by Colm Toibin
And they knew a great story. ‘Tell us a film’ I’d ask one particular student when I was feeling lazy, and he’d stand up and deliver the plot of whatever video he’d watched the night before. I’d seen some of the films; he was much, much better. Is wasn’t just entertainment. I could see that on his face, and I could see it in the faces of the others watching and listening. It was vital; it was power. He had them. These minutes might have been the highpoint of his life. It’s not just the plot of The Playboy. It’s the man in the middle, Christy, telling the story, making himself up, assembling himself with words. I don’t know what age he’s supposed to be, what age Synge had in mind when he made him cough offstage, before he walks on, ‘a slight young man … very tired and frightened and dirty’. He’s a teenager. (So is Pegeen Mike.) He’s lost and he’s shy. But he talks; he makes up his story. He’s listened to, and he has power.
Then there’s Christy’s story. ‘ … wasn’t I a foolish fellow not to kill my father in the years gone by.’ Sophocles only had it half-right. No true Irish boy wants to sleep with his mother. But killing the Da is a different proposition. ‘I just riz the loy’, says Christy, ‘and let fall the edge of it on the ridge of his skull.’ Once they knew that a ‘loy’ was kind of a shovel and that ‘riz’ meant lifting it over his Da’s head, all faces in the room lit up. These were teenagers, and all fathers are eejits, and worse than eejits. What else would you do with a shovel? Christy was their man. Better yet, the dead man walks onstage. The play has become a horror film, one of those really funny ones. Then Christy gets to fight his Da again, and he wins again. Old Mahon takes his beating and likes it. Christy pushes him offstage, and follows him. ‘I’m master of all fights from now.’ For the boys in the room, the play ends there. The girls read on, to Pegeen’s lament – ‘I’ve lost him surely’ – but the boys are offstage with Christy.
The fears of the boys and girls, their dreams, their current selves – they’re in The Playboy. And – a must for all good school texts – as we read or watch, we see the central characters grow out of their pain, and learn. The first time we see Christy, he’s gnawing a turnip. By the end of the play, he’s biting Shawn Keogh’s leg.
I loved teaching The Playboy; it more than made up for Persuasion. It’s a great school play because it’s wild and perfect, much like the average teenager.
When the Moon Has Set
On 23 May 1903 Synge wrote in his diary, ‘Finished (?) one act Play When the Moon Has Set (?)’. The question marks betray his own doubts about this early work, but also his determination to express himself as a dramatist. Establishing the pattern he would follow in conscientiously saving all his drafts, this version was labelled ‘J’; some time later he returned to the play, producing ‘K’, also unfinished. Though he marked both ‘J’ and ‘K’ ‘Rejected’, they remained among his papers to be read for possible publication after his death. The following text is based on a collation of these two incomplete but apparently final versions of the play whose ideas he had brooded over since 1896.1
The play reflects his deep distress at rejection by his first love Cherrie Matheson because of his refusal to accept Christianity, and his belated attempt to counter her beliefs by rewriting history. But all the drafts also reveal Synge’s musical training and the aesthetic, political, and social theories he was developing while studying in Paris, experiencing the realities of life on Aran, and becoming involved in the artistic movements of Dublin. A notebook entry of 1898, repeated in his earlier manuscripts and implicit in this final version reads:
Every life is a symphony. It is this cosmic element in the person which gives all personal art, and all sincere life, and all passionate love a share in the dignity of the world.
For the first time in this early play, that sequence of notes includes what would become the hallmark of his literary style in the vivid dialogue of the servant Bride and the madwoman Mary Costello, his celebration of the natural world, and his sympathy for those courageous enough to pursue their dreams.
Ann Saddlemyer
When The Moon Has Set ~ A Play In One Act
Persons
Colm Sweeny, a young man, heir to his uncle’s estate
Bride, a young maid
Sister Eileen, a young nun in a nursing order, a distant cousin to Colm
Mary Costello, a madwoman
Scene: A country house in the east of Ireland, late spring or early summer at the turn of the century.
