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The Clerk
The owner of an atelier—which is ostensibly a fashion house but truly a brothel—who employs the Mother as a dressmaker and the Step-Daughter as a prostitute after the Clerk’s death. In fact, she gives the Mother work as a ploy to get to the Step-Daughter, and as a result the Mother despises her, because it was at her atelier that the Father and Step-Daughter reunited, when he sought her sexual services, possibly in full awareness of her identity. In the second act, the Father hangs up hats and mantles, “the very articles of her trade,” and the “fat, oldish” Pace suddenly appears in the room, strutting to the stage with a “comical elegance” and blurring the lines between the supposedly realistic action of the play and space of the theater, on the one hand, and the world of authorial fantasy, on the other. Pace speaks in broken, half-Italian English (half-Spanish Italian in the original), which the Actors and Characters self-consciously admit offers comic relief—at once in the play they are planning to stage and the play as the audience experiences it. Nevertheless, this comic dimension of her persona contrasts sharply with her line of work and its horrifying effects on the family.
Madame Pace Quotes in Six Characters in Search of an Author
The Six Characters in Search of an Author quotes below are all either spoken by Madame Pace or refer to Madame Pace. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Act 2
Quotes
Excuse me, all of you! Why are you so anxious to destroy in the name of a vulgar, commonplace sense of truth, this reality which comes to birth attracted and formed by the magic of the stage itself, which has indeed more right to live here than you, since it is much truer than you—if you don’t mind my saying so? Which is the actress among you who is to play Madame Pace? Well, here is Madame Pace herself. And you will allow, I fancy, that the actress who acts her will be less true than this woman here, who is herself in person. You see my daughter recognized her and went over to her at once. Now you’re going to witness the scene!
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On the stage you can’t have a character becoming too prominent and overshadowing all the others. The thing is to pack them all into a neat little framework and then act what is actable. I am aware of the fact that everyone has his own interior life which he wants very much to put forward. But the difficulty lies in this fact: to set out just so much as is necessary for the stage, taking the other characters into consideration, and at the same time hint at the unrevealed interior life of each. I am willing to admit, my dear young lady, that from your point of view it would be a fine idea if each character couldtell the public all his troubles in a nice monologue or a regular one hour lecture (good humoredly). You must restrain yourself, my dear, and in our own interest, too; because this fury of yours, this exaggerated disgust you show, may make a bad impression, you know. After you have confessed to me that there were others before him at Madame Pace’s and more than once…
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Madame Pace Quotes in Six Characters in Search of an Author
The Six Characters in Search of an Author quotes below are all either spoken by Madame Pace or refer to Madame Pace. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Act 2
Quotes
Excuse me, all of you! Why are you so anxious to destroy in the name of a vulgar, commonplace sense of truth, this reality which comes to birth attracted and formed by the magic of the stage itself, which has indeed more right to live here than you, since it is much truer than you—if you don’t mind my saying so? Which is the actress among you who is to play Madame Pace? Well, here is Madame Pace herself. And you will allow, I fancy, that the actress who acts her will be less true than this woman here, who is herself in person. You see my daughter recognized her and went over to her at once. Now you’re going to witness the scene!
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
On the stage you can’t have a character becoming too prominent and overshadowing all the others. The thing is to pack them all into a neat little framework and then act what is actable. I am aware of the fact that everyone has his own interior life which he wants very much to put forward. But the difficulty lies in this fact: to set out just so much as is necessary for the stage, taking the other characters into consideration, and at the same time hint at the unrevealed interior life of each. I am willing to admit, my dear young lady, that from your point of view it would be a fine idea if each character couldtell the public all his troubles in a nice monologue or a regular one hour lecture (good humoredly). You must restrain yourself, my dear, and in our own interest, too; because this fury of yours, this exaggerated disgust you show, may make a bad impression, you know. After you have confessed to me that there were others before him at Madame Pace’s and more than once…
Related Characters:
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