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Michel Fustier

MAGELLAN : THE EARTH IS ROUND!


Magellan, a Portuguese captain, has sailed all the seas of the Indies. Now he wants to prove that the earth is round and that the Indies can be reached not only by sailing to the east, following the coast of Africa, but also by sailing to the west beyond America. Unfortunately, the Portuguese refuse to give him money for his expedition and he turns to the King of Spain, the great Charles the Fifth.

CHARACTERS
Magellan, a daring sailor in the full force of age
Charles the Fifth, King of Spain and Sovereign "on whose empire the sun never sets".
The King of Portugal. Magellan's pilot.
The minister.


1 - (in the palace of the King of Portugal)
MAGELLAN – My name is Magellan. I'm one of your sea captains …
KING OF PORTUGAL – I know you very well. I am the King of Portugal. Be quick about your business! I have so many things to do…
MAGELLAN - Your Majesty, I understand that you are in a hurry… As for me, I have taken all the necessary time these last ten years to sail the African and Indian seas for you …
KING OF PORTUGAL - We know about that. And we have also heard that you brought back gold, slaves, spices…
MAGELLAN - Indeed, your Majesty. And let it please your Majesty to remember also that I went up to the Molucca Islands where I found the famous cloves, thanks to which we can preserve our meat. And I am very proud of having done so.
KING OF PORTUGAL - We are very proud, too, and thank you. And now come to the point, what do you want?
MAGELLAN – I am now fed up with transporting cloves and I would like to sail for my own account. My ambition is to go around the world… I would like to prove that it is definitely round. To be the first to go around the world, that is my dream!
KING OF PORTUGAL - This man is crazy. To go around the world, if it happens to be round, I don't see what can be the use of that… Anyhow it brings in no money. Go back to your cloves, that is profitable. You may leave.

2 - (in the palace of the King of Spain)
KING OF SPAIN - You, nobleman, please come here…
MAGELLAN - Yes… Thank you, your Majesty.
KING OF SPAIN - Who are you and what do you want from me?
MAGELLAN – My name is Magellan and I want to sail around the world.
KING OF SPAIN - I am the King of Spain. My name is Charles the Fifth, I am twenty years old and I am about to become an outstanding ruler. Consequently, I am fit to understand perfectly someone who has decided to master the world. Since you want to be commissioned, I'll hire you.
MAGELLAN – You'll hire me!
KING OF SPAIN - Yes, to go around the world in my name. I'll give you a fleet, the command of which I immediately entrust to you. You'll be our great admiral and plant our flag on unknown beaches… When will you leave?
MAGELLAN - As soon as I have repaired the ships, found sailors and stocked food…
KING OF SPAIN - Of course… And then how will you manage?
MAGELLAN - Your Majesty, on one side, to the east, there is Africa and the Portuguese possessions, conquered by Vasco de Gama (he walks towards the right). On the other side, to the west, are America and the Spanish possessions (he walks towards the left) discovered by Christopher Columbus.
KING OF SPAIN - That's a fair deal: the Pope himself settled such a partition among us.
MAGELLAN - As for myself, I assert, what the pope did not know, that from America to the Indies there is a sea that can be sailed westwards from one side of the earth to the other, passing, so to speak by the other part of the world. So, by sailing westwards we could legitimately reach the Portuguese possessions. The glory of your Majesty cannot dispense with clearing up this question.
KING OF SPAIN - You are right, we want it to be resolved. Go, we'll support you.

