Three Wonder Plays Part 6

_Prince_: Oh, I will go after her!

_First Aunt: (Clutching him)_ Do not! She will drag you to destruction.

_Prince: (Struggling to door.)_ What matter! Let me go or she will escape me! _(Shaking himself free.)_ I will never stop till I come to her.

_(He rushes out, Second Aunt still holding on to him.)_

_First Aunt_: What at all has come upon him?

I never knew him this way before!

_(She trots after him.)_

_Princess: (Comes leaping in by window.)_ They are gone running the road to Muckanis.h.!.+ But they won't find me!

_Queen_: You have a right to be ashamed of yourself and your play-game. It's easy for you to go joking, having neither cark nor care: that is no way to treat the second best match in Ireland!

_King_: You were saying you had your mind made up to take him.

_Princess_: It failed me to do it! Himself and his counsellors and his seven aunts!

_Queen_: He will give out that you are crazed and mad.

_Princess_: He will be thankful to his life's end to have got free of me!

_King_: I don't know. It seemed to me he was better pleased with you in the finish than in the commencement. But I'm in dread his father may not be well pleased.

_Princess: (Patting him.)_ Which now of the two of you is the most to be pitied? He to have such a timid son or you to have such an unruly daughter?

_Queen_: It is likely he will make an attack on you. There was a war made by the King of Britain on the head of a terrier pup that was sent to him and that made away on the road following hares.

It's best for you to make ready to put yourself at the head of your troop.

_King_: It's long since I went into my battle dress. I'm in dread it would not close upon my chest.

_Queen_: Ah, it might, so soon as you would go through a few hards.h.i.+ps in the fight.

_King_: If the rest of Adam's race was of my opinion there'd be no fighting in the world at all.

_Queen_: It is this child's stubbornness is leading you into it. Go out, Nuala, after the Prince. Tell him you are sorry you made a fool of him.

_Princess_: He was that before--thinking to put me sitting and sewing in a cus.h.i.+oned chair, listening to stories of kings making a slaughter of one another.

_Queen_: Tell him you have changed your mind, that you were but funning; that you will wed with him yet.

_Princess_: I would sooner wed with the King of Poison! I to have to go to his kingdom, I'd sooner go earning my wages footing turf, with a skirt of heavy flannel and a dress of the grey frieze!

Himself and his bogs and his frogs!

_Queen_: I tell you it is time for you to take a husband.

_Princess_: You said that before! And I was giving in a while ago, and I felt the blood of my heart to be rising against it! And I will not give in to you again! It is my own business and I will take my own way.

_Queen: (To King.)_ This is all one with the raving of a hag against heaven!

_King_: What the Queen is saying is right. Try now and come around to it.

_Princess_: She has set you against me with her talk!

_Queen: (To King.)_ It is best for you to lay orders on her.

_Princess_: The King is not under your orders!

_Queen_: You are striving to make him give in to your own!

_King_: I will take orders from no one at all!

_Queen_: Bid her go bring back the Prince.

_Princess_: I say that I will not!

_Queen_: She is standing up against you! Will you give in to that?

_King_: I am bothered with the whole of you!

I will give in to nothing at all!

_Queen_: Make her do your bidding so.

_King_: Can't you do as you are told?

_Princess_: This concerns myself.

_King_: It does, and the whole of us.

_Princess_: Do you think you can force me to wed?

_King_: I do think it, and I will do it.

_Princess_: It will fail you!

_King_: It will not! I was too easy with you up to this.

_Princess_: Will you turn me out of the house?

_King_: I will give you my word, it is little but I will!

_Princess_: Then I have no home and no father!

It is to my mother you must give an account.

You know well it is with the first wife you will go at the Judgment!

_Queen_: Is it that you would make threats to the King? And put insults upon myself? Now she is daring and defying you! Let you put an end to it!