SCENE, [as before. Later in the day. Jimmy comes in, slightly drunk.]

JIMMY -- [calls.] Pegeen! (Crosses to inner door.) Pegeen Mike! (Comes
back again into the room.) Pegeen! (Philly comes in in the same state.)
(To Philly.) Did you see herself?

PHILLY. I did not; but I sent Shawn Keogh with the ass cart for to bear
him home. (Trying cupboards which are locked.) Well, isn't he a nasty
man to get into such staggers at a morning wake? and isn't herself the
divil's daughter for locking, and she so fussy after that young gaffer,
you might take your death with drought and none to heed you?

JIMMY. It's little wonder she'd be fussy, and he after bringing bankrupt
ruin on the roulette man, and the trick-o'-the-loop man, and breaking
the nose of the cockshot-man, and winning all in the sports below,
racing, lepping, dancing, and the Lord knows what! He's right luck, I'm
telling you.

PHILLY. If he has, he'll be rightly hobbled yet, and he not able to say
ten words without making a brag of the way he killed his father, and the
great blow he hit with the loy.

JIMMY. A man can't hang by his own informing, and his father should be
rotten by now. [Old Mahon passes window slowly.]

PHILLY. Supposing a man's digging spuds in that field with a long spade,
and supposing he flings up the two halves of that skull, what'll be said
then in the papers and the courts of law?

JIMMY. They'd say it was an old Dane, maybe, was drowned in the flood.
(Old Mahon comes in and sits down near door listening.) Did you never
hear tell of the skulls they have in the city of Dublin, ranged out like
blue jugs in a cabin of Connaught?

PHILLY. And you believe that?

JIMMY -- [pugnaciously.] Didn't a lad see them and he after coming
from harvesting in the Liverpool boat? "They have them there," says he,
"making a show of the great people there was one time walking the world.
White skulls and black skulls and yellow skulls, and some with full
teeth, and some haven't only but one."

PHILLY. It was no lie, maybe, for when I was a young lad there was a
graveyard beyond the house with the remnants of a man who had thighs as
long as your arm. He was a horrid man, I'm telling you, and there was
many a fine Sunday I'd put him together for fun, and he with shiny
bones, you wouldn't meet the like of these days in the cities of the
world.

MAHON -- [getting up.] -- You wouldn't is it? Lay your eyes on that
skull, and tell me where and when there was another the like of it, is
splintered only from the blow of a loy.

PHILLY. Glory be to God! And who hit you at all?

MAHON -- [triumphantly.] It was my own son hit me. Would you believe
that?

JIMMY. Well, there's wonders hidden in the heart of man!

PHILLY -- [suspiciously.] And what way was it done?

MAHON -- [wandering about the room.] -- I'm after walking hundreds and
long scores of miles, winning clean beds and the fill of my belly four
times in the day, and I doing nothing but telling stories of that naked
truth. (He comes to them a little aggressively.) Give me a supeen and
I'll tell you now. [Widow Quin comes in and stands aghast behind him. He
is facing Jimmy and Philly, who are on the left.]

JIMMY. Ask herself beyond. She's the stuff hidden in her shawl.

WIDOW QUIN -- [coming to Mahon quickly.] -- you here, is it? You didn't
go far at all?

MAHON. I seen the coasting steamer passing, and I got a drought upon me
and a cramping leg, so I said, "The divil go along with him," and turned
again. (Looking under her shawl.) And let you give me a supeen, for I'm
destroyed travelling since Tuesday was a week.

WIDOW QUIN -- [getting a glass, in a cajoling tone.] -- Sit down then by
the fire and take your ease for a space. You've a right to be destroyed
indeed, with your walking, and fighting, and facing the sun (giving him
poteen from a stone jar she has brought in.) There now is a drink for
you, and may it be to your happiness and length of life.

MAHON -- [taking glass greedily and sitting down by fire.] -- God
increase you!

WIDOW QUIN -- [taking men to the right stealthily.] -- Do you know what?
That man's raving from his wound to-day, for I met him a while since
telling a rambling tale of a tinker had him destroyed. Then he heard of
Christy's deed, and he up and says it was his son had cracked his skull.
O isn't madness a fright, for he'll go killing someone yet, and he
thinking it's the man has struck him so?

JIMMY -- [entirely convinced.] It's a fright, surely. I knew a party
was kicked in the head by a red mare, and he went killing horses a great
while, till he eat the insides of a clock and died after.

PHILLY -- [with suspicion.] -- Did he see Christy?

WIDOW QUIN. He didn't. (With a warning gesture.) Let you not be putting
him in mind of him, or you'll be likely summoned if there's murder done.
(Looking round at Mahon.) Whisht! He's listening. Wait now till you hear
me taking him easy and unravelling all. (She goes to Mahon.) And what
way are you feeling, mister? Are you in contentment now?

MAHON -- [slightly emotional from his drink.] -- I'm poorly only, for
it's a hard story the way I'm left to-day, when it was I did tend him
from his hour of birth, and he a dunce never reached his second book,
the way he'd come from school, many's the day, with his legs lamed under
him, and he blackened with his beatings like a tinker's ass. It's a hard
story, I'm saying, the way some do have their next and nighest raising
up a hand of murder on them, and some is lonesome getting their death
with lamentation in the dead of night.

WIDOW QUIN -- [not knowing what to say.] -- To hear you talking so
quiet, who'd know you were the same fellow we seen pass to-day?

MAHON. I'm the same surely. The wrack and ruin of three score years;
and it's a terror to live that length, I tell you, and to have your
sons going to the dogs against you, and you wore out scolding them, and
skelping them, and God knows what.

PHILLY -- [to Jimmy.] -- He's not raving. (To Widow Quin.) Will you ask
him what kind was his son?

WIDOW QUIN -- [to Mahon, with a peculiar look.] -- Was your son that
hit you a lad of one year and a score maybe, a great hand at racing and
lepping and licking the world?

MAHON -- [turning on her with a roar of rage.] -- Didn't you hear me say
he was the fool of men, the way from this out he'll know the orphan's
lot with old and young making game of him and they swearing, raging,
kicking at him like a mangy cur. [A great burst of cheering outside,
someway off.]

MAHON -- [putting his hands to his ears.] -- What in the name of God do
they want roaring below?

WIDOW QUIN -- [with the shade of a smile.] -- They're cheering a young
lad, the champion Playboy of the Western World. [More cheering.]

MAHON -- [going to window.] It'd split my heart to hear them, and I with
pulses in my brain-pan for a week gone by. Is it racing they are?

JIMMY -- [looking from door.] -- It is then. They are mounting him for
the mule race will be run upon the sands. That's the playboy on the
winkered mule.

MAHON [puzzled.] That lad, is it? If you said it was a fool he was,
I'd have laid a mighty oath he was the likeness of my wandering son
(uneasily, putting his hand to his head.) Faith, I'm thinking I'll go
walking for to view the race.

WIDOW QUIN -- [stopping him, sharply.] -- You will not. You'd best take
the road to Belmullet, and not be dilly-dallying in this place where
there isn't a spot you could sleep.

PHILLY -- [coming forward.] -- Don't mind her. Mount there on the bench
and you'll have a view of the whole. They're hurrying before the tide
will rise, and it'd be near over if you went down the pathway through
the crags below.

MAHON [mounts on bench, Widow Quin beside him.] -- That's a right view
again the edge of the sea. They're coming now from the point. He's
leading. Who is he at all?

WIDOW QUIN. He's the champion of the world, I tell you, and there isn't
a hop'orth isn't falling lucky to his hands to-day.

PHILLY -- [looking out, interested in the race.] -- Look at that.
They're pressing him now.

JIMMY. He'll win it yet.

PHILLY. Take your time, Jimmy Farrell. It's too soon to say.

WIDOW QUIN -- [shouting.] Watch him taking the gate. There's riding.

JIMMY -- [cheering.] More power to the young lad!

MAHON. He's passing the third.

JIMMY. He'll lick them yet!

WIDOW QUIN. He'd lick them if he was running races with a score itself.

MAHON. Look at the mule he has, kicking the stars.

WIDOW QUIN. There was a lep! (catching hold of Mahon in her excitement.)
He's fallen! He's mounted again! Faith, he's passing them all!

JIMMY. Look at him skelping her!

PHILLY. And the mountain girls hooshing him on!

JIMMY. It's the last turn! The post's cleared for them now!

MAHON. Look at the narrow place. He'll be into the bogs! (With a yell.)
Good rider! He's through it again!

JIMMY. He neck and neck!

MAHON. Good boy to him! Flames, but he's in! [Great cheering, in which
all join.]

MAHON [with hesitation.] What's that? They're raising him up. They're
coming this way. (With a roar of rage and astonishment.) It's Christy!
by the stars of God! I'd know his way of spitting and he astride the
moon. [He jumps down and makes for the door, but Widow Quin catches him
and pulls him back.]

WIDOW QUIN. Stay quiet, will you. That's not your son. (To Jimmy.) Stop
him, or you'll get a month for the abetting of manslaughter and be fined
as well.

JIMMY. I'll hold him.

MAHON [struggling.] Let me out! Let me out, the lot of you! till I have
my vengeance on his head to-day.

WIDOW QUIN -- [shaking him, vehemently.] -- That's not your son. That's
a man is going to make a marriage with the daughter of this house, a
place with fine trade, with a license, and with poteen too.

MAHON -- [amazed.] That man marrying a decent and a moneyed girl! Is it
mad yous are? Is it in a crazy-house for females that I'm landed now?

WIDOW QUIN. It's mad yourself is with the blow upon your head. That lad
is the wonder of the Western World.

MAHON. I seen it's my son.

WIDOW QUIN. You seen that you're mad. (Cheering outside.) Do you hear
them cheering him in the zig-zags of the road? Aren't you after saying
that your son's a fool, and how would they be cheering a true idiot
born?

