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<h1 class="faux">THE HOUR-GLASS. CATHLEEN NI<br />
HOULIHAN. THE GOLDEN HELMET.
THE IRISH DRAMATIC MOVEMENT
:: BEING THE FOURTH VOLUME OF
THE COLLECTED WORKS IN VERSE &amp;
PROSE OF WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS</h1>

<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>




<div class="maintitle">THE COLLECTED WORKS OF<br />WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS</div>



<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>

<div class="title">
THE HOUR-GLASS. CATHLEEN NI<br />
HOULIHAN. THE GOLDEN HELMET.<br />
THE IRISH DRAMATIC MOVEMENT<br />
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:collected-works-in-verse-yeats-vol-2-leaf.jpg" width="27" height="30" alt="leaf" />
BEING THE FOURTH VOLUME OF<br />
<span class="red">THE COLLECTED WORKS IN VERSE &amp;<br />
PROSE OF WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS</span><br />
IMPRINTED AT THE SHAKESPEARE<br />
HEAD PRESS STRATFORD-ON-AVON<br />
MCMVIII<br />
</div>


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<h2>CONTENTS</h2>




<div class="center">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
<tr>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">THE HOUR-GLASS</td>
<td align="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td></tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">CATHLEEN NI HOULIHAN</td>
<td align="right"><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td></tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">THE GOLDEN HELMET</td>
<td align="right"><a href="#Page_55">55</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td></tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">THE IRISH DRAMATIC MOVEMENT</td>
<td align="right"><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td></tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">APPENDIX I:</td></tr>
<tr>
<td align="left"><div class="contentstitle">‘THE HOUR-GLASS’</div></td>
<td align="right"><a href="#Page_233">233</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">APPENDIX II:</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left"><div class="contentstitle">‘CATHLEEN NI HOULIHAN’</div></td>
<td align="right"><a href="#Page_240">240</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr><td align="left">APPENDIX III:</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left"><div class="contentstitle">‘THE GOLDEN HELMET’</div></td>
<td align="right"><a href="#Page_243">243</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">APPENDIX IV:</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left"><div class="contentstitle">DATES AND PLACES OF THE FIRST PERFORMANCE OF NEW PLAYS PRODUCED BY THE NATIONAL THEATRE SOCIETY AND ITS PREDECESSORS</div></td>
<td align="right"><a href="#Page_244">244</a></td>
</tr>
</table></div>

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<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>




<h2>THE HOUR-GLASS:<br />

A MORALITY</h2>

<hr class="chap" />
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<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span></p>




<h3><i>PERSONS IN THE PLAY</i></h3>



<ul class="cast"><li><span class="smcap">A Wise Man</span></li>
<li><span class="smcap">A Fool</span></li>
<li><span class="smcap">Some Pupils</span></li>
<li><span class="smcap">An Angel</span></li>
<li><span class="smcap">The Wise Man’s Wife and two Children</span></li></ul>



<hr class="chap" />
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<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p>




<div class="title">THE HOUR-GLASS:<br />

A MORALITY</div>

<div class="hang1"><i>A large room with a door at the back and another
at the side, or else a curtained place where persons
can enter by parting the curtains. A desk
and a chair at one side. An hour-glass on a
bracket or stand near the door. A creepy stool
near it. Some benches. A <span class="small">WISE MAN</span> sitting at
his desk.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.<br />
[<i>Turning over the pages of a book.</i>]</div>

<p><span class="smcap">Where</span> is that passage I am to explain to my
pupils to-day? Here it is, and the book says
that it was written by a beggar on the walls of
Babylon: ‘There are two living countries, the
one visible and the one invisible; and when it
is winter with us it is summer in that country,
and when the November winds are up among
us it is lambing-time there.’ I wish that my
pupils had asked me to explain any other passage.
[<i>The <span class="small">FOOL</span> comes in and stands at the door
holding out his hat. He has a pair of shears in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>
the other hand.</i>] It sounds to me like foolishness;
and yet that cannot be, for the writer of
this book, where I have found so much knowledge,
would not have set it by itself on this
page, and surrounded it with so many images
and so many deep colours and so much fine
gilding, if it had been foolishness.</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>Give me a penny.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN [<i>turns to another page</i>].</div>

