Summary

Act 1, Scene 1 – At Rokesby Psychiatric Hospital in southern England, Martin Dysart, a psychiatrist in his mid-forties, watches seventeen year-old Alan Strang standing beside and nuzzling a horse named Nugget. As Alan leads Nugget away, Dysart wonders what is going on in the horse’s head, believing such questions to be absurd and subversive. Dysert realizes that he is bound up in old education, old knowledge and old assumptions, that he is looking at things from the wrong angle. He wonders if the heads of children and of horses are completely unknowable to him. He then recalls one Monday the previous month, which begins with visit from a woman named Hesther.

Act 1, Scene 2 – The Nurse announces the arrival of Mrs. Hesther Salomon, a magistrate. As Dysart waits for her, he explains to the audience of people watching around him that some days he...