The King of the Dark Chamber

The queen wants to see the King, whose visits are only during the night, in daylight. She, who worships beauty and abhors ugliness, suspects that her husband, the King, to be unsightly and leaves the palace. But she returns to realize her ignorance and to return to the King who is Light as well as Darkness. This is the theme of the play The King of the Dark Chamber which is the English version of the Bengali Raja published in 1910-1911. The story in its outline was adapted from a Buddhist tale, but Tagore moulded it into a symbolic play of a spiritual quest for Truth and Beauty.