<p>Here he has written: ‘The learned in old
times forgot the visible country.’ That I understand,
but I have taught my learners better.</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>Won’t you give me a penny?</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>What do you want? The words of the wise
Saracen will not teach you much.</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>Such a great wise teacher as you are will
not refuse a penny to a fool.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>What do you know about wisdom?</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>Oh, I know! I know what I have seen.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>What is it you have seen?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>When I went by Kilcluan where the bells used
to be ringing at the break of every day, I could
hear nothing but the people snoring in their
houses. When I went by Tubbervanach, where
the young men used to be climbing the hill to
the blessed well, they were sitting at the crossroads
playing cards. When I went by Carrigoras,
where the friars used to be fasting and
serving the poor, I saw them drinking wine
and obeying their wives. And when I asked
what misfortune had brought all these changes,
they said it was no misfortune, but it was the
wisdom they had learned from your teaching.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Run round to the kitchen, and my wife will
give you something to eat.</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>That is foolish advice for a wise man to give.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Why, Fool?</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>What is eaten is gone. I want pennies for
my bag. I must buy bacon in the shops, and
nuts in the market, and strong drink for the
time when the sun is weak. And I want snares
to catch the rabbits and the squirrels and the
hares, and a pot to cook them in.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Go away. I have other things to think of
now than giving you pennies.</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>Give me a penny and I will bring you luck.
Bresal the Fisherman lets me sleep among the
nets in his loft in the winter-time because he
says I bring him luck; and in the summer-time
the wild creatures let me sleep near their
nests and their holes. It is lucky even to look
at me or to touch me, but it is much more
lucky to give me a penny. [<i>Holds out his hand.</i>]
If I wasn’t lucky, I’d starve.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>What have you got the shears for?</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>I won’t tell you. If I told you, you would
drive them away.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Whom would I drive away?</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>I won’t tell you.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Not if I give you a penny?</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>No.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Not if I give you two pennies?</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>You will be very lucky if you give me two
pennies, but I won’t tell you!</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Three pennies?</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>Four, and I will tell you!</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Very well, four. But I will not call you
Teig the Fool any longer.</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>Let me come close to you where nobody
will hear me. But first you must promise you
will not drive them away. [<i><span class="small">WISE MAN</span> nods.</i>]
Every day men go out dressed in black and
spread great black nets over the hills, great
black nets.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Why do they do that?</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>That they may catch the feet of the angels.
But every morning, just before the dawn, I go
out and cut the nets with my shears, and the
angels fly away.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Ah, now I know that you are Teig the Fool.
You have told me that I am wise, and I have
never seen an angel.</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>I have seen plenty of angels.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Do you bring luck to the angels too?</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>Oh, no, no! No one could do that. But
they are always there if one looks about one;
they are like the blades of grass.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>When do you see them?</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>When one gets quiet, then something wakes
up inside one, something happy and quiet like
the stars—not like the seven that move, but
like the fixed stars.</p>

<div class="right">[<i>He points upward.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>And what happens then?</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>Then all in a minute one smells summer
flowers, and tall people go by, happy and laughing,
and their clothes are the colour of burning
sods.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Is it long since you have seen them, Teig
the Fool?</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>Not long, glory be to God! I saw one coming
behind me just now. It was not laughing, but
it had clothes the colour of burning sods, and
there was something shining about its head.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Well, there are your four pennies. You, a
fool, say ‘Glory be to God,’ but before I came
the wise men said it.</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>Four pennies! That means a great deal of
luck. Great teacher, I have brought you plenty
of luck!</p>

<div class="right">[<i>He goes out shaking the bag.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Though they call him Teig the Fool, he
is not more foolish than everybody used to be,
with their dreams and their preachings and
their three worlds; but I have overthrown their
three worlds with the seven sciences. With
Philosophy that was made from the lonely star,
I have taught them to forget Theology; with
Architecture, I have hidden the ramparts of
their cloudy heaven; with Music, the fierce
planets’ daughter whose hair is always on fire,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
and with Grammar that is the moon’s daughter,
I have shut their ears to the imaginary harpings
and speech of the angels; and I have made
formations of battle with Arithmetic that have
put the hosts of heaven to the rout. But,
Rhetoric and Dialectic, that have been born
out of the light star and out of the amorous
star, you have been my spearman and my catapult!
Oh! my swift horsemen! Oh! my keen
darting arguments, it is because of you that I
have overthrown the hosts of foolishness! [<i>An
<span class="small">ANGEL</span>, in a dress the colour of embers, and carrying
a blossoming apple-bough in her hand and a gilded
halo about her head, stands upon the threshold.</i>]
Before I came, men’s minds were stuffed with
folly about a heaven where birds sang the hours,
and about angels that came and stood upon
men’s thresholds. But I have locked the visions
into heaven and turned the key upon them.
Well, I must consider this passage about the
two countries. My mother used to say something
of the kind. She would say that when
our bodies sleep our souls awake, and that
whatever withers here ripens yonder, and that
harvests are snatched from us that they may
feed invisible people. But the meaning of the
book may be different, for only fools and women
have thoughts like that; their thoughts were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
never written upon the walls of Babylon. I must
ring the bell for my pupils. [<i>He sees the <span class="small">ANGEL</span>.</i>]
What are you? Who are you? I think I saw
some that were like you in my dreams when I
was a child—that bright thing, that dress that
is the colour of embers! But I have done with
dreams, I have done with dreams.</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANGEL.</div>

<p>I am the Angel of the Most High God.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Why have you come to me?</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANGEL.</div>

<p>I have brought you a message.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>What message have you got for me?</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANGEL.</div>

<p>You will die within the hour. You will die
when the last grains have fallen in this glass.</p>

<div class="right">[<i>She turns the hour-glass.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>My time to die has not come. I have my
pupils. I have a young wife and children that
I cannot leave. Why must I die?</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANGEL.</div>

<p>You must die because no souls have passed
over the threshold of Heaven since you came<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
into this country. The threshold is grassy, and
the gates are rusty, and the angels that keep
watch there are lonely.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Where will death bring me to?</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANGEL.</div>

<p>The doors of Heaven will not open to you,
for you have denied the existence of Heaven;
and the doors of Purgatory will not open to
you, for you have denied the existence of
Purgatory.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>But I have also denied the existence of Hell!</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANGEL.</div>

<p>Hell is the place of those who deny.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN [<i>kneels</i>].</div>

<p>I have, indeed, denied everything, and have
taught others to deny. I have believed in nothing
but what my senses told me. But, oh!
beautiful Angel, forgive me, forgive me!</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANGEL.</div>

