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Summary
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Under Milk Wood, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Nostalgia
Storytelling and Ordinary Life
Intimacy
Resilience and Redemption
Nature vs. Society
Gossip and Community
Summary
Analysis
First Voice invites the listener “to begin at the beginning” before setting the scene. It’s the middle of the night in a small, quaint fishing village. Everyone in the town is sound asleep. The darkness of night renders the houses as “blind as Captain Cat,” and it’s quiet enough to “hear the dew falling.” First Voice addresses the listener directly, explaining that only they are awake to see the ships bobbing up and down in the sea, and to experience the townspeople’s dreams. The stillness of night pervades everything in town from the chapel to the pub, to Dai Bread’s bakery.
First Voice’s narrative instruction “to begin at the beginning” addresses the listener directly, drawing them into the play and explicitly highlighting the active storytelling involved in bringing to life the play’s setting, characters, and plot. In establishing where “the beginning,” starts, First Voice imposes a narrative structure onto an otherwise formless setting. The peaceful quietness First Voice emphasizes in this opening scene suggests that the play’s setting is a quaint, simple place—the very opposite of a bustling, crowded city.
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First Voice urges the listener to listen as “time passes.” He describes Captain Cat, the blind sea-captain, asleep in his bunk on his ship, the S. S. Kidwelly. Second Voice interjects to describe Captain Cat’s dreams, in which he plummets deep into the sea and is greeted by his deceased shipmates First Drowned, Second Drowned, Third Drowned, Fourth Drowned, and Rosie Probert, who all recount the circumstances of their death. Second Drowned recalls how he and Captain Cat both had sexual relations with Rosie Probert. The drowned ask Captain Cat to fill them in on the goings on of the town they left behind. First Drowned asks if there is “washing on the line,” Second Drowned asks about “rum and laverbread,” and Fourth Drowned asks about “Concertinas” and “Ebenezer’s bell.” Captain Cat quickly becomes overwhelmed by all the voices.
First Voice’s advice to listen as “time passes” suggests that one can clearly discern the effects of time on the town in which the play takes place: perhaps the town is worn down and has seen better days, or perhaps its people are preoccupied with the past. Captain Cat’s dreams of his deceased shipmates certainly supports the latter speculation: the retired sea captain’s dreams are haunted by the ghosts of the shipmates he has outlived. Cat’s frazzled response the ghosts’ many questions suggests that memory often overwhelms his present existence—that he is living in the past. Cat’s dream also establishes a connection between nostalgia and water, with water being the subject and setting of Cat’s nostalgia, as well as a metaphor the dream uses to convey the heavy, overpowering quality of Cat’s feelings of longing and grief. Lastly, the appearance of Rosie Probert, Cat’s former lover, introduces an element of physical intimacy into the play.
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First Voice directs the listener to listen to the sound of the town’s dressmaker and sweetshop-keeper, Miss Myfanwy Price, dream of her tall, handsome lover, Mr. Mog Edwards. Second Voice interjects, describing Edwards as “whacking thighed and piping hot,” and with “eyes like blowlamps” that take in Myfanwy’s body. In the dream, Edwards effusively declares his love for her and vows to whisk her away to his “Emporium on the hill” for a sensual evening together. Miss Price says, “Yes, Mog, yes, Mog, yes, yes, yes.”
First Voice draws the listener’s attention up the street to the attic above the cobbler’s shop, where the cobbler, Jack Black, lies fast asleep. Second Voice describes Black’s dreams of brashly breaking up lovers’ rendezvous in the woods.
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Next, Second Voice describes how Evans the Death, the town’s undertaker, laughs as he dreams about being a child and stealing a handful of his mother’s currants on snowy day.
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First Voice moves the scene next door, where Mister Waldo, a plump man who sleeps with bread pudding and a milk stout under his pillow, and the town’s “rabbitcatcher, barber, herbalist, catdoctor, [and] quack,” dreams about playing “this little piggy” with his mother. In the same dream, Mr. Waldo’s wife screams at him, anguishing over what their nosy neighbors will say about their marriage, and First Neighbour, Second Neighbour, Third Neighbour, and Fourth Neighbour begin to gossip about Mr. Waldo being a drunk and having an affair with Beattie Morris, who has apparently given birth to his child. The neighbors think Mr. Waldo is just like his father, who ended up in an asylum. Waldo’s wife’s voice returns, and she tearfully refers to herself as “Widower Waldo.”
