This little history will explain how it actually did provide material for Breakages, Limited, and for the bitter cry of the Powermistress General. Not until Breakages is itself broken will it cease to have a message for us.

Ayot St. Lawrence, March 1930

Dramatis Personae

The Apple Cart

A Political Extravaganza

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—

An Interlude

Orinthia’s boudoir at half-past fifteen on the same day. She is at her writing-table scribbling notes. She is romantically beautiful, and beautifully dressed. As the table is against the wall near a corner, with the other wall on her left, her back alone is visible from the middle of the room. The door is near the corner diagonally opposite. There is a large settee in the middle of the room.

The King enters and waits on the threshold.

Act II

Later in the afternoon. The Terrace of the Palace. A low balustrade separates it from the lawn. Terrace chairs in abundance, ranged along the balustrade. Some dining room chairs also, not ranged, but standing about as if they had just been occupied. The terrace is accessible from the lawn by a central flight of steps.

The King and Queen are sitting apart near the corners of the steps, the Queen to the King’s right. He is reading the evening paper: she is knitting. She has a little work table on her right, with a small gong on it.

Rising and singing.

—he’s a jolly good fel‑low
For he’s a jolly good fel‑low
For he’s—