the heel press

Author's Note: It's a little known fact that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien not only knew each other, but met every Thursday with a writing group known as the Inklings. Tolkien taught at Oxford at the time, and both would often take time to bounce ideas off of each other about their writing. This is a one-act play about one of those times.

 THE HOBBIT, THE LION, AND THE LEGEND

Characters
-- J.R.R. Tolkien
-- C.S. Lewis

[England, 1937. J.R.R. Tolkien’s English Office, Oxford Campus – Late evening. A stationary door is to the left, away and back from the desk. Tolkien’s desk is in the center of the stage, a globe on the right corner, a book placed behind it. A stack of papers sits on the left, another paper sitting in the center of the desk blotter. Tolkien is sitting at his desk, reading a student’s paper. There is a knock on the door.]

LEWIS: Tollers! Tollers!

TOLKIEN: Enter! (Lewis enters)

LEWIS: Ah, there you are. I thought I might find you here. Still grading papers I see.

TOLKIEN: My final of the lot. Written by our mutual acquaintance, Wystan Auden.

LEWIS: Ah yes. Brilliant boy. 

TOLKIEN: I concur. (takes a sip of tea) Well Jack, I imagine you’ve come to discuss the latest developments of your children’s series.

LEWIS: (smiles) No, not at all! I’ve come to fetch you!

TOLKIEN: Whatever for?

LEWIS: (laughs) My dear Tollers… (trails off, surprised) It’s Thursday.

TOLKIEN: Is it?

LEWIS: It is indeed. And so the Inklings await your attendance at the Bird.

TOLKIEN (looks at his tea): It is with all due respect, my dear Jack, that I insist on finishing my tea first.

LEWIS: Well, I have no personal qualms about that. Feel free.

TOLKIEN: I appreciate your generosity. Won’t you sit down?

LEWIS: I won’t, thank you all the same, for I fear not being able to get back up again.

TOLKIEN: Suit yourself (sips his tea). Save the silence, Jack. Tell me of the new developments in that Narnia world of yours. Last I recall, you wished to create an animal world of equality.

LEWIS: I do and I have. The perfect solution. I’ve decided to give the animals a king. A lion.

TOLKIEN: A lion?

LEWIS: (quickly) A lion. A talking lion, in point of fact.

TOLKIEN: A talking lion? How much further use would you get out of using a talking lion than you would a human being? (pause) Does it have a name?

LEWIS: Aslan. (notices Tolkien’s desk globe and begins spinning it)

TOLKIEN: Aslan… (takes a puff of his pipe, deep in thought) Middle–Eastern dialect. Syrian, I should expect.

LEWIS: Oh come now, you’re slipping old boy. (pause as he stops the globe) It’s Turkish.

TOLKIEN: It appears I’m a bit farther south than I’d like to be.

LEWIS: (Glances down at the globe) Just a country.

TOLKIEN: Yes… (trails off) And this Aslan fellow, what does he do?

LEWIS: Same as your Bilbo Baggins does, I expect. Goes off, saves the world, and arrives home safe and sound, and just in time for tea.

TOLKIEN: You’re mocking me. I don’t appreciate that, you know. (continues to sip his tea throughout the conversation)

LEWIS: Oh, all right. He helps four young children in their quest to save his world.

TOLKIEN: Is it in danger?

LEWIS: Isn’t it always? I didn’t think we wrote about worlds that weren’t in a state of disarray.

TOLKIEN: True. So they arrive to save his world. And by helping them, he is helping himself. (pause) Correct?

LEWIS:Precisely.

TOLKIEN: I see. (pause) Children cannot fully carry the weight of their world, so you create one that they can. But your creating a world where animals talk is a bit far fetched.

LEWIS: And your work is removed from that kind of comparison, I suppose.

TOLKIEN: What do you mean?

LEWIS: I mean the creation of those small people, the hobbits. Why couldn’t they be large? Normal height. Able to reach the stove without a stool to stand on?

TOLKIEN: Because then they wouldn’t be hobbits, now would they, Jack?

