Victoria King
Cadet
i know!!! who doesnt and why?! and if they dont they need serious serious mental help! it just..............i dont know what i cant describe how it makes me feel! its just amazing!
Great Plays and Musicals
- Thread starter Victoria King
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the_alliance
Cadet
i'm here with catty and we're watching.....the matinee of.....Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol
ACT 1
Prologue
(MUSIC: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. LIGHTS come up on NARRATOR, performed by Ensemble.)
NARRATOR: Marley was dead, to begin with. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wondrous can come of the story we are about to relate…
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he had been partners in business for years. When Marley died Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole friend and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral.
Old Marley was dead as a doornail. There is no doubt whatsoever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon the Exchange for anything he chose to put his hand to.
Oh, but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous sinner.
(LIGHTS come up on SCROOGE in his COUNTING HOUSE as NARRATOR speaks about him. NARRATOR stands aside as 1st CHARITY WOMAN and 2nd CHARITY WOMAN enter.)
Scene 1
1st CHARITY WOMAN (Judy): A merry Christmas!
SCROOGE: Bah. Humbug.
1st CHARITY WOMAN (Judy): Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?
SCROOGE: Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years. He died seven years ago, this very night.
2nd CHARITY WOMAN (Jeannie): At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge, it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundred of thousands are in want of common comfort, sir.
SCROOGE (continuing to write): Are there no prisons?
2nd CHARITY WOMAN (Jeannie): Plenty of prisons.
SCROOGE: And the workhouses? Are they still in operation?
2nd CHARITY WOMAN (Jeannie): I wish I could say that they were not.
1st CHARITY WOMAN (Judy): A few of us are endeavoring to raise a charitable fund to buy the poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because Christmas is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. As you are a man of means, I am sure my friend and I can count on you to make a generous contribution, in the spirit of the holiday. Or perhaps you would care to make a donation in Mr. Marley's name on this anniversary of his passing. What shall I put you down for?
SCROOGE: Nothing.
1st CHARITY WOMAN (Judy): You wish to remain anonymous?
SCROOGE: I wish to be left alone! I don't make merry at Christmas myself, and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned--they cost enough--and those who are badly off must go there.
2nd CHARITY WOMAN (Jeannie): Good sir, the Union workhouses are dreadful places where the able-bodied are worked like beasts of burden, their dependents allowed barely enough food and shelter to keep them alive. Disease and death haunt these houses. I assure you, many would rather die than enter their doors.
SCROOGE: If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population! Allow me to remind you, ladies, that it is a hard and unforgiving world. Those who make their way in it, do so by dint of labor. What I have gained, I have earned with sacrifice and years of toil. I suggest you recommend to your poor petitioners that they employ themselves in a similar course of action. If you press me further, I tell you it is enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon.
1st CHARITY WOMAN (Judy): Mr. Scrooge--!
SCROOGE: Good afternoon!
(FRED enters, passing 1st and 2nd CHARITY WOMEN as they exit.)
2nd CHARITY WOMAN (Jeannie) (to FRED): If it is aught for charity you seek, seek elsewhere. Here's none to be found.
FRED: Indeed! I am sorry to hear that! Allow me to make a donation of my own-not so much as Uncle Scrooge might well spare, but something nonetheless! The best of the holiday season to you both.
1st CHARITY WOMAN (Judy) (shaking FRED'S hand): Thank you very much, sir. A merry Christmas to you, sir!
(1st and 2nd CHARITY WOMEN exit.)
SCROOGE: “Merry Christmas…” Humbug.
FRED: Christmas a humbug, uncle! You don't mean that, I am sure.
SCROOGE: I do. Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough.
FRED: Come, then. What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough.
SCROOGE: Bah.
FRED: Don't be cross, uncle.
SCROOGE: What else can I be when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer? If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with `Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled in his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. Hah!
FRED: Uncle!
SCROOGE: Nephew! Keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.
FRED: Keep it! But you don't keep it.
SCROOGE: Leave it alone, then. Much good may it do you! Much good has it ever done you!
FRED: There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say. Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people around them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!
(BOB CRACHIT has entered during FRED'S speech. He applauds vigorously.)
SCROOGE (to CRACHIT): Let me hear another sound from you, and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation. You're quite a powerful speaker, sir. I wonder you don't go into Parliament.
FRED: Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us tomorrow.
SCROOGE: Never.
FRED: But why?
SCROOGE: Why did you get married?
FRED: Because I fell in love.
SCROOGE: Because you fell in love! Ridiculous.
FRED: You never came to see me before I married. Why give it as a reason for not coming now?
SCROOGE: Crachit! Show him to the door.
FRED: I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?
SCROOGE: Crachit! The door!
FRED: I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have come in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humor to the last. So a Merry Christmas, uncle!
SCROOGE: Out!
FRED: And a Happy New Year!
SCROOGE (growls)
(FRED stops to talk to BOB CRACHIT.)
SCROOGE: There's another fellow, my clerk, with fifteen-shilling a week, and a wife and family to support, talking about a merry Christmas. Idiots and fools. I'll retire to Bedlam.…
(FRED exits. BOB CRACHIT goes out and returns with his hat and scarf and SCROOGE'S hat and coat.)
SCROOGE (to CRACHIT): You, sir! You'll want all day tomorrow, I suppose?
BOB CRACHIT: If it's quite convenient, sir.
SCROOGE: It's not convenient… paying a day's wages for no work. You think it only “fair,” I'll be bound.
BOB CRACHIT: It's only once a year, sir.
SCROOGE: “Only once a year, sir?” A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December. Very well, go home, keep your Christmas. But mind you, be here all the earlier the next morning.
BOB CRACHIT: Indeed I will, Mr. Scrooge. Thank you, sir!
(BOB CRACHIT puts on his hat and scarf. TINY TIM and PETER CRACHIT have entered and are waiting for him. They exit together. SCROOGE puts aside his papers and puts on his hat and coat. LIGHTS go down on the counting house. While the NARRATOR speaks TOWNSPEOPLE enter and pass by SCROOGE as he walks home through the STREET. MUSIC: Good King Wenceslas.)
NARRATOR: Christmas Eve. The city clocks had just gone seven, and it was quite dark. Cold, bleak, biting weather.
But winter's cold had little influence on Scrooge. No wind that blew was bitterer than he; no falling snow was more intent, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. He had made himself a sort of artificial winter that froze any that came near him, for it was his chief pleasure to walk alone amongst his fellow creatures, disdaining their pity or their ire alike. Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, “My dear Scrooge, how are you?” Even the blind men seemed to sense his presence and turn away. No man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge.
BOY (runs up and tugs on SCROOGE'S coat): Have you a penny to spare, sir?
SCROOGE: Bah! (Frightening BOY off. NARRATOR steps forward and TOWNSPEOPLE exit gradually. SCROOGE crosses to his ROOM and changes into his robe.)
ACT 2
Scene 1
NARRATOR: Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern, and having read all the newspapers and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker's book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner, Marley. They were a gloomy suit of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices. Once inside, he closed his door, locked himself in, double-locked himself in, and sat down before the fire.
(LIGHTS come up on SCROOGE'S ROOM.)
NARRATOR: It so happened that while he was ruminating, his glance came to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated for some purpose now forgotten with a chamber in the highest story of the building. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing of its own accord.
(BELL is heard. SCROOGE sits frozen. Silence, then CLANKING is heard. NARRATOR steps aside and MARLEY enters, behind.)
MARLEY: SCROOGE! (SCROOGE sits silent in terror.) EBENEZER SCROOGE!
SCROOGE: Who…who are you?
MARLEY: Ask me who I was.
SCROOGE: Who were you then, and what do you want of me?
MARLEY: Much! In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.
SCROOGE: Marley?!
MARLEY: You don't believe in me.
SCROOGE: I don't.
MARLEY: Why do you doubt your senses?
SCROOGE: Because a little thing can affect them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheat. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. It's humbug, I tell you. Humbug!
(MARLEY cries out loudly and rattles his chains.)
SCROOGE: Mercy! Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?
MARLEY: Man of the worldly mind! Do you believe in me or not?
SCROOGE: I do! I must! But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?
MARLEY: It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world-oh, woe is me!-and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness.
Look upon me! I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard. Is its pattern strange to you? Or would you know the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have labored on it since. It is a ponderous chain!
SCROOGE: Jacob, Old Jacob Marley, speak comfort to me, Jacob!
MARLEY: I have none to give. It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our counting house-mark me!-in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole, and weary journeys now lie before me.
SCROOGE: You must have been very slow about it, Jacob.
MARLEY: Slow!
SCROOGE: Seven years dead, and traveling the whole time.
MARLEY: No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse.
SCROOGE: Do you travel fast?
MARLEY: I travel on the wings of the wind.
SCROOGE: I would think you should have covered a great quantity of ground in seven years.
MARLEY: O, captive, bound and double-ironed - not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunities misused! Yet such was I! Oh, such was I!
SCROOGE: You were always a good man of business, Jacob.
MARLEY: Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!
At this time of the year, I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me?
Hear me, now o man! My time is nearly gone.
SCROOGE: I will! But don't be hard upon me, Jacob, pray!
MARLEY: Know then I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day… I am here tonight to warn you, so that you may have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate--
SCROOGE: You were always a good friend to me, Jacob.
MARLEY: --You will be haunted by three Spirits--
SCROOGE: Is that the chance and hope you mentioned? I--I think I'd rather not.
MARLEY: --Without their visits you cannot shun the path I tread. Expect the first when the bell tolls one.
(MARLEY begins to exit.)
SCROOGE: Couldn't I take `em all at once, and have it over?
MARLEY'S VOICE: Remember, for your own sake, what has passed between us!
NARRATOR: Scrooge followed Marley to the window, where he beheld a great crowd of spirits in the air. One ghost, he saw, hovered in a doorway and cried bitterly over a poor mother and her child, he could no longer help. Terrified by the vision, Scrooge returned to his chair, to wait the coming of the first spirit Marley had foretold.
(SCROOGE, disconcerted, returns to his chair to wait the coming of the 1st SPIRIT. CHIME.)
SCROOGE: Quarter to.
(CHIME.)
SCROOGE: Ten to!
(CHIME.)
SCROOGE: Five to.
(BELL tolls, and the 1st SPIRIT enters.)
SCROOGE: The hour itself! (Looks around and sees 1st SPIRIT.)
Scene 2
SCROOGE: Are--are you the spirit whose coming was foretold to me?
1st SPIRIT: I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.
SCROOGE: Long past?
1st SPIRIT: No. Your past. Rise, and walk with me.
(The 1st SPIRIT makes a gesture and LIGHTS come up on a SCHOOL ROOM, where a SCROOGE as a BOY sits reading. There is a trunk next to him. MUSIC.)
