Translations

“Soon you’ll be telling me all the secrets that have been in that head of yours all these years.”

These words are spoken by Manus to Sarah, as he teaches her to pronounce her own name. From these lines, it’s clear that Manus believes in Sarah’s intelligence and is suspect of the ways villagers have dismissed her thoughts simply because she couldn’t articulate them. On a deeper level, these lines gesture to Manus’s initial confidence that all valuable thoughts can (and should) be articulated. These lines suggest that Sarah’s learned ability to speak will provide the villagers access to her “secret” thoughts. Later in the play, however, Manus seems to develop a more complex and cynical perspective toward communication.  

“It’s easier to stamp out learning than to recall it.”

This phrase is a quote from Book Three of the Agricola (as identified by Jimmy). The Agricola is a book by the Roman historian Tacitus; the text covers the geography and ethnography of ancient Britain, describing the empire’s corruption of native traditions and beliefs (essentially mirroring the present-day tyranny of the British army in Ireland). The quote itself not only gestures to the British tyranny of “stamp[ing] out learning,” but the ethereal nature of memory, and the difficulty of recalling one’s own native legacy. The phrase is both ironically and aptly assigned by