Communicator (communicator) wrote,
Communicator
communicator

You have been tested and your deepest purposes proved

Get your Deadwood episode transcripts here (strong language warning). There was a discussion on metafilter a couple of days ago about whether the writing in Deadwood is Shakespearean (I think the main writer is a professor of literature)

Well. No, it ain't Shakespeare, but then nothing is. It's a silly comparison. However, I was impressed by this soliloquy of EB Farnum while scrubbing the floor, which someone presented as evidence for the case.

You have been tested, Al Swearingen.
And your deepest purposes proved:

"There's gold on the woman's claim."

You might as well have shouted it from
the rooftops.

[EB speaks what he thinks are Al's thoughts...]

That's why I'm jumping through hoops
to get it back.

Thorough as I fleeced the fool she married,
I will fleece his widow, too.
Using loyal associates like
Eustace Bailey Farnum,
as my go-betweens and dukes.

To explain why I want her bought out,
I'll make a pretext of my fear
of the Pinkertons.

I'll throw Farnum a token fee. Why should I
reward EB with some small, fractional
participation in the claim?

Or let him even lay by
a little security
or source of continuing income for
his declining years?

What's he ever done for me?

Except let me terrify him
every god-damn day of his life
'till the idea of bowel regularity
is a forlorn fucking hope?

Not to mention ordering
a man killed in one of
EB's rooms.

So every fucking, free moment
of his life, EB has to spend
scrubbing the blood stains
off the god-damn floor.

...to keep him
from having
to lower
his rates.
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