Ah, Pathos

Poor Pierrot discovers he’s not the only one

The Maker of Dreams by Oliphant Down

This fantasy play — a very slight thing — is strangely affecting. At times, I’ll say, it is particularly affecting. At other times, I fear, it goes too far.

But first, we need to remember the rules.

In your classic comedies from oh so many centuries ago, Pierrot is the fool. He is the white-clothed, white-hatted clown. His face is made luminous with paint, his appearance absurd. He dances and capers for his love, Columbine, and she spurns him. For he has nothing, is nothing. He has nothing but his only friend, the beautiful and far, far distant moon.

Pierrot is love’s fool. He is a fool for the audience, too, and quite comic in his way. His behaviour can often be absurd. But it is Pierrot who cries bitter tears; he was the first and greatest of the sad, forsaken clowns, made to be tortured and ever unfulfilled for the entertainment of the mob. Pierrot is, whatever else he is, a terribly tragic figure; and more of us are like him in his predicament than would ever admit it.

This play takes an already tear-inducing archetype and makes it yet more tragic. For Pierrot is accompanied, in this telling, by a companion, a blonde and blue-eyed dancer named Pierrette. The two of them are performers, variety performers (so many tickets for sale for different price ranges — we let anyone in to see the show, don’t you fear!), and they’re trying to scrape together some money for their futures. Pierrot is busy in what he thinks of as promotion. He’s endlessly singing new songs, trying to write good ones. One day, he says, his ship will come in and he’ll have a great song, the song that will make his fortune and perhaps his name. Soon, he will advertise; he’ll put an article in the local paper. Get together an audience. But in the unhappy meantime, Pierrot is discontented.

All of this happens while Pierrette makes the tea and tries with such gentleness to improve his mood.

Pierrot is of the view that they’re merely colleagues. People who work together, who pay each other the minimum necessary attention for the purposes of their labours. If he wants to go off and get married, he announces, he will. And Pierrette, of course, is at perfect liberty — if anyone ever took an interest in her — to get married, too. They can both go into the future apart, and do what they want. The partnership will have run its course, and they will both say thank you, have a nice life, and each move on.

Pierrot is certain that there is a perfect woman, the woman of his dreams, out there in the world. He searches for her every evening, at every performance. Is she the woman he has just seen, the one with a lot of red hair, the woman wearing beads? Pierrot is minded to go out into the night to see if she’s the one for him.

But of course, there is no one out there for poor Pierrette. No one except Pierrot — and of course he could never see it.

I want to give the reader a little background, because I think you might not have grasped the possibility of pathos here.

Pierrot is supposed to be a fool in love. He is laughed at as he tries and fails to make someone care for him. He is ever denied love and love’s affection. But here, he is not the unhappy suitor. Instead, he’s still unsuccessful, but he’s blithe and businesslike and cruel without quite meaning to be. There is someone even more pathetic, even more worthy of pity than Pierrot, someone who loves him — loves him hopelessly and thanklessly, unnoticed, even unseen. A woman who thinks Pierrot is wonderful, if only he can get it all together: who loves his breaking spontaneously into song. Who does everything she can to make his life a little better, to help him bear his burdens, who would think all her efforts more than paid for by a smile.

It’s the idea that this man — usually the doomed romantic — is heedless of someone who loves him so much and so desperately. Someone who wants nothing more than to make him happy. I’ll be honest, folks: It had my eyes briefly misting up. We’ve all been there, surely, in Pierrette’s place. Or we’ve all been almost there.

A better play than this would have stuck the landing. You know how it’s got to end: the audience cannot be left in tears and it’s probably impolitic to turn this into farce. And so we have the introduction of a third party, an external force. And just for a moment, this being a fantasy, it really is magical. A man arrives after Pierrot has charged out into the cold night to find his love — a robust old man with kindly eyes, the sort of man people naturally take to. He seems to know Pierrette by name, knows what she wants and cannot have; and says, after some introduction, that he is the man who makes all of the dreams of the world.

This play has a lot of potential for pathos. If it can make me begin to tear up a hundred years later, it’s doing something right. Modern readers — including me — may find parts of it too sentimental and well worth ditching in performance. But that’s the price we must pay for being so caught by Pierrette’s gentle pain.