Princes and noble lords.
What answer shall I make to this base man?
I say thou liest,
And will maintain what thou hast said is false
In thy heart-blood, though being all too base
To stain the temper of my knightly sword.
NOTES
PROLOGUE
1 twopenny type: chairs rentable for twopence.
2 no home to go to: a phrase much used at closing time by Dublin barmen.
3 Guard: a policeman, in Irish Garda Síochána.
4 de Valera … Bangalore: Eamon de Valera (1882–1975), President of the Executive Council (Prime Minister) from March 1932 until February 1948, and also June 1951-June 1954 and March 1957-June 1959; after December 1937 his title was Taoiseach. The Kildare Street Club, now extinct, was Dublin’s most exclusive men’s club. The Keeper presumably refers to the Bishop of Bangalore for alliterative reasons.
5 Boord of Works: a government department charged with maintaining parks, public buildings, and other public properties.
6 the ‘joy: Mountjoy Prison near the Royal Canal in Phibsboro, North Dublin.
7 Mister Connolly: Joseph Connolly, then Chairman of the Board of Works. In September 1939 he was appointed Controller of Censorship. R.M. Smyllie, Myles’s editor at The Irish Times, described Connolly as ‘a bitter Anglophobe.’ See Bernard Share, The Emergency; Neutral Ireland, 1939–1945 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1978), 32. Smyllie claimed that ‘in practice … the censorship … worked almost exclusively against the Allies,’ and called it ‘ludicrous He was not allowed to mention that many Irishmen had joined the British forces nor could obituaries speak of death in battle. The Irish births of Generals Montgomery and Alexander ‘had to be kept dark’. When a Dubliner serving in the British Navy was rescued from his sinking ship, this could only be mentioned by stating ‘in the Social and Personal column that the young man … had completely recovered from the effect of his recent boating accident!’ See R.M. Smyllie, Unneutral Eire,’ Foreign Affairs 24: 2 (January 1946), 322–3. Myles’s ‘Cruiskeen Lawn’ column was apparently censored (Cronin, No Laughing Matter, 119).
8 omadaun: Irish amadán, fool, simpleton, idiot.
9 own-shucks: óinseach is the female form of amadán.
10 drop o’malt: malt is whiskey.
11 family allowances … undher th’plough: The Fine Gael leader, James Dillon, suggested government subsidies to assist poor families in March 1939. Myles, in his Civil Service capacity as Brian O Nualláin, was appointed Secretary to the Local Government Committee set up in July 1939 to study the question. The Committee first met in April 1940, and eventually recommended the appointment of a second, interdepartmental committee. The second Committee was even more desultory, reporting finally in October 1942, and recommending the establishment of Family or Children’s Allowances. The proposal was strongly opposed, on both political and religious grounds, by J.J. McElligott, Secretary to the Department of Finance, and by Sean MacEntee, Minister of Local Government (August 1941–February 1948), Myles’s/O Nualláin’s direct superior, MacEntee’s hostile memoranda, presumably drafted by Myles, then his private secretary, were particularly numerous, lengthy, and hysterical in February–March 1943. McElligott’s and MacEntee’s conviction that rural poverty was morally bracing, and quintessentially Irish, echoes — presumably unconsciously — similar ideas which Myles had parodied in An Béal Bocht (1941). Their insistence that the child allowance would weaken the family and so subvert Catholic values anticipated arguments used successfully against the ‘Mother and Child’ plan of Dr Noel Browne (Minister of Health, February 1948–11 April 1951), which proposed free pre- and post-natal care for mothers and children, irrespective of means. See J.J. Lee, Ireland 1912–1985 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 277–86.
The slogan ‘One more cow, and one more sow, and one more acre under the plow,’ was coined by Patrick J. Hogan (1891–1936), Minister of Agriculture 1922–32.
ACT I
1 This castle … senses: Macbeth 1.6.1–3, spoken by Duncan as he enters Macbeth’s castle.
2 What early tongue … distemperature: Romeo and Juliet 2.3.32–40. Friar Lawrence rebukes Romeo for visiting him so early.
3 eight hundred thousand feet: some species of bees do have queens who mate on a nuptial flight, but considerably closer to the ground. I am grateful to my colleague, Prof. Stephen Welter, for assistance with Myles’s erratic entomology.
