ACT III--THE SCARLET LETTER 

[The opening scene is the same as for Acts I and II.]

JACK
I had an undergraduate crush on Nathaniel Hawthorne long before the one I had on Shaw. I admired his skill in constructing a story, and the profundity of his probings into those "secret places of the human heart."

CHRISTINE
That was before you were in the Air Force, wasn't it?

JACK
Back when I was very young . . . and aspired to be a great writer myself. Hawthorne was the master--not James, who was too remote, not Twain, Hemingway's model, not Hemingway, everyone else's model at the time, not Melville, whom I hardly knew existed then--but Hawthorne, the master craftsman who was also a moral teacher. If I could only capture his truth for our time--what he'd done for Spenser, Milton, Bunyan--it would be a noble achievement. I actually wrote a hundred pages of a novel modeled on The House of the Seven Gables, using the old house I’d grown up in in Northern Illinois and passing three generations in review--while the ghosts of hidden sins, and a howling St. Bernard dog, haunted the place. The most admirable way I’d imitated Hawthorne was to burn that manuscript when I got back from Okinawa and was trying to write again. [Pause.] I'd first thought of a dramatic adaptation of The Scarlet Letter back before the Korean War, when I was re-reading the novel for an American Literature course. I noticed how easily it could be visualized as a series of scenes, most involving just two characters, and thought all it would take would be to lift out the dialogue and write a few stage directions. At the time I thought this was a personal discovery, but later found it to be a cliché of Hawthorne criticism. I didn't do anything with it at the time

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CHRISTINE
I think that's great. But then you did decide to do The Scarlet Letter as a play . . . and Mother played the part of Hester.

JACK
Yes, but it wasn't easy. Back in school, an older "Budweiser" man, and then a theatre major, I considered that dramatic adaptation again. I abstracted about twenty-five typed pages of dialogue as the first step, but soon discovered there'd be much more to it than just adding stage directions. Hawthorne does a lot, particularly in introducing supernatural suggestion, in long passages of exposition. Then how do you get a baby to cry in the right places? Betty did have problems handling "little Pearl"--but even worse is trying to duplicate the variations Hawthorne rings on the symbolism of the scarlet letter without the resource of narrative exposition. However, by then I'd come to believe that anything a novelist can do a dramatist can do better, was reading Shakespeare and feeling sorry for Hawthorne, living in an age that denied itself the revelation of tragic drama in verse. Still, the more involved I became the more admiration I had for his sense of theatre, particularly his skill in closing a scene--his sense of curtain. While it became clear it was going to be more difficult than I’d imagined, I still felt that The Scarlet Letter could be a very powerful play.

CHRISTINE
And you did it as your master's thesis?

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CHRISTINE
But, if I were to do it, I would feel like I was trying to re-capture Mother's identity as well as Hester Prynne's.

JACK
It would be true if I sat down to read the novel again today--my memories of Betty and Hester can't be separated. The pride to challenge the whole community--and prevail--the strength of character first to seduce a Dimmesdale and then to protect him, the combination of high candor and profound mystery in her eyes, the earth-mother, the eternal Eve, the suffering woman archetypes synthesized in the being of Hester Prynne--and, most of all, the rare beauty, radiating pristine innocence, beauty genuinely tempting to a man not easily tempted, that might well distract a saint from his appointed rounds. Do you know Mishima's story The Priest of Shiga Temple and His Love?" 

CHRISTINE
I heard you discuss that story once, with Shoko and the countess . . . and Mother. When she was there at Shangri-La. 

JACK
When you were only six, or seven? [Christine smiles.] It's an eternal mystery. There's Angelo's comment, in Shakespeare's 

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CHRISTINE
And Jordan was to be in it, too.

