Daisy Miller

Henry James, Dawn Keeler

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781783192724
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Teatro americano

Henry James's classic story of unrequited love.
Lake Geneva, 1878: a young American expatriate, Frederick Winterbourne, meets Daisy Miller, a strikingly pretty young American from Schenectady. Though immediately infatuated with each other, they are socially worlds apart. Winterbourne fails to recognise that Daisy is that alarming new phenomenon, 'the American Girl', free to do as she pleases. Daisy Miller has its intensely poignant denouement in Rome, where Daisy's conduct provokes the wrath of the city's American colony, and leads Winterbourne to tragically misjudge her.

Characters

DAISY MILLER

Young American

FREDERICK WINTERBOURNE

Young American living in Europe

MRS MILLER

Daisy’s mother

MRS COSTELLO

Winterbourne’s aunt

MRS WALKER

American widow

GIOVANELLI

Italian lawyer

EUGENIO

Swiss courier

WAITER

SERVANT

The play takes place in 1878–9, in Vevey, a resort
on Lake Geneva, Switzerland, and Rome, Italy.

Daisy Miller was first performed at the Malvern Festival Theatre on 30 August 2005, with the following cast:

FREDERICK WINTERBOURNE, Richard Grieve

DAISY MILLER, Scarlett Johnson

MRS COSTELLO, Jean Boht

MRS MILLER, Sandra Dickinson

MRS WALKER, Shirley Anne Field

EUGENIO/GIOVANELLI, Craig Giovanelli

Producer, Ian Fricker

Director, Christopher Morahan

Designer, Christopher Woods

Lighting Designer, Gerry Jenkinson

Music, Ilona Sekacz

ACT ONE

FREDERICK WINTERBOURNE is sitting, smoking, at a table. He is engrossed in writing. The sound of a pen scratching on paper. A cup of coffee is on the table. The stage is dark apart from a light on WINTERBOURNE.

WINTERBOURNE: (Voice over.) July the sixteenth, 1879, the Hôtel des Trois Couronnes, Vevey. Here I am back in Switzerland, at the little resort of Vevey, just two months after that whole remarkable and mystifying episode came to an end. It was in this very garden, almost a year ago, that I first met Daisy Miller: real name Annie, Annie P Miller from Schenectady, in the State of New York…the incomparable Daisy! If I wrote here all that I could write about what happened in the days, weeks and months after that meeting, I should speedily fill this notebook, bought in Rome last winter, but hitherto unopened. It’s so long since I’ve kept any notes, written down my current reflections, taken a sheet of paper, as it were, into my confidence. (WINTERBOURNE starts to speak in sync with his voice and gradually takes over.) Perhaps it is too late now fully to recapture that experience, but I want to catch and keep its essence, distil its meaning. Whether I succeed, or not, I’m glad I’ve come back here, where it all started – it is something that I have had to do. (WINTERBOURNE has put down his pen and addresses the audience.) Vevey in June is always the same; American travellers are so numerous at this time that it takes on some of the qualities of an American watering-place. There’s a flitting to and fro of stylish young girls, a rustling of muslin flounces. One of those young girls last June, surely the most striking of all, was Miss Daisy Miller.

Gradually, a light comes up on DAISY. She is standing as though in a painting. Quite still. The arbour acts as a frame for the painting.

WINTERBOURNE continues.

What am I supposed to do? Ignore her? I watch her, fascinated. Everything about her, her eyes, her nose, her ears, her teeth, her complexion, all are perfection. I immediately want to talk to her. But I hesitate. In Geneva, the dark little capital of Calvinism, where I’ve mainly lived since a boy, a young man isn’t at liberty to speak to a young unmarried girl, except under quite exceptional circumstances! Quel absurdité! But here, in pleasure-loving Vevey, with so many American tourists milling around, it seems the most natural thing in the world.

Lights up. Vevey, on Lake Geneva, Switzerland, June 1878. The garden of the Hôtel des Trois Couronnes.

Sound of a brass band playing a Strauss waltz floats across the lake.

DAISY MILLER steps out of the picture. She goes and stands in front of WINTERBOURNE. She carries a parasol and has a small pair of binoculars on a ribbon round her neck.

That music is very jolly, isn’t it?

DAISY: It makes one want to dance.

She moves a little in time to the music.

