Out Lines – Episode 8

Episode Transcript

[ music ]

0:00:01.4 Virginia Baeta as Salome: You’re proud of what you are, aren’t you?

0:00:03.0 David Leeper as The Prisoner: Why not?

0:00:04.6 Chris Weikel as Lane: You’ve got the wrong climax going for you.

0:00:06.7 Karen Stanion as Gladys: Something tingling with excitement is about to take place.

0:00:10.4 VB: Why do we do that?

0:00:11.7 Mark Finley: I don’t know, overbearing parents.

0:00:14.4 MF: Hello and welcome to Out Lines, an LGBTQ theater podcast where we look back in time to get a clear picture of our community and our culture today. I’m Mark Finley, Artistic Director of TOSOS, director, playwright and servant to Simon.

0:00:30.3 Jordan Schildcrout: I’m Jordan Schildcrout, and when I’m not writing theatre scholarship about LGBTQ theatre history, I’m taking care of a beautiful and bullying cat named Jupiter.

0:00:40.4 VB: And I’m Virginia Baeta, and when I’m not trying to get my cat – Meatball – off of my lap, I’m an actor, a playwright, and well, also a person very excited to share this episode with you today. The Prisoner is on stage, the climax of Now She Dances! approaches, and we’re going to spend this episode looking deeply at the crux of Doric’s argument. And also a story that has moved and motivated so many of us for over a century, the trials of Oscar Wilde.

0:01:09.0 JS: So fasten your seatbelts, we have a lot to cover over the next two episodes.

0:01:12.8 MF: I’m here for it, let’s get started.

0:01:16.0 JS: When we last left Now She Dances!, The Prisoner had been taken from the summer house and was brought before Salome. Salome, The Prisoner, Lane and Bill are the only characters in the garden.

0:01:30.3 The Prisoner: Is this some kind of game?

0:01:33.3 Salome: Game?

0:01:34.2 The Prisoner: A fantasy trip with me as the sex object.

0:01:36.4 Salome: You want to play games?

0:01:38.5 VB: This is a scene that is a dance. This is the dance in many ways.

0:01:43.7 JS: I think that’s a beautiful point.

0:01:45.0 MF: Yeah. And you do say, I mean, The Prisoner does say “A fantasy trip with me as some sex object?” So he does say it right out.

0:01:53.1 VB: Yeah.

0:01:53.7 MF: And he does not leave or say, “Let me out, what are you people? You’re all crazy,” which would be you know, the normal response. He doesn’t do that.

0:02:00.6 VB: Or try to enlist help from the audience.

0:02:02.7 MF: Right, everybody else has. He doesn’t.

0:02:05.3 VB: And he would be… If you were thinking about this like is it okay, I’m gonna look at this totally realistically, that would be the first place you would go. “I have been kidnapped by these weirdos in these costumes and you’re my peer, so help me out here,” but he doesn’t do that.

0:02:19.4 MF: I also love that you brought up interrogation ’cause that’s what it is. But what I’m loving is Salome is both good cop and bad cop within the same line.

0:02:31.9 Salome: Did you do it?

0:02:33.0 The Prisoner: No, I did not.

0:02:35.9 Salome: What didn’t you do?

0:02:38.3 The Prisoner: I was innocently walking along West Street.

0:02:41.3 Salome: I thought you people called it cruising.

0:02:43.9 The Prisoner: Right, it’s funny, I’m laughing. Is there a telephone here?

0:02:49.4 Salome: I said sit down. No? Stand. Do precisely as you please. Should you wish to sit down, these are chairs. Lane, function, give our guest some champagne.

0:03:03.5 The Prisoner: No, thanks.

0:03:04.5 Jay Thomas as Bill: Want me to put him away now?

0:03:07.4 Salome: Fine, don’t have champagne. I’ll have some. He can share from my glass. My name is Salome.

0:03:16.1 The Prisoner: I asked to use a telephone.

0:03:20.6 Salome: And you?

0:03:20.6 The Prisoner: Me what?

0:03:21.8 Salome: Your name.

0:03:23.3 The Prisoner: Where’s the phone?

0:03:25.0 Bill: Come near me, I’ll bust you in the face.

0:03:27.4 Salome: Are you a phone freak?

0:03:29.3 The Prisoner: I’m allowed one phone call.

