Characters
The Happy Prince
Pity learned after death
A dead prince whose gilded statue, with sapphire eyes and a ruby on its sword-hilt, stands above the city. In life he knew only pleasure behind the walls of Sans-Souci; as a statue he sees the city's misery and weeps with a heart of lead. Fixed to his pedestal, he gives away his ruby, his eyes and his gold through the Swallow until he is blind and grey, and his broken heart is chosen by God.
The Swallow
Messenger and devoted friend
A little bird who stays behind when his friends fly to Egypt because he has fallen for a Reed, then leaves her in a huff. Vain, chatty and easily bored at first, he agrees to stay one night as the Prince's messenger, and then another, until he gives up Egypt altogether. He carries every gift, tells the blind Prince stories of the Nile, and dies of cold at his feet after kissing him on the lips.
The Reed
The Swallow's first love
A slender river Reed whom the Swallow courts all summer by flying round her and making silver ripples on the water. The other Swallows call it a ridiculous attachment, since she has no money and far too many relations. She will not leave her home to travel, and the Swallow accuses her of flirting with the wind. Her story sets up the shallow love that his love for the Prince replaces.
The seamstress and her son
Poverty at the needle
A tired woman with coarse, needle-pricked hands who embroiders passionflowers on a satin gown for one of the Queen's maids-of-honour, while her little boy lies ill with fever, asking for oranges she cannot buy. The Swallow leaves the ruby beside her thimble as she sleeps and cools the boy with his wings. Her story answers the rich girl on the palace balcony who complains that seamstresses are so lazy.
The young man in the garret
The starving writer
A young man with crisp brown hair and dreamy eyes who is trying to finish a play for the Director of the Theatre, but is too cold and faint with hunger to go on. The Swallow drops the Prince's first sapphire through a hole in his roof onto a bunch of withered violets. He takes it as a present from some great admirer and declares that he is beginning to be appreciated.
The little match-girl
A child in the square
A barefoot, bareheaded girl in the square below the statue who has let her matches fall into the gutter and is crying because her father will beat her if she brings home no money. The Prince gives her his second sapphire, which leaves him blind. She takes the jewel for a lovely bit of glass and runs home laughing.
The Mayor and Town Councillors
Civic self-importance
The city's rulers, who admire the statue only while it glitters. The Mayor finds it little better than a beggar once its gold is gone, wants a proclamation forbidding birds to die in the square, and proposes a new statue of himself. The Councillors echo every word he says until each of them wants his own statue, and they fall to quarrelling. The Art Professor and the Town Clerk complete this picture of official folly.
God and His Angel
The true judge of worth
They appear only in the closing lines. God asks one of His Angels to bring Him the two most precious things in the city, and the Angel returns with the broken leaden heart and the dead Swallow from the dust-heap. God approves the choice, promising that the bird will sing forever in His garden of Paradise and that the Happy Prince will praise Him in His city of gold.