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The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats. Volume 2 of 8

Год написания книги
2017
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If he would let my master have his rights.

CHAMBERLAIN

Pick up your litter! Take your noise away!
Make haste, and get the clapper from the bell!

BRIAN

[Putting last of food into basket.]

What do the great and powerful care for rights
That have no armies!

[CHAMBERLAIN begins shoving them out with his staff

MAYOR

My lord, I am not to blame.
I’m the King’s man, and they attacked me for it.

BRIAN

We have our prayers, our curses and our prayers,
And we can give a great name or a bad one.

[MAYOR is shoving BRIAN out before him with one hand. He keeps his face to CHAMBERLAIN, and keeps bowing. The CHAMBERLAIN shoves him with his staff

MAYOR

We could not make the poet eat, my lord.

    [CHAMBERLAIN shoves him with staff.
Much honoured [is shoved again] – honoured to speak with you, my lord;
But I’ll go find the girl that he’s to marry.
She’s coming, but I’ll hurry her, my lord.
Between ourselves, my lord [is shoved again], she is a great coaxer.
Much honoured, my lord. O, she’s the girl to do it;
For when the intellect is out, my lord,
Nobody but a woman’s any good.

    [Is shoved again.
Much honoured, my lord [is shoved again], much honoured, much honoured!

[Is shoved out, shoving BRIAN out before him

[All through this scene, from the outset of the quarrel, SEANCHAN has kept his face turned away, or hidden in his cloak. While the CHAMBERLAIN has been speaking, the SOLDIER and the MONK have come out of the palace. The MONK stands on top of steps at one side, SOLDIER a little down steps at the other side. COURT LADIES are seen at opening in the palace curtain behind SOLDIER. CHAMBERLAIN is in the centre

CHAMBERLAIN

[To SEANCHAN.]

Well, you must be contented, for your work
Has roused the common sort against the King,
And stolen his authority. The State
Is like some orderly and reverend house,
Wherein the master, being dead of a sudden,
The servants quarrel where they have a mind to,
And pilfer here and there.

    [Pause, finding that SEANCHAN does not answer.
How many days
Will you keep up this quarrel with the King,
And the King’s nobles, and myself, and all,
Who’d gladly be your friends, if you would let them?

    [Going near to MONK.
If you would try, you might persuade him, father.
I cannot make him answer me, and yet
If fitting hands would offer him the food,
He might accept it.

MONK

Certainly I will not.
I’ve made too many homilies, wherein
The wanton imagination of the poets
Has been condemned, to be his flatterer.
If pride and disobedience are unpunished
Who will obey?

CHAMBERLAIN

[Going to other side towards SOLDIER.]

If you would speak to him,
You might not find persuasion difficult,
With all the devils of hunger helping you.

SOLDIER

I will not interfere, and if he starve
For being obstinate and stiff in the neck,
’Tis but good riddance.

CHAMBERLAIN

One of us must do it.
It might be, if you’d reason with him, ladies,
He would eat something, for I have a notion
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