QUIKKO: In my opinion, the Moon Committee for Earth Research can expect nothing from this map. I notice that not even the huge crater C.Y. 2802, where we hold our meetings, is marked on it.
LABU: The Moon map is dispatched to the archive without further debate.
SOFANTI: Excuse me, but who is Tobias Mayer?
LABU: According to the Earth Archive, Tobias Mayer was a professor of astronomy in Göttingen who died a number of years ago. Herr Lichtenberg concluded Mayer’s work.
SOFANTI: I motion that we thank Herr Lichtenberg for his interest in Moon research by making him the subject of our own investigations, for, as Mr. President has just rightly noted, our Committee’s final sessions will deal with humans.
LABU: Any objections? No objections have been raised. The Committee passes the motion.
QUIKKO: I have the privilege to present a photograph of Lichtenberg.
ALL: Let us see it, please.
PEKA: But there are twenty people in it.
QUIKKO: This is Pastor Lichtenberg from Oberamstädt near Darmstadt together with his esteemed wife and his eighteen children. The smallest one is the aforementioned moon researcher.
SOFANTI: But now he is supposed to be over thirty.
LABU: Gentlemen, the time allotted for the Committee meeting is up.
I request that Mr. Quikko tune the Spectrophone in to Göttingen.
QUIKKO: Spectrophone to Göttingen.
A series of purring and ringing signals can be heard.
QUIKKO: He’s not in Göttingen.
LABU: Then you’ll have to search for him, but without a sound. It’s our silent hour now. Pause.
QUIKKO (whispering): London. He’s in London. In the Drury Lane Theater. They’re performing Hamlet. The great actor Garrick is playing Hamlet.3
GARRICK: Rest, rest, perturbed spirit! So, gentlemen,
With all my love I do commend me to you:
And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
May do t’express his love and friending to you,
God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together;
And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint. O cursed spite!
That ever I was born to set it right!
Nay, come, let’s go together.4
A burst of applause; then music.
LORD CHAMBERLAIN: It will get somewhat noisy in here during the intermission, Herr Professor. Furthermore, His Majesty has particularly asked me to give Mr. Garrick the privilege of making the acquaintance of one of Europe’s greatest scholars.
LICHTENBERG: Your courteousness, my Lord Chamberlain, goes too far. His Majesty well knows that he will be fulfilling a long-cherished wish of mine by making it possible for me to become acquainted with Garrick. His acting, I can see, is beyond compare.
LORD CHAMBERLAIN: As you will see, his manners are in no way surpassed by the art of his acting. He is equally at home in the gilded court of St. James as in Hamlet’s paper court.
LICHTENBERG: Will you show me to his dressing room?
LORD CHAMBERLAIN: We will be there directly. — Please announce us to Mr. Garrick.
LICHTENBERG: I was told that the acoustics are bad, but I understood every word.
LORD CHAMBERLAIN: The acoustics really are bad. But when Garrick acts, not a sound is lost. It is deathly quiet, and the audience sits as if they were painted on the wall.
DRESSING ROOM ATTENDANT: Mr. Garrick will see you now.
GARRICK: I am happy for this chance to greet you. The King already let me know you would be coming.
LICHTENBERG: I am far too caught up in the impression left by your acting to be able to greet you in the way I would wish.
GARRICK: The honor of seeing you here before me is greater than any greeting.
LICHTENBERG: Some of my friends warned me against seeing you. They were afraid that I would no longer have any appreciation of the German stage upon my return home.
GARRICK: I cannot take that seriously. Or do you think we have not heard of the reputation of an Iffland or an Eckhof here?5
LICHTENBERG: Unfortunately, they seldom have an opportunity to play Lear or Hamlet. Here, Shakespeare is not merely famous, but rather sacred. His name is intertwined with venerable ideas, songs by him and about him are sung, and so a large segment of English youth knows him earlier than they learn the ABCs or the one-times-one table.
GARRICK: Shakespeare is our “High School,” although I can’t forget what I have learned from my friends Sterne and Fielding.
LICHTENBERG: I think I could fill many pages with what your conduct in front of the ghost taught me.
LORD CHAMBERLAIN: Then you won’t forget an anecdote I was recently told about Mr. Garrick. A few weeks ago, there was an audience member sitting in the balcony who believed that the ghost in Act I was real. His neighbor told him it was an actor. “But,” responded the first, “if that’s the case, why was the man dressed in black himself so frightened by it?” The man dressed in black — that was Garrick.
LICHTENBERG: Oh, yes, the black garment! I wanted to talk about that. I have frequently heard you being reprimanded because of it, although never between the acts or on the way home or at a meal directly afterwards, but always only after the first impression has lost its force, during a cool, sober conversation. And I never quite understood this reproach.
GARRICK: Yes, I’ll admit to you that I have reasons why I dress this way. It seems to me the old costumes on the stage can easily become a masquerade. They are beautiful when they are pleasing, but the deception that then comes into play is rarely offset by the pleasure in their beauty.
LICHTENBERG: You feel the same way about actors in old costumes as I do about German books in Latin script. To me, they are always a kind of translation.
GARRICK: Allow me to speak about my combat with Laertes in the last act. My predecessors wore a helmet in that scene. I wear a hat. Why? I absolutely feel the fall of a hat during a fight; I feel the fall of a helmet far less. I don’t know how firmly a helmet should fit; but I feel every slight shift of a hat. I think you understand me.
LICHTENBERG: Perfectly. It is not the business of an actor to awaken the antiquarian in the audience.
GARRICK: I once read something by an old Spaniard who said that theater is like a map. Valladolid is only a finger’s breadth away from Toledo. One has barely seen a person who is sixteen years old when he appears again at sixty on the stage. That is true theater; one should not hamper the trade with pedantry. (A gong sounds.) Please excuse me. My scene approaches.
QUIKKO: I trust the gentlemen of the Committee will not think me high-handed for switching it off. But I think our material is complete. I am convinced that we can conclude our debate without further ado. The unhappiness of Professor Lichtenberg can no longer be a mystery to us. You have seen him in the most dazzling society and at that moment in his existence when the world seemed to open up for him. He was a marvelous guest at the English royal court; he had the privilege of speaking to the great actor Garrick about the secrets of his art; he visited England’s great observatories and got to know the wealthy nobility in their castles and seaside resorts; the Queen opened up her private gallery and Lord Calmshome opened up his wine cellar for him. And now he is supposed to go back to Göttingen and his cramped rental apartment, which his publisher has allocated him as payment for his writing. He must exchange his box at the theater for his window seat. He must struggle with the students who are sent to him for room and board by distinguished Englishmen. He, who calculates lunar eclipses and planetary conjunctions, is supposed to simultaneously calculate the pocket money of the young lords and idlers boarding with him. Don’t you see how the misery of this existence — with its intrigues at the university, the gossip of the professors, the resentment and the narrowness — must embitter him and turn him into a misanthrope before his time? His unhappiness? Do you really need to look for it? It is called Göttingen and lies in the kingdom of Hanover.