Deirdre of the Sorrows

by J. M. Synge

DEIRDRE.
— brightly. — You should be well pleased it’s for that I’d worry all times, when it’s I have kept your tent these seven years as tidy as a bee-hive or a linnet’s nest. If Conchubor’d a queen like me in Emain he’d not have stretched these rags to meet us. (She pulls hanging, and it opens.) There’s new earth on the ground and a trench dug. . . . It’s a grave, Naisi, that is wide and deep.

NAISI.
— goes over and pulls back curtain showing grave. — And that’ll be our home in Emain. . . . He’s dug it wisely at the butt of a hill, with fallen trees to hide it. He’ll want to have us killed and buried before Fergus comes.

DEIRDRE.
Take me away. . . . Take me to hide in the rocks, for the night is coming quickly.

NAISI.
— pulling himself together. — I will not leave my brothers.

DEIRDRE.
— vehemently. — It’s of us two he’s jealous. Come away to the places where we’re used to have our company. . . . Wouldn’t it be a good thing to lie hid in the high ferns together? (She pulls him left.) I hear strange words in the trees.

NAISI.
It should be the strange fighters of Conchubor. I saw them passing as we came.

DEIRDRE.
— pulling him towards the right. — Come to this side. Listen, Naisi!

NAISI.
There are more of them. . . . We are shut in, and I have not Ainnle and Ardan to stand near me. Isn’t it a hard thing that we three who have conquered many may not die together?

DEIRDRE.
— sinking down. — And isn’t it a hard thing that you and I are in this place by our opened grave; though none have lived had happiness like ours those days in Alban that went by so quick.

NAISI.
It’s a hard thing, surely, we’ve lost those days for ever; and yet it’s a good thing, maybe, that all goes quick, for when I’m in that grave it’s soon a day’ll come you’ll be too wearied to be crying out, and that day’ll bring you ease.