LEWIS: (pause) No… I expect not. Yet I suspect their creation is nothing more than a way to manoeuvre yourself into your own book. (grins) Don’t think I didn’t notice, Tollers.

TOLKIEN: (stunned) Are you proposing… that I… am a hobbit?

LEWIS: Well not in stature, I can assure you, but in character. I’ve considered it thoroughly. You and Bilbo. You’re much alike. You both enjoy your gardens, love your food plain, smoke a pipe, and have an irrepressible distaste for travelling. (pause) You can’t deny it, Tollers.

TOLKIEN: I will give you the satisfaction by agreeing that there are some similarities. But are there not some of your own characteristics buried deep within Aslan as well?

LEWIS: (pause) I said Aslan was a talking lion, Tollers, not a talking lemur. That’s about the extent to which I can reflect myself in the animal world.

TOLKIEN: I see. (pause) But for heaven’s sake, why a lemur?

LEWIS: Why? Why a—why? (pause) I don’t really know. I like the sound of it, I suppose.

TOLKIEN: You give considerable thought to how things sound, with your lemurs and Aslan.

LEWIS: So do you, old boy. ‘The Silmarillion’? It has a noble ring to it.

TOLKIEN: Well, (takes a puff of his pipe) so it does, I suppose.

(Lewis glances across Tolkien’s desk, but stops. Picks up the book off his desk.)

LEWIS: What’s this? ‘The Hobbit’?

TOLKIEN: (distracted) Hmm? (realizes) Ah, I’ve been meaning to give you that. It’s yours. The second book off the press, as you requested.

LEWIS: (feigns hurt) Why not the first? (off of Tolkien’s look) I believe second shall suffice quite nicely. (flips the book open) Tollers, where’s the inscription?

TOLKIEN: The what?

LEWIS: The inscription. (grins) Come now Tollers, at the very least, I deserve an inscription.

TOLKIEN: Very well. (holds his hand out) Give me the book. I’ll write one now.

LEWIS: (mortified) You can’t write it in the spur of the moment! It must be deep… and emotional... and thoroughly embarrassing. Otherwise, it’s not a true inscription.

TOLKIEN: I see. (leans back) Then I should make frequent mention of your continued support of the novel by your banging on my office door daily, demanding to know if it’s done?

LEWIS: (pause) You write better than you jest, Tollers. I beg of you, stay with the writing. (flips through it, and reads aloud) “Such a question of course made the Elvenking angrier than ever, and he answered: "It is a crime to wander in my realm without leave. Do you forget that you were in my kingdom, using the road that my people made?..." (suddenly) Oh! That’s right!

TOLKIEN: What’s right?

LEWIS: (looks up from the book) You never told me… how is that problem coming along? Creating the new language for the Elven people for your next book.

TOLKIEN: There no longer is a problem, Jack. It has been solved.

LEWIS: Really, Tollers? Why that’s marvellous! (leans book against globe) How did you do it?

TOLKIEN: By merging two recent interests of mine. I created a new dialect by planting it in two others. One foot in the Finnish, the other in the Welsh.

LEWIS: Its shoes must be a disgrace.

TOLKIEN: Your continuous jesting is becoming somewhat monotonous, Jack.

LEWIS: (pause) Very well, I shall stop. For the moment, anyway

TOLKIEN: I assure you, I do appreciate it. Thank you.

LEWIS: So this language… this is what the elves will be speaking? Is it Elvish then?

TOLKIEN: Elvish? (puffs his pipe, thinking) I do like the sound of that.

LEWIS: I thought you might. (pause) Well… I must admit, I think that’s rather brilliant.

TOLKIEN: You don’t see it as… too childish? (pause) Although I’ll get what I deserve, asking such a question of a man with a talking lion.

LEWIS: I shall disregard that remark. (pause) I don’t feel it childish at all. Rather revolutionary.

TOLKIEN: Do you think it will be taken seriously?

LEWIS: What, this Elvish language? Why shouldn’t it? No one knows your sources.

TOLKIEN: No… I mean all of it. The whole thing.

LEWIS: The whole thing? What are you—(realizes) Ah, I see. I should have guessed. (pause) Wystan… told me of your lecture last week. Somewhat short of a success, I hear.

