Moscardinho

Ophrys bombyliflora Link

Button Moulder - Hello, old man.
Peer - Good evening, friend.
Button Moulder - In a hurry? What are you doing, here on this empty moor?
Peer - Moving towards my death. What else?
Button Moulder - Ah. Excuse me... my eyes aren't what they were. Are you Peer Gynt?
Peer - So people say.
Button Moulder - Perfect! The man I was sent to find.
Peer - What for?
Button Moulder - Easy. I'm a button moulder. You're to go in my ladle.
Peer - Why?
Button Moulder - To be melted down.
Peer - Pardon?
Button Moulder - Here's the ladle, wiped and waiting. Your grave's dug. Your coffin's ordered. My orders are to fetch your soul to the Boss at once.
Peer - Without a word of notice?
Button Moulder - That's how it's always done. Births... burials. Day chosen on the quiet. Not a word to the guest of honour.
Peer - I don't feel well. Oh Peer! What an end to your journey! I wasn't all that bad. An idiot, perhaps. Not a proper sinner.
Button Moulder - Precisely. Not a proper sinner. You were not bad enough for the sulphur-pit, nor good enough for paradise. That's why you go to the casting ladle with the others.
Peer - You're going to melt me down, and start again?
Button Moulder - That's right. Like worn out coins.
Peer - I refuse. I won't.
Button Moulder - What's all the fuss about? It's not important. You were never yourself, alive - why do you care what happens when you're dead?
Peer - Never myself? You're joking! Never myself - Peer Gynt? What else have I ever been? I am Peer. All Peer.
Button Moulder - You have been selfish, but not yourself.

Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt (1867; trad. Kenneth McLeish)

Erva-prata

Paronychia argentea

Characters:
Francisco Pizarro, Commander of the Expedition
Fray Marcos de Nizza, Franciscan Friar

De Nizza. Look hard, you will find Satan here, because here is a country which denies the right to hunger.
Pizarro. You call hunger a right?
De Nizza. Of course. It gives life meaning. Look around you: happiness has no feel for men here, since they are forbidden unhappiness. They hold everything in common. So they have nothing to give one another. They are part of the seasons, no more; as indistinguishable as mules, as predictable as trees. All men are born unequal: this is a divine gift. And want is their birthright. Where you deny this and there is no hope of any new love, where tomorrow is abolished, and no man ever thinks "I can change myself", there you have the rule of Antichrist.
(...)
When I came here first I thought I had found Paradise. Now I know it is Hell. A country which castrastes its people. What are your Inca subjects? A population of eunuchs, living entirely without choice.
Pizarro. And what are your Christians? Unhappy hating men. Look: I am a peasant, I want value for money. If I go marketing for gods, who do I buy? Christ of Europe, with all its deaths and brooding, or Atahuallpa of Peru? His spirit keeps an Empire sweet and still as corn in the field.
De Nizza. And you're content to be a stalk of corn?
Pizarro. Yes, yes! They're no fools, these sun men. They know what cheats you sell on your barrow. Choice. Hunger. Tomorrow. Well, they've looked at your wares and passed on. They live here as part of nature, no hope and no despair.
De Nizza. And no life. Why must you be dishonest? You are not only part of nature, and you know it. There is something in you at war with nature; there is in all of us.

Peter Shaffer, The Royal Hunt of the Sun (Samuel French - London, 1964)