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SCENE V. The Mustachio Man

1 CHRISTIANUS. All right. While we’re waiting for the waiter, I want to tell you a little secret of mine that got lost.

2 KATHERINE. Got lost?

3 CHRISTIANUS. Yes. I had it on the tip of my tongue right before you started to tell me about your lost luggage. But then I got so much into your little story that I totally forgot to tell you mine.

4 KATHERINE. So what is it, that secret of yours?

5 CHRISTIANUS. Well, it’s not nearly as thrilling or dramatic as your revelation was.

6 KATHERINE. OK, but what is it about?

7 CHRISTIANUS. Well, it’s just that your hair looks absolutely fabulous!

8 KATHERINE. Thank you! I am so glad you noticed!

9 CHRISTIANUS. It’s a relatively recent creation, isn’t it?

10 KATHERINE. Yes, I just had it done. I needed to reinvent myself.

11 CHRISTIANUS. Yes, we all need to reincarnate ourselves a little now and then. Actually, you look like Princess Nofret! [22]

12 KATHERINE. Like a princess? How sweet of you! Who is she?

13 CHRISTIANUS. I am not exactly sure who she is now; but once upon a time she was the consort of the Mustachio Man, Prince Rahotep. [23] [24]

14 KATHERINE. Hmm, it sounds familiar. Rahotep, you say?

15 CHRISTIANUS. Yes, he was one of those ancient Egyptian princes.

16 KATHERINE. Of course! Egyptian! I got a little confused because of the moustache. I have seen a lot of pictures of ancient Egyptian men with fancy beards, but not very many with moustaches. So in my head, the words ‘Egyptian’ and ‘moustache’ just didn’t appear on the same page. [25]

17 CHRISTIANUS. Yes, ancient Egyptian moustaches are quite rare commodities. They are definitely not on the CBOT! [26]

18 KATHERINE. Definitely not! And judging from the latest Chicago developments, they never will be, either! [27]

19 CHRISTIANUS. Probably not.

20 KATHERINE. In any case, I don’t like moustaches, so I have a tendency to forget about them very quickly. Actually, most of my female friends also dislike moustaches.

21 CHRISTIANUS. Sure. But the princess presumably saw something in Rahotep and his moustache, right?

22 KATHERINE. Presumably. But what would that be?

23 CHRISTIANUS. Perhaps his moustache type can reveal something?

24 KATHERINE. Maybe. Was it a more rectangular-shaped one, like the one Hitler used to have? Or was it a more spread-out thing, like the one Professor Tulp sometimes had? [28]

25 CHRISTIANUS. No, it was smaller than any of those, and much less bushy. If you remember Clark Gable, then you would know which approximate moustache model I am talking about: a more simple, straightforward, streamlined design. [29]

26 KATHERINE. Hmmm. Maybe one could live with one of those. It’s aesthetically cleaner, more neutral. And it’s very intimate!

27 CHRISTIANUS. Yes, very intimate! And on top of that, it’s also more practical and hygienic: one would get much less pizza stuck in it.

28 KATHERINE. Did the prince eat a lot of pizza?

29 CHRISTIANUS. I am not sure; but I certainly eat a lot of pizza. So I am glad that I am not a mustachio man myself.

30 KATHERINE. I am glad too.

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Notes (SCENE V)

[22] V:11, Princess Nofret: Walther Wolf (1900–1973) includes a colour photograph of a 1.18 meter high limestone statue of Princess Nofret (National Museum, Cairo), from the Early 4th Dynasty, ca. 2575 B.C. (1972, p. 81). Her straight, thick, shoulder-length dark hair — which actually was a wig, according to Wolf (1972, p. 22) — is clearly seen, with a headband.

WALTHER WOLF (1972), The Origins of Western Art: Egypt, Mesopotamia, The Aegan. London, England: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Original edition (1969): Frühe Hochkulturen: Ägypten, Mesopotamien, Ägäis. Stuttgart, Germany: Chr. Belser Verlag.

[23] V:13, Mustachio Man: Note here that Christianus uses ‘mustachio’ instead of ‘moustache’ or ‘mustache’, etc. Henry W. Fowler observes that the noun ‘mustachio’ is ‘now archaic for moustache’ (1965, p. 376); but Christianus presumably uses ‘mustachio’ here to produce exactly that archaic effect. Another reason to use ‘mustachio’, perhaps in addition to the first, may have been to add some more southern ring and flavour to the word, to indicate that the moustached man wasn’t very British, not even archaically so. There is also the possibility that Christianus may have intended ‘mustachio’ to convey some ‘macho’ qualities.