WINTERBOURNE: Presumably that’s what it’s meant to do. Do you know the music?

DAISY: No.

WINTERBOURNE: It’s a waltz.

DAISY: I know it’s a waltz, I thought you meant that particular waltz. Everyone’s waltzing in New York these days. (She leans over the table.) What are you writing?

WINTERBOURNE: A set of articles for a New York newspaper, about places in Europe I’ve enjoyed visiting. I’m hoping they will be published as a travel book.

DAISY: A guidebook!

WINTERBOURNE: Well, yes, it will contain some useful information about places, but it won’t exactly be a Baedeker!

DAISY: A Baedeker? What’s that?

WINTERBOURNE: It’s the guidebook – a bible for the discriminating traveller!

DAISY: Dear me!

WINTERBOURNE: (After a silence.) Isn’t this a simply tremendous view? See that mountain over there?

DAISY: It’s so big, I couldn’t miss it, I guess! But I don’t know what it’s called. Our Swiss courier, Eugenio, has been too busy chasing after my brother Randolph to tell us much about the area.

WINTERBOURNE: Oh, your brother and I have already made acquaintance. He told me his name. We had quite a conversation. He’s a most spirited little boy.

DAISY: Randolph spirited? I’ll say! And so naughty. He was jumping round on a pole just now, pretending it was a horse. Not only that, he was poking it into everything he could find. I thought he was going to poke my eyes out.

WINTERBOURNE: That would have been a pity. You have, if I may say so, rather remarkable eyes.

DAISY looks at him quizzically.

By the way, the pole’s an alpenstock.

DAISY: I know, it’s just easier to call it a pole.

WINTERBOURNE: Randolph told me he’s going to climb the Alps with it… Are you going to Italy?

DAISY: Yes, sir. I’m going to Rome for the winter – with my mother and Randolph – and of course Eugenio.

WINTERBOURNE: Are you thinking of going over the Simplon?

DAISY: Going over the what?

WINTERBOURNE: The Simplon.

DAISY: I don’t know. I suppose it’s some mountain.

WINTERBOURNE: Yes, it is. Some mountain! The scenery is quite spectacular. From Vevey, crossing the Simplon Pass is the best way of going down into Italy.

DAISY: (Looking through her binoculars.) What’s that mountain over there?

WINTERBOURNE: It’s the Dent du Midi. Dent is French for ‘tooth’; du Midi means ‘of the South’.

DAISY: ‘Tooth of the South’! I suppose it does look like a tooth, an upside down one. Do you live up in the mountains?

WINTERBOURNE: (Laughing.) Good gracious, I’m not a goatherd! No, I live in Geneva, just across the lake.

DAISY: Have you lived there very long?

WINTERBOURNE: Yes, indeed. I’ve travelled a good deal too. I’m very fond of travelling, and happily, as a writer for an American newspaper, I’ve been able to do it.

DAISY: I suppose you know ever so many foreign languages?

WINTERBOURNE: Yes, quite a few.

DAISY: Is it hard to learn to speak them?

WINTERBOURNE: Yes, to speak them well it is. Have you picked up any foreign words on your tour?

DAISY: Just the odd one. But I don’t want to speak foreign languages; I just want to listen to them. They say the way they speak in the French theatre is so beautiful.

WINTERBOURNE: Absolutely true.

DAISY: Have you been to the French theatre very often?

WINTERBOURNE: The first time I was in Paris I went every night.

DAISY: Goodness, every night! And when we were in Paris I didn’t go once.

WINTERBOURNE: Why not?

DAISY: Randolph, of course. He doesn’t want to go anywhere. He’d like to be back at home with Father. (Pause.) Do you have a favourite country in Europe?

WINTERBOURNE: Yes. There’s one I love beyond any other.

DAISY: Which is that?

WINTERBOURNE: Italy. It’s a beautiful place.

DAISY: Well, I’ll get a chance to see it, won’t I? (Pointing with her parasol.) Have you been to that old castle?

WINTERBOURNE: The Château de Chillon. More than once.

DAISY: We haven’t been there. I want to go there, dreadfully. I mean to go there. I wouldn’t go away from here without seeing that old castle.

WINTERBOURNE: It’s a very pretty excursion, and very easy to make. You can go in a carriage, you know, or by the little steamer.

DAI...