But endured; the government, which fled before Sherman in 1863, returned in ‘65, and even grew too despite the fact that a city government of carpetbaggers held on long after the state as a whole had dispossessed them; in 1869 Tougaloo College for Negroes was founded, in 1884 Jackson College for Negroes was brought from Natchez, in 1898 Campbell College for Negroes removed from Vicksburg: Negro leaders developed by these schools intervened when in 1868 one ‘Buzzard’ Egglestone instigated the use of troops to drive Governor Humphries from the executive offices and mansion; in 1887 Jackson women sponsored the Kermis Ball lasting three days to raise money for a monument to the Confederate dead; in 1844 Jefferson Davis spoke for his last time in public at the old Capitol; in 1890 the state’s greatest convention drew up the present constitution;
And still the people and the railroads: the New Orleans and Great Northern down the Pearl River valley, the Gulf Mobile and Northern north-east; Alabama and the eastern black prairies were almost a commuter’s leap and a line to Yazoo City and the upper river towns made of the Great Lakes five suburban ponds; the Gulf and Ship Island opened the south Mississippi lumber boom and Chicago voices spoke among the magnolias and the odour of jasmine and oleander; population doubled and trebled in a decade, in 1892 Millsaps College opened its doors to assume its place among the first establishments for higher learning; then the natural gas and the oil, Texas and Oklahoma licence plates flitted like a migration of birds about the land and the tall flames from the vent-pipes stood like incandescent plumes above the century-cold ashes of Choctaw camp-fires and the vanished imprints of deer; and in 1903 the new Capitol was completed — the golden dome, the knob, the gleamy crumb, the gilded pustule longer than the miasma and the gigantic ephemeral saurians, more durable than the ice and the pre-night cold, soaring, hanging as one blinding spheroid above the centre of the Commonwealth, incapable of being either looked full or evaded, peremptory, irrefragable, and reassuring;
In the roster of Mississippi names:
Claiborne. Humphries. Dickson. McLaurin. Barksdale. Lamar. Prentiss. Davis. Sartoris. Compson;
In the roster of cities:
JACKSON. Alt. 294 ft. Pop. (a.d. 1950) 201,092.
Railroads: Illinois Central, Yazoo & Mississippi Valley, Alabama & Vicksburg, Gulf & Ship Island.
Bus: Tri-State Transit, Vanardo, Thomas, Greyhound, Dixie-Greyhound, Teche-Greyhound, Oliver.
Air: Delta, Chicago & Southern.
Transport: Street buses, Taxis.
Accommodations: Hotels, Tourist camps, Rooming houses.
Radio: WJDX, WTJS.
Diversions: chronic: S.I.A.A., Basketball Tournament, Music Festival, Junior Auxiliary Follies, May Day Festival, State Tennis Tournament, Red Cross Water Pageant, State Fair, Junior Auxiliary Style Show, Girl Scouts Horse Show, Feast of Carols.
Diversions: acute: Religion, Politics.
Scene I
OFFICE OF THE Governor of the State. 2.00 a.m. March twelfth.
The whole bottom of the stage is in darkness, as in Scene I, Act I, so that the visible scene has the effect of being held in the beam of a spotlight. Suspended too, since it is upper left and even higher above the shadow of the stage proper than the same in Scene I, Act I, carrying still further the symbolism of the still higher, the last, the ultimate seat of judgment.
It is a corner or section of the office of the Governor of the Commonwealth, late at night, about 2 a.m. — a clock on the wall says two minutes past two — a massive flat-topped desk bare except for an ashtray and a telephone, behind it a high-backed heavy chair like a throne; on the wall behind and above the chair, is the emblem, official badge, of the state, sovereignty (a mythical one, since this is rather the state of which Yoknapatawpha County is a unit) — an eagle, the blind scales of justice, a device in Latin perhaps, against a flag. There are two other chairs in front of the desk, turned slightly to face each other, the length of the desk between them.
The Governor stands in front of the high chair, between it and the desk, beneath the emblem on the wall. He is symbolic too: no known person, neither old nor young; he might be someone’s idea not of God but of Gabriel perhaps, the Gabriel not before the Crucifixion but after it. He has obviously just been routed out of bed or at least out of his study or dressing-room; he wears a dressing-gown, though there is a collar and tie beneath it, and his hair is neatly combed.
