William Butler Yeats
The King's Threshold; and On Baile's Strand

NOTE

Both these plays have been written for Mr. Fay’s “Irish National Theatre.” “The King’s Threshold” was played in October, 1903, and “On Baile’s Strand” will be played in February or March, 1904. Both are founded on Old Irish Prose Romances, but I have borrowed some ideas for the arrangement of my subject in “The King’s Threshold” from “Sancan the Bard,” a play published by Mr. Edwin Ellis some ten years ago.

W. B. Y.

THE KING’S THRESHOLD

LIST OF CHARACTERS

A PROLOGUE.¹

An Old Man with a red dressing-gown, red slippers and red nightcap, holding a brass candlestick with a guttering candle in it, comes on from side of stage and goes in front of the dull green curtain.

Old Man.

I’ve got to speak the prologue. [He shuffles on a few steps.] My nephew, who is one of the play actors, came to me, and I in my bed, and my prayers said, and the candle put out, and he told me there were so many characters in this new play, that all the company were in it, whether they had been long or short at the business, and that there wasn’t one left to speak the prologue. Wait a bit, there’s a draught here. [He pulls the curtain closer together.] That’s better. And that’s why I’m here, and maybe I’m a fool for my pains.

And my nephew said, there are a good many plays to be played for you, some to-night and some on other nights through the winter, and the most of them are simple enough, and tell out their story to the end. But as to the big play you are to see to-night, my nephew taught me to say what the poet had taught him to say about it. [Puts down candlestick and puts right finger on left thumb.] First, he who told the story of Seanchan on King Guaire’s threshold long ago in the old books told it wrongly, for he was a friend of the king, or maybe afraid of the king, and so he put the king in the right. But he that tells the story now, being a poet, has put the poet in the right.

And then [touches other finger] I am to say: Some think it would be a finer tale if Seanchan had died at the end of it, and the king had the guilt at his door, for that might have served the poet’s cause better in the end. But that is not true, for if he that is in the story but a shadow and an image of poetry had not risen up from the death that threatened him, the ending would not have been true and joyful enough to be put into the voices of players and proclaimed in the mouths of trumpets, and poetry would have been badly served.

[He takes up the candlestick again.

And as to what happened Seanchan after, my nephew told me he didn’t know, and the poet didn’t know, and it’s likely there’s nobody that knows. But my nephew thinks he never sat down at the king’s table again, after the way he had been treated, but that he went to some quiet green place in the hills with Fedelm, his sweetheart, where the poor people made much of him because he was wise, and where he made songs and poems, and it’s likely enough he made some of the old songs and the old poems the poor people on the hillsides are saying and singing to-day.

[A trumpet-blast.

Well, it’s time for me to be going. That trumpet means that the curtain is going to rise, and after a while the stage there will be filled up with great ladies and great gentlemen, and poets, and a king with a crown on him, and all of them as high up in themselves with the pride of their youth and their strength and their fine clothes as if there was no such thing in the world as cold in the shoulders, and speckled shins, and the pains in the bones and the stiffness in the joints that make an old man that has the whole load of the world on him ready for his bed.

[He begins to shuffle away, and then stops.

And it would be better for me, that nephew of mine to be thinking less of his play-acting, and to have remembered to boil down the knap-weed with a bit of three-penny sugar, for me to be wetting my throat with now and again through the night, and drinking a sup to ease the pains in my bones.

[He goes out at side of stage.

THE KING’S THRESHOLD

Scene: Steps before the Palace of King Guaire at Gort. A table in front of steps to right with food on it. Seanchan lying on steps to left. Pupils before steps. King on top of steps at centre.