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Waldo’s wife’s screeching is replaced by the screeching of his mother, who also anguishes over gossiping neighbors. Waldo regresses into his childhood self, and the neighbors complain that he is dirty and mischievous. One neighbor claims he stole some currants, while another mother demands to know what Waldo has done to Matti. Waldo orders Matti to give him a kiss, and Matti asks for a penny in return. A preacher asks if Waldo will take Matti Richards to be his “awful wedded wife,” and four other women chime in to ask the same question. Waldo screams.
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First Voice redirects the listener’s attention toward the clean and immaculately dressed Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard, who is asleep in bed “under virtuous polar sheets” in her room at the Bay House, a boarding house. Her two husbands, Mr. Ogmore and Mr. Pritchard, are both dead. Mrs. Ogmore is pathologically tidy and dreams of instructing her deceased husbands to relay their daily routines to her. Ogmore and Pritchard run through their chores, such as taking “salts which are nature’s friend,” making herbal tea, and boiling drinking water.
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First Voice draws the listener’s attention toward Gossamer Beynon—the butcher’s daughter, and a schoolteacher—who sleeps “under a fluttering hummock of chicken’s feathers in a slaughterhouse that has chintz curtains and a three-pieced suite.” Gossamer dreams of a lover, who is described as “a small rough ready man with a bushy tail winking in a paper carrier.”
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Organ Morgan, the town organist, cries for help in his sleep. He dreams of the “music” of Coronation Street: the “spouses […] honking like geese and the babies singing opera.” Across town, the cocklers, Mr. and Mrs. Floyd, are sound asleep, “like two old kippers in a box.”
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In Salt Lake Farm, Utah Watkins counts sheep that look like his wife. Elsewhere, Ocky Milkman dreams of crying as he empties his milk churns into the Dewi River. Next door, Cherry Owen’s empty mug turns into a fish, which he drinks. Elsewhere, P.C. Attila Rees drags himself out of bed and starts to pee into his helmet before deciding he’ll regret it in the morning and returning to bed.
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Willy Nilly, the postman, dreams of delivering the mail, which causes him to knock on his wife’s back in his sleep. Willy Nilly’s knocking leads Mrs. Willy Nilly to dream of being spanked by her teacher for being late to school, which is the dream she’s had every night since marrying Willy Nilly. Sinbad Sailors, who runs the taproom, “hugs his damp pillow,” which he calls Gossamer Beynon. Lily Smalls dreams of being caught by a mogul in the washroom.
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Bessie Bighead, a poor, perpetually single woman who works at Salt Lake Farm, picks daisies to place on the grave of Gomer Owen, who kissed her just once, as they were standing next to the pigsty. In Mrs. Butcher Beynon’s dream, Mr. Beynon is arrested for selling illicit meats, such as “dogs’ eyes” and “manchop.” In his own dream, Butcher Beynon shoots wild giblets.
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Elsewhere, Mr. Pugh, the schoolmaster, dreams of murder. Elsewhere still, Mrs. Organ Morgan holds her hands over her ears and tries to sleep as her husband snores loudly beside her.
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Mary Ann Sailors dreams herself away from her clean kitchen, which has “Sunday-school pictures” hanging from its walls, and into the Garden of Eden, which she envisions as a “kitchen garden” full of vegetables. She sits in the garden and shells peas.
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Meanwhile, in Donkey Street, Dai Bread dreams of harems, Polly Garter dreams of babies, Nogood Boyo dreams of nothing, and Lord Cut-Glass dreams of a ticking clock.
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The Voice of a Guide-Book describes the town of Llareggub, which is home to less than 500 people, and which contains only three, narrow streets and some farmland. The Guide-Book describes Llareggub as “decaying,” and the townspeople as having “a salty individuality of their own.” On Coronation Street, the town’s main road, there are “humble” houses painted garish colors, as well as a few crumbling 18th-century houses. There’s not any interesting architecture, nature, or general excitement in Llareggub to attract outsiders, but a “contemplative” person might find a “picturesque sense of the past” in the town’s eccentric people and odd traditions.
