J. M. Synge

“ We should not go to the theatre as we go to a chemist’s, or a dram-shop, but as we go to a dinner, where the food we need is taken with pleasure and excitement. This was nearly always so in Spain and England and France when the drama was at its richest—the infancy and decay of the drama tend to be didactic—but in these days the playhouse is too often stocked with the drugs of many seedy problems, or with the absinthe or vermouth of the last musical comedy. ”

“ MICHAEL
going to her and giving her the ring.—There’s your ring, Sarah Casey; but I’m thinking he’ll walk by and not stop to speak with the like of us at all.
SARAH
tidying herself, in great excitement.—Let you be sitting here and keeping a great blaze, the way he can look on my face; and let you seem to be working, for it’s great love the like of him have to talk of work.
MICHAEL
moodily, sitting down and beginning to work at a tin can.—Great love surely.
SARAH
eagerly.—Make a great blaze now, Michael Byrne. ”

“ Ah, it’s a bad, wicked way the world is this night, if there’s a fine air in it itself. You’d never have seen me, and I a young woman, making whisper-talk with the like of him, and he the fearfullest old fellow you’d see any place walking the world. ”

“ The drama, like the symphony, does not teach or prove anything. Analysts with their problems, and teachers with their systems, are soon as old-fashioned as the pharmacopœia of Galen,—look at Ibsen and the Germans—but the best plays of Ben Jonson and Molière can no more go out of fashion than the black-berries on the hedges. ”

“ In the greater part of Ireland, however, the whole people, from the tinkers to the clergy, have still a life, and view of life, that are rich and genial and humorous. I do not think that these country people, who have so much humor themselves, will mind being laughed at without malice, as the people in every country have been laughed at in their own comedies. ”

“ It’s lonesome and cold you’ll be feeling the ditch where you’ll be lying down that night, I’m telling you, and you hearing the old woman making a great noise in her sleep, and the bats squeaking in the trees. ”

“ SCENE: The same. Early morning. Sarah is washing her face in an old bucket; then plaits her hair. Michael is tidying himself also. Mary Byrne is asleep against the ditch.
SARAH
to Michael, with pleased excitement.—Go over, now, to the bundle beyond, and you’ll find a kind of a red handkerchief to put upon your neck, and a green one for myself.
MICHAEL
getting them.—You’re after spending more money on the like of them. Well, it’s a power we’re losing this time, and we not gaining a thing at all. (With the handkerchief.) Is it them two? ”

“ Is it putting that ring on your finger will keep you from getting an aged woman and losing the fine face you have, or be easing your pains, when it’s the grand ladies do be married in silk dresses, with rings of gold, that do pass any woman with their share of torment in the hour of birth, and do be paying the doctors in the city of Dublin a great price at that time, the like of what you’d pay for a good ass and a cart? ”

“ It’s sick and sorry we are to tease you; but what did you want meddling with the like of us, when it’s a long time we are going our own ways—father and son, and his son after him, or mother and daughter, and her own daughter again—and it’s little need we ever had of going up into a church and swearing—I’m told there’s swearing with it—a word no man would believe, or with drawing rings on our fingers, would be cutting our skins maybe when we’d be taking the ass from the shafts, and pulling the straps the time they’d be slippy with going around beneath the heavens in rains falling. ”

“ She breaks off coughing.—My singing voice is gone for this night, Sarah Casey. (She lights her pipe.) But if it’s flighty you are itself, you’re a grand handsome woman, the glory of tinkers, the pride of Wicklow, the Beauty of Ballinacree. I wouldn’t have you lying down and you lonesome to sleep this night in a dark ditch when the spring is coming in the trees ”

“ Of the things which nourish the imagination humour is one of the most needful, and it is dangerous to limit or destroy it. Baudelaire calls laughter the greatest sign of the Satanic element in man; and where a country loses its humor, as some towns in Ireland are doing, there will be morbidity of mind, as Baudelaire’s mind was morbid. ”

“ Let you not take the can from the sack, Sarah Casey; for the people is coming above would be making game of you, and pointing their fingers if they seen you do the like of that. Let you leave it safe in the bag, I’m saying, Sarah darling. It’s that way will be best. ”

“ I’m going up into the chapel to give you my blessing and hear the priest saying his prayers. It’s a lonesome road is running below to Greenane, and a woman would never know the things might happen her and she walking single in a lonesome place. ”

“ He begins opening the bundle.
SARAH
It’s a fine can, your reverence. for if it’s poor simple people we are, it’s fine cans we can make, and himself, God help him, is a great man surely at the trade. ”