 
King.
I welcome you that have the mastery
Of the two kinds of music; the one kind
Being like a woman, the other like a man;
Both you that understand stringed instruments,
And how to mingle words and notes together
So artfully, that all the art is but speech
Delighted with its own music; and you that carry
The long twisted horn and understand
The heady notes that being without words
Can hurry beyond time and fate and change;
For the high angels that drive the horse of time,
The golden one by day, by night the silver,
Are not more welcome to one that loves the world
For some fair woman’s sake.
I have called you hither
To save the life of your great master, Seanchan,
For all day long it has flamed up or flickered
To the fast-cooling hearth.
Senias.
When did he sicken?
Is it a fever that is wasting him?
King.
He did not sicken, but three days ago
He said he would not eat, and lay down there
And has not eaten since. Till yesterday
I thought that hunger and weakness had been enough,
But finding them too trifling and too light
To hold his mouth from biting at the grave
I called you hither, and have called others yet.
The girl he is to wed at harvest-time,
That should be of all living the most dear,
Is coming from the South, and had I known
Of any other neighbours or good friends
That might persuade him, I had brought them hither,
Even though I’d to ransack the world for them.
Senias.
What was it put him to this work, High King?
King.
You will call it no great matter. Three days ago
I yielded to the outcry of my courtiers,
Bishops, soldiers, and makers of the law,
Who long had thought it against their dignity
For a mere man of words to sit among them
At my own table; and when the meal was spread
I ordered Seanchan to good company,
But to a lower table; and when he pleaded
The poet’s right, established when the world
Was first established, I said that I was King
And made and unmade rights at my own pleasure.
And that it was the men who ruled the world,
And not the men who sang to it, who should sit
Where there was the most honour. My courtiers,
Bishops, soldiers, and makers of the law
Shouted approval, and amid that noise
Seanchan went out, and from that hour to this,
Although there is good food and drink beside him,
Has eaten nothing. If a man is wronged,
Or thinks that he is wronged, and will lie down
Upon another’s threshold until he dies,
The common people for all time to come
Will raise a heavy cry against that threshold,
Even though it is the King’s. He lies there now
Perishing; he is calling against my majesty,
That old custom that has no meaning in it,
And as he perishes, my name in the world
Is perishing also. I cannot give way
Because I am King, because if I give way
My nobles would call me a weakling, and it may be
The very throne be shaken; but should you
That are his friends speak to him and persuade him
To turn his mouth from the ill-savouring grave
And eat good food, he shall not lack my favour;
For I will give plough-land and grazing-land,
Or all but anything he has set his heart on.
It is not all because of my good name
I’d have him live, for I have found him a man
That might well hit the fancy of a king
Banished out of his country, or a woman’s,
Or any other’s that can judge a man
For what he is. But I that sit a throne,
And take my measure from the needs of the state,
Call his wild thought that over-runs the measure,
Making words more than deeds, and his proud will
That would unsettle all, most mischievous,
And he himself a most mischievous man.
Senias.
King, whether you did right or wrong in this
Let the King say, for all that I need say
Is that there’s nothing that cries out for death
In the withholding of that ancient right,
And that I will persuade him. Your own words
Had been enough persuasion were it not
That he is lost in dreams that hunger makes,
And therefore heedless, or lost in heedless sleep.
King.
I leave him to your love, that it may promise
Plough-lands and grass-lands, jewels and silken wear,
Or anything but that old right of the poets.
 

[He goes out. The Pupils, who have been standing perfectly quiet, all turn towards Seanchan, and move a step nearer.

 

 
Senias.
The King did wrong to abrogate our right,
But Seanchan, who talks of dying for it,
Talks foolishly. Look at us, Seanchan,
Waken out of your dream and look at us,
Who have ridden under the moon and all the day,
Until the moon has all but come again,
That we might be beside you.
 

[Seanchan turns half round leaning on his elbow, and speaks as if in a dream.

