The Canterville Ghost

from the story by Oscar Wilde

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An American family buys a stately home – along with its four-hundred-year-old ghost. Oscar Wilde's story portrays the clash between the Old World (an ancestral house, a medieval ghost, some traditionally-minded servants and several hundred years of history) with the New World (money to spare, consumerism and no respect for history). There is suspense, slapstick comedy, and romance, as the daughter of the American family falls in love with a young aristocrat. Then there is the final resolution: can the Ghost ever find rest and forgiveness for his crimes?

The script can be performed as a straight play or as a musical. The optional songs (words supplied) use Gilbert and Sullivan tunes for the English characters, and American songs by Stephen Foster etc for the Americans.

Mrs Otis: Mrs Umney! What has been spilt here?

Mrs Umney: It is blood, Madam.

Mrs Otis: I cannot have bloodstains in a sitting-room. Have it removed at once.

Mrs Umney: It cannot be removed, Madam. It has been there for four hundred years.

Mrs Otis: Has the floor not been cleaned in all that time?

Mrs Umney: It is the blood of Lady Eleanore de Canterville. She was murdered on that very spot by her wicked husband, Sir Simon de Canterville, in 1471. The blood has remained there ever since.

Mrs Otis: Four hundred years! It will be a seething mass of bacteria.

Mr Umney: Mrs Umney is quite correct, Madam. The stain cannot be removed. We leave it as it is now; it is the object of much admiration from visitors.

Mr Otis: That stain's not four hundred years old. It's quite fresh.

Umney: Sir Simon revisits the scene of his crime every night, sir, to keep the memory of it fresh.

Artwork by Simon Bond