4 little tickets: presumably coupons for the Irish Sweepstakes.
5 ‘O Death, where is thy sting’: 1 Corinthians 15.55.
6 Foul whisperings … their secrets: Macbeth 5.1. 79–80. The Doctor, after observing Lady Macbeth’s sleep-walking scene.
7 This is the state … he falls: King Henry VIII 3.2. 352–8. Commencing ‘This is the state of man,’ the speech is Wolsey’s meditation on his downfall.
8 If I am … go through: Henry VIII 1.2. 71-6. Wolsey again, defending the taxes he has levied, when Queen Katherine tells the King they have angered the people.
9 Things done well … not any: Henry VIII 1.2. 88–92. King Henry rebuking Wolsey and ordering him to lower the tax.
10 What should this mean? … see them more: Henry VIII 3.2. 204–09; 223–8. Wolsey, as he begins to realize that the King knows of his secret dealings and the fortune he has amassed. Myles substitutes They for He (205) and bee for man (226).
11 Meriel Moore … ‘Jack-in-the-Box’: Jack-in-the-Box, the Gate Theatre’s 1942 Christmas entertainment, included Myles’s Thirst and Oscar Wilde’s ‘fragment,’ La Sainte courtisane, or, The Woman Covered with Jewels (written in 1894–5), in which Meriel Moore played the gaudily seductive Myrrhina.
12 Who’s there … meditations: Henry VIII 2.2. 64–5. King Henry, angry at being interrupted while brooding over his plans to divorce Queen Katherine.
13 I prithee, go to: Shakespearean phrases, but from no specific play. Please, leave me alone.
14 In peace there’s nothing … full height!: Henry V 3.1. 3–17. King Henry urging his men on at Harfleur; the speech begins with the famous, ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends …’
15 Let us seek … empty: Macbeth 4.3.1–2. Malcolm to Macduff, in their English exile. Uncharacteristically, the Drone has misquoted slightly: ‘seek out some desolate shade.’
16 Like the Pontick sea … swallow them up: Othello 3.3. 453–460. Othello, reacting to Iago’s insinuations about Desdemona and Cassio.
17 This argues fruitfulness … exercise devout: Othello 3.4. 38–41. Othello to Desdemona, suspicious because her palm is sweaty.
18 Stay, my pet … tires him: Henry VIII 1.1. 129–34. Norfolk, who begins, ‘Stay, my lord,’ urging Buckingham to behave prudently.
19 Be advised … fire of passion: Henry VIII 1.1. 139–49. Norfolk, continuing his good advice.
20 The Queen, my lord, is dead … Signifying nothing: Macbeth 5.5. 16–28. Myles neatly appropriates Seyton’s announcement of Lady Macbeth’s death, and Macbeth’s ensuing meditation.
ACT II
1 bew-uks: books
2 Sahurda-work: Saturday work, overtime.
3 have a decko: have a look, possibly from Romany dik, to look.
4 hum: smell.
5 dote: pet.
6 the pledge: Father [Theobald] Mathew’s pledge, to abstain from alcohol, which he developed in 1838 to promote abstinence in Ireland.
7 on me tod: on my own, alone.
8 oul wan: spouse, literally ‘old one’.
9 hoor: an Irish pronunciation of whore, here simply suggesting a difficult journey.
10 takin’ a jar: drinking.
11 service … pinshin: the Civil Service, and its pension.
12 musha: exclamation, from the Irish más ea, even so, or maiseadh, if it be so.
13 joxers: yes-men, insincere flatterers (Dublin slang).
14 poor whore: see hoor. In this case, not a lady of the evening but someone easily victimized.
; 15 bugger: literally a sodomite, but here simply a disagreeable person. Replaced in performance by bowsy, a Dublin term for an aggressive bully.
16 baucaugh-shool: a wandering beggar, a tramp, from bacach, beggar, and siúil, to walk.
