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The Glittering Gate

by Edward John Dunsany

Genre: Comedy, Fantasy
Setting: Fantasy
Format of Original Source: Play
Recommended Adaptation Length: 30 Minutes

Candidate for Adaptation? Promising

EXCERPT:

JIM

You’ll never get through those gates, Bill. You’ll never do it.

BILL

They’re only gold, Jim. Gold’s soft like lead. Old Nut-cracker would do it if they were steel.

JIM

You’ll never do it, Bill.

[Bill puts a rock against the gates, stands on it to reach the lock and gets to work on the lock. A good instrument to use is an egg-whipper. Jim goes on wearily with his work. As Bill works away, fragments and golden screws begin to fall on the floor.

BILL

Jim! Old Nut-cracker thinks nothing of it. It’s just like cheese to old Nut-cracker.

JIM

They won’t let you do it, Bill.

BILL

They don’t know what I’ve got. I’m getting through it like cheese, Jim.

JIM

Suppose it’s a mile thick. Suppose it’s a million miles thick. Suppose it’s a hundred million miles thick.

BILL

Can’t be, Jim. These doors are meant to open outward. They couldn’t do that if they were more than four inches at the most, not for an Archbishop. They’d stick.

JIM

You remember that great safe we broke open once, what had coal in it.

BILL

This isn’t a safe, Jim, this is Heaven.


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