The First Patient (Supplementary)
Unit 3 – The First Patient (Play)
C. V. Burgess
Warm Up
Associate the tools with the correct profession and complete the table.
| Farmer | Carpenter | Electrician | Chef |
| plough, seed drill, stone picker, cultivator, fork | hammer, chisel, nail puller, framing square, wood | voltmeter, voltage detector, wire strippers, flashlight | oven, cutting boards, spatula |
Characters
Men: 1–8
Women: 1–8
Others: Nurse, Little Girl, Small Boy, Dentist
Scene
A dentist’s waiting-room.
Seated: Women 1–8, Men 1–8.
Entering: Man 3, Woman 5, Woman 6.
Man 4 has a rough bandage round his jaw and is groaning.
Dialogue
Woman 5: We’ll have some time to wait before the dentist sees us, dear.
Woman 6: So I see.
(They sit. Woman 5 produces holiday photographs and shows them throughout the play.)
Man 5: What time do you make it, Jack?
Man 6: Almost eight-thirty. The dentist should be along any moment now.
Woman 6: Isn’t it a dreadful hour of the morning to see a dentist! I’m not half awake yet.
Man 5: I hope he won’t be long. I’m going to be late for work anyway.
(Enter Woman 7 with Little Girl Dorothea.)
Little Girl: I don’t want to see the dentist. I won’t! I won’t!
Woman 7: Remember what Daddy said—no ice-lollies if you don’t have your teeth seen to.
(Enter Nurse.)
Woman 6: Good, the dentist shouldn’t be long now.
Woman 3: And about time, too.
(Enter Dentist.)
Dentist: Could I have the first patient, please?
(Exits into surgery.)
Woman 1: That’s you, Joe.
Man 1: Yes, that’s me.
Woman 1: Make sure he pulls out the right one, Joe.
(Exit Man 1. Woman 1 sits.)
Woman 2: I believe the dentist is ever so good.
Woman 3: He took out six for Mrs. Johnstone and she never felt a thing.
(Enter Woman 8 with Small Boy Maurice.)
Woman 8: Now Maurice, there’s nothing to be afraid of.
Small Boy: I’m not afraid.
Man 5: I’m going to ask for gas. I’ll never forget the last time.
Man 1 (off-stage anecdote): I knew a chap once. He asked for gas. It was the last time he ever asked for anything.
Man 4: I shouldn’t ask for gas. Give me the old-fashioned methods.
Man 5: You can have them. I’ll have it without the pain.
(Nurse crosses with a large hammer, then with pliers, then with a hacksaw. Each trip causes panic.)
Woman 1: Oh, Joe! My poor Joe!
(She tries to rush in; restrained by Woman 2.)
Man 4: Nothing to what they used in the old days… five hours in the chair!
(Loud hammering, screeching, sawing from surgery.)
Small Boy (confesses): I haven’t got toothache at all! I was only joking to get off school!
Woman 8: (drags him out by ear) I’ll take you to school—and the headmaster will give you a good thrashing!
Little Girl: Mummy, I was only joking too!
Woman 7: Nonsense, your tooth is as black as the kitchen range.
(Patients flee one by one.)
Woman 1: (weeping) It’s Joe! Poor Joe!
(Man 1 emerges perfectly unharmed.)
Man 1: Of course I’m all right. The dentist was only trying to force open his instrument cabinet—he’d lost the key.
(Dentist re-enters waving the key.)
Dentist: I found it—under the telephone directory! What an awful waste of time!
Nurse: The first patient couldn’t wait; he’s coming back this evening.
Woman 5: (still showing photos) Dear me, that long queue did move quickly, didn’t it?
(Woman 5 follows Nurse into surgery.)
Curtain.
About the Author
Christopher Victor Burgess (C. V. Burgess) is a humorous playwright whose situational humour intensifies characters’ emotions. Famous works:
- Short Plays for Large Classes
- Teach Yourself Speech Training
- Classroom Playhouse Verse in Action
Glossary
- groaning – crying in pain
- dreadful – extremely bad
- ice-lollies – flavoured ice on a stick
- weeny tug – small pull
- gas – anaesthesia
- scream – a very funny thing
- ferrying – carrying
- queer – strange
- writhing – twisting the body
- agony – severe pain
- sulking – being sad and silent
- blurred – hazy, not clear
1. Complete the Summary
Fill the blanks with words from the list below.
