these names is Igirisu (English)-bei. We may well wonder what an Englishman was doing dans cette galère.
ACT III
Kokusenya, at the head of his newly recruited force, arrives before Kanki's castle, but he is absent, and they are refused admittance. The old mother, however, is permitted to enter in the guise of a prisoner bound with cords. Kanki returns. The old woman begs him earnestly to espouse her son Kokusenya's cause. He forthwith draws his sword and tries to kill his wife, but is prevented. He then explains that he has not suddenly gone mad, but that if he joined Kokusenya people would say he was influenced by women, so it was necessary to remove his wife as a preliminary to granting her request. His wife being still alive, this was impossible.
News of this refusal being conveyed to Kokusenya, he bounds over the moat and parapet of the castle,[1] and presents himself before Kanki. After mutual Homeric defiance they prepare to fight, when Kanki's wife exposes her breast, showing that in order to remove all obstacle to the plans of her husband and brother, she has given herself a death-wound. The two then fraternise, and a quantity of warlike gear is produced, in which Kokusenya is clad, his mother looking on with great admiration. She then commits suicide, enjoining on her son and Kanki to show no weakness in fighting against the Tartars, but to regard them as the enemies of mother and wife. She dies with a smile on her face, gazing at the gallant appearance of Kokusenya in the new armour supplied him by Kanki.
- ↑ Incidents like this remind us that it was a marionette theatre for which Chikamatsu wrote. Puppets can do many things impossible to human actors.
