Prologue

I must remind the reader that this playlet was written when its
principal character, far from being a fallen foe and virtually a
prisoner in our victorious hands, was still the Caesar whose
legions we were resisting with our hearts in our mouths. Many
were so horribly afraid of him that they could not forgive me for
not being afraid of him: I seemed to be trifling heartlessly with
a deadly peril. I knew better; and I have represented Caesar as
knowing better himself. But it was one of the quaintnesses of
popular feeling during the war that anyone who breathed the
slightest doubt of the absolute perfection of German
organization, the Machiavellian depth of German diplomacy, the
omniscience of German science, the equipment of every German with
a complete philosophy of history, and the consequent hopelessness
of overcoming so magnificently accomplished an enemy except by
the sacrifice of every recreative activity to incessant and
vehement war work, including a heartbreaking mass of fussing and
cadging and bluffing that did nothing but waste our energies and
tire our resolution, was called a pro-German.

Now that this is all over, and the upshot of the fighting has
shown that we could quite well have afforded to laugh at the
doomed Inca, I am in another difficulty. I may be supposed to be
hitting Caesar when he is down. That is why I preface the play
with this reminder that when it was written he was not down. To
make quite sure, I have gone through the proof sheets very
carefully, and deleted everything that could possibly be mistaken
for a foul blow. I have of course maintained the ancient
privilege of comedy to chasten Caesar's foibles by laughing at
them, whilst introducing enough obvious and outrageous fiction to
relieve both myself and my model from the obligations and
responsibilities of sober history and biography. But I should
certainly put the play in the fire instead of publishing it if it
contained a word against our defeated enemy that I would not have
written in 1913.

The Inca of Perusalem was performed for the first time in
England by the Pioneer Players at the Criterion Theatre,
London, on 16th December, 1917, with Gertrude Kingston as
Ermyntrude, Helen Morris as the Princess, Nigel Playfair as
the waiter, Alfred Drayton as the hotel manager, C. Wordley
Hulse as the Archdeacon, and Randle Ayrton as the Inca.

PROLOGUE

The tableau curtains are closed. An English archdeacon comes
through them in a condition of extreme irritation. He speaks
through the curtains to someone behind them.

THE ARCHDEACON. Once for all, Ermyntrude, I cannot afford to
maintain you in your present extravagance. [He goes to a flight
of steps leading to the stalls and sits down