WordPress won’t allow me to format quotes of dialogue from a play so instead allow me to present the relevant quote in an image:
Aidan Mathews, Exit/Entrance, p. 53. Itallics added.
The play Exit/Entrance was first performed in 1988. I have no idea when it was last performed. It is a play about love and marriage and hope and regret and death. And Hesiod. I wish I could see it live but until contemporary Irish culture wakes up to how simply terrific Aidan Mathews writing is, it is unlikely. Hauerwas’ First Law is: “You never marry the right person.” This interchange between Charles and Helen is a dramatic depiction of the truth of that law. It comes towards the end of the play, which is towards the start of their life together. It is wonderful. Marriage may be, depending on who you listen to (I don’t quite agree), a sacrament; an expression of God’s grace in time and space and material form. It is a heavenly thing, perhaps. But because of that (not in spite of that) it must be an earthly thing made on the ground upon which we stand and from the ground upon which we stand.
Your Correspondent, His favourite exercises are woodworking and sex
I found his “Communion” on my mum’s bookshelf, last time I was back – I think you’d love it, if you haven’t read it already.
Aw savage. I’d love a look at that!