No. 543: The winners

Trevor Grove reports: Competitors were in- vited to use ten words, taken from the opening lines of a well-known play, to construct part of the script for either a play, musical, panto- mime or film. Evidently, one of the chief diffi- culties encountered by competitors was that of finding a convenient format in which to present their offerings : too many appeared to feel limited by the freedom of choice available. The result, in many cases, was a poor dull thing which, though undoubtedly cast in a dramatic mould, lacked any suggestion of its belonging to a more complete and interesting whole. Not so H. A. C. Evans's splendid excerpt from his new panto, Harold in Blunderland:

HAROLD My kingdom's substance lies

imprisoned now By Giant Tuc, of lawless flesh, and brow Defiant. But the Spanish fig to Tuc!

I've long possessed the means to keep my luck And here she comes, the Deane of mighty

power Who guards my special interests every hour.

DAME CASTLE All hail, 0 mighty Harold!

HAROLD Welcome, Dame I've got a problem.

DAME Giant Tuc?

HAROLD The same He's out to wreck my harvest, and his thirst For plunder won't be slaked until he first Destroys my kingdom DAME Fear him nut, for I Can claim Good Fairy Pib as my ally. G. F. FIB (Enters) I'm here, my Dame, prepared to do your will And save great Harold's state from every ill. GIANT ruc (Enters) Ha ha! You cannot frighten . me with Pib, That smoking flax, that feebly spluttering squib. G. F. PIB Down, Tuc, upon your knees! Come, now, give in. G. TUC No! I'm too strong, and strength has ever been My passport to the kingdom I would win.

Five guineas to Mr Evans. Mrs P. K. Brown's extract from A Newe Moralitie, equally original, wins three guineas :

Behold there Dives, in fat substance lapt, In bulk imprisoned, and by flesh entrapt, Of many a Spanish dancer once possess'd, By belly-dancing Arab dame caress'd; Of beggar Lazarus crying out his need His sumptuous harvest-plenty took small

heed; Yet now to Abraham cries he in his turn, 'Let but my fire be slaked! I burn, I burn! Send Lazarus hither to this smoking hell, With one cool drop my fiery pangs to quell!' 'Alas!' says Abraham, 'It may not be; Passport is none betwixt our Heaven and thee.'

Four well-earned guineas to Vera Telfer with an unpublished dialogue between Lydia Lan- guish and Mrs Malaprop : L L Beverley has a modest competence, ma'am.

MRS M A half-pay lieutenant lacks the sub- stance of a baronet's heir. I wish I could have you imprisoned in your room, miss, till you learned to modulate your affectations with commonsense.

L L I am pledged to Beverley, ma'am.

MRS M And I suppose you have ridiculous notions about the Dunmow Flesh when you might have the riches of the Spanish gallipots.

L L Beverley is English, ma'am.

MRS M And so is Captain Absolute. I was speaking in metamorphosis of three thousand a year.

L L I will not marry a paunchy creature, how- ever wealthy.

MRS M I cannot imagine why you should be so possessed against Captain Absolute, who is a regular pentagon of manly grace, as to think he should assemble the dame of St Paul's for he is as nimble as the South African harvest. You read too many novels, miss, and having,

I trust, slaked your thirst for romance you should learn to apply yourself to embrocation, smoking and other female accomplishments instead of wishing to passport yourself with an illegible ensign.

And two guineas for a remarkable piece of musical lunacy to B. L. Howarth, from whom an extract : Scene 'Four Corners,' the British frontier post. A handsome young Gibraltarian, Manolito Bot- ticelli, is looking wistfully across the no-man's- land which separates him from his Spanish sweetheart Conchita Salerosa, in La Linea. He sings to a guitar in true flamenco style : `The substance of my plaint (Chorus of Ay! Hy! Hy! ad lib., ad nauseam) Is that, by harsh restraint, I find, imprisoned there, The flesh for which I care : The Spanish frontier-post, Possessed by armdd host, Forbids access—o shame!— To maiden, girl or dame .

(Chorus of 016, Manolo! Ballet, consisting of zapateados, malagueiias, fandangos, seguidik banderillas, mantillas, jotas, accompanied by Conchita Supercilia playing Don't Knock the Rock.) Honourable mentions to Douglas Hawson and R. J. de Bruyn; a guinea to Stuart Wylie, first opened of the ten entries which identified the words as from Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy,