Penda's Fen (1974)

1. Oh, my country.

2. I say, over and over.

3. I am one of your sons. It is true.

4. I am.

5. I am!

6. Yet, how

7. shall I show

8. my love?

9. I'm sorry, Stephen.

10. Your father does have a sermon to prepare.

11. Well, we like you to like good music, Stephen, but it was terribly loud.

12. Don't be silly, Stephen.

13. It's all right, Mother. You've ruined it now.

14. "I think the greatest visionary work in English music

15. "Is The Dream of GERONTIUS

16. "By Sir Edward Elgar.

17. "It poses the most important question..

18. "What is to happen to my soul?

19. "GERONTIUS - Greek 'Geron', 'Gerontos' - an old man, has died.

20. "The music portrays his experience after death.

21. "An angel meets his soul beyond the grave.

22. "I think this angel is male,

23. "yet he sings in a woman's voice which makes him unearthly.

24. "He takes the dead man's soul across the grills of hell,

25. "Where demons scream and mock them.

26. "Soon, they approach the courts of light.

27. "We hear a distant singing.

28. "Tumultuous,

29. "like a mighty ocean.

30. "Elgar himself was a pious Roman Catholic,

31. "but his message is true for us Protestants, too.

32. "Perhaps even...

33. "Perhaps especially for those not blessed with the Christian faith.

34. "And though it is about the judgement on one dead man,

35. "it is, surely, about that other judgement

36. "that faces us daily,

37. "in every moment of our lives.

38. "Over

39. "and over.

40. "We come to the crisis.

41. "GERONTIUS asks,

42. "shall he see God?

43. "The angel cries with joy.

44. "This soul is strong enough to look on God

45. "and stand the terror and the shock."

46. "And so they come

47. "before the throne of God.

48. "A terrible silence.

49. "And then breaks out a brief fearful dissonance.

50. "The moment of the glance of God.

51. "Surely the most shattering moment in all of music.

52. "To hear in your head such sounds.

53. "To be a man.

54. "Have Heaven and hell between your ears and write them down

55. "in notes.

56. "And walk those hills,

57. "and hear the angel and the demon.

58. "The judgement,

59. "on those hills.

60. "And hear the dissonance

61. "that is the piercing glance of God."

62. Hello squire.

63. Is this the day you school kids play at soldiers, then?

64. Some of us are learning to defend our country.

65. I should get your anklets straight, then.

66. England's last hope!

67. I wish Joel would like me.

68. He can be so cutting.

69. I was wondering when he would notice.

70. Milk lad. Hardly original.

71. So unaware.

72. He'll grow through it.

73. We most of us do.

74. So totally unaware.

75. And so late.

76. What do they say here?

77. 'A late spring never lies.'

78. (WHISPERING) What do them letters say?

79. Those letters.

80. 'Sophrosyne' - balance of mind.

81. Trust Franklin, Franklin always knows.

82. His father's a priest.

83. Not a priest, a parson.

84. Don't you know the difference, Honeybone?

85. 'Thine everywhere' over the showers.

86. 'The car and soap flakes. '

87. Honeybone! 'Let there be light. '

88. 'A healthy mind in a healthy body. '

89. Even over the bog, look!

90. 'Gnothi seauton.'

91. That means, 'Discover thyself'.

92. 'Uncover thy ass, ' more like!

93. Honeybone! That's dirty.

94. Corporal HONEYBONE.

95. Your buckles are disgusting! Corporal HONEYBONE.

96. Male and female must both be cleaned.

97. Catch something else.

98. Mr Chairman, sir.

99. Gentlemen.

100. Our country, England, is the freest in the world.

101. We have liberty of movement, liberty of choice,

102. free speech, a free press.

103. We do not have political censorship.

104. Our police are not armed.

105. We do not have a secret police.

106. We know what we are discussing here tonight.

107. Not the media in general, but one programme in particular.

108. That one that is in everybody's mind just now.

109. The so-called TV documentary,

110. Who was Jesus?

111. Who was Jesus?

112. It calls itself, I quote,

113. 'Investigative theology.

114. We know in our hearts it is atheistic and subversive trash!

115. From this at least, the homes of England have been saved by a timely injunction,

116. for which we have not the abstraction of freedom itself to thank,

117. but those who exercise eternal vigilance on its behalf.

118. Look at this man and woman.

119. See if you do not see them as I see them.

120. A mother and a father above all parents.

121. A mother and a father of England,

122. who, in this modern wilderness of amorality, stand up alone

123. to uphold our erring national family on its Christian path.

124. Perhaps we should let the eighteenth birthday pass and not tell him at all.

125. Never tell him.

126. It was agreed,

127. in the beginning.

128. Not to tell him

129. till he was eighteen

130. was agreed.

131. A mistake.

132. Yes.

133. We should've done what we thought was right.

134. Not what we agreed.

135. Yes.

136. With all respect to the lady who asked this,

137. our postmistress,

138. I hope she doesn't take this cut on me by withholding my mail.

139. You talk about strikers holding the country to ransom.

140. What are they supposed to do? Play cricket?

141. Besides, hold us to ransom, isn't that what government itself does?

142. And by government I don't mean those figureheads

143. who come pleading to us every five years to have their licences renewed.

144. - (CROWD PROTESTS) - I mean the manipulators, the fixers,

145. the psychopaths who have real power in the land.

146. Is it strikers who play Monopoly for real with our countryside and cities?

147. Is it strikers who smash the fabric of our communities for greed?

148. Is it strikers who throw up in the air million after million,

149. your taxes and mine,

150. on bungles, deliriums and fantasies?

151. Look, is it strikers who pillage our Earth,

152. ransack it, drain it, drive for quick gain

153. to hand on nothing but dust to the children of tomorrow?

154. Now, now, come off it, Mr Arne.

155. People were dying because of this strike.

156. Pensioners, old soldiers dying of starvation and cold.

157. - (CROWD CLAPPING) - Yes.

158. When that happens in a strike it's cold they die of,

159. when it's inflation,

160. authorities' high hand or callousness that kill them,

161. it's hypothermia they die of then.

162. Now, you have to get this into perspective.

163. Perspective I give you.

164. What, for instance, is the ultimate question

165. a government are left with when pondering matters of defence?

166. How many million civilians can we afford

167. to let get slaughtered before the remainder revolt and depose us?

168. Mr Chairman, do we have, to endure this hysterical barrage?

169. Each must have his say, Sir Nicholas.

170. Look...

171. Not far from here is an expanse of country.

172. You all know it well, Brummies drive out of a Sunday to leave their litter there.

173. Poets have hymned

174. the spirit of this landscape.

175. Our greatest composer has enshrined it.

176. Farmland and pasture now, an ancient fen.

177. The earth beneath your feet feels solid there.

178. It is not!

179. Somewhere there the land is hollow.

180. Somewhere beneath is being constructed

181. something we are not supposed to know.

182. A top secret.

183. We locals are not supposed to know it's even there.

184. And you accept it!

185. What is it, then?

186. An air raid shelter

187. to shift the population of Birmingham to in all of four minutes.

188. What is it, hidden beneath this shell of lovely earth?

189. Some hideous angel of technocratic death.

190. An alternative city, for government from beneath.

191. Motorways there.

192. Offices, control suites, silent, empty, waiting for the day.

193. Telephones, computers,

194. signal equipment.

195. Ministry pencils,

196. every grade of H and B, ready, sharpened against the minute.

197. "Oh, " you said, "it must be something to protect us."

198. Us?

199. When for all we know the likelihood is,

200. our entire civilian population is

201. marked down on some top-secret memo somewhere

202. as strategically expendable.

203. When you talk of holding the country to ransom,

204. please think of possibilities like that.

205. The British working man will never let a dictatorship happen.

206. He's far too bloody-minded.

207. I damn well hope so.

208. Mr Arne is a writer.

209. For all I know, he might be another Shakespeare.

210. But his imagination runs away with him.

211. That path is a shocker!

212. - He's a terrible crank, father. - He is a shocker.

213. He is a shocker.

214. You can tell he's not a nice man from his television plays.

215. Well, can't you, Mother?

216. There's always somebody in them, unnatural.

217. I think he's unnatural himself!

218. That's why he and his wife haven't been blessed with children!

219. Stephen...

220. it's probably a good thing. What?

221. That they haven't any children?

222. Bringing them up with values like they have.

223. God gives to whom He chooses, He does not make mistakes!

224. Stephen, you can be grotesque.

225. Have one for me, will you, my brother?

226. Hey, hands off, Barry. What's the matter?

227. Manners!

228. Oh, your brother!

229. He's a long while!

230. Brott!

231. Brott Gisbourne!

232. Brott!

233. The man...

234. in the fire.

235. I'm sorry, Mrs Gisbourne,

236. it's not yet possible for you to see your son!

237. Nobody can see him, Mrs Gisbourne, only the doctors!

238. Brott?

239. Brott!

240. I had a dream like that, sir. Like the queen in the play, sir.

241. About a snake, Franklin?

242. No, sir.

243. I had a dream, sir.

244. Yes, Albus, I've no doubt you had.

245. Like a parable.

246. That there was a demon on my dad's church tower, sir.

247. Black and shiny, like a jet statue, looking down at me, sir.

248. Then I thought, still dreaming, sir,

249. I'll turn him to an angel.

250. So I used my willpower in my dreams, sir.

251. Pushed all my will up, at the demon on the church,

252. and turned him into a shining angel.

253. Then I thought, in my dreams, sir,

254. if I can turn him one way,

255. I can turn him back.

256. So I pushed all my will

257. and up on the tower, the angel turned to a demon again.

258. A Manichaean dream, Franklin.

259. Yes, sir.

260. Does that mean dirty, sir?

261. Oliver. - Sir?

262. It's a heresy, sir.

263. A heretical belief in the early church, that the universe was a battlefield

264. between the forces of lightness and dark, sir.

265. I only wish, Franklin, you would, now and then,

266. transfer your Manichaean impulse

267. to the rugger field.

268. (LAUGHING) Yes, sir.

269. Franklin doesn't do anything for the house, sir.

270. He's a passenger.

271. He ought to be boiled in oil.

272. Skinned first.

273. And then boiled alive.

274. I say, excuse me.

275. You've spelt Pinvin wrong.

276. It's V not F.

277. Pinvin.

278. The police had this road blocked off this morning,

279. why can't we get through?

280. 'Cause 'tis closed.

281. Why?

282. So others can't get through.

283. It's Pinvin!

284. Yes.

285. Pull the other one, Rector.

286. There's a peal of bells on.

287. You know, I was thinking the other day,

288. the lonely places our technocrats choose for their obscene experiments.

289. Los Alamos, for instance.

290. Ah, yes, birthplace of the atomic bomb.

291. The ancient Indians have venerated that for centuries as sacred ground.

292. Yeah, again and again.

293. Everywhere you'll find these sick laboratories

294. built on, or beneath, such haunted sites.

295. As though, thereby, to bottle the primal genie of the Earth.

296. Tc pervert him.

297. Oh, who's the genie in our pen?

298. I wouldn't know.

299. Are you interested in the occult, Mr Arne?

300. Not in the least.

301. I'm a writer.

302. Demons of my own.

303. It's not for nothing that always around

304. Churches ghosts and demons give the greatest trouble, they do say.

305. Ah, because the church gives off most powerfully the Manichaean challenge.

306. Oh, look, some would say that the spire of a church acts an aerial,

307. attracting around it the old elemental forces of light and darkness in combat,

308. some would say.