SCROOGE: Good heavens!
1st SPIRIT (stopping him): These are the shadows of things past, Ebenezer. They cannot see or hear you.
SCROOGE: Why, it's just as I remember it! My old school room, you see, and there I am! How astonishing!
COACHMAN OFFSTAGE: Lively there!
SPIRIT: A solitary child…
SCROOGE: The others have already left for the Christmas holidays.
1st SPIRIT: But the school is not quite deserted yet…
(BELLE as a GIRL enters.)
GIRL: Why, Ebenezer! Won't you be going home for Christmas?
BOY: I'm sure my father will send for me soon.
GIRL (sitting down next to him): What are you reading? Can I look at your book with you?
BOY (showing her): It's about Robinson Crusoe and his parrot.
SCROOGE: “Poor Robin Crusoe,” he called him, when he came home again after sailing round the island. “Poor Robin Crusoe, where have you been, Robin Crusoe?” The man thought he was dreaming, but he wasn't. It was the parrot. - Poor boy. I wish… but it's too late now.
1st SPIRIT: What's the matter?
SCROOGE: Nothing, nothing.
1st SPIRIT: I see a tear upon your cheek. Do you call that nothing?
SCROOGE: There was a boy in the street earlier… I should like to have given him something, that's all.
COACHMAN: Come along then. (Picking up the trunk.) Back upstairs with you.
BOY: My trunk! I need my trunk for when I go home, sir!
COACHMAN: You'll not be going home this Christmas, little Ebenezer. Upstairs with you now.
BOY: Perhaps there's been a mistake! I know my father--
(COACHMAN exits, opposite with trunk.)
GIRL: Poor, Ebenezer.
1st SPIRIT: This was not the only Christmas he spent reading here…
BOY: I don't mind so much. It's only Christmas. I don't care.
GIRL: Cheer up, Ebenezer. It won't be long. Besides, you have your books to read!
WOMAN'S VOICE (Susan): Belle!
GIRL: My coach! I must run and see Papa and Mama! I wish you could come spend Christmas with us. (She gives BOY a quick kiss on the cheek and exits.)
1st SPIRIT: She had a large heart.
SCROOGE: So she had.
1st SPIRIT: Let us look at a later Christmas… Young Ebenezer is now a grown man, released from school into the world - his father dead. A promising, independent, young man with business prospects, and every hope of happiness before him…
Scene 3
(1st SPIRIT waves its hand, and years pass. Scene is now set with BELLE and YOUNG SCROOGE.)
YOUNG SCROOGE: It is but another year, Belle! After waiting so long, surely one more year is no great thing-my apprenticeship is but lately finished, my investments still in doubtful state.
BELLE: Another year, Ebenezer! When are we to be married?
YOUNG SCROOGE: Very, very soon, I promise you, my love. Only let us wait until we are sure of our prosperity!
BELLE: It cannot be. It was the same with you last Christmas, and the Christmas before.
YOUNG SCROOGE: But this year will be different! Mr. Marley speaks of setting up a money-changing business in the City, in which I am to be made partner!
BELLE: Mr. Marley! Oh, he is a rare man.
YOUNG SCROOGE: He is a man of business, Belle. And a very good one with sound sense. I would do well to become such a man in the world.
BELLE: I do not like him, Ebenezer. He has a cold heart, and an evil eye. Do not enter into this compact with him!
YOUNG SCROOGE: Mr. Marley has promised me an important position, and a half share of profits. Come now, he is not such a wicked man as you think. And if he is? I follow him but for my own gain-he has no sway over my heart, as you do, Belle. What of Mr. Marley, then? He shall but help us to make our fortune!
BELLE: You are already more like him than you know.
YOUNG SCROOGE: Belle, I have hopes and expectations that will soon come to fruition, I am sure of it! Just another year that is all, and then I shall feel our happiness together is secure.
BELLE: Our happiness? No, Ebenezer. I see too well, another idol has displaced me in your affections. Alas, if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.
YOUNG SCROOGE: What Idol could displace you, Belle?
BELLE: A golden one.
YOUNG SCROOGE: You find fault with me because I care for money. For the money to assure our happiness, our money, Belle! Oh, this is rich! This!--this is the even-handed dealing of the world! There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth.
SCROOGE (to himself): Too true, too true.
BELLE: You fear the world too much, Ebenezer. All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you.
YOUNG SCROOGE: What then? Even if I have grown wiser to the ways of the world, what then? I am not changed towards you, am I?
SCROOGE: Let us go. I wish to see another scene.
BELLE: The contract of love between us is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and content to be so. You are changed. When it was made, you were another man.
YOUNG SCROOGE: I was a boy.
SCROOGE: Let us go, Spirit.
BELLE: Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are.
1st SPIRIT: These are the shadows of the things that have been. That they are what they are, do not blame me.
YOUNG SCROOGE: Belle!
BELLE: For the love of him you once were, I release you with a full heart. May you be happy in the life you have chosen!
(BELLE exits. YOUNG SCROOGE exits opposite.)
1st SPIRIT (departing): Think on what has passed, Ebenezer Scrooge, and know yourself.
(SCROOGE returns to his chair.)
SCROOGE: I did right. I had no choice. Should we have married on no more than the expectation of riches? A family like Crachit's? Impossible. I made my fortune, could she have but waited. I was a boy, a fool to care for her. Enough! I will not think on it. And yet, my nephew, Fred… Poor Belle! No more. No more, I say!
Were not three spirits prophesied me? What time is it now? Let me see. I must stay awake and keep a look about. Let `em come. I have passed so far a strange and terrible night, and I doubt anything between a baby and a rhinoceros would astonish me.
ACT 3
Scene 1
NARRATOR: The hour was drawing close against which the coming of the second spirit had been foretold. Scrooge was on his guard, for he wished to challenge the Spirit on the moment it appeared, and did not wish to be taken by surprise.
(CHIME. CHIME. BELL)
NARRATOR: Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by any means prepared for nothing; and, consequently, when no shape appeared, he was taken with a violent fit of trembling.
(SCROOGE gathers his courage and looks around the edge of his chair. Sees 2nd SPIRIT.)
2nd SPIRIT: Ho, ho, ho! Ebenezer Scrooge! Come, come closer, and look upon me! I am the Ghost of Christmas Present! Have you never seen the like of me before?
SCROOGE : Never!
2nd SPIRIT: Never walked forth with the other members of my family?
SCROOGE: I don't think I have. I am pretty sure I would have remembered it. No, I am afraid I have not. Have you many brothers and sisters, Spirit?
2nd SPIRIT: More than eighteen hundred to date!
SCROOGE: Eighteen hundred! A tremendous family to provide for!… Spirit, conduct me where you will. If you have aught to teach me this night, let me profit by it. I went forth before upon compulsion, but I learnt a lesson, which is working on me now, and I am humbler than I was.
2nd SPIRIT: Come with me! Let us visit a Christmas Present of someone you know!
(The 2nd SPIRIT gestures, and LIGHTS come up on FRED'S party.)
FRED (Laughing): He said that Christmas a humbug, as I live! He believed it too!
NARRATOR: Scrooge found himself in the home of his nephew, Fred. The walls and ceiling were hung with living green. Bright gleaming mistletoe and berries glistened, and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney, as Scrooge's dingy house had never known. There were turkeys, geese, mince-pies, plum-puddings, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, and seething bowls of punch, that made the room dim with their delicious steam.
CAROLINE: Oh, Fred.
SCROOGE: Is that my niece, Caroline? Very pretty girl. Exceedingly pretty girl.
FRED: That's the truth, my dear! He's a comical old fellow, and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offences carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him.
KITTY: I'm sure he's very rich, Fred.
FRED: What of that! His wealth is of no use to him. He don't do any good with it. He don't make himself comfortable with it. He hasn't even the satisfaction of thinking that he's ever going to benefit anyone with it, for I don't expect we shall be in his will, my dear Caroline, no I don't expect so at all.
CAROLINE: I don't know how you have patience with him, Fred.
FRED: Oh, I am sorry for him. I couldn't be angry with him if I tried.
SCROOGE: A good-hearted lad, Fred.
FRED: Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself, always. Here, he takes it into his head to dislike us, and he won't come and dine with us. What's the consequence? He loses a very good dinner, and some pleasant moments, which could do him no harm. I am sure he loses pleasanter companions than he can find in his own thoughts, either in his moldy old office, or his dusty chambers. I mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he likes it or not, for I pity him. He may rail at Christmas till he dies, but he can't help thinking better of it-I defy him to do so-if he finds me going there, in good temper, year after year, and saying `Uncle Scrooge, how are you?' If it only puts him in the vein to leave his poor clerk fifty pounds, that's something; and I think I shook him yesterday.
But this is dreary talk for a Christmas party. Let's have a game!
CAROLINE: What shall we play?
NARRATOR: They played at forfeits, and blindman's buff. There was music, and Scrooge's niece played the harp-among other tunes, a simple little air, which had been familiar to the Scrooge as a child, and affected him greatly now. They all played a game of How, When and Where, and Twenty Questions, which Scrooge joined in, wholly forgetting in the interest he had in what was going on, that his voice made no sound in their ears.
FRED: No, no, no, no!
CAROLINE: Does it live in the country?
FRED: No.
KITTY: Then it lives in the City. Is it kept in a cage or on a leash?
FRED: Ha! No.
KITTY: A live animal, an animal that growls and is of savage nature. Found in the City, but not kept in a cage or on a leash! Extraordinary. Is it a dog?
FRED: No!
SCROOGE: A bear?
CAROLINE: Could it be a bear?
FRED: No.
SCROOGE: It was a sound guess-excellent young woman. Very intelligent.
CAROLINE: Not a horse, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. And you say it walks the streets freely. Not made a show of, not housed in a menagerie, never brought to market. A rather disagreeable animal.
SCROOGE: Most perplexing.
KITTY: Does it talk, Fred?
SCROOGE: Talk!
CAROLINE: A talking animal?
FRED: YES!
KITTY: Then I know, Fred, I know! It's your Uncle Scrooge!
CAROLINE (laughing): Fred! For shame!
(SCROOGE'S face falls. The 2nd SPIRIT indicates it is time to move on.)
KITTY: You might have said `yes' to the bear--!
FRED: Well, he has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure, and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health! A Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to the old man, wherever he is!
2nd SPIRIT: We have more to see. Let us visit another Christmas, in another part of the City…
Scene 2
(As NARRATOR speaks, TOWNSPEOPLE enter and SCROOGE and the 2nd SPIRIT walk among them in the STREET.)