MAHON -- [getting distressed.] -- It's maybe out of reason that that
man's himself. (Cheering again.) There's none surely will go cheering
him. Oh, I'm raving with a madness that would fright the world! (He sits
down with his hand to his head.) There was one time I seen ten scarlet
divils letting on they'd cork my spirit in a gallon can; and one time I
seen rats as big as badgers sucking the life blood from the butt of
my lug; but I never till this day confused that dribbling idiot with a
likely man. I'm destroyed surely.

WIDOW QUIN. And who'd wonder when it's your brain-pan that is gaping
now?

MAHON. Then the blight of the sacred drought upon myself and him, for
I never went mad to this day, and I not three weeks with the Limerick
girls drinking myself silly, and parlatic from the dusk to dawn. (To
Widow Quin, suddenly.) Is my visage astray?

WIDOW QUIN. It is then. You're a sniggering maniac, a child could see.

MAHON -- [getting up more cheerfully.] -- Then I'd best be going to
the union beyond, and there'll be a welcome before me, I tell you (with
great pride), and I a terrible and fearful case, the way that there I
was one time, screeching in a straightened waistcoat, with seven doctors
writing out my sayings in a printed book. Would you believe that?

WIDOW QUIN. If you're a wonder itself, you'd best be hasty, for them
lads caught a maniac one time and pelted the poor creature till he ran
out, raving and foaming, and was drowned in the sea.

MAHON -- [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.

WIDOW QUIN -- [showing him out.] -- That's it. Run to the right, and not
a one will see. [He runs off.]

PHILLY -- [wisely.] You're at some gaming, Widow Quin; but I'll walk
after him and give him his dinner and a time to rest, and I'll see then
if he's raving or as sane as you.

WIDOW QUIN -- [annoyed.] If you go near that lad, let you be wary of
your head, I'm saying. Didn't you hear him telling he was crazed at
times?

PHILLY. I heard him telling a power; and I'm thinking we'll have right
sport, before night will fall. [He goes out.]

JIMMY. Well, Philly's a conceited and foolish man. How could that madman
have his senses and his brain-pan slit? I'll go after them and see him
turn on Philly now. [He goes; Widow Quin hides poteen behind counter.
Then hubbub outside.]

VOICES. There you are! Good jumper! Grand lepper! Darlint boy! He's the
racer! Bear him on, will you! [Christy comes in, in Jockey's dress, with
Pegeen Mike, Sara, and other girls, and men.]

PEGEEN -- [to crowd.] -- Go on now and don't destroy him and he
drenching with sweat. Go along, I'm saying, and have your tug-of-warring
till he's dried his skin.

CROWD. Here's his prizes! A bagpipes! A fiddle was played by a poet in
the years gone by! A flat and three-thorned blackthorn would lick the
scholars out of Dublin town!

CHRISTY -- [taking prizes from the men.] -- Thank you kindly, the lot of
you. But you'd say it was little only I did this day if you'd seen me a
while since striking my one single blow.

TOWN CRIER -- [outside, ringing a bell.] -- Take notice, last event of
this day! Tug-of-warring on the green below! Come on, the lot of you!
Great achievements for all Mayo men!

PEGEEN. Go on, and leave him for to rest and dry. Go on, I tell you, for
he'll do no more. (She hustles crowd out; Widow Quin following them.)

MEN -- [going.] -- Come on then. Good luck for the while!

PEGEEN -- [radiantly, wiping his face with her shawl.] -- Well, you're
the lad, and you'll have great times from this out when you could win
that wealth of prizes, and you sweating in the heat of noon!

CHRISTY -- [looking at her with delight.] -- I'll have great times if
I win the crowning prize I'm seeking now, and that's your promise that
you'll wed me in a fortnight, when our banns is called.

PEGEEN -- [backing away from him.] -- You've right daring to go ask
me that, when all knows you'll be starting to some girl in your own
townland, when your father's rotten in four months, or five.

CHRISTY -- [indignantly.] Starting from you, is it? (He follows her.)
I will not, then, and when the airs is warming in four months, or five,
it's then yourself and me should be pacing Neifin in the dews of night,
the times sweet smells do be rising, and you'd see a little shiny new
moon, maybe, sinking on the hills.

PEGEEN [looking at him playfully.] -- And it's that kind of a poacher's
love you'd make, Christy Mahon, on the sides of Neifin, when the night
is down?

CHRISTY. It's little you'll think if my love's a poacher's, or an
earl's itself, when you'll feel my two hands stretched around you, and I
squeezing kisses on your puckered lips, till I'd feel a kind of pity for
the Lord God is all ages sitting lonesome in his golden chair.

PEGEEN. That'll be right fun, Christy Mahon, and any girl would walk her
heart out before she'd meet a young man was your like for eloquence, or
talk, at all.

CHRISTY -- [encouraged.] Let you wait, to hear me talking, till we're
astray in Erris, when Good Friday's by, drinking a sup from a well,
and making mighty kisses with our wetted mouths, or gaming in a gap
or sunshine, with yourself stretched back unto your necklace, in the
flowers of the earth.

PEGEEN -- [in a lower voice, moved by his tone.] -- I'd be nice so, is
it?

CHRISTY -- [with rapture.] -- If the mitred bishops seen you that time,
they'd be the like of the holy prophets, I'm thinking, do be straining
the bars of Paradise to lay eyes on the Lady Helen of Troy, and she
abroad, pacing back and forward, with a nosegay in her golden shawl.

PEGEEN -- [with real tenderness.] -- And what is it I have, Christy
Mahon, to make me fitting entertainment for the like of you, that has
such poet's talking, and such bravery of heart?

CHRISTY -- [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?

PEGEEN. 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 nick-names for the stars of night.

CHRISTY. You, is it? Taking your death in the hailstones, or in the fogs
of dawn.

PEGEEN. Yourself and me would shelter easy in a narrow bush, (with a
qualm of dread) but we're only talking, maybe, for this would be a poor,
thatched place to hold a fine lad is the like of you.

CHRISTY -- [putting his arm round her.] -- If I wasn't a good Christian,
it's on my naked knees I'd be saying my prayers and paters to every
jackstraw you have roofing your head, and every stony pebble is paving
the laneway to your door.

PEGEEN -- [radiantly.] If that's the truth, I'll be burning candles from
this out to the miracles of God that have brought you from the south
to-day, and I, with my gowns bought ready, the way that I can wed you,
and not wait at all.

CHRISTY. It's miracles, and that's the truth. Me there toiling a long
while, and walking a long while, not knowing at all I was drawing all
times nearer to this holy day.

PEGEEN. And myself, a girl, was tempted often to go sailing the seas
till I'd marry a Jew-man, with ten kegs of gold, and I not knowing at
all there was the like of you drawing nearer, like the stars of God.

CHRISTY. And to think I'm long years hearing women talking that talk,
to all bloody fools, and this the first time I've heard the like of your
voice talking sweetly for my own delight.

PEGEEN. 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, to-day. (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.]

MICHAEL -- [singing outside] -- The jailor and the turnkey They quickly
ran us down, And brought us back as prisoners Once more to Cavan town.
[He comes in supported by Shawn.] There we lay bewailing All in a prison
bound.... [He sees Christy. Goes and shakes him drunkenly by the hand,
while Pegeen and Shawn talk on the left.]

MICHAEL -- [to Christy.] -- The blessing of God and the holy angels on
your head, young fellow. I hear tell you're after winning all in the
sports below; and wasn't it a shame I didn't bear you along with me to
Kate Cassidy's wake, a fine, stout lad, the like of you, for you'd never
see the match of it for flows of drink, the way when we sunk her bones
at noonday in her narrow grave, there were five men, aye, and six men,
stretched out retching speechless on the holy stones.

CHRISTY -- [uneasily, watching Pegeen.] -- Is that the truth?

MICHAEL. It is then, and aren't you a louty schemer to go burying your
poor father unbeknownst when you'd a right to throw him on the crupper
of a Kerry mule and drive him westwards, like holy Joseph in the days
gone by, the way we could have given him a decent burial, and not have
him rotting beyond, and not a Christian drinking a smart drop to the
glory of his soul?

CHRISTY -- [gruffly.] It's well enough he's lying, for the likes of him.

MICHAEL -- [slapping him on the back.] -- Well, aren't you a hardened
slayer? It'll be a poor thing for the household man where you go
sniffing for a female wife; and (pointing to Shawn) look beyond at that
shy and decent Christian I have chosen for my daughter's hand, and I
after getting the gilded dispensation this day for to wed them now.

CHRISTY. And you'll be wedding them this day, is it?

MICHAEL -- [drawing himself up.] -- Aye. Are you thinking, if I'm drunk
itself, I'd leave my daughter living single with a little frisky rascal
is the like of you?

PEGEEN -- [breaking away from Shawn.] -- Is it the truth the
dispensation's come?

MICHAEL -- [triumphantly.] Father Reilly's after reading it in gallous
Latin, and "It's come in the nick of time," says he; "so I'll wed them
in a hurry, dreading that young gaffer who'd capsize the stars."

PEGEEN -- [fiercely.] He's missed his nick of time, for it's that lad,
Christy Mahon, that I'm wedding now.

MICHAEL -- [loudly with horror.] -- You'd be making him a son to me, and
he wet and crusted with his father's blood?

PEGEEN. Aye. Wouldn't it be a bitter thing for a girl to go marrying the
like of Shaneen, and he a middling kind of a scarecrow, with no savagery
or fine words in him at all?

MICHAEL -- [gasping and sinking on a chair.] -- Oh, aren't you a heathen
daughter to go shaking the fat of my heart, and I swamped and drownded
with the weight of drink? Would you have them turning on me the way that
I'd be roaring to the dawn of day with the wind upon my heart? Have you
not a word to aid me, Shaneen? Are you not jealous at all?

SHANEEN -- [In great misery.] -- I'd be afeard to be jealous of a man
did slay his da.

