MICHAEL McKINNIE
This essay examines Allan Stratton's Rexy! and Michael Hollingsworth's The Life and Times of Mackenzie King in the context of their historiographic representations of former Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King. The essay argues that the plays' different tropological strategies of representation determine their respective historical narratives, and explores some of the dramaturgical and theatrical implications of these strategies. Specifically, "Kingmaker" argues that Hollingsworth's narrative is constructed through metonymy, textually and scenographically drawing attention to the space between historical events and its own representation of those events. Stratton's narrative, in contrast, is guided by metaphor, and attempts to efface the representational methodologies at work in its construction of King.
Cet article étudie les pièces Rexy! de Allan Stratton et The Life and Times of Mackenzie King de Michael Hollingsworth dans le contexte de leur représentation historiographique de l'ancien premier ministre du Canada Mackenzie King. Il montre que les différentes stratégies tropologiques de représentation utilisées dans les pièces déterminent leurs narrations historiques respectives, et il explore les répercussions dramaturgiques et théâtrales de ces stratégies. Plus spécifiquement, "Kingmaker" montre que la narration de Hollingsworth est construite à partir de la métonymie et qu'elle attire textuellement et scénographiquement l'attention sur la différence entre les événements historiques et sa propre représentation de ces événements. La narration de Stratton, elle, est guidée par la métaphore et elle tente d'effacer les méthodologies de représentation utilisées pour la construction de King.
Given his enigmatic public and private personae, it is not surprising that Mackenzie King's political and personal lives have been the subject of a wide range of historical and creative narratives. Since 1980, when the final installments of King's personal diaries were released, historiographers have had ample source material for constructing a vivid portrait of Canada's longest-serving Prime Minister. Indeed, many of King's infamous eccentricities are chronicled in minute detail throughout the diaries: his almost perverse devotion to his mother and his dog Pat; his obsession with dreams, visions, and the supernatural; his overwhelming vanity. One need only read a small portion of the diaries to recognize Mackenzie King not only as a historical figure, but as a performance. By writing a history, the historiographer lays a claim to how he or she desires both the historical subject and history itself to be performed.
Many Canadian playwrights count history plays among their works. Some, like Michael Hollingsworth, have made Canadian history and politics major sources of theatrical material; others, like Allan Stratton, have turned to Canadian history at different stages in their professional life. Hollingsworth's The Life and Times of Mackenzie King and Stratton's Rexy! are, however, descendents of a particular period in Canadian history: Pierre Trudeau's final attempt to patriate the constitution, which culminated in the Constitution Act, 1982. Both playwrights' work attempts to take ownership of parts of Canadian history when the Canadian government was attempting to complete the transfer of constitutional power from Britain to Canada-a process of independence begun under Mackenzie King with the Statute of Westminster in 1931. In an essay in Canadian Theatre Review, Michèle White writes that Hollingsworth "attributes the genesis of his multi-part play cycle The History of the Village of the Small Huts to a single still image, the photo of the Queen handing Canada's patriated constitution to Prime Minister Trudeau in 1982. In Hollingsworth's view, it is the moment when Canada acquired nation status" (50). Similarly, the political manipulation by which King helps keep both Canada and the Liberal party together in Rexy! (which was first performed in Toronto in 1981) echoes Trudeau's political machinations throughout the constitutional debate. But although the two plays may be situated in a similar historical discourse, the ways in which they construct the narratives of Mackenzie King and contemporary Canadian history are substantially different.
Hollingsworth's The History of the Village of the Small Huts series now encompasses eight plays, the seventh of which is The Life and Times of Mackenzie King. The series chronicles: Canadian political history from the time of the first European settlers with Part One: New France and continues through The British, The Mackenzie/Papineau Rebellions, Confederation and Riel, Laurier, The Great War, Life and Times, and World War II. These plays are characterized by strong visual imagery and rapid-fire pacing, reflective of Hollingsworth's association with VideoCabaret International, a company whose work draws on popular and mass culture in its theatrical performances. A recurring theme in VideoCabaret work is the performance of the theatrical in politics, whether through Art vs. Art/Hummer for Mayor or the dramatization of the 1993 federal election in The Great Debate. The company characterizes this concern as "classic VideoCabaret, simulating the theatre, the design and performance, of pop politics" (Life and Times [program] 5). Jim Plaxton's black boxes draw attention to the packaging of history and Shadowland's outrageous costuming reinforces the idea that the Village series is about performance-not simply performing history as theatre, but pointing out the performance that is history. Conversely, Allan Stratton's Rexy! is determined by a different, more"literary" tradition. Much of Stratton's success has come in comic theatre, most notably with Nurse Jane Goes to Hawaii, a play that has had huge success on the dinner theatre and summer stock circuits. Stratton has written two plays which draw on Canadian political history: Rexy!, first produced in 1981 at the Phoenix Theatre in Toronto, and A Flush of Tories, produced by Winnipeg's Prairie Theatre Exchange in 1991. These two plays are published together in a single volume entitled Canada Split. Rexy! allows Stratton to turn his satirical gaze toward Mackenzie King, the ultimate political oddity, whose eccentricities Stratton sympathetically spoofs. While Hollingsworth's mode of performance mimics the fractured performance of King's public and private personae within a social context and historical chronology, Stratton's mode of performance attempts to reconcile the public and private, as King himself attempts in his diaries, within the confines of the humanist, "well rounded" character.
In constructing his historical narrative Hollingsworth employs the trope of metonymy. By metonymy I mean an associated fragment being substituted for a larger whole. Thus Life and Times relies on postmodern quotations of character, dialogue, and setting to historicize its narrative. The play refuses to fashion events into a story that can be mistaken for "the way it was", drawing attention to the space between lost historical events and its own representation of those events. This could be viewed as an attempt to break free from conventional modes of representation, in which character, speech, and setting are assembled in, and presented as, a complete and selfsustaining narrative that is able to stand in for historical events. The trope that guides this type of narrative is metaphor, using something in place of something else-a problematic notion given that history is always written after the events have occurred; metaphoric narratives may erase chronological time as they attempt to transcend history, positioning themselves as beyond the constraints of time. Such is the case in Allan Stratton's Rexy!. While such a narrative may constitute an easily readable account of historical events and figures, the narrative cannot write itself; the play hides its own structural methodology, with all its implications for character, speech, and setting, behind the seemingly "natural" progression of its plotting and characterization. Life and Times, however, relies on fragmented modes of performance that signify historical objects and events while drawing attention to themselves as fragments, pointing up the provisionality and unreliability of character, speech, and setting as authentic historical metaphors.
