"I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence"
About this Quote
The specific intent is deflation. Behan refuses the role the authorities need him to play: the condemned man who grants their punishment moral weight by showing up to receive it. By taking their language literally, he strips it of its intimidation. If the state can pronounce death without the body present, then its power is revealed as paper power: orders, stamps, and self-serious men in uniforms narrating reality into existence.
Subtextually, it’s also an Irish joke about British bureaucracy and the absurdity of imperial rule in miniature - a young republican (Behan had IRA ties and did time) facing a system that claims legality while practicing politics. His wit isn’t escapism; it’s a survival tactic and a counter-weapon. Humor becomes a kind of dissidence: if you can make the court look ridiculous, you’ve already damaged its authority.
Context matters because Behan came out of a culture where storytelling and insult are public arts. He doesn’t argue against the sentence; he laughs it out of the room. The punchline lands because it’s not denial. It’s a refusal to be spiritually processed.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|---|
| Source | Verified source: The Hostage (Brendan Behan, 1958)
Evidence: PAT. I know. When I came back to Dublin, I was court-martialled in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence. (Act 1). This line appears as dialogue spoken by the character PAT in Act 1 of Brendan Behan’s play The Hostage (English version of An Giall). Multiple independent secondary references also attribute the line to The Hostage, Act 1, 1958 (e.g., quotation collections and articles), but the linked page reproduces the line in dramatic context and is consistent with those attributions. However, because this is not a scan of the first edition/printed script, I can’t responsibly claim a specific page number or prove this was the *first* time the wording ever appeared (e.g., Behan may have said it earlier in conversation/interviews before incorporating it into the play). For strict ‘first published’ verification, the next step would be checking the earliest printed edition of The Hostage (1958) in a library/Google Books scan to capture bibliographic details (publisher/ISBN) and the exact page in that edition. Other candidates (1) Funny You Should Say That (Andrew Martin, 2006) compilation95.0% ... I was court - martialled in my absence , and sentenced to death in my absence , so I said they could shoot me in ... |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Behan, Brendan. (2026, March 1). I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-was-court-martialled-in-my-absence-and-14023/
Chicago Style
Behan, Brendan. "I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence." FixQuotes. March 1, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-was-court-martialled-in-my-absence-and-14023/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence." FixQuotes, 1 Mar. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-was-court-martialled-in-my-absence-and-14023/. Accessed 8 Mar. 2026.
