King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays

THE OLD WOMAN. Has any one ever loved you, I would like to know? Now if it were that young prince who is staying with us, he would have some right to make love-songs--if what th...

THE GYPSY. This, your majesty. There is only one man in your kingdom who can cope with this girl whom you call mad. Your servants cannot do it. As I passed by the room where she...

JIMMY. Of course you're the only girl in the world to him--now. You're the only one he's ever seen. But wait till he sees the others! Six weeks? On second thought I make it thre...

_There are sounds of fighting, and the women wait in silence. Then the sounds cease, and slowly the soldiers bear in a dead body, which they lay on the steps. They affix torches...

THE MAID. I suppose I was. Though I always preferred to imagine that I was some Princess that had been changed in the cradle and stolen away. When I was hardly more than a baby,...

HE. Because you have changed the world for me. It's as though I had been groping about in the dark, and then--sunrise! And there's a queer feeling here. (_He puts his hand on hi...

VIVIEN. I never wanted anything badly enough to cry for it before. But I could cry my heart out for him. I've absolutely no pride left. Well-- I'm going to have him, that's all....

These plays, with one exception, were written in Greenwich Village, and, with another exception, first performed there--some at the old Liberal Club, and others by the Provincet...

JOSEPH. (_with complete sincerity_) It is that hour when I have finished the day's work, and can lie down upon my couch. It is the hour before sleep comes, when the room is fill...

THE PRINCESS. Dimly, as from another life, I seem to remember the jolting of the wagons that rocked me to sleep, and the good smell of the soup in the big kettle over the fire.