“ THE KING. Do ghosts eat bread? Forsooth, men who have been slain with a sword do not go about in the streets crying for a piece of bread.
THE SERVANT. Forsooth, they do if they are fashioned as this beggar.
THE KING. Why, he is but a man. Surely he cannot have more than one life in a lifetime.
THE SERVANT. Listen to a tale, O king, which happened yesterday.
THE KING. I am listening.
THE SERVANT. Thy soldiers smote this beggar for crying aloud in the streets for bread, but his wounds are already healed. They cut out his tongue, but he immediately grew another. ”

“ I lose two sons when Gunnar's eyes are still,
For then will Kolskegg never more turn home....
If Gunnar would but sail, three years would pass;
Only three years of banishment said the doom—
So few, so few, for I can last ten years
With this unshrunken body and steady heart.
(To ORMILD)
Have I sat down in comfort by the fire
And waited to be told the thing I knew?
Have any men come home to the young women,
Thinking old women do not need to hear,
That you can play at being a bower-maid
In a long gown although no beasts are foddered? ”

“ Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to hear the truth of an old legend that has persisted wrongly through the ages, the truth that, until now, has been hid behind the embroidered curtain of a rhyme, about the Knave of Hearts, who was no knave but a very hero indeed. The truth, you will agree with me, gentlemen and most honored ladies, is rare! It is only the quiet, unimpassioned things of nature that seem what they are. ”

“ THE BEGGAR (coolly) . One of thy servants cannot stop me. Neither can ten thousand of them do me any harm. I am stronger than a mountain. I am stronger than the sea!
THE KING. Ha! We will see about that, we will see about that. (To THE SERVANT) Hold him, I say. Call the guards. He shall be put in chains.
THE BEGGAR. My strength is greater than a mountain and my words are more fearful than a hurricane. This servant of thine cannot even touch me. With one breath of my mouth I can blow over this whole palace. ”

“ JOHN TALBOT. Cromwell's soldiers hold the spring.
DRISCOLL. I care not! Let me forth and drink! Let me forth!
JOHN TALBOT. 'T would be to your death.
BUTLER. And what will he get but his death if he stay here,
Captain Talbot?
DRISCOLL (struggling with JOHN TALBOT) . I'm choked! I'm choked, I tell ye! Let me go, Jack Talbot! Let me go!
NEWCOMBE (still half-asleep, rises to his knees, with a terrible cry, and his groping hands upthrust to guard his head) . God's pity! No! no! no!
DRISCOLL (shocked into sanity, staggers back, crossing himself) .
God shield us!
BUTLER. Silence that whelp! ”

“ The Beggar and the King looks at first like a pleasant absurdity; it is in reality valuable as a short history of the ostrich method of dealing with realities. The beggar, of course, continues to cry aloud after his tongue, and even his head, have been removed, because there are so many millions of him. Again and again, in the course of history, he has gathered desperate courage to defy authority that is blind and evil. Always at last, as in the French and the Russian revolutions and in the more recent European revolts, he succeeds in wresting the power from those in autocratic authority. ”

“ Good-morrow, Bartley Fallon; good-morrow, Mrs. Fallon. Well, Bartley, you'll find no cause for complaining to-day; they are all saying it was a good fair.
BARTLEY (raising his voice) . It was not a good fair, Mrs. Tarpey. It was a scattered sort of a fair. If we didn't expect more, we got less. That's the way with me always: whatever I have to sell goes down and whatever I have to buy goes up. If there's ever any misfortune coming to this world, it's on myself it pitches, like a flock of crows on seed potatoes. ”

“ An old woman will be soon tired with anything she will do, and isn't it nine days herself is after crying and keening, and making great sorrow in the house?
MAURYA (puts the empty cup mouth downwards on the table, and lays her hands together on BARTLEY'S feet) . They're all together this time, and the end is come. May the Almighty God have mercy on Bartley's soul, and on Michael's soul, and on the souls of Sheamus and Patch, and Stephen and Shawn (bending her head) ; and may He have mercy on my soul, Nora, and on the soul of everyone is left living in the world. ”

“ At the rise of the curtain there is a moment of intense silence. Then the STEWARD enters and commences to clear the table of the few dishes which still remain on it after the CAPTAIN'S dinner. He is an old, grizzled man dressed in dungaree pants, a sweater, and a woolen cap with ear-flaps. His manner is sullen and angry. He stops stacking up the plates and casts a quick glance upward at the skylight; then tiptoes over to the closed door in rear and listens with his ear pressed to the crack. What he hears makes his face darken and he mutters a furious curse. ”

“ Touch thy forehead now to the floor, as I have commanded thee, and thou shall go from this palace a free man. Refuse, and thou wilt be sorry before an hour that thy father ever came within twenty paces of thy mother.
THE BEGGAR. I have ever lamented that he did. For to be born into this world a beggar is a more unhappy thing than any that I know—unless it is to be born a king.
THE KING. Fft! Thy tongue of a truth is too lively for thy health. Come, now, touch thy forehead thrice to the floor and promise solemnly that thou wilt never beg in the streets again. ”

“ THE BEGGAR. I will not harm thee now. I will only cry aloud in the streets for bread wherewith to fill my belly. But one day I will not be so kind to thee. On that day my mouth will be filled with a rushing wind and my arms will become as strong as steel rods, and I will blow over this palace, and all the bones in thy foolish body I will snap between my fingers. I will beat upon a large drum and thy head will be my drumstick. ”