NARRATOR: Now the room, the fire, holly, mistletoe, turkeys, pies, pudding, fruit, and punch, all vanished instantly, and they stood in the city streets on Christmas day, where the people made a rough, but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow from the pavement in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of their houses. The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs and with the dirtier snow upon the ground, which last deposit had been ploughed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and wagons into thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy, and the streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed, half frozen. There was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad…
(As 2nd SPIRIT and SCROOGE walk, the 2nd SPIRIT spreads goodwill among the TOWNSPEOPLE. MUSIC: God Rest You, Merry Gentleman.)
BUSINESSMAN (Jim): A Merry Christmas to you!
1st CHARITY WOMAN (Judy): A shame to quarrel upon Christmas Day.
MRS. CRACHIT: So it is. God love it, so it is. A Merry Christmas!
MRS. CRACHIT (to her children): Come along!
(BOB CRACHIT with TINY TIM enter.)
SCROOGE: Why, that's my clerk, Bob Crachit!
BUSINESSMAN (Jim): A Merry Christmas, Bob! And to you, young Tim!
TINY TIM: Thank you, sir. God bless you, sir!
SCROOGE: How extraordinary!
(The TOWNSPEOPLE exit. 2nd SPIRIT and SCROOGE follow BOB CRACHIT & TINY TIM home to CRACHIT'S HOUSE where MRS. CRACHIT and the CRACHIT CHILDREN are setting the table.)
Scene 3
SCROOGE: This is Bob Crachit's house!
THERESA CRACHIT: Papa!
BELINDA CRACHIT: Papa's home!
MRS. CRACHIT: Run and help your father off with his coat, Peter.
PETER CRACHIT: Merry Christmas, Tim!
BOB CRACHIT (to MRS. CRACHIT): Merry Christmas, my dear.
MRS. CRACHIT: Merry Christmas, Bob.
BOB CRACHIT (looking at the table and rubbing his hands in expectation): And what have we here?
MRS. CRACHIT: Martha, help your brother (TINY TIM) to his seat. And now-the goose! (MRS. CRACHIT exits to get the goose.)
BELINDA CRACHIT: And we made plum pudding, father!
BOB CRACHIT: Plum pudding! Then it really is Christmas, isn't it?
(MRS. CRACHIT enters with a very, very small Cornish hen on a tray, which she sets on the table. There is a moment of silence.)
BOB CRACHIT (making the best of it): You have outdone yourself, my dear.
MRS. CRACHIT: It was all-
BOB CRACHIT: It looks delicious, and sure to taste marvelous-- won't it, children?
BELINDA CRACHIT: Hurrah!
BOB CRACHIT (stopping MRS. CRACHIT, about to cut the goose): Let us give thanks, my dear, for this and our good Lord's many other gifts. (ALL sit and bow their heads.) For what we are about to receive on this blessed Christmas Day, may the Lord make our hearts truly thankful. And we are truly thankful, aren't we, children?
MARTHA CRACHIT: Yes, Papa!
BOB CRACHIT: We should have a toast! What shall we toast?
PETER CRACHIT: Christmas!
TERESA CRACHIT: Presents!
BELINDA CRACHIT: The goose!
BOB CRACHIT: The cook!
MARTHA CRACHIT: The grocer who sold us the goose!
PETER CRACHIT: Belinda, who bought the goose!
TINY TIM: Mr. Scrooge! (There is a moment of silence.)
TERESA CRACHIT: Mr. Scrooge?
BOB CRACHIT: To Mr. Scrooge, the founder of the feast!
MRS. CRACHIT: Mr. Scrooge the founder of the feast indeed! I wish I had him here. I'd give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he'd have a good appetite for it.
BOB CRACHIT: My dear, the children. Christmas Day.
MRS. CRACHIT: It should be Christmas Day, I am sure, on which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge. Oh, you know he is, Robert! Nobody knows it better than you do, poor fellow!
BOB CRACHIT: My dear… Christmas Day.
MRS. CRACHIT: I'll drink his health for your sake and the day's, not for his. Long life to him. A merry Christmas and a happy new year - he'll be very merry and very happy, I have no doubt.
BOB CRACHIT: A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!
CRACHITS (all): Merry Christmas.
TINY TIM: And God bless us every one!
SCROOGE: Tell me, Spirit, if Tiny Tim will live.
2nd SPIRIT: I see a vacant seat in the chimney corner, and a crutch without an owner. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.
SCROOGE: No, no. Oh, no, kind Spirit, say he will be spared!
2nd SPIRIT: If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race will find him here. (Turning to SCROOGE) What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population!
Man, if man you be in heart and not alone in shape, forbear such wickedness until you have discovered what the surplus is, and where it is. Will you decide what men shall live and what men shall die? It may be that in the sight of heaven you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. (WANT & IGNORANCE enter and join 2nd SPIRIT.) Look upon your children, ye hard-hearted man!
SCROOGE (shrinking back): Mine, Spirit!
2nd SPIRIT: They belong to Man. Look upon them! Here they stand: yellow, meager, naked, wolfish. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I read Doom for all Mankind if what is written here be not erased.
SCROOGE: Have they no refuge or resource, Spirit?
2nd SPIRIT (thundering): Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
(BELL. 2nd SPIRIT, WANT & IGNORANCE exit. SCROOGE looks around him.)
ACT 4
Scene 1
SCROOGE: Spirit? Do not leave me, Spirit!
(3rd SPIRIT ENTERS, opposite.)
SCROOGE: Heavens! What comes here? (Addressing it) Am--am I in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come? (3rd SPIRIT points its finger.) You…are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us. Is that so, Spirit? (3rd SPIRIT makes no indication.)
Ghost of the Future! I fear you more than any specter I have seen. But, as I believe your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me? (3rd SPIRIT points ahead.)
Lead on! Lead on! The night is waning fast, and its precious time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!
(3rd SPIRIT points. BUSINESS MEN enter.)
SCROOGE: I know these men! Excellent men of business.
1st BUSINESS MAN (Chris): No, I don't know much about it, either way. I only know he's dead.
2nd BUSINESS MAN (Derek): When did he die?
WEALTHY LADY (Susan): Last night, I believe.
2nd BUSINESS MAN (Derek): Why, what was the matter with him? I thought he'd never die.
1st BUSINESS MAN (Chris): God knows.
2nd BUSINESS MAN (Derek): What has he done with his money?
1st BUSINESS MAN (Chris): I haven't heard. Left it to his company, perhaps. He hasn't left it to me, that's all I know.
WEALTHY LADY (Susan): It's likely to be a very cheap funeral, for upon my life I don't know of anybody who will go to it.
2nd BUSINESS MAN (Derek): I don't mind going, if a lunch is provided.
1st BUSINESS MAN (Chris) (Laughing): Well then, it's quite impossible, for I never wear black gloves, and I never eat lunch.
WEALTHY LADY (Susan): Cold, isn't it?
1st BUSINESS MAN (Chris): Seasonable for Christmas time. You're not a skater, I suppose?
WEALTHY LADY (Susan): No, no. Well then… Good morning!
(BUSINESS MEN shake hands and exit.)
SCROOGE: What is the meaning of this, Spirit? Of whom do they speak?
Scene 2
(3rd SPIRIT points to Scrooge's room, where OLD JOE and MRS. DILBER have entered.)
MRS. DILBER: What I say is every person has a right to take care of themselves. He always did, Lord knows!
SCROOGE: But that's my room! What are these horrible people doing here?
OLD JOE: Ah, now that's true indeed, Mrs. Dilber. True indeed. No man more so, and that's a fact.
MRS. DILBER: Why, then, we shall help ourselves, and who's the wiser? He's no worse for the loss of a few things like these.
OLD JOE: No, indeed, Mrs. Dilber.
MRS. DILBER: If he had wanted to keep `em after he was dead, the wicked old screw, why wasn't he natural in his lifetime? If he had been, he'd have had somebody to look after him when he was struck with death, instead of lying there, gasping out his last, alone, by himself.
OLD JOE: That's the truest word that ever was spoke, Mrs. Dilber. It's a judgment on him.
MRS. DILBER: You open that bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value of it. Now speak out plain.
OLD JOE: I always give too much to the ladies. It's a weakness of mine, and that's the way I'll ruin myself… Nah! What do you call this? Looks to be-bed curtains!
MRS. DILBER: Ay! Bed curtains!
OLD JOE: You don't mean to say you took `em down, rings and all, with him lying there?
MRS. DILBER: Yes I do, and why not?
OLD JOE: You were born to make your fortune and you'll certainly do it, Mrs. Dilber.
MRS. DILBER: I certainly shan't hold my hand, when I can get something by reaching it out, for the sake of such a man as he was, I promise you, Joe. Careful now, those be his blankets.
OLD JOE: His blankets?
MRS. DILBER: Who else's do you think? He isn't likely to take cold without `em, I dare say.
OLD JOE: I hope he didn't die of anything…catching, eh?
MRS. DILBER: Don't you be afraid of that. I ain't so fond of his company that I'd loiter about him for such things, if he did. Ah! You may look through that shirt till your eyes ache, but you won't find a hole in it, nor a threadbare place. It's the best he had, and a fine one too. They'd have wasted it, if it hadn't been for me.
OLD JOE: What do you call wasting of it?
MRS. DILBER: Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure! Somebody was fool enough to do it, but I took it off again. Ah, this is the end of it, you see! He frightened everyone away from him when he was alive, to profit us when he was dead!
SCROOGE: The case of this unhappy man might be my own, I see. My life tends that way. I shall not forget its lesson, but let's leave this place of death!
(LIGHTS go down on OLD JOE and MRS. DILBER, and come up on BED. A body lies there covered by a sheet. 3rd SPIRIT points to it.)
SCROOGE: Dreadful Specter, what would you show me? No, let us leave, Spirit, this fearful place. In leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson, trust me.
Is there not one person in this great City who feels some sympathy and pity at this wretched man's death? Is this the end of all then? Oh let me see some tenderness, or this dark chamber will forever haunt my vision!
(LIGHTS come up on CRACHIT home. MRS. CRACHIT and the CRACHIT children are sitting at the table. MRS. CRACHIT is sewing. PETER CRACHIT is reading from a bible.)
Scene 3
PETER CRACHIT: “And He took a child, and set him in the midst of them.”
MRS. CRACHIT: The color hurts my eyes. There, they're better now again. It makes them weak by candlelight; and I wouldn't show weak eyes to your father when he comes home, for the world. It must be near his time.
PETER CRACHIT: Past it rather. I think he's walked a little slower than he used to, these few last evenings, mother.
MRS. CRACHIT: I have known him to walk, to walk with-
SCROOGE: Oh heaven! Tiny Tim!
MRS. CRACHIT: I have known your father walk with Tiny Tim upon his shoulder, very, very fast indeed.
MARTHA CRCAHIT: And so have I, often!
BELINDA CRACHIT: And so have I!
MRS. CRACHIT: But he was very light to carry, and his father loved him so, that it was no trouble-no trouble. And there is your father at the door.
