by J. M. Synge
CHRISTY. It’s Pegeen I’m seeking only, and what’d I care if you brought me a drift of chosen females, standing in their shifts itself, maybe, from this place to the Eastern World?
SARA — [runs in, pulling off one of her petticoats.] — They’re going to hang him. (Holding out petticoat and shawl.) Fit these upon him, and let him run off to the east.
WIDOW QUIN. He’s raving now; but we’ll fit them on him, and I’ll take him, in the ferry, to the Achill boat.
CHRISTY — [struggling feebly.] — Leave me go, will you? when I’m thinking of my luck to-day, for she will wed me surely, and I a proven hero in the end of all. [They try to fasten petticoat round him.]
WIDOW QUIN. Take his left hand, and we’ll pull him now. Come on, young fellow.
CHRISTY — [suddenly starting up.] — You’ll be taking me from her? You’re jealous, is it, of her wedding me? Go on from this. [He snatches up a stool, and threatens them with it.]
WIDOW QUIN — [going.] — It’s in the mad-house they should put him, not in jail, at all. We’ll go by the back-door, to call the doctor, and we’ll save him so. [She goes out, with Sara, through inner room. Men crowd in the doorway. Christy sits down again by the fire.]
MICHAEL — [in a terrified whisper.] — Is the old lad killed surely?
PHILLY. I’m after feeling the last gasps quitting his heart. [They peer in at Christy.]
MICHAEL — [with a rope.] — Look at the way he is. Twist a hangman’s knot on it, and slip it over his head, while he’s not minding at all.
PHILLY. Let you take it, Shaneen. You’re the soberest of all that’s here.
SHAWN. Is it me to go near him, and he the wickedest and worst with me? Let you take it, Pegeen Mike.
PEGEEN. Come on, so. [She goes forward with the others, and they drop the double hitch over his head.]
CHRISTY. What ails you?
SHAWN — [triumphantly, as they pull the rope tight on his arms.] — Come on to the peelers, till they stretch you now.
CHRISTY. Me!
MICHAEL. If we took pity on you, the Lord God would, maybe, bring us ruin from the law to-day, so you’d best come easy, for hanging is an easy and a speedy end.
CHRISTY. I’ll not stir. (To Pegeen.) And what is it you’ll say to me, and I after doing it this time in the face of all?
PEGEEN. I’ll say, a strange man is a marvel, with his mighty talk; but what’s a squabble in your back-yard, and the blow of a loy, have taught me that there’s a great gap between a gallous story and a dirty deed. (To Men.) Take him on from this, or the lot of us will be likely put on trial for his deed to-day.
CHRISTY — [with horror in his voice.] — And it’s yourself will send me off, to have a horny-fingered hangman hitching his bloody slip-knots at the butt of my ear.
MEN — [pulling rope.] — Come on, will you? [He is pulled down on the floor.]
CHRISTY — [twisting his legs round the table.] — Cut the rope, Pegeen, and I’ll quit the lot of you, and live from this out, like the madmen of Keel, eating muck and green weeds, on the faces of the cliffs.
PEGEEN. And leave us to hang, is it, for a saucy liar, the like of you? (To men.) Take him on, out from this.
SHAWN. Pull a twist on his neck, and squeeze him so.
PHILLY. Twist yourself. Sure he cannot hurt you, if you keep your distance from his teeth alone.
SHAWN. I’m afeard of him. (To Pegeen.) Lift a lighted sod, will you, and scorch his leg.
PEGEEN — [blowing the fire, with a bellows.] Leave go now, young fellow, or I’ll scorch your shins.
CHRISTY. You’re blowing for to torture me (His voice rising and growing stronger.) That’s your kind, is it? Then let the lot of you be wary, for, if I’ve to face the gallows, I’ll have a gay march down, I tell you, and shed the blood of some of you before I die.
SHAWN — [in terror.] — Keep a good hold, Philly. Be wary, for the love of God. For I’m thinking he would liefest wreak his pains on me.
CHRISTY — [almost gaily.] — If I do lay my hands on you, it’s the way you’ll be at the fall of night, hanging as a scarecrow for the fowls of hell. Ah, you’ll have a gallous jaunt I’m saying, coaching out through Limbo with my father’s ghost.
SHAWN — [to Pegeen.] — Make haste, will you? Oh, isn’t he a holy terror, and isn’t it true for Father Reilly, that all drink’s a curse that has the lot of you so shaky and uncertain now?
CHRISTY. If I can wring a neck among you, I’ll have a royal judgment looking on the trembling jury in the courts of law. And won’t there be crying out in Mayo the day I’m stretched upon the rope with ladies in their silks and satins snivelling in their lacy kerchiefs, and they rhyming songs and ballads on the terror of my fate? [He squirms round on the floor and bites Shawn’s leg.]
SHAWN — [shrieking.] My leg’s bit on me. He’s the like of a mad dog, I’m thinking, the way that I will surely die.
CHRISTY — [delighted with himself.] — You will then, the way you can shake out hell’s flags of welcome for my coming in two weeks or three, for I’m thinking Satan hasn’t many have killed their da in Kerry, and in Mayo too. [Old Mahon comes in behind on all fours and looks on unnoticed.]
