Conquer and Divide by Lindsey Varley
£23.00 incl. zero VAT
This light hearted and somewhat irreverent look at the invasions of Ancient Britain and how Alfred, the really, really Great, tamed the Viking hordes. There is some public relations spin from Bishop Asser and the Venerable Bede but, apart from that, this is a true-ish account of everything that Alfred did for Britain. Burnt the cakes? Nah. Fake news. Establish law and order? Yep. Stopped the Vikings fighting? Sort of. A jolly bit of bite-size history.
The play, with suggested songs, is about 30 minutes long.
Description
The play starts in the year AD407 as the last Roman legion waves goodbye to the cold and rainy island of Britain. They leave various local kings in charge and things do not go well. Cue lots of fighting and general idiocy which allows the country to get overrun by Anglo Saxons. The Saxons then carve the country up into seven kingdoms and settle down. There’s a bit of peace and quiet until…you guessed it…the Vikings decide that Britain is the favoured destination for all Norsemen with a bit of time on their hands. By this time (9th century) there are more farmers in Britain than warriors, so the Vikings help themselves, thank you very much, to plenty of Saxon kingdoms. But they don’t reckon on one extremely stubborn Saxon king called Alfred, who proves to be a right pain in their Viking necks (and everyone else’s too, apparently.)
Possible 43 parts, of which at least 22 are solo speaking parts and the rest are chorus speaking parts. (The total number of parts could be LESS – for example, you could cut down on the number of Thanes, Churls and Slaves and you could cut out the Market Trader and Girl scene and lose about 15 people, if required. If MORE parts were required, then the Narrator’s parts could be split up between more people and you could add some non-speaking Vikings to the end section.)
Approximate running time 30 minutes.
Songs are suggested for this play (see Sample)
No scenery is required.
