Plays of Near Far

Plays of Near & Far, by Lord
Dunsany

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Title: Plays of Near & Far
Author: Lord Dunsany
Release Date: September 27, 2006 [EBook #19393]
Language: English
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Plays of Near & Far
By

LORD DUNSANY
G. P. Putnam's Sons London & New York
MADE IN GREAT BRITAIN
First printed December, 1922
Limited Edition: Five Hundred Copies only
Printed by the BOTOLPH PRINTING WORKS GATE ST.,
KINGSWAY, W.C.2

By LORD DUNSANY
THE GODS OF PEGANA TIME AND THE GODS THE SWORD OF
WELLERAN A DREAMER'S TALES THE BOOK OF WONDER
FIVE PLAYS FIFTY-ONE TALES TALES OF WONDER PLAYS
OF GODS AND MEN TALES OF WAR UNHAPPY FAR-OFF
THINGS TALES OF THREE HEMISPHERES IF THE
CHRONICLES OF RODRIGUEZ

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'oeuvre 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