Authors: Peter Morgan
The Audience (13 page)
Elizabeth
What advice did he offer on how to deal with them?
Young Elizabeth
To keep my opinions to myself. Remember my constitutional limitations at all times. And hope that I may nudge them by maybe one or two degrees … over time. (
Rolls eyes
.) How humiliating.
Elizabeth
Why?
Young Elizabeth
To have to sit there like a stuffed animal and listen politely to mad people for hours on end –
Elizabeth
That’s one version of it. A kinder one, perhaps, would be that you’re allowing complicated people,
over
-complicated
people to measure themselves against something unchanging. Permanent. Simple. Your ordinariness as a human being will be your greatest asset as a sovereign. A more distinctive, perhaps imaginative person would make a mess of it. And if I would add anything to your lesson it’s this: those ‘mad people’ will prove to be your greatest allies. No matter how
old-fashioned
, expensive and unjustifiable we are, we will
still
be preferable to a elected president meddling in what they do. Which is why they always dive in to rescue us every time we make a mess of things. If you want to know how it is that the monarchy in this country has survived as long as it has – don’t look to its monarchs. Look to its Prime Ministers.
A beat.
Now c’mon. You need to get back to Kingfisher Patrol.
The Queen and Young Elizabeth exit.
A moment later, the Queen pops her head back into the room, tutting at her own wastefulness, and …
‘Click’: turns out the light.
Peter Morgan is an international award-winning writer for stage, screen and film. As well as receiving Oscar and BAFTA nominations for his screenplay for Stephen Frears’
The Queen
, starring Helen Mirren, Morgan won a host of international awards including Golden Globe, British Independent Film and
Evening Standard
British Film Awards. His last play, the award-winning
Frost/Nixon,
received critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic before being adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film of the same name. The film garnered five Oscar nominations, including Best Screenplay. His many other film credits include the award-winning
The Last King of Scotland, The Damned United,
and the upcoming
Rush
, directed by Ron Howard, as well as his current project for Warner Bros about the life of Hugh Hefner, entitled
Playboy
. His extensive television credits include the critically acclaimed
The Deal
– the first part of Morgan’s ‘Tony Blair Trilogy’ (BAFTA Award for Best Drama) –
The Special Relationship
and
Longford.
frost/nixon
the queen
First published in 2013
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DAThis ebook edition first published in 2013
All rights reserved
© Peter Morgan, 2013The right of Peter Morgan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights whatsoever in these plays are strictly reserved and applications to perform them should be made in writing, before rehearsals begin, to Independent Talent Group Ltd, Oxford House, 76 Oxford Street, London W1D 1BS. No performance may be given unless a licence has first been obtained.
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ISBN 978–0–571–30407–3