The Whispering
From Valwiki
| Author: | John Walte. |
| Subtitle: | (None). |
| Language: | Common (A version in Elvish). |
| Document Type: | Play. |
| Genre: | Drama. |
The Whispering is a play by the Valikorlian philosopher and playwright John Walte. It was written and staged the same year.
Like many of Walte's better-known plays, The Whispering is a scathing commentary on common morality.
Contents |
Play Background
The Whispering was written during the winter of his seventeenth year and was published in the spring of the same year. It was not performed in the theatre till he was twenty one years old, when a Elvish touring company produced it in the Royal Play Hall in Valikorlia.
Plot
Helena Ironwing, the widow of Captain Ironwing, is about to dedicate an orphanage she has built in his memory. She reveals to her Priest that she has hidden the evils of her marriage for its duration, and has built the orphanage to deplete her husband's wealth so that their son, Armaine, might not inherit anything from him. Father Tolsteu had advised her to return to her husband despite his philandering, and she did so in the belief that her love would reform him. But her husband's philandering continued until his death, Mrs. Ironwing was unable to leave him because of the constraints of common morality, and during the action of the play she discovers that her son Armaine (whom she had sent away so that he would not be corrupted by his father) has congenital syphilis, and has fallen in love with Regina Heart, Mrs. Ironwing's maid, who is revealed to be an illegitimate daughter of Captain Ironwing, and thereby Armaine's half-sister.
The play concludes with Mrs. Ironwing deciding whether to painlessly kill her son Armaine in his madness in accordance with his wishes.
Reactions
The Whispering was deliberately sensational. What most offended Walte's contemporaries was what they regarded as its shocking indecency, its more than frank treatment of a forbidden topic. An Dalmarite critic was later to describe it as "a dirty deed done in public," and to many it must have seemed simply shocking rather than in any profound intellectual sense revolutionary.
At the time, the mere mention of venereal disease was scandalous, but to show that even a person who followed society's ideals of morality had no protection against it was beyond scandalous. Hers was not the noble life which Valikorlians believed would result from fulfilling one's duty rather than following one's desires. Those idealized beliefs were only the "whisperings" of the past, haunting the present.
The production of The Whispering scandalized Valikorlian society of the day and Walte was strongly criticised. When Walte and the play was presented to nobles of Bridgeton, at a dinner in Walte's honour, a Marine told Walte that The Whispering was not a good play. After a pause, Walte exploded "Well if I didn't write The Whispering then how could I live with myself!?".
List of characters
- Mrs. Helena Ironwing, a widow.
- Armaine Ironwing, her son, a painter.
- Father Tolsteu.
- Jacob Entram, a carpenter.
- Regina Heart, Jacob Entram's daughter (Mr. Ironwing's daughter), Mrs. Ironwing's maid.
OOC Info
It's mainly just a parody on common morality, thus why it is always taken in so critically. Most Lawful Characters would find it to be distasteful.
Availability
It's not published widely and is mainly available to troupes and eccentric book collectors.
