Butter in a Lordly Dish is the name of a half-hour radio play written by Agatha Christie and first performed on the BBC Radio Light Programme on Tuesday January 13, 1948 at 9.30pm in a strand entitled Mystery Playhouse presents The Detection Club. It was repeated on Friday January 16 at 4.15pm and has never been repeated since. No recording exists and the play has never been commercially published. It remains one of Christie's least-known works. The title comes from the Bible: Judges, 5:25 - "He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish". "He" refers to Sisera and "she" is Jael. In the Bible, Jael kills Sisera by hammering a nail through his head. The same fate awaits Sir Luke Enderby in Christie's play at the hands of Julia Keene.
The play was one of a series of six written by members of the Detection Club to raise funds for the organisation. The other five plays and their first broadcasts (all on Tuesdays at 9.30pm) are as follows:
- The Murder at Warbeck Hall by Cyril Hare, broadcast on January 27, 1948
- A Nice Cup of Tea by Anthony Gilbert, broadcast on February 3, 1948
- Sweet Death by Christianna Brand on February 10, 1948
- Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble by E. C. R. Lorac on February 17, 1948
- Where Do We Go From Here? by Dorothy L Sayers on February 24, 1948
The play received its first production since 1948 as part of the Agatha Christie Theatre Festival in 2001 at the Palace Theatre, Westcliff-on-Sea and has occasionally been performed since as a special event. The play was included in Murder on Air, a special production from April 22 to May 3, 2008 by the Agatha Christie Theatre Company of three of Christie's radio plays (the other two being The Yellow Iris and Personal Call) at the Theatre Royal, Windsor.
Read more about Butter In A Lordly Dish: Plot Summary, 1948 Radio Production
Famous quotes containing the words lordly dish, butter, lordly and/or dish:
“He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in
a lordly dish.
She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workmen’s
hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sis’e-ra, she smote off his
head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples.”
—Bible: Hebrew Judges (l. V, 25–26)
“In mathematics he was greater
Than Tycho Brahe, or Erra Pater:
For he, by geometric scale,
Could take the size of pots of ale;
Resolve, by sines and tangents straight,
If bread and butter wanted weight;
And wisely tell what hour o’ th’ day
The clock doth strike, by algebra.”
—Samuel Butler (1612–1680)
“he went down
As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs,
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills,
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.”
—Edwin Markham (1852–1940)
“My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my good is but vain hope of gain:
The day is past, and yet I saw no sun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.”
—Chidiock Tichborne (1558–1586)