TERESA CRACHIT: Don't grieve, father!
BOB CRACHIT: I wish you could have gone, my dear. It would have done you good to see how green a place it is. But you'll see it often. I promised him that I would walk there on Sundays. --My little, little child! My little child!--
I happened to come across Mr. Scrooge's nephew, just today in the street, and he said to me, `I am heartily sorry for it, Mr. Crachit, and heartily sorry for your good wife. If I can be of service to you in any way,' giving me his card, `that's where I live.' Now, it wasn't for the sake of anything he might be able to do for us, so much as for his kind way. It really seemed as if he had known our Tiny Tim, and felt with us.
MRS. CRACHIT: I'm sure he's a good soul.
BOB CRACHIT: He is indeed. I shouldn't be at all surprised, mark what I say, if he found Peter a situation.
MRS. CRACHIT: Only hear that, Peter.
BELINDA CRACHIT: And then Peter will be marrying and setting up for himself!
PETER CRACHIT (grinning): Get on with you.
BOB CRACHIT: As likely as not, one of these days, though there's plenty of time for that. But however and whenever we part from one another, I am sure we shall none of us forget poor Tiny Tim-shall we?
MARTHA CRACHIT: Never, father!
BOB CRACHIT: And I know, I know, my dears, that when we recollect how patient and how mild he was, although he was a little, little child, we shall not quarrel among ourselves, and forget poor Tiny Tim in doing it.
PETER CRACHIT: No, never, father.
BOB CRACHIT: I am very happy. I am very happy.
(3rd SPIRIT gestures, and LIGHTS go down on CRACHIT household.)
Scene 4
SCROOGE: Spirit of the Future, I have been considering what I have been shown this night, and by the Spirits of Christmas Past and Present, and I am thinking of putting into practice some changes in my life. Let me behold what I shall be, in days to come. (3rd SPIRIT points.) My counting-house is yonder-Where are you taking me?
(LIGHTS come up on GRAVEYARD. Sounds of wind, or storm.)
SCROOGE: Merciful God! What is here? (3rd SPIRIT points to a tombstone, set in the ground.)
Does this belong to the wretched man of whom those people spoke? I see, by your gesture, that you wish me to approach and look upon his grave. (Hesitating) Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point, answer me one question, kind Spirit… Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of the things that may be, only? Men's courses foreshadow certain ends, which if they persevere in, will come to that end. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change, is that not so? Oh Spirit, say it is thus with what you show me now! (Still, the 3rd SPIRIT gestures to the gravestone.)
I see you wish me to know the name of this poor, unhappy man, who died without a soul who mourned his passing.
(Full of dread, SCROOGE approaches, and reads his own name upon the gravestone.)
SCROOGE: No, Spirit! Oh, no, no, Spirit! Hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for beholding this.
Why would you show this to me, if I am past all hope? Good Spirit, your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me by an altered life! I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all year long. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future, the Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!
ACT 5
Scene 1
(CHURCH BELLS sound. The 3rd SPIRIT exits. LIGHTS come up and SCROOGE looks around him. TOWNSPEOPLE come out for Christmas morning. SCROOGE stands up and looks around him. MUSIC.: Deck the Halls.)
SCROOGE: Can it be--? You there! I say, if you please.
BOY: Me, sir?
SCROOGE: Yes, yes. --Sweet fresh air, heavenly sky! Oh, glorious. Glorious!-- What's today, my fine fellow?
BOY: Today? why Christmas Day, sir!
SCROOGE: I haven't missed it! The Spirits have done it all in one night. Of course they can-they can do anything they like! (To BOY) I say, do you know the Poultry shop, in the next street but one, at the corner?
BOY: I should hope I did!
SCROOGE: An intelligent boy! Remarkable boy! Do you know whether they've sold the prize turkey that was hanging up there? Not the little prize turkey, the big one?
BOY: What, the one as big as me?
SCROOGE: Delightful boy. A pleasure to talk to you. Yes, my lad!
BOY: It's hanging there now.
SCROOGE: Is it? Go and buy it. No, no, I am in earnest! Go and buy it. Oh, and this is for you, eh? (Giving him a coin.)
(BOY exits, running.)
SCROOGE (to himself): Must get ready for Fred's party-I hope he'll let me in to dine with them after all! (SCROOGE crosses into his ROOM and changes from his robe into his coat and hat.) I'll send the goose to Bob Crachit's! He shan't know who sends it. It's twice the size of Tiny Tim! (Exiting out into the STREET) Good morning! And a merry Christmas!
MRS. CRACHIT (taken aback): And a merry Christmas to you, Mr. Scrooge!
SCROOGE (seeing 2nd CHARITY WOMAN (Jeannie) approaching): My dear lady. How do you do? It sends a pang across my heart to remember what I said to you yesterday in my office.
2nd CHARITY WOMAN (Jeannie): Mr. Scrooge?
SCROOGE: Yes, that is my name, and I fear it may not be pleasant to you. Allow me to ask your pardon. And will you have the goodness to put down my contribution of- (whispers to 2nd CHARITY WOMAN (Jeannie).)
2nd CHARITY WOMAN (Jeannie): Lord bless me! My dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious?
SCROOGE: A great many back-payments are included in it, I assure you. Will you come and visit my office tomorrow?
2nd CHARITY WOMAN (Jeannie): I will!
FRED: Why, bless my soul! Uncle Scrooge!
SCROOGE: It is I, Fred, your uncle Scrooge. I have come for dinner. Will you have me up?
NARRATOR: Have him up? It's a mercy he didn't shake his arm off.
(FRED & SCROOGE exit. TOWNSPEOPLE exit gradually as NARRATOR speaks, and COUNTING-HOUSE is reset.)
NARRATOR: Dear heart alive, how his niece started when Scrooge was brought up! But she recovered herself instantly and Scrooge was invited in. Nothing could be heartier. She was just as Scrooge remembered her, and so was the jollity, and the music, and the games, at which Scrooge seemed to have a special knack for guessing correctly. Wonderful party, wonderful happiness, wonderful Christmas!
Scene 2
NARRATOR: But he was early at the office next morning. Oh he was early there, for he had set his heart on being there first, and catching Bob Crachit coming late! And he did! The clock struck nine. No Bob. A quarter past. No Bob. He was full eighteen minutes and a half behind his time. Scrooge sat with his door wide open, so that he might see him come in.
(BOB CRACHIT enters, hurriedly.)
SCROOGE (as bad-tempered as before): Mr. Crachit! What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?
BOB CRACHIT: I'm-I'm very sorry, sir, very sorry. A bit behind my time.
SCROOGE: You are? Yes, I should say you are. Step this way, if you please.
BOB CRACHIT: It's only once a year, sir. It shall not be repeated. I'm afraid I was making rather merry yesterday, sir.
SCROOGE: Were you indeed, sir. Now, I'll tell you what, Mr. Crachit, I am not going to stand for this sort of thing any longer. And therefore, and therefore, I have decided to raise your salary!
BOB CRACHIT: Mr.-Mr. Scrooge? Sir?
SCROOGE: A merry Christmas, Bob! A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you, for many a year! I'll raise your salary, and endeavor to assist your struggling family.
BOB CRACHIT: I don't understand, sir…
SCROOGE: I have a great many things in mind, Bob. I understand you have a young man in your household in need of a position, and that your child, Tim, is in need of medicines. We will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop.
BOB CRACHIT (still bewildered): Thank you, sir!
SCROOGE: Well, come on then! Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another `i', Bob Crachit!
Epilogue
(TINY TIM and PETER CRACHIT come in to meet BOB CRACHIT, who introduces them to SCROOGE. NARRATOR and TOWNSPEOPLE come in behind them. MUSIC.)
NARRATOR: Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more. And to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old world knew.
Some people laughed to see the change in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them, for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter. His own heart laughed, and that was quite enough for him. In later days, it was said of Ebenezer Scrooge, that he knew how to keep Christmas in his heart all year round. May that be truly said of all of us. And so, as Tiny Tim observed-
TINY TIM (with SCROOGE): God bless us, every one!
THE END
courtesy of http://members.tripod.com/heidijacot/id41.htm
ACT 1
Prologue
(MUSIC: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. LIGHTS come up on NARRATOR, performed by Ensemble.)
NARRATOR: Marley was dead, to begin with. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wondrous can come of the story we are about to relate…
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he had been partners in business for years. When Marley died Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole friend and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral.
Old Marley was dead as a doornail. There is no doubt whatsoever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon the Exchange for anything he chose to put his hand to.
Oh, but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous sinner.
(LIGHTS come up on SCROOGE in his COUNTING HOUSE as NARRATOR speaks about him. NARRATOR stands aside as 1st CHARITY WOMAN and 2nd CHARITY WOMAN enter.)
Scene 1
1st CHARITY WOMAN (Judy): A merry Christmas!
SCROOGE: Bah. Humbug.
1st CHARITY WOMAN (Judy): Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?
SCROOGE: Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years. He died seven years ago, this very night.
2nd CHARITY WOMAN (Jeannie): At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge, it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundred of thousands are in want of common comfort, sir.
SCROOGE (continuing to write): Are there no prisons?
2nd CHARITY WOMAN (Jeannie): Plenty of prisons.
SCROOGE: And the workhouses? Are they still in operation?
2nd CHARITY WOMAN (Jeannie): I wish I could say that they were not.
1st CHARITY WOMAN (Judy): A few of us are endeavoring to raise a charitable fund to buy the poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because Christmas is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. As you are a man of means, I am sure my friend and I can count on you to make a generous contribution, in the spirit of the holiday. Or perhaps you would care to make a donation in Mr. Marley's name on this anniversary of his passing. What shall I put you down for?
SCROOGE: Nothing.
1st CHARITY WOMAN (Judy): You wish to remain anonymous?
SCROOGE: I wish to be left alone! I don't make merry at Christmas myself, and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned--they cost enough--and those who are badly off must go there.
2nd CHARITY WOMAN (Jeannie): Good sir, the Union workhouses are dreadful places where the able-bodied are worked like beasts of burden, their dependents allowed barely enough food and shelter to keep them alive. Disease and death haunt these houses. I assure you, many would rather die than enter their doors.
SCROOGE: If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population! Allow me to remind you, ladies, that it is a hard and unforgiving world. Those who make their way in it, do so by dint of labor. What I have gained, I have earned with sacrifice and years of toil. I suggest you recommend to your poor petitioners that they employ themselves in a similar course of action. If you press me further, I tell you it is enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon.
1st CHARITY WOMAN (Judy): Mr. Scrooge--!
SCROOGE: Good afternoon!
(FRED enters, passing 1st and 2nd CHARITY WOMEN as they exit.)
2nd CHARITY WOMAN (Jeannie) (to FRED): If it is aught for charity you seek, seek elsewhere. Here's none to be found.