<p>You should have asked forgiveness long ago.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Had I seen your face as I see it now, oh!
beautiful angel, I would have believed, I would
have asked forgiveness. Maybe you do not
know how easy it is to doubt. Storm, death,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
the grass rotting, many sicknesses, those are
the messengers that came to me. Oh! why are
you silent? You carry the pardon of the Most
High; give it to me! I would kiss your hands
if I were not afraid—no, no, the hem of your
dress!</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANGEL.</div>

<p>You let go undying hands too long ago to
take hold of them now.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>You cannot understand. You live in a country
that we can only dream about. Maybe it is as
hard for you to understand why we disbelieve
as it is for us to believe. Oh! what have I
said! You know everything! Give me time to
undo what I have done. Give me a year—a
month—a day—an hour! Give me to this
hour’s end, that I may undo what I have
done!</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANGEL.</div>

<p>You cannot undo what you have done. Yet
I have this power with my message. If you
can find one that believes before the hour’s end,
you shall come to Heaven after the years of
Purgatory. For, from one fiery seed, watched
over by those that sent me, the harvest can
come again to heap the golden threshing-floor.
But now farewell, for I am weary of the weight
of time.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Blessed be the Father, blessed be the Son,
blessed be the Spirit, blessed be the Messenger
They have sent!</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANGEL.<br />
[<i>At the door and pointing at the hour-glass.</i>]</div>

<p>In a little while the uppermost glass will be
empty.      [<i>Goes out.</i></p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Everything will be well with me. I will call
my pupils; they only say they doubt. [<i>Pulls
the bell.</i>] They will be here in a moment. They
want to please me; they pretend that they disbelieve.
Belief is too old to be overcome all in
a minute. Besides, I can prove what I once
disproved. [<i>Another pull at the bell.</i>] They are
coming now. I will go to my desk. I will speak
quietly, as if nothing had happened.</p>

<div class="hang2">[<i>He stands at the desk with a fixed look in his eyes.
The voices of <span class="small">THE PUPILS</span> are heard singing
these words</i>:</div>

<div class="poetry-container">
  <div class="poetry">
    <div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">I was going the road one day—</div>
<div class="verse">O the brown and the yellow beer—</div>
<div class="verse">And I met with a man that was no right man:</div>
<div class="verse">O my dear, O my dear!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

<div class="enter"><i>Enter <span class="small">PUPILS</span> and the <span class="small">FOOL</span>.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Who is
that pulling at my bag? King’s son, do not
pull at my bag.</p>

<div class="speakerc">A YOUNG MAN.</div>

<p>Did your friends the angels give you that
bag? Why don’t they fill your bag for you?</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>Give me pennies! Give me some pennies!</p>

<div class="speakerc">A YOUNG MAN.</div>

<p>What do you want pennies for? that great
bag at your waist is heavy.</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>I want to buy bacon in the shops, and nuts
in the market, and strong drink for the time
when the sun is weak, and snares to catch
rabbits and the squirrels that steal the nuts,
and hares, and a great pot to cook them in.</p>

<div class="speakerc">A YOUNG MAN.</div>

<p>Why don’t your friends tell you where
buried treasures are? Why don’t they make
you dream about treasures? If one dreams
three times there is always treasure.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL [<i>holding out his hat</i>].</div>

<p>Give me pennies! Give me pennies!</p>

<div class="hang2">[<i>They throw pennies into his hat. He is standing
close to the door, that he may hold out his hat
to each newcomer.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">A YOUNG MAN.</div>

<p>Master, will you have Teig the Fool for a
scholar?</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANOTHER YOUNG MAN.</div>

<p>Teig, will you give us your pennies if we
teach you lessons? No, he goes to school for
nothing on the mountains. Tell us what you
learn on the mountains, Teig?</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Be silent all! [<i>He has been standing silent, looking
away.</i>] Stand still in your places, for there
is something I would have you tell me.</p>

<div class="hang2">[<i>A moment’s pause. They all stand round in
their places. <span class="small">TEIG</span> still stands at the door.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Is there any one amongst you who believes
in God? In Heaven? Or in Purgatory? Or
in Hell?</p>

<div class="speakerc">ALL THE YOUNG MEN.</div>

<p>No one, Master! No one!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>I knew you would all say that; but do not
be afraid. I will not be angry. Tell me the
truth. Do you not believe?</p>

<div class="speakerc">A YOUNG MAN.</div>

<p>We once did, but you have taught us to
know better.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Oh! teaching, teaching does not go very
deep! The heart remains unchanged under it
all. You have the faith that you always had,
and you are afraid to tell me.</p>

<div class="speakerc">A YOUNG MAN.</div>

<p>No, no, Master!</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>If you tell me that you have not changed
I shall be glad and not angry.</p>

<div class="speakerc">A YOUNG MAN [<i>to his <span class="normal">Neighbour</span></i>].</div>

<p>He wants somebody to dispute with.</p>

<div class="speakerc">HIS NEIGHBOUR.</div>

<p>I knew that from the beginning.</p>

<div class="speakerc">A YOUNG MAN.</div>

<p>That is not the subject for to-day; you were
going to talk about the words the beggar wrote
upon the walls of Babylon.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>If there is one amongst you that believes, he
will be my best friend. Surely there is one
amongst you. [<i>They are all silent.</i>] Surely what
you learned at your mother’s knees has not
been so soon forgotten.</p>

<div class="speakerc">A YOUNG MAN.</div>

<p>Master, till you came, no teacher in this land
was able to get rid of foolishness and ignorance.
But every one has listened to you, every one
has learned the truth. You have had your last
disputation.</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANOTHER.</div>

<p>What a fool you made of that monk in the
market-place! He had not a word to say.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.<br />
[<i>Comes from his desk and stands among them
in the middle of the room.</i>]</div>

<p>Pupils, dear friends, I have deceived you all
this time. It was I myself who was ignorant.
There is a God. There is a Heaven. There is
fire that passes, and there is fire that lasts for
ever.</p>

<div class="hang2">[<i><span class="small">TEIG</span>, through all this, is sitting on a stool by
the door, reckoning on his fingers what he will
buy with his money.</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></div>

<div class="speakerc">A YOUNG MAN [<i>to <span class="normal">Another</span></i>].</div>

<p>He will not be satisfied till we dispute with
him. [<i>To the <span class="small">WISE MAN</span>.</i>] Prove it, Master.
Have you seen them?</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN [<i>in a low, solemn voice</i>].</div>

<p>Just now, before you came in, someone came
to the door, and when I looked up I saw an
angel standing there.</p>

<div class="speakerc">A YOUNG MAN.</div>

<p>You were in a dream. Anybody can see an
angel in his dreams.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Oh, my God! It was not a dream! I was
awake, waking as I am now. I tell you I was
awake as I am now.</p>

<div class="speakerc">A YOUNG MAN.</div>

<p>Some dream when they are awake, but they
are the crazy, and who would believe what they
say? Forgive me, Master, but that is what
you taught me to say. That is what you said
to the monk when he spoke of the visions of
the saints and the martyrs.</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANOTHER YOUNG MAN.</div>

<p>You see how well we remember your teaching.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Out, out from my sight! I want someone
with belief. I must find that grain the Angel
spoke of before I die. I tell you I must find it,
and you answer me with arguments. Out with
you, out of my sight!</p>

<div class="right">[<i>The <span class="normal">Young Men</span> laugh.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">A YOUNG MAN.</div>

<p>How well he plays at faith! He is like the
monk when he had nothing more to say.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Out, out! This is no time for laughter! Out
with you, though you are a king’s son!</p>

<div class="right">[<i>They begin to hurry out.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">A YOUNG MAN.</div>

<p>Come, come; he wants us to find someone
who will dispute with him.<span style="margin-right: 6em;">[<i>All go out.</i></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.<br />
[<i>Alone; he goes to the door at the side.</i>]</div>

<p>I will call my wife. She will believe; women
always believe. [<i>He opens the door and calls.</i>]
Bridget! Bridget! [<i><span class="small">BRIDGET</span> comes in wearing
her apron, her sleeves turned up from her floury
arms.</i>] Bridget, tell me the truth; do not say
what you think will please me. Do you sometimes
say your prayers?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>Prayers! No, you taught me to leave them
off long ago. At first I was sorry, but I am
glad now for I am sleepy in the evenings.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>But do you not believe in God?</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>Oh, a good wife only believes what her
husband tells her!</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>But sometimes when you are alone, when I
am in the school and the children asleep, do
you not think about the saints, about the things
you used to believe in? What do you think of
when you are alone?</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET [<i>considering</i>].</div>

<p>I think about nothing. Sometimes I wonder
if the linen is bleaching white, or I go out to see
if the crows are picking up the chickens’ food.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Oh, what can I do! Is there nobody who
believes he can never die? I must go and find
somebody! [<i>He goes towards the door, but stops
with his eyes fixed on the hour-glass.</i>] I cannot go
out; I cannot leave that. Go, and call my pupils
again. I will make them understand. I will
say to them that only amid spiritual terror, or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
only when all that laid hold on life is shaken
can we see truth. There is something in Plato,
but—no, do not call them. They would answer
as I have bid.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>You want somebody to get up an argument
with.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Oh, look out of the door and tell me if there
is anybody there in the street. I cannot leave
this glass; somebody might shake it! Then the
sand would fall more quickly.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>I don’t understand what you are saying.
[<i>Looks out.</i>] There is a great crowd of people
talking to your pupils.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Oh, run out, Bridget, and see if they have
found somebody that all the time I was teaching
understood nothing or did not listen!</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.<br />
[<i>Wiping her arms in her apron and pulling
down her sleeves.</i>]</div>

<p>It’s a hard thing to be married to a man of
learning that must be always having arguments.
[<i>Goes out and shouts through the kitchen door.</i>]
Don’t be meddling with the bread, children,
while I’m out.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN [<i>kneels down</i>].</div>

<p>‘<i>Confiteor Deo Omnipotenti beatæ Mariæ .&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</i>’
I have forgotten it all. It is thirty years since I
have said a prayer. I must pray in the common
tongue, like a clown begging in the market,
like Teig the Fool! [<i>He prays.</i>] Help me,
Father, Son, and Spirit!</p>

<div class="hang2">[<i><span class="small">BRIDGET</span> enters, followed by the <span class="small">FOOL</span>, who is
holding out his hat to her.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>Give me something; give me a penny to buy
bacon in the shops, and nuts in the market,
and strong drink for the time when the sun
grows weak.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>I have no pennies. [<i>To the <span class="small">WISE MAN</span>.</i>]
Your pupils cannot find anybody to argue with
you. There is nobody in the whole country who
has enough belief to fill a pipe with since you
put down the monk. Can’t you be quiet now
and not always wanting to have arguments?
It must be terrible to have a mind like that.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>I am lost! I am lost!</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>Leave me alone now; I have to make the
bread for you and the children.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Out of this, woman, out of this, I say!
[<i><span class="small">BRIDGET</span> goes through the kitchen door.</i>] Will
nobody find a way to help me! But she spoke
of my children. I had forgotten them. They
will believe. It is only those who have reason
that doubt; the young are full of faith. Bridget,
Bridget, send my children to me.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET [<i>inside</i>].</div>

<p>Your father wants you; run to him now.</p>

<div class="hang2">[<i>The two <span class="small">CHILDREN</span> come in. They stand together
a little way from the threshold of the kitchen
door, looking timidly at their father.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Children, what do you believe? Is there a
Heaven? Is there a Hell? Is there a Purgatory?</p>

<div class="speakerc">FIRST CHILD.</div>

<p>We haven’t forgotten, father.</p>

<div class="speakerc">THE OTHER CHILD.</div>

<p>O no, father. [<i>They both speak together as if
in school.</i>] There is nothing we cannot see;
there is nothing we cannot touch.</p>

<div class="speakerc">FIRST CHILD.</div>

<p>Foolish people used to think that there was,
but you are very learned and you have taught
us better.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>You are just as bad as the others, just as bad
as the others! Do not run away, come back to
me! [<i>The <span class="small">CHILDREN</span> begin to cry and run away.</i>]
Why are you afraid? I will teach you better—no,
I will never teach you again. Go to your
mother! no, she will not be able to teach them.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.
Help them, O God!&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. The grains
are going very quickly. There is very little
sand in the uppermost glass. Somebody will
come for me in a moment; perhaps he is at the
door now! All creatures that have reason
doubt. O that the grass and the plants could
speak! Somebody has said that they would
wither if they doubted. O speak to me, O
grass blades! O fingers of God’s certainty, speak
to me! You are millions and you will not speak.
I dare not know the moment the messenger
will come for me. I will cover the glass. [<i>He
covers it and brings it to the desk. Sees the <span class="small">FOOL</span>,
who is sitting by the door playing with some flowers
which he has stuck in his hat. He has begun to
blow a dandelion-head.</i>] What are you doing?</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>Wait a moment. [<i>He blows.</i>] Four, five, six.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>What are you doing that for?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>I am blowing at the dandelion to find out
what time it is.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>You have heard everything! That is why
you want to find out what hour it is! You are
waiting to see them coming through the door
to carry me away. [<i><span class="small">FOOL</span> goes on blowing.</i>] Out
through the door with you! I will have no
one here when they come. [<i>He seizes the <span class="small">FOOL</span>
by the shoulders, and begins to force him out through
the door, then suddenly changes his mind.</i>] No, I
have something to ask you. [<i>He drags him back
into the room.</i>] Is there a Heaven? Is there a
Hell? Is there a Purgatory?</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>So you ask me now. When you were asking
your pupils, I said to myself, if he would ask
Teig the Fool, Teig could tell him all about it,
for Teig has learned all about it when he has
been cutting the nets.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Tell me; tell me!</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>I said, Teig knows everything. Not even
the cats or the hares that milk the cows have
Teig’s wisdom. But Teig will not speak; he
says nothing.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Tell me, tell me! For under the cover the
grains are falling, and when they are all fallen I
shall die; and my soul will be lost if I have not
found somebody that believes! Speak, speak!</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL [<i>looking wise</i>].</div>

<p>No, no, I won’t tell you what is in my mind,
and I won’t tell you what is in my bag. You
might steal away my thoughts. I met a bodach
on the road yesterday, and he said, ‘Teig, tell
me how many pennies are in your bag; I will
wager three pennies that there are not twenty
pennies in your bag; let me put in my hand and
count them.’ But I pulled the strings tighter,
like this; and when I go to sleep every night
I hide the bag where no one knows.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.<br />
[<i>Goes towards the hour-glass as if to uncover it.</i>]</div>

<p>No, no, I have not the courage. [<i>He kneels.</i>]
Have pity upon me, Fool, and tell me!</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>Ah! Now, that is different. I am not afraid
of you now. But I must come nearer to you;
somebody in there might hear what the Angel
said.</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>Oh, what did the Angel tell you?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>Once I was alone on the hills, and an angel
came by and he said, ‘Teig the Fool, do not
forget the Three Fires; the Fire that punishes,
the Fire that purifies, and the Fire wherein
the soul rejoices for ever!’</p>

<div class="speakerc">WISE MAN.</div>

<p>He believes! I am saved! The sand has run
out.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. [<i><span class="small">FOOL</span> helps him to his chair.</i>] I am
going from the country of the seven wandering
stars, and I am going to the country of the fixed
stars! I understand it all now. One sinks in
on God; we do not see the truth; God sees the
truth in us. Ring the bell. They are coming.
Tell them, Fool, that when the life and the
mind are broken the truth comes through them
like peas through a broken peascod. Pray, Fool,
that they may be given a sign and carry their
souls alive out of the dying world. Your prayers
are better than mine.</p>

<div class="hang2">[<i><span class="small">FOOL</span> bows his head. <span class="smcap">WISE MAN’S</span> head sinks on
his arm on the books. <span class="small">PUPILS</span> are heard singing
as before, but now they come right on to the stage
before they cease their song.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">A YOUNG MAN.</div>

<p>Look at the Fool turned bell-ringer!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">ANOTHER.</div>

<p>What have you called us in for, Teig? What
are you going to tell us?</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANOTHER.</div>

<p>No wonder he has had dreams! See, he is
fast asleep now. [<i>Goes over and touches him.</i>]
Oh, he is dead!</p>

