Here is the second half of this dual post: my adaptation of Chapter Seven. I'm putting my adaptation and the original text side-by-side so you all can see how I adapted it. The following post (which will probably come tomorrow, and should be the final post in this series) will analyze why I made the choices I did when writing the adaptation.
(For copyright purposes: the following text is under copyright, all rights are reserved, and I will hunt you down.)
WHITE KING: Hello? Are you – are you part of my army?
ALICE: I’m a pawn, if it please Your Majesty.
WHITE KING: A pawn? Well, a pleasure to meet you! I’m the White King.
ALICE: Yes, thank you, Your Majesty.
WHITE KING: I need you to do something for me, little pawn. Look all down that road, and tell me who you see.
ALICE looks.
ALICE: I see nobody, Your Majesty.
WHITE KING: I only wish I had such eyes… to be able to see Nobody! And at that distance, too! Why, it’s as much as I can do to see real people, in this light!
ALICE: Oh, but there’s somebody coming now! But he’s moving very slowly – and what curious attitudes he goes into!
WHITE KING: Oh, he’s an Anglo-Saxon messenger, and those are Anglo-Saxon attitudes! His name is Haigha. My other messenger’s called Hatta. I have two, you know. To come and go. One to come, and one to go!
ALICE: I beg your pardon.
WHITE KING: It isn’t respectable to beg.
HAIGHA arrives. He carries a few bags slung over his shoulder.
HAIGHA: My lord!
WHITE KING: Tell me, who did you pass on the road?
HAIGHA: Well, I passed nobody.
WHITE KING: Quite right – this young lady saw him too. So that means Nobody walks slower than you.
HAIGHA: That’s not fair. I’m sure nobody walks much faster than I do.
WHITE KING: He can’t do that, or else he’d have been here first. What news do you have for me?
HAIGHA: I’ll whisper it.
HAIGHA leans over to the WHITE KING and screams in his ear.
HAIGHA: They’re at it again!
WHITE KING: You call that a whisper? I feel faint.
HAIGHA: I’ll give you some hay, my lord.
HAIGHA takes hay from a bag and applies it to the WHITE KING’S forehead.
WHITE KING: There’s nothing like hay when one’s feeling faint.
ALICE: I would think that cold water to the forehead would be better – or perhaps some sal-volatile.
WHITE KING: I didn’t say there was nothing better, I said there was nothing like it!
ALICE: Who is at it again?
WHITE KING: The Lion and the Unicorn!
HAIGHA: They’re fighting for the crown!
WHITE KING: The Lion beat the Unicorn
HAIGHA: All around the town!
1 comment:
This is seriously worth me flying down to Hyderabad for - lovely sense of dramatic timing Blue!
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