- The Pied Piper: If you break the promise that you made... this is the only time I'll warn... by the time the sun has changed to shade, you'll wish you all were never born!
- Mayor: Do you threaten us, fellow? Go, do your worst! Blow your pipe until you burst!
- [the councillors make sounds of agreement]
- The Pied Piper: So be it.
- [Turns to leave, but at the door turns back]
- The Pied Piper: Hamelin's... cursed!
- [Leaves, closing the door behind him]
- Lame Boy: And just as I became assured my lame foot would be speedily cured, the music stopped and I stood still...
- [we see the Lame Boy at night standing before the place in the mountain where the portal had opened]
- Lame Boy: and found myself outside the hill...
- Lame man: [He turns around and we see him grown into an adult] Left alone against my will... to go now limping as before and never hear of that country more.
- The Pied Piper: [to the Mayor and council after they've tried to cheat him] Folks who put me in a passion... may find me pipe after another fashion!
- Lame Boy: [holding up a rat for the Pied Piper to see] You're needed here without a doubt... you must have figured *that* much out.
- The Pied Piper: How's Hamelin fixed for rodent slayers?
- Alderman: Oh no, not another necromancer! We're giving none a second chance, sir!
- Willie: But I'm on holiday! What's the point of being on holiday if you can't stay up?
- Robert Browning: That's a very clever argument, young Willie, to be sure! And while I'm certain I can't answer it as you phrased it, put like that I see no reason why you shouldn't stay up until dawn; that's what holidays are for.
- Townswoman: [at a town meeting] Just a moment! Where's the mayor?
- Burly Townsman: He said he'd try and stop by later... something about a major meeting having to do with banquet seating.
- Townswoman: Typical! You know what that's about!
- Old Townswoman: They're sitting there drinking stout!
- Bernard the Necromancer: [of the rats] Get rid of them? There that problem's hard to fix. After all, this is the year only 1376.
- Townswoman: It's later than you think!
- [last lines]
- Robert Browning: [softly and gently] So, Willie... let me and you be wipers of scores out with all men... especially pipers. And whether they pipe us free from rats or from mice, if we've promise them aught... let us keep our promise.
- Burly Townsman: [a la James Cagney, finding a rat nesting in his hat] You... you dirty rat!
- Bernard the Necromancer: Science hasn't figured out the rat... after all, we still think the world is flat.
- Robert Browning: [the young townswoman is seen sitting by the bed of her missing child] Alas... alas for Hamelin.
- [She bends over the bed and begins sobbing]
- The Pied Piper: This I'll promise... the time may come when I wear out my current welcome. Should that happen, you have my word I'll remember what I heard and give you my protection.
- Lame Boy: Against what?
- The Pied Piper: Why, unnatural selection.
- Robert Browning: You put me in mind of Saint Augustine's observation that the innocence of children is due less to the purity of their hearts than the weakness of their limbs.