FRED: Indeed! I am sorry to hear that! Allow me to make a donation of my own-not so much as Uncle Scrooge might well spare, but something nonetheless! The best of the holiday season to you both.
1st CHARITY WOMAN (Judy) (shaking FRED'S hand): Thank you very much, sir. A merry Christmas to you, sir!
(1st and 2nd CHARITY WOMEN exit.)
SCROOGE: “Merry Christmas…” Humbug.
FRED: Christmas a humbug, uncle! You don't mean that, I am sure.
SCROOGE: I do. Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough.
FRED: Come, then. What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough.
SCROOGE: Bah.
FRED: Don't be cross, uncle.
SCROOGE: What else can I be when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer? If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with `Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled in his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. Hah!
FRED: Uncle!
SCROOGE: Nephew! Keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.
FRED: Keep it! But you don't keep it.
SCROOGE: Leave it alone, then. Much good may it do you! Much good has it ever done you!
FRED: There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say. Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people around them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!
(BOB CRACHIT has entered during FRED'S speech. He applauds vigorously.)
SCROOGE (to CRACHIT): Let me hear another sound from you, and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation. You're quite a powerful speaker, sir. I wonder you don't go into Parliament.
FRED: Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us tomorrow.
SCROOGE: Never.
FRED: But why?
SCROOGE: Why did you get married?
FRED: Because I fell in love.
SCROOGE: Because you fell in love! Ridiculous.
FRED: You never came to see me before I married. Why give it as a reason for not coming now?
SCROOGE: Crachit! Show him to the door.
FRED: I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?
SCROOGE: Crachit! The door!
FRED: I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have come in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humor to the last. So a Merry Christmas, uncle!
SCROOGE: Out!
FRED: And a Happy New Year!
SCROOGE (growls)
(FRED stops to talk to BOB CRACHIT.)
SCROOGE: There's another fellow, my clerk, with fifteen-shilling a week, and a wife and family to support, talking about a merry Christmas. Idiots and fools. I'll retire to Bedlam.…
(FRED exits. BOB CRACHIT goes out and returns with his hat and scarf and SCROOGE'S hat and coat.)
SCROOGE (to CRACHIT): You, sir! You'll want all day tomorrow, I suppose?
BOB CRACHIT: If it's quite convenient, sir.
SCROOGE: It's not convenient… paying a day's wages for no work. You think it only “fair,” I'll be bound.
BOB CRACHIT: It's only once a year, sir.
SCROOGE: “Only once a year, sir?” A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December. Very well, go home, keep your Christmas. But mind you, be here all the earlier the next morning.
BOB CRACHIT: Indeed I will, Mr. Scrooge. Thank you, sir!
(BOB CRACHIT puts on his hat and scarf. TINY TIM and PETER CRACHIT have entered and are waiting for him. They exit together. SCROOGE puts aside his papers and puts on his hat and coat. LIGHTS go down on the counting house. While the NARRATOR speaks TOWNSPEOPLE enter and pass by SCROOGE as he walks home through the STREET. MUSIC: Good King Wenceslas.)
NARRATOR: Christmas Eve. The city clocks had just gone seven, and it was quite dark. Cold, bleak, biting weather.
But winter's cold had little influence on Scrooge. No wind that blew was bitterer than he; no falling snow was more intent, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. He had made himself a sort of artificial winter that froze any that came near him, for it was his chief pleasure to walk alone amongst his fellow creatures, disdaining their pity or their ire alike. Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, “My dear Scrooge, how are you?” Even the blind men seemed to sense his presence and turn away. No man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge.
BOY (runs up and tugs on SCROOGE'S coat): Have you a penny to spare, sir?
SCROOGE: Bah! (Frightening BOY off. NARRATOR steps forward and TOWNSPEOPLE exit gradually. SCROOGE crosses to his ROOM and changes into his robe.)
ACT 2
Scene 1
NARRATOR: Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern, and having read all the newspapers and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker's book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner, Marley. They were a gloomy suit of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices. Once inside, he closed his door, locked himself in, double-locked himself in, and sat down before the fire.
(LIGHTS come up on SCROOGE'S ROOM.)
NARRATOR: It so happened that while he was ruminating, his glance came to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated for some purpose now forgotten with a chamber in the highest story of the building. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing of its own accord.
(BELL is heard. SCROOGE sits frozen. Silence, then CLANKING is heard. NARRATOR steps aside and MARLEY enters, behind.)
MARLEY: SCROOGE! (SCROOGE sits silent in terror.) EBENEZER SCROOGE!
SCROOGE: Who…who are you?
MARLEY: Ask me who I was.
SCROOGE: Who were you then, and what do you want of me?
MARLEY: Much! In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.
SCROOGE: Marley?!
MARLEY: You don't believe in me.
SCROOGE: I don't.
MARLEY: Why do you doubt your senses?
SCROOGE: Because a little thing can affect them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheat. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. It's humbug, I tell you. Humbug!
(MARLEY cries out loudly and rattles his chains.)
SCROOGE: Mercy! Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?
MARLEY: Man of the worldly mind! Do you believe in me or not?
SCROOGE: I do! I must! But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?
MARLEY: It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world-oh, woe is me!-and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness.
Look upon me! I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard. Is its pattern strange to you? Or would you know the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have labored on it since. It is a ponderous chain!
SCROOGE: Jacob, Old Jacob Marley, speak comfort to me, Jacob!
MARLEY: I have none to give. It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our counting house-mark me!-in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole, and weary journeys now lie before me.
SCROOGE: You must have been very slow about it, Jacob.
MARLEY: Slow!
SCROOGE: Seven years dead, and traveling the whole time.
MARLEY: No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse.
SCROOGE: Do you travel fast?
MARLEY: I travel on the wings of the wind.
SCROOGE: I would think you should have covered a great quantity of ground in seven years.
MARLEY: O, captive, bound and double-ironed - not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunities misused! Yet such was I! Oh, such was I!
SCROOGE: You were always a good man of business, Jacob.
MARLEY: Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!
At this time of the year, I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me?
Hear me, now o man! My time is nearly gone.
SCROOGE: I will! But don't be hard upon me, Jacob, pray!
MARLEY: Know then I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day… I am here tonight to warn you, so that you may have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate--
SCROOGE: You were always a good friend to me, Jacob.
MARLEY: --You will be haunted by three Spirits--
SCROOGE: Is that the chance and hope you mentioned? I--I think I'd rather not.
MARLEY: --Without their visits you cannot shun the path I tread. Expect the first when the bell tolls one.
(MARLEY begins to exit.)
SCROOGE: Couldn't I take `em all at once, and have it over?
MARLEY'S VOICE: Remember, for your own sake, what has passed between us!
NARRATOR: Scrooge followed Marley to the window, where he beheld a great crowd of spirits in the air. One ghost, he saw, hovered in a doorway and cried bitterly over a poor mother and her child, he could no longer help. Terrified by the vision, Scrooge returned to his chair, to wait the coming of the first spirit Marley had foretold.
(SCROOGE, disconcerted, returns to his chair to wait the coming of the 1st SPIRIT. CHIME.)
SCROOGE: Quarter to.
(CHIME.)
SCROOGE: Ten to!
(CHIME.)
SCROOGE: Five to.
(BELL tolls, and the 1st SPIRIT enters.)
SCROOGE: The hour itself! (Looks around and sees 1st SPIRIT.)
Scene 2
SCROOGE: Are--are you the spirit whose coming was foretold to me?
1st SPIRIT: I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.
SCROOGE: Long past?
1st SPIRIT: No. Your past. Rise, and walk with me.
(The 1st SPIRIT makes a gesture and LIGHTS come up on a SCHOOL ROOM, where a SCROOGE as a BOY sits reading. There is a trunk next to him. MUSIC.)
SCROOGE: Good heavens!
1st SPIRIT (stopping him): These are the shadows of things past, Ebenezer. They cannot see or hear you.
SCROOGE: Why, it's just as I remember it! My old school room, you see, and there I am! How astonishing!
COACHMAN OFFSTAGE: Lively there!
SPIRIT: A solitary child…
SCROOGE: The others have already left for the Christmas holidays.
1st SPIRIT: But the school is not quite deserted yet…
(BELLE as a GIRL enters.)
GIRL: Why, Ebenezer! Won't you be going home for Christmas?
BOY: I'm sure my father will send for me soon.
GIRL (sitting down next to him): What are you reading? Can I look at your book with you?
BOY (showing her): It's about Robinson Crusoe and his parrot.
SCROOGE: “Poor Robin Crusoe,” he called him, when he came home again after sailing round the island. “Poor Robin Crusoe, where have you been, Robin Crusoe?” The man thought he was dreaming, but he wasn't. It was the parrot. - Poor boy. I wish… but it's too late now.
1st SPIRIT: What's the matter?
SCROOGE: Nothing, nothing.
1st SPIRIT: I see a tear upon your cheek. Do you call that nothing?
SCROOGE: There was a boy in the street earlier… I should like to have given him something, that's all.
COACHMAN: Come along then. (Picking up the trunk.) Back upstairs with you.
BOY: My trunk! I need my trunk for when I go home, sir!
COACHMAN: You'll not be going home this Christmas, little Ebenezer. Upstairs with you now.
BOY: Perhaps there's been a mistake! I know my father--
(COACHMAN exits, opposite with trunk.)
GIRL: Poor, Ebenezer.
1st SPIRIT: This was not the only Christmas he spent reading here…
BOY: I don't mind so much. It's only Christmas. I don't care.
GIRL: Cheer up, Ebenezer. It won't be long. Besides, you have your books to read!
WOMAN'S VOICE (Susan): Belle!
GIRL: My coach! I must run and see Papa and Mama! I wish you could come spend Christmas with us. (She gives BOY a quick kiss on the cheek and exits.)
1st SPIRIT: She had a large heart.
SCROOGE: So she had.
1st SPIRIT: Let us look at a later Christmas… Young Ebenezer is now a grown man, released from school into the world - his father dead. A promising, independent, young man with business prospects, and every hope of happiness before him…
Scene 3
(1st SPIRIT waves its hand, and years pass. Scene is now set with BELLE and YOUNG SCROOGE.)
YOUNG SCROOGE: It is but another year, Belle! After waiting so long, surely one more year is no great thing-my apprenticeship is but lately finished, my investments still in doubtful state.
BELLE: Another year, Ebenezer! When are we to be married?
YOUNG SCROOGE: Very, very soon, I promise you, my love. Only let us wait until we are sure of our prosperity!
BELLE: It cannot be. It was the same with you last Christmas, and the Christmas before.
YOUNG SCROOGE: But this year will be different! Mr. Marley speaks of setting up a money-changing business in the City, in which I am to be made partner!