Temple and Stevens have just entered. Temple wears the same fur coat, hat, bag, gloves, etc., as in Scene II, Act I, Stevens is dressed exactly as he was in Scene III, Act I, is carrying his hat. They are moving toward the two chairs at either end of the desk.
STEVENS
Good morning, Henry. Here we are.
GOVERNOR
Yes. Sit down.
(as Temple sits down)
Does Mrs. Stevens smoke?
STEVENS
Yes. Thank you.
He takes a pack of cigarettes from his topcoat pocket, as though he had come prepared for the need, emergency. He works one of them free and extends the pack to Temple. The Governor puts one hand into his dressing-gown pocket and withdraws it, holding something in his closed fist.
TEMPLE
(takes the cigarette)
What, no blindfold?
(the Governor extends his hand across the desk. It contains a lighter. Temple puts the cigarette into her mouth. The Governor snaps on the lighter)
But of course, the only one waiting execution is back there in Jefferson. So all we need to do here is fire away, and hope that at least the volley rids us of the metaphor.
GOVERNOR
Metaphor?
TEMPLE
The blindfold. The firing squad. Or is metaphor wrong? Or maybe it’s the joke. But don’t apologise; a joke that has to be diagrammed is like trying to excuse an egg, isn’t it? The only thing you can do is, bury them both, quick.
(the Governor approaches the flame to Temple’s cigarette. She leans and accepts the light, then sits back)
Thanks.
The Governor closes the lighter, sits down in the tall chair behind the desk, still holding the lighter in his hand, his hands resting on the desk before him. Stevens sits down in the other chair across from Temple, laying the pack of cigarettes on the desk beside him.
GOVERNOR
What has Mrs. Gowan Stevens to tell me?
TEMPLE
Not tell you: ask you. No, that’s wrong. I could have asked you to revoke or commute or whatever you do to a sentence to hang when we — Uncle Gavin telephoned you last night.
(to Stevens)
Go on. Tell him. Aren’t you the mouthpiece? — isn’t that how you say it? Don’t lawyers always tell their patients — I mean clients — never to say anything at all: to let them do all the talking?
GOVERNOR
That’s only before the client enters the witness stand.
TEMPLE
So this is the witness stand.
GOVERNOR
You have come all the way here from Jefferson at two o’clock in the morning. What would you call it?
TEMPLE
All right. Touché then. But not Mrs. Gowan Stevens: Temple Drake. You remember Temple: the all-Mississippi debutante whose finishing school was the Memphis sporting house? About eight years ago, remember? Not that anyone, certainly not the sovereign state of Mississippi’s first paid servant, need be reminded of that, provided they could read newspapers eight years ago or were kin to somebody who could read eight years ago or even had a friend who could or even just hear or even just remember or just believe the worst or even just hope for it.
GOVERNOR
I think I remember. What has Temple Drake to tell me then?
TEMPLE
That’s not first. The first thing is, how much will I have to tell? I mean, how much of it that you don’t already know, so that I won’t be wasting all of our times telling it over? It’s two o’clock in the morning; you want to — maybe even need to — sleep some, even if you are our first paid servant; maybe even because of that —— You see? I’m already lying. What does it matter to me how much sleep the state’s first paid servant loses, any more than it matters to the first paid servant, a part of whose job is being paid to lose sleep over the Nancy Mannigoes and Temple Drakes?
STEVENS
Not lying.
TEMPLE
All right. Stalling, then. So maybe if his excellency or his honour or whatever they call him, will answer the question, we can get on.
STEVENS
Why not let the question go, and just get on?
GOVERNOR
(to Temple)
Ask me your question. How much of what do I already know?
TEMPLE
(after a moment: she doesn’t answer at first, staring at the Governor: then:)
Uncle Gavin’s right. Maybe you are the one to ask the questions. Only, make it as painless as possible. Because it’s going to be a little . . . painful, to put it euphoniously — at least ‘euphonious’ is right, isn’t it? — no matter who bragged about blindfolds.
GOVERNOR
Tell me about Nancy — Mannihoe, Mannikoe — how does she spell it?
TEMPLE
She doesn’t. She can’t. She can’t read or write either. You are hanging her under Mannigoe, which