0:03:31.4 Salome: Why won’t you tell me your name?

0:03:34.9 MF: And it’s interesting at this point. Probably because it shifts a little bit. Prisoner starts asking other people for help.

0:03:44.2 VB: We’re also tipping into the movement about names.

0:03:47.5 MF: Yes, yes. But before we get that, we get another reference to The Prisoner recognizing Lane from somewhere.

0:03:57.6 VB: Mm-hmm, yes.

0:03:58.3 MF: And again, we’re going back to Doric’s favorite target of the closeted homosexual.

0:04:05.0 The Prisoner: What are you supposed to be? The butler?

0:04:07.8 Lane: On occasion.

0:04:10.8 The Prisoner: I’ve seen you somewhere before.

0:04:13.3 Lane: It’s hardly likely.

0:04:17.3 The Prisoner: Sure. Some piss elegant bar on the Upper East Side.

0:04:19.0 Lane: You’re mistaken.

0:04:20.9 The Prisoner: Ah. Yes, I understand.

0:04:25.1 Lane: I would prefer you didn’t.

0:04:27.8 MF: It’s unmistakably a reference to the Townhouse, just sidebar, is Townhouse still there?

0:04:35.2 JS: I really wouldn’t know.

[ laughter ]

0:04:35.4 MF: Oh, okay. Alright now, that really is a sidebar.

0:04:39.6 VB: Yes. So, earlier on, Salome tells The Prisoner, my name’s Salome, and The Prisoner at this point demands to have a telephone. She asks a couple of more times, why won’t you tell me your name, you’re not telling me your name, etcetera, and The Prisoner is appealing for help from Bill, from Lane and then…

0:05:00.3 The Prisoner: What name would you like me to have?

0:05:01.3 Salome: Name yourself.

0:05:02.7 The Prisoner: I am Iokannan.

0:05:04.3 Salome: Don’t be irreligious.

0:05:06.2 The Prisoner: Alexander the Great?

0:05:06.7 Salome: Don’t be pretentious.

0:05:09.2 The Prisoner: Achilles.

0:05:09.3 Salome: Such self-delusions.

0:05:10.3 The Prisoner: Antinous?

0:05:12.7 Salome: You’re not cute enough.

0:05:13.8 The Prisoner: Richard the…

0:05:15.1 Salome: Wasn’t Lionhearted in the least. He was a sniveling little…

0:05:18.7 The Prisoner: Socrates.

0:05:19.2 Salome: Are you going to trot them all out? Michelangelo, Marlowe, Bacon, Shakespeare?

0:05:24.7 Lane: How about Horatio Alger?

0:05:27.0 The Prisoner: How about George Washington?

0:05:29.8 Bill: Watch it.

0:05:31.4 The Prisoner: Sorry, Bill.

0:05:31.5 Salome: You’re not shocking me.

0:05:33.9 The Prisoner: I’ll have that drink now.

0:05:37.5 Salome: Lane, champagne.

0:05:37.6 The Prisoner: I’d rather have a beer.

0:05:39.7 Lane: Budweiser?

0:05:41.9 The Prisoner: Sure.

0:05:42.0 Salome: We still haven’t settled on your name.

0:05:43.6 The Prisoner: Alfred Taylor.

0:05:46.3 Salome: Is that your real name?

0:05:48.0 The Prisoner: No, but it’ll do.

0:05:50.5 Salome: I don’t like it.

0:05:51.9 The Prisoner: Sorry.

0:05:52.8 Salome: I shall call you Bruce.

0:05:55.2 JS: What I love about this whole sequence is that basically The Prisoner and with Salome’s assistance, names a whole slew of famous gay people from history. It’s the roll call, right? And what I think this is in some ways doing in the play is that in the gay liberation movement there was really a desire to see gay people not just as people defined by sex, but as people that were part of a culture, and a culture that had a history. And so you would see a lot of things like in 1977, there’s a book called “Homosexuals In History” that’s published that becomes extremely popular in the movement and this desire to see oneself as part of a lineage really helps to define a lot of what the Gay Liberation Movement was doing culturally speaking. And I love that the list here goes all over the place from like ancient Greece to the Renaissance to turn-of-the-century America. But the name that The Prisoner lands on, is Alfred Taylor. And that’s worth talking about, because it may be the one that is least familiar to people. And Alfred Taylor was an Englishman and a contemporary of Oscar Wilde. In fact, he was accused of being the person that, if you will, procured young men for Oscar Wilde’s acquaintance.

