Here's to the much-read and long dead	.
Eithne sings her opening lines with gusto, and hands on hips she asks: "What will you have?" The audience choruses, "I'll have a pint!" And so Dublin's famous Literary Pub Crawl gets a roll on. The first of the pubs is The Duke, just off Grafton St, where the eager crowd fills the upstairs room. The night I went there were quite a few visitors from Downunder. Donning their old black caps, our two professional actors Brendon and Eithne become the derelict street dwellers from Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot". Motionless, each staring with glazed eyes into a world beyond the room. The audience waits, transfixed. "You're sure it was here?" "What?" "That we were to wait." "He said by the tree. Do you see any others?" As the segment ends they freeze and the audience responds with enthusiasm. We learn some Irish literary history along the way, about how Beckett was educated at Trinity College and how his absurdist theatre was received, with one critic describing "Godot" as the only play he'd seen "where nothing happened - twice." Across the road was where the Literary Society met and James Joyce held discussions with political allies like Irish hero Charles Stewart Parnell. Guides as well as actors, Eithne and Brendon shepherd their 30 odd drinking followers across the Dublin streets between the trucks and rampant buses to the grounds of Trinity College. Puzzled faces detect that this is not a pub. Yes, from here on the culture stops will be outdoors and the drinking stops indoors as the other pubs don't have the space for such a crowd to stand together in one section. Huddled underneath the arches of Trinity's bell tower we learn that the college was built in 1592 on the orders of the English queen and that James Joyce, being an Irish Catholic, was forbidden to attend. Apparently when Oscar Wilde arrived to study here in 1872 he condescendingly declared that his fellow students "think of nothing but running and jumping, and they vary these intellectual pursuits with bouts of fighting and drinking." Eithne's impersonation of Wilde as the Irish dandy has the crowd roaring with laughter. And when she describes his interest in the burly silver miners on his US lecture tour, we know it's time for another drink. Bidding farewell to the university that nurtured others like Goldsmith, Synge and even Bram Stoker of Dracula fame, we head for another round at our second pub J.M.O'Neill's of Suffolk St, a pub frequented by Beckett. After a rather long 20 minutes in the cosy atmosphere of our Irish pub we need moral rehabilitation and are marched across to the steps of St Andrew's Church, only to find it's been turned into a Dublin Tourism Visitor Centre. Here we learn about US-born Mary Lavin who returned to Ireland. Our street theatre brings her short stories to life - "it was the smell of the nuns I used to love!" Compared to the impoverished Dubliners, the nuns of course did not smell at all. Brendon then performs the role of twentieth century Irish writer and alcoholic Brendan Behan who disgraced himself at his US press conferences. Time for another drink? Into The Old Stand we file, a favourite pub of Irish nationalist Michael Collins, whose career was the subject of a film in recent years. The publican is used to the sudden surge of customers at this time every night. The Literary Pub Crawl has been running now for sixteen years and is as popular as ever. Drawing to a close we are met with The Quiz. Will anyone remember it all? I was taking notes and still couldn't answer half the questions, but one keen soul managed to win the T-shirt, which of course was green. The outstretched arm points us to our fourth, and apparently optional drinking spot, the Davy Byrnes bar. Would it be Shaw, Synge or Yeats this time? No. As if obsessed by the notion of the absurd, we finish as we began. Above the bar there is a flat that once put a roof over the head of, you guessed it, one Samuel Beckett.
Fact File Jameson Dublin Literary Pub Crawl: Starting Point: The Duke (upstairs), Duke St, just off Grafton St, Dublin When? Nightly at 7.30pm (but only Thurs-Sun in winter) Also Sundays at 12 noon Website: www.dublinpubcrawl.com Other places of literary interest in Dublin: Trinity College, where so many Irish writers were educated Dublin Writers Museum, a celebration of their history, with original letters and early edition books St Patrick's Cathedral, where Jonathan Swift, author of "Gulliver's Travels", was Dean Newman House, Catholic University attended by James Joyce The James Joyce Centre, displays and audio-visuals about Dublin's most international writer Abbey Theatre, founded 100 years ago The Shaw Birthplace, restored Victorian home where the Nobel prize winner was born For details of these get a copy of "Dublin's Top Visitor Attractions" published by Dublin Tourism. Information: Dublin Tourism: www.visitdublin.com Tourism Ireland: www.tourismireland.com   IMPORTANT NOTE: This article is copyright © Bruce Holmes and may not be reproduced without his express permission. All rights reserved.