A cock crows, the sky grows lighter, and First Voice directs the listener’s attention to Captain Cat, who rings the townhall bell to awaken the sleeping citizens, which he does every day. Second Voice shifts the focus to Reverend Eli Jenkins, who dresses in his preacher’s robe and walks downstairs, opening the front door to greet the new day. The Reverend looks upon “the eternal hill” before him and exclaims “Dear Gwalia!” before expressing gratitude for his town. Though the Reverend knows that there are places worthier and more beautiful than Llareggub, he would stay in the town forever if he could. The Reverend closes his door, ending what Second Voice calls the “morning service.”
Lily Smalls, “Mrs. Beynon’s treasure,” wakes up from her dreams of fooling around with “royalty” in Milk Wood and goes downstairs to Mrs. Beynon’s kitchen to boil water on the stove. She looks at her reflection in Mr. Beynon’s shaving glass and bemoans her appearance. She talks to her reflection, inaudibly whispering the name of the person she loves into her face in the glass. From upstairs, the voice of Mrs. Beynon demanding her morning tea interrupts Lily’s daydreaming.
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In the School House across the street, Mr. Pugh brings Mrs. Pugh her morning tea and imagines slipping poison into the cup. He opens the bedroom door and hands the tea to his wife, who complains about the taste before she’s taken one sip. Mrs. Pugh asks if the Reverend has recited his poetry yet, and when Mr. Pugh confirms that he has, she rises from bed.
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Second Voice draws the listener’s attention to Lily Smalls as she scrubs the front steps of the Beynons’ house. Mrs. Pugh looks on and scoffs at Lily, whose skirt is tucked into her undergarments. Mrs. Pugh watches P.C. Attila Rees angrily trudge out of Handcuff House and predicts that he’s on his way to arrest Polly Garter “for having babies.” Mary Ann Sailors opens her bedroom window and announces to the world her exact age: “eighty-five years three months and a day!” Meanwhile, Organ Morgan sits beside his bedroom window playing music.
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Dai Bread hurriedly makes his way down Donkey Street toward the bakery, muttering to himself about his useless wives, who failed to make him breakfast that morning. Mrs. Dai Bread One, who is rather old and frumpy, tries to “stir up” her neighbor Mrs. Sarah by asking for a loaf of bread and inquiring about her boils. In contrast, Mrs. Dai Bread Two is “gypsied to kill,” dressed in broken high heels and a “silky scarlet petticoat” that displays her “dirty pretty knees” and body. She has “black slinky hair,” wears perfume, and talks about using tea leaves to predict the future as she lights her pipe.
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Lord Cut-Glass wears mismatched, secondhand clothing to go door to door emptying slops. Meanwhile, Nogood Boyo gets into trouble at the wash-house, and Miss Myfanwy Price, dressed in a prim housecoat, looks forward to a scrumptious homemade breakfast.
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Polly Garter stands under the clothesline and feeds her baby. She complains about nothing growing in her garden besides “washing” and “babies.” She thinks about the babies’ fathers, who live far away, and imagines her baby chastising her for living a dishonorable life before ultimately deciding that she is a good enough mother.
First Voice redirects the listener’s attention to Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard, who dines on tea and “starchless bread.” Elsewhere, Mr. Waldo eats kippers, and Marry Ann Sailors praises God. Mr. Pugh continues to imagine ways to kill Mrs. Pugh, who continues to nag him. Willy Nilly finishes his tea as Mrs. Willy Nilly tends to the boiling water on the stove, which she’ll use to steam open the townspeople’s mail. Reverend Eli Jenkins continues to compose poetry, and Lord Cut-Glass tends to the clocks. Captain Cat sits in the galley of his schooner and eats fried fish.
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Mr. Cherry Owen and Mrs. Cherry Owen sit in their small, one-room home and eat last night’s meal of boiled onions for breakfast. They laugh together as Mrs. Cherry Owen recounts to her husband the drunken antics he got into the night before, since he has no memory of them. She points to a smudge on the wall, which she explains is from her husband throwing the sago. He also sang “Bread of Heaven,” danced around, and cried until Mrs. Cherry Owen put him to bed.
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First Voice describes the smell of fried liver emanating from the Beynons’ house. Mrs. Beynon gives the cat pieces of liver, which Mr. Beynon claims belonged to the cat’s brother. Mrs. Beynon shrieks, and Beynon continues to tease her about the questionable sources of all the meats they eat, though Lily Smalls insists that he’s lying.