MEN — [to Pegeen.] — Bring the sod, will you?
PEGEEN [coming over.] — God help him so. (Burns his leg.)
CHRISTY — [kicking and screaming.] — O, glory be to God! [He kicks loose from the table, and they all drag him towards the door.]
JIMMY — [seeing old Mahon.] — Will you look what’s come in? [They all drop Christy and run left.]
CHRISTY — [scrambling on his knees face to face with old Mahon.] — Are you coming to be killed a third time, or what ails you now?
MAHON. For what is it they have you tied?
CHRISTY. They’re taking me to the peelers to have me hanged for slaying you.
MICHAEL — [apologetically.] It is the will of God that all should guard their little cabins from the treachery of law, and what would my daughter be doing if I was ruined or was hanged itself?
MAHON — [grimly, loosening Christy.] — It’s little I care if you put a bag on her back, and went picking cockles till the hour of death; but my son and myself will be going our own way, and we’ll have great times from this out telling stories of the villainy of Mayo, and the fools is here. (To Christy, who is freed.) Come on now.
CHRISTY. Go with you, is it? I will then, like a gallant captain with his heathen slave. Go on now and I’ll see you from this day stewing my oatmeal and washing my spuds, for I’m master of all fights from now. (Pushing Mahon.) Go on, I’m saying.
MAHON. Is it me?
CHRISTY. Not a word out of you. Go on from this.
MAHON [walking out and looking back at Christy over his shoulder.] — Glory be to God! (With a broad smile.) I am crazy again! [Goes.]
CHRISTY. Ten thousand blessings upon all that’s here, for you’ve turned me a likely gaffer in the end of all, the way I’ll go romancing through a romping lifetime from this hour to the dawning of the judgment day. [He goes out.]
MICHAEL. By the will of God, we’ll have peace now for our drinks. Will you draw the porter, Pegeen?
SHAWN — [going up to her.] — It’s a miracle Father Reilly can wed us in the end of all, and we’ll have none to trouble us when his vicious bite is healed.
PEGEEN — [hitting him a box on the ear.] — Quit my sight. (Putting her shawl over her head and breaking out into wild lamentations.) Oh my grief, I’ve lost him surely. I’ve lost the only Playboy of the Western World.
CURTAIN
The Tinker’s Wedding
It took Synge five years to finish writing The Tinker’s Wedding, which he had begun working on at the same time as Riders to the Sea and In the Shadow of the Glen. The two-act drama is set on a roadside near a chapel in rural Ireland. The plot involves Sarah Casey, who convinces her reluctant lover Michael Byrne, a tinker, to marry her by threatening to run off with another man. She accosts a local priest, convincing him to wed them
for ten shillings and a tin can. At the wedding, Michael’s mother turns up drunk and harasses the priest, before stealing the can to exchange it for more drink. The next morning Sarah and Michael go to the chapel to be wed, but when the priest finds that the can is missing he refuses to perform the ceremony. Sarah protests and a fight breaks out, which ends with the priest tied up in a sack. The tinkers free him after he swears not to set the police after them and he curses them in God’s name as they flee in mock terror.
A broad comedy with elements of social truth, The Tinkers’ Wedding was refused production in the Abbey Theatre. No doubt, the sight of a priest being beaten up and thrown into a sack would infuriate a Dublin audience that had already shown its hostility to the previous play, The Playboy of the Western World. The Tinkers’ Wedding premiered instead at His Majesty’s Theatre London on 11 November, 1909, eight months after Synge had passed away. The critics judged the work to be too long, deeming its content more suitable to the one-act form.
His Majesty’s Theatre, London
CONTENTS
PREFACE.
PERSONS
ACT I.
ACT II
Interior of the theatre in the nineteenth century
PREFACE.
THE DRAMA IS made serious — in the French sense of the word — not by the degree in which it is taken up with problems that are serious in themselves, but by the degree in which it gives the nourishment, not very easy to define, on which our imaginations live. 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.
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.
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 humour, as some towns in Ireland are doing, there will be morbidity of mind, as Baudelaire’s mind was morbid.
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 humour themselves, will mind being laughed at without malice, as the people in every country have been laughed at in their own comedies.
J. M. S.
December 2nd, 1907
PERSONS
MICHAEL BYRNE, a tinker.
MARY BYRNE, an old woman, his mother.
SARAH CASEY, a young tinker woman.
A PRIEST.
ACT I.
SCENE: A VILLAGE roadside after nightfall. A fire of sticks is burning near the ditch a little to the right. Michael is working beside it. In the background, on the left, a sort of tent and ragged clothes drying on the hedge. On the right a chapel-gate.
SARAH CASEY:(coming in on right, eagerly.)We’ll see his reverence this place, Michael Byrne, and he passing backward to his house to-night.
MICHAEL: (grimly.)That’ll be a sacred and a sainted joy!
SARAH: (sharply.)It’ll be small joy for yourself if you aren’t ready with my wedding ring. (She goes over to him.) Is it near done this time, or what way is it at all?