TOLKIEN: (stands up angrily) Pompous, arrogant fools. The lot of them. (begins pacing as Lewis sits on the edge of the desk)

LEWIS: Then why should you concern yourself with them? I must say, I shouldn’t want my books being read by… (mimics Tolkien) pompous, arrogant fools.

TOLKIEN: It’s a matter of principle. I resent being made a fool of. It’s entirely unforgiveable.

LEWIS: Really? If that’s true, I can’t imagine how we have remained friends for so long.

TOLKIEN: (ignores him) What purpose does being narrow-minded serve? What harm, what true harm would come to them to consider the fantastical as a serious genre of fiction, adult fiction?

LEWIS: It shouldn’t do them any harm, I imagine.

TOLKIEN: Precisely. And yet they balk and insist on their own suffocating terms. They say that all good literature must be grounded in two things, history and reality. History and reality? Phooey! Realistic literary men do not make true heroes, unless perhaps they die. And what good are they to us then?

LEWIS: What of your Beowulf then? That man you’re always reading about in classes to motivate the masses… He was a hero, wasn’t he?

TOLKIEN: But he was not realistic. He was fantastical! (building) A fantastical man whose heroic deeds speak to us even now! He slayed the hideous creatures that stood in his way:  Grendel, Grendel’s mother and then a dragon! (pause, more serious) We idolize this man. This man! Do we not admire his valor, his courage and strength? (pause) His story is a fantasy… a fantasy novel, the first of its kind! Do we laugh at him? Do we balk? No… we admire. We revel in his legend with nothing short of… wondrous awe. (pause) Do you not agree, Jack?

LEWIS: (after a long pause) It’s a difficult argument to counter, Tollers. What did they say when you told them that? (Tolkien doesn’t respond) You didn’t tell them that… did you?

TOLKIEN: (sits, slowly) What was… Wystan’s assessment… of the lecture?

LEWIS: (stands) Something to the effect of your becoming distracted and losing sense of direction.

TOLKIEN: (sighs) I wasn’t prepared to discuss something so personal. I shouldn’t have lectured.

LEWIS: (picking up the paper off the desk) You should have read them Beowulf. Resurrected him right then and there to plead your case. (motions with the paper to the cup) Your tea is done.

TOLKIEN: So it is. (stands) Hand me my coat, will you Jack?

(Lewis puts the paper down on the desk goes to the hat stand to get Tolkien’s coat; Tolkien notices and picks up the paper from his desk and reads)

TOLKIEN: (reads aloud) “Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about. As such, some books are undeservedly forgotten, while none are undeservedly remembered.” (pause, looks up from paper to audience) Some books… are undeservedly forgotten… while none are undeservedly remembered.

(After putting his own on first, Lewis returns with Tolkien’s coat)

LEWIS: Did you say something Tollers?

TOLKIEN: No. Nothing at all. (Tolkien drops paper on desk; Lewis helps him with his coat)

LEWIS: (notices) Wystan Auden’s paper?

TOLKIEN: Yes, it is.

LEWIS: Are you going to grade it before we go?

TOLKIEN: No, I think… I’ll wait until tomorrow. Read it with fresh eyes.

(Lewis nods, puts on his scarf; Tolkien gives a look around his office as they head for the door. Speaking as they close the door behind them; their silhouettes can be seen in the glass)

TOLKIEN: Say Jack… What more do you think it would take for the fantasy… to be accepted as something serious, to be read by adults?

(The lights slowly begin to dim on stage, except a small beam on the edge of the desk)

LEWIS: Well… it would have to start with a novel. One good, solid novel to set the standard for all those that followed after it. Something memorable. (pause, laughs) I wonder if we’ll be remembered, Tollers.

(The stage becomes darker, a spotlight focuses on the book on the desk)

TOLKIEN: Who, you and I? Among all those legends? And myths? And almighty men who sit among gods? (laughs heartily) I doubt it.

(The stage is completely dark now, except for the spotlight on ‘The Hobbit’; the light goes out)

THE END