3 - (at large on the Ocean)
MAGELLAN - At last, master Pilot, after two years of preparation, we have set sail to go around the world.
PILOT - Now we are sailing across the Atlantic ocean and are about to reach America. But, sir, America is a dreadful barrier, which nobody has yet been able to cross.
MAGELLAN - As for me, I declare that there is somewhere a passage through America leading to the Ocean which is on the other side of the earth. A passage through which we can reach the Indies, or China, or Japan.
PILOT - Are you sure?
MAGELLAN - Anyhow, that is my decision.
PILOT - For several months now we have been looking for such a passage and we have explored all the gulfs of the coast. Alas, they were only mouths of rivers. Yet, we are very far down to the south.
MAGELLAN - If necessary, we'll spend the winter here.
PILOT - The cold is already very bitter! The crew is chilled to the bone, they are protesting, they are rebelling…
MAGELLAN - They are cowards and I'm ready to chop off a few heads... Then, when the ice has thawed, we'll go down nearer the South Pole. I told you that I want the passage to be there.
PILOT - You are a man who knows so dreadfully what he wants that God, maybe, will obey you… A passage? Here is one, possibly… We are exploring it… What an intricate maze of cliffs and straits…
MAGELLAN – Go on, be bold, I didn't ask God to make the task easy!
PILOT - We are sailing to and fro… Mountains are hanging over us… I'm terror-stricken. We have almost no food left… We have already sailed three hundred miles… We'll never be able to find our way back.
MAGELLAN - We'll never have to retrace our way back: we have succeeded! Look at that infinite sea that opens up in front of us. No more mountains, no more straits. We have passed what will henceforth be called "the Straits of Magellan".
PILOT - It's quite right to name them after you!
MAGELLAN - We have opened up a gate to the new ocean and we are now triumphantly sailing towards the Portuguese islands of the Indies.
PILOT - Oh, my God… Your pacific ocean: it is so huge, it extends so far… Now we have really nothing left to eat, only the leather of our shoes.
MAGELLAN - Isn't that enough for us now to reach the Molucca Islands, where the Portuguese find their precious cloves?
PILOT - They used to reach them by sailing to the East, and we are now arriving from the West. We have succeeded!
MAGELLAN - Now it's certain, the earth is round and soon we'll have sailed around it.

4 - (in the palace of the King of Spain)
KING OF SPAIN - And how did it end?
MINISTER - Well, the unfortunate Magellan, in the excitement of having discovered his Straits, got himself massacred while strutting in front of a tribe of wretched natives.
KING OF SPAIN - What a pity, so great a sea captain!
MINISTER - And the only surviving ship of his expedition tried to make its way through the Indian ocean and alongside the African coasts, hiding…
KING OF SPAIN - Why hiding?
MINISTER - Since the Portuguese, on whose seas it was sailing, were exasperated and wanted to prevent the Spanish from achieving their goal.
KING OF SPAIN - Yes, our old rivalry!
MINISTER - But in the long run, the Victoria –such was the name of that last ship, under the command of Sebastiano del Cano- came back to the port of Sevilla, which it had left two years before, thus completing the circumnavigation of the world. All Glory to Spain!
KING OF SPAIN - So, the earth is round.
MINISTER - No doubt about it.
KING OF SPAIN - His Holiness the Pope might be sadly vexed.
MINISTER - The Portuguese were even more furious because the Victoria was crammed with cloves from the Molucca Islands, the sale of which refunded twice the cost of the expedition.
KING OF SPAIN - And the fact that Magellan himself, a Portuguese, led the Spanish to victory, do you think that they will not be bothered by that? We'll have to nurse the wounds of their souls back to health.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

When, after almost two centuries, the episode of the crusades in Palestine had ended miserably (1390), the Spanish and the Portuguese started fighting against the Muslim Arabs (that is the "Maure") and at last succeeded in turning them completely out of the Iberian Peninsula.. Afterwards, being in a warlike mood but lacking territories to be conquered, they turned towards the sea…
What were they trying to find across the seas? Basically lands, slaves, gold and spices. Lands, slaves, gold, that is easy to understand. But what are spices exactly? They are products of the Far East, such as pepper, ginger, cinnamon, incense, nutmeg, camphor… which add taste to otherwise insipid food and above all prevent them from going rotten. Unfortunately these products were initially difficult to import because they had to be transported by land and by sea in succession, back and forth from ships to camel back, subject to heavy tolls en route, before being delivered in Venice or Marseilles.
The idea of transporting them only by sea, by sailing directly up to the production area and back, was very attractive and the Portuguese were the first to go round Africa and land on the coasts of the Far East (Vasco da Gama, 1498). They reached the extreme point of Indonesia, the Molucca Islands, where they found the famous cloves, essential for the conservation of meats (not very long ago, dentists still used them to disinfect dental caries!). At the same time the Spanish had turned to the Atlantic ocean and, as everybody knows, were discovering America.
Still nobody knew exactly whether the earth was flat, as the Bible says, or round, as others thought. In that latter eventuality the Portuguese, sailing to the east, and the Spanish, sailing to the west, could have met. But no one had been able to supply the slightest proof of the roundness of the earth. Magellan did so, as told in the above play, and demonstrated that, passing westward through the "Straits of Magellan", it was possible to reach the Far East via the Pacific Ocean and thus come back to Europe from the other side of the earth. Indeed, the earth is round!

Non commercial use allowed. Reg. SACD - Michel Fustier, 4 Chambfort, 69 100 Villeurbanne, France. Tel: 00 33 (0)4 78 84 25 28.