The Tinker's Wedding
Synge, John Millington
The Tinker's Wedding
John Millington Synge
The Tinker's Wedding
A Comedy in Two Acts
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 pharmacopoeia 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 blackberries 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
Scene
A road-side near a village
Act I
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 chapelgate.
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 it's 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 tinkers 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.
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