PEGEEN. Well, it'd be a poor thing to go marrying your like. I'm seeing
there's a world of peril for an orphan girl, and isn't it a great
blessing I didn't wed you, before himself came walking from the west or
south?

SHAWN. It's a queer story you'd go picking a dirty tramp up from the
highways of the world.

PEGEEN -- [playfully.] And you think you're a likely beau to go straying
along with, the shiny Sundays of the opening year, when it's sooner on
a bullock's liver you'd put a poor girl thinking than on the lily or the
rose?

SHAWN. And have you no mind of my weight of passion, and the holy
dispensation, and the drift of heifers I am giving, and the golden ring?

PEGEEN. I'm thinking you're too fine for the like of me, Shawn Keogh of
Killakeen, and let you go off till you'd find a radiant lady with droves
of bullocks on the plains of Meath, and herself bedizened in the diamond
jewelleries of Pharaoh's ma. That'd be your match, Shaneen. So God save
you now! [She retreats behind Christy.]

SHAWN. Won't you hear me telling you...?

CHRISTY -- [with ferocity.] -- Take yourself from this, young fellow, or
I'll maybe add a murder to my deeds to-day.

MICHAEL -- [springing up with a shriek.] -- Murder is it? Is it mad yous
are? Would you go making murder in this place, and it piled with poteen
for our drink to-night? Go on to the foreshore if it's fighting you
want, where the rising tide will wash all traces from the memory of man.
[Pushing Shawn towards Christy.]

SHAWN -- [shaking himself free, and getting behind Michael.] -- I'll
not fight him, Michael James. I'd liefer live a bachelor, simmering in
passions to the end of time, than face a lepping savage the like of him
has descended from the Lord knows where. Strike him yourself, Michael
James, or you'll lose my drift of heifers and my blue bull from Sneem.

MICHAEL. Is it me fight him, when it's father-slaying he's bred to now?
(Pushing Shawn.) Go on you fool and fight him now.

SHAWN -- [coming forward a little.] -- Will I strike him with my hand?

MICHAEL. Take the loy is on your western side.

SHAWN. I'd be afeard of the gallows if I struck him with that.

CHRISTY -- [taking up the loy.] -- Then I'll make you face the gallows
or quit off from this. [Shawn flies out of the door.]

CHRISTY. Well, fine weather be after him, (going to Michael, coaxingly)
and I'm thinking you wouldn't wish to have that quaking blackguard in
your house at all. Let you give us your blessing and hear her swear her
faith to me, for I'm mounted on the spring-tide of the stars of luck,
the way it'll be good for any to have me in the house.

PEGEEN [at the other side of Michael.] -- Bless us now, for I swear to
God I'll wed him, and I'll not renege.

MICHAEL -- [standing up in the centre, holding on to both of them.] --
It's the will of God, I'm thinking, that all should win an easy or a
cruel end, and it's the will of God that all should rear up lengthy
families for the nurture of the earth. What's a single man, I ask you,
eating a bit in one house and drinking a sup in another, and he with no
place of his own, like an old braying jackass strayed upon the rocks?
(To Christy.) It's many would be in dread to bring your like into their
house for to end them, maybe, with a sudden end; but I'm a decent man
of Ireland, and I liefer face the grave untimely and I seeing a score of
grandsons growing up little gallant swearers by the name of God, than
go peopling my bedside with puny weeds the like of what you'd breed, I'm
thinking, out of Shaneen Keogh. (He joins their hands.) A daring fellow
is the jewel of the world, and a man did split his father's middle with
a single clout, should have the bravery of ten, so may God and Mary and
St. Patrick bless you, and increase you from this mortal day.

CHRISTY AND PEGEEN. Amen, O Lord!

[Hubbub outside.]

[Old Mahon rushes in, followed by all the crowd, and Widow Quin. He
makes a rush at Christy, knocks him down, and begins to beat him.]

PEGEEN -- [dragging back his arm.] -- Stop that, will you. Who are you
at all?

MAHON. His father, God forgive me!

PEGEEN -- [drawing back.] -- Is it rose from the dead?

MAHON. Do you think I look so easy quenched with the tap of a loy?
[Beats Christy again.]

PEGEEN -- [glaring at Christy.] -- And it's lies you told, letting on
you had him slitted, and you nothing at all.

CHRISTY -- [clutching Mahon's stick.] -- He's not my father. He's a
raving maniac would scare the world. (Pointing to Widow Quin.) Herself
knows it is true.

CROWD. You're fooling Pegeen! The Widow Quin seen him this day, and you
likely knew! You're a liar!

CHRISTY -- [dumbfounded.] It's himself was a liar, lying stretched out
with an open head on him, letting on he was dead.

MAHON. Weren't you off racing the hills before I got my breath with the
start I had seeing you turn on me at all?

PEGEEN. And to think of the coaxing glory we had given him, and he after
doing nothing but hitting a soft blow and chasing northward in a sweat
of fear. Quit off from this.

CHRISTY -- [piteously.] You've seen my doings this day, and let you save
me from the old man; for why would you be in such a scorch of haste to
spur me to destruction now?

PEGEEN. It's there your treachery is spurring me, till I'm hard set to
think you're the one I'm after lacing in my heart-strings half-an-hour
gone by. (To Mahon.) Take him on from this, for I think bad the world
should see me raging for a Munster liar, and the fool of men.

MAHON. Rise up now to retribution, and come on with me.

CROWD -- [jeeringly.] There's the playboy! There's the lad thought he'd
rule the roost in Mayo. Slate him now, mister.

CHRISTY -- [getting up in shy terror.] -- What is it drives you to
torment me here, when I'd asked the thunders of the might of God to
blast me if I ever did hurt to any saving only that one single blow.

MAHON -- [loudly.] If you didn't, you're a poor good-for-nothing, and
isn't it by the like of you the sins of the whole world are committed?

CHRISTY -- [raising his hands.] -- In the name of the Almighty God....

MAHON. Leave troubling the Lord God. Would you have him sending down
droughts, and fevers, and the old hen and the cholera morbus?

CHRISTY -- [to Widow Quin.] -- Will you come between us and protect me
now?

WIDOW QUIN. I've tried a lot, God help me, and my share is done.

CHRISTY -- [looking round in desperation.] -- And I must go back into
my torment is it, or run off like a vagabond straying through the Unions
with the dusts of August making mudstains in the gullet of my throat,
or the winds of March blowing on me till I'd take an oath I felt them
making whistles of my ribs within?

SARA. Ask Pegeen to aid you. Her like does often change.

CHRISTY. I will not then, for there's torment in the splendour of her
like, and she a girl any moon of midnight would take pride to meet,
facing southwards on the heaths of Keel. But what did I want crawling
forward to scorch my understanding at her flaming brow?

PEGEEN -- [to Mahon, vehemently, fearing she will break into tears.] --
Take him on from this or I'll set the young lads to destroy him here.

MAHON -- [going to him, shaking his stick.] -- Come on now if you
wouldn't have the company to see you skelped.

PEGEEN -- [half laughing, through her tears.] -- That's it, now the
world will see him pandied, and he an ugly liar was playing off the
hero, and the fright of men.

CHRISTY -- [to Mahon, very sharply.] -- Leave me go!

CROWD. That's it. Now Christy. If them two set fighting, it will lick
the world.

MAHON -- [making a grab at Christy.] -- Come here to me.

CHRISTY -- [more threateningly.] -- Leave me go, I'm saying.

MAHON. I will maybe, when your legs is limping, and your back is blue.

CROWD. Keep it up, the two of you. I'll back the old one. Now the
playboy.

CHRISTY -- [in low and intense voice.] -- Shut your yelling, for if
you're after making a mighty man of me this day by the power of a lie,
you're setting me now to think if it's a poor thing to be lonesome,
it's worse maybe to go mixing with the fools of earth. [Mahon makes a
movement towards him.]

CHRISTY -- [almost shouting.] -- Keep off... lest I do show a blow
unto the lot of you would set the guardian angels winking in the clouds
above. [He swings round with a sudden rapid movement and picks up a
loy.]

CROWD -- [half frightened, half amused.] -- He's going mad! Mind
yourselves! Run from the idiot!

CHRISTY. If I am an idiot, I'm after hearing my voice this day saying
words would raise the topknot on a poet in a merchant's town. I've won
your racing, and your lepping, and...

MAHON. Shut your gullet and come on with me.

CHRISTY. I'm going, but I'll stretch you first. [He runs at old Mahon
with the loy, chases him out of the door, followed by crowd and Widow
Quin. There is a great noise outside, then a yell, and dead silence for
a moment. Christy comes in, half dazed, and goes to fire.]

WIDOW QUIN -- [coming in, hurriedly, and going to him.] -- They're
turning again you. Come on, or you'll be hanged, indeed.

CHRISTY. I'm thinking, from this out, Pegeen'll be giving me praises the
same as in the hours gone by.

WIDOW QUIN -- [impatiently.] Come by the back-door. I'd think bad to
have you stifled on the gallows tree.

CHRISTY -- [indignantly.] I will not, then. What good'd be my life-time,
if I left Pegeen?

WIDOW QUIN. Come on, and you'll be no worse than you were last night;
and you with a double murder this time to be telling to the girls.

CHRISTY. I'll not leave Pegeen Mike.

WIDOW QUIN -- [impatiently.] Isn't there the match of her in every
parish public, from Binghamstown unto the plain of Meath? Come on, I
tell you, and I'll find you finer sweethearts at each waning moon.

CHRISTY. It's Pegeen I'm seeking only, and what'd I care if you brought
me a drift of chosen females, standing in their shifts itself, maybe,
from this place to the Eastern World?

SARA -- [runs in, pulling off one of her petticoats.] -- They're going
to hang him. (Holding out petticoat and shawl.) Fit these upon him, and
let him run off to the east.

WIDOW QUIN. He's raving now; but we'll fit them on him, and I'll take
him, in the ferry, to the Achill boat.

