No. 522: The winners

Trevor Grove reports: Competitors were given ten words chosen from the opening lines of a well-known play and asked to construct round them part of the script for a play, film, musical or pantomime—a task which some of the better entries this week made to appear deceptively easy but of which less fortunate colleagues made particularly heavy weather. It became rapidly apparent that one of the chief difficulties in mak- ing a success of it was that of trying to estab- lish, without resorting to word-wasting stage directions, what kind of play one was supposed to be writing, where it was set, when, and so on. Those who thought it necessary to give a fulsome 'exposition' were doomed to honour- able failure; whereas the smart boys who chose not to be original but to indulge in some degree of plagiarism—from the mere borrowing of a couple of notorious characters to your full- blooded parody—found themselves with space, and wit, to Spare. Like Peter Peterson, for in- stance. who wins five guineas : Room() But to have me cudgelled! I thought she had more affected me.

IAGO Consider it not with so much curiosity, noble heart, but tell me roundly what answer she gave to thy suit.

ammo She blushed, and seemed not to con- ceive me.

taco Not conceive thee! She had best pill thy manhood, then. Tis like to be six at a birth, if I mistake not her lusts and thy abilities. I smell lechery, Rodrigo; at the sight of thee her senses, be assured, did most saucily rebel.

RODRIGO Thinkest thou so? She seemed honest. Into Pish! She was ever too free in the confer- ring of her favours. The hours will crawl with her till she get thee to her bed. Sharpen thine eyesight, and trust not seeming. I tell thee, thou shalt yet explore to thy fullestsatis- faction the shadowy labyrinth of her desires.

For the sheerest sauce, as well as a certain appalling flair for Gilbertian syncopation, three well-earned guineas to Tim O'Dowda's King Lear on Ice:

FRANCE My balance you've affected, My destiny deflected, Cordelia, my dearest one, my own. CORDELIA With magical velocity, You woke my curiosity,

No more am I abandoned and alone.

FRANCE I saw you: you blushed;

Like lightning I rushed To assure you that I would be thine.

CORDELIA I dared not believe

That you could conceive A passion as urgent as mine.

(France hands her a posy of marjoram which they smell ecstatically)

BOTH Now Cupid has so saucily

Impaled us, no remorse will he Display to us for we are in his thrall; With aim that's quite unerring.

His boon on us conferring—

Away from you the hours seem to crawl!,

CORDELIA Although at present I blight

The King my father's eyesight.

I still shall go on loving him the same. FRANCE Till he relents, right glad are we To flee this realm of shadowy

Pretensions, empty promises and shame.

Herbert Mayman, the first correctly to iden- tify King Lear as the source of the words, wins a guinea. And though very honourable mentions go to E. 0. Parrott, J. M. Crooks and J. R. V. White, this week's third prize of three guineas goes to Hilary Temple :

MRS MALAPROP Oh heavens, Sir Anthony, Lydia is affected with the influenza. 'Tis the more pity as she had a particular curiosity to see you.

SIR Arsrritorrie Madam, I am sorry she should be unwell, though doubtless she must have blushed to meet me.

MRS M Ay, Sir Anthony, often have I said to her, 'Sir Anthony will conceive,' say I 'how wastefully your time is spent. He will smell out any inception on your part.'

SIR A And I warrant she replied saucily, ma'am. That is the trouble with girls now. They would be independent, but would not earn their liv- ing.

MRS M You are not conferring, Sir Anthony, that she should earn money SIR A I foresee a time when many of her sex will be forced to crawl to an employer, ma'am. MRS td Fy, Sir Anthony, I am glad I have not

your eyesight.

SIR A 'Tis but a shadowy vision, ma'am, but it will come, depend on it.