know when I love by the way I behave.’
At last came a lady both knowing and tender,
Saying, ‘You’re not at all what they take you to be.’
I betrayed her before she had quite finished speaking,
And she swallowed cold poison and jumped in the sea.
And I say to myself, when there’s time for a word,
As I gracefully grow more debauched and depraved,
‘Ah, love may be strong, but a habit is stronger,
And I knew when I loved by the way I behaved.’”
The point is reinforced in Schmendrick and Molly’s song, which is the last thing that we read in the novel:
“‘I am no king, and I am no lord,
And I am no soldier at arms,’ said he.
‘I’m none but a harper, and a very poor harper,
That am come hither to wed with ye.’
‘If you were a lord, you should be my lord,
And the same if you were a thief,’ said she.
‘And if you are a harper, you shall be my harper,
For it makes no matter to me, to me,
For it makes no matter to me.’
‘But what if it prove that I am no harper?
That I lied for your love most monstrously?’
‘Why, then I’ll teach you to play and sing,
For I dearly love a good harp,’ said she.”
The theme is clearly stated by Schmendrick earlier in the novel, using a technique that is elsewhere used for comic effect: verse as prose. Schmendrick is speaking to the unicorn:
“‘It’s a rare man who is taken for what he truly is,’ he said. ‘There is much misjudgment in the world. Now I knew you for a unicorn when I first saw you, and I know that I am your friend. Yet you take me for a clown, or a clod, or a betrayer, and so I must be if you see me so. The magic on you is only magic and will vanish as soon as you are free, but the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes. We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream. Still I have read, or heard it sung, that un[i]corns when time was young, could tell the difference ‘twixt the two—the false shining and the true, the lips’ laugh and the heart’s rue.’”
The running gag is a favorite comic device, and Beagle makes good use of it. Speaking disparagingly about the power of Mommy Fortuna’s magic, Schmendrick says: “She can’t turn cream into butter.” A few pages later, Rukh tells Schmendrick: “You can’t turn cream into butter.” When Schmendrick later meets Molly Grue, she cheerfully deflates his ego by asserting the same thing: “You can’t turn cream into butter.” And finally, King Haggard, speaking to the Lady Amalthea about Schmendrick, quite independently comes to the not-so-surprising conclusion: “I don’t think he could turn cream into butter.” The running gag has run its course, each iteration delighting the reader more than the last.
By far the most important mode of humor used in the novel is anticlimax—a sudden drop from the dignified or important in thought or expression to the commonplace or trivial. Beagle uses this technique literally dozens of times, beginning on the first page with the description of the unicorn: “and the long horn above her eyes shown and shivered with its own seashell light even in the deepest midnight. She had killed dragons with it, and healed a king whose poisoned wound would not close, and knocked down ripe chestnuts for bear cubs.” While perhaps not the most hilarious example that could be chosen, it certainly indicates that this will be a novel that does not take itself too seriously.
Schmendrick is responsible for many of the anticlimactic lines, which seems perfectly appropriate since the character resembles an out-of-work stand-up comic down on his luck. For example, when he introduces himself to the unicorn, he says: “…For I too am real. I am Schmendrick, the magician, the last of the red-hot swamis, and I am older than I look.” Speaking of their destination, Schmendrick explains its origins like this:
“Haggard’s fortress…Haggard’s dire keep. A witch built it for him, they say, but he wouldn’t pay her for her work, so she put a curse on the castle. She swore that one day it would sink into the sea with Haggard, when his greed caused the sea to overflow. Then she gave a fearful shriek, the way they do, and vanished in a sulphurous puff. Haggard moved in right away. He said no tyrant’s castle was complete without a curse.”
Approaching Hagsgate, Schmendrick seems surprised: “It must be Hagsgate, and yet there’s no smell of sorcery, no air of black magic. But why the legends, then, why the fables and fairy tales? Very confusing, especially when you’ve had half a turnip for dinner.”
We can always count on Schmendrick to break the mood. Having had too much to drink, he sounds as if he could be on The Tonight Show:
“‘You don’t know what a real curse is. Let me tell you my troubles.’ Easy tears suddenly glittered in his eyes. ‘To begin with, my mother never liked me. She pretended, but I knew—’”
Later, when the questing group is followed out of Hagsgate, Schmendrick tries to figure out why: “Perhaps Drinn has started to feel guilty about underpaying his poisoner.… Perhaps his conscience is keeping him awake. Anything is possible. Perhaps I have feathers.” Finally, at what could be a tender moment, Schmendrick advises the Lady Amalthea: “You are truly human now. You can love, and fear, and forbid things to be what they are, and overact.”
But anticlimax is not limited to Schmendrick’s speech. Molly, too, can change the mood with a word or two. After Schmendrick has turned the unicorn into the Lady Amalthea, he is explaining how he carries the true magic: “I am a bearer.… I am a dwelling, I am a messenger.” Without missing a beat Molly says: “You are an idiot.” Speaking about the need for wine to fulfill the riddle that will finally lead them to the Red Bull, Molly says to Schmendrick: “I thought if you had some water to start with…Well, it’s been done. It’s not as though you’d have to make up something new. I’d never ask that of you.”
The Lady Amalthea even gets into the act, as unlike that sweet and beautiful lady as that may sound. Trying to mislead King Haggard she says: “The Red Bull. But why do you think I have come to steal the Bull? I have no kingdom to keep, and no wish for conquest. What would I do with him? How much does he eat?” In a rare moment of candor, Prince Lír, too, uses anticlimax with the Lady Amalthea: “I became a hero to serve you, and all that is like you. Also to find some way of starting a conversation.”
Minor characters as well use this comic device to good effect. Captain Cully, for example, wants to pump Schmendrick for news about Cully’s reputation in the wide world. He phrases his dinner invitation this way: “Come to the fire and tell us your tale. How do they speak of me in your country? What have you heard of dashing Captain Cully and his band of freemen? Have a taco.” The cat who tells Molly how to get to the Red Bull seems very mysterious—until the last line:
“‘When the wine drinks itself,’ he said, ‘when the skull speaks, when the clock strikes the right time—only then will you find the tunnel that leads to the Red Bull’s lair.’ He tucked his
