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Dramatic Reader for Lower Grades

Chapter 67: Transcriber's note
By Florence Holbrook
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Children & Young Adult ReadingPlays/Films/Dramas

About This Book

A collection of short, stage-ready plays that adapt familiar fairy tales, nursery rhymes, and simple moral tales into dialogue for young performers. Each piece condenses traditional episodes—including stories such as Little Red Riding-Hood, Goldilocks, Cinderella, Hänsel and Gretel, Robin Hood, and William Tell—into brief scenes with clear roles and modest stage directions. A preface offers guidance on expressive reading, voice and manner for characters, and imaginative role-play. The selections emphasize simple plots, vivid characters, and cooperative enactment, aiming to build reading fluency, sympathy through perspective-taking, and enjoyment of drama among lower-grade children.

Comus. Dear Lady, stay with me and be my queen. Here may you reign over all my kingdom. See what royal robes are mine, what jewels, what costly tables and shining gold and silver. No sorrow shall you know, but only joy and pleasure.

Lady Alice. Cease your words. You cannot move the mind guided by honesty and truth. You cannot frighten me, for well I know goodness is stronger than evil, truth is more powerful than falsehood. The pure heart cannot be harmed.

Comus. Cease, cease! all this is foolishness. Be wise and taste. All trouble will be forgotten. Come, I insist!

[The brothers rush in and drive Comus and his crew away. But Lady Alice is entranced and cannot move.]

Spirit. Have you let him escape? You should have seized his wand. Without that he has no power, but now we must have help to release your sister from his wicked power. The goddess of our river Severn, the lovely Sabrina, has power over all the enchantments of Comus. Her will I call.

Sabrina fair,
 Listen, where thou art sitting,
 Goddess of the silver lake,
 Listen and save.

Come from your home in the coral caves of the sea and help this lovely maiden in distress.

Sabrina (entering).

From off the waters fleet,
 Thus I set my printless feet
 O'er the cowslip's velvet head
 That bends not as I tread;
 Gentle swain, at thy request
 I am here!

Spirit. Dear goddess, we implore your powerful aid to undo the charm wrought by the enchanter on this maiden.

Sabrina. 'Tis my greatest joy to help the pure and good. Gentle Lady, look on me. Thrice upon thy finger tips, thrice upon thy lips, I sprinkle drops from my pure fountain. Then I touch this marble seat and break the spell. All is well. Farewell.

Spirit. Fair Sabrina, for this aid I pray that all the pretty rills will never cease to flow into your broad river. May your banks ever be fair with groves and meadows sweet, while all men shall praise you for your gentle deeds. Farewell. Now, Lady, let us hasten from this grove. Your parents await their dear children, and we must hasten ere they become alarmed over your delay. Thanks to your pure heart and the aid of the fair Sabrina, you have come safely through the enchanter's wood.