309. I am not sure which side the church has always been on.

310. Hello, Stephen.

311. Hello, Mrs Arne.

312. What's the leaf for?

313. Comfrey.

314. She has an abscess.

315. A herb cure?

316. Not a cure so much.

317. The only way to let an abscess heal is to stop bitch-face worrying at it.

318. Can't the vet put a poultice on?

319. She'll tear it off.

320. They don't like foreign bodies, but she'll leave a leaf.

321. She doesn't even know it's on.

322. Put the cat down, dear, she isn't a child.

323. Why is Manichaeanism a heresy, Dad?

324. The world is a battleground between good and evil.

325. Why is it an error to believe so?

326. Manichaeans didn't believe exactly that.

327. They believed that

328. light was a vulnerable spark in man

329. under constant attack from forces of darkness.

330. They hoped for some great son of light himself to come,

331. to vanquish darkness and set light free.

332. The son of light has come. His name is Jesus.

333. Not to the Manichaeans!

334. Jesus, to them, was only one of many sons of light,

335. in an unending succession of them,

336. in an unending battle

337. to save man's spark of light.

338. Father, do you think dreams come true?

339. Don't come true. They are true.

340. What do you mean?

341. Your dream tells you a truth about yourself.

342. A truth you hide from while you're awake.

343. A truth you need to know about yourself,

344. for your well-being.

345. This buried truth

346. comes up in your head while you're asleep.

347. Rising to act itself out like a play for you.

348. That's the responsibility of the dreamer, Stephen.

349. To acknowledge that

350. truth about yourself the dream reveals.

351. Then act upon that truth.

352. The DeVo would call such a dream

353. voice from God.

354. You're a believer. We're believers.

355. You believe in God.

356. I believe in truth.

357. - (MUSIC STOPS) - (MOANING)

358. Unnatural.

359. Sorry, Joel. I thought Stephen would have come.

360. - Thank you. - (MILK BOTTLES CLANKING)

361. Parade, attention!

362. Both in order, march!

363. Dressing for the right; right, dress!

364. Eyes front.

365. 'Unworthy.'

366. Squad A, missing Cadet Rifleman Ascoff, sir.

367. Absent from school, sir.

368. Squad B, all present and correct, sir.

369. Squad C, missing Corporal Franklin, sir.

370. Not absent from school, sir.

371. Sergeant Honeybone. Sir.

372. Find Franklin, will you? Sir.

373. 'Discover thyself. '

374. What?

375. Spit it out, squire.

376. Put it in a letter, squire.

377. I haven't got all day! Some of us has to work.

378. So,

379. now you'll renege on your military apprenticeship also.

380. What are you, Franklin?

381. A non-cooperative, sir.

382. And whose noble company do you now join?

383. The Sixth Form Revenant, sir.

384. What sort of person are you going to be?

385. I do not say, "what sort of man...?"

386. I begin to wonder, Franklin, whether you want to be a man at all.

387. My opinions carry a deal of weight,

388. whatever you may think of them.

389. It's opinions such as mine

390. that you'll have to contend with, all along the line.

391. Your decision to be a non-cooperative

392. is a decision you'll have to make again and again and again.

393. Even more so after you leave here, Franklin.

394. Every moment,

395. every day,

396. against the reality of the world.

397. No doubt you think me a very peculiar sort of chap.

398. Not at all, sir.

399. I have always looked up to you as...

400. As an English norm, sir.

401. You're the only boy in my house

402. who I still cannot recommend for the Sixth Form Club.

403. Doesn't that pain you?

404. If that's how you feel, Mr Cooke.

405. Sir.

406. Ah!

407. - (INAUDIBLE) - (POUNDING)

408. You all right, squire?

409. You all right?

410. You all, you all right?

411. Come charging down that hill right into me.

412. Hey!

413. Hey.

414. Sorry.

415. Just to help you up,

416. that's all.