JACK
I wanted him for Dimmesdale, of course, which amused him. He said he'd be a better Chillingworth, a better devil than fallen Puritan saint, a Childe-Harold-type Romantic, masochistically falling upon the thorns of life he might have walked around--a character for whom he had little sympathy. He expected to be doing Shakespeare's Richard III, and said he'd just have to play a little older Richard to do Chillingworth. But he knew that, if Richard was to be his farewell to the college stage, I expected The Scarlet Letter to be mine, so said he'd accept the challenge of playing a character he personally despised, as good discipline for an actor. And, after he'd seen an early draft of the script, he began to make the kind of suggestions that showed he was already thinking of what he would be doing with the role. 

CHRISTINE
I'll bet he was good . . . I can just picture him standing on the scaffold! Or there with Mother in the forest. 

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CHRISTINE
And she didn't tell you she'd do it until . . . until that night you . . . fixed her hair on the steps of the scaffold . . . did she?

JACK 
That's right. She had almost told me she wouldn't at that cast party after The Rainmaker, a day or two after I had told her that I wouldn't be going down to Miami after all, but was going to stay home and work on the script for my project. [The light shifts, Jack talking to Christine as he walks over to join the party in progress. Christine exits to come on with Tom.] As Betty came in, with Tom, she walked right up to me and suddenly fished a copy of The Scarlet Letter out of her purse.

BETTY
I just finished reading this this afternoon. 

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BETTY
I had to do something during the day to take my mind off of the pressures of the performance. And this book is short. 

TOM
[Smiling.] Yeah . . . the tension before the game. That's the worst. I sometimes read, too.

JACK
[Almost to himself.] But not The Scarlet Letter, I'll bet. 

BETTY
You really think I'd be right for . . . Hester? 

JACK
I think it's one of the half dozen greatest female characters in all the world's literature, and that you'd be absolutely perfect for it.

BETTY
Do you think so? If it were me, I'd point right up there at that preacher in the very first scene and holler out, "There he is! He's the one who did it!" And all that old-fashioned language--"dost thee," and "beest thou"--are you going to change that? And what is she supposed to do at the end? Sit down and cry? She ought to turn those "worthy magistrates" ears blue for half a mile in every direction. No . . . I don't like it.

TOM
You're talking about The Scarlet Letter? I read that in high school. But is it a play? Let me see it. 

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TOM
[Sounds sincere.] Hey . . . sorry you won't be down there, Jack. But you'll be able to watch the game on television, won't you? You'll probably see it better that way. The way I'd rather see a game. We watch a lot of game films, you know . . . and . . .

JACK
[Noticing Betty getting restless.] You don't want to do it then? Okay. I might decide not to do it anyway. Nobody else has much faith in it, either--not Dr. Gillis, not even Jordan.

BETTY
What would Jordan do?

JACK
Dimmesdale--the preacher--the one who did it.

BETTY
Would he? [Laughs.] Well, I suppose . . . then I really would turn him in . . . and insist on child support. 

JACK
[A little snotty.] All right. You're a star now. You can begin to be choosy in the parts you take. I'll count you out.

BETTY
Don't give me any of that "I discovered you, and you owe it to me." But I didn't say I wouldn't. I might . . . for a friend. If Jordan will. But I still don't think I'd feel comfortable as . . . Hester Prynne . . . is that how you pronounce the name? 

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JACK
Would you like to see the script I have so far? [Tom looks up, then sees that Jack is asking Betty.] 

BETTY
No. I read the book, Jack--isn't that enough for now? 

JACK
[Lights down to leave him spotlighted as he moves back to Christine.] She dismissed me with a queenly wave of her hand, then steered Tom over toward where Jordan and Dr. Gillis were debating something, then, as Tom shook hands all around, they started talking about the football game. Betty didn't talk to me again until I was leaving. After sulking there in a corner for a while, I got my coat and started to go. [Lights up on Christine.] At the door, I felt a hand on my shoulder, as Betty asked, "Is it really true that you see me as Hester Prynne?" I said, "Yes, ma'am, I do." Then she said, "Well, you work hard on that script over this vacation--then I'll know you're thinking about me while I'm gone." She laughed, and continued laughing as she went back toward the punch bowl. I didn't see Betty again until I saw her on national television at the Orange Bowl game. I couldn't help moving her from the stands to the scaffold in my imagination, and putting a tidy red letter A in place of the blue KU on that bosom the cameraman kept focusing on. 

