A Boy, A Girl, & A Dog:
The Lay of Leithian Dramatic Script Project
aka “The Script,” “The Play of Leithian,” and “This Madness”…
(with apologies to Messrs. Shakespeare and Tolkien)

“For every minstrel hath his tune;
and some are strong and some are soft,
and each would bear his song aloft,
and each a little while be heard,
though rude the note, and light the word.”

   —Lúthien Tinúviel to Morgoth,
         The Lay of Leithian, Canto XIII
(J.R.R. Tolkien transl.)

Yes, this is the infamous dark-humorous “screenplay” version of the story of Beren and Luthien — and Huan — and pretty much everyone else in First Age Middle-earth, too, either directly or by inference, as paths cross calamitously. It was supposed to be a one-off cartoon, then became a single scene, then a one-act play — and then popular demand, well, demanded more. It is canon-based, as the Notes will show: I've been very careful to explain and denote what's conjecture, what's interpolation, and what warrant exists for either. There is a coffee'n'cats alert in force — beverage incidents are not unheard of — and while it is a Work In Progress, it does have an overarching structure, as may be seen, and will eventually reach The End. There should probably be a Sanity Alert as well…

—Philosopher At Large

Table Of Contents


Act I. An Appointment in Menegroth: The Throne Room Scene from the Lay of Leithian

Act II. Houseguests from Hell: The Sojourn in Nargothrond

PDF version of Acts I & II,
ZIP archive of the PDF

Act III. Tinuviel at Bay: A Caccia of Beleriand

Enteract

PDF version of Acts III & the Enteract,
ZIP archive of the PDF

Act IV. Beloved Fool: Beyond the Western Sea

· Part I
· Part II
· Part III
· Part IV
· Part V
· Part VI

The Leithian Script — Why?
(Notes to The Script Project in general, and the various Acts in detail. Begun 8/06/02)

Reference Material:
The Dynasties of the Ruling Houses of the Eldar and the Edain,
consolidated into one giant family tree from information in the Silmarillion & HOME. Color-coded 9" x 16.5" PDF file, 250KB.


UPDATES:

September 9, 2014
I have successfully updated in less than a year! This is now as complete as it gets. There is still much editing to be done (I have never been able to find the CSS used, sadly), and some of the links remain uncorrected (in large part to the notes). I am going to try in what time I have to fix the anchors first (as that is somewhat straightforward). I wouldn't mind some help with the CSS though, as (if you have explored the rest of this site) I have slightly less than non-existent design skills. If you can help, my email is farther down the page. I will also be attempting to compile all of Act IV into a single document, both PDF and HTML. If I get really ambitious (and have someone help a bit!) you might even end up seeing it all in some E-book formats..

April 23, 2014
This project seems to encourage massive delays! Another year has passed and I've finally added Act II. I'm not sure what happened to or where I found my complete copy of Act IV part IV (though I continue to search), so that is unfortunately still missing. If anyone knows where to find it or has a copy, please please send me a mail with details so I can post it. Mail details to alasseo at the google mail service.

July 17, 2013
Well, after nearly 2 years, I finally have everything but Act II and Act IV part IV up, including the family tree PDF, the PDF copies of Acts I, II, III, and enteract, and the images from Acts I, II, and II.

Hopefully, in a day or two I will have Act II and Act IV, part IV up. due to time constraints, expect no formatting for those Acts.

Oct 4, 2011
Hi, my name is Alan, and I'm hosting this mirror of the Leithian Script. This is not my work - all credit goes to Philosopher at Large. If you wish to send comments, the only method of contact I can find is the livejournal here. Otherwise, feel free to send them to me and if I am ever able to get in contact with the original author, I will pass on anything you have to say.

I have not edited any of the content of the work, with the exception of removing some images that I have not been able to retrieve. However, I have changed some of the formatting. Particularly, I have made (am working on now, really) several versions of the works. The main Table of Contents above has each Act in a single HTML file. These however, (especially Act IV) are quite large, and some browers choke on them. Thus, I have also split (will split) the acts into smaller chunks, with the cleanest breaks I could make while still preserving the purpose of a reduced filesize.