0:07:21.8 JS: And therefore, when Oscar Wilde was arrested for gross indecency, so was Alfred Taylor. And this is often overlooked, in the different plays and movies and so forth that tell the story of the trials. But that it wasn’t just Wilde on trial. That Alfred Taylor was on trial with him because he refused to give evidence against Wilde, and that to me is interesting too. That he could have saved himself by turning on Wilde, he chose not to. And the results of that is that he too was found guilty and he served two years hard labor. Now, in his case, according to the biographers, after he was liberated from prison, he fled to the US and supposedly in the 1920s was spotted by Alfred Douglas as a waiter in Chicago, of all things.

0:08:10.0 JS: But the reason why I think this is significant, and what I think potentially Doric is doing here is he’s re-playing in our minds the trials of Oscar Wilde. But rather than naming the character Oscar Wilde, it’s the person that was with Oscar Wilde, that other gay figure that is so often forgotten to history. And so, one way I think you can understand The Prisoner in Doric’s play, is that it is kind of meant to be this trans-historical “every gay.” Like perhaps the audience Salome knows Socrates, knows Shakespeare. These are supposedly the heroes, the people that accomplished great things. But what about just the gay every person that doesn’t accomplish great things and is persecuted? Who are they? Where are they in the history? But then, we end up with Bruce. And this may be a little bit lost if you’re of a certain age, but back in the day, that was just like the stereotypical jokey name for any gay man. The stereotype was that they were all supposed to be named Bruce, and I think one of the reasons for this is that all gay men are supposed to speak with sibilant S’s and therefore Bruce was part of a joke, the kind of homophobic gag, if you will.

[ music ]

0:09:18.3 MF: Oscar Wilde, literary lion and man about town, went from being one of the most celebrated figures of his age to infamy, imprisonment and premature death. A precisely, albeit poorly-worded, visiting card, left by an angry yet powerful man, set the legendary wheels in motion.

0:09:39.7 VB: Just to throw something back here, just as far as what the legal status was of some of these accusations that are gonna fly out. To be a “sodomite,” which was the legal issue there, would be someone who practiced any form of non-reproductive sex, whether it was same-sex or not. And in 1828, sodomy was changed to a felony that was punishable by imprisonment. Later on, there was an act that had made it a crime for any person to commit an act of “gross indecency” and that original purpose of the law was actually protecting adolescents, particularly adolescent girls, but covering all adolescents from “male lust in all of its many forms.” At the time, it was seen as progressive legislation, but it was worded pretty vaguely. And it was worded vaguely enough then to, as we’re gonna see in a little bit, be used to target relationships and acts between consenting adults.

0:10:45.2 JS: And the whole concept of sodomy, of course, takes us back to the Bible which is where we began with Salome, who throughout Oscar Wilde’s play, is referred to as a “Daughter of Sodom.” And so the way that this sort of circulates as a kind of code word just for sexual immorality is flowing through much of Wilde’s own work, too.

0:11:05.2 VB: I have to just note here, Oscar Wilde is married and has two children and is living that life as well. So Queensberry objects to this relationship. This very close relationship between Oscar Wilde and his son. He tries different ways to separate the two of them and he leaves a calling card for Oscar Wilde at his favorite club, a club that Wilde would frequent with his wife with the title on it: “To Oscar Wilde posing as a ‘Somdomite’,” yes, a ‘Somdomite’ was a misspelling which is kind of delightful.

0:11:41.5 JS: I would add that one thing that seemed significant here is that Wilde is a famous personality in his time. And so when the Marquess says to pose as something, it seems to me that what he’s talking about is his public persona. So he’s kind of like in some ways trying to avoid a libel charge by not saying, “You’re queer.” But saying, “You are pretending or performing as someone who seems to be queer,” and that is bad enough. So to act the fop to be concerned with aesthetics and flowers and poetry in such a public way is to him an offense, and that is actually what he’s accusing Wilde of.

0:12:17.8 VB: What happens here is, this actually forces Wilde’s hand. He’s basically in a position where if he ignores it, the story goes out in one direction. If he doesn’t ignore it, then – he does what he does – which is he hires a lawyer to sue Queensberry for libel.