17 Keep nix … a screw: keep watch … till I have a look.
ACT III
1 The Awnt State will feight … be reight!: In an effort to bring down Gladstone’s Liberal government, Lord Randolph Churchill (1849–95) decided to ‘play the Orange card’, that is, appeal to the widespread fear and hatred of Catholics among the Presbyterians of Northern Ireland, especially those who were members of the Orange Order, founded to resist Catholic claims. They were bitterly opposed to Gladstone’s plan to give Ireland ‘Home Rule’, which they believed would put them at the mercy of the Catholic majority. Churchill first used the slogan, ‘Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right’, when he landed at Larne (22 February 1886) to arouse the Presbyterians and encourage them to resist Home Rule by every means, even civil war. The phrase became popular, and was revived by Sir Edward Carson (1854–1935) against the Third Home Rule Bill (1912–14), as well as by later opponents of any merging of Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic. Those opposed to such a merging are called Unionists or Loyalists (loyal to the union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland).
2 Awnt over in Rome: the Pope.
3 Latin … taught in the schools: a conflation of the Catholic Church’s liturgical use of Latin at that time, and efforts to revive the Irish language by making it a compulsory subject in the schools of Eire.
4 glorious ond immortal mamory: a phrase from the ‘Orange’ toast ‘To the glorious, pious, and immortal memory of the great and good King William [William of Orange], who saved us from Popery, brass money, and wooden shoes.’
5 Deevil so-and-so: Eamon de Valera. Myles has reversed and so disguised certain contemporary issues, perhaps to evade — or tease — the censors. In 1943, neutral Ireland (Eire) feared invasion by either German or British forces, with the latter much more likely. The British resented the presence of German and Italian diplomats in Dublin, and wanted to use the ‘Treaty Ports’ (Cobh, Berehaven, and Lough Swilly), former British naval bases on Irish territory, turned over to the Irish in 1938. Northern Ireland, as part of the United Kingdom, participated in hostilities against Germany.
6 imperial matters: the STRANGE ANT represents various British emissaries who tried to persuade or threaten de Valera into assisting the British war effort, since Ireland was still technically part of the British Empire/Commonwealth; here, ironically, Northern Ireland is being treated as insufficiently committed to the War.
7 large drum: a lambeg drum, usually a feature of Orange marches.
8 the 50’s: men fifty or older.
9 a fit place … to live in: ‘What is our task?’ David Lloyd George (1863–1945; British Prime Minister 1916–22) asked in a speech at Wolverhampton (24 November 1918), and answered himself: ‘To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in.’
10 the oul’ Munsters: the Royal Munster Fusiliers, a British Army regiment traditionally recruited from the Province of Munster. Disbanded along with the other ‘southern’ Irish regiments in June 1922.
11 fáinnes: gold circles worn as lapel pins by Irish speakers.
12 A dhaoine … buaidhte aca: Noble people and Irish friends! Friends and all people! The Irish have won at last. After this war they have conquered the whole world.
I wish to thank my colleague, Dr Joan Trodden Keefe, for assistance with Myles’s Irish.
13 Ar an ocáid … domhan go h-uile!: On this historic occasion I declare myself Emperor of the whole world!
14 Nií bheidh … feasta: From now on, only Irish will be spoken throughout the world.
EPILOGUE
1 Richard II, 4:1:19–20, 26–9. The speaker is Aumerle, the ‘base man’ Bagot. Perhaps weary by this time, the Drone makes prose out of Shakespeare’s blank verse:
Princes and noble lords.
What answer shall I make to this base man?
I say thou liest,
And will maintain what thou hast said is false
In thy heart-blood, though being all too base
To stain the temper of my knightly sword.
From the Dung Heap of History
Peter Lennon (28 February 1930—18 March 2011) on a newly discovered text from the Irish writer with a contemporary resonance.
The Guardian, 17 November 1994
A play by Ireland’s most celebrated comic writer, Flann O’Brien, lost for fifty years, has been discovered in the archives of Northwestern University, Illinois, by an American academic. It will be published next week by the Dublin Lilliput Press.
It was known that Flann O’Brien, author of The Dalkey Archive published in 1965 and The Third Policeman (1967), had written a play which was a free adaptation of Karel and Josef Capek’s 1921 The Insect Play.
This was inspired by a French entomologist’s La vie des insectes. Its target was Henry Ford’s world of the assembly line and time and motion studies.