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JACK
But she was a different girl when she came back from Miami, and, after putting me through the studied alienation of that final exam period, she herself had initiated the consummation of our agreement that she would be my Hester. But we didn't move in with one another . . . not in those days . . . any more than Hester and Dimmesdale did. She had been very passionate, but then avoided me completely for two or three days, during which her sorority sisters even refused to call her to the phone. Then, for a week or so after we were talking again, I proposed various plans for meeting, involving elaborate secrecy and security-- like sneaking her in the back door of my apartment building while I created a diversion out front, or taking separate bicycle paths to meet out in the country on a Sunday afternoon.

CHRISTINE
[Laughing.] And what did she say to ideas like that?

JACK
She listened, but wouldn't hear of it. Finally, about two weeks later, she said, "No, that was a mistake, Jack. It's not that it's too dangerous. We shouldn't have done it at all. You just caught me in a weak moment." I didn't say, "Hey, wait a minute! I was the one who was caught in a weak moment," but I thought it. "It's important to the play for us to bury our sin in the past," she said. And I acted as if that made sense to me. I sure didn't tell anybody . . . though many may have guessed that we were concealing something. Anyway, as the semester got under way, I got the formal approval to go ahead from Dr. Gillis, whose interest had picked up a little after he had looked 

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CHRISTINE
And you did almost everything yourself.

JACK
Almost everything. A few evenings later I met with Jordan and Betty, to read through the scenes they had together and make sure that they were really with me before I went out to recruit the rest of the cast. Jordan always read well, and, wherever he had trouble with the reading of a line I could be pretty sure that it was my fault, and marked it for revision. But Betty, never a particularly good cold reader, had more trouble than ever in some places, while she read other passages, particularly those closest to Hawthorne, as if those "thou's" and "thee's" that she had been so concerned about were her natural idiom. I was watching her carefully, for any sign of her attitude toward the character, but she was very businesslike. It puzzled me--this strange submissive resistance, and I was tempted to provoke a reaction that I could read more clearly. Did she begin to feel the character or didn't she? But, since she'd pulled back, making me apprehensive about just where I stood with her myself, I thought, "Better not. If she's willing to take the role, I'll take that for now." I had confidence in the play to bring her spirit out. Hester Prynne was in there, I knew. 

CHRISTINE
That's probably what she was searching for too. 

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CHRISTINE
She was still busy with the Shakespeare play, of course.

JACK
But not very . . . Anne only has that one good scene early in the play. But I didn't want to work with her much before Jordan was available. I'd finished casting and begun rough blocking before Richard III opened, reading lines myself, and using people from other scenes, since Jordan and Betty wouldn't be there, for I had a lot of technical problems to work out. I had two other actors who were very good. Dan Parker, my roommate, was playing Chillingworth. He'd had six years of professional experience--two years doing radio and television commercials, repertory work--and had come back to school for the advanced degrees that'd help him find an academic base. The last I heard, he was director at a little college in Missouri-- Dr. Parker, presiding over the local theatre activity--just what he wanted--and I hope he's as happy a man as he deserves to be. 

CHRISTINE
I've seen your pictures of him. Always with a big smile. 

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CHRISTINE
People don't appreciate how much work there is doing a play.

JACK 
And I'd beefed up the part of Mistress Hibbins considerably, using her for much of the exposition, and for actual comic relief--which I definitely didn't want from Chillingworth--and increased these functions during rehearsals. Kay Adams was playing the part, the girl we had expected to play Eliza the previous summer, and she was able to catch exactly the balance of crazy old lady and real witch that I wanted. I worked out a lot of the staging with the two of them--reading through, re-writing or re-blocking, then reading through again. 

CHRISTINE
And people are delighted to do all that extra work--which they would complain about if it were for anything but a play. 

