Dialogue following No. 5

Enter HATTER, MARCH HARE, and DORMOUSE with tea-table which they set and seat themselves at it. Enter ALICE.

HATTER and HARE. No room! No room!

ALICE. There’s plenty of room. (sits in chair at head of table)

HARE. Have some wine.

ALICE. I don’t see any wine.

HARE. There isn’t any.

ALICE (angrily). Then it wasn’t very civil of you to offer it.

HAR. It wasn’t very civil of you to sit down without being invited.

ALICE. I didn’t know it was your table. It’s laid for a great many more than three.

HAT. Your hair wants cutting.

ALICE (severely). You should learn not to make personal remarks.

HAT (looking astonished). Why is a raven like a writing-desk?

ALICE. I believe I can guess that.

HARE. Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?

ALICE. Exactly so.

HARE. Then you should say what you mean.

ALICE. I do - at least, I mean what I say; that’s the same thing you know.

HAT. Not the same thing a bit. You might just as well say that “I see what I eat” is the same thing as “I eat what I see”.

HARE. You might just as well say that “I like what I get” is the same thing as “I get what I like”.

DORMOUSE. You might just as well say that “I breathe when I sleep” is the thing [sic] as “I sleep when I breathe”.

HAT. It is he same thing with you. (to ALICE, taking out his watch) What day of the month is it?

ALICE. The fourth.

HAT. Two days wrong. (to HARE) I told you butter wouldn’t suit the works.

HARE. It was the best butter.

HAT. Yes, but some crumbs must have got in as well, you shouldn’t have put it in with the bread-knife.

HARE takes watch and dips it in cup

HARE. It was the best butter, you know.

ALICE. What a funny watch! It tells the day of the month, and doesn’t tell what o’clock it is.

HAT. Why should it. Does your watch tell you what year it is?

ALICE. Of course not, but that’s because it stays the same year for such a long time together.

HAT. Which is just the case with mine. Have you guessed the riddle yet?

ALICE. No, I give it up. What’s the answer?

HAT. I haven’t the slightest idea.

HARE. Nor I.

ALICE. I think you might do something better with your time than wasting it asking riddles that have no answers.

HAT. If you knew Time as well as I do, you wouldn’t talk about wasting it. It’s him.

ALICE. I don’t know what you mean.

HAT. Of course you don’t, I dare say you never spoke to Time.

ALICE. Perhaps not, but I know I have to beat time when I learn music.

HAT. Ah! that accounts for it. He won’t stand beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he’d do almost anything you liked with the clock. For instanc,e suppose that it were nine o’clock in the morning - just time to begin lessons, you’d only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling. Half past one - time for dinner!

HARE. I only wish it was.

ALICE. That would be grand certainly, but then I shouldn’t be hungry for it, you know

HAT. Not at first perhaps, but you could keep it to half-past one as long as you liked.

ALICE. Is that the way you manage?

HAT. Not I. We quarrelled last March, just before he went mad, you know (points to HARE) it was at the great concert given by the Queen of Hearts, and I had to sing

  Twinkle, twinkle, little bat, How I wonder what you’re at! Up above the world you fly Like a tea-tray in the sky.

Well I’d hardly finished the first verse when the Queen bawled out, “He’s murdering the time, off with his head.”

ALICE. How dreadfully savage!

HAT. And ever since that, he won’t do a thing I ask. It’s always six o’clock now.

ALICE. Is that the reason so many tea-things are put out here?

HAT (sighing). Yes, that’s it. It’s always tea-time, and we’ve not time to wash the things between whiles.

ALICE. Then you keep moving round, I suppose?

HAT. Exactly so, as the things get used up.

ALICE. But what happens when you come to the beginning again?

HARE. Suppose we change the subject. Wake up, Dormouse, and tell us a story.

DORMOUSE. Once upon a time there were three sisters, and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie, and they lived at the bottom of a well –

ALICE. What did they live on?

DORMOUSE. They lived on treacle.

ALICE. They couldn’t have done that, you know, they’d have been ill.

DORMOUSE. So they were - very ill.

HARE. Take some more tea!

ALICE. I’ve had nothing yet, so I can’t take more.

HAT. You mean you can’t take less. It’s very easy to take more than nothing.

ALICE. Nobody asked your opinion.

HAT. Who’s making personal remarks now?

ALICE (to D) Why did they live at the bottom of a well?

DORMOUSE. It was a treacle well.

ALICE. There’s no such thing.

HAT and HARE. Hush! Hush!

DORMOUSE. And so these three little sisters, they were learning to draw you know –

ALICE. What did they draw?

DORMOUSE. Treacle.

HAT. I want a clean cup, let’s all move one place on.

HAT moves, followed by DORMOUSE and MARCH HARE. ALICE into MARCH HARE’s place.

ALICE. But I don’t understand. Where did they draw the treacle from?

HAT. You can draw water out of a water-well, so I should think you could draw treacle out of a treacle-well - eh, stupid?

ALICE. But they were in the well.

DORMOUSE. Of course they were - well in - they were learning to draw everything that begins with an M –

ALICE. Why with an M?

HARE. Why not?

DORMOUSE (half asleep, and pinched by HATTER, gives a little shriek and goes on). that begins with an M; suh as mouse-traps, and moon, and memory, and muchness; you know how you say things are “much of a muchness”, did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?

ALICE. Really, now you ask me, I don’t think –

HAT. Then you shouldn’t talk.

ALICE. (jumping up) How rude you are!

All rise from table and come down stage