The Playboy of the Western World

J. M. Synge

• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783752802924
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Historical Fiction
• Index: Literature

On the stage one must have reality, and one must have joy; and that is why the intellectual modern drama has failed, and people have grown sick of the false joy of the musical comedy, that has been given them in place of the rich joy found only in what is superb and wild in reality. In a good play every speech should be as fully flavoured as a nut or apple, and such speeches cannot be written by anyone who works among people who have shut their lips on poetry. In Ireland, for a few years more, we have a popular imagination that is fiery and magnificent, and tender; so that those of us who wish to write start with a chance that is not given to writers in places where the springtime of the local life has been forgotten, and the harvest is a memory only, and the straw has been turned into bricks.

ACT II.

SCENE, [as before. Brilliant morning light. Christy, looking bright and cheerful, is cleaning a girl's boots.]

CHRISTY — [to himself, counting jugs on dresser.] — Half a hundred beyond. Ten there. A score that's above. Eighty jugs. Six cups and a broken one. Two plates. A power of glasses. Bottles, a school-master'd be hard set to count, and enough in them, I'm thinking, to drunken all the wealth and wisdom of the County Clare. (He puts down the boot carefully.) There's her boots now, nice and decent for her evening use, and isn't it grand brushes she has? (He puts them down and goes by degrees to the looking-glass.) Well, this'd be a fine place to be my whole life talking out with swearing Christians, in place of my old dogs and cat, and I stalking around, smoking my pipe and drinking my fill, and never a day's work but drawing a cork an odd time, or wiping a glass, or rinsing out a shiny tumbler for a decent man. (He takes the looking-glass from the wall and puts it on the back of a chair; then sits down in front of it and begins washing his face.) Didn't I know rightly I was handsome, though it was the divil's own mirror we had beyond, would twist a squint across an angel's brow; and I'll be growing fine from this day, the way I'll have a soft lovely skin on me and won't be the like of the clumsy young fellows do be ploughing all times in the earth and dung. (He starts.) Is she coming again? (He looks out.) Stranger girls. God help me, where'll I hide myself away and my long neck nacked to the world? (He looks out.) I'd best go to the room maybe till I'm dressed again. [He gathers up his coat and the looking-glass, and runs into the inner room. The door is pushed open, and Susan Brady looks in, and knocks on door.]

SUSAN. There's nobody in it. [Knocks again.]

NELLY — [pushing her in and following her, with Honor Blake and Sara Tansey.] It'd be early for them both to be out walking the hill.

SUSAN. I'm thinking Shawn Keogh was making game of us and there's no such man in it at all.

HONOR — [pointing to straw and quilt.] — Look at that. He's been sleeping there in the night. Well, it'll be a hard case if he's gone off now, the way we'll never set our eyes on a man killed his father, and we after rising early and destroying ourselves running fast on the hill.

NELLY. Are you thinking them's his boots?

SARA — [taking them up.] — If they are, there should be his father's track on them. Did you never read in the papers the way murdered men do bleed and drip?

SUSAN. Is that blood there, Sara Tansey?

SARAH — [smelling it.] — That's bog water, I'm thinking, but it's his own they are surely, for I never seen the like of them for whity mud, and red mud, and turf on them, and the fine sands of the sea. That man's been walking, I'm telling you. [She goes down right, putting on one of his boots.]

SUSAN — [going to window.] — Maybe he's stolen off to Belmullet with the boots of Michael James, and you'd have a right so to follow after him, Sara Tansey, and you the one yoked the ass cart and drove ten miles to set your eyes on the man bit the yellow lady's nostril on the northern shore. [She looks out.]

SARA — [running to window with one boot on.] — Don't be talking, and we fooled to-day. (Putting on other boot.) There's a pair do fit me well, and I'll be keeping them for walking to the priest, when you'd be ashamed this place, going up winter and summer with nothing worth while to confess at all.

HONOR — [who has been listening at the door.] — Whisht! there's someone inside the room. (She pushes door a chink open.) It's a man. [Sara kicks off boots and puts them where they were. They all stand in a line looking through chink.]

SARA. I'll call him. Mister! Mister! (He puts in his head.) Is Pegeen within?

CHRISTY — [coming in as meek as a mouse, with the looking-glass held behind his back.] — She's above on the cnuceen, seeking the nanny goats, the way she'd have a sup of goat's milk for to colour my tea.

SARA. And asking your pardon, is it you's the man killed his father?

CHRISTY — [sidling toward the nail where the glass was hanging.] — I am, God help me!

SARA — [taking eggs she has brought.] — Then my thousand welcomes to you, and I've run up with a brace of duck's eggs for your food today. Pegeen's ducks is no use, but these are the real rich sort. Hold out your hand and you'll see it's no lie I'm telling you.