[24] V:13, Prince Rahotep: Wolf has published a black-and-white photograph of a limestone statue of Prince Rahotep and his consort, where his moustache is clearly seen (1972, p. 26). Now, if we are to believe Arnold Hauser, the typical Egyptian artist focused on ‘thoroughness and precision of execution’ (1962, pp. 30–31), knowing that ‘originality of subject-matter’ was seldom appreciated (1962, p. 30). If we accept some such premises, we might say that it is likely that the moustache appearing on Rahotep’s statue is not just a product of some liberal artist’s imaginary intervention, but instead a rather accurate depiction of one of Rahotep’s more distinguishing facial features.

ARNOLD HAUSER (1962), The Social History of Art: From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

[25] V:16, Egyptian . . . moustaches: Katherine is not entirely wrong to say that Egyptian moustaches, and especially ancient Egyptian moustaches, are relatively rarely found in books on ancient Egyptian archaeology and art. Various types of beards, however, are much more common, as in, for example, the depictions of Amenophis III (Desroches-Noblecourt 1965, p. 74), his son Amenhotep IV (Wolf 1972, p. 42), and Ramses II (Nawrath 1963, p. 89), etc. It may be interesting to note that many of the ancient Egyptian beards were actually wigs — worn on special occasions for religious or representative purposes (Nawrath 1963, p. 97), and sometimes referred to as being divine or ‘of the gods’ (Desroches-Noblecourt 1965, plate XX). However, Prince Rahotep’s moustache presumably was not a wig, but ‘real’ and natural.

ALFRED NAWRATH (1963), Egypten: Land av igår och idag. Preface by Professor Torgny Säve-Söderbergh. Stockholm: Generalstabens Litografiska Anstalts Förlag. Original edition (1962): Ägypten: Land zwischen Sand und Strom. Bern: Kümmerly & Frey, Geographischer Verlag.

CHRISTIANE DESROCHES-NOBLECOURT (1965), Tutankhamen: Life and Death of a Pharaoh. With 32 colour plates by F. L. Kenett. Preface by His Excellency Sarwat Okasha, Member of the Executive Council of UNESCO. Colour-plate captions by Dr. A. Shoukry, Director General of the Antiquities Service of the UAR. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, in association with George Rainbird.

[26] V:17, not on the CBOT: Christianus may indicate several things by saying that ancient Egyptian moustaches are definitely not on the CBOT (Chicago Board of Trade). One important thing that he may want to communicate is that the lack of such moustaches being traded on the CBOT is not an indication of that there are no such moustaches traded somewhere else; for such moustaches may be sold through much more private channels than those that typical Chicago commodities brokers normally use.

[27] V:18, Chicago developments: Katherine presumably knew that the CBOT had serious plans to merge with some other exchange, such as the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) or the Atlanta-based ICE (Intercontinental Exchange), as Reuters had reported (2007). And she may have been convinced at the time that the CBOT would merge, and in that process also stop to exist as the CBOT, in which case there would be no (old-style) CBOT left to trade anything at.

REUTERS (2007), ‘UPDATE 2-ICE, CME ramp up rhetoric on dueling CBOT deals’. Reuters [http://www.reuters.com], Tuesday, 20 March 2007, 4:16 p.m. EDT.

[28] V:24, Hitler . . . Tulp: Furneaux (1969, p. 154) publishes one photograph of Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) where his moustache is clearly visible. A close-up of the anatomy-lecturing Professor Tulp’s face, including his moustache, can be found in Rembrandt (1956, p. 40).

RUPERT FURNEAUX (1969), Dramatiska händelser i vår tid. With contributions by Sten Söderberg, Birger Norman, Lars Widding, and Lars Skiöld. Edited by Marianne Särman. Translated by Jan Guillou. Höganäs, Sweden: Bokförlaget Bra Böcker.

REMBRANDT (1956), Tentoonstelling. Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum and Rotterdam: Museum Boymans.

[29] V:25, Clark Gable: Clark Gable’s (1901–1960) moustache can, for example, be seen in Frank Capra’s 1934 movie It Happened One Night (Heurling 1995, p. 182). A similar moustache model — although somewhat more extended than either Clark Gable’s or Prince Rahotep’s — may be found on the upper lip of the Bible-studying Mr. Spinoza (Kenny 2006, p. 192; Bibliothèque nationale de France).

BO HEURLING, ed. (1995), Norstedts Filmlexikon. With Contributions by Lars Axelson, Lasse Bergström, Bo Heurling, Lars Åhlander. Stockholm: Norstedts and Svenska Filminstitutet.

ANTHONY KENNY (2006), The Rise of Modern Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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HOW TO CITE: Bo C. Klintberg (2008), ‘The Mustachio Man’ in Katherine’s Questionable Quest for Love and Happiness. Online edition of Philosophical Plays, 1 Jan. 2008. Retrieved [today’s date] from http://philosophicalplays.googlepages.com/pgKQQv1sc05.htm.

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