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WILLIAM JAY SMITH | The Straw MarketSynopsis
The Straw Market, which depicts Americans in Florence shortly after World War II, is a satire based on the age-old theme of Innocents Abroad. It is at the same time a study of the constant interplay of illusion and reality. Every American in the play is being duped. Wilson Brush, a young art critic and Fulbright Scholar, is overwhelmed by the glamour of Florence as represented by Cucu Merlini and her mother, the phony Marchesa Merlini. His guide to the glories of the city is the pseudo-Bostonian, Hortensia Carboy, who turns out to be the sister of the phony Marchesa. Gladys Davos, the feature editor of the fashion magazine The Medium, commissions Brush to write an article about Florence but she drops him as soon as his article is completed so that she may move on to Rome. Thelma Waddle, the wife of the head of the American church, is being taken for a ride by her titled Florentine friends. Hilda Doneapple is ecstatic about the poetry of her friend, Radcliffe-poet Waverly Thorne, whose poetic style is a pathetic pastiche of all current poetic fashion from William Carlos Williams to Robert Lowell. The Headlight Bar, the gathering place of the Anglo-American Colony of Florence and of the various unemployed and frequently titled Florentines, turns out to be a veritable den of thieves. The only character who sees the reality of the situation is the Cowboy guitarist, who, with Calypso tunes, acts as a kind of Greek chorus, commenting on the action.
Scene i: As the curtain rises on the Headlight Bar on the Via Tornabuoni, Gladys Davos and her mother, Mrs. Wedgwood Davos, are discussing the beauties of Florence with Wilson Brush, the Fulbright Scholar. After engaging him to write an article on the city for her magazine The Medium, Gladys departs for Venice with her mother. Mrs. Thelma Waddle discusses the drought with her Florentine companions Commendatore Facciotutto and Livia Gaddes Gelatini. Radcliffe-poet Waverly Thorne recites her poems to her friend Hilda Doneapple. Hortensia Carboy, a supposed Bostonian aristocrat and long resident of Florence alerted by Gladys Davos, enters and promises to help Wilson Brush with his article by introducing him to the important people in the city. She promises to have some Florentine beauties pose for pictures at the Straw Market in the center of town. “Yes, Mr. Brush, the Straw Market,” she says, “that’s the real forum of today, isn’t it? The Straw Forum if you like . . . and we all belong there . . . all bits of straw woven together for the briefest moment in infinity, and then flung away before the wind . . . or left to rot in the rain.” As she leaves, she points out the exact spot where Dante first beheld Beatrice. Immediately afterward, through the bead curtain of the doorway, appears Matilda (“Cucu”) Merlini, who speaks beautiful English (like most of the other Florentines, she appears to have an English grandmother). Brush falls at once under her spell. She invites him to visit her and her mother, the Marchesa Merlini, on the Costa San Giorgio. Scene ii: A few days later Wilson Brush appears at the apartment of the Marchesa. By this time, he is madly in love with Cucu Merlini. He “has given up criticizing art,” he is “really living it.” And Cucu seems to return his affection. The Marchesa, hunched and one-eyed with red hair that dangles in corkscrew curls, embodies for Wilson Brush all the mystery of the strange old world of which he is enamored. Complaining of the continuing drought, she takes out a pack of cards to tell his fortune. He has a great future as an art critic, she says, and he will meet a beautiful girl whom he will take across the Atlantic. She asks him for 2,000 Lire for telling his fortune (the money is “for the benefit of the children of Florence”). Cucu and Wilson leave for the vernissage of Ben Benzina at the Strozzi Palace.
One afternoon early in May at the Headlight Bar, Professor Duncan Pin ecstatically welcomes the rain that has finally come to Florence. Pin, who throughout the play has been mastering his Italian verbs, has graduated to idioms. Gladys Davos, back from Venice with her mother, congratulates Wilson Brush on his splendid article for The Medium but no sooner has she done so than she opens a telegram from her editor saying that the magazine does not want anything about Florence but prefers a piece on Rome. Hortensia Carboy, offering the rental of her cousin’s apartment to Wilson Brush, asks him to put his 100,000 Lire in an envelope. She will add another 100,000 Lire to the envelope and her cousin will come by shortly with the keys to the apartment. When she leaves, Hilda Doneapple turns from Waverly Thorne’s poetry to the latest issue of the Rome Daily American and reads aloud the announcement that the police have apprehended the Marchesa Merlini, who, as head of a band of black marketeers dealing in American hospital supplies in conjunction with Lucky Luciano, has conducted a highly successful confidence operation. Her daughter Cucu Merlini has fled to the Virgin Islands in the company of the wealthy playboy painter Ben Benzina. When Wilson Brush opens his envelope, he finds not 200,000 Lire but strips of the Rome Daily American. Realizing that he has lost his love and his money and has been flimflammed, a victim of the old cloth trick, he rushes madly from the bar. A Florentine black marketeer points out to a young American tourist the spot where Dante first beheld Beatrice. Tutu Martini, a dark replica of Cucu Merlini, enters and sits down with the American tourist. The confidence game will clearly continue as the Cowboy sings: The con men have been
Although the settings are described in detail, the descriptions are meant to be merely suggestive. The greatest freedom should be taken in staging the play and a minimum of properties employed so that an air of dream and fantasy may be established and maintained throughout. Tapes of the music composed for the songs of The Straw Market are available. W. J. S.
Act I Act II
MARIO, a bartender
Contributor’s notes
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