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CHRISTINE
But that was the first Shakespeare play she was in, wasn't it? That must have been an overwhelming experience in itself.

JACK
Perhaps. I didn't go to the cast party for Richard III. Remembering the last cast party, I wanted to keep things as tidy as possible between Betty and me while we were doing our play. [He walks over to the apartment he shares with Dan as he's talking, and sits down.]

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DAN
You should have been there, Jack. [Starts fixing bacon and eggs for both.] But what is it with Betty? She got into an argument with Jordan, and I thought he might take on that football player--which might have left you looking for a new Dimmesdale. Does she have something going with Jordan? I always thought Jordan . . . well . . . who knows what goes on in the forest? She doesn't have Tom's ring around her neck any more, but came with him, and left with him. I really thought, in Chillingworth mode, that it was you and Betty now, meant to check when you were asleep to see if you had a scarlet letter branded on your chest. [Gives Jack a Chillingworth look.]

JACK
Hunh! An argument with Jordan? I can't imagine what could have provoked that. But she left with Tom? That's interesting. And Jordan got mad enough to fight? Had he been drinking?

DAN
Some, no doubt. But he wasn't drunk enough to want to fight. He doesn't get drunk that way--could drink us both under the table and never show it. Someone said it was a remark Hazen made about Jordan's role in your play, or his relationship to Betty, that ticked him off. But Betty and Jordan were hot at each other before Hazen got involved, so it was more likely something Jordan said to him. But Betty hustled her football player out of there before any blows were thrown, which gave everyone something else to talk about. 

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DAN
I'm ready, Jack. You know Jordan got that year's scholarship at the Old Vic, don't you? Or maybe you don't. He just found out himself yesterday. That's what he was high on, if anything.

JACK
[A pause.] No, I didn't know that. Well . . . it's not surprising. He is the best, and I know how badly he wants the training in Shakespeare. But that does change things. He was planning to go to New York, you know . . . [Walking to the center of the stage, to meet Jordan there, but as if talking to Christine on the way.] I didn't add, "and Betty was planning to go with him." I couldn't stop thinking about it, but didn't want to talk about it, not with Dan. I met with Betty and Jordan that evening, and things were a little tense. Jordan got there before Betty did and he was telling me about the scholarship when Betty came in.

JORDAN
It's a dream come true, Jack. Exactly what I need. I'll be going to England late this summer and will be gone for close to a year. [Christine comes in as Betty--then he's addressing her.] It means I'll have to postpone New York, for a year. Then, who knows what will come of this. [Betty returns his look.]

JACK
Well, let's work through your forest scene. I'll read Pearl's lines. Betty and I'll set it up. Start with, "There is no Black Man!" after Pearl asks if that's who they hear coming. 

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JACK
It is the minister. Yes, now I see.
And, Mother, see his hand above his heart!
Is it because he took the Black Man's pen, 
And when he wrote his name in that big book,
The Black Man set his mark in that same place?
But, Mother, why does he not wear his mark
Outside his garments . . . even as thou dost?

BETTY
Pray go now, child! Tease me another time.
I'll call thee when we've finished talking here.
Stray not beyond the babble of the brook. 
[After a moment, Hester calls, faintly.]
Hist! Arthur Dimmesdale!
[Louder, but hoarsely.] Arthur Dimmesdale! Here!

JORDAN
Who speaks to me? [Seeing the letter.] It's Hester! Hester Prynne! And is it thou? And art thou still in life?

BETTY
Why even so! As such has been my life
These seven years! And thou? Dost thou yet live?

JACK
[As their reading is muted . . . to come back up with the end of the scene.] Betty was in control, a sort of desperate passion bursting out as she let her hair down and made her pitch for him to run away

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BETTY
[Coming back up.] We must allow familiarity
Some time to work . . . to overcome her fear . . .
For thou art yet a stranger to the child.

JORDAN
Yes, so it doth appear. But, Hester . . . now . . .
What must we do? For I am like a child,
And look to thee to lead where we must go.

