The Welsh Boy

Julian Mitchell, James Parry

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781849434553
• eBook ISBN: 9781849436076
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

The Welsh Boy is a scintillating rediscovery of one of the hidden gems of eighteenth-century literature and brings back to life a true story of passionate love and outrageous sexual scandal in the sleepy provincial town of Ross-on-Wye. James Parry is blessed with a wonderful singing voice that has allowed him to escape his humble origins in South Wales. Mary Powell is the richest heiress in the district – also its loveliest, and its most daring. When Mary engages James as her music master their lessons at the spinet turn into tutorials in the most heavenly pleasures. But love is one thing, sex another and marriage yet a third.

ACT ONE

As the lights go up, we find JAMES PARRY admiring an 18th-century book, stroking the cover, flipping a few pages. He looks up at the audience.

PARRY: Wonderful thing, a book. Not the ink and paper or the leather binding, but the way it holds the essence of the writer and his times, keeps him and them as fresh as the day he wrote it. Doesn’t matter what’s in it – poems, stories – truth or lies – if you’ve written a book, you can thumb your nose at death. Here we are, almost three hundred years later, and I’m as alive as I ever was. You may like me, you may not. But I survive. What’s the good of that, you’ll say. What use is a thumbed nose to my poor drowned bones? Revenge! That’s what. The revenge I have, and go on having, on all the bastards who wanted to wipe me out of existence, so they could go on living their mean, strutting, money-grubbing, little lives, without me there to remind them just how mean and money-grubbing and sourly little they were. (Bitter.) I loved that beautiful girl. Heart and soul. And when I held her in my arms, she loved me as I loved her, and – (Beat, then he taps the book.) This memoir of mine, you know, it sold pretty well. Was reprinted. Several times. And it’s true, all true. And for all their fine airs then, those petty gentry, they wrote no books, so they can’t defend themselves or answer back. They live now only in my version of them. Their meanness, their heartlessness, their spite and stupidity, their jealousy, are recorded for ever. Or near enough. (Doubt, then laugh.) But then so are mine. Revenge is always said to be sweet. But – I don’t know. What do you think ?

He goes as the lights change, and music begins on a wheezy organ, suggesting provincial life. It is the 1730s, and we are in the Prospect at Ross, a place where the townspeople promenade below the church. Two young women are coming on: MARY POWELL, a Monmouthshire heiress of 19, and BETTY FISHER, a local milliner. MARY speaks in an educated voice, BETTY in the local accent.

MARY: He’s really good-looking.

BETTY: Much better than poor old Mr Apperley! With his nose like an organ-pipe!

MARY: I hope it was only his nose! Or how would Mrs Apperley have managed?

They both giggle. The music splutters, then stops.

BETTY: That old organ! The parish should get him a new one.

MARY: A new organ for the new organist? But what about the one he’s brought with him?

More giggles.

BETTY: He looks manly enough to me.

MARY: But people in Hereford say –

BETTY: People in Hereford will say anything.

MARY: But when he sings, his voice is so high. They say it’s more like a boy’s voice.

BETTY: Perhaps he’s a unicorn?

MARY: Not a unicorn, Betty, a – Oh, here he comes. Being condescended to by Doomsday.

John Roberts, an Oxford student known locally as DOOMSDAY, comes on with PARRY. The girls pretend to look at the view, but their attention is really all for PARRY.

DOOMSDAY: No, the Ross organ would be no good for sounding the Last Trump. Very inferior to the one in St Mary’s. That has the best organ outside London.

PARRY: One of the best, certainly.

DOOMSDAY: No, the best. Once you’ve heard it –

PARRY: I have heard it. I’ve played on it.

DOOMSDAY: Really?

PARRY: I have friends at Oxford.

DOOMSDAY: (Patronising.) At Jesus, I suppose? The Welsh college.

PARRY: (Aggressive.) Its scholars are as learned as those of any other college, they tell me.

DOOMSDAY: They like to think so, no doubt. But they have a long way to go to catch up. Jesus is such a recent addition to the university.

PARRY: It’s been there a hundred and fifty years.

DOOMSDAY: My dear fellow! Balliol was founded in 1263. And it’s been the great centre for medical education ever since.

PARRY: It likes to think so, no doubt. (Quick, before he can reply.) But why are you doing Medicine? Your father’s an attorney, isn’t he?

DOOMSDAY: He is.

PARRY: Doesn’t he want you to follow him in the law?

DOOMSDAY: He did. But when I explained to him that the world as we know it is nearing its end –

PARRY: Is it?

DOOMSDAY: It says so in Revelations…if you know how to read them. There will be wars, famines, earthquakes, fire – and pestilence and plague. Doctors will be in very great demand. Balliol doctors especially.

PARRY: (Looking at the view.) With the river making that great loop down there, the bridge and castle, the church spires, the fields, the woods, the distant mountains – Herefordshire seems more like Arcadia than a place for plague and pestilence.

DOOMSDAY: If you think Ross is Arcadia – (Laugh.) It’s the most boring town in England. Nothing but innkeepers and fishermen. And all the girls are dressmakers.

PARRY: Women must dress, I suppose.

DOOMSDAY: (Looking over at MARY POWELL.) Miss Powell dresses exceptionally well, don’t you think?

PARRY: (Interested.) Oh, is that Miss Powell?

DOOMSDAY: Wonderful figure. Beautiful complexion. (Looking down at the river and bridge.) Ah, here comes the coach to take me back to civilisation. You’ll find little enough here, I’m afraid. Unless you can liven the scene yourself. (Patronising again.) But next time you’re in Oxford, you let me know. I’ll show you Balliol chapel, and you can pedal away on our organ to your heart’s content.

PARRY: Very kind.

DOOMSDAY: My pleasure!

DOOMSDAY goes over to the girls and doffs his hat. BETTY bobs, but he ignores her completely.

Miss Powell!

MARY: Good morning. Off for the Easter term?

DOOMSDAY: Hilary. At Oxford we call it the Hilary term.

MARY: We shall miss you. Our only man of real learning.

DOOMSDAY: (Delighted.) Well! Well! I suppose I am!

MARY: Apart from the rector, of course.

DOOMSDAY: Oh, the rector! (Patronising laugh.) He was at Cambridge! Good morning to you!

MARY: Good morning.

He goes.

PARRY: (To audience.) His name’s Roberts, but everyone calls him Doomsday. He’s a conceited fool, whose head has been turned by the metaphysical quacks of Oxford.

He looks again at the view. MARY nudges BETTY.

MARY: Now.

BETTY: No.

MARY: Go on! We must find out what sort of a man he is. If man at all.

BETTY: Then go yourself!

MARY: I can’t approach a stranger. Whatever would he think? Go on!

She gives her a push. BETT...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• INTRODUCTION
• Characters
• ACT ONE
• ACT TWO