CHRISTY -- [struggling feebly.] -- Leave me go, will you? when I'm
thinking of my luck to-day, for she will wed me surely, and I a proven
hero in the end of all. [They try to fasten petticoat round him.]

WIDOW QUIN. Take his left hand, and we'll pull him now. Come on, young
fellow.

CHRISTY -- [suddenly starting up.] -- You'll be taking me from her?
You're jealous, is it, of her wedding me? Go on from this. [He snatches
up a stool, and threatens them with it.]

WIDOW QUIN -- [going.] -- It's in the mad-house they should put him,
not in jail, at all. We'll go by the back-door, to call the doctor, and
we'll save him so. [She goes out, with Sara, through inner room. Men
crowd in the doorway. Christy sits down again by the fire.]

MICHAEL -- [in a terrified whisper.] -- Is the old lad killed surely?

PHILLY. I'm after feeling the last gasps quitting his heart. [They peer
in at Christy.]

MICHAEL -- [with a rope.] -- Look at the way he is. Twist a hangman's
knot on it, and slip it over his head, while he's not minding at all.

PHILLY. Let you take it, Shaneen. You're the soberest of all that's
here.

SHAWN. Is it me to go near him, and he the wickedest and worst with me?
Let you take it, Pegeen Mike.

PEGEEN. Come on, so. [She goes forward with the others, and they drop
the double hitch over his head.]

CHRISTY. What ails you?

SHAWN -- [triumphantly, as they pull the rope tight on his arms.] --
Come on to the peelers, till they stretch you now.

CHRISTY. Me!

MICHAEL. If we took pity on you, the Lord God would, maybe, bring us
ruin from the law to-day, so you'd best come easy, for hanging is an
easy and a speedy end.

CHRISTY. I'll not stir. (To Pegeen.) And what is it you'll say to me,
and I after doing it this time in the face of all?

PEGEEN. I'll say, a strange man is a marvel, with his mighty talk; but
what's a squabble in your back-yard, and the blow of a loy, have taught
me that there's a great gap between a gallous story and a dirty deed.
(To Men.) Take him on from this, or the lot of us will be likely put on
trial for his deed to-day.

CHRISTY -- [with horror in his voice.] -- And it's yourself will send me
off, to have a horny-fingered hangman hitching his bloody slip-knots at
the butt of my ear.

MEN -- [pulling rope.] -- Come on, will you? [He is pulled down on the
floor.]

CHRISTY -- [twisting his legs round the table.] -- Cut the rope, Pegeen,
and I'll quit the lot of you, and live from this out, like the madmen of
Keel, eating muck and green weeds, on the faces of the cliffs.

PEGEEN. And leave us to hang, is it, for a saucy liar, the like of you?
(To men.) Take him on, out from this.

SHAWN. Pull a twist on his neck, and squeeze him so.

PHILLY. Twist yourself. Sure he cannot hurt you, if you keep your
distance from his teeth alone.

SHAWN. I'm afeard of him. (To Pegeen.) Lift a lighted sod, will you, and
scorch his leg.

PEGEEN -- [blowing the fire, with a bellows.] Leave go now, young
fellow, or I'll scorch your shins.

CHRISTY. You're blowing for to torture me (His voice rising and growing
stronger.) That's your kind, is it? Then let the lot of you be wary,
for, if I've to face the gallows, I'll have a gay march down, I tell
you, and shed the blood of some of you before I die.

SHAWN -- [in terror.] -- Keep a good hold, Philly. Be wary, for the love
of God. For I'm thinking he would liefest wreak his pains on me.

CHRISTY -- [almost gaily.] -- If I do lay my hands on you, it's the way
you'll be at the fall of night, hanging as a scarecrow for the fowls of
hell. Ah, you'll have a gallous jaunt I'm saying, coaching out through
Limbo with my father's ghost.

SHAWN -- [to Pegeen.] -- Make haste, will you? Oh, isn't he a holy
terror, and isn't it true for Father Reilly, that all drink's a curse
that has the lot of you so shaky and uncertain now?

CHRISTY. If I can wring a neck among you, I'll have a royal judgment
looking on the trembling jury in the courts of law. And won't there be
crying out in Mayo the day I'm stretched upon the rope with ladies in
their silks and satins snivelling in their lacy kerchiefs, and they
rhyming songs and ballads on the terror of my fate? [He squirms round on
the floor and bites Shawn's leg.]

SHAWN -- [shrieking.] My leg's bit on me. He's the like of a mad dog,
I'm thinking, the way that I will surely die.

CHRISTY -- [delighted with himself.] -- You will then, the way you can
shake out hell's flags of welcome for my coming in two weeks or three,
for I'm thinking Satan hasn't many have killed their da in Kerry, and
in Mayo too. [Old Mahon comes in behind on all fours and looks on
unnoticed.]

MEN -- [to Pegeen.] -- Bring the sod, will you?

PEGEEN [coming over.] -- God help him so. (Burns his leg.)

CHRISTY -- [kicking and screaming.] -- O, glory be to God! [He kicks
loose from the table, and they all drag him towards the door.]

JIMMY -- [seeing old Mahon.] -- Will you look what's come in? [They all
drop Christy and run left.]

CHRISTY -- [scrambling on his knees face to face with old Mahon.] -- Are
you coming to be killed a third time, or what ails you now?

MAHON. For what is it they have you tied?

CHRISTY. They're taking me to the peelers to have me hanged for slaying
you.

MICHAEL -- [apologetically.] It is the will of God that all should
guard their little cabins from the treachery of law, and what would my
daughter be doing if I was ruined or was hanged itself?

MAHON -- [grimly, loosening Christy.] -- It's little I care if you put a
bag on her back, and went picking cockles till the hour of death; but
my son and myself will be going our own way, and we'll have great times
from this out telling stories of the villainy of Mayo, and the fools is
here. (To Christy, who is freed.) Come on now.

CHRISTY. Go with you, is it? I will then, like a gallant captain with
his heathen slave. Go on now and I'll see you from this day stewing my
oatmeal and washing my spuds, for I'm master of all fights from now.
(Pushing Mahon.) Go on, I'm saying.

MAHON. Is it me?

CHRISTY. Not a word out of you. Go on from this.

MAHON [walking out and looking back at Christy over his shoulder.] --
Glory be to God! (With a broad smile.) I am crazy again! [Goes.]

CHRISTY. Ten thousand blessings upon all that's here, for you've turned
me a likely gaffer in the end of all, the way I'll go romancing through
a romping lifetime from this hour to the dawning of the judgment day.
[He goes out.]

MICHAEL. By the will of God, we'll have peace now for our drinks. Will
you draw the porter, Pegeen?

SHAWN -- [going up to her.] -- It's a miracle Father Reilly can wed us
in the end of all, and we'll have none to trouble us when his vicious
bite is healed.

PEGEEN -- [hitting him a box on the ear.] -- Quit my sight. (Putting
her shawl over her head and breaking out into wild lamentations.) Oh my
grief, I've lost him surely. I've lost the only Playboy of the Western
World.