BELLE: Mr. Marley! Oh, he is a rare man.
YOUNG SCROOGE: He is a man of business, Belle. And a very good one with sound sense. I would do well to become such a man in the world.
BELLE: I do not like him, Ebenezer. He has a cold heart, and an evil eye. Do not enter into this compact with him!
YOUNG SCROOGE: Mr. Marley has promised me an important position, and a half share of profits. Come now, he is not such a wicked man as you think. And if he is? I follow him but for my own gain-he has no sway over my heart, as you do, Belle. What of Mr. Marley, then? He shall but help us to make our fortune!
BELLE: You are already more like him than you know.
YOUNG SCROOGE: Belle, I have hopes and expectations that will soon come to fruition, I am sure of it! Just another year that is all, and then I shall feel our happiness together is secure.
BELLE: Our happiness? No, Ebenezer. I see too well, another idol has displaced me in your affections. Alas, if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.
YOUNG SCROOGE: What Idol could displace you, Belle?
BELLE: A golden one.
YOUNG SCROOGE: You find fault with me because I care for money. For the money to assure our happiness, our money, Belle! Oh, this is rich! This!--this is the even-handed dealing of the world! There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth.
SCROOGE (to himself): Too true, too true.
BELLE: You fear the world too much, Ebenezer. All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you.
YOUNG SCROOGE: What then? Even if I have grown wiser to the ways of the world, what then? I am not changed towards you, am I?
SCROOGE: Let us go. I wish to see another scene.
BELLE: The contract of love between us is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and content to be so. You are changed. When it was made, you were another man.
YOUNG SCROOGE: I was a boy.
SCROOGE: Let us go, Spirit.
BELLE: Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are.
1st SPIRIT: These are the shadows of the things that have been. That they are what they are, do not blame me.
YOUNG SCROOGE: Belle!
BELLE: For the love of him you once were, I release you with a full heart. May you be happy in the life you have chosen!
(BELLE exits. YOUNG SCROOGE exits opposite.)
1st SPIRIT (departing): Think on what has passed, Ebenezer Scrooge, and know yourself.
(SCROOGE returns to his chair.)
SCROOGE: I did right. I had no choice. Should we have married on no more than the expectation of riches? A family like Crachit's? Impossible. I made my fortune, could she have but waited. I was a boy, a fool to care for her. Enough! I will not think on it. And yet, my nephew, Fred… Poor Belle! No more. No more, I say!
Were not three spirits prophesied me? What time is it now? Let me see. I must stay awake and keep a look about. Let `em come. I have passed so far a strange and terrible night, and I doubt anything between a baby and a rhinoceros would astonish me.
ACT 3
Scene 1
NARRATOR: The hour was drawing close against which the coming of the second spirit had been foretold. Scrooge was on his guard, for he wished to challenge the Spirit on the moment it appeared, and did not wish to be taken by surprise.
(CHIME. CHIME. BELL)
NARRATOR: Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by any means prepared for nothing; and, consequently, when no shape appeared, he was taken with a violent fit of trembling.
(SCROOGE gathers his courage and looks around the edge of his chair. Sees 2nd SPIRIT.)
2nd SPIRIT: Ho, ho, ho! Ebenezer Scrooge! Come, come closer, and look upon me! I am the Ghost of Christmas Present! Have you never seen the like of me before?
SCROOGE : Never!
2nd SPIRIT: Never walked forth with the other members of my family?
SCROOGE: I don't think I have. I am pretty sure I would have remembered it. No, I am afraid I have not. Have you many brothers and sisters, Spirit?
2nd SPIRIT: More than eighteen hundred to date!
SCROOGE: Eighteen hundred! A tremendous family to provide for!… Spirit, conduct me where you will. If you have aught to teach me this night, let me profit by it. I went forth before upon compulsion, but I learnt a lesson, which is working on me now, and I am humbler than I was.
2nd SPIRIT: Come with me! Let us visit a Christmas Present of someone you know!
(The 2nd SPIRIT gestures, and LIGHTS come up on FRED'S party.)
FRED (Laughing): He said that Christmas a humbug, as I live! He believed it too!
NARRATOR: Scrooge found himself in the home of his nephew, Fred. The walls and ceiling were hung with living green. Bright gleaming mistletoe and berries glistened, and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney, as Scrooge's dingy house had never known. There were turkeys, geese, mince-pies, plum-puddings, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, and seething bowls of punch, that made the room dim with their delicious steam.
CAROLINE: Oh, Fred.
SCROOGE: Is that my niece, Caroline? Very pretty girl. Exceedingly pretty girl.
FRED: That's the truth, my dear! He's a comical old fellow, and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offences carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him.
KITTY: I'm sure he's very rich, Fred.
FRED: What of that! His wealth is of no use to him. He don't do any good with it. He don't make himself comfortable with it. He hasn't even the satisfaction of thinking that he's ever going to benefit anyone with it, for I don't expect we shall be in his will, my dear Caroline, no I don't expect so at all.
CAROLINE: I don't know how you have patience with him, Fred.
FRED: Oh, I am sorry for him. I couldn't be angry with him if I tried.
SCROOGE: A good-hearted lad, Fred.
FRED: Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself, always. Here, he takes it into his head to dislike us, and he won't come and dine with us. What's the consequence? He loses a very good dinner, and some pleasant moments, which could do him no harm. I am sure he loses pleasanter companions than he can find in his own thoughts, either in his moldy old office, or his dusty chambers. I mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he likes it or not, for I pity him. He may rail at Christmas till he dies, but he can't help thinking better of it-I defy him to do so-if he finds me going there, in good temper, year after year, and saying `Uncle Scrooge, how are you?' If it only puts him in the vein to leave his poor clerk fifty pounds, that's something; and I think I shook him yesterday.
But this is dreary talk for a Christmas party. Let's have a game!
CAROLINE: What shall we play?
NARRATOR: They played at forfeits, and blindman's buff. There was music, and Scrooge's niece played the harp-among other tunes, a simple little air, which had been familiar to the Scrooge as a child, and affected him greatly now. They all played a game of How, When and Where, and Twenty Questions, which Scrooge joined in, wholly forgetting in the interest he had in what was going on, that his voice made no sound in their ears.
FRED: No, no, no, no!
CAROLINE: Does it live in the country?
FRED: No.
KITTY: Then it lives in the City. Is it kept in a cage or on a leash?
FRED: Ha! No.
KITTY: A live animal, an animal that growls and is of savage nature. Found in the City, but not kept in a cage or on a leash! Extraordinary. Is it a dog?
FRED: No!
SCROOGE: A bear?
CAROLINE: Could it be a bear?
FRED: No.
SCROOGE: It was a sound guess-excellent young woman. Very intelligent.
CAROLINE: Not a horse, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. And you say it walks the streets freely. Not made a show of, not housed in a menagerie, never brought to market. A rather disagreeable animal.
SCROOGE: Most perplexing.
KITTY: Does it talk, Fred?
SCROOGE: Talk!
CAROLINE: A talking animal?
FRED: YES!
KITTY: Then I know, Fred, I know! It's your Uncle Scrooge!
CAROLINE (laughing): Fred! For shame!
(SCROOGE'S face falls. The 2nd SPIRIT indicates it is time to move on.)
KITTY: You might have said `yes' to the bear--!
FRED: Well, he has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure, and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health! A Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to the old man, wherever he is!
2nd SPIRIT: We have more to see. Let us visit another Christmas, in another part of the City…
Scene 2
(As NARRATOR speaks, TOWNSPEOPLE enter and SCROOGE and the 2nd SPIRIT walk among them in the STREET.)
NARRATOR: Now the room, the fire, holly, mistletoe, turkeys, pies, pudding, fruit, and punch, all vanished instantly, and they stood in the city streets on Christmas day, where the people made a rough, but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow from the pavement in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of their houses. The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs and with the dirtier snow upon the ground, which last deposit had been ploughed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and wagons into thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy, and the streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed, half frozen. There was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad…
(As 2nd SPIRIT and SCROOGE walk, the 2nd SPIRIT spreads goodwill among the TOWNSPEOPLE. MUSIC: God Rest You, Merry Gentleman.)
BUSINESSMAN (Jim): A Merry Christmas to you!
1st CHARITY WOMAN (Judy): A shame to quarrel upon Christmas Day.
MRS. CRACHIT: So it is. God love it, so it is. A Merry Christmas!
MRS. CRACHIT (to her children): Come along!
(BOB CRACHIT with TINY TIM enter.)
SCROOGE: Why, that's my clerk, Bob Crachit!
BUSINESSMAN (Jim): A Merry Christmas, Bob! And to you, young Tim!
TINY TIM: Thank you, sir. God bless you, sir!
SCROOGE: How extraordinary!
(The TOWNSPEOPLE exit. 2nd SPIRIT and SCROOGE follow BOB CRACHIT & TINY TIM home to CRACHIT'S HOUSE where MRS. CRACHIT and the CRACHIT CHILDREN are setting the table.)
Scene 3
SCROOGE: This is Bob Crachit's house!
THERESA CRACHIT: Papa!
BELINDA CRACHIT: Papa's home!
MRS. CRACHIT: Run and help your father off with his coat, Peter.
PETER CRACHIT: Merry Christmas, Tim!
BOB CRACHIT (to MRS. CRACHIT): Merry Christmas, my dear.
MRS. CRACHIT: Merry Christmas, Bob.
BOB CRACHIT (looking at the table and rubbing his hands in expectation): And what have we here?
MRS. CRACHIT: Martha, help your brother (TINY TIM) to his seat. And now-the goose! (MRS. CRACHIT exits to get the goose.)
BELINDA CRACHIT: And we made plum pudding, father!
BOB CRACHIT: Plum pudding! Then it really is Christmas, isn't it?
(MRS. CRACHIT enters with a very, very small Cornish hen on a tray, which she sets on the table. There is a moment of silence.)
BOB CRACHIT (making the best of it): You have outdone yourself, my dear.
MRS. CRACHIT: It was all-
BOB CRACHIT: It looks delicious, and sure to taste marvelous-- won't it, children?
BELINDA CRACHIT: Hurrah!
BOB CRACHIT (stopping MRS. CRACHIT, about to cut the goose): Let us give thanks, my dear, for this and our good Lord's many other gifts. (ALL sit and bow their heads.) For what we are about to receive on this blessed Christmas Day, may the Lord make our hearts truly thankful. And we are truly thankful, aren't we, children?
MARTHA CRACHIT: Yes, Papa!
BOB CRACHIT: We should have a toast! What shall we toast?
PETER CRACHIT: Christmas!
TERESA CRACHIT: Presents!
BELINDA CRACHIT: The goose!
BOB CRACHIT: The cook!
MARTHA CRACHIT: The grocer who sold us the goose!
