Triago
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The complete works of Otto Büchstein
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A secondary character in Büchstein’s final, unpublished play Die Schweizer Heulsuse, Triago also features Talentdämmerung, introduced mainly for comical effect, Triago is the court’s principal legal advisor.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.
Die Schweizer Heulsuse
Triago and Herculio discuss where credit is and is not due:
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 thing and nought beside
That flies you to a vernal rage
The fickle globe in its manifold confound’ry
Lies prettily indeed
For thy alignment.
Triago’s untimely demise.
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
Der Kampf um Talente
On doing more with less:
Triago: When the master says, “Thou shalt do more”
I am thus obliged: I shall do more:
For legal art is the whole of the law.
And when he says “thou shalt take less”
It is the same: less shall I take.
With crumbs and crusts do shall I make.
Nuncle: Whose legal income’s stretched so thin
To play so small a violin?
Triago: Oh manifold skill! Flow like a stream
About the smooth stones of demand!
Collaboration? Oh, blast my eyes!
How we strive to operationalise
But how to vouchsafe service deliv’ry
With fewer dressed in legal livery?
What wouldst thou give for this old rope?
A measley mill or two?
Nuncle: You’ll cope.
Triago: Oursource! Rightshore! By this peroration
I endorse the yen for automation.
I’ll take the strain and with aught stress
With living breath, do more with less.
Nuncle: Oh, bless.
It’s easier than that.
You’ll just do less.