Requiem for a Nun

240 WILLIAM FAULKNER

Diversions- chronic: S.I.A.A., Basketball Tournament, Music Festival, Junior

Auxiliary Follies, May Day Festival, State Tennis Tournament, Red Cross

Water Pageant, State Fair, Junior Auxiliary Style Show, Girl Scouts Horse

Show, Feast of Carols.

Diversions: acute: Religion, Politics.

Scene One

Office of the Governor of the State. 2:00 A.M. March twelfth.

The whole bottom of the stage is in darkness, as in Scene I, Act One, so

that the visible scene has the effect of being held in the beam of a

spotlight. Suspended too, since it is upper left and even higher above the

shadow of the stage proper than the pme in Scene 1, Act One, carrying still

further the symbolism of the still higher, the last, the ultimate seat of

judgment.

It is a corner or section of the office of the Governor of the Commonwealth,

late at night, about two A.m.-a clock on the wall says two minutes past

two-, a massive flat-topped desk bare except for an ashtray and a telephone,

behind it a highbacked heavy chair like a throne; on the wall behind and

above the chair, is the emblem, official badge, of the State, sovereignty (a

mythical one, since this is rather the State of which Yoknapatawpha County

is a unit)-an eagle, the blind scales of justice, a device in Latin perhaps,

against a flag. There are two other chairs in front of the desk, turned

slightly to face each other, the length of the desk between them.

The Governor stands in front of the high chair, between it and the desk,

beneath the emblem on the wall. He is symbolic too: no known person, neither

old nor young; he might be someone's idea not of God but of Gabriel perhaps,

the Gabriel not before the Crucifixion but after it. He has obviously just

been routed out of bed or at least out of his study or dressingroom; he

wears a dressing gown, though there is a collar and tie beneath it, and his

hair is neatly combed.

Temple and Stevens have just entered. Temple wears the same fur coat, hat,

bag, gloves etc. as in Act One, Scene 11, Stevens is dressed exactly as he

was in Scene 111, Act One, is carrying his hat. They are moving toward the

two chairs at either end of the desk.