THE FIFTH CONJURATION
A Scene in Blank Verse after the Manner of Christopher Marlowe
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
SENATOR RON, Chairman of the Hearing
A SENATOR, the principal examiner
ANOTHER SENATOR
DOCTOR FAUCI FAUSTUS, summoned as a witness
FAUSTUS’S LAWYER, a contentious advocate
A CLERK, SERGEANT-AT-ARMS, REPORTERS, and SPECTATORS
The chamber of the United States Senate. Cameras glare upon the witness table. Enter DOCTOR FAUSTUS and his LAWYER. While the LAWYER speaks with clerks, FAUSTUS remains alone.
FAUSTUS
Was this the end for which I searched the spheres,
And questioned spirits in the midnight air?
I once commanded Mephistophilis
To cross the seas and rifle every court,
Yet now I sit beneath electric suns,
While glassy eyes transmit my countenance
To every tavern, kitchen, shop, and school.
I have discoursed with emperors and fiends,
Raised Alexander from the hollow grave,
Yet senators, with paper, ink, and spite,
Have forged an engine subtler than all hell:
A question sharpened to accuse the tongue.
They ask of plagues, of masks, of gates made fast,
Of children veiled and travelers turned away,
Of edicts born at midnight and enforced
Before the sun could judge their consequence.
If I say yea, the word condemns my soul;
If nay, ten thousand letters answer me.
O Fifth Amendment, pentacle of law,
More strong than circles drawn with dragon’s blood,
Stand thou between my silence and their wrath.
One line shall be my castle and my creed,
My shield, my sword, my sacramental seal.
Enter SENATOR RON, A SENATOR, and ANOTHER SENATOR. They take their seats.
SENATOR RON
The Committee will come now to order.
We meet to learn what counsels moved the state
When pestilence descended on the land:
Why faces vanished under cloth and thread,
Why schools were closed and commerce put to sleep,
And travelers forbidden sea and sky.
A SENATOR
Doctor, did you advise the travel ban?
LAWYER
Objection! Vague, compound, and prejudiced!
It lacks foundation, date, authority,
The ports, the flights, the statutes, and the facts.
Moreover, “ban” is loaded rhetoric.
We call it prudent spatial separation.
SENATOR RON
Counsel, attorneys may not here object.
LAWYER
I must object to that interpretation.
The Constitution follows where he goes,
And I shall follow with objections too.
SENATOR RON
You shall be silent while the witness speaks.
LAWYER
Objection to the phrase “shall be silent.”
It chills my speech and burdens advocacy.
I further move the Chairman be recused.
SENATOR RON
You have no motion pending in this room.
LAWYER
I must object because you call it none.
A SENATOR
May I proceed, or must we question him?
SENATOR RON
Proceed.
A SENATOR
Doctor, did you advise the travel ban?
LAWYER
Objection! Asked and answered, though unanswered;
Assumes advice, causation, and a ban—
SENATOR RON
Sergeant-at-Arms, remove this advocate.
LAWYER
Objection! Chairman! This is tyranny!
I claim the First, the Fifth, the Sixth, the Ninth,
The Tenth, the Fourteenth, and all amendments
That prudent counsel may discover later!
Unhand me, sir! I strenuously object!
The SERGEANT-AT-ARMS seizes him.
SENATOR RON
Throw him beyond the chamber’s outer doors.
Should he object when once he reaches them,
Conduct him farther down the marble steps.
LAWYER
You cannot silence law! I shall appeal!
Objection to these hands! Objection! Chair—
He is carried out.
SENATOR RON
The record will reflect his swift removal.
Now, Senator, begin thy questions fresh.
A SENATOR
Doctor, did you advise the travel ban?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
A SENATOR
Before that counsel, did you publicly
Declare such bans both useless and unwise?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
A SENATOR
Yet later did you praise the selfsame act
As necessary to preserve our lives?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
A SENATOR
What changed between the evening and the dawn?
Did evidence compel your sudden turn,
Or did some minister revise your truth?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
A SENATOR
These letters bear your name and signature.
One says the common mask will little serve;
Another, written scarcely one month hence,
Commands two masks where one had stood before.
Did evidence produce this multiplication?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
A SENATOR
Was cloth transformed by some experiment,
Or did obedience make the fabric strong?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
ANOTHER SENATOR
At first the plague was little understood.
Advice must change as knowledge is increased.
The sailor alters course when tempests rise;
The physician changes physic with the case.
A SENATOR
A doctor owns the limits of his art.
Our witness spoke as one whose every word
Had issued from the mouth of certainty.
Dissent became a pestilence itself,
And honest doubt was branded as disease.
Did you request that private companies
Suppress physicians who opposed your claims?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
A SENATOR
Did you advise the lords of social speech
To strike their words and names from public sight?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
A SENATOR
Did you call settled what was yet untried?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
A SENATOR
This paper bears your office and your hand.
It recommends that children two years old
Be masked within the nursery and school.
What trial proved this burden did them good?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
A SENATOR
Were children counted in your measured cost,
Or were they counters in a statesman’s game?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
A murmur rises from the spectators.
SENATOR RON
The visitors will keep their judgment still.
A SENATOR
When churches closed their ancient doors, while shops
Received the crowds and kept their business free,
Did science draw distinctions in that rule?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
A SENATOR
Did prayer infect more swiftly than the mart?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
A SENATOR
Why sat the dying friendless in their rooms,
While men who framed the rule themselves convened?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
ANOTHER SENATOR
The witness did not govern every state.
You lay a nation’s grief upon one man.
A SENATOR
One man became the nation’s oracle.
His face appeared at morning, noon, and night;
His slightest gesture moved a thousand schools.
He cannot now retreat into the crowd
Whose every motion waited on his breath.
Did you approve the mandates laid on work,
By which a man might lose his livelihood
Unless he underwent the ordered cure?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
A SENATOR
Did you foresee the nurses cast away,
Though they had served among the sick for months?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
A SENATOR
What power did the emergency confer
That ordinary law could never grant?
Could fear suspend the citizen’s own flesh
And make his body property of state?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
A SENATOR
At what fixed hour did this great power end?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
The lights flicker. Thunder is heard.
ANOTHER SENATOR
The morning sky was clear.
A SENATOR
Perhaps the doctor’s former masters come
To claim the portion promised in his bond.
SENATOR RON
Confine yourself to matters of the state.
A SENATOR
Indeed, the difference narrows by the hour.
Doctor, you once declared that questioning
Your judgment questioned science in itself.
Did you believe that science dwelt in you?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
A SENATOR
Did pride infect the counsel that you gave?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
A SENATOR
Did power taste sweeter than the public health?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
A horned shadow appears briefly upon the wall.
ANOTHER SENATOR
What shape was that?
SENATOR RON
A fault within the lamps.
A SENATOR
Doctor, did you knowingly conceal
The facts that would have weakened your decrees?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
A SENATOR
Did you speak falsely to the nation’s face?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
A SENATOR
And do you now repent what you have done?
FAUSTUS
I plead the Fifth, and shall not answer thee.
A long silence.
SENATOR RON
The witness hath invoked his privilege.
The hearing is adjourned.
He strikes the gavel. All depart except SENATOR RON. FAUSTUS pauses at the door, then exits.
SENATOR RON
The Fifth may shield the witness from reply,
Yet privilege is neither crown nor throne.
If lawful questions meet defiant scorn,
This chamber hath another writ at hand.
Let counsel search the record of this day
And weigh contempt of Congress in the scale.
Exit.
FINIS
that was delightful! thank you Father