How the past is characterized cannot be placed in opposition to what the past means. In making this statement I reveal some of my own strategies in reading and constructing history. First, I believe that we cannot "know" Mackenzie King through history-writing, or historiography; in one sense, it is better to employ the postmodern quotation marks, for "Mackenzie King" must be characterized as many different personae, as actorly roles which are performed differently in changing social conditions. Second, historiographic writing is constructed, and invites reading, as a broad and complex narrative, in which the reader engages both historical content and historiographic structure (the structural tropes which guide the writing of the history) and then situates that narrative within historical discourse. I should clarify what I mean by both narrative and discourse. Drawing on the work of Hayden White, I define narrative as the organization of events according to an artistic, or rhetorical, principle which makes use of description, time, and space to formulate a story which can be read. Discourse is the broader field in which narratives are produced and compete. My reading, therefore, is based on how differing Mackenzie King narratives are constructed within the discourses of dramaturgy and Canadian political history.
A metaphor found frequently in White's thought is that writing and reading history is as much an artistic as a scientific practice. White's position is anti-archeological; historical "fact" cannot be unearthed, interpreted, and presented without the use of a rhetorical mode of speech. The rhetorical tropes the historian employs-how he or she tells the story-shape historical discourse, and must be read as an important constituent of the discourse. Central to White's thesis is a kind of semiotic plurality, in which meaning and readings are not just transmitted, but are constantly negotiated by an active historiographic reader/writer:
[E]very narrative discourse consists, not of one single code monolithically utilized, but of a complex set of codes the interweaving of which by the author-for the production of a story infinitely rich in suggestion and variety of affect, not to mention attitude towards and subliminal evaluation ot [sic] its subject matter-attests to his talents as an artist, as master rather than servant of the codes available for his use.... [T]he artistic text, as against the scientific, directs attention as much to the virtuosity involved in its productionas to the "information" conveyed in the various codes employed in its composition. It is this complex multilayeredness of discourse and its consequent capacity to bear a wide variety of interpretations of its meaning that the performance model of discourse seeks to illuminate. From the perspective provided by this model, a discourse is regarded as an apparatus for the production of meaning rather than as only a vehicle for the transmission of information about an extrinsic referent (41-42).
Accepting that discourse is a meaning-producing apparatus, it becomes necessary to account for the structure of that apparatus, and its possibilities of narrative production. Roland Barthes lays out a useful framework for reading historical discourse in his 1967 essay "The Discourse of History." It is possible, argues Barthes, to "read off' historical discourse by reading for specific things: an "act of uttering", the "utterance;' itself, and what the utterance may signify. The "act of uttering" is the way in which the historian's manner of speaking authorizes what is said, and influences how the discourse is organized. In other words, 'what is it about the way of speaking that allows something to be spoken?' That which is spoken is the utterance; however, Barthes is not as concerned with the content of a single utterance as with "collections" (12) of related structures or actions that are repeatedly invoked to support a world view. Finally, it is important to read the signifiers in the historical discourse. How and why are they collected by the historian? How do they involve their audience in constructing a narrative? In the context of Life and Times and Rexy!, there are important things to read for: source works which inform the play (which may put the play in a broader cultural and social context); the dramatic structure of the play (how it is put together, and how it understands its audience); the historiographic structure of the play (how the play views history, and its awareness of its role in constructing history) ; and ultimately, the political implications of all of the above.
In order to discuss the historical narratives of Life and Times and Rexy! it is important to consider the implications of the source material for much of what we know about Mackenzie King's personal life: his own diaries. King began the diaries as a student in 1893 and continued, with minor gaps, to make entries until three days before his death on July 19, 1950. Beyond King's own accounts of daily events, a narrative had to be constructed through the assembly of the diaries for publication after his death. Although he did plan to collect some entries into a publishable form, these were to be selected and edited to protect the privacy of living people named in the diaries, and, presumably, to protect the privacy of King himself. Once the selection had been made, the original diaries were to be destroyed. But King never began to assemble a memoir before his death; as a result, the executors of his will sought legal counsel and decided to transcribe the diaries for public consumption as an official biography. 2
There is also the problem of King's purpose in keeping a diary. How does it influence the research drawn from it? What audience is it intended for? What kind of reading strategy is best adopted for reading the entries? As the diary's Finding Aid points out:
The researcher should be aware of the limitations of any diary as a research source. A diary might be seen as the means to keeping an exact record of important events or conversely a medium for confession and psychological relief. In either case, the motivation will govern the selection of detail, and colour the comment and opinion (8).
King inaugurates the diaries with what Barthes terms the "performative opening, for the words really perform a solemn act of foundation; the model for this is poetic, the I sing of the poets" (9). King wrote in 1893 that "through its pages the reader may be able to trace how the author has sought to improve his time" (Finding Aid 2), and in 1941, thousands of entries later, King comments:
Like my friend Bert Harper3 before me I have sought to keep a record of thought, beliefs and actions which might serve later to myself, if the chance should come to go through the papers, something of the influences which shape human lives and have influenced my own for better or worse (Finding Aid 3).
Like many entries in the diaries, and, indeed, like many of his public speeches, this sentence displays King's penchant for garbled syntax and elevated prose. His purpose in writing the diaries is a lofty one, devoted mainly to his interaction with broad human "influences" and the equally unspecific "time." He perceives himself to be at the centre of mythic forces. The "reader" in this story is really King himself, who, by writing the diary, unifies dissimilar events by shaping them into a cohesive, but decidedly unconventional, narrative. By committing his thoughts to paper, King creates a separate and presumably more satisfying portrait of his life, which, upon reflection, is reassuring. That his views and experiences are written down, rather than simply spoken or thought, is important:
[N]arratives being written instead of voiced or thought (as one finds in monologue or interior monologue) ... become independent documentary objects capable of exerting an influence on their creators.... [T]he writing itself can assist or impede change in the writer and thus help to determine the outcome of the tale--even as it renders that tale (Abbott 39).
