The Playboy of the Western World: A Comedy in Three ActsSynge, J. M. (John Millington)
Philosophy
The Playboy of the Western World: A Comedy in Three Acts
Synge, J. M. (John Millington)
Ireland -- Drama
WIDOW QUIN.
_laughing derisively._—Me, is it? Well, Father Reilly has cuteness to
divide you now. (_She pulls Christy up._) There’s great temptation in a
man did slay his da, and we’d best be going, young fellow; so rise up
and come with me.
PEGEEN.
_seizing his arm._—He’ll not stir. He’s pot-boy in this place, and I’ll
not have him stolen off and kidnapped while himself’s abroad.
WIDOW QUIN.
It’d be a crazy pot-boy’d lodge him in the shebeen where he works by
day, so you’d have a right to come on, young fellow, till you see my
little houseen, a perch off on the rising hill.
PEGEEN.
Wait till morning, Christy Mahon. Wait till you lay eyes on her leaky
thatch is growing more pasture for her buck goat than her square of
fields, and she without a tramp itself to keep in order her place at
all.
WIDOW QUIN.
When you see me contriving in my little gardens, Christy Mahon, you’ll
swear the Lord God formed me to be living lone, and that there isn’t my
match in Mayo for thatching, or mowing, or shearing a sheep.
PEGEEN.
_with noisy scorn._—It’s true the Lord God formed you to contrive
indeed. Doesn’t the world know you reared a black lamb at your own
breast, so that the Lord Bishop of Connaught felt the elements of a
Christian, and he eating it after in a kidney stew? Doesn’t the world
know you’ve been seen shaving the foxy skipper from France for a
threepenny bit and a sop of grass tobacco would wring the liver from a
mountain goat you’d meet leaping the hills?
WIDOW QUIN.
_with amusement._—Do you hear her now, young fellow? Do you hear the
way she’ll be rating at your own self when a week is by?
PEGEEN.
_to Christy._—Don’t heed her. Tell her to go into her pigsty and not
plague us here.
WIDOW QUIN.
I’m going; but he’ll come with me.
PEGEEN.
_shaking him._—Are you dumb, young fellow?
CHRISTY.
_timidly, to Widow Quin._—God increase you; but I’m pot-boy in this
place, and it’s here I’d liefer stay.
PEGEEN.
_triumphantly._—Now you have heard him, and go on from this.
WIDOW QUIN.
_looking round the room._—It’s lonesome this hour crossing the hill,
and if he won’t come along with me, I’d have a right maybe to stop this
night with yourselves. Let me stretch out on the settle, Pegeen Mike;
and himself can lie by the hearth.
PEGEEN.
_short and fiercely._—Faith, I won’t. Quit off or I will send you now.
WIDOW QUIN.
_gathering her shawl up._—Well, it’s a terror to be aged a score. (_To
Christy._) God bless you now, young fellow, and let you be wary, or
there’s right torment will await you here if you go romancing with her
like, and she waiting only, as they bade me say, on a sheepskin
parchment to be wed with Shawn Keogh of Killakeen.
CHRISTY.
_going to Pegeen as she bolts the door._—What’s that she’s after
saying?
PEGEEN.
Lies and blather, you’ve no call to mind. Well, isn’t Shawn Keogh an
impudent fellow to send up spying on me? Wait till I lay hands on him.
Let him wait, I’m saying.
CHRISTY.
And you’re not wedding him at all?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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