Skip to main content

The Ugly Duckling

Source: Acting Company


A. A. Milne’s one-act play, The Ugly Duckling, acquired a classical status because of the hearty humour used to present a profound theme. The King and the Queen are worried because their daughter Camilla is too ugly to get a suitor. In spite of all the devious strategies employed by the King and his Chancellor, the princess remained unmarried. Camilla was blessed with a unique beauty by her two godmothers but no one could see any beauty in her physical appearance. She has an exquisitely beautiful character. What use is character? The King asks.

The play is an answer to that question. Character plays the most crucial role in our moral science books and traditional rhetoric, religious scriptures and homilies. When it comes to practical life, we look for other things such as wealth, social rank, physical looks, and so on. As the King says in this play, “If a girl is beautiful, it is easy to assume that she has, tucked away inside her, an equally beautiful character. But it is impossible to assume that an unattractive girl, however elevated in character, has, tucked away inside her, an equally beautiful face.”

The King lacks any character worth the label. Like most people who love power, he is a narcissist. When he asks the Chancellor whether Camilla took after him, the Chancellor is shrewd enough to answer, “Most certainly not, Your Majesty.” The previous Chancellor lost his life because he was not shrewd enough to learn kings’ love of flattery. The King did not hesitate to kill a prince who ran away from marrying Camilla. His body was found in the moat next morning. “But what was he doing in the moat, Your Majesty?” The Chancellor asks with feigned innocence. “Bobbing about,” admonishes the King. “Try not to ask needless questions.”

People vanish if they fail to pander to the King’s whims and fancies. Self-conceit is hardly considered character though people in power usually get away with it. Power and character seem to be genetically disjoint entities. Deviousness is the sibling of power. The King here is devious enough to present the beautiful Dulcibella, Camilla’s maid, as the prospective bride to Prince Simon when he comes to meet the Princess.

Dulcibella is physically charming but intellectually stupid. The King trains her on behaviour and etiquette. She is asked to give Simon a look which is “half-way between the breathless adoration of a nun and the voluptuous abandonment of a woman of the world.” Dulcibella is incapable of making heads or tails of such royal amalgamations. It is not required, as it turns out.

The drawbridge over the palace’s moat is so old that it takes half an hour to be brought down. Prince Simon lacks the patience and he jumps into the palace’s battlements by swinging from the branch of a tree beside the moat, quite a risky thing to do especially because he doesn’t know swimming. He admits that there are a lot of other things which he can’t do. It will take “a couple of years” to mention those things, he says. He is saying all this to Princess Camilla who is pretending to be Dulcibella, the maid.

The Prince has a character. He doesn’t put on masks over his deficiencies and drawbacks. He accepts them as part of himself. However, he is not quite sure that Princess Camilla would accept him with all those limitations. So he has asked his attendant Carlo to disguise himself as the Prince. Soon Prince Simon understands that he is disclosing all this to none other than Princess Camilla who is the first person he meets while others in the palace are busy bringing down the ancient drawbridge.

Neither Simon nor Camilla is surprised when they come to know about the disguises and strategies being played out. They will continue to play the game for the sake of the others who don’t possess enough character to understand vital truths.

We live in a world which places a high premium on external appearances. We put on a lot of masks because of that – oh, all that costumes and cosmetics, hair colours and skin creams! We pretend a lot too. Ironically, the present pandemic of Covid-19 has added a real mask to all those virtual ones that conceal our true selves. We may get rid of the medical mask sooner or later. If only we could get rid of some of those virtual masks too. But Simon and Camilla are exceptions. Where everyone wears mask upon mask, it may be dangerous to walk about with a bear face.  
 
A page from the play
PS. This is part of a series being written for the #BlogchatterA2Z Challenge. The previous parts are:
14. No Exit
17. Quixote
18. The Rebel
Tomorrow: Vernon God Little

Comments

  1. We live in a world where people judge others by their physical appearances more than their nature and intellect. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. It is always a pleasure to read your posts.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Masks, virtual or real, should be put down for they don't let you breathe freely. I would like to know more about these two beautiful and brave hearts.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They are very interesting and lovable characters. The whole play is a delight to read, full of innocent fun.

      Delete
  3. Our world gives too much importance to external appearances. It is one of the reasons I don't like the idea of love at first sight, which is portrayed in many movies. This book reminds me of Ayushman Khurrana's movie, Bala. It teaches one to not be ashamed of their looks.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The looks matter for a moment or so. After that, what's inside will begin to matter.

