You bunch of pigs! At least don’t walk o...

You bunch of pigs! At least don’t walk on poor Teddy! [He sits down and puts the corpse’s arm in his.] If you maltreat me, Teddy falls on his face. Is that the respect due to the dead? I’m acting in self-defense. You are seven, seven, and sober, and I am one, and drunk. Is it decent, is it honest, seven against one? Calm down! Teddy has calmed down too! Sit down, I don’t like sanctimoniousness. There must always be some who’re brighter and some who’re stupider. The latter make up for it by being better workers. You’ve seen that I work with my brain. You never had the right spirit of reverence, my dear fellows. And what do you set in motion when you bury good brandy inside you? I achieve new insights, let me tell you. I’ve said the profoundest things to Teddy! But you had to run off for that miserable brandy. Sit down: look at the sky, growing dark between the trees. Is that nothing? There’s no religion in you!

For full extended monologue, please refer to clips or the script edition cited here: Bertolt Brecht, Baal, Grove Press, 1964, pp. 62-63.

• Full Text
• Wikipedia
• Criterion Collection film adaptation