The diaries write King's life-narrative for himself, sanctioning his recorded thoughts and actions.4
While the diaries attempt to unify disparate subjectivities in one self-narrative, Hollingsworth's The Life and Times of Mackenzie King fractures "Mackenzie King" by historicizing the public and private Kings. The play subverts the diaries' construction of a guiding purpose by disallowing their attempt to construct a self which is serenely above the fray. Thus Life and Times is as much the times of Mackenzie King as it is his life, taking an almost sociological view of Canada between 1918 and 1937. King is not permitted to define himself as being in command of his world, to amplify his own influence, because he exists within a social and historical context. The play demonstrates how material conditions shape King's actions, and illustrates some of the consequences of those actions. King is not held solely responsible for the course of history, but is, instead, situated in a political class more concerned with self-preservation than addressing the needs of the working class.
Metonymy, then, is the linguistic trope which guides Hollingsworth's attempt to reinvent "the official story": that Canadian history is dull and only "historians" are in command of the past (Life and Times [program] 5). In this formulation, Hollingsworth's historiographic revisionism is contingent on the creation of a metonymic dramaturgical and theatrical vocabulary. Thus the basic structure of Life and Times is fragmentary; twenty years of Canadian history are performed by 57 characters (some fictional and some not) through 122 scenes. Finding a "central story" in the play is difficult, for it conflates the structure of the historical chronology- which demands some adherence to the linear progression of time-with that of the television newscast; it picks up stories and characters at important moments in their "lives" (which are, by definition, important moments in Canadian history) but never takes the audience along a psychological journey with the characters or the country. A scene does not follow the naturalist plotting of beginning, exposition, and resolution; instead, it is introduced in the middle of the narrative and the ending is arbitrary, or expediently theatrical:
IN ANOTHER PLAYING AREA SC #47
THE LIGHTS FADE IN
KING HOLDS UP PAT
King The spirit of my mother is inside you.
You are my only friend. Oh Pat. I love you.
You are loyal, kind, honest, HONEST.
You should be Prime Minister. Not me. YOU.
I'm not worthy. Oh Pat, Pat, Pat.
You have changed my life. You, yes, you.
Its [sic] mad but its true. I can't live without you.
Oh Pat.
I can't imagine living my life dogless.
Life without a dog is incomprehensible.
I declare my love for this creature. Oh Pat.
BUREAU ENTERS
Bureau They're on to me, they're after me.
They know everything, the graft, the bribes.
King Yes, I have heard rumours.
Bureau You've heard rumours. If they arrest me I spill my
guts on your table. All my guts about the Liberal
Party in the upcoming election.
King You want something.
Bureau The Senate. Sanctuary.
King What would you do to be a Senator.
Bureau Anything,
King Get down on your belly and crawl around this room like a
lizard. (BUREAU CRAWLS AROUND). Now bark
like a dog. (BUREAU BARKS LIKE A DOG). Now-
THE LIGHTS FADE (45)
The scene insists on itself as a fragment, the frame established only to drop in at "important" historical moments and then leave again. Hollingsworth "quick-cuts" from place to place, never focusing on one event for longer than a minute, ensuring that the narrative does not represent the historical past as a cohesive whole.
This structure also demands that the characters in Life and Times not be read as psychologically complex beings because their speech cannot be constructed as naturalistic monologue or dialogue. They speak in sentence fragments, their speech mirroring their shifting train of thought, establishing a manner of speaking that is hardly "literary," but is, instead, reflective of the fractured historical frame in which they exist. What the characters say is often not dialogue with other characters, but a kind of metadialogue with themselves and the audience, in which the character verbalizes any subtext and defines himself or herself according to Hollingsworth's construction of the historical narrative. The second time King appears onstage he carries a portrait of his mother, saying:
I was always an A Student, always.
U ot T, University of Chicago, Harvard.
Always an A, always. Wasn't I.
Oh mother, what am I going to do.
You used to tell me.
I can work for John D. Rockefeller or Andrew Carnegie.
What does it mean.
I hear you.
It means I am Mr. Establishment.
Tell grand dad, I made it.
But the primrose path does not lead to greatness,
Great wealth, yes, but not greatness.
I am a tool of divine providence.
My mission is to be Prime Minister.
The work of my grandfather continues.
I hear you. I hear you, I hear you (4).
King is really addressing three audiences with this monologue: his mother, himself, and the theatre audience. Hollingsworth's King uses his mother to sanction his thoughts, in the same way the historical King uses the diary to sanction his thoughts. In making his King verbalize his thoughts, Hollingsworth reinforces the anti-naturalist character convention he establishes from the beginning of the play. More importantly, the audience recognizes the profound inconsistencies that inform the character: Hollingsworth has King characterize himself as Mr. Establishment while invoking the name of his grandfather, William Lyon Mackenzie-a revolutionary; later he will "assist the inevitable in the right direction" (10) by running to succeed Laurier as Liberal leader, displaying his faith in both providence and ruthless ambition. The language metonymically signifies King's own fractured diary self-narrative, which attempts to suture together disparate beliefs, influences, and desires.
The quick-cut structure of Life and Times also allows Hollingsworth to emphasize a political message which is not so overt in his "manifesto" regarding his revision of "the official story" of Canadian history. The audience's sympathies are undoubtedly intended to be with the working class, who comprise a major part of the times in Life and Times. By quick-cutting between scenes of opulence among the politicians and famine among the Depression-era working class, Hollingsworth characterizes the isolation in which the two opposing classes live.
Hollingsworth tracks Joe Slomkovsky, a returning soldier from World War I, at various points throughout the play. In scene 80, Joe attempts to quiet his daughter's dog, which, it becomes quickly apparent, will soon provide a meal for the family:
Joe Shut up, shut up, Shut up or I'll wring your nuts.
He's eating us out of house and home and he never
shuts up.
Don't look at me like that.
There's no work.
Wife And there's no food (70).