<div class="speakerc">FOOL.</div>

<p>Do not stir! He asked for a sign that you
might be saved. [<i>All are silent for a moment.</i>]
.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. Look what has come from his mouth .&nbsp;.&nbsp;.
a little winged thing .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. a little shining
thing.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. It is gone to the door. [<i>The <span class="small">ANGEL</span>
appears in the doorway, stretches out her hands and
closes them again.</i>] The Angel has taken it in
her hands.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. She will open her hands in
the Garden of Paradise.<span style="margin-right: 6em;">[<i>They all kneel.</i></span></p>

<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a><br /><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p>

<h2>CATHLEEN NI HOULIHAN</h2>

<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span></p>





<h3><i>PERSONS IN THE PLAY</i></h3>



<ul class="cast"><li><span class="smcap">Peter Gillane</span></li>
<li><span class="smcap">Michael Gillane</span>, <i>his Son, going to be married</i></li>
<li><span class="smcap">Patrick Gillane</span>, <i>a lad of twelve, Michael’s Brother</i></li>
<li><span class="smcap">Bridget Gillane</span>, <i>Peter’s Wife</i></li>
<li><span class="smcap">Delia Cahel</span>, <i>engaged to Michael</i></li>
<li><span class="smcap">The Poor Old Woman</span></li>
<li>Neighbours</li></ul>


<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p>




<div class="title">CATHLEEN NI HOULIHAN</div>


<div class="hang1"><i>Interior of a cottage close to Killala, in 1798.
<span class="small">BRIDGET</span> is standing at a table undoing a parcel.
<span class="small">PETER</span> is sitting at one side of the fire, <span class="small">PATRICK</span>
at the other.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>What is that sound I hear?</p>

<div class="speakerc">PATRICK.</div>

<p>I don’t hear anything. [<i>He listens.</i>] I hear
it now. It’s like cheering. [<i>He goes to the window
and looks out.</i>] I wonder what they are cheering
about. I don’t see anybody.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>It might be a hurling.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PATRICK.</div>

<p>There’s no hurling to-day. It must be down
in the town the cheering is.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>I suppose the boys must be having some
sport of their own. Come over here, Peter, and
look at Michael’s wedding-clothes.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER [<i>shifts his chair to table</i>].</div>

<p>Those are grand clothes, indeed.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>You hadn’t clothes like that when you married
me, and no coat to put on of a Sunday more
than any other day.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>That is true, indeed. We never thought a
son of our own would be wearing a suit of that
sort for his wedding, or have so good a place
to bring a wife to.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PATRICK [<i>who is still at the window</i>].</div>

<p>There’s an old woman coming down the
road. I don’t know is it here she is coming?</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>It will be a neighbour coming to hear about
Michael’s wedding. Can you see who it is?</p>

<div class="speakerc">PATRICK.</div>

<p>I think it is a stranger, but she’s not coming
to the house. She’s turned into the gap that
goes down where Murteen and his sons are
shearing sheep. [<i>He turns towards <span class="small">BRIDGET</span>.</i>]
Do you remember what Winny of the Cross
Roads was saying the other night about the
strange woman that goes through the country
whatever time there’s war or trouble coming?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>Don’t be bothering us about Winny’s talk,
but go and open the door for your brother. I
hear him coming up the path.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>I hope he has brought Delia’s fortune with
him safe, for fear her people might go back
on the bargain and I after making it. Trouble
enough I had making it.</p>

<div class="right">[<i><span class="small">PATRICK</span> opens the door and <span class="small">MICHAEL</span> comes in.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>What kept you, Michael? We were looking
out for you this long time.</p>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL.</div>

<p>I went round by the priest’s house to bid
him be ready to marry us to-morrow.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>Did he say anything?</p>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL.</div>

<p>He said it was a very nice match, and that
he was never better pleased to marry any two
in his parish than myself and Delia Cahel.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>Have you got the fortune, Michael?</p>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL.</div>

<p>Here it is.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span></p>

<div class="hang2">[<i><span class="small">MICHAEL</span> puts bag on table and goes over and
leans against chimney-jamb. <span class="small">BRIDGET</span>, who
has been all this time examining the clothes,
pulling the seams and trying the lining of the
pockets, etc., puts the clothes on the dresser.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.<br />
[<i>Getting up and taking the bag in his hand and
turning out the money.</i>]</div>

<p>Yes, I made the bargain well for you,
Michael. Old John Cahel would sooner have
kept a share of this a while longer. ‘Let me
keep the half of it until the first boy is born,’
says he. ‘You will not,’ says I. ‘Whether
there is or is not a boy, the whole hundred
pounds must be in Michael’s hands before he
brings your daughter to the house.’ The wife
spoke to him then, and he gave in at the end.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>You seem well pleased to be handling the
money, Peter.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>Indeed, I wish I had had the luck to get a
hundred pounds, or twenty pounds itself, with
the wife I married.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>Well, if I didn’t bring much I didn’t get
much. What had you the day I married you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
but a flock of hens and you feeding them, and
a few lambs and you driving them to the market
at Ballina. [<i>She is vexed and bangs a jug on the
dresser.</i>] If I brought no fortune I worked it
out in my bones, laying down the baby, Michael
that is standing there now, on a stook of straw,
while I dug the potatoes, and never asking big
dresses or anything but to be working.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>That is true, indeed.</p>
<div class="right">[<i>He pats her arm.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>Leave me alone now till I ready the house
for the woman that is to come into it.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>You are the best woman in Ireland, but
money is good, too. [<i>He begins handling the
money again and sits down.</i>] I never thought to
see so much money within my four walls. We
can do great things now we have it. We can
take the ten acres of land we have a chance of
since Jamsie Dempsey died, and stock it. We
will go to the fair of Ballina to buy the stock.
Did Delia ask any of the money for her own
use, Michael?</p>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL.</div>

