So a couple years ago, I had to rewrite a few scenes from a book in Shakespeare style, but without iambic pentameter because my teacher was kind, and obviously I chose Les Mis.
I hope you enjoy it for Barricade Day!!
Act I Scene I
Darkness Surrounds Grantaire
A street behind a barricade
ENJOLRAS: Grantaire, go sleep away the wine that cloudeth thy mind. Tis a place for intoxication, not drunkenness. Dishonour the barricade not.
GRANTAIRE: Thy speech alone is enough to chase away the clouds inside my mind. Thou must know I believe in thee.
ENJOLRAS: Leave me.
Grantaire: I prithee, grant thy servant permission to sleep ‘t off here.
ENJOLRAS: Nay, sleep it off elsewhere, winecask!
GRANTAIRE: Let me sleep here and if need be die here.
ENJOLRAS: Thou art incapable of believing or thinking or willing or living or dying.
GRANTAIRE: Thou shalt see, my lord, thou shalt see.
[exit Enjolras]
If I could only see as he sees – my golden god of the sun!
He seeth a light
doth command it to come through the dark abyss of truth.
He is mad and yet I love him more dearly than mine own life,
indeed, he brings life to me.
Enjolras, Enjolras, my lord, my devotion! None loves the daylight more than the blind man and for me he is that – an eagle soaring in the upper air of faith whilst I, poor lost soul, earthbound must be.
Invaluable is he to me, but I to him?
Nay! He wouldst sooner sleep with harlots than allow me to press mine unworthy hand with his.
I am an unwelcome Ephestion, torn away from that which gives me strength as I possess none.
Cruel fates! If I could only die in his light, I could die a happy man!
For what is man? Man liveth and dieth and tis all for not.
Enjolras, thou art leading away thy children – thy disciples – to a bloody death, but willingly will they go if thou sayest tis for freedom.
Well I would go for thee, blond youth, not for some false dream, nay, I would go for thee if thou desired it.
For thee would I be damned to hell if only I could watch thy flight. Alas, I am nothing and as nothing I must die and live alone.
[Exit]
Act I scene II
[Enter Gavroche, Enjolras, Combeferre, and workmen]
GAVROCHE: Come now, we must have more paving-stones, more barrels, more of everything. Come, a basket of rubble to stuff up the hole. Tis not big enough to provide protection from the blades and blows of war. Shove everything upon it, break up the dwelling if necessary. Hullo, there lieth a glass-paned door!
WORKMAN 1: Then what shall we do with’t, clumsy young lad?
GAVROCHE: Clumsy yourself. A glass-paned door is a very good thing t’have on a barricade – easy to attack, but not so easy to get past. Have not ye attempted to steal apples o’er a wall with broken glass on top? Think of a bit of glass cutting the soldiers’ arms. Tis the trouble – no imagination doth ye posses! A sword! I must have a sword! Why will no one give one to me?
COMBEFERRE: A sword at thine age?
GAVROCHE: Why not pray tell? I had one in the last revolution when we forced Charles X to flee from us!
ENJOLRAS: Once there are enough for the men, we shall begin to deliver them out to the children.
GAVROCHE: If thou shalt expire afore me I shall take thy sword.
ENJOLRAS: Urchin!
GAVROCHE: Greenhorn!
[enter Young Man 1]
Ho – come to join us? Art thou not willing to do a turn for thy poor old country?
[Young Man runs]
ENJOLRAS: Gavroche, ye art small enough that thou shalt not be noticed. Slip out along the house fronts, out into the streets, and bring thee back to tell what’s going on.
GAVROCHE: So we are good for something after all, us little ‘uns. Aye, I will do ‘t. Ye trust the little ‘uns, my lord, but keep an eye on the big ‘uns – see, that man there.
ENJOLRAS: What of him?
GAVROCHE: Tis a spy.
ENJOLRAS: Art thou certain?
GAVROCHE: Aye, he took me less than a fortnight ago by the Pont Royal.
ENJOLRAS: Who art thou?
JAVERT: I see what thou meanest by it. Yes, I am.
ENJOLRAS: Thou art an informer?
JAVERT: I am a representative of the law.
ENJOLRAS: And thy name?
JAVERT: Javert.
GAVROCHE: So the mouse has caught the cat!
ENJOLRAS: Tis a spy – ye shall be killed two minutes before the barricade falls.
JAVERT: Why not now?
ENJOLRAS: I shall not waste our strength.
JAVERT: A flick of a knife would take little effort.
ENJOLRAS: We art judges, not murderers. Gavroche – get started. Do what I told thee.
