The Lost Silk Hat
by Edward John DunsanyGenre: Comedy
Setting: Fantasy
Format of Original Source: Play
Recommended Adaptation Length: 30 Minutes
Candidate for Adaptation? Not Likely
EXCERPT:
CALLER
Why can’t you think of a plan? If you’re a poet, thinking’s rather in your line.
POET
If I could bring my thoughts to contemplate so absurd a thing as a hat for any length of time no doubt I could think of a plan, but the very triviality of the theme seems to scare them away.
CALLER (rising)
Then I must get it myself.
POET
For Heaven’s sake, don’t do that! Think what it means!
CALLER
I know it will seem absurd, but not so absurd as walking through London without it.
POET
I don’t mean that. But you will make it up. You will forgive each other, and you will marry her and have a family of noisy, pimply children like everyone else, and Romance will be dead. No, don’t ring that bell. Go and buy a bayonet, or whatever one does buy, and join the Bosnians.
CALLER
I tell you I can’t without a hat.
POET
What is a hat! Will you sacrifice for it a beautiful doom? Think of your bones, neglected and forgotten, lying forlornly because of hopeless love on endless golden sands. “Lying forlorn!” as Keats said. What a word! Forlorn in Africa. The careless Bedouins going past by day, at night the lion’s roar, the grievous voice of the desert.
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