417. That's all!

418. Joel?

419. Him all right, dove. I ain't killed him.

420. I'm all right.

421. He'll get over it.

422. "And reconstruct whatever political doctrinal purpose

423. "the tamperers were bending the gospel to serve.

424. "Unearth from this fabrication

425. "the troubling historical and spiritual reality

426. "of Christ himself. "?

427. "To the reader who shouts 'blasphemy',

428. "I say, blasphemy worse

429. "that the name of this life-enhancing revolutionary Jesus

430. "Should now be dangled like a halo above a sick culture

431. "centred on authority and death."

432. Dad, the place name book.

433. Oh, I lent that.

434. Tell your father, Stephen, that I meant to bring it back.

435. Oh, well, only if you've finished with it.

436. I got what I needed. I should have one of my own.

437. Buying it's one of those simple jobs that never get done.

438. How's your new play coming on?

439. Ah, it gets written.

440. Will it be outrageous?

441. Your plays often are.

442. I make 'em tamer now.

443. Ah, the public have lost the imaginative strength they had.

444. Their sight and will to see what's really going on

445. has been steadily weakened by the entertainment barons for gain,

446. by the yes men for cravenness.

447. We're not people any more with eyes to see.

448. We're blind, gapin' holes

449. at the end of a production line we're stuffing with trash.

450. We're not even citizens, we are doped serfs

451. on some mad Great Wall of China project.

452. Our task master's no Hitler, Stalin or Mac,

453. but our own management class.

454. Their pink, fat faces even begin to look alike.

455. My husband's what people call a paranoid.

456. Persecution mania? - That's right.

457. Trouble is his twisted notions usually prove true.

458. There's one hope for man only.

459. When the great concrete mega-city chokes the globe from pole to pole,

460. it shall already have bedded in some hidden crack

461. the sacred seed of its own disintegration and collapse.

462. Disobedience, chaos.

463. Out of those alone, can some new experiment in human living be born.

464. Here am I subverting you.

465. Your father would be horrified.

466. Oh, I don't know.

467. Dear...

468. Headmaster,

469. As you say,

470. our

471. Stephen

472. was

473. proud

474. in his

475. corporal's

476. uniform,

477. and

478. all

479. that it

480. stood

481. for.

482. I can

483. only assume

484. that he

485. is now

486. finding some

487. other cause

488. in which

489. to invest

490. his national pride.

491. Well, I can only assume it's because you hanker suddenly to join

492. what I term your generation's underside.

493. You've never wholeheartedly subscribed, have you, Franklin,

494. to the traditions of the school?

495. Consider the photographs.

496. It's fashionable now to mock such men as these.

497. But their service to England and man is sterling and true.

498. When the roll of honour is called of the sons of England

499. who should be on it?

500. You?

501. Or these?

502. (AT A DISTANCE) Cold.

503. Cold.

504. Cold.

505. Cold.

506. Cold.

507. Cold.

508. (STAMMERS) Sir Edward?

509. Come.

510. Where did I pluck the sublimity of that?

511. From the angels? From the air?

512. From a dog.

513. His owner refused to give him a bone.

514. By GERONTIUS' transcendental deathbed cry I...

515. Music from the whine of a dog for his bone.

516. For my seventieth birthday,

517. he gave me a dinner.

518. And, afterwards,

519. at my house, he made music for me.

520. I'd lived in that empty house for so long, that they wanted to

521. give me company, music.

522. Be kind.

523. A young girl sang for me.

524. Oh, so nervous, so nervous.

525. She had practised her song all day long for me.

526. It was a song of mine, you see.

527. I stood up.

528. Quaking, I, I...

529. My hand was... fist was raised.

530. My brow was

531. thunder.

532. "Stop! Stop! Stop!

533. "You've ruined my birthday."

534. She burst into tears and ran from the house,

535. never sang a note again.

536. Because, you see,

537. that song was written

538. for my wife.

539. (WHISPERS) For my wife.

540. So belonged...

541. One day, when I was very old,

542. the surgeons

543. cut half my rotten stomach out.

