Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Alice, Part Four: The Adaptation

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:

Unknown said...

This is seriously worth me flying down to Hyderabad for - lovely sense of dramatic timing Blue!