The O’Brien play, Rhapsody in Stephen’s Green, was put on in Dublin by the Edwards-MacLiammoir company at the Gaiety Theatre during Lent in 1943 with a cast of 150 — representing millions, as is obligatory with an insect play. But, presumably because of the offence it gave to Catholics, Ulster Protestants, Irish civil servants, Corkmen, and the aspersions it seemed to cast on married life and the superpatriotic Fianna Fáil party, it only ran six days and was never again performed. O’Brien died in 1966.
Robert Tracy, Professor of English and Celtic Studies at the University of California in Berkeley, told from his California home how he discovered the play: ‘I was actually researching performances of Chekov in Ireland,’ he said. ‘I wanted to get records of the Edwards-MacLiammoir productions, but I was told all the company’s papers had been sold to Northwestern University. Going through the index of contents I saw the insect play mentioned.
‘I at first assumed this was just the first act, well known by scholars, but you can imagine the thrill when I found they had a full text which was clearly Hilton Edwards’ prompt copy.’
The first act of Rhapsody in Stephen’s Green was among Flann O’Brien’s papers owned by the University of Southern Illinois. But no trace until now had been found of acts two and three and a prologue and epilogue.
This play is in the vein of O’Brien‘s columns under the name Myles na gCopaleen (Myles of the Little Horses) for The Irish Times in the 1950s and 1960s, which played merry hell with his countrymen’s pretensions, religious piety, political cant and official ignorance in the use of the English and Irish languages.
The first act deals with the beastly behaviour of bees and act two features avaricious beetles, greedy ducks and dopey crickets with a pronounced Cork accent. Corkmen are traditionally the butt of Dublin jokes.
But it is act three which has fascinating topical resonance. It features a colony of mindlessly driven Orange ants who work themselves into a frenzy against a colony of Green ants until finally their aggression pushes them into suicidal war with Blue ants.
The Orange ants mouth slogans such as ‘The Awnt State will fieght ond the Awnt State wull be rieght!’. They also declare themselves to be ‘hord-headed ond ready to fieght for the rieght to keep in stap with the Awnt Empiere’.
The phonetic spelling leaves no doubt that we are dealing with Belfast men. O’Brien, a Catholic, was actually born in Ulster, but spent most of his life in Dublin. His real name was Brian O’Nolan.
Before the Southern audience could become too smug, enter a ludicrous figure known as Deevil, transparently the prime minister Eamon de Valera, who is leader of the Green Ants and ready to march across the border to recover his property, which consists of a dead beetle.
There is no mistaking 33-year-old Brian O’Nolan’s bitter disgust with the 1940s world of carnage, greed and cant at home and abroad. But on the literary level the work is rather too parochial and simplisticall
y exhuberant to be classed as one of his major works. However it and the context in which it was born — and rapidly snuffed out — gives intriguing insights into neutral Ireland of the 1940s, suffocating in puritanism and insular politics.
The Irish Times was complimentary but The Irish Press was sniffy, the critic no doubt aware of the long and oppressive shadow of his proprietor, Eamon de Valera.
But the Catholic Standard was outraged and there were allegations that their critic, Gabriel Fallon, went to the length of trying to influence the Director of the Irish Catholic Boy Scouts to order the boys, doubling as ants and chickens, to withdraw their labour. O’Nolan was accused of presenting ‘obscenities and salacities on the Dublin stage’.
We can gauge the tone of the Catholic Standard’s criticism by a furious letter to the paper signed ‘Myles na gCopaleen’: ‘We protest very strongly against a dirty tirade which, under the guise of dramatic criticism, was nothing more than a treatise on dung. “There will always be a distinction,” Mr Fallon says, “between the honest dung of the farmyard and nasty dirt of the chicken run.”
‘Personally I lack the latrine erudition to comment on this extraordinary statement, and I am not going to speculate on the odd researches that led your contributor to his great discovery. I am content to record my objection that his faecal reveries should be published.’
Whatever class of dung was involved the play did not make it into a second week and disappeared.
By the Same Author
also in the series:
ETCH I
The Hidden Ireland: Reassessment of a Concept
Louis Cullen
ETCH II
The Great Hunger: Poem into Play
Patrick Kavanagh & Tom Mac Intyre