CHRISTY — [coming forward shyly, and holding out his left hand.] — They're a great and weighty size.

SUSAN. And I run up with a pat of butter, for it'd be a poor thing to have you eating your spuds dry, and you after running a great way since you did destroy your da.

CHRISTY. Thank you kindly.

HONOR. And I brought you a little cut of cake, for you should have a thin stomach on you, and you that length walking the world.

NELLY. And I brought you a little laying pullet — boiled and all she is — was crushed at the fall of night by the curate's car. Feel the fat of that breast, Mister.

CHRISTY. It's bursting, surely. [He feels it with the back of his hand, in which he holds the presents.]

SARA. Will you pinch it? Is your right hand too sacred for to use at all? (She slips round behind him.) It's a glass he has. Well, I never seen to this day a man with a looking-glass held to his back. Them that kills their fathers is a vain lot surely. [Girls giggle.]

CHRISTY — [smiling innocently and piling presents on glass.] — I'm very thankful to you all to-day...

WIDOW QUIN — [coming in quickly, at door.] — Sara Tansey, Susan Brady, Honor Blake! What in glory has you here at this hour of day?

GIRLS — [giggling.] That's the man killed his father.

WIDOW QUIN — [coming to them.] — I know well it's the man; and I'm after putting him down in the sports below for racing, leaping, pitching, and the Lord knows what.

SARA — [exuberantly.] That's right, Widow Quin. I'll bet my dowry that he'll lick the world.

WIDOW QUIN. If you will, you'd have a right to have him fresh and nourished in place of nursing a feast. (Taking presents.) Are you fasting or fed, young fellow?

CHRISTY. Fasting, if you please.

WIDOW QUIN — [loudly.] Well, you're the lot. Stir up now and give him his breakfast. (To Christy.) Come here to me (she puts him on bench beside her while the girls make tea and get his breakfast) and let you tell us your story before Pegeen will come, in place of grinning your ears off like the moon of May.

CHRISTY — [beginning to be pleased.] — It's a long story; you'd be destroyed listening.

WIDOW QUIN. Don't be letting on to be shy, a fine, gamey, treacherous lad the like of you. Was it in your house beyond you cracked his skull?

CHRISTY — [shy but flattered.] — It was not. We were digging spuds in his cold, sloping, stony, divil's patch of a field.

WIDOW QUIN. And you went asking money of him, or making talk of getting a wife would drive him from his farm?

CHRISTY. I did not, then; but there I was, digging and digging, and "You squinting idiot," says he, "let you walk down now and tell the priest you'll wed the Widow Casey in a score of days."

WIDOW QUIN. And what kind was she?

CHRISTY — [with horror.] — A walking terror from beyond the hills, and she two score and five years, and two hundredweights and five pounds in the weighing scales, with a limping leg on her, and a blinded eye, and she a woman of noted misbehaviour with the old and young.

GIRLS — [clustering round him, serving him.] — Glory be.

WIDOW QUIN. And what did he want driving you to wed with her? [She takes a bit of the chicken.]

CHRISTY — [eating with growing satisfaction.] He was letting on I was wanting a protector from the harshness of the world, and he without a thought the whole while but how he'd have her hut to live in and her gold to drink.

WIDOW QUIN. There's maybe worse than a dry hearth and a widow woman and your glass at night. So you hit him then?

CHRISTY — [getting almost excited.] — I did not. "I won't wed her," says I, "when all know she did suckle me for six weeks when I came into the world, and she a hag this day with a tongue on her has the crows and seabirds scattered, the way they wouldn't cast a shadow on her garden with the dread of her curse."

WIDOW QUIN — [teasingly.] That one should be right company.

SARA — [eagerly.] Don't mind her. Did you kill him then?

CHRISTY. "She's too good for the like of you," says he, "and go on now or I'll flatten you out like a crawling beast has passed under a dray." "You will not if I can help it," says I. "Go on," says he, "or I'll have the divil making garters of your limbs tonight." "You will not if I can help it," says I. [He sits up, brandishing his mug.]

SARA. You were right surely.

CHRISTY — [impressively.] With that the sun came out between the cloud and the hill, and it shining green in my face. "God have mercy on your soul," says he, lifting a scythe; "or on your own," says I, raising the loy. SUSAN. That's a grand story.

HONOR. He tells it lovely.

CHRISTY — [flattered and confident, waving bone.] — He gave a drive with the scythe, and I gave a lep to the east. Then I turned around with my back to the north, and I hit a blow on the ridge of his skull, laid him stretched out, and he split to the knob of his gullet. [He raises the chicken bone to his Adam's apple.]

GIRLS — [together.] Well, you're a marvel! Oh, God bless you! You're the lad surely!

SUSAN. I'm thinking the Lord God sent him this road to make a second husband to the Widow Quin, and she with a great yearning to be wedded, though all dread her here...