GAVROCHE: I am gone, but let me have his sword. I have left you the musician, but I would like to have his harp.
[exit Gavroche]
LE CABUC: Comrades, that house would be a good place to shoot from. With marksmen at all the windows, devil a soul could come along the street!
YOUNG MAN 2: But the house is shut.
LE CABUC: Canst we knock?
YONG MAN 3: They shant open.
LE CABUC: Then we shall break down the door. Is anyone in? Silence.
DOORKEEPER: Messieurs, what do you want?
LE CABUC: Open the door!
DOORKEEPER: Nay, I am forbidden, monsieur.
LE CABUC: Do it all the same.
DOORKEEPER: I canst do as ye request.
LE CABUC: Wilt thou open?
DOORKEEPER: Nay
LE CABUC: Then ye refuse?
DOORKEEPER: Aye, for mine own –
[Doorkeeper shot by an arrow and dies]
LE CABUC: There!
ENJOLRAS: On thy knees. On thy knees.
LE CABUC: Though thou art a youth, I have no strength to resist thee.
ENJOLRAS: Pray or pounder. Thou hast one minute.
LE CABUC: Mercy!
[Enjolras stabs Le Cabuc. Le Cabuc falls dead]
ENJOLRAS: Get rid of that.
[Exit Young men carrying Le Cabuc]
Shiit this is some dedicated work
Thank you!! It was a lot of fun! I originally did a scene with Joly, Bossuet, and Grantaire too, but I think I’ve lost it since 😦
He doesn’t care at all about stars in the Brick, it’s purely musical
invention. He has no interests except for the rare pinch of snuff and
some reading, which he forces himself to do although he hates it.
In his leisure moments, which were far from frequent, he read, although he
hated books; this caused him to be not wholly illiterate. This could be
recognized by some emphasis in his speech.
As we have said, he had no vices. When he was pleased with himself, he
permitted himself a pinch of snuff. Therein lay his connection with
humanity.
The reader will have no difficulty in understanding that Javert was the
terror of that whole class which the annual statistics of the Ministry of
Justice designates under the rubric, Vagrants. The name of Javert routed
them by its mere utterance; the face of Javert petrified them at sight.
(Les Misérables 1.5.5)
Here’s a passage that does connect Javert with stars in a way that probably inspired the song Stars, in that it is using the stars to symbolize “order and light.” It’s from 1.8.3, when Javert bursts in on Valjean at Fantine’s bedside, after Valjean revealed his true identity at court.
I’m going to have to confess that I haven’t yet read the Brick!
Could anyone else help us out here? Does Javert’s love for the stars come from the Brick or the musical?
Javert was in heaven at that moment. Without putting the thing clearly to himself, but with a confused intuition of the necessity of his presence and of his success, he, Javert, personified justice, light, and truth in their celestial function of crushing out evil. Behind him and around him, at an infinite distance, he had authority, reason, the case judged, the legal conscience, the public prosecution, all the stars; he was protecting order, he was causing the law to yield up its thunders, he was avenging society, he was lending a helping hand to the absolute, he was standing erect in the midst of a glory. There existed in his victory a remnant of defiance and of combat. Erect, haughty, brilliant, he flaunted abroad in open day the superhuman bestiality of a ferocious archangel. The terrible shadow of the action which he was accomplishing caused the vague flash of the social sword to be visible in his clenched fist; happy and indignant, he held his heel upon crime, vice, rebellion, perdition, hell; he was radiant, he exterminated, he smiled, and there was an incontestable grandeur in this monstrous Saint Michael.
Hugo also makes a point of saying that there were no stars visible in the sky the night Javert commits suicide; just as Valjean notes there are no visible stars the night before he gives himself up at Arras
Oh, hey, so guess what it says the night Valjean dies:
“The night was starless and extremely dark.
No doubt, in the gloom, some
immense angel stood erect with wings outspread, awaiting that soul.“
This is a man who has lived by a strong moral code his whole life, and who for the first time realizes that the world he sees as black and white, is in fact a million different shades of grey.
This is a man who had nothing and nobody his whole life EXCEPT that code, and when it is stripped away, is left with nothing.
And when he dies, he STILL has nothing because essentially, nothing changes. Nobody grieves, nobody cares.
Should you be interested in a villian:
THESE are two people who happily scam people out of money, rob off the dead and are just generally horrible people.
They were also the two who had five children, sold two of them, and couldn’t give a toss that two of them are dead.
¯_( ಠ_ಠ)_/¯ 