The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays — John Shaqi
The Unicorn from the Stars and Other PlaysYeats, W. B. (William Butler)
General
The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays
Yeats, W. B. (William Butler)
Ireland -- Drama; Irish drama
THOMAS. He should be thankful to myself for that. Any person I will
take in hand I make a clean job of them the same as I would make of any
other thing in my yard, coach, half coach, hackney-coach, ass car,
common car, post-chaise, calash, chariot on two wheels, on four wheels.
Each one has the shape Thomas Hearne put on it, and it in his hands;
and what I can do with wood and iron, why would I not be able to do it
with flesh and blood, and it in a way my own?
FATHER JOHN. Indeed I know you did your best for Martin.
THOMAS. Every best. Checked him, taught him the trade, sent him to the
monastery in France for to learn the language and to see the wide
world; but who should know that if you did not know it, Father John,
and I doing it according to your own advice?
FATHER JOHN. I thought his nature needed spiritual guidance and
teaching, the best that could be found.
THOMAS. I thought myself it was best for him to be away for a while.
There are too many wild lads about this place. He to have stopped here,
he might have taken some fancies and got into some trouble, going
against the Government, maybe, the same as Johnny Gibbons that is at
this time an outlaw having a price upon his head.
FATHER JOHN. That is so. That imagination of his might have taken fire
here at home. It was better putting him with the Brothers, to turn it
to imaginings of heaven.
THOMAS. Well, I will soon have a good hardy tradesman made of him now
that will live quiet and rear a family, and maybe be appointed coach
builder to the royal family at the last.
FATHER JOHN [_at window_]. I see your brother Andrew coming back from
the doctor; he is stopping to talk with a troop of beggars that are
sitting by the side of the road.
THOMAS. There now is another that I have shaped. Andrew used to be a
bit wild in his talk and in his ways, wanting to go rambling, not
content to settle in the place where he was reared. But I kept a guard
over him; I watched the time poverty gave him a nip, and then I settled
him into the business. He never was so good a worker as Martin; he is
too fond of wasting his time talking vanities. But he is middling
handy, and he is always steady and civil to customers. I have no
complaint worth while to be making this last twenty years against
Andrew. [ANDREW _comes in._]
ANDREW. Beggars there are outside going the road to the Kinvara fair.
They were saying there is news that Johnny Gibbons is coming back from
France on the quiet. The king's soldiers are watching the ports for
him.
THOMAS. Let you keep now, Andrew, to the business you have in hand.
Will the doctor be coming himself, or did he send a bottle that will
cure Martin?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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