 
Seanchan.
I was but now
At Almhuin, in a great high-raftered house,
With Finn and Osgar. Odours of roast flesh
Rose round me and I saw the roasting spits,
And then the dream was broken, and I saw
Grania dividing salmon by a pool,
And then I was awakened by your voice.
Senias.
It is your hunger that makes you dream of flesh
Roasting, and for your hunger I could weep;
And yet the hunger of the crane that starves
Because the moonlight glittering on the pool
And flinging a pale shadow has made it shy,
Seems to me little more fantastical
Than this that’s blown into so great a trouble.
Seanchan.
[Who has turned away again.]
There is much truth in that, for all things change
At times, as if the moonlight altered them,
And my mind alters as if it were the crane’s;
For when the heavy body has grown weak
There’s nothing that can tether the wild mind
That being moonstruck and fantastical
Goes where it fancies. I had even thought
I knew your voice and face, but now the words
Are so unlikely that I needs must ask
Who is it that bids me put my hunger by?
Senias.
I am your oldest pupil, Seanchan;
The one that has been with you many years,
So many that you said at Candlemas
That I had almost done with school, and knew
All but all that poets understand.
Seanchan.
My oldest pupil. No, that cannot be;
For it is someone of the courtly crowds
That have been round about me from sunrise
And I am tricked by dreams, but I’ll refute them.
I asked the pupil that I loved the best,
At Candlemas, why poetry is honoured,
Wishing to know how he’d defend our craft
In distant lands among strange churlish Kings.
And he’d an answer.
Senias.
I said the poets hung
Images of the life that was in Eden
About the childbed of the world, that it,
Looking upon those images, might bear
Triumphant children; but why must I stand here
Repeating an old lesson while you starve?
Seanchan.
Tell on, for I begin to know the voice;
What evil thing will come upon the world
If the arts perish?
Senias.
If the arts should perish
The world that lacked them would be like a woman
That looking on the cloven lips of a hare
Brings forth a hare-lipped child.
Seanchan.
But that’s not all.
For when I asked you how a man should guard
Those images you had an answer also,
If you’re the man that you have claimed to be,
Comparing them to venerable things
God gave to men before he gave them wheat.
Senias.
I answered, and the word was half your own,
That he should guard them, as the men of Dea
Guard their four treasures, as the Grail King guards
His holy cup, or the pale righteous horse
The jewel that is underneath his horn,
Pouring out life for it, as one pours out
Sweet heady wine – but now I understand
You would refute me out of my own mouth;
And yet a place at table near the King
Is nothing of great moment, Seanchan.
How does so light a thing touch poetry?
 

[Seanchan is now sitting up. He still looks dreamily in front of him.

 
Seanchan.
At Candlemas you called this poetry
One of the fragile mighty things of God
That die at an insult.
Senias.
[To other Pupils.] Give me some true answer.
For on that day we spoke about the court
And said that all that was insulted there
The world insulted, for the courtly life,
Being the first comely child of the world,
Is the world’s model. How shall I answer him?
Can you not give me some true argument?
I will not tempt him with a lying one.
Arias.
[Throwing himself at Seanchan’s feet.]
Why did you take me from my father’s fields?
If you would leave me now, what shall I love?
Where shall I go, what shall I set my hand to?
And why have you put music in my ears
If you would send me to the clattering houses?
I will throw down the trumpet and the harp,
For how could I sing verses or make music
With none to praise me and a broken heart?
Seanchan.
What was it that the poets promised you
If it was not their sorrow? Do not speak.
Have I not opened school on these bare steps,
And are not you the youngest of my scholars?
And I would have all know that when all falls
In ruin, poetry calls out in joy,
Being the scattering hand, the bursting pod,
The victim’s joy among the holy flame,
God’s laughter at the shattering of the world,
And now that joy laughs out and weeps and burns
On these bare steps.
Arias.
O Master, do not die.
 

[Three men come in. Cian and Brian, old men carrying basket with food, and Mayor of Kinvara. They stand at the side listening.

 
Senias.
Trouble him with no useless argument.
Be silent; there is nothing we can do
Except find out the King and kneel to him
And beg our ancient right. These three have come
To say whatever we could say and more,
And fare as badly. Come, boy, that’s no use;
 

[He lifts the Boy up.

 
If it seem well that we beseech the King,
Lay down your harps and trumpets on the stones
In silence and come with me silently.
Come with slow footfalls and bow all your heads,
For a bowed head becomes a mourner best.
 

[They lay the harps and trumpets down one by one and then go out very solemnly and slowly, following one another.

 
Cian.
Let’s show the food that’s in the basket.
Mayor.
[Who carries an Ogham stick.] No,
I must get through my speech or I’ll forget it;
Besides, there is no reason why he’d eat
Till he has heard my reasons.
Cian.
It were better
To show what we have brought him in the basket,
For we have nothing that he has not liked
From boyhood.
Brian.
For we have not brought kings’ food
That’s cooked for everybody and nobody.
Mayor.
You are not showing right respect to me,
Or to the people of Kinvara, when you wish
That something else should come before my message.
Seanchan.
What brings you here? I never sent for you.
Cian.
He must be famishing, he looks so pale.
We had better get the food out first. I tell you,
That we have brought the things he likes the best.
Mayor.
No, no; I lost a word at every cross road
And maybe if I do not speak it now
I’ll have forgot it.
Cian.
Well, out with it quickly.
Seanchan.
Why, what’s this foolery?
Mayor.
No foolery;
A message from the richest, best born townsman