The origin myth of ‘Kubla Khan’ is that of the young genius who retires to ‘a lonely farmhouse between Porlock and Lynton’ suffering ‘a slight indisposition’ for which he self-administers ‘an anodyne’. Porlock is associated with the exposure of malignity in Simon Gray's drama, Otherwise Engaged (1975), which describes a lazy afternoon on which a publisher called Hench settles down to listen to a new recording of Parsifal. The play describes a series of interruptions from friends, family, and colleagues, as if the person from Porlock were manifested through each. At first we perceive them through Hench's eyes, as an unwelcome distraction, but in their comings and goings they slowly reveal Hench to be a selfish, complacent monster.