The King's Threshold; and On Baile's Strand

The King's Threshold; and On Baile's Strand
William Yeats

William Butler Yeats

The King's Threshold; and On Baile's Strand

NOTE

Both these plays have been written for Mr. Fay’s “Irish National Theatre.” “The King’s Threshold” was played in October, 1903, and “On Baile’s Strand” will be played in February or March, 1904. Both are founded on Old Irish Prose Romances, but I have borrowed some ideas for the arrangement of my subject in “The King’s Threshold” from “Sancan the Bard,” a play published by Mr. Edwin Ellis some ten years ago.

    W. B. Y.

THE KING’S THRESHOLD

LIST OF CHARACTERS

A PROLOGUE.[1 - Written for the first production of “The King’s Threshold” in Dublin, but not used, as, owing to the smallness of the company, nobody could be spared to speak it.]

An Old Man with a red dressing-gown, red slippers and red nightcap, holding a brass candlestick with a guttering candle in it, comes on from side of stage and goes in front of the dull green curtain.

Old Man.

I’ve got to speak the prologue. [He shuffles on a few steps.] My nephew, who is one of the play actors, came to me, and I in my bed, and my prayers said, and the candle put out, and he told me there were so many characters in this new play, that all the company were in it, whether they had been long or short at the business, and that there wasn’t one left to speak the prologue. Wait a bit, there’s a draught here. [He pulls the curtain closer together.] That’s better. And that’s why I’m here, and maybe I’m a fool for my pains.

And my nephew said, there are a good many plays to be played for you, some to-night and some on other nights through the winter, and the most of them are simple enough, and tell out their story to the end. But as to the big play you are to see to-night, my nephew taught me to say what the poet had taught him to say about it. [Puts down candlestick and puts right finger on left thumb.] First, he who told the story of Seanchan on King Guaire’s threshold long ago in the old books told it wrongly, for he was a friend of the king, or maybe afraid of the king, and so he put the king in the right. But he that tells the story now, being a poet, has put the poet in the right.

And then [touches other finger] I am to say: Some think it would be a finer tale if Seanchan had died at the end of it, and the king had the guilt at his door, for that might have served the poet’s cause better in the end. But that is not true, for if he that is in the story but a shadow and an image of poetry had not risen up from the death that threatened him, the ending would not have been true and joyful enough to be put into the voices of players and proclaimed in the mouths of trumpets, and poetry would have been badly served.

[He takes up the candlestick again.

And as to what happened Seanchan after, my nephew told me he didn’t know, and the poet didn’t know, and it’s likely there’s nobody that knows. But my nephew thinks he never sat down at the king’s table again, after the way he had been treated, but that he went to some quiet green place in the hills with Fedelm, his sweetheart, where the poor people made much of him because he was wise, and where he made songs and poems, and it’s likely enough he made some of the old songs and the old poems the poor people on the hillsides are saying and singing to-day.

[A trumpet-blast.

Well, it’s time for me to be going. That trumpet means that the curtain is going to rise, and after a while the stage there will be filled up with great ladies and great gentlemen, and poets, and a king with a crown on him, and all of them as high up in themselves with the pride of their youth and their strength and their fine clothes as if there was no such thing in the world as cold in the shoulders, and speckled shins, and the pains in the bones and the stiffness in the joints that make an old man that has the whole load of the world on him ready for his bed.

[He begins to shuffle away, and then stops.

And it would be better for me, that nephew of mine to be thinking less of his play-acting, and to have remembered to boil down the knap-weed with a bit of three-penny sugar, for me to be wetting my throat with now and again through the night, and drinking a sup to ease the pains in my bones.

[He goes out at side of stage.

THE KING’S THRESHOLD

Scene: Steps before the Palace of King Guaire at Gort. A table in front of steps to right with food on it. Seanchan lying on steps to left. Pupils before steps. King on top of steps at centre.

King.
I welcome you that have the mastery
Of the two kinds of music; the one kind
Being like a woman, the other like a man;
Both you that understand stringed instruments,
And how to mingle words and notes together
So artfully, that all the art is but speech
Delighted with its own music; and you that carry
The long twisted horn and understand
The heady notes that being without words
Can hurry beyond time and fate and change;
For the high angels that drive the horse of time,
The golden one by day, by night the silver,
Are not more welcome to one that loves the world
For some fair woman’s sake.
I have called you hither
To save the life of your great master, Seanchan,
For all day long it has flamed up or flickered
To the fast-cooling hearth.
Senias.
When did he sicken?
Is it a fever that is wasting him?
King.
He did not sicken, but three days ago
He said he would not eat, and lay down there
And has not eaten since. Till yesterday
I thought that hunger and weakness had been enough,
But finding them too trifling and too light
To hold his mouth from biting at the grave
I called you hither, and have called others yet.
The girl he is to wed at harvest-time,
That should be of all living the most dear,
Is coming from the South, and had I known
Of any other neighbours or good friends
That might persuade him, I had brought them hither,
Even though I’d to ransack the world for them.
Senias.
What was it put him to this work, High King?
King.
You will call it no great matter. Three days ago
I yielded to the outcry of my courtiers,
Bishops, soldiers, and makers of the law,
Who long had thought it against their dignity
For a mere man of words to sit among them
At my own table; and when the meal was spread
I ordered Seanchan to good company,
But to a lower table; and when he pleaded
The poet’s right, established when the world
Was first established, I said that I was King
And made and unmade rights at my own pleasure.
And that it was the men who ruled the world,
And not the men who sang to it, who should sit
Where there was the most honour. My courtiers,