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First Voice redirects the scene up the street. Sinbad Sailors, who is Mary Ann Sailors’s grandson, opens his bar, Sailors Arms, where “it is always opening time.” First Voice describes the sounds of babies crying and children being sent to school. Second Voice comments on the cranky fishermen tending to their nets. One of these fishermen, Nogood Boyo takes his dinghy, the Zanzibar, out on the bay. He looks up at the sky and wonders “who’s up there,” though he doesn’t much care about the answer. Nogood Boyo looks at Llareggub Hill, which is covered in trees, white houses, and farmland.
In town, Mr. Mog Edwards stands outside Manchester House and thinks about his love for Miss Myfanwy Price. Meanwhile, the town teems with the sounds of daily business: of syrup being sold, farmers driving animals to market. Captain Cat sits at his window and listens to the sounds of children running to school; he can recognize them by the sound their feet make against the cobblestone street. He hears the sound of Willy Nilly knocking on the door of the Bay View and thinks that the mailman should watch his step, since every step at Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard’s boarding house is slippery from her constant cleaning.
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Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard opens the door of the Bay View and greets Willy Nilly, who hands her a letter, which he explains is from a man in Builth Wells who wants to stay at the Bay View for two weeks while he studies birds. Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard thinks about all the feathers the letter-writer would drag inside the boarding house and immediately declines his request. She slams the door in Willy Nilly’s face.
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Captain Cat hears Willy Nilly arrive at the School House, where he relays to Mrs. Pugh all the gossip he’s gleaned from that day’s letters. Willy Nilly gives Mrs. Pugh a package for Mr. Pugh, informing her that it contains a book entitled Lives of the Great Poisoners. Willy Nilly continues on to Manchester House, where he relays the day’s news to Mr. Mog Edwards, who eagerly asks the mailman if he’s been sent “a letter from her.” Willy Nilly describes the contents of Miss Price’s love letter before handing Edwards the envelope to read himself.
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After leaving Manchester House, Willy Nilly intercepts Mr. Waldo, who is on his way to the Sailors Arms. Willy Nilly hands Mr. Waldo an envelope containing “another paternity summons,” which prompts Mr. Waldo to order a pint the second he arrives at the Sailors Arms.
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Captain Cat continues to listen to the townspeople. He overhears Mrs. Floyd and Nogood Boyo talking about fish. He discerns the sound of the overweight Mrs. Dai Bread One making her way down the street, and the clicking of high heels as Mae, Rose Cottage’s oldest child, passes by his window. Women stand around the town pump and trade gossip about the usual subjects, such as who’s expecting a baby, who’s been beaten, and the cost of soap. Polly Garter is visibly pregnant, and they scoff that “there should be a law” against such a thing.
Captain Cat hears organ music in the distance. He notes the early start to Organ Morgan’s practice session and considers it to be a sign that Spring is in the air. When he hears the clamber of milk-cans approaching, Captain Cat laughs to himself about how watered down Ocky Milkman’s milk is.
Captain Cat hears a cock crow, which means that the morning is already half over. The organ music stops, and First Voice describes more of the town’s sounds: horses walking down the town’s cobblestone streets, pigs grunting, and the smell of baking bread. Women stroll into Mrs. Organ Morgan’s general store, which sells all kinds of goods, from whistles to rat traps. Three women (First Woman, Second Woman, and Third Woman) talk about Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard’s new man, who apparently studies birds through a telescope. They wryly observe that Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard’s first husband didn’t need a telescope, since he simply watched them “undressing through the key-hole.”
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The women continue to gossip, poking fun at Mrs. Beynon for believing all Mr. Beynon’s talk of questionable meats. Fourth Woman calls the people who live in Llareggub “a nasty lot,” and First Woman gestures toward “lazy” Nogood Boyo as an example. The women talk about Ocky Milkman’s wife, who never ventures outside the house, and Dai Bread, who has two wives. Fourth Woman says that all men are “brutes,” citing as an additional example Organ Morgan, whose practicing keeps his wife up all night.
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First Voice redirects the listener’s attention to the sun beating down on Llareggub and the adjacent sea. Second Voice interjects to describe Evans the Death “press[ing] hard with black gloves on the coffin of his breast in case his heart jumps out.”