0:12:36.2 JS: Different historians present the reasons for Wilde’s move in different ways, and one argument that often gets shown in a lot of the depictions of the story when it’s retold in plays and movies and so forth, is that it’s actually Lord Alfred Douglas that pushes him towards this. That he had a long-standing feud with his father, who he saw as domineering and to use a more contemporary term, a macho kind of guy that he wanted to teach a lesson to. And so he thought that he could use this opportunity to in some ways use Wilde to get back at his father. Now, the truth of that of course is arguable, but that is the way that a lot of historians have interpreted this strange move on Wilde’s part to take this to court.

0:13:17.7 MF: Marquess of Queensberry invented those rules for fighting – the Queensberry rules.

0:13:23.6 VB: That’s right.

0:13:24.2 MF: Which ironically comes out in another Doric Wilson play “One round – Queensberry Rules.” That’s the kind of… He was a sportsman, he was a gamesman, he was outdoorsy, he was definitely [chuckle] the opposite, the polar opposite of Wilde and Bosie.

0:13:40.5 VB: So the first of the trials of Oscar Wilde, which they’re called the trials of Oscar Wilde, but actually only two of them are of Oscar Wilde. One of them where he is essentially sort of the prosecutor, is the Queensberry trial. Oscar Wilde is put on the stand. He opens up his testimony by lying about his age, which is maybe not the best way to go about your testimony, but then again, I’m not really sure how different it was to be testifying in a trial in England during that time. But Oscar Wilde’s testimony actually dances around what is truth? What is beauty? What is art? What is a real answer? With the exception of one point where he says – when he is asked if there’s any truth at all about the accusations of Queensberry – he says that there is no truth whatever in any of them emphatically.

0:14:29.1 MF: Which doesn’t seem to me to be true, so.

0:14:31.6 VB: Right. [chuckle] That basically what follows in the text of the trials is a systematic unraveling of that statement through some really hard to listen to and watch cross-examination.

0:14:48.5 MF: Like you said, Virginia, I don’t know what it was like to be on trial at that time in London, but I would imagine if it’s Oscar Wilde, there is a certain air of theatricality about it, so why wouldn’t he open with something as bizarre as lying about his age. I’m assuming from his angle, he’s not really being really tried, so why not make a play out of it? Why not make a farce out of it?

0:15:16.3 VB: Oscar Wilde is asked about passages from writings of his own, of others. He spends more time talking about, he’s being asked about whether or not a work is moral or should be offered to the young. And Wilde keeps on going back to whether or not something is well-written or poorly written or beautiful, and that the words that the attorney was using, they’re not the way that he processes or explains literature.

0:15:48.5 JS: I think that’s a great point, and so often in the representations, you see that sort of conflict, not around a crime per se, but just about worldviews that here’s a poet who sees the world in terms of like beauty and truth and aesthetics and that philosophy it turns out can’t withstand the sharp teeth of legal discourse. And he really gets chewed up in it. And you see that sort of conflict playing out in the drama of the court scene. It’s not just about a man on trial, but in some ways of a philosophy, a way of existing in the world that the very practical-minded Victorian seem to have no patience for. One of the things that Wilde talks about in his theoretical writings is that the role of the artist and the dramatist in particular, he says, “Is not simple truth, but complex beauty.” And unfortunately, the legal system rarely has use for complex beauty.

0:16:38.5 VB: Queensberry’s defense begins to bring up that they are going to present a whole series of young men that Wilde had engaged in one way or another. At this point, basically when they make that threat Wilde and his solicitor decide to withdraw the charges against Queensberry. And I’m greatly abbreviating this, but even though Wilde withdraws basically the fact that there are all of these witnesses that Queensberry says that he’s going to bring up to prove that he’s right, triggers the decision to put out a warrant for Wilde’s arrest under that Act that I talked about before, and that will take us to Wilde trial number one. One little “fun fact” to toss in here, The Importance of Being Earnest, it was still running at this time and it continued to run but they removed Oscar Wilde’s name from the ads and the playbills. People would think that it wasn’t written by him, but there you go. Just take his name off of it, now it’s still okay for public consumption.

[ music ]

0:17:44.5 MF: We’ll continue our discussion of the second and third trials in the next episode of Out Lines. In the meantime, you can find more info in our show notes.

0:17:53.9 Bill: The trial of the prisoner continues.