Later that same day, Jimmy and Philly enter the pub looking for a drink, but neither Pegeen nor her father is there to serve them. The men comment on Pegeen's infatuation with Christy, who has routed every competitor on the beach. Though they acknowledge his skill as an athlete, they are annoyed by his incessant bragging over his heroic deed. They then discuss a collection of skulls on display in Dublin. Old Mahon enters to hear their talk, and shows them his own skull injury. When he attributes it to his good-for-nothing son, the men grow suspicious and ask for more detail. Mahon promises to oblige if they feed him supper, and reveals that he has been earning bed and board in exchange for the story of his son's attack. Widow Quin enters to find them in conversation, and she quickly separates them from one another. After giving Old Mahon a drink, she confides to Jimmy and Philly that Mahon is raving. She tells them how he had initially attributed his head fracture to a tinker's blow, but has changed his story after hearing tell of Christy's deed. Meanwhile, Mahon grows maudlin, lamenting his son's betrayal. Finding him credible, Jimmy and Philly ask for more detail about the son. However, the widow slyly interjects by asking Mahon whether his son was a great athlete. Naturally, Mahon denies that claim, insisting the boy is a mangy cur. Suddenly, they hear the crowd roaring from the beach. Though the sound pierces Mahon's aching head, he is curious about the commotion, and joins Jimmy and Philly to watch a tremendously exciting mule race in the distance. They all exclaim over the skill of the race champion, and then note that the crowd is carrying him towards the pub. When he recognizes this champion as Christy, Mahon cries out in shock. The widow insists his perception has been obscured by his injury, since his son could never have achieved such a victory. Confused, Mahon concedes the point, and insists he must check himself into an insane asylum, admitting that he has spent time there in the past. He exits, followed by Jimmy and Philly, who remain suspicious of the widow's story. As he is carried in by the crowd, overcome with prizes, Christy boasts that his mule race victory is nothing compared to his heroic murder. Pegeen proudly tends to Christy as the crowd disperses to watch the final event down on the beach. Once they are alone, Christy declares his wish to wed Pegeen in a fortnight. Pegeen hedges, insinuating he is a skirt-chaser. He rejects this suggestion, wooing her poetically and tenderly in the process. She softens, speaking tenderly in turn. Finally, Pegeen consents to marriage, noting how fortunate it is that she already has a dress. Michael, still drunk, enters with Shawn. Death still on his mind from the wake, Michael chastises Christy for having deprived his father of a Christian burial. Shawn then announces that he has received Father Reilly's dispensation, and that Michael has consented to have him and Pegeen married today. Michael adds that he does not want to leave Pegeen alone any longer with a reprobate like Christy. Pegeen defies her father by declaring her plan to marry Christy. Horrified his daughter would prefer a father-killer to a decent Christian, Michael urges Shawn to challenge Christy. Shawn's cowardly refusal to stand up for himself only hardens Pegeen against him. Shawn does tries to argue his case, citing the ring he has already bought, the promise he has made to give the family heifers, and the church's permission, but Pegeen remains unmoved. Christy threatens to murder Shawn if he persists, and Michael grows incensed at the suggestion, adding that he cannot allow a murder in his pub, especially since he has stocked so much illegal moonshine for the night's celebration. He encourages the men to bring their battle down to the beach, but Shawn remains steadfast in his refusal to fight. Michael reassesses the situation: If the goal of marriage is to procreate, then better Pegeen should procreate with brave Christy than create any small replicas of the cowardly Shawn. Convinced, Michael gives his blessing to Pegeen and Christy by bringing their hands together. They hear a hubbub outside, and then Old Mahon bursts in, followed by the crowd and Widow Quin. Mahon rushes at Christy, who cowers before his father's blows. Pegeen intervenes in the fight, and Old Mahon reveals that he is Christy's father. Pegeen immediately renounces Christy, who desperately claims that Mahon is a lunatic, and turns to Widow Quin to validate the lie. But Widow Quin can no longer hide the truth, and the crowd roars with pleasure at seeing Christy's lie unravel. Christy begs mercy for a moment, but then, in a sudden and lyrical expression of his fate, he accepts his own lowliness. Unfit for happiness, he could never endure the terrible splendor of a girl like Pegeen. Covering her tears, Pegeen urges Mahon to take his son away before she sets the town's boys on him. Her manner is derisive and desperate. As Mahon struggles to drag Christy away, the crowd eggs on the fight, until Christy turns on them, brandishing a spade. They back away gingerly, jeering in amusement that Christy has gone mad. Mahon goads his son once again, and Christy chases him from the building, the spade raised high. Everyone rushes out, following Christy. Offstage, there is a great yell, followed be silence. A dazed Christy stumbles back in, followed by the Widow Quin, who warns that he must leave at once since the crowd has turned on him. However, Christy refuses, hoping that Pegeen will want him again now that he has truly killed his father. The widow counters that there are woman like Pegeen all over the country, but he is unmoved. Sara runs in and removes her petticoats, hoping Christy will wear them as a makeshift disguise. However, Christy threatens the two women with a stool, and the widow suggests they should fetch the doctor since the man has clearly gone mad. They leave him alone. From the doorway, Michael, Philly, Shawn and Pegeen strategize how to trap Christy in a loop of rope. A frightened Shawn refuses to participate, so the others enter together and land the rope around his arms. Caught, Christy asks Pegeen how she feels about him now that he has actually committed the parricide. Pegeen answers: "I'll say, a strange man is a marvel, with his mighty talk; but what's a squabble in your back yard, and the blow of a loy, have taught me that there's a great gap between a gallous story and a dirty deed" . In other words, the act is far less attractive in reality than it is in a story. She then instructs the men to take Christy away, lest they all go on trial for his crime. Christy begs for mercy and release, promising to run away and live like a wild man in the rough. They pull the rope tighter, and Pegeen threatens to burn his legs in the fire. In a speech of elevated language, Christy threatens to kill them before he's hanged. As he writhes on the floor, he bites at Shawn's leg, laughing. He proudly anticipates Satan's welcome once he reaches hell, for none too many have "killed their da" in County Mayo . Unnoticed, Old Mahon crawls in on all fours. As Christy struggles, Pegeen burns his leg with a sod and they drag him along the floor until he comes face to face with his father. Christy asks his father if he has come to be a killed a third time, but Mahon merely inquires why he is tied up. Michael apologetically explains that they must bring Christy to the authorities in order to protect themselves from charges of criminal activity. Mahon responds that he cares nothing for what happens to Michael and this crew, but that he and his son will certainly amuse themselves for years to come with stories of Mayo's villainy. Mahon loosens Christy's bonds, and order his son to leave with him. Christy agrees, but insists that he will be the "gallant captain" and his father the "heathen slave" . He pushes Old Mahon, warning that he himself is the boss now, and the dazed older man wonders whether he has gone "crazy again," so strange is his son's aggressive behavior . Christy thanks the assembled group, explaining that from this day forward, he will go "romancing through a romping lifetime" . Then, he and his father exit. Shawn approaches Pegeen, overjoyed that they can now wed. As he complains about the bite on his leg, Pegeen boxes his ears and sends him out of her sight. In a flurry, mostly to herself, Pegeen laments Christy's departure, crying wildly, "Oh, my grief, I've lost him surely. I've lost the only Playboy of the Western World" .

In 1896, Synge joined W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and George Russell to form the Irish National Theatre Society. The Irish National Theatre -- rechristened The Abbey Theatre in 1904 -- intended to provide a "Theory of Regeneration" for Irish culture. This regeneration took the form of artistic exploration intended to revitalize contemporary Irish identity following decades of poverty, famine and political impotence under the grip of the English crown. In this way, political nationalism became literary nationalism, as the public declared its identity largely by embracing Ireland's rich literary past of hero-centered myth and saga. One of the most famous heroes of Irish myth is Cu Chulainn , about whom writings date from the 8th century. A tragic turn of Cu Chulainn's story is that he killed his own son, mistaking the boy for an intruder. His mistake was largely the result of not having seen his son for 8 years. The Abbey Theatre's audience certainly recognized the Cu Chulainn allusion within The Playboy, but also noted that Synge had inverted it, making it craven rather than heroic. Where Cu Chulainn - living alone, without family - possessed extraordinary strength and wisdom, here Christy - previously joined at the hip to his drunken father - was dull and weak-limbed, never having traveled before stumbling upon Mayo. Cu Chulainn purposefully slew an intruder, learning afterwards the boy was his son. Christy struck haphazardly at his father, contriving afterwards to elevate the act to heroic murder. Cu Chulainn's grief brought him low; Christy's lie raised him up. If the inversion of the Cu Chulainn legend offended, worse still was the perceived inversion of the Biblical father-son relationship. God-the-father, beneficent and almighty, sacrifices his only son for the salvation of all mankind, but pathetic and weak Christy , smites his only father solely for his own personal good. In a further twist to the allusion, Christy "kills" his father three times, all of them metaphorical, in a fantasia of parricide. These acts lead to Christy's rebirth at the end of the play, again evoking Christ's rebirth. Consider that Pegeen burns Christy's leg: It is baptism by fire. At the end of the play, one can begin to see why the play was so controversial. Synge seems to be deliberately flouting the myths and beliefs by which his audience defined themselves. He presents a country full of ironic chaos, hardly the romantic stuff of National Regeneration. By the end of the play, the villagers of County Mayo have no one left on whom to pin their hopes or to enact their dreams. Synge leaves them adrift, devoid of focus. Christy, on the other hand, rises from the ashes of his ordeal a new man with new eyes. Unfettered by love, law, morality or god, he exits the play a "gallant master with his heathen slave" . Christ died for everyone, and everyone was better because of it. Christy murdered for himself, and everyone but him is worse off as a result. In a sense, it is almost as is Synge is merely trying to provoke and mock, rather than to make any coherent point. And yet one realizes with distance how the play does indeed celebrate mankind, though it does so by celebrating the power of the individual and the imagination. The shared cultural myths prove less powerful in this play than does the individual's capacity for self-creation. Christy's self-creation begins as literal fiction, one in which he is the hero of his own tall tale, but ends as fiction literalized, as Christy grows to inhabit his own lie's words. He becomes what he creates. Expression engenders desire, awakening a new capacity for action. It is not Christy's burgeoning confidence in wooing Pegeen that represents this newfound capacity for action, nor is it his unexpected athletic prowess in the beach games. It is not even his mad dash offstage to "murder" his father a second time. Instead, it is, ironically, the failure of words - the failure of the lie - that ultimately empowers him. In the moment where Pegeen turns against him, Christy has his great epiphany: "...you're after making a mighty man of me this day by the power of a lie..." . By recognizing how his imagination could have such power over his actual life, Christy ensures that his change will not be temporary, but will persist. Moreover, the lie is powerful precisely because it has no direct correlation to truth. What Christy loses when Pegeen repudiates him is a fall from her imagination. His lie has failed. However, what he does in turn shows the full capacity of human self-determination. He decides to continue believing it. By the end of the play, he has deemed her unworthy of him, rather than the other way around. If Christy has fallen from Pegeen's imagination, then he merely needs to reorder his perspective so that it is her imagination that has suffered worse. Because she can no longer accept the lie of his great heroism - whereas he decides to continue believing it - she is worse off than he is, and so is he able to leave the pub with his head held high. Thus would the original audience has been terribly and violently confused. From their perspective, Christy seemed like a loser, a murderer, a liar. And yet from his perspective - and from the playwright's - he exits the pub a true "playboy" - a man of genuine self-confidence triumphing through imagination, language and potential. His triumph has nothing to do with the violence of patricide, but rather with the discovery of his individual power. As Christy leaves with such power, Pegeen's loss is felt even greater. Synge's deliberate attempt to write a theatre of both "reality" and "joy" finds a great articulation in the play's final moment. His affection for the lives and language of the Mayo villagers is unmistakable throughout. They are all such colorful characters with great theatricality. And yet that joy is matched by the "reality" of their desperation, born from being so separated from the rest of the world, living a life where a vivacious girl like Pegeen will end up marrying a craven like Shawn simply from traditional expectations and a lack of options. The comedic play ends on a terribly tragic note as Pegeen realizes the reality of her life, a reality divorced from the power to create a new world as Christy has for himself. She chose the reality of her village over his imaginative potential, and thus has "lost the only Playboy in the Western World" .


ACT I SCENE I

[1]

       [Enter] ANTONIO and DELIO

  DELIO.  You are welcome to your country, dear Antonio;
  You have been long in France, and you return
  A very formal Frenchman in your habit:
  How do you like the French court?

