The Playboy of the Western World quotes

and that is why the intellectual modern drama has failed, and people have grown sick of the false joy of the musical comedy, that has been given them in place of the rich joy found only in what is superb and wild in reality.

In a good play every speech should be as fully flavoured as a nut or apple, and such speeches cannot be written by anyone who works among people who have shut their lips on poetry.

In Ireland, for a few years more, we have a popular imagination that is fiery and magnificent, and tender;

Anyone who has lived in real intimacy with the Irish peasantry will know that the wildest sayings and ideas in this play are tame indeed, compared with the fancies one may hear in any little hillside cabin in Geesala, or Carraroe, or Dingle Bay.

All art is a collaboration; and there is little doubt that in the happy ages of literature, striking and beautiful phrases were as ready to the storyteller’s or the playwright’s hand, as the rich cloaks and dresses of his time.

It is probable that when the Elizabethan dramatist took his ink-horn and sat down to his work he used many phrases that he had just heard, as he sat at dinner, from his mother or his children.

With a sign to the men to be quiet. You’re only saying it. You did nothing at all.

A soft lad the like of you wouldn’t slit the windpipe of a screeching sow.

Offended. You’re not speaking the truth.

The peelers is fearing him, and if you’d that lad in the house there isn’t one of them would come smelling around if the dogs itself were lapping poteen from the dungpit of the yard.

Bravery’s a treasure in a lonesome place, and a lad would kill his father, I’m thinking, would face a foxy divil with a pitchpike on the flags of hell.

It’s the truth they’re saying, and if I’d that lad in the house, I wouldn’t be fearing the loosed kharki cutthroats, or the walking dead.

As she goes to inner room. May God and Mary and St. Patrick bless you and reward you, for your kindly talk. She shuts the door behind her. He settles his bed slowly, feeling the quilt with immense satisfaction.

Well, it’s a clean bed and soft with it, and it’s great luck and company I’ve won me in the end of time⁠—two fine women fighting for the likes of me⁠—till I’m thinking this night wasn’t I a foolish fellow not to kill my father in the years gone by.

I’m thinking you’re an odd man, Christy Mahon. The oddest walking fellow I ever set my eyes on to this hour today.

What would any be but odd men and they living lonesome in the world?

I’m not odd, and I’m my whole life with my father only.

Would you have me think a man never talked with the girls would have the words you’ve spoken today? It’s only letting on you are to be lonesome, the way you’d get around me now.

I wish to God I was letting on; but I was lonesome all times, and born lonesome, I’m thinking, as the moon of dawn.

Going to door.

And he a poor fellow would get drunk on the smell of a pint.

He’d a queer rotten stomach, I’m telling you, and when I gave him three pulls from my pipe a while since, he was taken with contortions till I had to send him in the ass cart to the females’ nurse.

Clasping her hands. Well, I never till this day heard tell of a man the like of that!

She swings the door to and looks at Christy, who is cowering in terror, for a moment, then she bursts into a laugh.

Well, you’re the walking Playboy of the Western World, and that’s the poor man you had divided to his breeches belt.

Looking out; then, to her. What’ll Pegeen say when she hears that story? What’ll she be saying to me now?

Triumphantly. It was my own son hit me. Would you believe that?

Well, there’s wonders hidden in the heart of man!

Suspiciously. And what way was it done?

With philosophy.

It’s true mankind is the divil when your head’s astray.

Let me out now and I’ll slip down the boreen, and not see them so.

In a low voice.

Isn’t there the light of seven heavens in your heart alone, the way you’ll be an angel’s lamp to me from this out, and I abroad in the darkness, spearing salmons in the Owen, or the Carrowmore?

If I was your wife, I’d be along with you those nights, Christy Mahon, the way you’d see I was a great hand at coaxing bailiffs, or coining funny nicknames for the stars of night.

And to think it’s me is talking sweetly, Christy Mahon, and I the fright of seven townlands for my biting tongue.

Well, the heart’s a wonder; and, I’m thinking, there won’t be our like in Mayo, for gallant lovers, from this hour, today.

Drunken singing is heard outside. There’s my father coming from the wake, and when he’s had his sleep we’ll tell him, for he’s peaceful then. They separate.