Description

The Emperor’s New Clothes Guided Reading Script

This is one of a collection of Hans Christian Andersen stories and includes Teaching Input, Discussion and Suggestions for Further Activities – i.e. ample content for a lesson. It can equally be used as a literary or PSHE resource.

The Ugly Duckling is also available with more to follow (scripts, not ducklings!)

It could also be used as a small play, for performance, with a few ‘tweaks’ and the addition of the music suggestions below.

The Emperor’s New Clothes is also available as a play within a play. It is part of the Fashion Assembly and tells the story via a cast of 10. The assembly itself is for a cast of 30 (easily adaptable up or down depending on a number of fashion models used!)

Music

1. Fashion – David Bowie
2.  You’re so Vain – Carly Simon

Cast of 6:

1. Narrator
2. Emperor
3. Weaver 1 & 2
4. Royal Adviser
5. Street Child

Duration:        Around 10 minutes reading time

Sample Text:

Narrator:             (To Street Child) Apart from you, you all went along with this charade – just so as to save face? Well, really!

Royal Adviser:   Yes, I know it looks bad

Narrator:             It most certainly does

Emperor:             But I wonder what you’d have done, especially as everyone else seemed to be going along with it?

Narrator:             But couldn’t you see you were being taken for a song and a dance?

Weaver 1:            It was quite funny!

Weaver 2:            Especially when the emperor here actually turned up to try on his new clothes

Weaver 1:            After having given us all that money and gold thread and

Emperor:             (Interrupting) Yes, yes. Must you rub it in? Haven’t I been humiliated enough?

Royal Adviser:   (Groaning) Oh, if only I had had the strength to admit to what I could see – as in, nothing! No cloth on the loom, no clothes, just air!

Emperor:             And what a lot of hot air you were! Coming back telling me how wonderfully the work was progressing. How delighted I was going to be with my new clothes!

Royal Adviser:   But I didn’t want to appear either unfit for my job or stupid.

Narrator:             And so, you ended up being both!

Street Child:       I’ll never understand grown-ups!