BETTY
[Coming up to him and taking his hands.]
We must make plans to spirit us away . . .
[They both then look to Jack.]

JACK
Coming along . . . but shakey. Shall we do it one more time?

JORDAN
Let's let it be for now, Jack. I know I've got to get into this scene, tune in on Betty better than I am . . . but not tonight. I'm no doubt just too wound up on this news, feeling that I'm finally going to escape from this Puritan community. [He sweeps his hand in a half circle that includes everything, but finishes looking at Betty again, and keeps looking at her until she just looks away.] I'm just spinning now.

[Jordan leaves. Jack is sitting in one of the seats in the second row, legs thrown over the back of the seat in front, Betty on the front edge of the scaffold, adjusting the cap she is wearing.] 

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BETTY
No . . . I don't feel like rehearsing . . . and I'm not in that mood, either. But I do have something I need to talk to you about.

JACK
Oh? What? [He starts to come up to join her.] 

BETTY
No, you stay there . . . and I'll stay here . . . on the scaffold.

JACK
Dan tells me that you stopped a fight at the party last night. [Laughs.] I wondered if the problems here this evening were coming from Jordan's excitement . . . or what happened there. Is it because Jordan won't be able to take you to New York?

BETTY
Yes. I wanted to go to New York--and I did expect Jordan to take me. But that's the least of my problems right now.

JACK
Well, let's think about summer after the play. You're going to be great as Hester Prynne--just as I knew you would. If you do that for me, I might take you to New York.

BETTY
More Hester than you know, Jack . . . I'm pregnant. [Jack jumps, making Betty laugh, nervously.] 

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BETTY
I've known it for a couple of weeks . . . and I'm pretty sure that Roger Prynne is not the father.

JACK
Well . . . don't you think we should get married?

BETTY
[The tone of her laughter changing, as he come up on stage to join her.] You're such a Puritan, Jack . . . one of those godly magistrates yourself. But I should marry somebody, I suppose. [Looking into his eyes.] And why not you? [She puts out a hand, to keep him quiet, which he then takes in his.] Yes, I wanted to go to New York . . . wanted to be a professional actress. I didn't want to get pregnant.

JACK
Well, we could still go to New York, Betty . . . I . . .

BETTY
And wait for the baby. It would be ridiculous. No, it would be better to go to . . . where did you say they had offered you a job? . . . to Nebraska . . . to somewhere where they still believe in babies, and things like that . . . and just hide!

JACK
[Moves forward on the stage, taking the light with him.] I thought that she might cry, but she didn't, just stood there quietly holding my hand, as if totally submitting herself to an uncontrollable fate. I was willing to run off anywhere with her after she had let her hair down

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CHRISTINE
[Laughs.] Even run off to Nebraska?

JACK
Don't laugh. You were born there . . . so you're a Nebraskan.

CHRISTINE
And proud of it . . . though I don't know much about the state.

JACK
And the play went perfectly. Maybe that was what it needed, the hidden love affair--which we at least tried to keep hidden. Betty and I suddenly seemed to be on the same wave length, tuned to each other, both feeling a little guilty, but sublimating it into our work on the play. Chillingworth was lurking around the edges, reading the clues we were leaving him, Mistress Hibbins had an appropriate "I know more than I'm telling about what goes on here on these dark nights" posture, and Jordan's reaction was just right, too. Sometimes it was as if he knew about us, as he watched me work with Betty and was sharp enough to read the echoes, but sometimes it was as if he had his own secret, and that it, too, had something to do with Betty.

CHRISTINE
As if he were the father?

JACK
Well . . . I could believe him when he put his hand over his heart, as he looked at her on the scaffold. And Betty dominated 

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CHRISTINE
That's true, isn't it? A good play brings out all these emotions . . . which is one reason it's so exciting to be in one.