The scene ends three lines later, and is followed immediately by Prime Minister R.B. Bennett, whose portrait is perhaps the cruelest in the play. Bennett turns to the audience and says:
How do you get a belly like this you ask.
at six meals a day.
don't get a belly like this eating
three.
breakfast I have 11 eggs and 2 pounds of bacon and a
loaf of bread.
That gets me started.
Oh bacon, bacon.
Bacon, God I love it.
Love it, love it, love it, love it.
I can't imagine a world without bacon (70-71).
Hollingsworth returns to Joe's Wife and Daughter in the following scene, where it quickly becomes apparent that the family dog (in performance played by a mangy hand puppet) has been taken away to be butchered. King then enters with Pat (a much better-looking puppet) and a frying pan:
Oh Pat, you're King here.
And you are going to eat like a King.
Look Pat, look.
Your favourite. Steak and Pork chops.
The steak is medium rare and the pork chops are well done.
Eat it all, Pat, eat it all (72).
Finally, scene 84 is the family eating:
Joe Jesus that's good. Meat, meat, oh meat.
Wife Yes.
Joe Jesus that's good. Meat, meat, oh meat.
Wife Yes.
Joe Jesus that's good. Meat, meat, oh meat.
Wife Yes.
Joe How is it, Muffin?
Daughter Oh it's good, it's good, it's good (72).
By contrasting the conditions of the political é1ite with the working class in the space of less than five minutes, Hollingsworth is able to make the simplest political point: in times of depression, those with power preserve it, while those with less agency lose what little they have. This message is heightened by the fragmentary narrative construction, which allows him to describe opposing social classes and conditions in rapid sequence.
Allan Stratton's Rexy! takes up King at the historical moment where Hollingsworth leaves him: immediately after his return from visiting Germany in 1937. As the title of the play suggests, the focus is on King, Rex being the pet name used by his friend Joan Patteson. Stratton's construction of King is humanist where Hollingsworth's is anti-humanist; instead of being produced by multiple and contradictory ideologies and discourses, King's individual subjectivity pre-exists as the play's coherent source of meaning and action. Stratton's King is endowed with psychological progression and resolution; he is a metaphoric construction of King, created to stand in for the real, but absent, Mackenzie King. While pointing out some of King's follies, Stratton feels the need to redeem him by the end of the play. The title of the play does not mock the character as much as it denotes a warm familiarity, as Stratton renders King's eccentricities almost quaintly endearing and not potentially dangerous.
While Rexy! gestures towards satire, what Stratton constructs is a moral fable, through which the audience can gain insight into politically troubled times (recall that the play was first performed in 1981, at the height of that particular constitutional debate). Structurally and historically the play progresses so that King achieves a kind of grace, taking his place amidst the pantheon of great Canadians. And yet grace- or providence, as King calls it in his diaries- exists beyond the constraints of chronological historyor material conditions, and can only be achieved through the world of the imaginary. Stratton allows King to transcend his historical and social context, devoting the play to realizing the providence that the diarist King desires so much.
Ann Saddlemyer's foreword to the play is an interesting characterization of the dramatic and historical motivation for both Rexy! and A Flush of Tories. She opens with the question: "So what's the creator of Nurse Jane doing taking on seven Canadian prime ministers? Is there a connection between Harlequin romance, national unity, and minority rights? You bet there is. It's called caring: about people, their dreams, desires, hopes, illusions, and fears-and the effect these have on others" (7). Saddlemyer's problematic answer to this valuable question identifies a ma or contradiction in Rexy!: in order to establish the link between the two plays she must not specify who "people" really are. For while Stratton may care about people (and treat his characters as though they were people), I am unable to see the effect of King's actions on anyone but members of a small political class. Only two minor characters in Rexy!-Enid Simpson and her brother-could be considered to be outside the political é1ite. The rest- King, Lester Pearson, Colonel Ralston, Joan Patteson, Mrs. King, William Lyon Mackenzie, Lord Riverdale, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and General McNaughton-are all of a similar class. Stratton's theatrical historiography is guided by a very traditional idea; that is, history is the preserve of great men who stand above the fray. King's efforts to keep Canada united are played out in a narrow political context and are not reflected in the broader Canadian social formation because a diverse society is not presented. The focus is on Mackenzie King and his place in the international world, where acceptance signals acceptance by history itself. While Stratton may mock King's vanity, he eventually satisfies it, having Mrs. King tell her son before he "dies" that his country will miss him, and that he will be remembered (170). Although this sentiment is mawkish, her statement resonates because Rexy! is the memory she speaks of. And in being that memory, the play sanctions its own narrative strategies of historical representation.
This is not surprising given the nature of Stratton's previous work. Saddlemyer calls him a satirist, but one who allows his characters to maintain an individual subjectivity apart from the conditions in which they exist:
For instruction is the true nature of satire. But Allan is a gentle satirist: he treats his characters with sympathy, recognizing their loneliness and fears, acknowledging their right to ambitions and dreams, however petty or misguided they may be. It is the methods that are satirized, the conditions which encourage those methods, and their long-lasting conditions [sic] (7).
While I agree with Saddlemyer's reading of Stratton's strategies, I believe that those strategies have historical and dramaturgical implications which she does not consider. First, King is the Prime Minister of Canada, a position that authorizes, and perhaps encourages, action by the character. While Stratton's King may have a "right" to "loneliness and fears," "ambitions and dreams," the play diminishes his agency in its fulfillment of "divine providence." Second, the play does this through a dramatic structure that takes the audience up a rising arc of progress, until we are called upon to sanction King's imposition of conscription; however, Stratton, in his instructive role as satirist, has already encouraged us to bring down his verdict on the historical subject. His commitment to "inclusiveness" (Saddlemyer 9), discourages dissent unless the audience member rejects the entire premise which the narrative serves: that King, despite his deviousness and vanity, was serving a higher purpose by keeping Canada together. When this mission is fulfilled (and with the sanction of the audience), he can enter the pantheon of great Canadians that includes his rebel grandfather.
The final scenes of the play ensure that we are left with an image of King as a great leader, making his final triumph before completing the "rebel" takeover and joining his mother and grandfather-literally, they appear and all hold hands in a circle-in the afterlife that King desperately desired. He may have mocked him before, but now Stratton endows King with a kind of nobility:
Pearson: But when the Army Council threatened to resign en
masse if he didn't introduce overseas conscription,
he had nowhere to go if he didn't want to lose
Ontario, and the West and his government. And so
on November twenty-third, 1944, he rose in the
House.