  ANTONIO.                          I admire it:
  In seeking to reduce both state and people
  To a fix'd order, their judicious king
  Begins at home; quits first his royal palace
  Of flattering sycophants, of dissolute
  And infamous persons,--which he sweetly terms
  His master's master-piece, the work of heaven;
  Considering duly that a prince's court
  Is like a common fountain, whence should flow
  Pure silver drops in general, but if 't chance
  Some curs'd example poison 't near the head,
  Death and diseases through the whole land spread.
  And what is 't makes this blessed government
  But a most provident council, who dare freely
  Inform him the corruption of the times?
  Though some o' the court hold it presumption
  To instruct princes what they ought to do,
  It is a noble duty to inform them
  What they ought to foresee.[2]--Here comes Bosola,
  The only court-gall; yet I observe his railing
  Is not for simple love of piety:
  Indeed, he rails at those things which he wants;
  Would be as lecherous, covetous, or proud,
  Bloody, or envious, as any man,
  If he had means to be so.--Here's the cardinal.

       [Enter CARDINAL and BOSOLA]

  BOSOLA.  I do haunt you still.

  CARDINAL.  So.

  BOSOLA.  I have done you better service than to be slighted thus.
  Miserable age, where only the reward of doing well is the doing
  of it!

  CARDINAL.  You enforce your merit too much.

  BOSOLA.  I fell into the galleys in your service:  where, for two
  years together, I wore two towels instead of a shirt, with a knot
  on the shoulder, after the fashion of a Roman mantle.  Slighted thus!
  I will thrive some way.  Black-birds fatten best in hard weather;
  why not I in these dog-days?

  CARDINAL.  Would you could become honest!

  BOSOLA.  With all your divinity do but direct me the way to it.
  I have known many travel far for it, and yet return as arrant knaves
  as they went forth, because they carried themselves always along with
  them.  [Exit CARDINAL.] Are you gone?  Some fellows, they say,
  are possessed with the devil, but this great fellow were able
  to possess the greatest devil, and make him worse.

  ANTONIO.  He hath denied thee some suit?

  BOSOLA.  He and his brother are like plum-trees that grow crooked
  over standing-pools; they are rich and o'erladen with fruit, but none
  but crows, pies, and caterpillars feed on them.  Could I be one
  of their flattering panders, I would hang on their ears like a
  horseleech, till I were full, and then drop off.  I pray, leave me.
  Who would rely upon these miserable dependencies, in expectation
  to be advanc'd to-morrow?  What creature ever fed worse than hoping
  Tantalus?  Nor ever died any man more fearfully than he that hoped
  for a pardon.  There are rewards for hawks and dogs when they have
  done us service; but for a soldier that hazards his limbs in a
  battle, nothing but a kind of geometry is his last supportation.

  DELIO.  Geometry?

  BOSOLA.  Ay, to hang in a fair pair of slings, take his latter swing
  in the world upon an honourable pair of crutches, from hospital
  to hospital.  Fare ye well, sir:  and yet do not you scorn us;
  for places in the court are but like beds in the hospital, where
  this man's head lies at that man's foot, and so lower and lower.
       [Exit.]

  DELIO.  I knew this fellow seven years in the galleys
  For a notorious murder; and 'twas thought
  The cardinal suborn'd it:  he was releas'd
  By the French general, Gaston de Foix,
  When he recover'd Naples.

  ANTONIO.                  'Tis great pity
  He should be thus neglected:  I have heard
  He 's very valiant.  This foul melancholy
  Will poison all his goodness; for, I 'll tell you,
  If too immoderate sleep be truly said
  To be an inward rust unto the soul,
  If then doth follow want of action
  Breeds all black malcontents; and their close rearing,
  Like moths in cloth, do hurt for want of wearing.

The plays opens in its primary setting, the "presence-chamber" of the Duchess's palace in Malfi, Italy, in the sixteenth century. At the Duchess's palace, Delio welcomes his friend Antonio home from a trip to France, and asks him how he liked it there. Antonio admits his admiration for the French prince, who had rooted out the sycophants and corrupt officials in order to prohibit corruption from spreading through the rest of the country. Antonio hears Bosolo arriving with the Cardinal, and jokes to Delio how Bosola rails against against vices only because he cannot afford to commit them himself. As they enter, Bosola laments to the Cardinal how he has not been fairly rewarded for a service he performed for the Cardinal and which cost him a prison sentence in the galleys. In response, the Cardinal complains about Bosola's dishonest character and leaves. Bosola complains more to Antonio, describing how both the Cardinal and his brother, the Amalfi duke Ferdinand, are corrupt and unjust for having treated him improperly. Delio tells Antonio that Bosola served seven years in the galleys for having committed a notorious murder, and the rumor was that the Cardinal did indeed commission him to do it. Antonio says it's too bad that the Cardinal won't give him Bosola due, as this will likely "poison all his goodness"

The opening lines of The Duchess of Malfi set the tone for the struggle between good and evil that is to follow. Antonio, who we learn later in the scene is, by the Cardinal's own judgment, too honest to spy on the Duchess, praises the French court for its lack of sycophants and corruption. Then the Cardinal and Bosola enter, and Antonio tells Delio that Bosola "rails at those things"--vices--"which he wants" , so not only is his appearance of virtue false, it is hypocritical and based around self-interest. The audience quickly realizes that these characters are the antithesis of the virtues Antonio praised as reflected in the French court.  Further, in his private conversation, we learn immediately that Antonio is an archetypal man of virtue, one who not only lives honestly but esteems it in others.  This analysis is validated throughout the play, and makes him something of an anomaly in this twisted court. Antonio's character sketches to Delio present a fuller picture of the Cardinal and Ferdinand's evil--the Cardinal is cold and calculating, Ferdinand hot-tempered and deranged. There is nothing to temper these judgments--not one virtue is named for either character. In contrast, Antonio sees the Duchess as "right noble," "full of rapture," "divine," and completely virtuous. Though this view of the Duchess will be complicated somewhat later in the play, the beginning of the first scene lays the ground for what will essentially become a battle of evil trying to corrupt and destroy good. It also quickly becomes clear that Bosola does not fit perfectly into this dichotomy. Antonio's first description of him, combined with Delio's information that he committed a notorious murder, would seem to place him firmly on the side of the brothers, but Antonio himself quickly says, "I have heard/He's very valiant" , and worries that the Cardinal's mistreatment of him will "poison all his goodness" .  So Antonio, at least, believes him to have some goodness. Thus from the beginning the audience is given hints that Bosola is an enigma, and will represent the battleground where the fight of good versus evil will play out. This contradiction is quickly made manifest when Ferdinand recruits Bosola to be his informer. When Ferdinand hands him gold, Bosola's immediate reaction is to ask "Whose throat must I cut?" . That he immediately assumes he is being hired to murder says much about his character, but so does the fact that he says "must." Until Act Five, Bosola's defining trait, besides his cynical melancholy, is his unflinching loyalty to Ferdinand and the Cardinal. Here we see the first hint of this--having been handed a piece of gold, he already feels compelled to do whatever Ferdinand asks, whether he wants to or not.  Considering that he remains not only uncompensated but also unthanked for whatever the murder he had previously committed for the Cardinal, the loyalty is all the more befuddling and interesting. Bosola's situation is further complicated when he learns he is being hired not to murder, but to spy. This seems like a significantly less evil task, especially as Bosola has no particular loyalty to the Duchess, yet he is dismayed. Even though he has already murdered for money, he declares in reference to the coins, "should I take these they'd take me to hell" . Yet even against such strong reservations, Bosola gives in -- "I am your creature" . And "creature," with its connotations of unthinking loyalty and inhumanity, is just the right word. The distinction between Bosola and his masters has in it a touch of class commentary.  First of all, the depravity represented by Ferdinand the Cardinal is most contemptible because of the hypocrisy their positions add to it.  That the Duke and the religious figure, both authority figures of 'high' birth, would be the most ugly ensures an ugly world beneath them.  In the same way Antonio praised the French prince for inspiring goodness through his realm through his positive example, so is the poor example of the Malfi authorities somewhat responsible for the depravity of their court.  In contrast, Bosola's depravity or evil is conditioned, as discussed above.  He believes himself to have less agency than they do, which helps explain Antonio's view of him as one who is valiant but whose valiance could be compromised if he is treated poorly.  In some ways, Bosola is the central character of the text - Webster lists him first in the cast list, a rare occurrence in the day for characters of low rank - and he survives longer than the Duchess, ostensibly the heroine.  This fact further suggests the way that questions of class and rank, especially in contrast to an individual's natural, moral virtues, provide a means to understand the play's central themes. The dialogue between the Duchess and her brothers contains much foreshadowing. Most obviously, it reveals their desire to control her, and their incredible degree of concern over her marriage situation. A threat of violence hangs over the scene, with Ferdinand's pulling out a knife--"This was my father's poniard" --and the Cardinal's warning, "Wisdom begins at the end: remember it" , which rings ominously with its reference to the end of life. This scene also hints, however, that the Duchess will not obey her brothers blindly. She uses her diamond analogy to argue that women who remarry are not so easily condemned or depraved, and when they ignore her, we see her impatience when she demands of them, "Will you hear me?" .  The practiced rhythm of their lecture, which she points out to Ferdinand, suggests that the filial dynamic is long-gestating, and suggests that her willfulness to disobey them might have in it some share of petulance as well.  Of course, even if this is the case, what is a game to her will soon be revealed as much more to them. Her defiance is made much clearer once her brothers leave. Not only will she not be dissuaded from her planned marriage, she will "make them  low footsteps" , using them, in effect, to do what she wants in direct opposition to them. This is real defiance, not just of her brothers but of societal and religious mores of the time, and it is a first look at the Duchess's great vitality, which is further reflected when she takes the lead in the proposal scene. The marriage scene, in addition to contrasting the Duchess's vivid personality with Antonio's rather passive one, also foreshadows the tragedy to come. It opens with the Duchess telling Antonio she wants to write her will, immediately evoking the thought of death. The Duchess's metaphors and allusions, too, often invoke death--she is not an alabaster statue kneeling at her husband's tomb; she refers to her marriage to Antonio as a Gordian knot, a knot that could not be untied unless cut with "violence" ; and she says they can put an unsheathed sword between them in bed to keep them chaste, which introduces a weapon into their intimacy. Thus while this end of the act is largely happy, Webster gives the audience plenty of warning that such happiness will not last.  The contradictions in the Duchess's character - between her valiant refusal to bow before social mores and her willfulness on directly and imprudently countering the protestations of her brothers - are summarized in Cariola's final soliloquy, which questions whether the Duchess is a model of greatness or simply a madwoman.

