My usual system of quoting the second paragraph of the third section is always challenged by theatre scripts, and in this case there are no sections to the play at all, though there is a point where an optional interval is indicated. So I’ll just quote the most famous lines.

History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there’s fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.

These lines come at the conclusion of a grim story: the young Neoptolemus is sent by Odysseus to retrieve the bow of Philoctetes, who has been abandoned by the Greeks on the island of Lemnos. Philoctetes’ bow shoots invincible arrows, and the Greeks know that they cannot conquer Troy without it. But the only way to get it from Philoctetes is for Neoptolemus to pretend that he too has fallen out with the Greeks. Eventually a divine intervention helps to resolve the plot into a more cheerful place than seemed likely for most of the duration. (This is not a spoiler; the chorus tells us that it’s going to happen in the first speech of the play.)

It’s often difficult to appreciate a play from the script (well, difficult for me at least), but I really enjoyed this, in particular Heaney’s use of Ulster turns of phrase to give a clear voice to the characters. It’s a psychological story which can be told with minimal scenery. I’d certainly pay to see it.

You can get it here.