A number of patients wait at the waiting room of a dentist’s clinic. Everybody is frightened at the thought of a painful tooth being extracted. One woman is bent on showing everyone her photographs. After the arrival of the dentist, Joe, the first patient, is called in. Sometime later the nurse comes out with a hammer. Everyone is worried, imagining Joe being subjected to a lot of hammering. Later she takes in a pair of pliers and still later a hacksaw. A little boy confesses he pretended to have toothache because he did not wish to go to school. The loud sawing and screeching from within makes everyone leave the clinic one by one. Finally only two women remain, one of them Joe’s wife. She weeps bitterly about her husband. Joe emerges and explains he had shifted his appointment to the evening and had been given pills for pain. After they leave, the dentist finds the key of his tool cabinet. The woman with the photographs is surprised that the queue had moved quickly and she is next.
2. Graphic Organiser (GO)
Title: The First Patient
Author: C. V. Burgess
Settings: A dentist’s waiting-room early morning
Characters: 16 numbered men & women, Nurse, Dentist, Little Girl, Small Boy
Climax: Patients flee in panic imagining brutal treatment, but Joe was never touched.
Humorous elements: Misinterpretation of harmless noises, exaggerated fears, holiday-photos obsession, children’s tricks to skip school.
3. Answer in 3–4 Sentences
a) Who were the patients waiting for?
They were waiting for the dentist to arrive and begin his morning consultations.
b) How did Woman 5 spend her time?
She endlessly showed her holiday photographs to anyone within reach, describing each one in comic detail.
c) How did the other women react?
Most responded politely at first, then grew irritated or vacantly nodded, desperate to escape her slideshow.
d) Are children afraid of the dentist?
Yes; both Dorothea and Maurice dread pain, plus they use “toothache” as an excuse to skip school.
e) What strange instruments did the nurse carry?
A large hammer, then pliers, then a hacksaw; patients assumed these were for brutal extraction.
f) People’s reaction to the noises?
Each metallic sound provoked groans, gasps, and eventual mass flight from the clinic.
g) Why sympathize with the first patient?
They believed Joe was undergoing horrific torture with hammer and saw.
h) Why did Woman 1 panic more?
Joe was her husband; every sound seemed to be tearing his teeth and nerves apart.
i) Why was Woman 5 unaware?
She was absorbed in recounting her holiday snaps, paying no attention to the surrounding drama.
j) How did Woman 5 move up the list?
All other patients fled, so she automatically became next when the nurse called.
k) Why leave without meeting the dentist?
Terror of imagined pain, plus the farcical noises, made them prefer toothache to treatment.
l) What really happened in the surgery?
The dentist merely struggled to open his locked instrument cabinet; Joe received only pain-killing pills and re-scheduled his appointment.
4. Vocabulary – Medical Specialists
Match Column A with Column B.
| A | B |
| 1. lung problems | pulmonologist |
| 2. skin problems | dermatologist |
| 3. women’s diseases | gynaecologist |
| 4. kidney diseases | nephrologist |
| 5. nervous system | neurologist |
| 6. stomach disorders | gastroenterologist |
| 7. vision | ophthalmologist |
| 8. newborn infants | neonatologist |
| 9. heart | cardiologist |
| 10. ear, nose, throat | otolaryngologist |
Suffix -logy = study of:
Cynology – dogs; Ichthyology – fish; Ornithology – birds; Oology – birds’ eggs.
5. 80–100 Word Paragraphs
i) Mistaken understanding & humour
The entire comedy springs from patients misinterpreting innocent events: ordinary carpentry tools become instruments of torture, and cupboard-banging becomes dental butchery. Burgess piles coincidence upon exaggeration until panic snowballs into mass flight, revealing how quickly fear feeds on imagination. The humour lies in the gap between reality— a dentist merely opening a locked cabinet— and the wild scenarios the mind invents.
ii) Personal anecdote
Students discuss times they jumped to false conclusions (e.g., mistaking a fire drill for a real blaze, or a teacher’s joke for serious punishment). Groups act out the misunderstanding, then reveal the harmless truth, mirroring the play’s comic structure.
Listening – Choose the Correct Option
i) c) reduce
ii) a) accepted
iii) b) humour room
iv) d) spontaneous
v) a) living
ICT Corner – Describing a Process
URL 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfVQxUF6yTA (BBC Learning English)
URL 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNXvnbxU61w (Alternate video)
Observe active/passive verbs while describing step-by-step procedures.