Old family library in country house; many books are in shelves round the walls. A turf fire has burnt low in the fireplace, which is on one side, with a large portrait above it. The principal door is on the right, but there is another in the back wall partly covered with a curtain and opening with two battants into the open air. Small window near the fireplace; another to the right of the end-door; both have the blinds down. A large lamp heavily shaded is burning near the table. A large bow of black crepe is resting on one of the chairs near the fire. Bride, a young maid, is kneeling down settling the turf fire. Colm comes in on the left, wearing a big coat buttoned up to his chin.
Colm: [looking round the room]. Sister Eileen has gone to bed?
Bride: She has not, your honour. She’s been in a great state fearing you were lost in the hills, and now she’s after going down the hollow field to see would there any sound of the wheels coming.
Colm. I came in the other way so she could not have heard me. [Goes to the large window] Is she long gone?
Bride. A while only.
Colm. I wonder if I could find her …
Bride: You could not, your honour, and you’d have a right to be sitting here and warming your feet, the way it’s proud and happy she’ll be to see you when she turns in from the shower is coming in the trees.
Colm [pulling up the blind]: I hope she will not miss her way. Perhaps if she sees the door open she will turn back. [He stands looking out.]
Bride [a little impatiently]. She’ll be coming in a minute I’m telling you, and let you be taking your own rest. You’re wanting it surely, for we were thinking it’s destroyed you’d be driving alone in the night and the great rain, and you not used to anything but the big towns of the world. [She pulls a chair to the fire.]
[Colm comes over to the fire, wearily. He begins taking off his coat and heavy boots. Bride lifts up the bow of crepe from his chair.]
Bride [showing it to him]. Isn’t it a fine bow she’s made with bits of rags that we found? I was watching her do it, and I’m telling you she’s a wonder surely.
Colm [with reserve]. She is clever with her fingers.
Bride. Wait till your honour sees the way she has the room beyond, with fine flowers in, and white candles, and grand clothes on the bed, and your poor uncle lying so easy with his eyes shut you’d be thinking it was an old man in his sleep. [Turning to the fire with a sigh.] Ah, it’s a long way any person would go seeking the like of Sister Eileen, and it’s very lonesome your honour’ll be tomorrow or the next day when she is gone away to the town.
Colm. She will stay for the funeral.
Bride. And what day, if myself may ask, will the funeral be?
Colm. I have settled it for Friday, but it was not easy, there were so many things to arrange.
Bride. It’s great trouble the rich do have when there is even an old man to be buried, and it was that, I’m thinking, kept you a whole evening in the town.
Colm. It kept me a good while, but I went wrong going home, and took the road through the bogs to the graveyard of Glan-na-nee.
Bride. The Lord have mercy on us! There does be no one at all passing that way but a few men do be carting turf, and isn’t it a great wonder your honour got home safe, and wasn’t lost in the hills?
Colm. I hardly knew where I was, but I found a woman there who told me my way.
Bride. It was a lonesome place for a woman, God help her, and the night coming.
Colm. She was nearly crazy I think, but she must have known the trap for she called out to me by my name
and asked my uncle.
Bride [greatly interested]. And was it much she said to your honour?
Colm. At first she spoke sensibly and told me how I was to go, but when she tried to say something else she had on her mind she got so confused I could not follow her. Then the mare got frightened at a sort of cry she gave, and I had to come away.
Bride. She was a big tall woman I’m thinking, with a black shawl on her, and black hair round her face? [She begins blowing the fire with her mouth.]
Colm. Then you know who she is?
Bride. She’s Mary Costello, your honour. [She goes on blowing.]
Colm. A beggar woman?
Bride [indignantly]. Not she a beggar woman … She’s a Costello from the old Castilian family, and it’s fine people they were at one time, big wealthy nobles of the cities of Spain, and herself was the finest girl you’d find in the whole world, with nice manners, and white hands on her, for she was reared with the nuns, as it’s likely you’ve heard tell from his honour, God rest his soul.
