Weird Peter Moments from Peter Pan (1928)
WENDY. But your mother gets letters?
PETER. Don’t have a mother.
WENDY. Peter!
(She leaps out of bed to put her arms round him, but he draws back; he does not know why, but he knows he must draw back.)
PETER. You mustn’t touch me.
WENDY. Why?
PETER. No one must ever touch me.
WENDY. Why?
PETER. I don’t know.
(He is never touched by any one in the play.)
PETER. They are such cruel creatures, Wendy, that they try to pull boys and girls like you into the water and drown them.
WENDY (too guarded by this time to ask what he means precisely by ‘like you,’ though she is very desirous of knowing). How hateful!
Marooned on the rock after fighting Hook:
PETER. Hook wounded me twice. (He believes it; he is so good at pretend that he feels the pain, his arms hang limp.) I can neither swim nor fly.
PETER. The kite! Why shouldn’t it carry you? (He grips the tail and pulls, and the kite responds.)
WENDY. Both of us!
PETER. It can’t lift two. Michael and Curly tried.
(She knows very well that if it can lift her it can lift him also, for she has been told by the boys as a deadly secret that one of the queer things about him is that he is no weight at all. But it is a forbidden subject.)
PETER (with a drum beating in his breast as if he were a real boy at last). To die will be an awfully big adventure.
(^Emphasis added, because I know the line is present in every version but I think the Description here is significant.)
The children underground:
The pretend meals are not Wendy’s idea; indeed she was rather startled to find, on arriving, that Peter knew of no other kind, and she is not absolutely certain even now that he does eat the other kind, though no one appears to do it more heartily. He insists that the pretend meals should be partaken of with gusto, and we see his band doing their best to obey orders.
(He rises and throws out his arms he knows not to whom, perhaps to the boys and girls of whom he is not one.)
MULLINS (jeering). There is none can save you now, missy.
PETER. There is one.
MULLINS. Who is that?
PETER (casting off the cloak). Peter Pan, the avenger!
(He continues standing there to let the effect sink in.)
HOOK (throwing out a suggestion). Cleave him to the brisket.
(But he has a sinking feeling that this boy has no brisket.)
HOOK. Proud and insolent youth, prepare to meet thy doom.
PETER. Dark and sinister man, have at thee.
(Some say that he had to ask TOOTLES whether the word was sinister or canister.
HOOK or PETER this time! They fall to without another word. PETER is a rare swordsman, and parries with dazzling rapidity, sometimes before the other can make his stroke. HOOK, if not quite so nimble in wrist play, has the advantage of a yard or two in reach, but though they close he cannot give the quietus with his claw, which seems to find nothing to tear at. He does not, especially in the most heated moments, quite see PETER, who to his eyes, now blurred or opened clearly for the first time, is less like a boy than a mote of dust dancing in the sun. By some impalpable stroke HOOK’S sword is whipped from his grasp, and when he stoops to raise it a little foot is on its blade. There is no deep gash on HOOK, but he is suffering torment as from innumerable jags.)
BOYS (exulting). Now, Peter, now!
(PETER raises the sword by its blade, and with an inclination of the head that is perhaps slightly overdone, presents the hilt to his enemy.)
HOOK. ’Tis some fiend fighting me! Pan, who and what art thou?
(The children listen eagerly for the answer, none quite so eagerly as WENDY.)
PETER (at a venture). I’m youth, I’m joy, I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg.
(Where is PETER? The incredible boy has apparently forgotten the recent doings, and [Pg 145]is sitting on a barrel playing upon his pipes. This may surprise others but does not surprise HOOK. Lifting a blunderbuss he strikes forlornly not at the boy but at the barrel, which is hurled across the deck. PETER remains sitting in the air still playing upon his pipes. At this sight the great heart of HOOK breaks. That not wholly unheroic figure climbs the bulwarks murmuring ‘Floreat Etona,’ and prostrates himself into the water, where the crocodile is waiting for him open-mouthed. HOOK knows the purpose of this yawning cavity, but after what he has gone through he enters it like one greeting a friend.
The curtain rises to show PETER a very Napoleon on his ship. It must not rise again lest we see him on the poop in HOOK’S hat and cigars, and with a small iron claw.)
WENDY looks out at the nursery window and sees a friend below, who is hovering in the air knocking off tall hats with his feet. The wearers don’t see him. They are too old. You can’t see PETER if you are old. They think he is a draught at the corner.)
MRS. DARLING (from the window). Peter, where are you? Let me adopt you too.
(She is the loveliest age for a woman, but too old to see PETER clearly.)
PETER (passionately). I don’t want to go to school and learn solemn things. No one is going to catch me, lady, and make me a man. I want always to be a little boy and to have fun.
(So perhaps he thinks, but it is only his greatest pretend.)
The final scene in this version is Peter and Wendy in Never Land a year later, when she's leaving after her spring-cleaning visit.
Wendy looks a little older, but Peter is just the same. She is cloaked for a journey, and a sad confession must be made about her; she flies so badly now that she has to use a broomstick.
WENDY. If another little girl—if one younger than I am—— (She can’t go on.) Oh, Peter, how I wish I could take you up and squdge you! (He draws back.) Yes, I know. (She gets astride her broomstick.) Home! (It carries her from him over the tree-tops.
In a sort of way he understands what she means by ‘Yes, I know,’ but in most sorts of ways he doesn’t. It has something to do with the riddle of his being. If he could get the hang of the thing his cry might become [Pg 162]‘To live would be an awfully big adventure!’ but he can never quite get the hang of it, and so no one is as gay as he. With rapturous face he produces his pipes, and the Never birds and the fairies gather closer till the roof of the little house is so thick with his admirers that some of them fall down the chimney. He plays on and on till we wake up.)
In conclusion: this boy may or may not be dead, but he is certainly not alive.
(A lot of his general weirdness is present in the novel as well, of course, but he seems... a lot less corporeal in this take.)
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