Synopsis

An historical drama requiring just one simple set, it's a play suitable for both youth and adult groups, that takes place on the Kent coast in 1817 at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

A mysterious traveller arrives at a local hostelry seeking shelter. The inn landlady reluctantly accepts him as a guest, but before he can settle down for the night he is disturbed by survivors brought from a shipwreck on the Goodwin Sands, in the persons of a young lady and her maid who were en-route for Ostend.

Duration

Characters

(4m, 4f)

• Anna Higgins - the innkeeper, a middle-aged woman of strong disposition and dominant manner
• Guy Worthington - a stalwart young man, very confident, dashing, polite and charming, but a little arrogant
• William Higgins - Anna's son, a simple young man, unworldly, easily led and dominated
• Jacob Turley - a fisherman and smuggler with a truculent and aggressive manner becoming servile when he is opposed
• Marian Langwathby - a pretty young woman of eighteen, innocent but flirtatious, amiable but insensitive, spoiled and inclined to be silly
• Thomas Thompson - a foolish young man with a guileless manner
• Alice Smith - Marian's maid, older than Marian, self-effacing and modest, very much the maid and aware of her place in life
• Mad Meg - a forceful middle-aged woman of strong and determined character

• Walk-on part of Gypsy Man, Meg's son