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Next, Second Voice notes how the Spring day has incited feelings of anger in Jack Black, who takes out his frustrations on a shoe he’s cobbling for Mrs. Dai Bread Two. Jack Black grumbles to himself that nobody should be wearing such a shoe, no matter how nice their legs are. Second Voice observes how Spring has an opposite effect on Captain Cat, who is overcome with a sense of nostalgia. Meanwhile, Mary Ann Sailors looks out the window at Llareggub Hill and thinks it must be “the Chosen Land.”
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First Voice redirects the listener’s attention to Willy Nilly, who has returned home to steam open more mail with his wife. They open a letter from Mr. Mog Edwards to Miss Myfanwy Price, which opens with what reads as an advertisement for his Tailor’s shop before moving into a declaration of his love for her. Edwards describes a dream in which Miss Price sits “dripping wet” in his lap, which inspires Reverend Jenkins to call her a “mermaid.” Edwards thinks that Jenkins “a proper Christian,” unlike Cherry Owen, who tells Edwards he should have tossed the mermaid-Myfanwy back into the sea. Edwards closes his letter by voicing his anxieties about his failing business. The letter ends with the stamped message “Shop at Mog’s.”
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Willy Nilly leaves his home and heads to the House of Commons, which is located near the harbor. There, he sees herring gulls in the sky and fishermen at work. The fishermen look in the water and see all the goods their catch will allow them to buy, however, they quickly become discouraged and decide it’s time to quit for the day and head to the Sailors Arms.
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A bell rings, and children pour out of the School House, singing as they run. Captain Cat listens to the children and sings a song about “Johnnie Crack and Flossie Snail,” who “kept their baby in a milking pail.” After a long pause, First Voice remarks on the “music of the spheres” that echoes over Milk Wood, on which he bestows the title “The Rustle of Spring.” Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard blows her nose into a handkerchief and curses the sun, but she can do little to cleanse the intense feeling of Spring from the air. Meanwhile, Mrs. Dai Bread One and Mrs. Dai Bread Two sit outside their house. Mrs. Dai Bread Two gazes into her crystal ball and antagonizes Mrs. Dai Bread One by claiming to see Dai Bread in bed with two women.
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Reverend Eli Jenkins walks outside the chapel and listens to Polly Garter sing as she scrubs the floors of the Welfare Hall for the Mothers’ Union Dance that will take place that evening. Polly sings about her past lovers, whom she calls Tom, Dick, and Harry, and whom were all big and handsome men. Her song turns melancholy as she mourns the death of Willy Wee, the only man she ever loved. Though Polly has no shortage of lovers, whenever she’s with a new man, she can’t stop thinking about Willy Wee.
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Reverend Eli Jenkins praises God for Polly’s heartfelt song and continues on his way to care for the sick with his poems. He passes by Mr. Waldo, who is on his way to Sailors Arms. Mr. Waldo arrives at the pub, which is full of dejected fishermen. Sinbad Sailors greets Mr. Waldo and confesses his love for Gossamer Beynon, whom he calls “a lady all over.” Sinbad wishes he could marry Gossamer, but his disapproving grandmother, Mary Ann Sailors, prevents him from doing so. Mr. Waldo can only think lustfully of women and disagrees that Gossamer—or any woman—is “a lady all over.”
Captain Cat sits by his window and listens to the schoolchildren play. The girls tease the boys, ordering them to kiss Gwennie “where she says,” or be forced to give her a penny. Gwennie lists different places to kiss her, such as Goosegog Lane, Llareggub Hill, and Milk Wood. Two boys give in to Gwennie’s demands, but when she asks Dicky to kiss her in Milk Wood, he tells her he can’t, since his mother forbade it. When Dicky doesn’t have a penny to give Gwennie instead of a kiss, the girls threaten to throw him in the river.
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First Voice describes the way the shrieking children form a mob around Dicky, who eventually breaks away and runs downhill, blushing, crying, and clutching at his pants, which have had the buttons ripped off them. Dicky cries for his mother, whom the children insinuate is a loose woman. But this “means nothing at all” to Dicky, who loves his mother, even though she sleeps in a “fat birth-smelling bed” and has “cowbreath.” After the children are finished tormenting Dicky, they run to Myfanwy Price’s shop to exchange their new, “sticky” pennies for sweets.
