Curly...Don’t you wish they wassich a rig, though? Nen you
could go to the party and do a hoe-down til mornin’ ’f you was a
mind to. Nen drive home ’th the sun a-peakin’ at you over the
ridge, purty and fine.Laurey will have none of this in Riggs. “I ain’t wantin’ to do no
hoe-down till mornin’,” she complains, and in a few seconds
she has slammed the door on Curly. She stalks out in Ham-
merstein’s book too, but something else has happened to her
during the final stanza of the song. The stage direction intro-
ducing the third stanza reads: “The music, which had become
more turbulent to match the scene, now softens,” and Curly
“sings very softly”:
A
I can see the stars gittin’ blurry
When we ride back home in the surrey,
Ridin’ slowly home in the surrey with the fringe on top.
A
I can feel the day gittin’ older,
Feel a sleepy head near my shoulder,
Noddin’, droopin’ close to my shoulder till it falls, kerplop!
B
The sun is swimmin’ on the rim of a hill,
The moon is takin’ a header,
And jist as I’m thinkin all the earth is still,
A lark’ll wake up in the medder....
A
Hush! You bird, my baby’s a-sleepin’—
Maybe got a dream worth a-keepin’
(Soothing and slower)
Whoa! You team, and jist keep a-creepin’ at a slow clip-clop.
Don’t you hurry with the surrey with the fringe on the top.
This is exactly where the divide between the two orders
of time can be seen most clearly. The pace of the song has