[LADY ELAINE, _with_ MAIDS.]
PRINCESS [_as_ OMAR _enters_]--Ah! see! here comes a messenger. Now will
I see what my dear Sir Knight will say to me.
[OMAR _gives her a letter._]
[_Reads:_]
"Dear Lady--I have died of grief, and shall never see thee more.
"CONSTANTINE."
PRINCESS--Alas, Alas! My Knight, I will join thee.
[_Screams, falls, dies._]
KING [_enters sorrowfully_]--Oh! 'tis but to-day that my daughter had a
letter saying that her lover had died of grief. She, too, has died of
sorrow, and I shall have the same fate. Woe, that I had no time to
repent!
[_Falls, dies._]
THE END
The utter childlikeness of this playlet is one of its chief charms. Any
one may play it--it is not copyrighted. And if it may seem forbiddingly
dark in tone, perhaps in spite of the empurpled tragedies of its ending,
the pang will be turned to joy when the king and the princess arise
promptly from the ground and assume their proper character as father and
little daughter amid the wild plaudits of the audience, consisting
probably of mother only.
Nothing can be better for the children than to engage them in the making
of little plays such as this. There are now many books of plays for
children and young people. Of course there are not enough. There should
be one hundred where there is now but one. If all the young people would
go to work devising plays we would soon have more; and plays made by
themselves for themselves would be better for their use than any others
could ever be.
Where the life of the sixteen-year-old daughter in the home may become
most useful may perhaps consist in getting the parents and the children
to join her in carrying through the great endeavor of presenting a play,
some winter afternoon in the kitchen, for their own delectation and
education. It is easy to imagine the whole family, including the father,
whatever his age may be, taking part in a play; and if the father finds
it hard work to fall down dead at the proper minute, it is good enough
for him for allowing himself to grow so stiff! And if he finds it
difficult to feel at home in a helmet of pasteboard trimmed with gilt
paper and decorated with dust-brush plumes, he may remember that he is
ridiculous in his own eyes only, not in those of the enraptured boy and
girl who are fellow actors with him.
An unfailing source of good plots is always at hand in the Bible; and no
better way to impress these stories upon the memory could be found than
by turning the incidents into little plays and tableaux for the family
to show. The Sabbath School lesson could be metamorphosed into a joy and
the symbolisms of Christmas and Easter could be made a reality by the
legitimate use of the dramatic instinct that is innate in all of us.
A form of art akin to the play is the moving picture. This source of
amusement and of education is within the reach of every country
community that has learned the secret of joining hands. The men and
especially the women of the community should be invariably present and
should instantly and firmly object to any film that seems to them
harmful. This being provided, the young people are safe and may have the
pleasure and instruction that come from seeing displayed the clean,
adventurous story, the doings of other lands and of historic events long
past.