αίαι, ay, ay! … stutterer Demosthenes
gob full of pebbles outshouting seas –
4 words only of mi ‘art aches and … ‘Mine's broken,
you barbarian, T.W.!' He was nicely spoken.
‘Can't have our glorious heritage done to death!'
I played the Drunken Porter in Macbeth.
‘Poetry's the speech of kings. You're one of those
Shakespeare gives the comic bits to: prose!
All poetry (even Cockney Keats?) you see
The young Tony Harrison seems to be resigned to his place in the world and reinforces it by implication, by saying he played the part of the Porter in Macbeth, a lower class, comic character. It could be taken as perverse pride, though; a sort of defiance.
Them and uz