The Literary Pub Crawl

Later in the evening, we walked down across the Liffey again to take the Literary Pub Crawl (only in Ireland!). Sometimes the nexus between the pubs and the literature was a little tenuous, but it was fun. An actor (our guide) started with a song, where the audience answered the call "What'll you have?" with "I'll have a pint." Then another actor joined him for the opening few minutes of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot." He talked about Joyce's "Ulysses," part of which takes place in the neighborhood, and recited the last lines of Molly Bloom's soliloquy ("Yes, yes . . .") ending that novel, in which she mentions Duke Street, where we were. We finished our drinks and went a few blocks to the main quad of Trinity college (our guide said that we would get one literary stop without a pub, but that would be compensated for by one pub stop without any literature). There we were told about Trinity's famous students, such as Beckett, Jonathan Swift. Edmund Burke, Oliver Goldsmith and Oscar Wilde. He talked about Wilde's American lecture tour and recited a letter where Wilde talked about his lecture (on Art and Aesthetics) in Leadville, Colorado, to a bunch of whiskey-drinking miners.

Then we went to O'Neil's Pub, where the other actor showed up and they did part of a scene from a play by James Plunkett, involving a pair of street beggars. Then we went to the Old Standard for our promised non-literary pub stop (instead, watching Brazil against North Korea in World Cup soccer). Finally, we went back to Duke Street, where we heard stories about Brendan Behan, the famous pub-crawling writer. Our guide then gave us a quiz. I (Mike) managed to shout out one answer, but my Jeopardy reflexes were dulled by having been up for 33 1/2 hours, so the winner (of a Literary Pub Crawl tee-shirt) was a woman from Chicago. Second place (a tiny bottle of what our guide called Bushmills "mouthwash") required a run-off question between a young man from Yorkshire and a middle-aged woman from Florida. Then we ended the evening at Davy Byrne's pub, where one of the scenes in "Ulysses" takes place.

Some of the quiz questions were interesting. See if you can answer:

1. Beckett was born on what day near Easter?
2. Unknown to many, Beckett was one of the original writers involved in the musical "Oh, Calcutta!," but withdrew his name from the credits when he learned it would have naked women onstage. Another of the writers, one of the Beatles, also withdrew. Which Beatle?
3. Oliver Goldsmith was hired to compile a collection of Mother Goose rhymes. Needing to fill space, he wrote two new ones himself, passing them off as common children's rhymes. Now they are. Which two?
4. Oscar Wilde, as an undergraduate, was proficient in a sport (one that's in the Olympics and practiced professionally). Which one?
5. Of Ireland's four winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature (William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney), which one also won an Academy Award?

Answers later.