The Painter and the Three Magics - Edward Gordon Craig

Printed

3 pages

Author(s)

The Painter and the Three Magics

Edward Gordon Craig | June 1916 | Marina di Pisa, Italy
Characters
Cockatrice, Blind-Boy, Parrot, The Painter, Old Man Adam, The Magic Donkey, called Brickle-Brit, The Magic Table, The Magic Stick
Number of acts
4
Note

The Drama for Fools is a large-scale dramatic cycle containing multiple puppet plays. This cycle kept Craig exceedingly busy between 1916 and 1918. It was supposed to hold 365 short plays and be performed like a traveling show: each night, from 31 April to 31 March, a new play would be shown in a new location. Craig, who wrote his plays under the pen name Tom Fool, stopped writing before the cycle was finished and gave up on performing the play himself.

Nonetheless, he stored his drafts in three cardboard boxes, as a collection of typewritten notebooks containing many illustrations and whose covers display words written in colourful calligraphy. He cared immensely for these notebooks, as he improved, corrected, and supplemented them until the 1950s. This collection is today held at the Institut International de la Marionnette in Charleville-Mézières.

The Painter and the Three Magics marks the starting point of the adventures of Blind-Boy, Cockatrice and Columbus the Parrot, the main characters of The Drama for Fools. It takes place right after they get out of Hell, an episode which showed how Cockatrice met his “mother” Blind-boy and introduced the magic objects that will later reappear in The Roman Adventure, and which are directly taken from the folktale Tischchen deck dich, Goldesel und Knüppel aus dem Sack (The Wishing-Table, the Gold-Ass and the Cudgel in the Sack), mostly known to the Brothers Grimm’s rewriting.

Plot summary

The protagonists are given three magic objects as presents

Cockatrice is made aware that he must not look at himself in a mirror, otherwise he will die. As he wants to admire his own beauty, he runs away and visits a painter to get a portrait of himself painted. To flatter him, the painter portrays him like an English gentleman. Blind-Boy finds Cockatrice and takes him away with him without paying the painter. Blind-boy tells Cockatrice that Columbus the Parrot and himself met a very old man named Old Man Adam, who owns a donkey, a table, and a stick which have magical powers. All three of them go to Old Man Adam’s house, and Old Man Adam gives them the objects as presents as they will lose their magical powers should they not change owners.

Related works
Tischchen deck dich, Goldesel und Knüppel aus dem Sack
The Drama for Fools, Edward Gordon Craig1914-1918
Composition date
1916

Publications and translations

Publication

Edward Gordon Craig, The Drama for Fools / Le Théâtre des fous. Montpellier: L'Entretemps, 2012.

Translations
  • Edward Gordon Craig, The Drama for Fools / Le Théâtre des fous. Montpellier: L'Entretemps, 2012.

    (French)

Conservation place

Institut International de la Marionnette - Charleville-Mézières, France
Language
English
Literary tones
Fantasy, Comical
Animations techniques
String marionette
Audience
Not specified
Licence
Institut International de la Marionnette & Edward Gordon Craig Estate

Key-words

Theatrical techniques

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Written by

Didier Plassard