The Apple Cart

Act I

An office in the royal palace. Two writing-tables face each other from opposite sides of the room, leaving plenty of room between them. Each table has a chair by it for visitors. The door is in the middle of the farthest wall. The clock shows that it is a little past 11; and the light is that of a fine summer morning.

Sempronius, smart and still presentably young, shows his right profile as he sits at one of the tables opening the King’s letters.

Pamphilius, middle aged, shows his left as he leans back in his chair at the other table with a pile of the morning papers at his elbow, reading one of them. This goes on silently for some time. Then Pamphilius, putting down his paper, looks at Sempronius for a moment before speaking.

My dear Sem: one isn’t alone on an uninhabited island. My mother used to stand me on the table and make me recite about it.

He declaims.

To sit on rocks; to muse o’er flood and fell;
To slowly trace the forest’s shady scene
Where things that own not man’s dominion dwell
And mortal foot hath ne’er or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o’er steeps and foaming falls to lean:
This is not solitude: ’tis but to hold
Converse with Nature’s charms, and view her stores unrolled.

Suddenly overwhelmed with emotion, rises and begins singing in stentorian tones.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind—