Toad of Toad Hall

by Alan Alexander Milne

TOAD OF TOAD HALL

TOAD OF
TOAD HALL

A Play from Kenneth Grahame's Book

 

A. A. MILNE

 

 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
New York

COPYRIGHT 1929 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS;

RENEWAL COPYRIGHT © 1957 DOROTHY DAPHNE MILNE

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT THE PERMISSION OF CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.

A-2.65[V]

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 29-10493

SCENES

PROLOGUE AND ACT I.
Down by the Willows.

ACT II.

Scene I. The Wild Wood.

Scene 2. Badger's House.

Scene 3. The Same. Some Weeks Later.

ACT III.

Scene I. The Courthouse.

Scene 2. The Dungeon.

Scene 3. The Canal Bank.

ACT IV.

Scene I. Rat's House by the River.

Scene 2. The Underground Passage.

Scene 3. The Banqueting Room at Toad Hall.

EPILOGUE.
The Wind in the Willows.

CHARACTERS

NURSE.
MARIGOLD.
THE MOLE.
THE WATER-RAT.
MR. BADGER.
ALFRED.
CHIEF WEASEL.
CHIEF STOAT.
CHIEF FERRET.
FIRST FIELD MOUSE.
SECOND FIELD MOUSE.
USHER.
POLICEMAN.
JUDGE.
PHOEBE.
WASHERWOMAN.
MAMA RABBIT.
HAROLD RABBIT.
LUCY RABBIT.
FOX.
BARGE-WOMAN.
A BRAVE YOUNG WEASEL (HENRY).
A FOOLISH FERRET (JAMES).

Barge-horse, Squirrels, Rabbits, Ferrets, Weasels, Stoats, Field Mice, Turkey, Duck, Back Legs of Alfred, etc., etc.

INTRODUCTION

There are familiarities which we will allow only ourselves to take. Your hands and my hands are no cleaner than any­ body else's hands, yet the sort of well-thumbed bread-and-butter which we prefer is that on which we have placed our own thumbs. It may be that to turn Mr. Kenneth Grahame into a play is to leave unattractive finger marks all over him, but I love his books so much that I cannot bear to think of anybody else disfiguring them. That is why I accepted a sug­gestion, which I should have refused in the case of any other book as too difficult for me, that I should dramatize The Wind in the Willows.

There are two well-known ways in which to make a play out of a book. You may insist on being faithful to the author, which means that the scene in the airplane on page 673 must be got in somehow, however impossible dramatically; or with somebody else's idea in your pocket, you may insist on being faithful to yourself, which means that by the middle of Act III everybody will realize how right the original author was to have made a book of it. There may be a third way, in which case I have tried to follow it. If, as is more likely, there isn't, then I have not made a play of The Wind in the Willows. But I have, I hope, made some sort of enter­tainment, with enough of Kenneth Grahame in it to appease his many admirers, and enough of me in it to justify my name upon the title-page.

Of course I have left out all the best parts of the book; and for that, if he has any knowledge of the theater, Mr. Gra­hame will thank me. With a Rat and Mole from the Green Room Club, a Baby Otter from Conti, a Pan from Clarkson's, and a wind (off) whispering in the reeds of Harker, we are not going to add any fresh thrill to the thrill which the loveliness of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn has already given its readers. Whether there is, indeed, any way of put­ting these animals on the stage must be left to managers, pro­fessional and amateur, to find out. But it seemed clear to me that Rat and Toad, Mole and Badger could only face the footlights with hope of success if they were content to amuse their audiences. There are both beauty and comedy in the book, but the beauty must be left to blossom there, for I, anyhow, shall not attempt to transplant it.

But can one transplant even the comedy? Perhaps it has happened to you, as it has certainly happened to me, that you have tried to explain a fantastic idea to an entirely matter-of-fact person. "But they don't," he says, and "You can't," and "I don't see why, just because," and "Even if you assume that," and "I thought you said just now that he hadn't." By this time you have thrown the ink-pot at him, with enough accuracy, let us hope, to save you from his ulti­matum, which is this: "However fantastic your assumption, you must work it out logically," that is to say, realistically.

To such a mind The Wind in the Willows makes no ap­peal, for it is not worked out logically. In reading the book it is necessary to think of Mole, for instance, sometimes as an actual mole, sometimes as such a mole in human clothes, sometimes as a mole grown to human size, sometimes as walking on two legs, sometimes on four. He is a mole, he isn't a mole. What is he? I don't know. And, not being a matter-of-fact person, I don't mind. At least, I do know, and still I don't mind. He is a fairy, like so many immortal char­acters in fiction; and, as a fairy, he can do, or be, anything.

But the stage has no place for fairies. There is a horrid realism about the theater, from which, however hard we try, we can never quite escape. Once we put Mole and his friends on the boards we have to be definite about them. What do they look like?

To answer this here is difficult. To say at rehearsal what they do not look like will be easy. Vaguely I see them made up on the lines of the Cat in The Blue Bird and the Hen Pheasant in Chantecler. As regards their relative sizes, Toad should be short and fat, Badger tall and elderly, Rat and Mole young and slender. Indeed Mole might well be played by some boyish young actress. The "humans," Judge, Police man, Usher and the rest, should be as fantastic as possible, with a hint of the animal world about them. Only Phoebe must keep her own pretty face, but even she must be no mortal. I see her in a ballet skirt or something entirely un­suitable to a gaoler's daughter, pirouetting absurdly about the prison.

But no doubt the producer will see them all differently. If he is an amateur, I shall congratulate him on his enterprise and wish him luck; if he is a professional, I shall be there to watch him, and, no doubt, to tell him enthusiastically how much better his ideas are than mine.

A. A. M.