0:17:55.9 Lane: Whoever said this was a trial?

0:17:58.3 Bill: I watch “Law & Order.” I know a trial when I see one.

0:18:01.9 Lane: Americans…

0:18:03.6 Salome: Oh, You didn’t do anything to mama, nobody ever does anymore, maybe you gave her a leaflet, but you are in no way innocent.

0:18:11.4 The Prisoner: Certain of that?

0:18:12.5 Salome: I know one when I see one.

0:18:14.9 The Prisoner: One what?

0:18:16.5 Salome: What you are.

0:18:18.6 The Prisoner: What am I?

0:18:19.7 Salome: I don’t blame you for being ashamed of it.

0:18:22.0 The Prisoner: I’m not.

0:18:22.8 Salome: Humiliated?

0:18:24.2 The Prisoner: No.

0:18:24.7 Salome: You disgust decent people!

0:18:26.6 The Prisoner: No more than they disgust me.

0:18:29.0 MF: It’s essentially what this whole play is.

0:18:31.5 JS: Yeah. And often I feel in Doric’s other plays, we see that too, that if so-called normal society doesn’t want the queer person, well, the queer person doesn’t want normal society. And that’s just fine with Doric.

[ laughter ]

0:18:44.1 Salome: Who do you think you are? Lane, tell Bruce the story about the pederast and…

0:18:50.2 The Prisoner: The Boy Scout.

0:18:52.0 Lane: I don’t think he’s interested.

0:18:54.3 Salome: Tell him.

0:18:56.7 Lane: To earn his merit badge for fishing, the Boy Scout went hiking backwards through the bus station with his fly unbuttoned.

0:19:03.1 The Prisoner: Trolling for queers.

0:19:05.0 Lane: He may have already heard it.

0:19:07.7 JS: Just the way that this whole segment trots out what would have been in the era that Doric was writing this, the cliches, the stereotypes, the vulgar jokes, the diminishment of the dignity of queer people is just what we’re seeing enacted here. And of course, as we’ve already spoken about that it’s Lane who’s called upon to actually do the degradation. It’s at Salome’s behest, but it’s Lane who has to tell these awful jokes.

0:19:36.4 Salome: Then tell him the one about the fluff who fell in love with the handsome doctor…

0:19:40.3 The Prisoner: Who specialized in disorders of the alimentary canal.

0:19:43.5 Lane: I’d really rather not.

0:19:44.7 Salome: Lane.

0:19:45.5 Lane: This is hardly the place or the time.

0:19:48.0 Salome: Tell him!

0:19:52.2 Lane: The fluff flitted into the surgery of the handsome doctor, complaining of a blockage. The doctor extended his arms some distance up the orifice in question, where indeed, he did encounter an impediment. Which the doctor expected, which to his amazement, was one dozen long-stemmed roses, to which the fluff said…

0:20:13.8 The Prisoner: “Read the card.”

0:20:15.7 Bill: I don’t get it! Was something written on the card?

0:20:20.0 The Prisoner: Have him explain it to you.

0:20:22.6 VB: Salome and Lane agree on the arrangement that they have, the contract that they have, where Lane can be as long as he maintains his closeted status, really.

0:20:33.5 JS: And I think one thing we can definitely say about Doric, is he understands the power of comedy. And he knows that comedy can be a tool to take down those in power. But it can also be used to oppress people. It can actually be really damaging to people, and I think that’s part of what he’s enacting here.

0:20:50.8 VB: Yeah. The description that Doric writes, when The Prisoner finishes Lane’s joke about the dozen long-stemmed roses… Red roses. The Prisoner “with carefully constrained rage,” completes that joke.

0:21:03.7 MF: And when he’s helping Lane with the joke, both of the stage directions say, “with pained patience.” Second one, “His patience drained.” So, it’s building up towards, “Read the card.”

0:21:18.4 Salome: Lane, put some Bette Midler on the boombox.

0:21:20.5 The Prisoner: Enjoying yourself?

0:21:22.5 VB: I love that this is one of the only places that says, “Update accordingly.”

[ laughter ]

0:21:26.3 JS: Right.

0:21:27.6 Salome: You and I seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot. You were innocently cruising… Excuse me, walking along West Street.

0:21:36.5 The Prisoner: I was at home.

0:21:37.4 Salome: Whose home?