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Second Voice shifts focus toward Gossamer Beynon leaving the school in her high heels. As she walks down the street, people, including Sinbad Sailors, undress her with their eyes. Gossamer sees Sinbad as she passes Sailors Arms and mutters to herself about being attracted to a “common” man, though this isn’t a problem for her, so long as he’s sexually appealing. Sinbad watches Gossamer walk, drinks, and bemoans her pride. He describes Gossamer as “the butcher’s unmalting icemaiden daughter” who will be forever oblivious to his interest in her. Gossamer senses Sailors’s thoughts and “turns in a terror of delight away from” him before going to the kitchen for a meal of kidney and chips.
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In the School House, the Pughs dine in silence. Mr. Pugh reads his book about famous poisoners and takes notes, careful to conceal the book’s cover from his wife. Mrs. Pugh calls her husband a “pig” for being rude and reading at the table, prompting Pugh to imagine himself concocting a potion of toxic herbs in a laboratory. When Mrs. Pugh asks what he’s reading, he claims the book’s title is Lives of the Great Saints. Mrs. Pugh smirks and tells Mr. Pugh she saw him talking with “Saint Polly Garter,” who Mrs. Organ Morgan claims was “martyred” by Mr. Waldo last night.
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Mrs. Organ Morgan, who caught the lovers together, discusses her discovery with Organ Morgan. Apparently, Polly and Mr. Waldo claimed to be “looking for nests.” Mrs. Organ Morgan scowls at Polly’s promiscuous behavior and suggests that the single mother ought to give up her supposed hobby of “looking for nests,” since she already has so many children. Still, Mrs. Organ Morgan admits, Polly’s children are nice. When Mrs. Organ Morgan asks her husband which of Polly’s children he likes best, he replies “Bach,” which causes Mrs. Organ Morgan to cry and accuse him of not paying attention to her.
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First Voice shifts the scene to Lord Cut-Glass, who is in his kitchen, feeding fish scraps to a dog. The walls of Lord Cut-Glass’s kitchen are adorned with 66 ticking clocks of various shapes and sizes, all set to a different hour. First Voice explains that Lord Cut-Glass “lives in […] a life of siege” and keeps all the clocks to stay alert in the event that an outsider tries to rob him. Second Voice interjects to explain how “the lust and lilt and lather [...] of the bird-praise and body of Spring” are lost on Lord Cut-Glass, who associates Spring with “nearness to the tribes” that will charge down “Armageddon Hill” to attack him.
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As the afternoon draws on, and “the sea lolls, laps and idles.” Clouds float over Llareggub Hill, and donkeys and pigs dream. Mr. Pugh has fallen asleep at the table, and an irritated Mrs. Pugh calls him a pig. Mr. Pugh continues to daydream about poisoning Mrs. Pugh.
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Second Voice interjects to describe one voice Cat remembers most clearly: young Rosie Probert, whose name is tattooed on his stomach, and who was the only woman the formerly promiscuous seafarer had ever loved. Rosie was seeing many other men while she was with Cat, but in his dream, she is his alone, and the lovers talk back and forth in rhyming verse. Rosie asks “Tom Cat” about the seas he traversed as a sailor, and Cat speaks poetically of “Seas barking with seals,/ Blue seas and green,/ Seas covered with eels/ And mermen and whales.” Cat and Rosie’s exchanges gradually become more explicit, and Cat proposes that Rosie let him “shipwreck in [her] thighs.” Rosie tells Cat to call for her twice at grave. Cat calls once, but before he can say her name again, Rosie disappears into the darkness.
A child passing by Captain Cat’s window with her mother sees the captain crying, but she becomes distracted by the sight of Nogood Boyo fishing in the bay. She tells her mother how Nogood Boyo “gave [her] three pennies yesterday but [she] wouldn’t,” without finishing the thought. Meanwhile, Nogood Boyo makes his first catch of the day: a whalebone corset, which conjures in his mind the image of Mrs. Dai Bread Two wearing nothing but a bangle. He imagines offering Mrs. Dai Bread Two the corset, but she immediately rejects it. Nogood Boyo wills himself to stop thinking dirty thoughts about Mrs. Dai Bread Two, insisting that he “want[s] to be a good Boyo, but nobody’ll let [him].” The image of Mrs. Dai Bread Two is replaced by that of a geisha girl dancing to Eastern music, and Nogood Boyo to lose control of himself.
