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

Prelude to AtoZ

  From Garden of 5 Senses, Delhi [file pic] Hindsight gives an unearthly charm and order to the past. There can be pain too. A lot of things could have been different, much better, if only we possessed the wisdom of our old age back in those days. As a writer put it, Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear and a lot of those guys must have thought, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” Life is a series of errors with intermittent achievements. The only usefulness of the errors may be the lessons they teach us. Probably, that is their purpose too. We are created to err so that we learn, I dare to put it that way. I turn 64 in a month’s time. It’s not inappropriate to look back at some of the people whom life brought into my life so that I would learn certain lessons. No, I don’t mean to say that life has any such purpose or design or anything. Life is absurd. People come into your life as haphazardly as vehicles ply on your road or birds poop on your head. Some of these people change the chemist

Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani , Malayalam weekly Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote. Bernard Shaw defined democracy , with his characteristic cynicism, as “ a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve .” We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b) 2 which should be equal to a 2 and b 2 . There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm , the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine

How Arvind Kejriwal can save himself

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a clear vision. Eliminate all opposition. Decimate them or absorb them. My previous post [link below] showed a few people decimated by them. Today let’s look at the others: those who are saved by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]. 1. Himanta Biswa Sarma  This guy was in Congress and faced serious charges related to the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam. He also faced corruption charges related to drinking water supply in Guwahati. His house was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI]. Then he switched over to BJP and all his crimes just vanished. It’s as simple as taking a dip in the Ganga and all your sins are forgiven. Today he is the chief minister of Assam. Nothing is heard of all the charges that were levelled against him. 2. Amarinder Singh  This former Captain in the Indian Army was a Congressman until Modi’s Enforcement Directorate [ED] started raiding him, his son and his son-in-law. He put an end to all those raid

The Good Old World

Book Review Title: Dukhi Dadiba and irony of fate Author: Dadi Edulji Taraporewala Translators: Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 314 If you want to return to the good old days of the late 19 th century, this is an ideal novel for you. This was published originally in Gujarati in 1913. It appeared as a serial before that from 1898 onwards in a periodical. The conflict between good and evil is the dominant motif though there is romance, betrayal, disappointment, regret, and pretty much of traditional morality. Reading this novel is quite like watching an old Bollywood movie, 1960s style. Ardeshir Bahadurshah, a wealthy Parsi aristocrat in Surat, dies having obligated his son Jehangir to find out his long-lost brother Rustom. Rustom was Bahadurshah’s son in his first marriage. The mother died when the boy was too small and the nurse who looked after the child vanished with it one day. Ratanmai, Bahadurshah’s present wife, takes her

Kejriwal’s Arrest in Modi’s Kurukshetra

For some mysterious reason, Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest reminded me of Haren Pandya. Maybe, because Pandya’s 21 st death anniversary is approaching (26 March). Have you forgotten Haren Pandya? He was the Home Minister of Gujarat before Narendra Modi assumed dictatorial powers in that state. Modi chose to teach humility to Pandya by making him the Minister of State for revenue. Pandya chose not to learn humility from Modi and resigned from that post in Aug 2002. Remember Gujarat of 2002? You should. A fire engulfed a train on 27 Feb 2002 killing 58 Hindu pilgrims who were returning from Ayodhya where they had gone to discover their god, not very unlike Christopher Columbus undertaking a voyage to discover India and messing it all up. What caused the fire in the train? Lord Ram knows probably. The upshot was that there was a riot in Gujarat by Hindus against Muslims. Haren Pandya is one of the BJP leaders who gave statements in many places indicting Modi for the riots. He asser