0:21:38.5 The Prisoner: In bed.

0:21:39.1 Salome: With whom?

0:21:40.1 The Prisoner: Alone.

0:21:40.7 Salome: You people live such lonely lives, don’t you? Nope, forget I said that. I don’t know what makes me say things like that. I’m not spiteful by nature. Really, I’m not. You were at home, alone in bed.

0:21:55.7 The Prisoner: You got it.

0:21:56.7 Salome: You lie. Herod would never take you in your own home.

0:22:00.8 The Prisoner: He didn’t even knock.

0:22:02.1 Bill: He should have kicked your door in.

0:22:04.4 The Prisoner: He did.

0:22:06.2 JS: I feel like part of what Doric is referencing here, is actually Bowers v. Hardwick. Bowers v. Hardwick is a case in ’86, and it was the one that upheld the constitutionality of the Georgia sodomy law. Which was the case in which the police actually busted in on a private bedroom, and arrested both of the men inside. And this was a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court decided that actually these men were not protected in terms of privacy in any way, that the police were right to do what they did. Bowers v. Hardwick, set the homophobic precedent during the era of Reagan. And of course, I can’t hear this today without thinking about Breonna Taylor. And that awful case that led to her murder. And so, this sense of the autonomy and the dignity of individuals, and their being subject to the power of the state through the police, this is not something that is unique to queer people, and it is not unique to the era that Doric’s writing in.

0:23:06.2 The Prisoner: I was beaten.

0:23:07.2 Salome: With what?

0:23:08.4 Bill: A baseball bat?

0:23:09.7 The Prisoner: A golf club.

0:23:10.9 Salome: Herod wouldn’t hurt a fly.

0:23:12.7 The Prisoner: He hurt me.

0:23:13.6 Salome: Did you bleed?

0:23:14.7 The Prisoner: Yes.

0:23:15.5 Salome: Badly?

0:23:16.6 The Prisoner: Yes!

0:23:17.4 Salome: I don’t see any blood.

0:23:18.8 The Prisoner: They cleaned me up.

0:23:20.4 Lane: They cleaned you up?

0:23:22.8 The Prisoner: When they found out I was coming up here.

0:23:24.9 Lane: People only get hurt when they deserve it.

0:23:27.3 The Prisoner: Is that so?

0:23:29.2 Lane: No one ever clubbed me.

0:23:31.7 The Prisoner: Yet.

0:23:33.1 Lane: Are you threatening me?

0:23:34.5 Salome: No wonder you get hurt.

0:23:36.8 VB: It’s very much the attitude, where as long as you keep a low profile, then you’re fine, no one’s gonna impinge on your rights, your safety or your body, and that you call harm upon yourself. This is a feminist, queer, racial, all of the areas where there are people that end up under some damage or strain or duress, it’s because they called it on themselves, it’s really what it comes down to it.” Your skirt was too short.” “You were too flamboyant.” Don’t antagonize and you’ll be safe and okay.

0:24:07.2 JS: Which allows you then to not question at all the power structures that actually enact that violence, by blaming the victim of that violence.

0:24:17.1 Salome: Why are you so hostile to me?

0:24:20.4 The Prisoner: I’m not.

0:24:22.1 Salome: You should be guilt-ridden. Your very existence is a denial of my femininity.

0:24:27.1 VB: Why does this trajectory have to take the arc that it does? In this case, it is because The Prisoner’s existence in Salome’s mind “denies her femininity,” which is an argument I think that is also of its time, of when Doric had written this. And one of the places where I think that some people would say, “Well, the entire dramatic arc of this is dated.” But Salome being who she is in this world, this is very much her worldview.

0:24:55.6 JS: And I think it speaks so much to people’s fear of diversity. That not everyone may live the same sexuality, may live the same gender. And to have the freedom to do so in no way actually should impinge upon you, but yet so many people feel that it does.

0:25:10.5 MF: Yup.

0:25:11.1 JS: Right. Even back in the day when Adrienne Rich write about compulsory heterosexuality.

0:25:16.5 VB: Right.

0:25:16.7 JS: Which I think is such an important concept, why is it that we demand universal adherence? [chuckle] That everyone must participate in this. And of course, diversity is part of the natural spectrum of our life. And I think the sooner we accept that, honestly, the better.

0:25:30.1 VB: Amen to that.

