Plays of Near & Far

Excerpt

PREFACE

Believing plays to be solely for the stage, I have never before allowed any of mine to be printed until they had first faced from a stage the judgment of an audience, to see if they were entitled to be called plays at all. A successful production also has been sometimes a moral support to me when some critic has said, as for instance of "A Night at an Inn," that though it reads passably it could never act.

But in this book I have made an exception to this good rule (as it seems to me), and that exception is "The Flight of the Queen." I know too little of managers and theatres to know what to do with it, and have a feeling that it will be long before it is ever acted, and am too fond of this play to leave it in obscurity. This beautiful story has been lying about the world for countless centuries, without ever having been dramatized. It is the story of a royal court, which I have merely adapted to the stage. The date that I have given is accurate; it happened in June; and happens every June; perhaps in some corner of the reader's garden. It is the story of the bees.

As for "The Compromise of the King of the Golden Isles," it is just the sort of play through which those that hunt for allegories might hunt merrily, unless I mention that there are no allegories in any of my plays.

An allegory I take to be a dig at something local and limited, such as politics, while outwardly appearing to tell of things on some higher plane. But, far from being the chef d'œuvre of some ponderously profound thinker, I look on the allegory, if I have rightly defined it, as being the one form of art that is narrowly limited in its application to life. When the man whose cause it championed has been elected alderman, when the esplanade has been widened, or the town better lighted or drained, the allegory's work must necessarily be over; but the truth of all other works of art is manifold and should be eternal.

Though there is no such land as the Golden Isles and was never any such king as Hamaran, yet all that we write with sincerity is true, for we can reflect nothing that we have not seen, and this we interpret with our idiosyncracies when we attempt any form of art.

I set some store by the way in which the three lines about Zarabardes are recited, though it is hard to explain in writing a matter of rhythm. But the heartlessness of it can be indicated by a clear pronunciation of the syllables, as though the people that utter these words had long been drilled in a formula.

The third play, "Cheezo," tells of one of those rare occasions when it is permissible for an artist, and may be a duty, to leave his wider art in order to attack a definite evil. And the invention of "great new foods" is often a huge evil.

"Cheezo" is a play of Right and Wrong, and Wrong triumphs. Were not this particular Wrong triumphing at this particular date I should not have thought it a duty to attack it, and were it easily defeated it would not have been worth attacking.

I have seen it acted with a Stage Curate, rather weak and a little comic; obviously such a man could be no match for Sladder. Hippanthigh should be of stronger stuff than that: he is defeated because that particular evil is, as I have said, defeating its enemies at present. Nor could there be any drama in a contest between the brutal Sladder and a Stage Curate; for the spark that we call humour, by whose light we see much of life, comes as it were of two flints, and not of a flint and cheese.

The three little plays that follow I will leave to speak for themselves, as ultimately all plays have to do.

DUNSANY

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THE COMPROMISE OF THE KING OF THE GOLDEN ISLES

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

The King of the Golden Isles: King Hamaran.
The King's Politician.
The Ambassador of the Emperor.
The Emperor's Seeker.
Two Priests of the Order of the Sun.
The King's Questioners.
The Ambassador's Nubian.
The Herald of the Ambassador.
The Emperor's Dwarf.
The Deputy Cup-Bearer.
The King's Doom-Bearer.

The King's Politician: A man has fled from the Emperor, and has taken refuge in your Majesty's Court in that part of it called holy.

The King: We must give him up to the Emperor.

Politician: To-day a spearsman came running from Eng-Bathai seeking the man who fled. He carries the barbed spear of one of the Emperor's seekers.

King: We must give him up.

Politician: Moreover he has an edict from the Emperor demanding that the head of the man who fled be sent back to Eng-Bathai.

King: Let it be sent.

Politician: Yet your Majesty is no vassal of the Emperor, who dwells at Eng-Bathai.

King: We may not disobey the Imperial edict.

Politician: Yet——

King: None hath dared to do it.

Politician: It is so long since any dared to do it that the Emperor mocks at kings. If your Majesty disobeyed him the Emperor would tremble.

King: Ah.

Politician: The Emperor would say, "There is a great king. He defies me." And he would tremble strangely.

King: Yet—if——

Politician: The Emperor would fear you.

King: I would fain be a great king—yet——

Politician: You would win honour in his eyes.

King: Yet is the Emperor terrible in his wrath. He was terrible in his wrath in the olden time.

Politician: The Emperor is old.

King: This is a great affront that he places upon a king, to demand a man who has come to sanctuary in that part of my Court called holy.

Politician: It is a great affront.

[Enter the Seeker. He abases himself.

Seeker: O King, I have come with my spear, seeking for one that fled the Emperor and has found sanctuary in your Court in that part called holy.

King: It has not been the wont of the kings of my line to turn men from our sanctuary.

Seeker: It is the Emperor's will.

King: It is not my will.

Seeker: Behold the Emperor's edict.

[The King takes it. The Seeker goes towards the door.

Seeker: I go to sit with my spear by the door of the place called holy.

[Exit Seeker.

King: The edict, the edict. We must obey the edict.

Politician: The Emperor is old.

King: True, we will defy him.

Politician: He will do nothing.

King: And yet the edict.

Politician: It is of no importance.

King: Hark. I will not disobey the Emperor. Yet will I not permit him to abuse the sanctuary of my Court. We will banish the man who fled from Eng-Bathai. [To his Doom-Bearer.] Hither, the Doom-Bearer; take the black ivory spear, the wand of banishment, that lies on the left of my throne, and point it at the man that shelters in the holy place of my Court....