MICHAEL: A poor way only, Sarah Casey, for it’s the divil’s job making a ring, and you’ll be having my hands destroyed in a short while the way I’ll not be able to make a tin can at all maybe at the dawn of day.
SARAH: (sitting down beside him and throwing sticks on the fire.)If it’s the divil’s job, let you mind it, and leave your speeches that would choke a fool.
MICHAEL: (slowly and glumly.)And it’s you’ll go talking of fools, Sarah Casey, when no man did ever hear a lying story even of your like unto this mortal day. You to be going beside me a great while, and rearing a lot of them, and then to be setting off with your talk of getting married, and your driving me to it, and I not asking it at all.
[Sarah turns her back to him and arranges something in the ditch.]
MICHAEL: (angrily.)Can’t you speak a word when I’m asking what is it ails you since the moon did change?
SARAH: (musingly.)I’m thinking there isn’t anything ails me, Michael Byrne; but the spring-time is a queer time, and its* queer thoughts maybe I do think at whiles.
MICHAEL: It’s hard set you’d be to think queerer than welcome, Sarah Casey; but what will you gain dragging me to the priest this night, I’m saying, when it’s new thoughts you’ll be thinking at the dawn of day?
SARAH: (teasingly.)It’s at the dawn of day I do be thinking I’d have a right to be going off to the rich tinker’s do be travelling from Tibradden to the Tara Hill; for it’d be a fine life to be driving with young Jaunting Jim, where there wouldn’t be any big hills to break the back of you, with walking up and walking down.
MICHAEL: (with dismay.)It’s the like of that you do be thinking!
SARAH: The like of that, Michael Byrne, when there is a bit of sun in it, and a kind air, and a great smell coming from the thorn trees is above your head.
MICHAEL: (looks at her for a moment with horror, and then hands her the ring.) Will that fit you now?
SARAH: (trying it on.)It’s making it tight you are, and the edges sharp on the tin.
MICHAEL: (looking at it carefully.) It’s the fat of your own finger, Sarah Casey; and isn’t it a mad thing I’m saying again that you’d be asking marriage of me, or making a talk of going away from me, and you thriving and getting your good health by the grace of the Almighty God?
SARAH: (giving it back to him.)Fix it now, and it’ll do, if you’re wary you don’t squeeze it again.
MICHAEL: (moodily, working again.) It’s easy saying be wary; there’s many things easy said, Sarah Casey, you’d wonder a fool even would be saying at all. (He starts violently.) The divil mend you, I’m scalded again!
SARAH: (scornfully.)If you are, it’s a clumsy man you are this night, Michael Byrne (raising her voice); and let you make haste now, or herself will be coming with the porter.
MICHAEL: (defiantly, raising his voice.) Let me make haste? I’ll be making haste maybe to hit you a great clout; for I’m thinking on the day I got you above at Rathvanna, and the way you began crying out and saying, “I’ll go back to my ma,” and I’m thinking on the way I came behind you that time, and hit you a great clout in the lug, and how quiet and easy it was you came along with me from that hour to this present day.
SARAH: (standing up and throwing all her sticks into the fire.)And a big fool I was too, maybe; but we’ll be seeing Jaunting Jim to-morrow in Ballinaclash, and he after getting a great price for his white foal in the horse-fair of Wicklow, the way it’ll be a great sight to see him squandering his share of gold, and he with a grand eye for a fine horse, and a grand eye for a woman.
MICHAEL: (working again with impatience.) The divil do him good with the two of them.
SARAH: (kicking up the ashes with her foot.)Ah, he’s a great lad, I’m telling you, and it’s proud and happy I’ll be to see him, and he the first one called me the Beauty of Ballinacree, a fine name for a woman.
MICHAEL: (with contempt.)It’s the like of that name they do be putting on the horses they have below racing in Arklow. It’s easy pleased you are, Sarah Casey, easy pleased with a big word, or the liar speaks it.
SARAH: Liar!
MICHAEL: Liar, surely.
SARAH: (indignantly.)Liar, is it? Didn’t you ever hear tell of the peelers followe
d me ten miles along the Glen Malure, and they talking love to me in the dark night, or of the children you’ll meet coming from school and they saying one to the other, “It’s this day we seen Sarah Casey, the Beauty of Ballinacree, a great sight surely.”
MICHAEL: God help the lot of them!
SARAH: It’s yourself you’ll be calling God to help, in two weeks or three, when you’ll be waking up in the dark night and thinking you see me coming with the sun on me, and I driving a high cart with Jaunting Jim going behind. 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.
MICHAEL: Whist. I hear some one coming the road.
SARAH: (looking out right.)It’s some one coming forward from the doctor’s door.
MICHAEL: It’s often his reverence does be in there playing cards, or drinking a sup, or singing songs, until the dawn of day.
SARAH: It’s a big boast of a man with a long step on him and a trumpeting voice. It’s his reverence surely; and if you have the ring done, it’s a great bargain we’ll make now and he after drinking his glass.
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.
