“Charlotte Brontë Remembers…
The Afternoon of Noms des Plumes”
A Drama in one act
by Leslie McBlair

About the play…Charlotte Bronte, in her late letters, gave tantalizing hints of how she and her sisters chose their names to publish their work. This three-character one act works perfectly in the classroom or on a small stage. It’s an enhanced teaching tool. for those long English classes!

Time: Autumn 1845
Place: The upstairs parlor at Haworth Parsonage, Northern England.

The Characters:
Charlotte BrontË: 28 years old, thin, pert, very small, talkative.
Emily BrontË: 26 years old, tall, thin, pale, serious, intense.
Anne BrontË: 25 years old, vivacious, attractive, eager to please.

The Scene: A high-ceilinged Victorian room with large windows looking out on the churchyard, a crowded cemetery, and dark, moody moors in the distance (can be indicated with a backdrop). There are two doors: one leads downstairs to the front of the house; the other opens to a stairwell up to the attic. There is a loveseat, chairs, a writing table, small coal stove, lots of books, and a pianoforte. Use ambient gas lamps. Scattered over the table are several wooden toy soldiers, lots of paper, writing implements, and two or three notebooks. When the lights come up, Emily is discovered copying poems from several small notebooks and scraps of paper into a larger notebook.

Anne: Emily! Just listen! Tabitha’s in the greatest rage, all red faced and huffing. Keeper’s wedged behind the kitchen stove and won’t budge.
Emily: (Pulling the shawl tighter on her shoulders) He’s no doubt trying to keep warm.
(Emily falls back into her reverie as Anne stirs the fire and adds a few coals to the little stove)
Anne: No. He has a big puff on each side of his nose. (She makes a face, puffing out her cheeks) About the size of a biscuit, I would say.
(Both girls giggle) Tabby spilled one on the floor as she was turning them out and Keeper grabbed it, and now she swears that biscuit will be all the poor dog gets to eat for a week.
Emily: Yes, it’s a bright morning. But so cold. (Anne sees Emily is in her imaginary world and begins their old game of Gondal, which can be compared to today’s role-playing, in which imaginative children dwell in a complex created world.)
Anne: Yes, your majesty, it’s a bright morning, but I see you’ve had a miserable night. You are alone, outside the cathedral in Regina. You were summoned in the middle of the night by an uncanny voice. (Anne becomes the general, while Emily takes on the character of Augusta, the troubled queen of Gondal)
Emily: (As if sleepwalking) And I would leave my bed to find the smile that he would shine to chase the visions from my head.
Anne: In all the hours of the gloom, your soul was wrapt away; you dreamt you stood by a marble tomb where royal corpses lay.
Emily: (Breaking the game momentarily) Now, you’re Alexander’s ghost weeping at the tombs of his son and grandson.
Anne: (Acts her version of a spectre. Emily urges her on. She can choose a piece of furniture to be her tomb.) Woe for the day, Regina’s pride, Regina’s hope is in the grave; and who shall rule my land beside? And, who shall save? Woe for the day; with gory tears my country’s sons this day shall rue. Woe for the day! (Stops, breaks the character) Emily? That verse gives me the shivers. Where do you get these images?
Emily: (Piqued that Anne has broken the game) You don’t sound enough like the ghost of a king. You do it like an ordinary girl.

About the Playwright:
Leslie McBlair has been active in Theatre in the Tidewater for thirty years. She has acted in, or directed nearly a hundred plays. She was winner of the George Washington University Competitive English Writing Award, and has published her light verse. Ms. McBlair was editor and scriptwriter for the US Department of Agriculture and wrote two film scripts for Price-Howard Productions in Rockville ,Md., one of which won 2nd place in the New York Horticultural Film Festival. She has 36 graduate hours in Old Dominion University’s Creative Writing Program.
Leslie’s favorite job was as Director of Education for a large Church. There she wrote and directed Liturgical Dramas, as well as fund-raising musicals! Her full-length play about Marilyn Monroe was a finalist in the 1988 Virginia Prize for Playwriting. She has been a member of the Tidewater Dramatists Guild since it’s inception. She specializes in plays with historical characters.