Triago
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A secondary character in Büchstein’s final, unpublished play Die Schweizer Heulsuse. Introduced mainly for comical effect, Triago is the court’s principal legal advisor. A blustery windbag, he is given to legnthy passages in which he says very little of substance, but with grandiloquent form.
Sample passages
Herculio: ’Tis neither malice, spite, nor virtue
Whose ledger swells, or plucks, the seedy fruits of progress —
But mainly accident.
Lest thee with surety know aught else —
Withhold thy assignations.
Triago: Pish upon thee, nuncle. Pish!
Dost thou mean to say
Things peel this way
Through doughty misadventure?
Herculio: Peradventure —
Triago: Pish abeam!
Has thou no more to say than that?
Wouldst thou on this shaky surmise
Withhold rebuke?
Herculio: Perchance, per case, mayhap dear Triago
’Twas but a fluke?
Triago: O! This nuisant planet weighs upon my soul!
Herculio: If ’tis this and nought beside
That flies you to a vernal rage
Our fickle globe in its manifold confound’ry
Lies prettily indeed
For thy alignment.
QUEEN: This covenant is well-drafted, but yegads! ’Tis lengthy.
TRIAGO (bowing unctuously): The writer shall be deemed hereinbefore obliged.
HERCULIO: My liege and madam, to expostulate
What brevity should be, what clarity is —
Why “day” is business day, and “time” is closing time.
’Tis buried — lost — among the cluttered syntax of this deed.
QUEEN: ’Twas no compliment, good Herculio, rest assured.
A crafty phrase to propitiate that noisome clerk, no more.
HERCULIO: Madam, I do concur!
Since brevity is the soul of wit,
And boilerplate the crutch of wretched tedium
I will be brief, where Triago, in all his trite facility, cannot.
TRIAGO: Milady! With all due and payable respect, and interest accrued thereon
I wouldst be inclined to be supportive of dissent —
QUEEN: O, exasperating vapours! Whatever doth he mean?
HERCULIO: Triago disagrees.
“Inclined”, Triago? “Supportive”? As straight as that?
No deemery to wrap it round?
TRIAGO: Aye, deemèd, perchance — I pray just such indulgence
To vouchsafe avoidance of some doubt.
QUEEN: Doubt, Triago?
TRIAGO: I’ll think of something, Majesty.
HERCULIO: How now, good lady: doth thou now understand?
QUEEN: I fear I do, in that I do not.
Speak, Triago — but pray, be quick.
TRIAGO: Celerity shall herein be mutually agreed to be — and shall be deemed to be — the watchword Madam!
HERCULIO: There goeth that wretched deemery —
TRIAGO: Was it not ever not unlike a thing unsuch as this?
QUEEN: Damn and blast your eyes Triago!
Have at you now!
- QUEEN runs TRIAGO through with a rapier and exits
HERCULIO:
- We fold our patron’s righteous sleep in word pollution
- By the chaff and shucks and hulls of convolution
- And whoever buys these minty lines: understand
- Lexical complexity doth, pro rata with thy budget, soon expand.
- CURTAIN