A light up on KING. He rises, his back to us.
But a curious thing. Instead of addressing his
speech to the Opposition, he turned and faced his
own members-faced the very French Canadians he
feared. Faced his personal terror and said
KING has faced us.
King: If there is anything to which I have devoted my
political life, it is to try and promote unity,
harmony, and amity between the diverse elements of
this country. My friends, you may desert me. You
can remove your confidence from me. You can
withdraw the trust that you have placed in my
hands-but I shall never deviate from that line of
policy. Whatever may be the consequences, I know I
am in the right; and a time will come when every man, woman, and child will render me full justice
on that score (167).
By having King turn and face the audience, Stratton is, in effect, asking us to pass judgement on him. We become the Liberal members taking stock of King, and we are expected to perform our role as they did; we are expected to give King "full justice on that score." While King may have been devious in his methods, his highest priority was always the unity of the country: "My concerns," he says, "are those of this nation." Indeed, by the end of the play, it seems that King has come to embody Canada itself, serving as a metaphoric stand-in for the nation (itself a mythic concept, based on essentialist ideals of common characteristics). It would be ignoble on our part not to allow him the grace he seeks. But, just in case we waver, we have Joan to assure us that history sanctions only one judgment:
Surprise, surprise, they thumped till their hands had bruises: the English because he'd brought in conscription and the French because he'd won so much time for himself that now it was only a hop, skip and a jump to peace. He'd guided us through war and he'd kept us together and they loved him for it. And sure enough, next election he won one final term before retiring, and this at a time when other war leaders like Churchill were getting dumped all over the place. It seemed he could escape from anything (167-168).
The satirist sits in judgment, and he offers the audience a part in arbitration; however, it is a false gift, as the expectation is that the audience will render the judgment prescribed by both the playwright and history, which the playwright uses to sanction his verdict. The audience is surrounded by the wall of "inclusiveness" that Stratton constructs in the final scenes of the play to ensure King's ascension into grace.
The audience is also implicated in another important way in both Life and Times and Rexy!: by the manner in which the playwright constructs historical and dramatic time. As with both character and structure, Hollingsworth's use of time is based on metonymy, on a fragment of history being recognized by the audience as representing a complete and fully-written historical chronology; Stratton, however, uses time metaphorically, supplanting chronological progression with dramatic progression, using time to reflect his foreclosed narrative.
Life and Times marks historical time by continually reminding the audience of its chronological progress, and by repeated use of speech and scenographic metonyms that, while signifying a historical period, draw attention to themselves as constructions of the playwright and VideoCabaret. Although time undoubtedly marches forward in the play, the story does not end with the play. The beginning and ending denote important historical moments, but are not "bookends" to a well-rounded (and fully-resolved) dramatic narrative; they are chosen because Hollingsworth had already written up until the point Life and Times begins in Laurier, and resumes where it ends with World War II. The audience is given the year the play begins when King identifies the year on his mother's tombstone as the date the action commences:
THE LIGHTS FADE IN SC #1 A GARGOYLE GUARDING A GRAVESTONE WITH THE WORDS
ISABEL GRACE MACKENZIE KING BORN 1843 DIED 1917 MACKENZIE KING ENTERS HOLDING A
WREATH KING PLACES THE WREATH AT THE GRAVESTONE
King V.0. [Voice Over] Mother died
today (1).
Scene 2 advances the chronology, with Molly reading a letter from the front: "Dear Mrs Macpherson. We regret to inform you that Private John Macpherson was killed in action at Amiens, France on August 8th, 1918" (1); the armistice is imminent ("They say the Armistice is going to be signed on November 11 th at 11 AM" (2)); and the Winnipeg General Strike ("I hereby call a General Strike for May 15th, 1919" (14)). But perhaps the most dominant markers, historically and scenographically, are the continued pronouncements of the radio. King's first election victory is emphasized by a broadcast on a huge radio which cites the historic date:
KING AND JOAN ENTER THEY STAND BESIDE A GIANT CARLSON-STROMBERG RADIO [...] JOAN TWIDDLES A DIAL MUSIC IS HEARD-THE CHARLESTON
King Its [sic] incredible, what is it.
Joan Its an invention.
They call it radio.
King Its incredible.
How do they do it.
Its like a spirit, speaking.
Joan Yes it is, Mister King.
King Call me Rex. My friends call me Rex.
Joan Well Rex, you have beautiful eyes.
Radio THIS IS THE CBC.5
The final results of the 1921 election are
Liberals 117
Conservatives 50
and Progressives 64
MACKENZIE KING IS NOW PRIME MINISTER OF CANADA (35)
When the stock market crashes we are once again greeted with the giant radio:
KING ENTERS WITH A WATERING CAN A CARLSON-STROMBERG RADIO IS CENTRE STAGE
King Oh the delights of the pastoral life.
Radio Voice Good evening this is the CBRC [sic].
October 19th, 1929. Black Tuesday.
That's what stockbrokers are calling it.
The greatest stock market crash in history
occurred today. Some experts are forecasting
financial disaster on a world scale (57).
The radio appears again for the election of 1930, and the radio voice announces the election results for 1935 and the abdication of Edward VIII. The audience is reminded of the date of important events, but, more importantly, the passage of time is stated and staged, drawing attention to the chronological principle by which the play is organized.
The historical period is also indicated by the dialogue the characters exchange. Much of the speech in Life and Times is non-naturalistic, "quoting" the vocabulary and patterns of popular cinema set in the 1920's and 30's. This metadialogue relies on a popular culture construction of the historical period for audience recognition; thus the language is distanced from "naturalistic" speech, and is distanced even further from the historical moment, as language is not a metonym for the historical period, but a metonym for a representation of the historical period. Indeed, scene 88 is entitled "Joe walks down the Boulevard of Broken Dreams." Much of the criminal activity in Life and Times is carried out by gangster figures who talk like Jimmy Cagney and abuse their Molls:
MOLLY AND SID ENTER
Sid That dirty rat, that dirty rat.
Molly You're completely insane.
