Overview

In Baghdad long ago lived a widowed laundress and her idle, verse making son. The Caliph's Grand Vizier importunes the boy to enter a cave and rescue a lamp with a genie inside. But forewarned, the boy does not turn the lamp over to the evil Vizier, but instead uses it to provide the three impossible wishes of the princess and thus win her hand. The princess married is more unhappy than unmarried. So she knowingly gives away the old lamp for a new one to a peddlar-- the Vizier in disguise-- to make the dreamer boy prove his mettle without magic. And this he does by rescuing the princess and proving that love lends courage to conquer all.