Colm. If he ever spoke of her I do not remember it. Why should he have told me about her?
Bride. It’s a long story, and a sad pitiful story. I’d have a right to tell you one day maybe if the Lord Almighty keep us alive, but Sister Eileen will be coming now, and the two of you won’t be needing the like of that to trouble you at all.
[She stands up and sweeps up the hearth.]
Colm. Has she been long out of her mind?
Bride. A long while in and out of it. It’s ten years she was below in the Asylum, and it was a great wonder the way you’d see her in there, not lonesome at all with the great lot were coming in from all the houses in the country, and herself as well off as any lady in England, France, or Germany, walking round in the gardens with fine shoes on her feet. Ah, it was well for her in there, God help her, for she was always a nice quiet woman, and a fine woman to look at, and I’ve heard tell it was ‘Your Ladyship’ they would call her, the time they’d be making fun among themselves.
Colm. I wonder if I ever saw her before. Her face reminded me of something, or Someone, but I cannot remember where I have met it.
Bride [going up to the portrait over the fireplace]. Let you come and look here, your Honour, and I’m thinking you’ll see.
Colm [going over]. Yes, that is the woman. But it was done years ago.
Bride. Long years surely, your honour, and it’s time the whole thing was forgot, for what call has any man to be weighing his mind with the like of it and he storing sorrows till the judgement day?
[She goes over to window. Colm takes down picture and looks at it closely in the lamp-light.]
Bride [looking out]. Sister Eileen’s coming now, and I’ll be going off to my bed, for I’m thinking the two of you won’t be needing me, and it’s a right yourselves would have to be going to rest, and not sitting here talking and talking in the dark night, when people are better sleeping, and not destroying their souls, pausing and watching and they thinking over the great troubles of the world.
[She goes out, and in a moment Sister Eileen comes in quickly from the door which leads into the open air. She is pleased and relieved when she sees Colm.]
Sister Eileen. You have come back? I was afraid something had happened.
Colm. I have been in some time.
Sister Eileen. I thought I would hear the wheels, and I went right down to the lake the night is so beautiful …You have arranged everything?
Colm. I sent a number of telegrams, and waited for answers. He is to be buried on Friday at Glan-na-nee, and the coffin will come down tomorrow.
Sister Eileen. When the storm broke I was sorry you had gone; you must have got very wet on the road across the mountains.
Colm. It rained heavily on Slieve na-Ruadh, but I am nearly dry again.
Sister Eileen. I was out for a little while getting flowers for your uncle’s room, but I did not find many they were so broken with the rain.
Colm. Then you saw what a change the rain has made among the trees.
Sister Eileen. It has ended the spring. I was just thinking what a difference there is since I arrived here three months ago, with the moonlight shining everywhere on the snow.
Colm. It seems like three years since you telegraphed for me, we have made such a world for ourselves.
Sister Eileen [changing the subject]. What have you got there?
Colm. It is the picture from that corner. [He turns it round to her.] I saw her tonight at the graveyard of Glan-na-nee.
Sister Eileen. What took you out there, surely that was not your way?
Colm. I went wrong coming home, and this woman put me right. Do you know anything of the woman?
Sister Eileen. I have heard a good deal about her, perhaps more than you have.
Colm. Bride has been telling me that she was a long time in the Asylum, and that she was connected in some way with my uncle.
Sister Eileen. He wanted to marry her although she was beneath him, but when it was all arranged she broke it off because he did not believe in God.
Colm. And after that she went mad?
Sister Eileen. After that. And your uncle shut himself up. He told me it was nearly twenty years since it happened, and yet he had never spoken of it to anyone. I do not think he would have told me if it had not been for his dislike of religious orders and the clothes I wear.
Colm. You mean he told you as a warning … And yet I suppose you take her as an example to be followed.