“ THE STEWARD. Let the Old Man see ye up for'ard monkey-shinin' with the handstand ye'll get a hidin' ye'll not forget in a hurry.
BEN. Aw, he don't see nothin'. (A trace of awe in his tones—he glances upward.) He just walks up and down like he didn't notice nobody—and stares at the ice to the no'th'ard.
THE STEWARD (the same tone of awe creeping into his voice) . He's always starin' at the ice. (In a sudden rage, shaking his fist at the skylight) Ice, ice, ice! Damn him and damn the ice! Holdin' us in for nigh on a year—nothin' to see but ice—stuck in it like a fly in molasses! ”

“ The admiration of men who care for poetry, and how many of them are there? There's a bigger demand for smoked glasses to look at eclipses of the sun. Why should Fame come to me? Haven't I given up my days for her? That is enough to keep her away. I am a poet; that is enough reason for her to slight me. Proud and aloof and cold as marble, what does Fame care for us? ”

“ MARY STEWART. Let us go and lift him into the house, and not be leaving him lie out there alone.
[CURTAIN] THE SUN [1] John Glasworthy
SCENE: A GIRL sits crouched over her knees on a stile close to a river. A MAN with a silver badge stands beside her clutching the worn top plank. THE GIRL'S level brows are drawn together; her eyes see her memories. THE MAN'S eyes see THE GIRL; he has a dark, twisted face. The bright sun shines; the quiet river flows; the cuckoo is calling; the mayflower is in bloom along the hedge that ends in the stile on the towing-path. ”

“ Don't you see the Government is beginning to realize it can't do without us? Don't you see my appointment is an acknowledgment of the rising tide of radicalism in the world? Don't you see, with the prestige that will come to me from this appointment, I will have greater power after the war; power to bring about the realization of all our dreams; power to demand—even at the Peace table itself, perhaps—that all wars must end?
HILDA. Do you actually believe you will have any power with your own people when you have compromised them for a temporary expediency? ”

“ Come, little bird with silver feet!
(MAIRE dies, and the child goes.)
SHAWN BRUIN
She is dead!
BRIDGET BRUIN
Come from that image: body and soul are gone.
You have thrown your arms about a drift of leaves
Or bole of an ash tree changed into her image.
FATHER HART
Thus do the spirits of evil snatch their prey
Almost out of the very hand of God;
And day by day their power is more and more,
And men and women leave old paths, for pride
Comes knocking with thin knuckles on the heart. ”

“ POMPDEBILE. Give one of the tarts to us. We would sample it.
(The PASTRY COOKS hand the tray to the KING, who selects a tart and eats it.)
POMPDEBILE (to VIOLETTA) . My dear, they are marvels! marvels! (He comes down from the throne and leads VIOLETTA up to the dais.) Your throne, my dear.
VIOLETTA (sitting down, with a sigh) . I'm glad it's such a comfortable one.
POMPDEBILE. Knave, we forgive your offense. The temptation was very great. There are things that mere human nature cannot be expected to resist. Another tart, Cooks, and yet another! ”

“ HALLGERD
Am I a wandering flame that sears and passes?
We must bide here, good Steinvor, and be quiet.
Without a man a woman cannot rule,
Nor kill without a knife; and where's the man
That I shall put before this goodly Gunnar?
I will not be made less by a less man.
There is no man so great as my man Gunnar:
I have set men at him to show forth his might ”

“ Even Cromwell—
HUGH TALBOT. Tut, tut, Dick! It's little ye know of Cromwell.
JOHN TALBOT. Then—you mean—
HUGH TALBOT. An you surrender Cashala, we may all six pass free.
An you hold Cashala, they will hang me, here before your eyes.
(DRISCOLL gives a rattling cry.)
BUTLER. God forgive me!
HUGH TALBOT. You have your orders. Hold the bridge!
(Turns to door.)
JOHN TALBOT (barring his way) . No, no! You shan't go forth!
FENTON. God's mercy, no!
HUGH TALBOT. Are you stark crazed?
FENTON. You shall stay with us.
JOHN TALBOT. What's your pledged word to men that know not honor? ”

“ Last night I was but the mother of a lad that herded sheep on the Athole hills: this morn it is I that am the mother of a man who is among the great ones of the earth. All over the land they will be telling of Dugald Stewart. Mothers will teach their children to be men by him. High will his name be with the teller of fine tales.—The great men came, they came in their pride, terrible like the storm they were, and cunning with words of guile were they. Death was with them.... He was but a lad, a young lad, with great length of days before him, and the grandeur of the world. ”

“ HALLGERD (seating herself in the high-seat)
It is an Irish hound, from that strange soil
Where men by day walk with unearthly eyes
And cross the veils of the air, and are not men
But fierce abstractions eating their own hearts
Impatiently and seeing too much to be joyful.
If Gunnar welcomed ye, ye may remain. ”

“ In Justice, "society stamps out a human life not without its fair possibilities—for eighty-one pounds," because obviously clear and guilty infraction of law cannot go unavenged. Justice is not condemned by the facts shown in this play, nor is its working extolled. In The Mob, the patrioteering element destroys a man who proclaims the injustice of a small and greedy war of conquest. In The Pigeon, brilliant debate is held, but no conclusion reached, as to what we should do with derelict and wasted lives, with men who do not fit into the scheme of success and society. ”

“ In comedy, and even in farce, struggle is clearly present. Here our sympathy is with people who engage in a not impossible combat—against rather obvious villains who can be unmasked, or against such public opinion or popular conventions as can be overset. The hold of an absurd bit of gossip upon stupid people is firm enough in "Spreading the News"; but fortunately it must yield to facts at last. The Queen and the Knave of Hearts are sufficiently clever, with the aid of the superb cookery of the Knave's wife, to do away with an ancient and solemnly reverenced law of Pompdebile's court. ”