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    The King's Threshold
    The King's Threshold
    The King's Threshold
    Ebook41 pages33 minutes

    The King's Threshold

    By W B Yeats

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    About this ebook

    William Butler Yeats was born near Dublin in 1865, and was encouraged from a young age to pursue a life in the arts. He attended art school for a short while, but soon found that his talents and interest lay in poetry rather than painting. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923, Yeats produced a vast collection of stories, songs, and poetry of Ireland's historical and legendary past. These writings helped secure for Yeats recognition as a leading proponent of Irish nationalism and Irish cultural independence. He received honorary degrees from Queen's University (Belfast), Trinity College (Dublin), and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. "The King's Threshold", first performed by the Irish National Theatre Society in 1903, referred to an Irish tradition that dates back to the 7th-8th centuries of commoners enforcing hunger strikes against people of higher status to whom they were indebted. It told the story of a bard who undergoes a hunger strike against the king.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2011
    ISBN9781420942293
    The King's Threshold
    Author

    W B Yeats

    William Butler Yeats was born in 1865 in County Dublin. With his much-loved early poems such as 'The Stolen Child', and 'He Remembers Forgotten Beauty', he defined the Celtic Twilight mood of the late-Victorian period and led the Irish Literary Renaissance. Yet his style evolved constantly, and he is acknowledged as a major figure in literary modernism and twentieth-century European letters. T. S. Eliot described him as 'one of those few whose history is the history of their own time, who are part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without them'. W. B. Yeats died in 1939.

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      Book preview

      The King's Threshold - W B Yeats

      THE KING'S THRESHOLD

      1904

      BY W. B. YEATS

      A Digireads.com Book

      Digireads.com Publishing

      Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-4166-1

      Ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-4229-3

      This edition copyright © 2011

      Please visit www.digireads.com

      In Memory of

      Frank Fay

      and his beautiful speaking in the

      character of Seanchan

      CONTENTS

      PERSONS IN THE PLAY

      THE KING'S THRESHOLD

      PERSONS IN THE PLAY

      King Guaire  The Lord High Chamberlain

      Seanchan (pronounced Shanahan)  A Soldier

      His Pupils  A Monk

      The Mayor of Kinvara  Court Ladies

      Two Cripples  Two Princesses

      Brian, an old servant   Fedelm

      THE KING'S THRESHOLD

      Steps before the Palace of King Guaire at Gort. A table or litter in front of steps at one side, with food on it, and a bench. Seanchan lying on steps. Pupils before steps. King on the upper step before a curtained door.

      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's but Speech

      Delighted with its own music: and you that carry

      The twisted horn, and understand the notes

      That lacking words escape Time's chariot;

      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.

      OLDEST PUPIL. When did he sicken?

      Is it a fever that is wasting him?

      KING. No fever or sickness. He has chosen death:

      Refusing to eat or drink, that he may bring

      Disgrace upon me; for there is a custom,

      An old and foolish custom, that if a man

      Be wronged, or think that he is wronged, and starve

      Upon another's threshold till he die,

      The common people, for all time to come,

      Will raise a heavy cry against that threshold,

      Even though it be the King's.

      OLDEST PUPIL. My head whirls round;

      I do not know what I am to think or say.

      I owe you all obedience, and yet

      How can I give it, when the man I have loved

      More than all others, thinks that he is wronged

      So bitterly that he will starve and die

      Rather than bear it? Is there any man

      Will throw his life away for a light issue?

      KING. It is but fitting that you take his side

      Until you understand how light an issue

      Has put us by the ears. Three

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