GREVILLE: Were you pages to the Czar or servants to the Sultan you would not have been dismissed. You would have had your throats cut.
BRAUN: Yes. And so would the doctors.
GREVILLE: Forget what you have seen. Majesty in its small clothes. Wipe it from your memory.
PAPANDIEK: He was ill. We knew that.
GREVILLE: Yes, and now he is well. Here.
(BRAUN takes the money and strolls off.)
PAPANDIEK: Sir, I am fond of His Majesty.
GREVILLE: You are not entitled to be. You are his servant. You will not be without employment … I hear your old colleague Fortnum has founded a grocery business. You could join him.
PAPANDIEK: Fortnum and Papandiek?
(While no more unlikely a coupling than, say, Justerini and Brooks, PAPANDIEK sees no future in it, and takes the money and goes.
FITZROY has been observing these proceedings with his customary disdain.)
FITZROY: You were kind to His Majesty during his illness, Greville.
GREVILLE: I did what I could, Captain Fitzroy.
FITZROY: Colonel Fitzroy. You did not know that? It seems unfair, I agree. But a word of advice. To be kind does not commend you to kings. They see it, as they see any flow of feeling, as a liberty. A blind eye will serve you better. And you will travel further.
ST PAUL’s
He pulls the curtain back to reveal the KING and QUEEN in full state robes (a fond stage direction, as it turned out as there was no money left out of the National Theatre budget to run up some state robes so it was just their everyday royal togs).
WILLIS: I shall be at the Cathedral, should the ceremony prove to be too great a burden for you, Your Majesty.
(He has laid his hand on the KING’s arm. The KING looks at it and WILLIS removes it.)
KING: You may tell Dr Willis that the ceremony will not be such a burden as the want of ceremony has been. And do not look at me, sir. Presume not I am the thing I was. I am not the patient. Be off, sir. Back to your sheep and your pigs. The King is himself again.
(WILLIS is escorted out as the KING and QUEEN go slowly up the steps, accompanied by Handel and attended by the company. They are met at the door of St Paul’s by the Archbishop of Canterbury who blesses the newly recovered monarch, and the KING raises his hat to the crowds as the curtain falls.)
Author biography
Alan Bennett first appeared on the stage in 1960 as one of the authors and performers of the revue Beyond the Fringe. His stage plays include Forty Years On, Getting On, Habeas Corpus, The Old Country and The Lady in the Van, and he has written many television plays, notably A Day Out, Sunset Across the Bay, A Woman of No Importance and the series of monologues Talking Heads. An adaptation of his television play, An Englishman Abroad, was paired with A Question of Attribution in the double-bill Single Spies, first produced at the National Theatre in 1988. This was followed in 1990 by his adaptation of The Wind in the Willows and in 1991 by The Madness of George III.
His most recent play, The History Boys, won the Evening Standard and Critics’ Circle awards for Best Play, The Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play, and The South Bank Award. Alan Bennett’s latest collection of prose, Untold Stories, was published in 2005 by Faber and Faber and Profile Books.
by the same author
Plays One: Forty Years On, Getting On, Habeas Corpus, Enjoy
Plays Two: Kafka’s Dick, The Insurance Man, The Old Country,
An Englishman Abroad, A Question of Attribution
The Lady in the Van
Office Suite
The Madness of George III
The Wind in the Willows
The History Boys
TELEVISION PLAYS
Me, I’m Afraid of Virginia Woolf: A Day Out, Sunset Across the Bay,
A Visit from Miss Prothero, Me, I’m Afraid of Virginia Woolf,
Green Forms, The Old Crowd, Afternoon Off
Rolling Home: One Fine Day, All Day on the Sands, Our Winnie,
Rolling Home, Marks, Say Something Happened, Intensive Care
Talking Heads
SCREENPLAYS
A Private Function: The Old Crowd, A Private Function,
Prick Up Your Ears, 102 Boulevard Haussmann,
The Madness of King George
The History Boys: the film
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
The Lady in the Van
Writing Home
Untold Stories
FICTION
Three Stories: The Laying on of Hands, The Clothes They Stood Up In,
Father! Father! Burning Bright
The Uncommon Reader
Copyright
First published in 1992
by Faber and Faber Limited
Bloomsbury House
74-77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
Revised text first published in 1995
This ebook edition first published in 2009
All rights reserved
© Forelake Ltd, 1992, 1995
Alan Bennett is hereby identified as author of this work in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights whatsoever in this work are strictly reserved. Applications for permission for any use whatsoever including performance rights must be made in advance, prior to any such proposed use, to United Agents Ltd, 12-26 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LE.
ISBN 978—0—571—25076—9 [epub edition]
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Alan Bennett, The Madness of George III
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