THE SPOILED BUDDHA
A PLAY IN TWO ACTS
BY HELEN WADDELL
[Illustration: Logo of the Talbot Press]
DUBLIN │ LONDON
The Talbot Press │ T. Fisher Unwin
(LTD.) │ (LTD.)
89 Talbot Street │ 1 Adelphi Terrace
1919
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE SPOILED BUDDHA.
This play was produced at the Grand Opera House,
Belfast, by the Ulster Theatre in February, 1915.
All Acting Rights are reserved by the Author.
---------------------------------------------------------
PROLOGUE.
(Spoken by a Buddhist Priest.)
The play is about the Buddha, in the days before he became a god: and
about Binzuru, who was his favourite disciple, and who might have become
even as the Buddha, only that he saw a woman passing by, and desired her
beauty, and so fell from grace. The scene of the first Act is the Sacred
Grove of Buddha, and the time is five hundred years before Christ was
born. The scene of the second Act is the outer court of the Temple at
Asakusa, which is a great temple in Japan, and the time is the present
day. Though the interval between the first Act and the second is only so
long as the actors shall be painting their faces, remember when the
curtain rises again that two thousand four hundred years have gone by:
that the Buddha is a great god worshipped in his temple, and the image
of Binzuru has grown old outside the holy place.
For the rest, we leave it to our actors and your patience.
---------------------------------------------------------
CHARACTERS.
ACT I.
THE BUDDHA
BINZURU His favourite disciple
DARUMA Binzuru’s rival
FOURTEEN RAKKAN The other disciples
THREE WOMEN FROM THE VILLAGE
A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN