Enter Swellfoot, in His Royal Robes, Without Perceiving the Pigs

Dramatis Personae.

Tyrant Swellfoot, King of Thebes. Iona Taurina, His Queen. Mammon, Arch-Priest of Famine. Purganax, Dakry, Laoctonos—Wizards, Ministers of Swellfoot. The Gadfly. The Leech. The Rat. Moses, the Sow-Gelder. Solomon, the Porkman. Zephaniah, Pig-Butcher. The Minotaur. Chorus of the Swinish Multitude. Guards, Attendants, Priests, Etc., Etc.

Scene.—Thebes.

Act 1.

Scene 1.1.—A Magnificent Temple, Built of Thigh-Bones and Death’s-Heads, and Tiled with Scalps. Over the Altar the Statue of Famine, Veiled; A Number of Boars, Sows, and Sucking-Pigs, Crowned with Thistle, Shamrock, and Oak, Sitting on the Steps, and Clinging Round the Altar of the Temple.

SWELLFOOT:
Thou supreme Goddess! by whose power divine
These graceful limbs are clothed in proud array
[HE CONTEMPLATES HIMSELF WITH SATISFACTION.]
Of gold and purple, and this kingly paunch
Swells like a sail before a favouring breeze,
And these most sacred nether promontories _5
Lie satisfied with layers of fat; and these
Boeotian cheeks, like Egypt’s pyramid,
(Nor with less toil were their foundations laid),
Sustain the cone of my untroubled brain,
That point, the emblem of a pointless nothing! _10
Thou to whom Kings and laurelled Emperors,
Radical-butchers, Paper-money-millers,
Bishops and Deacons, and the entire army
Of those fat martyrs to the persecution
Of stifling turtle-soup, and brandy-devils, _15
Offer their secret vows! Thou plenteous Ceres
Of their Eleusis, hail!

NOTE: (_8 See Universal History for an account of the number of people who died, and the immense consumption of garlic by the wretched Egyptians, who made a sepulchre for the name as well as the bodies of their tyrants.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.])

SWINE:
Eigh! eigh! eigh! eigh!

SWELLFOOT:
Ha! what are ye,
Who, crowned with leaves devoted to the Furies,
Cling round this sacred shrine?

SWINE:
Aigh! aigh! aigh!

SWELLFOOT:
What! ye that are
The very beasts that, offered at her altar _20
With blood and groans, salt-cake, and fat, and inwards,
Ever propitiate her reluctant will
When taxes are withheld?

SWINE:
Ugh! ugh! ugh!

SWELLFOOT:
What! ye who grub
With filthy snouts my red potatoes up
In Allan’s rushy bog? Who eat the oats _25
Up, from my cavalry in the Hebrides?
Who swill the hog-wash soup my cooks digest
From bones, and rags, and scraps of shoe-leather,
Which should be given to cleaner Pigs than you?

SWINE—SEMICHORUS 1:
The same, alas! the same; _30
Though only now the name
Of Pig remains to me.

SEMICHORUS 2:
If ’twere your kingly will
Us wretched Swine to kill,
What should we yield to thee? _35

SWELLFOOT:
Why, skin and bones, and some few hairs for mortar.

CHORUS OF SWINE:
I have heard your Laureate sing,
That pity was a royal thing;
Under your mighty ancestors, we Pigs
Were bless’d as nightingales on myrtle sprigs, _40
Or grasshoppers that live on noonday dew,
And sung, old annals tell, as sweetly too;
But now our sties are fallen in, we catch
The murrain and the mange, the scab and itch;
Sometimes your royal dogs tear down our thatch, _45
And then we seek the shelter of a ditch;
Hog-wash or grains, or ruta-baga, none
Has yet been ours since your reign begun.

FIRST SOW:
My Pigs, ’tis in vain to tug.

SECOND SOW:
I could almost eat my litter. _50

FIRST PIG:
I suck, but no milk will come from the dug.

SECOND PIG:
Our skin and our bones would be bitter.

THE BOARS:
We fight for this rag of greasy rug,
Though a trough of wash would be fitter.

SEMICHORUS:
Happier Swine were they than we, _55
Drowned in the Gadarean sea—
I wish that pity would drive out the devils,
Which in your royal bosom hold their revels,
And sink us in the waves of thy compassion!
Alas! the Pigs are an unhappy nation! _60
Now if your Majesty would have our bristles
To bind your mortar with, or fill our colons
With rich blood, or make brawn out of our gristles,
In policy—ask else your royal Solons—
You ought to give us hog-wash and clean straw, _65
And sties well thatched; besides it is the law!

NOTE: _59 thy edition 1820; your edition 1839.

SWELLFOOT:
This is sedition, and rank blasphemy!
Ho! there, my guards!