544. No anaesthetic.

545. Shock was

546. too much for the old heart.

547. They anaesthetised the stomach only.

548. There was a tiny curtain, so that I couldn't see them

549. cutting me.

550. But there was a mirror in the ceiling.

551. (CHUCKLES) They'd forgotten about that!

552. I lay down

553. and watched in the mirror above me

554. everything the surgeon did.

555. His knife

556. butchering.

557. Embowelling me alive.

558. My vitals were

559. my sustaining blood.

560. Is all that Elgar?

561. Very interesting.

562. Oh, have they cracked the enigma yet?

563. My secret. The...

564. (STAMMERS) The famous tune that fits with my enigma theme.

565. Has anyone identified it yet?

566. (STAMMERS) Oh, that, sir.

567. Well, they have tried combining your theme

568. with all sorts of tunes.

569. Auld Lang Syne in the minor, even God Save the King.

570. None of the combinations is really convincing.

571. The tune that fits is under all their noses.

572. But they won't spot it.

573. Because, you see, they have no demon for counterpoint.

574. Shall I tell you what it is?

575. (WHISPERS) Yes, come here, come.

576. Oh, that, sir.

577. That!

578. Sing it.

579. Hear how my tune

580. combines with that.

581. You're like one of the lunatics from the asylum where I taught.

582. In your head, boy. Do you want all the world to know?

583. Sing it in your head, nobly.

584. I'll add my theme.

585. Then listen, er, in your head,

586. how that they both combine.

587. So, tell no one.

588. Stephen, nobody.

589. It's a secret between the hills, yourself and me.

590. Ti ll the grave, sir.

591. Ti ll the grave.

592. Oh, yes.

593. If, er, on the hills you

594. ever hear the sound of an old man's whistling in the air,

595. don't be afraid.

596. It'll only be me.

597. I...

598. come back to look at the world, you see.

599. The lovely world.

600. Silver river.

601. Verdant valley.

602. Beautiful world.

603. Look, look, beautiful world.

604. Doesn't matter how good your marks have been,

605. you're in trouble with the school,

606. you'll get a bad reference.

607. If ever you get called up into the army, you'll...

608. end up peeling potatoes.

609. You'll never get into university.

610. You'll finish up on a conveyor belt.

611. Don't you sneer, Stephen.

612. A man cannot leave the belt for one moment

613. without getting a stand-in to take his place.

614. The belt moves on, regardless of the needs of men.

615. It gets at a man's heart.

616. The whole rhythm of his life is chained to the machine.

617. It's called productivity, Stephen.

618. I've seen it.

619. All day long the ambulances here are never still.

620. - (ALL CLAPPING) Happy birthday, mate!

621. You see,

622. you are like the English language, Stephen.

623. You have foreign parents, too.

624. Even...

625. Even Elgar had

626. some Welsh blood.

627. Bloody garden.

628. Never get on top of this bloody garden.

629. Bloody sow-thistle.

630. Bloody speedwell.

631. Sod this bloody garden.

632. And the people before us who let it run wild.

633. This sow-thistle.

634. Bloody speedwell.

635. I'm sorry what I hear, Mrs Arne.

636. - Me swearing? - Oh, no, no.

637. That you can't have any children.

638. You live with that.

639. Can't you adopt some?

640. Oh, we've been accepted on the lists. There just aren't the babies.

641. (STAMMERS) Can a homosexual have children?

642. They make very good fathers, I'm told.

643. I, I want to have children.

644. Well, you know what to do.

645. I only hope you and your future wife

646. will make a better chemical compound than us two.

647. Oh, we got one started, it fell out.

648. My womb rejects.

649. Chemical.

650. I'm adopted.

651. I'd never have guessed that, Stephen.

652. How does it feel to be adopted?

653. Sort of mixed.

654. Glad and sad.

655. Sad, I don't know where my real...

656. Where my real parents are.

657. But gladder than sad.

658. Like a molecule in a way.

659. Some of what goes to make me up, I know.

660. But now there are unknown

661. elements, possibilities.

