Show Plot Once Upon a Mattress

Authors:  Mary Rodgers (music), Marshall Barer (lyrics), and Jay Thompson, Dean Fuller, and Marshall Barer (book)

Time Period: 15th century fictional past

Setting: A remote, far-off royal kingdom

Summary:  Queen Aggravain has banned anyone else in the kingdom from marrying until her son, Prince Dauntless, finds a bride, but creates impossible tests to prevent any princess from being suitable.  Enter Princess Winnifred the Woebegone, an unrefined, boisterous, and lovable "swamp princess" who appalls the Queen.  Aggravain devises an impossible sensitivity test—placing a single tiny pea under a towering stack of twenty mattresses—to prove Winnifred is not a true, delicate princess.  But Winnifred finds some allies amongst the other members of court to help her prove her worth as a real princess.