The Tinkers Wedding | Page 3

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Note: I have omitted the running heads, and I have marked with *
possible typos.
THE TINKER'S WEDDING
A COMEDY IN TWO ACTS
BY J. M. SYNGE
JOHN W. LUCE AND COMPANY BOSTON : : : : : : : : : 1911

Copyright 1904 By J. M. Synge

PREFACE.
THE drama is made serious -- in the French sense of the word -- not by
the degree in which it is taken up with problems that are serious in
themselves, but by the degree in which it gives the nourishment, not
very easy to define, on which our imaginations live. We should not go
to the theatre as we go to a chemist's, or a dram-shop, but as we go to a
dinner, where the food we need is taken with pleasure and excitement.
This was nearly always so in Spain and England and France when the
drama was at its richest -- the infancy and decay of the drama tend to be
didactic -- but in these days the playhouse is too often stocked with the
drugs of many
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seedy problems, or with the absinthe or ver- mouth of the last musical
comedy. The drama, like the symphony, does not teach or prove
anything. Analysts with their problems, and teachers with their systems,
are soon as old-fashioned as the pharmacopœia of Galen, -- look
at Ibsen and the Germans -- but the best plays of Ben Jonson and
Molière can no more go out of fashion than the black- 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 the greatest sign of the Satanic element in
man; and where a country loses its humor, as some towns in Ireland are
doing, there will be morbidity of mind, as Baude- laire's mind was
morbid. In the greater part of Ireland, however, the whole people, from
the tinkers to the clergy, have still a life, and view of life, that
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are rich and genial and humorous. I do not think that these country
people, who have so much humor themselves, will mind being laughed
at without malice, as the people in every country have been laughed at
in their own comedies.
J. M. S.

December 2nd, 1907
[page intentionally blank]
PERSONS
MICHAEL BYRNE, a tinker. MARY BYRNE, an old woman, his
mother. SARAH CASEY, a young tinker woman. A PRIEST.
[page intentionally blank]
THE TINKER'S WEDDING -----------
ACT I.
SCENE: A Village roadside after nightfall. A fire of sticks is
burning near the ditch a little to the right. Michael is working beside it.
In the background, 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 this place, 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't ready with my wedding ring. (She goes over to
him.) Is it near done this time, or what way is it at all? MICHAEL.
A poor way only, Sarah Casey, for it's the divil's job making a ring, and
you'll be having my hands destroyed in a short while the way I'll not be
able to make a tin can at all maybe at the dawn of day. SARAH --
sitting down beside him and throwing sticks on the fire. -- If it's
the divil's
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job, let you mind it, and leave your speeches that would choke a fool.
MICHAEL -- slowly and glumly. -- And it's you'll go talking of
fools, Sarah Casey, when no man did ever