PETER CRACHIT: Belinda, who bought the goose!
TINY TIM: Mr. Scrooge! (There is a moment of silence.)
TERESA CRACHIT: Mr. Scrooge?
BOB CRACHIT: To Mr. Scrooge, the founder of the feast!
MRS. CRACHIT: Mr. Scrooge the founder of the feast indeed! I wish I had him here. I'd give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he'd have a good appetite for it.
BOB CRACHIT: My dear, the children. Christmas Day.
MRS. CRACHIT: It should be Christmas Day, I am sure, on which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge. Oh, you know he is, Robert! Nobody knows it better than you do, poor fellow!
BOB CRACHIT: My dear… Christmas Day.
MRS. CRACHIT: I'll drink his health for your sake and the day's, not for his. Long life to him. A merry Christmas and a happy new year - he'll be very merry and very happy, I have no doubt.
BOB CRACHIT: A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!
CRACHITS (all): Merry Christmas.
TINY TIM: And God bless us every one!
SCROOGE: Tell me, Spirit, if Tiny Tim will live.
2nd SPIRIT: I see a vacant seat in the chimney corner, and a crutch without an owner. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.
SCROOGE: No, no. Oh, no, kind Spirit, say he will be spared!
2nd SPIRIT: If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race will find him here. (Turning to SCROOGE) What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population!
Man, if man you be in heart and not alone in shape, forbear such wickedness until you have discovered what the surplus is, and where it is. Will you decide what men shall live and what men shall die? It may be that in the sight of heaven you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. (WANT & IGNORANCE enter and join 2nd SPIRIT.) Look upon your children, ye hard-hearted man!
SCROOGE (shrinking back): Mine, Spirit!
2nd SPIRIT: They belong to Man. Look upon them! Here they stand: yellow, meager, naked, wolfish. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I read Doom for all Mankind if what is written here be not erased.
SCROOGE: Have they no refuge or resource, Spirit?
2nd SPIRIT (thundering): Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
(BELL. 2nd SPIRIT, WANT & IGNORANCE exit. SCROOGE looks around him.)
ACT 4
Scene 1
SCROOGE: Spirit? Do not leave me, Spirit!
(3rd SPIRIT ENTERS, opposite.)
SCROOGE: Heavens! What comes here? (Addressing it) Am--am I in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come? (3rd SPIRIT points its finger.) You…are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us. Is that so, Spirit? (3rd SPIRIT makes no indication.)
Ghost of the Future! I fear you more than any specter I have seen. But, as I believe your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me? (3rd SPIRIT points ahead.)
Lead on! Lead on! The night is waning fast, and its precious time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!
(3rd SPIRIT points. BUSINESS MEN enter.)
SCROOGE: I know these men! Excellent men of business.
1st BUSINESS MAN (Chris): No, I don't know much about it, either way. I only know he's dead.
2nd BUSINESS MAN (Derek): When did he die?
WEALTHY LADY (Susan): Last night, I believe.
2nd BUSINESS MAN (Derek): Why, what was the matter with him? I thought he'd never die.
1st BUSINESS MAN (Chris): God knows.
2nd BUSINESS MAN (Derek): What has he done with his money?
1st BUSINESS MAN (Chris): I haven't heard. Left it to his company, perhaps. He hasn't left it to me, that's all I know.
WEALTHY LADY (Susan): It's likely to be a very cheap funeral, for upon my life I don't know of anybody who will go to it.
2nd BUSINESS MAN (Derek): I don't mind going, if a lunch is provided.
1st BUSINESS MAN (Chris) (Laughing): Well then, it's quite impossible, for I never wear black gloves, and I never eat lunch.
WEALTHY LADY (Susan): Cold, isn't it?
1st BUSINESS MAN (Chris): Seasonable for Christmas time. You're not a skater, I suppose?
WEALTHY LADY (Susan): No, no. Well then… Good morning!
(BUSINESS MEN shake hands and exit.)
SCROOGE: What is the meaning of this, Spirit? Of whom do they speak?
Scene 2
(3rd SPIRIT points to Scrooge's room, where OLD JOE and MRS. DILBER have entered.)
MRS. DILBER: What I say is every person has a right to take care of themselves. He always did, Lord knows!
SCROOGE: But that's my room! What are these horrible people doing here?
OLD JOE: Ah, now that's true indeed, Mrs. Dilber. True indeed. No man more so, and that's a fact.
MRS. DILBER: Why, then, we shall help ourselves, and who's the wiser? He's no worse for the loss of a few things like these.
OLD JOE: No, indeed, Mrs. Dilber.
MRS. DILBER: If he had wanted to keep `em after he was dead, the wicked old screw, why wasn't he natural in his lifetime? If he had been, he'd have had somebody to look after him when he was struck with death, instead of lying there, gasping out his last, alone, by himself.
OLD JOE: That's the truest word that ever was spoke, Mrs. Dilber. It's a judgment on him.
MRS. DILBER: You open that bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value of it. Now speak out plain.
OLD JOE: I always give too much to the ladies. It's a weakness of mine, and that's the way I'll ruin myself… Nah! What do you call this? Looks to be-bed curtains!
MRS. DILBER: Ay! Bed curtains!
OLD JOE: You don't mean to say you took `em down, rings and all, with him lying there?
MRS. DILBER: Yes I do, and why not?
OLD JOE: You were born to make your fortune and you'll certainly do it, Mrs. Dilber.
MRS. DILBER: I certainly shan't hold my hand, when I can get something by reaching it out, for the sake of such a man as he was, I promise you, Joe. Careful now, those be his blankets.
OLD JOE: His blankets?
MRS. DILBER: Who else's do you think? He isn't likely to take cold without `em, I dare say.
OLD JOE: I hope he didn't die of anything…catching, eh?
MRS. DILBER: Don't you be afraid of that. I ain't so fond of his company that I'd loiter about him for such things, if he did. Ah! You may look through that shirt till your eyes ache, but you won't find a hole in it, nor a threadbare place. It's the best he had, and a fine one too. They'd have wasted it, if it hadn't been for me.
OLD JOE: What do you call wasting of it?
MRS. DILBER: Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure! Somebody was fool enough to do it, but I took it off again. Ah, this is the end of it, you see! He frightened everyone away from him when he was alive, to profit us when he was dead!
SCROOGE: The case of this unhappy man might be my own, I see. My life tends that way. I shall not forget its lesson, but let's leave this place of death!
(LIGHTS go down on OLD JOE and MRS. DILBER, and come up on BED. A body lies there covered by a sheet. 3rd SPIRIT points to it.)
SCROOGE: Dreadful Specter, what would you show me? No, let us leave, Spirit, this fearful place. In leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson, trust me.
Is there not one person in this great City who feels some sympathy and pity at this wretched man's death? Is this the end of all then? Oh let me see some tenderness, or this dark chamber will forever haunt my vision!
(LIGHTS come up on CRACHIT home. MRS. CRACHIT and the CRACHIT children are sitting at the table. MRS. CRACHIT is sewing. PETER CRACHIT is reading from a bible.)
Scene 3
PETER CRACHIT: “And He took a child, and set him in the midst of them.”
MRS. CRACHIT: The color hurts my eyes. There, they're better now again. It makes them weak by candlelight; and I wouldn't show weak eyes to your father when he comes home, for the world. It must be near his time.
PETER CRACHIT: Past it rather. I think he's walked a little slower than he used to, these few last evenings, mother.
MRS. CRACHIT: I have known him to walk, to walk with-
SCROOGE: Oh heaven! Tiny Tim!
MRS. CRACHIT: I have known your father walk with Tiny Tim upon his shoulder, very, very fast indeed.
MARTHA CRCAHIT: And so have I, often!
BELINDA CRACHIT: And so have I!
MRS. CRACHIT: But he was very light to carry, and his father loved him so, that it was no trouble-no trouble. And there is your father at the door.
TERESA CRACHIT: Don't grieve, father!
BOB CRACHIT: I wish you could have gone, my dear. It would have done you good to see how green a place it is. But you'll see it often. I promised him that I would walk there on Sundays. --My little, little child! My little child!--
I happened to come across Mr. Scrooge's nephew, just today in the street, and he said to me, `I am heartily sorry for it, Mr. Crachit, and heartily sorry for your good wife. If I can be of service to you in any way,' giving me his card, `that's where I live.' Now, it wasn't for the sake of anything he might be able to do for us, so much as for his kind way. It really seemed as if he had known our Tiny Tim, and felt with us.
MRS. CRACHIT: I'm sure he's a good soul.
BOB CRACHIT: He is indeed. I shouldn't be at all surprised, mark what I say, if he found Peter a situation.
MRS. CRACHIT: Only hear that, Peter.
BELINDA CRACHIT: And then Peter will be marrying and setting up for himself!
PETER CRACHIT (grinning): Get on with you.
BOB CRACHIT: As likely as not, one of these days, though there's plenty of time for that. But however and whenever we part from one another, I am sure we shall none of us forget poor Tiny Tim-shall we?
MARTHA CRACHIT: Never, father!
BOB CRACHIT: And I know, I know, my dears, that when we recollect how patient and how mild he was, although he was a little, little child, we shall not quarrel among ourselves, and forget poor Tiny Tim in doing it.
PETER CRACHIT: No, never, father.
BOB CRACHIT: I am very happy. I am very happy.
(3rd SPIRIT gestures, and LIGHTS go down on CRACHIT household.)
Scene 4
SCROOGE: Spirit of the Future, I have been considering what I have been shown this night, and by the Spirits of Christmas Past and Present, and I am thinking of putting into practice some changes in my life. Let me behold what I shall be, in days to come. (3rd SPIRIT points.) My counting-house is yonder-Where are you taking me?
(LIGHTS come up on GRAVEYARD. Sounds of wind, or storm.)
SCROOGE: Merciful God! What is here? (3rd SPIRIT points to a tombstone, set in the ground.)
Does this belong to the wretched man of whom those people spoke? I see, by your gesture, that you wish me to approach and look upon his grave. (Hesitating) Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point, answer me one question, kind Spirit… Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of the things that may be, only? Men's courses foreshadow certain ends, which if they persevere in, will come to that end. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change, is that not so? Oh Spirit, say it is thus with what you show me now! (Still, the 3rd SPIRIT gestures to the gravestone.)
I see you wish me to know the name of this poor, unhappy man, who died without a soul who mourned his passing.
(Full of dread, SCROOGE approaches, and reads his own name upon the gravestone.)
SCROOGE: No, Spirit! Oh, no, no, Spirit! Hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for beholding this.
Why would you show this to me, if I am past all hope? Good Spirit, your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me by an altered life! I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all year long. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future, the Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!