Second Voice redirects the listener’s attention to Mae Rose Cottage, who lounges lazily in a field on Llareggub Hill. She blows on a dandelion and daydreams of “the dirty old fool” who loves her. First Voice shifts the focus to Reverend Eli Jenkins, who sits in his parlor—his “poem-room”—and writes his “Lifework,” a detailed account of Llareggub and its history. Jenkins calls the book “the White Book of Llareggub.” The walls of Jenkins’s poem-room are adorned with portraits of bards and preachers, as well as watercolor paintings that depict Milk Wood as “a lettuce salad dying.” The poem-room also features a portrait of Jenkins’s mother, though nothing depicts his father, Esau, who was too sick to be ordained, who was “scythed” while lying asleep in a cornfield and died sometime later, “of drink and agriculture.”
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Meanwhile, at Salt Lake Farm, Utah Watkins curses his dairy cows, which refuse to give milk. He orders a deaf dog named Daisy to attack the cows, but Daisy only licks Watkins in response. As the Spring day begins to wane, Bessie Bighead calls the cows by name: “Peg, Meg, Buttercup, Moll, Fan from the Castle, Theodosia and Daisy.” First Voice interjects some background information about Bessie Bighead’s dismal past, which is contained in the White Book of Llareggub. According to First Voice, Bessie was “conceived in Milk Wood, born in a barn,” and ultimately abandoned. She was kissed just once, by the late Gomer Owen, who was dared to do it. These days, Bessie milks the cows, sings, and sleeps in daylight, “until the night sucks out her soul and spits it into the sky.”
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First Voice carries the listener’s attention back to town, where dusk has settled over the cobblestoned streets. Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard has already closed all her doors and blinds and retreated to her bedroom for the night, and the ghosts of Mr. Pritchard and Mr. Ogmore emerge to roam freely about the house. In her sleep, Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard tells both her husbands she loves them, causing both of them to recoil in terror. Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard summons the ghosts to her room, and they reluctantly talk through their routines with Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard, just as they did the night before.
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Mae Rose Cottage is still lying in the field. She “draws circles of lipstick around her nipples” as she tells the nannygoats that she’s “bad” and destined for “hell.” Mae waits for God to “strike” her, though nothing happens.
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Jack Black prepares to intercept lovers in the woods. He dons a pair of “religious trousers,” grabs a torch and bible, and ventures into the darkening night. “Off to Gomorrah!” he cries. Meanwhile, Lily Smalls is with Nogood Boyo in the wash-house, and Cherry Owen ventures out to get drunk as his wife cheerfully waves him off. Sinbad Sailors greets Cherry Owen, though he inwardly pines for Gossamer Beynon.
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It’s finally night, and Llareggub becomes “a hill of windows,” which “call back the day and the dead that have run away to sea.” Women sing babies and old men to sleep.
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Meanwhile, single women retreat to their rooms to get ready for tonight’s dance, and accordion music begins to play. In the Sailors Arms, men drink and condemn the dance. Cherry Owen, who has just finished his 17th pint of beer, “righteously” insists that dancing is sinful.
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Second Voice calls the listener’s attention to the Llareggub hillside, and the accordion music stops. First Voice describes Reverend Eli Jenkins at work in his poem-room, where he writes about Llareggub Hill, calling it a “mystic tumulus,” and a “memorial” to those who have lived there since before the arrival of the Celts.
Mr. Waldo drinks in the Sailors Arms and sings a song about being a poor, young chimney sweep in Pembroke City who suffers until a married woman propositions him for sex. Meanwhile, Captain Cat crawls into bed and commences another night of troubled dreams about the dead and drowned, who begin to speak to him once more.
Organ Morgan heads to the chapel to practice the organ and thinks he sees Johann Sebastian Bach lying on a tombstone, but it’s only Cherry Owen, who is drunk and barely conscious.
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Themes
Mog Edwards and Myfanwy Price sit contentedly in their respective homes at the opposite ends of town and write love letter to each other. Mog thinks of Myfanwy and embraces his money.
Active
Themes
First Voice implores the listener to observe the darkening night and the breeze that blows over the sea. First Voice describes what Milk Wood is to different people. To “the hunters of lovers,” Milk Wood is a breeding ground for sin. To Mary Ann Sailors, who believes that the townspeople of Llareggub are God’s “chosen people,” Milk Wood is “a God-built garden.” To promiscuous farmhands, the Wood is an “ignorant chapel of bridesbeds.” And to Reverend Eli Jenkins, for whom The Woods are indicative of “the innocence of men,” the woods come alive “for the second dark time this one Spring day.”