Sid That dirty rat. I'm going to get that guy.
I made you a whore and now you are a whore.
Molly What do you mean made me a whore.
Sid Remember that cop that busted you for being a
prosty,
I set that up, I loved you so much.
I'm going to get that guy.
I got everything, you got nothing.
I'm going to get that guy.
Molly You stink.
Sid I'm going to get that guy.
Molly You stink.
Sid I'm going to get that guy.
Molly You really stink (52).
These low-lifes are contrasted with the socialites, who engage in ridiculous, innuendo-loaded, high-society banter. In this scene, Joan and Godfroy Pat- teson meet King for the first time:
Joan I could not help but see that you are moving in.
King Yes, I'm batching it as they say.
Godfroy Bitching it you mean.
Joan Ah. This is my husband.
As you can see he has a head like a billiard ball.
Godfroy So you are our new neighbour.
I'm Godfroy Patteson.
King Mackenzie King at your service.
Godfroy He was looking at you when he said that.
Joan Don't pay attention to what God Forbid says.
No one else does. I am
Godfroy My wife.
Joan No, you are not your wife.
Alas, I am.
I am Joan. Joan Patteson.
Oh you have big fat stubby fingers.
Beethoven had big fat stubby fingers.
Do you play the piano (30).
When characters speak, they "quote" popular culture constructions of historical classes and periods; they speak a metalanguage that constantly reaffirms the chronology by signifying historical time through a popular referent. Whether or not this adds historical "depth" is beside the point; what is important is that the audience is able to recognize the historical period through these constructions and situate them in a historical chronology, while at the same time recognizing the quoting fragments as fragments, rather than as metaphors standing in for the "whole truth."
This chronological historicization is continued through the Life and Times' scenographic representation of 1917-1937. Indeed, the entire History of the Village of the Small Huts has relied heavily on scenographic techniques and styles to convey a sense of historical time. Life and Times, produced at Toronto's Theatre Centre in the spring of 1993, used what have become the most dominant scenographic tools of the series: Jim Plaxton's "black box" set and Shadowland's costumes and props. In the black box all stage action takes place within an enclosed playing space that is entirely black in colour, what Plaxton describes as "literally a box that is closed on five sides and open on one side-the side the audience is on" (Plaxton 56). Perforating the ceiling allows lighting instruments to illuminate tightly defined playing areas with little spill. "Have you ever been in a darkened room with the curtains drawn and there was a hole in the curtain revealing a beam of light?" Plaxton asks. "It's completely black except for the beam" (Plaxton 56). Entrances and exits are made through black curtains from the side, with a second layer of masking to ensure that no light escapes from backstage. Visually, the effect is almost magical; characters suddenly appear following a blackout, perform the scene and vanish again. Because the lighting areas are so precise, it is possible for two actors to stand near each other, yet for only one to be lit. When the lights go down on one actor and rise on another, it is as though the second character has appeared from nowhere. Despite the darkness from which characters emerge, the black box does not erase historical time. Rather, it frames the action as though it were a series of still photos-much like the borders around a cartoon panel-and serves as a kind of visual metonym that enhances the fragmentary structure of the play while physically representing the historical "frame." The black box becomes an important tool for advancing Hollingsworth's chronology. Plaxton notes:
The reason this particular black box works for the Histories is that they are written one scene per page. An average scene will run a minute, but some scenes are only three lines long. There is a lot of coming and going with movement through time and space. In no way, given the budget limitations that we were working with, could we truck on a set or change a backdrop. The black box neutralized all that and placed all the emphasis on the characters (Plaxton 57).
The set becomes a performance tool, through which other participants in the process (the playwright/director, the actors, and the costumes/props designers) can insert their own constructs of the historical period. It does not erase historical time, but refuses to signify time because it cannot represent any environment which could remain an appropriate-and universal-setting across time and history; it is not "timeless" (as the Life and Times program suggests), but "time-giving." The black box makes it possible for Hollingsworth and Shadowland to historicize the characters by eliminating any naturalistic depiction of setting,
This is not to say that the black box simply disappears into the background. The stage area is physically separated from the audience by a black scrim, not unlike a motion picture projection screen. The audience is frequently reminded of the screen's presence by the projection of swirling lights and film footage onto its downstage surface, and when it is not lit from behind it is completely opaque, presenting another wall. Both sides of the scrim can be used at once, reminding the audience that action is taking place behind a physical barrier; it is impossible to ignore the scrim when the onset of World War II is projected, in the form of marching German soldiers, over Mackenzie King's horrified face. He and the other characters are obscured by the film footage, making it difficult for the audience to see the stage, and demonstrating that history is being viewed through two different films. The black box ensures that Plaxton can mimic the quick-cut structure of Hollingsworth's writing while conveying the guidance of chronological time, in spite of the box's refusal to efface itself.
Shadowland's parodic costuming and props are ideally suited to this environment. They are quotations of historical dress, built from eye-catching (or stomach-turning) materials in electric colours, shaped to signify, but not accurately represent, clothing of the 1920's and 30's. When Molly wears the dress from scene 13, we recognize both the flapper dress and the grotesque exaggeration: it is covered with cheap beads, made from iridescent material, draped with gaudy necklaces, and capped with a vulgar hat dominated by a huge feather. When Sid gives her a diamond that is "[a]s big as the Rockies" (12) he is not too far off: the rock he slips on her finger is as big as her hand. This is all devoted to marking time in the historical chronology. Shadowland captures and conveys a historical moment in a distorted fragment. No matter how broad the scenographic quote, we in the audience immediately recognize it as signifying a historical period.
Whereas Life and Times constantly draws attention to the presence of time as it follows a historical chronology, Rexy! erases or compresses time to serve its dramatic narrative; it is by manipulating the progress of time that Stratton is able to assist King's transfer into the mythic world. He has, in effect, made the leap from "real" time (time constructed to serve a naturalistic dramatic form) to "fable" time, which removes King from the material constraints of Canadian and international politics (minimal though they are in the play) by the latent invocation of the phrase "[o]nce upon a time" (171). It doesn't really matter that this is the last line in the play, for it simply confirms what Stratton has already done: eliminated, or, alternately, compressed the historical chronology by playing with time as a storyteller does in fables. "[O]nce upon a time" may be King's final line, but it is assumed from the beginning. The tone is established immediately as one of reminiscence:
JOAN The day Willy King came back from his state trip to
Europe I was set to burst. Dear old family friend
though he was, I was tired of his Ottawa stories.
