St Jane Austen (1817)

Period Costume. As befits an upper-class Anglican, Hnaef may wear preaching bands and a superior look.

Hnaef: Archdruid, it is the Marquis of Cholmondeley-Warner to see you.

Archdruid: The Marquis of Cholmondeley-Warner? But I am wearing my second-best collection of petticoats. Kitty - you must see him for me.

Kitty: Your Marquisity. The Archdruid is sad to inform you that, due to her getting wet feet she has had an attack of the vapours. But she says if you want to ask her to marry you again, the answer is "no". You are a sullen man, whose brooding and miserable exterior conceals a heart of flint. You may own Rutland, but what is all of Rutland if one must live among its sybaritic pleasures without true love? And what is that vile practice that you practise in its second-largest town?

Marquis: Uppingham?

Kitty: Precisely. You are a libertine and a trifler with women's hearts. Now begone, your Marquisitry.

Marquis: I shall be gone indeed, after I have swum around the lake in a sultry and mysterious manner.

Kitty: You'll find the duck pond over there, Your Marquisness. Afterwards you may change in one of the Marquees.

Marquis: You have more than one Marquee?

Kitty: Indeed, Your Marquisticity. The one on the left has been erected for tonight's Janeite Ball. The one on the right is the one we keep for visitors from Devon. We call it the Marquee of Tavistock.

[The Marquee - sorry, Marquis, may leave at this point]

Archdruid: Ah, Hnaef. What shall we do with all the gels?

Hnaef: Well, now your foot's better I'd put the Ibuprofen one away...

Archdruid: Not the medical creams. I'm trying to say "girls" in an upper-class manner, like Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

Hnaef: Like Lady Catherine de Bourgh? No, I do not like Lady Catherine de Bourgh. She is a miserable old crone who makes the lives of those who swing into orbit around her a tapestry of interference and misery. And have you heard her nephew Chris sing? Shocking, I tell you. And such eyebrows - he has them made up in Town by an eyebrow-monger, I believe.

Archdruid: No, Hnaef - I mean, when will we ever see the young gels of the Community all married? Dolly, Kitty, Bessy, Molly and Stacey?

Hnaef: You are forgetting, Eileen. Dolly is shacked up with a bloke from Eversholt. Bessy is hanging around with a student from Cranfield University. You attended the Civil Partnership of Kitty and Molly last week. And Stacey just wants to have fun.

Archdruid: Ah, yes, Hnaef. It's not 1805 anymore.

Hnaef: That is a truth universally acknowledged.