The Habit of Art: A Play by Alan Bennett

does forget. They’ll think it’s inspired. Whereas I, who know every plodding word, will be thought to have turned in my usual efficient performance.
    Kay And thank goodness.
    Henry You’ve seen it all before.
    She kisses him.
    Donald I’ve still not found him, have I?
    Tim Who?
    Donald Carpenter.
    Kay It’s getting there, love.
    Donald Did the music thing help?
    Kay makes an equivocal gesture.
    It’s hard because to me, you see, Carpenter is the centre of the play. Its heart.
    Henry ( to Tim, who is wheeling his bike ) Which way are you going?
    Tim The pub.
    During all this Henry has been hanging around for Tim. They exit.
    Donald I wonder if I ought to have a wig.
    Kay Tomorrow, darling.
    The Author nearly bumps into Donald, who raises a sheepish hand in farewell.
    Author Actors. I never get used to them.
    Kay Fitz is frightened, that’s what it is. But then everybody’s frightened. To act is to be frightened. When I used to do it I was always frightened. Threw up before every performance.
    Author I didn’t know you acted.
    Kay Yes. I loved it.
    Author What happened?
    Kay Nothing. That was the trouble.
    Author You were very good this afternoon.
    Kay Actors are like soldiers. The soldiers fear the enemy. The actors fear the audience. Fear of failing. Fear of forgetting, fear of art. Olivier ended up terrified. If you sat in the front row you could see him trembling. And besides all that, there’s the fear of this building. I worked once or twice with Ronald Eyre. Difficult man and, like all the best directors, an ex-schoolmaster. Ron knew what fear was…he’d worked at the RSC and he was here not long after it opened. The opening was, of course, disastrous. Ron said they should have moved out straight away, gone back to the Old Vic and rented the place out, made the Olivier into a skating rink, the Cottesloe a billiard hall and the Lyttelton boxing. Then after twenty-odd years of ordinary unpretentious entertainment, when it’s shabby and run-down and been purged of culture, and all the pretension had long since been beaten out of it, then with no fanfare at all they should sneak back with the occasional play and nobody need be frightened any more. Except of course the actors.
    He was wrong, though, Ron. Because what’s knocked the corners off the place, taken the shine off it and made it dingy and unintimidating – are plays. Plays plump, plays paltry, plays preposterous, plays purgatorial, plays radiant, plays rotten – but plays persistent. Plays, plays, plays. The habit of art.
    Author What happened to him?
    Kay Ron? Oh, you know. He died.
    The Author is going.
    Author But about the play. I am right, aren’t I? There is always somebody left out, one way or another.
    Kay Oh yes, darling. Every, every time.
    He goes, she collects her things, then turns out the lights as she exits.

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    Copyright © 2009 by Forelake Ltd.
All rights reserved
    Originally published in 2009 in slightly different form by Faber and Faber Limited, Great Britain
Published in the United States by Faber and Faber, Inc.
    Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following material: Two extracts from Profile by W. H. Auden © 1965 by W. H. Auden, used by permission of Random House. Extract from September 1, 1939 by W. H. Auden © 1965 by W. H. Auden, used by permission of Random House. Extract from In Memory of W. B. Yeats © 1939 by W. H. Auden, used by permission of Random House. Extract from letter by W. H. Auden to Benjamin Britten, 31 January 1942 © 1991 by the Estate of W. H. Auden, used by permission of Curtis Brown Ltd.
    The introduction was first published in the London Review of Books, vol. 31, no. 21, 5 November 2009.
    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
    Bennett, Alan, 1934–
    The habit of art / Alan Bennett; with an introduction by the author.—1st American ed.
    p. cm.
    ISBN: