Three Wonder Plays

Excerpt

ACT I

Scene: A room in the King's house at Burren.
Large window at back with deep window seat.
Doors right and left. A small table and some
chairs.

Dall Glic: (Coming in with tray, which he puts
on table. Goes back to door.) You can come in,
King. There is no one here.

King: (Coming in.) That's very good. I was
in dread the Queen might be in it.

Dall Glic: It is a good thought I had bringing
it in here, and she gone to give learning to the
Princess. She is not likely to come this side. It
would be a great pity to annoy her.

King: (Hastily swallowing a mouthful.) Look
out now the door and keep a good watch. The
time she will draw upon me is when I am eating
my little bite.

Dall Glic: I'll do that. What I wouldn't
see with my one eye, there's no other would see
with three.

King: A month to-day since I wed with her, and
well pleased I am to be back in my own place. I
give you word my teeth are rusting with the want
of meat. On the journey I got no fair play. She
wouldn't be willing to see me nourish myself,
unless maybe with the marrow bone of a wren.

Dall Glic: Sure she lays down she is but thinking
of the good of your health.

King: Maybe so. She is apt to be paying too
much attention to what will be for mine and for
the world's good. I kept my health fair enough,
and the first wife not begrudging me my enough.
I don't know what in the world led me not to stop
as I was.

Dall Glic: It is what you were saying, it was
for the good of the Princess Nuala, and of yourself.

King: That is what herself laid down. It
would be a great ease to my mind, she was saying,
to have in the house with the young girl, a far-off
cousin of the King of Alban, and that had been
conversation woman in his Court.

Dall Glic: So it might be too. She is a great
manager of people.

King: She is that ...I think I hear her
coming.... Throw a cloth over the plates.

Queen: (Coming in.) I was in search of you.

King: I thought you were in Nuala's sunny
parlour, learning her to play music and to go through
books.

Queen: That is what I thought to do. But I
hadn't hardly started to teach her the principles
of conversation and the branches of relationships
and kindred of the big people of the earth, when
she plucked off the coverings I had put over the
cages, and set open their doors, till the fiery birds
of Sabes and the canaries of the eastern world
were screeching around my head, giving out every
class of cry and call.

King: So they would too.

Queen: The royal eagles stirred up till I must
quit the place with their squawking, and the
enchanted swans raising up their heads and pecking
at the beadwork on my gown.

King: Ah, she has a wish for the birds of the air,
that are by nature light and airy the same as herself.

Queen: It is time for her to turn her mind
to good sense. What's that? (Whipping cloth
from tray.) Is it that you are eating again, and
it is but one half-hour since your breakfast?

King: Ah, that wasn't a breakfast you'd call
a breakfast.

Queen: Very healthy food, oaten meal flummery
with whey, and a griddle-cake; dandelion tea
and sorrel from the field....