Claire Danes: Maria Hughes

Stage Beauty

Maria Hughes

Maria: Your old tutor did you a great disservice, Mr. Kynaston. He taught you how to speak, and swoon, and toss your head but he never taught you how to suffer like a woman, or love like a woman. He trapped a man in a woman's form and left you there to die! I always hated you as Desdemona. You never fought! You just died, beautifully. No woman would die like that, no matter how much she loved him. A woman would fight!

Ned Kynaston: Do you know the Five Positions of Feminine Subjugation?
Maria: What?
Ned Kynaston: The Five Positions of Feminine Subjugation. No? Perhaps you're more acquainted with the Pose of Tragic Acceptance. Or the Demeanor of Awe and Terror.
Maria: Mr. Kynaston.
Ned Kynaston: How about the Supplicant's Clasp or the Attitude of Prostrate Grief?
Maria: Mr. Kynaston.
Ned Kynaston: Funny, you've seen be perform them a thousand times. I'd have thought they'd taken hold.
Maria: Mr. Kynaston!
Ned Kynaston: Ah, well now, there's a feminine gesture. You seem to have managed the Stamp of Girlish Petulance.
Maria: I just wanted to act. I just wanted to do what you do.
Ned Kynaston: I have worked half my life to do what I do. Fourteen boys crammed in a cellar... Do you know when I was in training for this profession, I was not permitted to wear a woman's dress for three long years, I was not permitted to wear a wig for four - not until I had proved that I had eliminated every masculine gesture, every masculine intonation from my very being. What teacher did you learn from? What cellar was your home?
Maria: I had no teacher, nor such a classroom. But then, I had less need of training.

Maria: What do you know of love, sir? Or loyalty? Or adoration suffered in deepest silence? The only love you know, sir, is what you act on stage.

Maria: Why won't you play men?
Ned Kynaston: Men aren't beautiful. What they do isn't beautiful either. Women do everything beautifully, especially when they die. Men feel far too much. *Feeling* ruins the effect. Feeling makes it ugly.
[Maria rolls her eyes]
Ned Kynaston: Perhaps that's why I could never pull off the death scene. I- could never feel it in a way that wouldn't mar the-
[pause]
Ned Kynaston: I couldn't let the beauty die. Without beauty there's nothing. Who could love that?

Sir Charles Sedley: So, Kynaston, will you see Mrs Hughes perform?
Maria: Yes, I'd love to know what you think of the death scene.
Ned Kynaston: Oh, I'm always interested in how my rivals die.
Sir Charles Sedley: [to the Duke of Buckingham] Your Grace?
George Villiars, Duke of Buckingham: Well, no. I've had my fill of Desdemonas.
George Villiars, Duke of Buckingham: [later] I'm off as well. Kynaston... shall I drop you?
Ned Kynaston: Yes, I need my sleep.

Female Emilia: What cry is that? Sweet mistress, speak. Who hath done this deed?
Maria: Nobody. I myself. Farewell. Commend me to my kind lord. Farewell.
[Dies]
Ned Kynaston: Why? How should she be murdered?

Maria: Mr. Pepys - who do you write all those little notes for?
Samuel Pepys: For myself, alone.
Maria: Do you enjoy it?
Samuel Pepys: I love it. Don't you love acting?
Maria: [hesitates] Yes... But unfortunately, I cannot do it for myself alone, for I fear in truth I am terrible at it.

[Ned is showing Maria different sexual positions; Ned is on his stomach underneath her]
Maria: So, am I the man or the woman?
Ned Kynaston: You're the man.
Maria: And you're the woman.
Ned Kynaston: Yes.
Maria: Isn't much to do.
Ned Kynaston: Not with what we're given.

[Ned is showing Maria different sexual positions; Maria is now on her stomach underneath him]
Maria: So, who am I now?
Ned Kynaston: You're the man.
[laughs]
Ned Kynaston: Uh, you're the woman.
Maria: [giggles] And you're?
Ned Kynaston: I'm the man, or so I assume. Seldom get up here, quite a view.
Maria: But I'm the man-woman.
Ned Kynaston: Yes, you're the man-woman.