The Tinker’s Wedding
A COMEDY IN TWO ACTS
by J. M. Synge
Contents
| PREFACE. |
| THE TINKER’S WEDDING |
| PERSONS. |
| ACT I. |
| ACT II. |
PREFACE.
The drama is made serious—in the French sense of the word—not bythe degree in which it is taken up with problems that are serious inthemselves, but by the degree in which it gives the nourishment, not very easyto define, on which our imaginations live. We should not go to the theatre aswe go to a chemist’s, or a dram-shop, but as we go to a dinner, where thefood we need is taken with pleasure and excitement. This was nearly always soin Spain and England and France when the drama was at its richest—theinfancy and decay of the drama tend to be didactic—but in these days theplayhouse is too often stocked with the drugs of many seedy problems, or withthe absinthe or vermouth of the last musical comedy.
The drama, like the symphony, does not teach or prove anything. Analysts withtheir problems, and teachers with their systems, are soon as old-fashioned asthe pharmacopœia of Galen,—look at Ibsen and the Germans—but thebest plays of Ben Jonson and Molière can no more go out of fashion than theblack-berries 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 thegreatest sign of the Satanic element in man; and where a country loses itshumor, as some towns in Ireland are doing, there will be morbidity of mind, asBaudelaire’s mind was morbid.
In the greater part of Ireland, however, the whole people, from the tinkers tothe clergy, have still a life, and view of life, that are rich and genial andhumorous. I do not think that these country people, who have so much humorthemselves, will mind being laughed at without malice, as the people in everycountry have been laughed at in their own comedies.
J. M. S.
December 2nd, 1907.
THE TINKER’S WEDDING
PERSONS
MICHAEL BYRNE, a tinker.
MARY BYRNE, an old woman, his mother.
SARAH CASEY, a young tinker woman.
A PRIEST.
ACT I.
SCENE: A Village roadside after nightfall. A fire of sticks is burning nearthe ditch a little to the right. Michael is working beside it. In thebackground, on the left, a sort of tent and ragged clothes drying on the hedge.On the right a chapel-gate.
SARAH CASEY
coming in on right, eagerly.—We’ll see his reverence thisplace, 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’tready with my wedding ring. (She goes over to him.) Is it near done thistime, or what way is it at all?
MICHAEL
A poor way only, Sarah