Sister Eileen. She did what was right. No woman who was really a Christian could have done anything else …
Colm. I wish you had seen her tonight screaming and crying out over the bogs.
Sister Eileen. I do not want to see her … I have seen your uncle for three months and his death today. That is enough.
Colm. It is far from enough if it has not made you realize that in evading her impulses this woman did what was wrong and brought this misery on my uncle and herself.
Sister Eileen [giving him back the picture]. We cannot argue about it. We do not see things the same way … Has she changed a great deal since that was done?
Colm. Less than he has. [He hangs the picture up again.] He was right in thinking that their story is a warning … At the time they were about the ages we are tonight, and now one is a mad woman, and the other has been tortured to death – [Some one knocks.] Come in!
[Bride, half rolled in a shawl, as if she was not fully dressed, comes in with a telegram.]
Bride [giving it to Sister Eileen]. That has just come for you now, Sister Eileen. It came into town after Mr. Colm had gone away, and they gave it to an old man was driving out west with an ass and cart.
[Sister Eileen takes it and reads it left. Bride takes Colm right.]
Bride [whispering]. I heard from the old man he seen Mary Costello coming in great haste over the hills, so let your honour not be afeard if you hear her singing or laughing, or letting a shout maybe in the darkness of the night.
Colm. Is there nothing one can do for her?
Bride. Nothing at all your honour. It’s best to leave her alone. [She goes towards the door.]
Sister Eileen [turning to her, in a low voice]. Can someone drive me into the town tomorrow? I must go to Dublin by the first train in the morning.
Bride. We can surely, Sister Eileen. And what time will we send to meet you coming back?
Sister Eileen. I am not coming back.
Bride. Well the Lord speed you Sister Eileen, and that the Almighty God may stretch out a holy hand to preserve and prosper you, and see you safe home. [Turning to the door.] It’s lonesome you’ll be leaving the lot of us behind you, and you after bringing a kind of a new life into this house was a dark quiet place for a score of years, and will be dark again maybe from this mortal night. [She goes out left.]
Colm [with a change in his voice]. What is this talk of your leaving me tomorrow?
Sister Eileen. Someone has told the Mother Superior your uncle is dead, and she telegraphs �
� as she puts it – that she is short of nurses and will need me for a new case tomorrow.
Colm. Cannot you stay a little longer?
Sister Eileen. I am afraid not possibly … [Looking up at the clock.] I must soon go and pack up.
Colm. We must talk about it till I make you decide with your whole mind whether you will obey the earth, or repeat the story of the mad woman and my uncle.
Sister Eileen [severely]. If you say what I think you are wishing to say, I will have to leave you and not speak to you any more. That is all you will gain.
Colm [sternly, locking door]. You shall not go till I have said what I have to say. Then if you are weak enough to give up your share of what is best in life, you may go where you will.
Sister Eileen [piteously]. I wish you would not spoil the last night we are together.
Colm. It may not be the last …
Sister Eileen [goes over and lights candle, picks up bow of crepe]. Please open the door and let me go to bed. I have been very wrong to allow you to talk to me as I have done, but I will go back to my true life tomorrow, and I will ask to be forgiven.
Colm. And you think you will forget this place and what has been said here?
Sister Eileen. It is only those who do the will of God who are happy; that is all I know.
[A burst of hysterical laughter is heard outside, and then a sob and a scrap of singing. A moment afterwards the door is pushed open and Mary Costello comes in, dazzled with the light, and goes over left without seeing Colm or Sister Eileen. She goes over to the bureau in the corner and sees that one of the drawers is open and pounces on it. She finds a ring case, and takes out two rings and puts them on her fingers, making the stones sparkle in the lamp light; she finds a bundle of white linen, takes out a silk dress and makes a movement as if she is going to throw it over her head. Before she does so she looks around stealthily, and sees Colm and Sister Eileen. She drops the dress on the floor with a cry, picks up her shawl and runs to the door, then stops, and turns towards them.]