      Delete
  4. Portraying strong messages through fun and comedy is most difficult I believe. Classics have that knack in their own ways. Loved this one!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Milne was an expert in that art. Glad you liked it.

      Delete
  5. I loved the story.Character is ingrained The version of truth differs with perspective

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Character can be built too. But a substantial part is already there within.

      Delete
  6. Another riveting recommendation. Haven't read this one. But I remember a children's classic by the same name and a similar message read long long ago.
    Pretense comes from the fact that truth is not kindly taken to.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hey, I was being suggested this just yesterday by a friend. This is an amazing suggestion and something I would love. Thank you :)
    -- rightpurchasing.com

    Do check out if my blog with the theme “Blog monetization” interests you:
    http://www.rightpurchasing.com/category/a2z-blog/

    ReplyDelete
  8. Light to read yet heavy on message it carries.
    The plot is worthy of a typical 'masala' Bollywood movie. I remember having seen a Hindi movie, that can be called a crude contemporary version of the story, which had a star studded cast.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Though I’m familiar with the tale, I’ve never read the book. Seems quite relevant.
    www.nooranandchawla.com

    ReplyDelete
  10. Wow, coincidently my post today is on masks too... Loved the review and the take on masks used by the society as a whole... Yes only the mask for covid seems to be the real one indeed!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We keep preparing faces to meet the faces we meet.... as Eliot said. World of masks.

      Delete
  11. I think this book has been the inspirations for so many Hollywood and Bollywood movies and TV serials.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. True. The play has also been a part of many a university curriculum. I taught it for a few years in North-Eastern Hill University.

      Delete
  12. Oh, my son was a part of this play in one of his school functions, years ago!! :D
    The message that it shares is profound!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, this is staged frequently. Children will love it particularly.

      Delete
  13. Loved how you ended this - it maybe riskier to go without a mask. That's why I love the process of writing. It is the one place I know my mask is completely off - and yet since it's all fiction, the mask is in a way firmly in place.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Writing is one of the safe places for shedding masks. I do it too. But in contemporary India, many a writer is paying a heavy price for shedding masks.

      Delete
  14. If I went to application theory like ethical theroy Who is the bad characters in this play and can I application the term other on this play

    ReplyDelete
  15. Can I consider the king is a villain

    ReplyDelete
  16. Can I consider the king is a villain

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Villain would be too strong a word for a father whose love for his daughter makes him do certain harsh deeds.

      Delete
  17. Your blog is a gem! The simplicity in your writing is a breath of fresh air in the crowded blogosphere. Thank you for making learning enjoyable and straightforward.
    best ayurvedic hospital in india





    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...

Insecurity and Exclusivism

“ Hindu khatare mein hai.” This was one of the first slogans that accompanied the emergence of Narendra Modi on the national scene. It means Hindus are in Danger . It reveals a deep-rooted feeling of insecurity. Hindus constitute an overwhelming majority in India – 80%. All the high positions in governance, judiciary, academics, any significant place, are occupied by Hindus. Yet the slogan was born. Strange? It will be facile to argue that Modi used this slogan and its concomitant hatred of Muslims and Christians as a political weapon for winning votes. True, he was successful in that; he rose to the highest political post in the country using minority-bashing. But the hatred did not end with that achievement; rather it spread outward and became more exclusive. Muslim and European rulers of India were booted out from the country’s history books and wherever else possible like the names of roads and institutions. With vengeance. Now there is a concerted effort going on to place In...

You Don’t Know the Sky

I asked the bird to lend me wings. I longed to fly like her. Gracefully. She tilted her head and said, “Wings won’t be of any use to you because you don’t know the sky.” And she flew away. Into the sky. For a moment, I was offended. What arrogance! Does she think she owns the sky? As I watched the bird soar effortlessly into the blue vastness, I began to see what she meant. I wanted wings, not the flight. Like wanting freedom without the responsibility that comes with it. The bird had earned her wings. Through storms, through hunger, through braving the odds. She manoeuvred her way among the missiles that flew between invisible borders erected by us humans. She witnessed the macabre dance of death that brought down cities, laid waste a whole country. Wings are about more than flights. How often have you perched on the stump of a massive tree brought down by a falling warhead and wept looking at the debris of civilisations? The language of the sky is different from tha...