Three Wonder Plays

By

Lady Gregory

G.P. Putnam's Sons London & New York

Note

These plays have been copyrighted in the United States and Great Britain.

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages.

All acting rights, both professional and amateur, are reserved in the United States, Great Britain, and all countries of the Copyright Union, by the author. Performances are forbidden and right of presentation is reserved.

Application for the right of performing these plays or reading them in public should be made to Samuel French, 26, Southampton Street, Strand, London, W.C.2.

Made in Great Britain by
THE BOTOLPH PRINTING WORKS
GATE STREET, KINGSWAY, W.C.2

CONTENTS

THE DRAGON
AUTHOR'S NOTE
ARISTOTLE'S BELLOWS
NOTE TO ARISTOTLE'S BELLOWS
THE JESTER
NOTES FOR THE JESTER

THE DRAGON

ACT I

PERSONS

The King

The Queen.

The Princess Nuala.

The Dall Glic (THE BLIND WISE MAN).

The Nurse.

The Prince of the Marshes.

Manus, King of Sorcha.

Fintan, The Astrologer.

Taig.

Sibby (TAIG'S MOTHER).

Gatekeeper.

Two Aunts of the Prince of the Marshes.

Foreign Men Bringing in Food.

The Dragon.

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.

King: My old fathers ate their enough of wild
herbs and the like in the early time of the world.
I'm thinking that it is in my nature to require a
good share of nourishment as if to make up for the
hardships they went through.

Queen: What now have you within that pastry
wall?

King: It is but a little leveret pie.

Queen: (Poking with fork.) Leveret! What's
this in it? The thickness of a blanket of beef;
calves' sweetbreads; cocks' combs; balls mixed
with livers and with spice. You to so much as
taste of it, you'll be crippled and crappled with
the gout, and roaring out in your pain.

King: I tell you my generations have enough
done of fasting and for making little of the juicy
meats of the world.

Queen: And the waste of it! Goose eggs and
jellies.... That much would furnish out a dinner
for the whole of the King of Alban's Court.
King: Ah, I wouldn't wish to be using anything
at all, only for to gather strength for to steer
the business of the whole of the kingdom!

Queen: Have you enough ate now, my dear?
Are you satisfied?

King: I am not. I would wish for a little taste
of that saffron cake having in it raisins of the sun.

Queen: Saffron! Are you raving? You to
have within you any of the four-and-twenty sicknesses
of the race, it would throw it out in red
blisters on your skin.

King: Let me just taste one little slab of that
venison ham.

Queen: (Poking with a fork.) It would take
seven chewings! Sudden death it would be!
Leave it alone now and rise up. To keep in health
every man should quit the