0:25:32.9 Salome: You’re proud of what you are, aren’t you?

0:25:35.8 The Prisoner: Why not?

0:25:36.5 Lane: He’s probably had his consciousness lifted.

0:25:40.2 The Prisoner: Raised.

0:25:41.6 Lane: He’s probably above compromise.

0:25:44.2 Salome: How selfish.

0:25:46.0 MF: “He’s probably above compromise.” It’s this closeted exchange. Difference between The Prisoner and Lane.

0:25:53.9 JS: Yeah.

0:25:55.2 VB: Yeah, and this is the beginning of movement three of the Lane-Prisoner conversation.

0:26:02.8 Lane: It’s even likely he’s dedicated to his own pleasure.

0:26:05.4 Salome: Unnatural.

0:26:06.9 Lane: He fancies himself better than the rest of us.

0:26:09.8 Salome: The rest of whom?

0:26:11.2 Lane: Those of us who prefer the cool, clean, dark air of the closet.

0:26:15.6 The Prisoner: Mothballs and mushrooms.

0:26:18.7 Lane: I’d rather be standing here, safe and secure in my Guccis, than stomping around in your boots on a collision with calamity.

0:26:26.9 Salome: Closets? What has this to do with closets?

0:26:30.5 The Prisoner: Everything.

0:26:32.4 VB: What is Lane doing here with The Prisoner? It seems like, he’s trying to persuade him. Trying to establish that connection, but also be like, “This is okay.” What is Lane trying to do here?

0:26:44.9 MF: He’s trying to get The Prisoner essentially to submit. He’s trying to break his will.

0:26:50.3 JS: I feel like Lane is also trying to justify himself.

0:26:53.0 MF: Oh, absolutely!

0:26:53.9 JS: Saying, “Look, I may be in the closet, but I do my thing, you do your thing, and they’re valid. They’re equal, it’s fine.” But the question, of course, “Well, is it?” We’ve actually seen how Lane has behaved throughout the course of this play.

0:27:08.0 MF: Right.

0:27:08.4 JS: And is he quite so blameless as he would like to believe himself to be in this little speech?

0:27:14.3 Lane: Friend. May I call you friend? Like it or not, maybe we do have a lot in common. We have even more that is not in common. You’re committed; I’ve never found commitment pays my bills at Bloomingdale’s. You’re an activist; I go to the opera. You’re involved; I rely on opiates.

0:27:39.9 Salome: Drugs?

0:27:41.1 The Prisoner: Whatever turns you on.

0:27:42.8 Lane: Which is to say whatever turns you off. Personally, I prefer Dewar’s.

0:27:48.3 JS: I will point this out. That one of the dichotomies is that Lane says, “You’re an activist; I go to the opera.” What I like about this, of course, is that Doric did both.

0:27:57.0 MF: Yes.

0:27:57.5 JS: It’s not an either or, right?

0:27:58.8 VB: Yes.

0:28:00.3 JS: Doric was as much into opera as he was into leather, and was as much of an activist as he enjoyed pleasure and leisure, too. That these things are not actually mutually exclusive, but that is part of how it’s being structured here.

0:28:12.8 MF: Yeah, I love that. But he was an authority on both, so we can talk about it.

0:28:16.0 VB: Absolutely. And that’s part of what Lane is doing before as well, is making sure that he is not included in this judgment.

0:28:25.3 Salome: You think I didn’t notice your hair?

0:28:27.1 The Prisoner: What about it?

0:28:30.4 Salome: It’s long.

0:28:32.4 The Prisoner: [chuckle] It is not.

0:28:33.3 Salome: It isn’t a crew cut.

0:28:35.8 The Prisoner: It’s my hair.

0:28:37.3 Salome: You are free to wear your hair that way…

0:28:39.3 The Prisoner: How liberal of you.

0:28:41.4 Salome: I’m free to find it repugnant.

0:28:44.5 Bill: Me too.

0:28:45.8 Salome: Don’t get me wrong, I like you.

0:28:49.9 Bill: You what?

0:28:50.6 Lane: She likes him.

0:28:52.3 Bill: But…

0:28:53.3 Salome: I said I like you.

0:28:56.1 The Prisoner: Put me back in the summer house.

0:28:58.3 Salome: Lane says you’re a prophet.

0:29:00.3 Lane: Slip of the tongue.