662. And if children are placed with us, and they grow to feel like that,

663. that will make us very happy.

664. But I hope they give you lots of children. A whole tribe.

665. Oh, Stephen.

666. Because you're interesting people,

667. your children would have interesting lives.

668. Come on, Stephen. Don't stand around all day.

669. Your arms are one length. Make yourself useful.

670. I am sorry, Mrs Kings.

671. I am sorry.

672. We pray for your reunion

673. on another shore.

674. Rector,

675. we neither of us lived in hope of that.

676. We have our days.

677. Now his is over.

678. Goodbye, my dear.

679. Father, when you heard the call of God,

680. was it a real voice?

681. Any voice you hear is real.

682. But outside your head.

683. Was God's voice to you outside your head?

684. No burning bush, if that's what you mean.

685. - Joan of Arc heard voices. - Joan was a witch.

686. The English only burnt her for one because she was a patriot of France.

687. Unofficial patriot and French saint now.

688. What was she?

689. There's some evidence that she might even have not been Christian.

690. But that she practised the, what is called,

691. the old religion.

692. The primitive religion of the villages and fields.

693. She worshipped the devil?

694. Stephen,

695. when a church, any church

696. goes to war against an older god,

697. it has to call that older god

698. the devil.

699. In her last moment, we are told,

700. Joan screamed through the flames

701. to Jesu.

702. Jesu.

703. Whom did she see?

704. The plaster Christ of the cathedrals,

705. or her old, elemental village god?

706. The son of Adam, son of man.

707. The torn, flayed hero, bleeding on the tree.

708. The old

709. man-god.

710. Unchanging,

711. ever changing.

712. Samson, Marduk, Jesus, Balder,

713. Heracles.

714. By whom this Earth is haunted since the first beat of the heart of man.

715. The bishop wouldn't like to hear you saying that.

716. I have displeased other bishops in my time.

717. The pagans practised human sacrifice.

718. Do we not?

719. In their millions through to the fire to Moloch, living and dead.

720. You know the old meaning of 'pagan' as well as I do.

721. Belonging to the village.

722. The village is sneered at as something petty.

723. Petty it can be.

724. Yet, it works.

725. The scale is human,

726. people can relate there.

727. Man may yet, in the nick of time, revolt and save himself.

728. Revolt from the monolith,

729. come back to the village.

730. Jesus was a revolutionary

731. in the most elemental sense.

732. In him alone...

733. In him alone, the legislator and the demon fuse.

734. He has been taken over, just as Marx was taken over.

735. Perverted by the Pauls, Augustines, Constantines,

736. the institution mongers, the doctrine men.

737. We crucify him over and over.

738. Over and over in that church, I...

739. crucify him.

740. Then, why do you stay frocked?

741. Because...

742. Because, like all of us in this world,

743. I am two men.

744. A self

745. and a non-self.

746. Only by being non-selves can we now survive

747. in our own mortal shrouds we weave around us.

748. And what shall this survival profit us

749. in this day of the mask, this day of corporation man?

750. What shall the self do then, poor thing,

751. but curl away in from the poisoning wind and dream?

752. Dream of some second coming

753. man himself must bring about

754. through some last disobedience and new

755. resurrection.

756. Yes, there is need of a book to argue this.

757. Perhaps, you might give the world just such a book.

758. Stephen,

759. where fathers fail

760. they look to their sons to achieve.

761. I'm not your chemical son, Dad.

762. I wouldn't inherit your understanding.

763. No knowing, son, what you might not inherit.

764. The world would've become this present bedlam,

765. church or no.

766. Yet, I wonder,

767. romanticism of a sort, I know,

768. and yet, I wonder.

769. Just as I wonder whom Joan of Arc in her last agony saw.

770. I wonder about another.

771. A man.

772. A thousand years even earlier than she.

773. A king of Midland, England.

774. This

775. last of his kind,

776. last pagan king in England

777. fighting his last battle against the new machine.