Delio's welcoming Antonio back from France and asking how it was. The French court was super, Antonio tells him: it's a clean operation, fairly and wisely run. Hey look, Bosola's coming in--he's "the only court gall," meaning he complains a lot about the court. The Cardinal comes in, and Bosola complains that the Cardinal is treating him unfairly; Bosola apparently went to prison for work he did in service of the Cardinal. The Cardinal doesn't want to hear it, and leaves Bosola unsatisfied. Antonio and Delio go over to the Bosola, and ask him what's up. Bosola harshes on the corruption of the Italian court for a while, bemoaning both the competition for social climbing and the stuff you have to do to get to the top, and then leaves. What a Debbie Downer. Delio sheds some light on the Cardinal's relationship with Bosola: Bosola spent seven years as a galley slave for committing a murder the Cardinal was rumored to have commissioned. Antonio's a glass-half-full kind of guy. He says something along the lines of, "Aw, that's too bad; Bosola seems like a good man who's just in a bad mood." Ferdinand enters, chatting with a few members of his courtly entourage. Then even more people come in: the Cardinal comes back in, this time accompanied by the Duchess, her lady Cariola, and Julia, the wife of courtier-posse member Castruchio. A quick note: think about how this scene must look as it's being staged. We're watching Antonio and Delio as they watch different groups of people go in and out of the room. So at this point we're watching a few people watching a whole bunch of people. Crowded, no? Delio wants the dirt on the Cardinal, and Antonio isn't shy about telling him. Apparently, the Cardinal's really bad news; he surrounds himself with sycophants and assassins while baldly plotting and bribing his way to get what he wants. He's basically the Regina George of 16th-century Italy. Ferdinand's no better: in addition to being "perverse" and "turbulent," he's totally immoral and corrupt. Their sister, the Duchess , is a totally different story: she's beautiful, intelligent, and virtuous--other women should try to be like her. We're thinking someone's got a crush. Ferdinand asks the Duchess to give Bosola the job of provisorship of the horse, which she immediately agrees to. Proviso-What-Now? The provisor of the horse was, nominally, the guy who took care of your horses. Moreover, though, it's a very prestigious social position in the Renaissance court, so it's a big deal that Bosola's landing the gig. Everybody leaves but Ferdinand and the Cardinal, and the Cardinal immediately tells Ferdinand to get Bosola to be his spy. Ferdinand tells him Antonio would have been a better choice, but the Cardinal protests that Antonio's too honest a guy to become a spy for them. People move around again, and now Ferdinand and Bosola are alone. Ferdinand gives Bosola gold and asks him to spy on the Duchess for him; in particular he wants to make sure she doesn't remarry. Bosola doesn't want any part of it, and refuses until Ferdinand tells him that he's made Bosola the Duchess's provisor of the horse. Bosola is unhappy with the situation, but wants the provisorship, so he agrees to be Ferdinand's intelligencer . After Bosola leaves, Ferdinand and the Cardinal start talking to the Duchess, making it clear that they are really, really not okay with her remarrying, even threatening her with their dead father's Wow-That-Couldn't-Be-A-Phallic-Symbol-At-All poniard . Women get dragged through the mud in this scene. The brothers go on about how women don't know what's good for them, are slaves to their desires, and make terrible decision just to make them. After setting feminism back farther than it already was in the 16th century , they leave the Duchess alone. Her response to all of this? "Screw that, I do what I want." Four for you, Duchess Coco. Cariola comes in, and promises to keep it a secret that the Duchess intends to remarry. The Duchess tells Cariola to hide herself as Antonio enters to have a chat. She has him sit down and start writing for her, telling him that she's making her will. They go back and forth a little bit on what she would leave her husband, if she had one. This of course leads to the super subtle question of, "So, Antonio, buddy, what do you think about marriage, huh?" Things progress quickly--our Duchess is seriously putting the moves on Antonio. She's all, "here, hold my ring... actually, you know what, how about I just put it on your finger." How's that fit, Antonio? Antonio is understandably gobsmacked; this lady's not only a Duchess, but his personal boss, and therefore way out of his league. The Duchess stops playing around--she thinks Antonio is a really good man, and she proposing to him. For real. It's rough being an aristocrat, she says. Most guys are too chicken to court her because of her social position, so she has to take the reigns herself if she wants to remarry. Antonio's still hesitating, but the Duchess knows that Antonio's really into her and just afraid of making a move on somebody so noble. She reassures him, "please, I'm a widow--I'm not dead. I've already done the married thing once; let's not pretend this is my first rodeo." He's on board, but is still wary--what about her brothers? "Psh, who cares about my brothers? Haters gonna hate." The Duchess has Cariola come out of hiding. After Antonio gets over the fact that somebody was watching that entire very personal exchange between him and his honey, the Duchess explains that Cariola's going to marry them right then and there. She moves fast. As it so happens, in Elizabethan England a man and a women could be legally considered married so long as they declared themselves "man and wife" You didn't even need a witness. Pretty useful if your toolish brothers don't want you to get hitched, no? The happy couple wanders off, looking forward to their blissful future, but Cariola stays onstage. She's not so happy about all of this. She really loves the Duchess, and she's worried because she thinks this whole getting-married-in-secret-to-her-social-inferior thing is crazy.


SCENE II

       ANTONIO, DELIO, [Enter SILVIO, CASTRUCCIO, JULIA, RODERIGO
       and GRISOLAN]

  DELIO.  The presence 'gins to fill:  you promis'd me
  To make me the partaker of the natures
  Of some of your great courtiers.

  ANTONIO.                          The lord cardinal's
  And other strangers' that are now in court?
  I shall.--Here comes the great Calabrian duke.

       [Enter FERDINAND and Attendants]

  FERDINAND.  Who took the ring oftenest?[4]

  SILVIO.  Antonio Bologna, my lord.

  FERDINAND.  Our sister duchess' great-master of her household?
  Give him the jewel.--When shall we leave this sportive action,
  and fall to action indeed?

  CASTRUCCIO.  Methinks, my lord, you should not desire to go to war
  in person.

  FERDINAND.  Now for some gravity.--Why, my lord?

  CASTRUCCIO.  It is fitting a soldier arise to be a prince, but not
  necessary a prince descend to be a captain.

  FERDINAND.  No?

  CASTRUCCIO.  No, my lord; he were far better do it by a deputy.

  FERDINAND.  Why should he not as well sleep or eat by a deputy?
  This might take idle, offensive, and base office from him, whereas
  the other deprives him of honour.

  CASTRUCCIO.  Believe my experience, that realm is never long in quiet
  where the ruler is a soldier.

  FERDINAND.  Thou toldest me thy wife could not endure fighting.

  CASTRUCCIO.  True, my lord.

  FERDINAND.  And of a jest she broke of[5] a captain she met full of
  wounds:  I have forgot it.

  CASTRUCCIO.  She told him, my lord, he was a pitiful fellow, to lie,
  like the children of Ismael, all in tents.[6]

  FERDINAND.  Why, there's a wit were able to undo all the
  chirurgeons[7] o' the city; for although gallants should quarrel,
  and had drawn their weapons, and were ready to go to it, yet her
  persuasions would make them put up.

  CASTRUCCIO.  That she would, my lord.--How do you like my Spanish
  gennet?[8]

  RODERIGO.  He is all fire.

  FERDINAND.  I am of Pliny's opinion, I think he was begot
  by the wind; he runs as if he were ballass'd[9] with quicksilver.

  SILVIO.  True, my lord, he reels from the tilt often.

  RODERIGO, GRISOLAN.  Ha, ha, ha!

  FERDINAND.  Why do you laugh?  Methinks you that are courtiers
  should be my touch-wood, take fire when I give fire; that is,
  laugh when I laugh, were the subject never so witty.

  CASTRUCCIO.  True, my lord:  I myself have heard a very good jest,
  and have scorn'd to seem to have so silly a wit as to understand it.

  FERDINAND.  But I can laugh at your fool, my lord.

  CASTRUCCIO.  He cannot speak, you know, but he makes faces; my lady
  cannot abide him.

  FERDINAND.  No?

  CASTRUCCIO.  Nor endure to be in merry company; for she says too much
  laughing, and too much company, fills her too full of the wrinkle.

  FERDINAND.  I would, then, have a mathematical instrument made
  for her face, that she might not laugh out of compass.--I shall
  shortly visit you at Milan, Lord Silvio.

  SILVIO.  Your grace shall arrive most welcome.

  FERDINAND.  You are a good horseman, Antonio; you have excellent
  riders in France:  what do you think of good horsemanship?

  ANTONIO.  Nobly, my lord:  as out of the Grecian horse issued many
  famous princes, so out of brave horsemanship arise the first sparks
  of growing resolution, that raise the mind to noble action.

  FERDINAND.  You have bespoke it worthily.

  SILVIO.  Your brother, the lord cardinal, and sister duchess.

       [Enter CARDINAL, with DUCHESS, and CARIOLA]

  CARDINAL.  Are the galleys come about?

  GRISOLAN.                               They are, my lord.

  FERDINAND.  Here 's the Lord Silvio is come to take his leave.

  DELIO.  Now, sir, your promise:  what 's that cardinal?
  I mean his temper?  They say he 's a brave fellow,
  Will play his five thousand crowns at tennis, dance,
  Court ladies, and one that hath fought single combats.