But Europe! For once I'd hear tales of adventure!
Tales about people who mattered! And in 1937 that
meant tales about that little monster with the
moustache (97).
While the audience is informed that the story begins in 1937, it is clearly not being narrated in 1937. In fact, the audience is unable to identify when the story is being told, despite the presence of chronological dates. Scenes with King are initiated with a kind of unspoken "I remember when by the other characters:
Pearson W.L.M. King. He called me Pearson, and
occasionally Lester, but he never called me Mike.
He predicted I'd be prime minister, you know. Said
a little bird told him. But at that time,
1939, 1 was with External-operating out of
London, England. Quite an exciting place to be
when Hitler invaded Poland (110).
We know the date Pearson is speaking of, but when is he speaking? He is explicit about "that" time, but what is this time? It is impossible to know, for, although the narrative is chronologically marked, the character narrator--the figure who constructs and organizes it-is not. After each memory is introduced the time differences between narrator, narrative, and audience dissolve, allowing the performance of memory as historical narrative. Pearson's memories of King transform from reminiscence to dramatization:
I was in charge of evacuating the Canadian Embassy.
The plan was to move it someplace out of the way.
We chose a pub. The Bull Inn.
Air raid siren starts in background, bomb sounds
swell.
The advance party had just set out by taxi when
Phone rings, PEARSON answers.
(On phone.) Hello? Pearson here.
Lights up on KING on phone. What with bombs,
sirens, phone static he and PEARSON are forced to
talk like two deaf men.
King (On phone) Hello. King here.
Pearson (On phone) Hello. Pearson, sir (110).
Memory is one of the most common forms of historiography, but here Stratton provokes confusion. In which time period is Pearson: the audience's or the time of action? King is clearly placed in the past, as both Joan and Pearson have to conjure him up before action can take place. And yet, both Joan and Pearson interact with King, suggesting that they occupy a space beyond chronological time, in which they can both remember the past from "audience time," but negotiate it as though they existed in "story time."
This is why I characterize the use of time in Rexy! as "fable time," in which the narrators (the characters and Stratton) determine the treatment of historical events by casting them into a space beyond chronological time under the rubric "once upon a time." This is the only way to facilitate King's transformation from a historical figure into a mythic figure. Joan erases the two years between King's final election victory in 1948 and his death in 1950, using the election as the final triumph in King's mortal life, and the gateway to an immortal existence. She even conjures him up one last time and speaks with him, assuring him that his place is secure in the fable history that lies beyond chronological history:
King In a coffin, Joan, there's no escape. Nowhere to
move. It's hard, hard wood. And there's the earth
all over you, pressing you down. The undertaker
plants you like a seed that will never grow. And
you'll be there forever.
Joan No Rexy, no. Your mother, your grandfather,
Laurier, little Pat-they travel, they speak to
us. They live.
King I hope to God they really do. What else is there
to dream? Nothing from this world. Oh, Joan, when
they write me down they'll treat me like a
Vancouver winter: I'll be so much drizzle and mist
they won't even see the mountains (168).
There are two strategies at work here: the first is to assure the audience that great Canadian heroes exist symbolically with us today, and can provide guidance in these times of political discord; the second is to assure the audience that Stratton, writing thirty years later, has given Mackenzie King his due. When "writing him down," Stratton has looked for, and found, the "mountains" in King's mortal life. Although King protests, Joan's statement ultimately carries the greater weight of the playwright's authority: "You kept us united" (168) (interestingly, this "[y]ou" could also address Stratton or the audience). King, like Laurier, helped keep the country together, and so his place in the pantheon of great Canadian leaders is assured. This mythical Canadian history, however, is impossible to track or situate within chronological time.
Finally, I would like to return to Hayden White, as I believe that some of his thinking applies to both Life and Times and Rexy!. White makes an interesting distinction between historical chronologies and historical narratives. While White's definition of narrative is narrower than my own- I believe that Life and Times is a literary narrative, guided by historical chronology-his observations on the structural implications of different forms is nonetheless perceptive, especially in light of these two plays:
The historical narrative, as against the chronicle, reveals to us a world that is putatively "finished," done with, over, and yet not dissolved, not failing apart. In this world, reality wears the mask of a meaning, the completeness andfullness of which we can only imagine, never experience. Insofar as historical stories can be completed, can be given narrative closure, can be shown to have had plot all along, they give to reality the odor of the ideal. This is why the plot of a historical narrative is always an embarrassment and has to be presented as "found" in the events rather than put there by narrative techniques (20-21).
Perhaps the distinction White makes between chronicles and narratives is similar to the difference between a diary and a memoir. The former is a story which is fragmentary, full of gaps, and guided by chronological time (it is always dated). The latter is a retrospective story, which must establish a subjective throughline that can reconcile disparate events and actions in charting a progressive evolution of character and history. In this sense, Life and Times is to a diary what Rexy! is to a memoir. Life and Times cannot construct a cohesive world because the metonymic signs it uses to signify material conditions are fragmentary and unresolved; the play's signs can never represent a world that is "finished" because they are always ready to dissolve. This structure allows Hollingsworth to depict the historical chronology as a series of fractured scenes which are focused on-or framed-only for a minute, and forces the audience to construct King and his environment through popular culture quotations of character and historical period. Rexy!, on the other hand, fashions a positivist response to the character's desire to turn "history into the shape of my mind" (169); the play mimics King's diary attempt at psychological synthesis by endowing him with a subjectivity that is beyond history. But Stratton cannot resist continued intervention, choosing to satisfy the desires and allay the fears King plays out in his diaries, constructing a King that conceivably could stand in for the persona King wishes for. In the end, The Life and Times of Mackenzie King serves as a literary metonyrn for a larger historical narrative-The History of the Village of the Small Huts. Rexy!, however, is a bookend, a fable that remembers King as both he and Stratton would like: the "little guy with big dreams," or, "the little Prime Minister who could."
