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beverage on top of Hennessy’s three star. I was guilty with
Whelan when he slipped into the bed.
STEPHEN: In the beginning was the word, in the end
the world without end. Blessed be the eight beatitudes.
(The beatitudes, Dixon, Madden, Crotthers, Costello,
Lenehan, Bannon, Mulligan and Lynch in white surgical stu-
dents’ gowns, four abreast, goosestepping, tramp fist past in
noisy marching)
THE BEATITUDES: (Incoherently) Beer beef battledog
buybull businum barnum buggerum bishop.
LYSTER: (In quakergrey kneebreeches and broad-
brimmed hat, says discreetly) He is our friend. I need not
mention names. Seek thou the light.
(He corantos by. Best enters in hairdresser’s attire, shin-
ily laundered, his locks in curlpapers. He leads John Eglinton
who wears a mandarin’s kimono of Nankeen yellow, lizard-
lettered, and a high pagoda hat.)
BEST: (Smiling, lifts the hat and displays a shaven poll
from the crown of which bristles a pigtail toupee tied with an
orange topknot) I was just beautifying him, don’t you know.
A thing of beauty, don’t you know, Yeats says, or I mean,
Keats says.
JOHN EGLINTON: (Produces a greencapped dark lan-
tern and flashes it towards a corner: with carping accent)
Esthetics and cosmetics are for the boudoir. I am out for
truth. Plain truth for a plain man. Tanderagee wants the
facts and means to get them.
(In the cone of the searchlight behind the coalscuttle, ol-
lave, holyeyed, the bearded figure of Mananaun Maclir