Rani Drew Odyssey of a Prince A play in Five Acts Rani Drew 10 Fulbrooke Road Cambridge CBE 9EE UK 01223-368231 www.ranidrew.wordpress.com 1 Synopsis The fact of war is as old as life itself on the planet. Not only humans but all other beings have waged wars against each other. Perhaps wars are a necessary tool to curb the growth of life – human and natural. Once devastation comes to an end, peace is born. A new beginning much reduced and ready to start again. The old gives way to the new. Peace follows war. This year it is 2014, the centenary of World War I – it is now a hundred years since 1914 when Europe was engulfed in war for four long years. Monarchs of six mighty empires, built and flourished on colonising Asia and Africa: the British, the French, the Germans, the Russians, the Hapsburgs and the Ottomans locked horns for supremacy. For four years, bullets and bombs shot across Europe, burning and bleeding countries of soldiers and civilians. Millions died fighting. A test of national loyalty was the call that went out like wild fire, for men – young and old – to enlist in the Armed Forces and fight for King and Country, until Europe itself burnt. Was this war necessary? Or was it simply a history of Empires and Kings coming to a natural end? Socialism was ever growing from marches for rights to insurrections for revolution, and the crowns glowing with stolen jewels were provoking the wrath of the exploited and the subjugated to strike at them and demand new nations, new republics. When an Emperor is shot by a subject, it announces the end of Kings and Empires. For the revolutionaries, King and Country were seen as oppression, not freedom for the subjects. It all had to end somehow. A war was the answer, except that it also decimated the population. SUMMARY The backdrop to WWI: Odyssey of a Prince is the mid-19th century when the British with their modern warfare were taking over many princely states of India. A British Indian Empire was in the making. The flourishing Punjab Kingdom was annexed after its powerful ruler, Maharaja Ranjeet Singh, died in 1838, leaving his descendants fighting amongst themselves for the throne. After two Sikh Wars, the Punjab Kingdom was annexed by the British, its young maharaja deposed and extradited to Britain. Like the Kohinoor, Duleep Singh was given a prominent place in the Court of Queen Victoria. Steeped in courtly luxury for three decades, the Prince woke up to his royal status as nothing more than a state of imprisonment. He rose against the might of the British, asserting his freedom and challenged them to arrest him as he set out to make his journey back to his original country, to call all other annexed Indian states to join him and chase the British out of India. He was arrested and returned from Aden. He chose to return to France where he planned to join the Russians against the British. Unsuccessful in his plans, he died in 1893, ill and paralysed in France. His progeny – six children – remained under the protection of Queen Victoria. This play is about them, but primarily about Frederick Duleep Singh, the third son of Maharaja Duleep Singh. Loyal to the British Crown, he joins the defence forces in 1914, the Norfolk Yeomanry, to fight for his Country. In five acts, the play traces the decisions he and his siblings have to make about their loyalties in the face of their father’s rebellion against the British Empire. As the War breaks out in 1914, they actively join to resist the German threat. 2 Playwright’s Notes 2014 WW1 Centenary Remembrance celebrations are not only for the British soldiers who fought and died in the war in great numbers, but also for those who joined the war effort from the colonies in Asia and Africa. The Indian contribution was considerable in terms of soldiers, food and medicine. Although the years before the War were a time Indians were beginning to look for Home Rule from the British, the Indian Congress put the movement on hold and actively backed the British in the War. In 2010, the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds called for the submission a play on Maharaja Duleep Singh. I submitted my play Queen Victoria and the Maharaja of Punjab for their consideration. Unfortunately, their plans changed, the play was not produced. Nonetheless, I staged a dramatized reading of it at Clare Hall, Cambridge in 2011. It aroused a significant interest in the audience. This year, with the arrival of WW1 centenary, one of the many Sikh organisations joining the centenary celebrations is The Anglo-Sikh Trust in Britain. They are interested in highlighting the Sikh contribution to the War effort, particularly the role played