0:29:02.0 Bill: You don’t like him, you like me.

0:29:04.4 Salome: Give me a prophecy.

0:29:06.3 The Prisoner: You took me out, put me back.

0:29:08.6 Salome: I can see you now, standing in some dark bar somewhere on the waterfront, absolutely convinced you know who you are. Well, you don’t know who you are. Not until I decide to tell you who you are. I define you.

0:29:27.6 JS: The other thing that I think was really made clear in this exchange is who has the power to define you? Do you get to decide who you are for yourself, or do other people have the power to tell you who you are, and that’s really the power that Salome is showing here. That is what she’s imposing. “I will tell you who you are. All of my stereotypes, all of my preconceptions, they are what will define you. You cannot define yourself.”

0:29:51.4 MF: What I think is a little confusing for me is this whole cross-reference to Samson and Delilah.

0:30:02.3 Salome: And you are not special at all, or you won’t be, not when I cut your hair…

0:30:08.6 Lane: Wrong play, Miss Salome.

0:30:10.8 Salome: William… Bill! In the drawing-room. My sewing kit. The scissors.

0:30:15.4 Lane: No!

0:30:16.3 Salome: There, on the table, the butter knife. Give me that knife. Unhand me!

0:30:20.6 Lane: Cool it, Delilah!

0:30:22.3 Salome: I… I…

0:30:23.4 Lane: Remember who you are!

0:30:26.1 Salome: But…

0:30:27.3 Lane: Where you are.

0:30:30.4 Salome: Where? Who?

0:30:31.0 Lane: You’ve got the wrong climax going for you.

0:30:33.6 Salome: Where are we?

0:30:34.8 Lane: Not among the Philistines.

0:30:36.9 VB: I find it funny ’cause in Wilde’s Salome, there’s a big movement about the hair…

0:30:43.3 MF: Right, right.

0:30:44.0 VB: Of John the Baptist. Of all of the parts, it’s like the skin, the hair, the lips.

0:30:49.1 MF: The eyes, the lips. Yeah.

0:30:50.6 VB: So I feel like there’s a double joke here where you think you’re going in that direction, but actually, it’s getting lost in this Samson-Delilah thing.

0:31:00.3 JS: But, again, it’s another biblical story that was also made into an opera.

0:31:04.4 MF: Indeed.

0:31:05.3 JS: In which a woman brings about the downfall of a man.

0:31:08.3 VB: Right.

0:31:08.8 JS: It’s recycling once again the Adam and Eve story, but that both men in these cases are meant to be biblical heroes that are brought down.

0:31:15.9 VB: And the cutting of the hair eliminates Samson’s strength.

0:31:19.3 JS: And on a practical level, we have to get the butter knife into Bill’s hand.

0:31:22.5 VB: Yes, we do need the butter knife.

0:31:24.6 JS: Whatever for?

[ music ]

0:31:26.5 MF: And that Delilah Delusion brings us to the end of this episode of Out Lines.

0:31:31.3 VB: Only two more episodes to go in this season.

0:31:33.5 MF: I can’t believe we’re almost there. In the next episode, we discover what Doric has been building to.

0:31:38.9 JS: And we’ll learn more about how the story of Oscar Wilde is woven into the rich tapestry of Now She Dances!.

0:31:44.8 The Prisoner: Hadn’t you better disarm him?

0:31:46.5 Lane: Interfere?

0:31:50.4 The Prisoner: I’m the love that dare not speak its name.

0:31:50.5 JS: What poem is this?

0:31:51.0 Salome: Take solace from that as I exit waltzing!

[ music ]

0:31:55.6 Morry Campbell: Thank you for listening to Out Lines. Subscribe, get lost in our show notes, and check out some awfully cute kitty pics at outlinespod.com. Season One of Out Lines features conversations recorded between September 2020 and April 2021. This episode’s selections from Doric Wilson’s Now She Dances were directed by Mark Finley and feature Virginia Baeta, Christopher Borg, Gail Dennison, David Leeper, Karen Stanion, Jay Thomas, and Chris Weikel. The theme music is by yours truly, the dastardly Morry Campbell. I who love cats as long as they belong to other people. Thanks to Sarah Wardrop for the production magic and to Free to Use Sounds. You are all stars.

0:32:40.8 VB: Out Lines is a production of The Weakest Thing.