JACK
And I loved working with Betty this way. I thought we'd found the ideal relationship. I couldn't compete with Jordan as an actor, or the pure charisma of a Tom Hazen, but there she was, doing my play (or Hawthorne's play as I'd read it), under my direction. I'd written the play with her in mind as Hester, doing much of the work when I'd thought she might be going off with Tom. But that didn't matter--she was still my Hester. Even the fact that we could now be lovers was just an extra dividend.

CHRISTINE
That's a nice way to put it . . . an extra dividend.

JACK
I wasn't her leading man, nor was it as her director that the relationship was best defined--but as her playwright, providing 

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CHRISTINE
What?

JACK
It got out of my hands completely. Whether it was Betty, or Hawthorne . . . or Hester Prynne asserting her spirit over all of us across the years . . . I began to just watch it happen. I thought I knew Hester when I began, but by the time I finally saw Betty as Hester on stage, in the last rehearsals and all three nights of the performance, she was too complicated for one man to know. I'd be in bed with Betty at night, and imagine her as Hester Prynne standing on the scaffold, or letting down her hair in the forest, and think, "This is that woman. And I'm holding her in my arms." Betty did the play off-Broadway, ten years later . . . and so many other great roles . . . was perfect as the countess . . . but I don't think she ever surpassed the Hester Prynne she did for me, as a college sophomore. I may be biased, but the way she dominated Jordan when they were together on stage in this play was . . . the ultimate seduction! Of course my own ecstatic state at the time may well have something to do with my reaction as a critic, too . . . and with my memories. But it was . . . special. 

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JACK
Yes . . . I was. The Sunday after our last performance I took Betty for a long drive. Dr. Gillis had been delighted by our play, which meant my M.A. was assured. I could have the job at Wellington College--with its brand-new theatre--if I wanted it. But I was more concerned about what Betty wanted. She had two years to go for her degree, and Dr. Gillis wanted her to stay . . . but then there was the baby. I finally pulled into a roadside parks, and opened with the question, "Well, Hester, now what?" Betty said, "We get married and go to Nebraska, Jack." And it was just that simple. We were married two days after graduation ceremonies at which Jordan and Tom received B.A.s and I got my M.A. It may have been obvious to some by that time that she was pregnant, but no one said anything . . . at least not to me. Jordan and Tom were both there, and I couldn't resist wondering, as Tom kissed the bride, and Jordan smiled, if either of them might be the father of our little Pearl--but I knew that I might be. And I also knew that I was willing to take Betty in any case. Standing there next to her I felt that I had won the prize, and was not yet much concerned about the child.

CHRISTINE
Well, thank you . . . for this candid appraisal.

JACK 
Sorry . . . I'm just telling it like it was. As we talked with Jordan about his plans, Betty's voice shook a little. He didn't have to be in England until late summer and was making plans with a friend to schedule a sort of cross-country tour doing a program of short Shakespeare pieces--a one-man show. 

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JACK
Yes, on sudden impulse, it seemed, he suggested that we go with him. He and Betty could do their courtship scene from Richard III, and whatever else would make a program. I had an abridged version of Othello I'd started as a class project, that would play in about half an hour, and Jordan said, "Well, let's look at it, Jack. But I'd want to do Iago. You'd have to do Othello--in blackface--which would allow you to strangle your wife every evening . . . for being unfaithful." I just looked at Betty, but none of us even smiled. She and I had talked a little about summer theatre, but nothing available would be as good as the things we'd done in the last year, so this was the best offer we'd had--and with Jordan--so we took it. It turned out to be a fiasco . . . but memorable . . . a genuine adventure.

CHRISTINE
[Laughs.] I've heard Mother tell her Oklahoma City story . . . more than once.

JACK
And I'm sure it got better every time. We canceled the western half of the tour, and Jordan went to spend the time he had left before going to England in Estes Park with his mother. We'd sent everything we owned to Nebraska, and followed it a little earlier than expected. But by the end of summer I was looking forward to a year at Wellington College, where Betty could have the baby and I could write, and get some good, solid journeyman directing experience. Then we'd have time to make plans and appraise opportunities. So it was off to Nebraska for the newlyweds. And that's where you were born.

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