by Maharaja Duleep Singh’s progeny played in the War. It seemed a natural sequence to my own earlier play. David Jones, one of the members of the Trust who has done original research on the history of this family in Britain, provided me with his research material and along with my own earlier research on Maharaja Duleep Singh, WWI: Odyssey of a Prince got written. In Five Acts, WWI Odyssey of a Prince takes us through the emotional and political journey of Maharaja Duleep Singh’s progeny in the historic four-year’s period spanned by WW1. Stage Set Stage set can be a period piece or minimalist. Three atmospheric stage artefacts are essential to highlight the play: 1) Indian religious artefacts: these could be screened on the back wall, and some more visible as stage props (Act I). 2) Oak Apple Day (Act III). Various Royalist bric-a-brac. 3) War Office (Act V). This will need a war-time atmosphere: wall noticeboard/screen, a radio and war posters etc. There are quite a number of small roles, but they can be doubled up by 6 actors. Costumes: period costumes would highlight the historical element. 3 Prologue ACT I The Progeny of Maharaja Duleep Singh are keeping his Wake in Norfolk. ACT II Blo’ Norton, 1906, Virginia Woolf visits Prince Duleep Singh ACT III Oak Apple Day Frederick, Partridge & Farrar celebrate the historic return of Bonnie Prince Charlie ACT IV Rumblings of WW1 ACT V Events of War Relayed to Home Front at Reserve Regiment of the North Yeomanry, K.O.R.R, Melton Constable Park: Scene i, War Effort Scene ii, The First Battle of the Marne Prince Frederick & the Sergeant at the Centre Visits from Partridge & Bamba (his sister) Scene iii, Western Front - Trenches Warfare Prince Frederick & Farrar Scene iv, 1916 – Germans attack the French & sky warfare Prince Victor visits Prince Frederick Scene v, The Battle of Magiddo, 1918, September WW1 ends Oliphant visits Prince Frederick EPILOGUE *** 4 WW1 Odyssey of a Prince PROLOGUE The War sounds: marching feet, shooting and bombardment come up and then fade. Silence. Lights go up on front of the stage. Lord Arthur Craigie Oliphant enters. OLIPHANT: At last, the war is silenced. From 1914 to 1918, for four years men marched, bullets fired, aeroplanes bombarded, ships were sunk, across Europe all the way up to Asia, even Africa. Germany, the instigator of the world blaze, is now humbled. As the saying goes, good follows bad, republics – people’s power – were born from the fall of four Empires. The British Empire has endured. Thanks not just to its own people but also to its loyal colonies who added their weight to its war against Germany. India supplied armed forces, food and medical services. The Indian people and the Maharajas stood by the British and put their shoulder to the war juggernaut. But those rulers deposed in the 19th century and extradited to Britain, were initially kept under strict vigilance and not allowed in the military service, for the fear of their changing sides. It’s on account of the progeny of one such deposed Maharaja, that I am here to begin their story. Sound of readings from the Granth Sahib. The stage flickers with moving paintings and portraits of Maharaja Ranjeet Singh, Sher Singh and Duleep Singh. Lights go full up. The body of Duleep Singh is stretched full out on a dais at the back, below the Sikh portraits, That’s Elveden, sparkling with Indian glory since 1863. A 17,000 acre country estate purchased by the India Office. Prince Duleep Singh where he lived for twenty years as a princely aristocrat before in defiance of the British Government, he left it and set out for India with his family. (Pause) Now, he lies here impervious to it all, good and bad. The Anglo-Sikh Wars were over by 1849. Defeated and deposed, the young Maharaja Duleep Singh was not only anglicized but also converted to Christianity at the age of 15, and within a short time extradited to Britain to live and flourish under the aegis of Queen Victoria, watched and controlled by the Government. That’s how the Kingdom of Punjab ended. It lasted barely a few decades but struck so much fear in the English that they had to bring it down, and down they did bring it to finish it once and for all. Yet, nothing ends forever. Some embers burn and light up the dark. ‘Prince’ was the title the young Duleep Singh, the heir to a kingdom stretching from the Khyber Pass to the Gates of Delhi, the deposed Maharaja of Punjab, was given when he made his passage to England. For a decade he lived as a true royal 5 aristocrat, a devout Christian in Thetford, hunting and shooting with Dukes, Counts and Princes, earning a good name as a local benefactor for schools and churches.