  ANTONIO.  Some such flashes superficially hang on him for form;
  but observe his inward character:  he is a melancholy churchman.
  The spring in his face is nothing but the engend'ring of toads;
  where he is jealous of any man, he lays worse plots for them than
  ever was impos'd on Hercules, for he strews in his way flatterers,
  panders, intelligencers, atheists, and a thousand such political
  monsters.  He should have been Pope; but instead of coming to it
  by the primitive decency of the church, he did bestow bribes
  so largely and so impudently as if he would have carried it away
  without heaven's knowledge.  Some good he hath done----

  DELIO.  You have given too much of him.  What 's his brother?

  ANTONIO.  The duke there?  A most perverse and turbulent nature.
  What appears in him mirth is merely outside;
  If he laught heartily, it is to laugh
  All honesty out of fashion.

  DELIO.                       Twins?

  ANTONIO.                             In quality.
  He speaks with others' tongues, and hears men's suits
  With others' ears; will seem to sleep o' the bench
  Only to entrap offenders in their answers;
  Dooms men to death by information;
  Rewards by hearsay.

  DELIO.              Then the law to him
  Is like a foul, black cobweb to a spider,--
  He makes it his dwelling and a prison
  To entangle those shall feed him.

  ANTONIO.                           Most true:
  He never pays debts unless they be shrewd turns,
  And those he will confess that he doth owe.
  Last, for this brother there, the cardinal,
  They that do flatter him most say oracles
  Hang at his lips; and verily I believe them,
  For the devil speaks in them.
  But for their sister, the right noble duchess,
  You never fix'd your eye on three fair medals
  Cast in one figure, of so different temper.
  For her discourse, it is so full of rapture,
  You only will begin then to be sorry
  When she doth end her speech, and wish, in wonder,
  She held it less vain-glory to talk much,
  Than your penance to hear her.  Whilst she speaks,
  She throws upon a man so sweet a look
  That it were able to raise one to a galliard.[10]
  That lay in a dead palsy, and to dote
  On that sweet countenance; but in that look
  There speaketh so divine a continence
  As cuts off all lascivious and vain hope.
  Her days are practis'd in such noble virtue,
  That sure her nights, nay, more, her very sleeps,
  Are more in heaven than other ladies' shrifts.
  Let all sweet ladies break their flatt'ring glasses,
  And dress themselves in her.

  DELIO.                        Fie, Antonio,
  You play the wire-drawer with her commendations.

  ANTONIO.  I 'll case the picture up:  only thus much;
  All her particular worth grows to this sum,--
  She stains[11] the time past, lights the time to come.

  CARIOLA.  You must attend my lady in the gallery,
  Some half and hour hence.

  ANTONIO.                   I shall.
       [Exeunt ANTONIO and DELIO.]

  FERDINAND.  Sister, I have a suit to you.

  DUCHESS.                                   To me, sir?

  FERDINAND.  A gentleman here, Daniel de Bosola,
  One that was in the galleys----

  DUCHESS.                       Yes, I know him.

  FERDINAND.  A worthy fellow he is:  pray, let me entreat for
  The provisorship of your horse.

  DUCHESS.                         Your knowledge of him
  Commends him and prefers him.

  FERDINAND.                     Call him hither.
       [Exit Attendant.]
  We [are] now upon[12] parting.  Good Lord Silvio,
  Do us commend to all our noble friends
  At the leaguer.

  SILVIO.          Sir, I shall.

  [DUCHESS.]                      You are for Milan?

  SILVIO.  I am.

  DUCHESS.        Bring the caroches.[13]--We 'll bring you down
  To the haven.
       [Exeunt DUCHESS, SILVIO, CASTRUCCIO, RODERIGO, GRISOLAN,
       CARIOLA, JULIA, and Attendants.]

  CARDINAL.      Be sure you entertain that Bosola
  For your intelligence.[14]  I would not be seen in 't;
  And therefore many times I have slighted him
  When he did court our furtherance, as this morning.

  FERDINAND.  Antonio, the great-master of her household,
  Had been far fitter.

  CARDINAL.             You are deceiv'd in him.
  His nature is too honest for such business.--
  He comes:  I 'll leave you.
       [Exit.]

       [Re-enter BOSOLA]

  BOSOLA.                      I was lur'd to you.

  FERDINAND.  My brother, here, the cardinal, could never
  Abide you.

  BOSOLA.     Never since he was in my debt.

  FERDINAND.  May be some oblique character in your face
  Made him suspect you.

  BOSOLA.                Doth he study physiognomy?
  There 's no more credit to be given to the face
  Than to a sick man's urine, which some call
  The physician's whore, because she cozens[15] him.
  He did suspect me wrongfully.

  FERDINAND.                     For that
  You must give great men leave to take their times.
  Distrust doth cause us seldom be deceiv'd.
  You see the oft shaking of the cedar-tree
  Fastens it more at root.

  BOSOLA.                   Yet take heed;
  For to suspect a friend unworthily
  Instructs him the next way to suspect you,
  And prompts him to deceive you.

  FERDINAND.                       There 's gold.

  BOSOLA.                                          So:
  What follows?  [Aside.] Never rain'd such showers as these
  Without thunderbolts i' the tail of them.--Whose throat must I cut?

  FERDINAND.  Your inclination to shed blood rides post
  Before my occasion to use you.  I give you that
  To live i' the court here, and observe the duchess;
  To note all the particulars of her haviour,
  What suitors do solicit her for marriage,
  And whom she best affects.  She 's a young widow:
  I would not have her marry again.

  BOSOLA.                            No, sir?

  FERDINAND.  Do not you ask the reason; but be satisfied.
  I say I would not.

  BOSOLA.             It seems you would create me
  One of your familiars.

  FERDINAND.              Familiar!  What 's that?

  BOSOLA.  Why, a very quaint invisible devil in flesh,--
  An intelligencer.[16]

  FERDINAND.          Such a kind of thriving thing
  I would wish thee; and ere long thou mayst arrive
  At a higher place by 't.

  BOSOLA.                   Take your devils,
  Which hell calls angels!  These curs'd gifts would make
  You a corrupter, me an impudent traitor;
  And should I take these, they'd take me [to] hell.

  FERDINAND.  Sir, I 'll take nothing from you that I have given.
  There is a place that I procur'd for you
  This morning, the provisorship o' the horse;
  Have you heard on 't?

  BOSOLA.                No.

  FERDINAND.                  'Tis yours:  is 't not worth thanks?

  BOSOLA.  I would have you curse yourself now, that your bounty
  (Which makes men truly noble) e'er should make me
  A villain.  O, that to avoid ingratitude
  For the good deed you have done me, I must do
  All the ill man can invent!  Thus the devil
  Candies all sins o'er; and what heaven terms vile,
  That names he complimental.

  FERDINAND.                   Be yourself;
  Keep your old garb of melancholy; 'twill express
  You envy those that stand above your reach,
  Yet strive not to come near 'em.  This will gain
  Access to private lodgings, where yourself
  May, like a politic dormouse----

  BOSOLA.                         As I have seen some
  Feed in a lord's dish, half asleep, not seeming
  To listen to any talk; and yet these rogues
  Have cut his throat in a dream.  What 's my place?
  The provisorship o' the horse?  Say, then, my corruption
  Grew out of horse-dung:  I am your creature.

  FERDINAND.                                    Away!
       [Exit.]

  BOSOLA.  Let good men, for good deeds, covet good fame,
  Since place and riches oft are bribes of shame.
  Sometimes the devil doth preach.
       [Exit.]

The second scene plays continuously, without any stage interruption. Delio reminds Antonio that the latter had promised to tell the former about the figures who populate the Amalfi court, their personalities and moral characters. Antonio agrees, but they are distracted by the entrance of several characters. Almost immediately, Ferdinand enters with Silvio, Castruccio, Roderigo, and Grisolan. Ferdinand is informed that Antonio had won the most jousting contests and so rewards him, lamenting that they can only play games instead of fighting in a real war. Castruccio tells him he thinks it best for princes to send deputies to fight in their stead, since when rulers fight themselves, it breeds discontent at home. Castruccio further insinuates that his wife had been less than faithful while he was gone away, and Ferdinand continues to pun on his cuckoldry throughout the conversation. They further discuss Roderigo's new horse, and Ferdinand compliments Antonio's riding. The Cardinal enters with the Duchess and her lady, Cariola, and the three distract all of the group save Antonio and Delio. of the Cardinal and Ferdinand's characters. He says the Cardinal's rumored bravery and light-heartedness is superficial, and that he is truly a melancholy and corrupt man who will destroy anyone he is jealous of, so much so that he tried to bribe his way to becoming pope. He says Ferdinand is never what he seems, has a "perverse and turbulent nature," , is vengeful, and uses the law to destroy people at will and for his own gains. Lastly, he describes their sister, the Duchess, as a great conversationalist, a beautiful woman, and a completely virtuous person. Delio accuses him of overstating her assets, but Antonio responds, "All her particular worth grows to this sum:/She stains the time past: lights the time to come--". Cariola brings message to Antonio, to attend to the Duchess in half an hour's time. Ferdinand asks the Duchess if she would take Bosola on as manager of her horses on his recommendation, and she accepts. In private, the Cardinal then tells Ferdinand to use Bosola as an informer as to their sister's behavior. When Ferdinand suggests they use Antonio instead of Bosola, the Cardinal protests that Antonio is far too honest for such an assignment. They see Bosola approaching, and the Cardinal leaves to avoid him. Ferdinand tells Bosola that the Cardinal doesn't trust him. Bosola warns that to be distrusted without cause can lead one to actually deceive. Changing the subject, Ferdinand offers him gold to spy on the Duchess, explaining that she is recently widowed and they do not want her to remarry; he does not give a reason for their concern. Bosola tries to return the money because he does not want to be a spy, but Ferdinand tells him he has already arranged Bosola the post of horse manager, and that to refuse would appear ungrateful. Bosola begrudgingly accepts and leaves