<p>She did not, indeed. She did not seem to
take much notice of it, or to look at it at all.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>That’s no wonder. Why would she look
at it when she had yourself to look at, a fine,
strong young man? it is proud she must be to
get you; a good steady boy that will make use
of the money, and not be running through it
or spending it on drink like another.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>It’s likely Michael himself was not thinking
much of the fortune either, but of what sort
the girl was to look at.</p>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL [<i>coming over towards the table</i>].</div>

<p>Well, you would like a nice comely girl to
be beside you, and to go walking with you.
The fortune only lasts for a while, but the
woman will be there always.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PATRICK [<i>turning round from the window</i>].</div>

<p>They are cheering again down in the town.
Maybe they are landing horses from Enniscrone.
They do be cheering when the horses take the
water well.</p>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL.</div>

<p>There are no horses in it. Where would
they be going and no fair at hand? Go down
to the town, Patrick, and see what is going on.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">PATRICK.<br />
[<i>Opens the door to go out, but stops for a
moment on the threshold.</i>]</div>

<p>Will Delia remember, do you think, to bring
the greyhound pup she promised me when she
would be coming to the house?</p>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL.</div>

<p>She will surely.</p>

<div class="right">[<i><span class="small">PATRICK</span> goes out, leaving the door open.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>It will be Patrick’s turn next to be looking
for a fortune, but he won’t find it so easy to
get it and he with no place of his own.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>I do be thinking sometimes, now things are
going so well with us, and the Cahels such a
good back to us in the district, and Delia’s own
uncle a priest, we might be put in the way of
making Patrick a priest some day, and he so
good at his books.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>Time enough, time enough, you have always
your head full of plans, Bridget.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>We will be well able to give him learning,
and not to send him tramping the country like
a poor scholar that lives on charity.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL.</div>

<p>They’re not done cheering yet.</p>

<div class="hang2">[<i>He goes over to the door and stands there for a
moment, putting up his hand to shade his eyes.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>Do you see anything?</p>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL.</div>

<p>I see an old woman coming up the path.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>Who is it, I wonder? It must be the strange
woman Patrick saw a while ago.</p>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL.</div>

<p>I don’t think it’s one of the neighbours anyway,
but she has her cloak over her face.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>It might be some poor woman heard we
were making ready for the wedding and came
to look for her share.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>I may as well put the money out of sight.
There is no use leaving it out for every stranger
to look at.</p>

<div class="hang2">[<i>He goes over to a large box in the corner, opens
it and puts the bag in and fumbles at the lock.</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></div>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL.</div>

<p>There she is, father! [<i>An <span class="normal">Old Woman</span> passes
the window slowly, she looks at <span class="small">MICHAEL</span> as she
passes.</i>] I’d sooner a stranger not to come to the
house the night before my wedding.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>Open the door, Michael; don’t keep the
poor woman waiting.</p>

<div class="hang2">[<i>The <span class="small">OLD WOMAN</span> comes in. <span class="small">MICHAEL</span> stands
aside to make way for her.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>God save all here!</p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>God save you kindly!</p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>You have good shelter here.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>You are welcome to whatever shelter we
have.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>Sit down there by the fire and welcome.</p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN [<i>warming her hands</i>].</div>

<p>There is a hard wind outside.</p>

<div class="hang2">[<i><span class="small">MICHAEL</span> watches her curiously from the door.
<span class="small">PETER</span> comes over to the table.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>Have you travelled far to-day?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>I have travelled far, very far; there are few
have travelled so far as myself, and there’s
many a one that doesn’t make me welcome.
There was one that had strong sons I thought
were friends of mine, but they were shearing
their sheep, and they wouldn’t listen to me.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>It’s a pity indeed for any person to have no
place of their own.</p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>That’s true for you indeed, and it’s long I’m
on the roads since I first went wandering.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>It is a wonder you are not worn out with
so much wandering.</p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>Sometimes my feet are tired and my hands
are quiet, but there is no quiet in my heart.
When the people see me quiet, they think old
age has come on me and that all the stir has
gone out of me. But when the trouble is on
me I must be talking to my friends.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>What was it put you wandering?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>Too many strangers in the house.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>Indeed you look as if you’d had your share of
trouble.</p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>I have had trouble indeed.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>What was it put the trouble on you?</p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>My land that was taken from me.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>Was it much land they took from you?</p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>My four beautiful green fields.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER [<i>aside to <span class="small">BRIDGET</span></i>].</div>

<p>Do you think could she be the widow Casey
that was put out of her holding at Kilglass a
while ago?</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>She is not. I saw the widow Casey one time
at the market in Ballina, a stout fresh woman.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER [<i>to <span class="small">OLD WOMAN</span></i>].</div>

<p>Did you hear a noise of cheering, and you
coming up the hill?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>I thought I heard the noise I used to hear
when my friends came to visit me.</p>

<div class="right">[<i>She begins singing half to herself.</i></div>

<div class="poetry-container">
  <div class="poetry">
<div class="verse">I will go cry with the woman,</div>
<div class="verse">For yellow-haired Donough is dead,</div>
<div class="verse">With a hempen rope for a neckcloth,</div>
<div class="verse">And a white cloth on his head,——</div>
</div>
</div>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL [<i>coming from the door</i>].</div>

