“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”
How those words, those words
Echoed through the hall!
Did it thus among the blooming buds,
The trees that sprung naively green?
When man first used his teeth like fangs,
When lips began to mangle form,
And tongue now tasted sin and hunger,
Did the fatal bite reverberate?
Did the gnashing noise resound?
When the apple slipped from Adam's hand
And fell with the weight of our perdition,
Did it thunder where it struck the ground?
Oh, all of Eden surely trembled,
For our very natures were torn and shaken.
Adam’s mouth once doomed the human race;
Mine dooms this land with Becket's blood.
Interdiction! Gone Grace!
And now shall the prowling Lion sever
Our damnèd souls from our helpless flesh,
From hope and light and love?
And life, oh Life!
Shall life become as death?
An empty, dreary void?
A nothing-world in which to suffer
Our self-made fever, mad forever?
Oh, Hell is a me-sized hole,
A vastness the length of a single cell,
A pocket full of dark eternity,
A prison of limitless space and time
In which to fall and fall and fall,
Alone:
A cage the shape of the human soul.
Infinity, insanity,
Oh vanity of vanities...
A universe of one.
There is no faith, nor hope, nor charity;
Of light, no glint, of end, no hint.
And suffering without meaning is
The only meaning for which we’re meant!
No agony’s so absolute
As absence of the Trinity.
Cast off from all things above,
Cut off from the Creator’s love,
There’s only one way left to go:
Down! Down! Down!
The final despondent descent…
Ashes, to ashes and cinders
We sinners are sent.
And sick of self, sick of same,
Tired of the solipsistic name,
Of ego, me, and mine—
Mine, all mine! The fault is mine!
My eyes and mind, O Christ: I'm blind!—
And full of ourselves and nothing else,
With hopeless, bitter hope we try, we try
To find another, any other,
Whatever sinner, tormentor—
It does not matter!
Just someone else!
Some long lost brother or lover
Must also share this Hell of hells
—Long! Long! Long!—
In Death beyond death,
Abyss without extent,
Existing without event...
—We yell and howl and bawl,
We scream and shriek and screech,
We weep and wail and cry
One last time…
…But it's only the lonely echoes we find.
Echoes… echoes… echoes...
Eternal, everlasting, hollow echoing,
Our own recoiling, backfiring crime.
It ricochets and strikes again:
Your sin—You’re sin—You are sin!
Lament.