ACT 5
Scene 1
(CHURCH BELLS sound. The 3rd SPIRIT exits. LIGHTS come up and SCROOGE looks around him. TOWNSPEOPLE come out for Christmas morning. SCROOGE stands up and looks around him. MUSIC.: Deck the Halls.)
SCROOGE: Can it be--? You there! I say, if you please.
BOY: Me, sir?
SCROOGE: Yes, yes. --Sweet fresh air, heavenly sky! Oh, glorious. Glorious!-- What's today, my fine fellow?
BOY: Today? why Christmas Day, sir!
SCROOGE: I haven't missed it! The Spirits have done it all in one night. Of course they can-they can do anything they like! (To BOY) I say, do you know the Poultry shop, in the next street but one, at the corner?
BOY: I should hope I did!
SCROOGE: An intelligent boy! Remarkable boy! Do you know whether they've sold the prize turkey that was hanging up there? Not the little prize turkey, the big one?
BOY: What, the one as big as me?
SCROOGE: Delightful boy. A pleasure to talk to you. Yes, my lad!
BOY: It's hanging there now.
SCROOGE: Is it? Go and buy it. No, no, I am in earnest! Go and buy it. Oh, and this is for you, eh? (Giving him a coin.)
(BOY exits, running.)
SCROOGE (to himself): Must get ready for Fred's party-I hope he'll let me in to dine with them after all! (SCROOGE crosses into his ROOM and changes from his robe into his coat and hat.) I'll send the goose to Bob Crachit's! He shan't know who sends it. It's twice the size of Tiny Tim! (Exiting out into the STREET) Good morning! And a merry Christmas!
MRS. CRACHIT (taken aback): And a merry Christmas to you, Mr. Scrooge!
SCROOGE (seeing 2nd CHARITY WOMAN (Jeannie) approaching): My dear lady. How do you do? It sends a pang across my heart to remember what I said to you yesterday in my office.
2nd CHARITY WOMAN (Jeannie): Mr. Scrooge?
SCROOGE: Yes, that is my name, and I fear it may not be pleasant to you. Allow me to ask your pardon. And will you have the goodness to put down my contribution of- (whispers to 2nd CHARITY WOMAN (Jeannie).)
2nd CHARITY WOMAN (Jeannie): Lord bless me! My dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious?
SCROOGE: A great many back-payments are included in it, I assure you. Will you come and visit my office tomorrow?
2nd CHARITY WOMAN (Jeannie): I will!
FRED: Why, bless my soul! Uncle Scrooge!
SCROOGE: It is I, Fred, your uncle Scrooge. I have come for dinner. Will you have me up?
NARRATOR: Have him up? It's a mercy he didn't shake his arm off.
(FRED & SCROOGE exit. TOWNSPEOPLE exit gradually as NARRATOR speaks, and COUNTING-HOUSE is reset.)
NARRATOR: Dear heart alive, how his niece started when Scrooge was brought up! But she recovered herself instantly and Scrooge was invited in. Nothing could be heartier. She was just as Scrooge remembered her, and so was the jollity, and the music, and the games, at which Scrooge seemed to have a special knack for guessing correctly. Wonderful party, wonderful happiness, wonderful Christmas!
Scene 2
NARRATOR: But he was early at the office next morning. Oh he was early there, for he had set his heart on being there first, and catching Bob Crachit coming late! And he did! The clock struck nine. No Bob. A quarter past. No Bob. He was full eighteen minutes and a half behind his time. Scrooge sat with his door wide open, so that he might see him come in.
(BOB CRACHIT enters, hurriedly.)
SCROOGE (as bad-tempered as before): Mr. Crachit! What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?
BOB CRACHIT: I'm-I'm very sorry, sir, very sorry. A bit behind my time.
SCROOGE: You are? Yes, I should say you are. Step this way, if you please.
BOB CRACHIT: It's only once a year, sir. It shall not be repeated. I'm afraid I was making rather merry yesterday, sir.
SCROOGE: Were you indeed, sir. Now, I'll tell you what, Mr. Crachit, I am not going to stand for this sort of thing any longer. And therefore, and therefore, I have decided to raise your salary!
BOB CRACHIT: Mr.-Mr. Scrooge? Sir?
SCROOGE: A merry Christmas, Bob! A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you, for many a year! I'll raise your salary, and endeavor to assist your struggling family.
BOB CRACHIT: I don't understand, sir…
SCROOGE: I have a great many things in mind, Bob. I understand you have a young man in your household in need of a position, and that your child, Tim, is in need of medicines. We will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop.
BOB CRACHIT (still bewildered): Thank you, sir!
SCROOGE: Well, come on then! Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another `i', Bob Crachit!
Epilogue
(TINY TIM and PETER CRACHIT come in to meet BOB CRACHIT, who introduces them to SCROOGE. NARRATOR and TOWNSPEOPLE come in behind them. MUSIC.)
NARRATOR: Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more. And to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old world knew.
Some people laughed to see the change in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them, for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter. His own heart laughed, and that was quite enough for him. In later days, it was said of Ebenezer Scrooge, that he knew how to keep Christmas in his heart all year round. May that be truly said of all of us. And so, as Tiny Tim observed-
TINY TIM (with SCROOGE): God bless us, every one!
THE END
courtesy of http://members.tripod.com/heidijacot/id41.htm
Victoria King
Cadet
yes but still....you can still love something even if you don't see it often! 
truth_be_told03
Cadet
I love "The King & I". I was in a local production this summer, and I fell in love with it! I also love "Cats", when it was on Broadway. That was awesome.
Victoria King
Cadet
the KING AND I! awww i love that musical i was in a production of that when i was ten, i was the little princess who came out late during the little processional to meet anna and the King picked me up! it was soo much fun and i got the part of the little girl..princess ying..(cant spell the last name! ) where i read the letter to Anna at the end.
shall we dance...1 2 3....run eliza run eliza run.....snow?! what is snow?! :blink:
okay im sorry...im just musical obsessed...lol! the other day during rehearsals for the musical im in now..cinderella...we were waltzing and our choreographer was saying how we were going to be doing the waltz running us through all the parts of it, who needs to be where in what section of it and she was saying how we will not be doing the king and i walz..and i immediately went into a chorus of shall we dance! :lol:
) where i read the letter to Anna at the end.shall we dance...1 2 3....run eliza run eliza run.....snow?! what is snow?! :blink:
okay im sorry...im just musical obsessed...lol! the other day during rehearsals for the musical im in now..cinderella...we were waltzing and our choreographer was saying how we were going to be doing the waltz running us through all the parts of it, who needs to be where in what section of it and she was saying how we will not be doing the king and i walz..and i immediately went into a chorus of shall we dance! :lol:
Existentialist
Entertainment Moderator
The King and I! That just reminds me of my old friend's mom... they had just seen it the week before, and I was in the city (meaning NYC) with them, and my friend's mom just randomly starts dancing and singing "shall... we.... dance..." It was the funniest thing I've ever seen a friend's mom do.
My favorite plays...
An American Daughter, by Wendy Wasserstein... I really like Wendy Wasserstein's plays...
Picasso at the Lapin Agile, by Steve Martin. I saw it 2 summers ago at the Timber Lake Playhouse (where Jennifer Garner did summer stock in 1992!) and it was hilarious.
Waiting For Godot...
The Lesson, by Eugene Ionesco... I love the theater of the absurd.
Favorite musicals...
By Jeeves
Phantom of the Opera
Into the Woods
A Chorus Line
Of course, I have never seen a musical on Broadway. Oh... has anyone seen Tell Me On a Sunday? I really want to see it. That, and Mamma Mia.
My favorite plays...
An American Daughter, by Wendy Wasserstein... I really like Wendy Wasserstein's plays...
Picasso at the Lapin Agile, by Steve Martin. I saw it 2 summers ago at the Timber Lake Playhouse (where Jennifer Garner did summer stock in 1992!) and it was hilarious.
Waiting For Godot...
The Lesson, by Eugene Ionesco... I love the theater of the absurd.
Favorite musicals...
By Jeeves
Phantom of the Opera
Into the Woods
A Chorus Line
Of course, I have never seen a musical on Broadway.
Oh... has anyone seen Tell Me On a Sunday? I really want to see it. That, and Mamma Mia.Victoria King
Cadet
yes they are quite good! i really want to see one now as well!
i have been waiting forever to get the Wicked soundtrack but it didnt come out till about two weeks ago, then i had to wait for Christmas to get it! but i finally have and as soon as i heard the first few seconds i was pleading to go to NYC to see it! :lol:
so now here is my Broadway wish list(and im thinking i might be able to go sometime soon!
)
~Wicked
~Boy from Oz
~Little Shop of Horrors(with HUNTER!!!)
~Moving out(i was supposed to see it last time i went but ran out of money :lol:!)
i have been waiting forever to get the Wicked soundtrack but it didnt come out till about two weeks ago, then i had to wait for Christmas to get it!
but i finally have and as soon as i heard the first few seconds i was pleading to go to NYC to see it! :lol:so now here is my Broadway wish list(and im thinking i might be able to go sometime soon!
)~Wicked
~Boy from Oz
~Little Shop of Horrors(with HUNTER!!!
)~Moving out(i was supposed to see it last time i went but ran out of money :lol:!)
Victoria King
Cadet
that is a hilarous play!!! :lol: i have read the script and seen bits and pieces in my drama classes but never been able to see it! great idea!
MVISAHOTTIE
Cadet
i have seen
Big
Sound of Music
Annie Get your gun
Man of LaMancha
Music Man
Going to see Little Shop of Horrors
I saw something else but forget
I wanna see
Thourouly modern Millie
Hairspray
And lotsa more
Big
Sound of Music
Annie Get your gun
Man of LaMancha
Music Man
Going to see Little Shop of Horrors
I saw something else but forget
I wanna see
Thourouly modern Millie
Hairspray
And lotsa more
Alias_Girl_624
Cadet
i've seen
Rent
Les Mis
Chicago
Lion King
Bye Bye Birdie
Hello Dolly
i'd like to see ...
Hairspray
Mama Mia
and a few others
Rent
Les Mis
Chicago
Lion King
Bye Bye Birdie
Hello Dolly
i'd like to see ...
Hairspray
Mama Mia
and a few others
MVISAHOTTIE
Cadet
I was in Hello Dolly at my camp
MVStrawberry
Cadet
i just got back from New York and I saw Gypsy, Wicked, Little Shop of Horrors and Cabaret (the day before it closed). I still want to see Hairspray, Producers, Chicago, Urinetown (but won't cause it's closing too ) oh, i'll stop listing, I'd love to see everything, but you know how that goes...
) oh, i'll stop listing, I'd love to see everything, but you know how that goes...iheartalias
The Holinator
i recently saw Chicago...I thought it was awesome! One of the best plays that I've seen...I highly recommend that one...Another one I highly recommend is Rent, loved it.