NOTES
1 I wish to extend my thanks to Ric Knowles at the University of Guelph for his assistance
throughout the writing of "King-Maker." I would also like to thank Michael Hollingsworth and VideoCabaret International for providing me with a production script of Life and Times. The published text appeared after this article was written.
Return to article
2 This means that the earlier entries are not completely unexpurgated:
The transcription of the diaries up to 1935 took some four years; while the diaries from 1936 to 1950 were merely photostated because they were already typewritten in the original form. The transcription did not include all of the diary passages because the orientation was towards assisting the official biography's political bias. At the same time, care was taken to remove any remarks which were judged to infringe upon the privacy of any individual. The Public Archives has the original diaries as well as all of the typescripts and photostats produced by the literary executors in the 1950's. It was discovered during the transcription process that the last binder volume for 1945 was missing [original emphasis] (Finding Aid 4).
The 1973 agreement with University of Toronto Press permitted the publishing (on microfiche) of
the complete diaries, but using the 1893-1935 transcriptions by the literary executors; although it
is possible to read a microfiched copy of the handwritten entries, King's penmanship is cramped
enough to deter all but the most dedicated King scholar. The reader should be aware of other
organizational decisions made by the literary executors: there are appendices at the end of each
year, which continue entries that King recorded at an earlier point in the backs of his diary binders
(The Finding Aid to the diaries, published by the Public Archives of Canada in 1981, warns that
"[r]esearchers using the diaries should be careful to examine these 'Additional Entries' to see if such
continuations affect their research" (6)); parallel diaries kept for 1926 and 1934 have been
integrated; the lack of cataloguing by subject matter prevents access by any basis other than
chronology; the 1945 binder is absent from the collection. The reader cannot, then, construct the
diaries as a linear narrative, for it is impossible to read from the "beginning" and continue,
uninterrupted, until the "end."
Return to article
3 Bert Harper was a close friend of King's, whose sudden death in 1893 prompted King to begin
his diaries. Harper had been a diarist, and was one of the few close friends King ever had.
Return to article
4 Both Life and Times and Rexy! have woven their views of King's mind into a narrative construction. Many diary entries provide evidence of an attempt to mend a fractured subjectivity by linking seemingly disparate events, and straddling both real and supernatural worlds; entries are guided by a logic which gives as much weight to dreams and visions as to concrete episodes. Thus King's diary narrative valorizes events that would normally be considered out of place in a classical historical narrative; despite this, the logic is consistent for a narrative situated within a cosmological framework. Witness this entry for Friday, December 16,1938:
This morning, while reading, there appeared over my mother's face, in the painting by my table, what was almost like a seraphic vision. There came first what looked like a little silver cloud in front and above the head. Gradually it melted into a transformation of the upper part of the head-the brow and the hair as if some beautiful light were shining upon it. A distinct silver band around the head, coming from near the eyes to the middle part of the head at the back. Finally the light shone from the back, on her hair, in a radiant glow, and then it faded out as another light lit up the chin and lower part of her face. I brought Handy [King's personal secretary, to whom much of the diaries were dictated] in to look at it, and he felt as I did, as though it were almost a spiritual vision assuring me of my mother's presence. He remarked that when Saints were being canonized, there "always appeared some glow from the sun." This seemed to him to be symbolical of canonization of a Saint. A glow from the sun it was which accounted for the actual effect it had [sic], by shining through the window on some of the documents on my table, and the reflection had taken this particular form. It was I think the folder entitled "Canadian Defence." Utterances and comments since the signing of the Munich Agreement. Defending Canada's position and furthering the maintenance of peace-all clearly part of my mission in public life. While the actual effect is to be accounted for in the manner mentioned, the circumstances that it occurred at the moment it did, when I was reading the last Chapter of Revelations on the last day of my sixty-third year,without question was not a matter of chance. It was part of a mystical revelation of bringing to my inner vision, the near presence of my mother today, and the assurance of her guidance. I shall never forget the beauty of the entire vision, and the comfort it brought (T128-1006).
There is a link between his mother, religion, foreign policy, and mysticism that sanctions King's public
actions. King engages in a dialogue with himself, erasing the material world in which he operates.
His private persona, constructed in and performed through his diary entries, provides personal
comfort and authorizes his public performance. Whether or not he is successful in convincing
external readers depends on how the diaries are read and performed historiographically.
Return to article
5. This is an instance where Hollingsworth has manipulated chronological time, knowingly or
unknowingly. The CBC-the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation-did not come into existence
until 1936. Its predecessor-the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (the CRBC)-was
not created until 1932, when the CRBC took over the existing CNR radio network under a
mandate to provide radio service to all Canadians. Ironically, the government responsible for
the CRBC's creation was the Conservative administration of the staunchly capitalist R.B.
Bennett, motivated primarily by the Prime Minister's virulent anti-Americanism.
Return to article
WORKS CITED
Abbott, H. Porter. Diary Fiction: Writing as Action. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1984.
Barthes, Roland. "The Discourse of History." Comparative Criticism: A Yearbook. 3 (1981): 3-20.
Hollingsworth, Michael. The History of the Village of the Small Huts Part VII.- The Life and Times of Mackenzie King. Production script. Toronto: VideoCabaret International, 1993.
Hollingsworth, Michael. The Life and Times of Mackenzie King. The History of the Village of the Small Huts: Parts I-VIII. Winnipeg: Blizzard, 1994. 283-319.
King, W.L. Mackenzie. Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1981.
The Life and Times of Mackenzie King. Show program. Toronto: VideoCabaret International, 1993.
Plaxton, Jim. Interview. "Sculptured Spaces." Canadian Theatre Review. 70 (1982): 54-59.
Public Archives of Canada. Diaries Finding Aid. Ottawa: Public Archives of Canada Manuscript Division, 1981.
Saddlemyer, Ann. Foreword. Canada Split. By Allan Stratton. Montreal: Nuage, 1991. 7-9.
Stratton, Allan. Rexy!. Canada Split. Montreal: Nuage, 1991. 95-171.
White, Hayden. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1987.
White, Michèle. "The History Cycle: The Parodic Seen/The Parodic Scene." Canadian Theatre Review. 70 (1982): 50-53.