778. That battle in which he is to fall.

779. King Penda.

780. What mystery of this land went down with him forever?

781. What wisdom?

782. When Penda fell,

783. what dark old sun of light went out?

784. Pinvin.

785. Pin-fin.

786. King Penda's fen.

787. Did Penda die here?

788. Who says that he is dead?

789. (WHISPERING) Stephen.

790. Stephen Franklin.

791. Unbury me.

792. Free me from this tree.

793. Many of us proceed to the ancient universities.

794. Others into family businesses.

795. Others into the forces of the Crown.

796. All onto the first rungs of that ladder,

797. destining us for positions of influence

798. and decision-making of the land.

799. Nor must we forget those, er,

800. somewhat more angular brethren amongst us.

801. Whose eyes are turned, it would seem, upon less concrete things.

802. So, what more fitting valedictory

803. er, than to sing together, one last time,

804. what has traditionally become our second school song

805. and every Englishman's alternative national hymn.

806. "And did those feet in ancient time

807. "walk upon England's mountains green?

808. "And was the holy lamb of God

809. "on England's pleasant pastures seen?

810. "And did the countenance divine

811. "shine forth upon our clouded hills?"

812. Are you an English boy?

813. - Such a light in his eyes. - True English boy?

814. It is he.

815. It is he. He has the light.

816. We knew the child would come. He's been promised us for so long.

817. But that we should find him

818. is too lovely to be true.

819. No, if we touch him, he'll vanish. It's written.

820. The child is innocent.

821. He does not know his inheritance.

822. Nor does he know the courage he will need

823. to exercise his right in this dark world.

824. Not that they put us to the fire any moire.

825. Oh, Stephen.

826. (WHISPERS) Stephen.

827. Think of that torment.

828. To be burned.

829. Shackled to the mockery of a tree and burned.

830. Living.

831. Burned away.

832. What torment is that?

833. Through the flames we see our lord.

834. He reaches out his hand, to bring us from the shadow of Th is world.

835. When we were burned, we cried in joy.

836. The Crosstians think we scream.

837. We cried in joy.

838. When we are burned,

839. why, we are turned to light.

840. Look.

841. Your inheritance.

842. The kings of the Earth, you can govern.

843. They walk in their sleep.

844. Yours is the right to inherit the power.

845. To will their will.

846. Power, Stephen,

847. to turn the rock of the world to wealth.

848. Power,

849. to fall and not to die.

850. Like Joan the Maid.

851. To fall

852. and not to die.

853. You have to come with us.

854. You are our child of light.

855. You have to be born in us.

856. Then you become pure light.

857. No. No!

858. Oh!

859. - (CRIES) - I am nothing pure.

860. Nothing pure!

861. My race is mixed.

862. My sex is mixed. I am woman and man.

863. Light with darkness.

864. Mixed!

865. Mixed.

866. I am nothing special. Nothing, nothing pure.

867. I am mud and flame!

868. If we can't have him, darkness must not.

869. Penda!

870. There you have seen your true dark enemies of England.

871. Sick father and mother, who would have us children forever.

872. Kind Penda?

873. Stephen,

874. our land must live.

875. This land we love must live.

876. Her deep, dark flame must never die.

877. Night is falling.

878. Your land and mine goes down into a darkness now.

879. And I, and all the other guardians of her flame

880. are driven from our home,

881. up out into the wolf's jaw.

882. But the flame still flickers in the fen.

883. You are marked down to cherish that.

884. Cherish the flame till we can safely wake again.

885. The flame is in your hands, we trust it you.

886. Our sacred demon of ungovernableness.

887. Cherish the flame,

888. we shall rest easy.

889. Stephen, be secret.

890. Child, be strange.

891. Dark, true, impure and dissonant.

892. Cherish our flame.

893. Our dawn

894. shall come.