<p>What is that you are singing, ma’am?</p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>Singing I am about a man I knew one time,
yellow-haired Donough that was hanged in
Galway.</p>
<div class="right">[<i>She goes on singing, much louder.</i></div>

<div class="poetry-container">
  <div class="poetry">
    <div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">I am come to cry with you, woman,</div>
<div class="verse">My hair is unwound and unbound;</div>
<div class="verse">I remember him ploughing his field,</div>
<div class="verse">Turning up the red side of the ground,</div>
    </div>
    <div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">And building his barn on the hill</div>
<div class="verse">With the good mortared stone;</div>
<div class="verse">O! we’d have pulled down the gallows</div>
<div class="verse">Had it happened in Enniscrone!</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL.</div>

<p>What was it brought him to his death?</p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>He died for love of me: many a man has
died for love of me.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER [<i>aside to <span class="small">BRIDGET</span></i>].</div>

<p>Her trouble has put her wits astray.</p>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL.</div>

<p>Is it long since that song was made? Is it
long since he got his death?</p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>Not long, not long. But there were others
that died for love of me a long time ago.</p>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL.</div>

<p>Were they neighbours of your own, ma’am?</p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>Come here beside me and I’ll tell you about
them. [<i><span class="small">MICHAEL</span> sits down beside her at the hearth.</i>]
There was a red man of the O’Donnells from
the north, and a man of the O’Sullivans from
the south, and there was one Brian that lost
his life at Clontarf by the sea, and there were
a great many in the west, some that died hundreds
of years ago, and there are some that will
die to-morrow.</p>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL.</div>

<p>Is it in the west that men will die to-morrow?</p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>Come nearer, nearer to me.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>Is she right, do you think? Or is she a
woman from beyond the world?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>She doesn’t know well what she’s talking
about, with the want and the trouble she has
gone through.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>The poor thing, we should treat her well.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>Give her a drink of milk and a bit of the
oaten cake.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>Maybe we should give her something along
with that, to bring her on her way. A few
pence or a shilling itself, and we with so much
money in the house.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>Indeed I’d not begrudge it to her if we had
it to spare, but if we go running through what
we have, we’ll soon have to break the hundred
pounds, and that would be a pity.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>Shame on you, Peter. Give her the shilling
and your blessing with it, or our own luck
will go from us.</p>

<div class="right">[<i><span class="small">PETER</span> goes to the box and takes out a shilling.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET [<i>to the <span class="small">OLD WOMAN</span></i>].</div>

<p>Will you have a drink of milk, ma’am?</p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>It is not food or drink that I want.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER [<i>offering the shilling</i>].</div>

<p>Here is something for you.</p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>This is not what I want. It is not silver I want.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>What is it you would be asking for?</p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>If anyone would give me help he must give
me himself, he must give me all.</p>

<div class="hang2">[<i><span class="small">PETER</span> goes over to the table staring at the
shilling in his hand in a bewildered way, and
stands whispering to <span class="small">BRIDGET</span>.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL.</div>

<p>Have you no one to care you in your age,
ma’am?</p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>I have not. With all the lovers that brought
me their love, I never set out the bed for any.</p>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL.</div>

<p>Are you lonely going the roads, ma’am?</p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>I have my thoughts and I have my hopes.</p>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL.</div>

<p>What hopes have you to hold to?</p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>The hope of getting my beautiful fields back
again; the hope of putting the strangers out of
my house.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL.</div>

<p>What way will you do that, ma’am?</p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>I have good friends that will help me. They
are gathering to help me now. I am not afraid.
If they are put down to-day they will get the
upper hand to-morrow. [<i>She gets up.</i>] I must
be going to meet my friends. They are coming
to help me and I must be there to welcome
them. I must call the neighbours together to
welcome them.</p>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL.</div>

<p>I will go with you.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>It is not her friends you have to go and
welcome, Michael; it is the girl coming into
the house you have to welcome. You have
plenty to do, it is food and drink you have to
bring to the house. The woman that is coming
home is not coming with empty hands; you
would not have an empty house before her.
[<i>To the <span class="small">OLD WOMAN</span>.</i>] Maybe you don’t know,
ma’am, that my son is going to be married to-morrow.</p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>It is not a man going to his marriage that I
look to for help.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER [<i>to <span class="small">BRIDGET</span></i>].</div>

<p>Who is she, do you think, at all?</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>You did not tell us your name yet, ma’am.</p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>Some call me the Poor Old Woman, and
there are some that call me Cathleen, the
daughter of Houlihan.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>I think I knew someone of that name once.
Who was it, I wonder? It must have been
someone I knew when I was a boy. No, no;
I remember, I heard it in a song.</p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.<br />
[<i>Who is standing in the doorway.</i>]</div>

<p>They are wondering that there were songs
made for me; there have been many songs made
for me. I heard one on the wind this morning.</p>

<div class="poetry-container">
  <div class="poetry">
    <div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">[<i>Sings.</i>] Do not make a great keening</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">When the graves have been dug to-morrow.</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Do not call the white-scarfed riders</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">To the burying that shall be to-morrow.</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Do not spread food to call strangers</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">To the wakes that shall be to-morrow;</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Do not give money for prayers</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">For the dead that shall die to-morrow .&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

<p class="unindent">they will have no need of prayers, they will
have no need of prayers.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL.</div>

<p>I do not know what that song means, but
tell me something I can do for you.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>Come over to me, Michael.</p>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL.</div>

<p>Hush, father, listen to her.</p>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN.</div>

<p>It is a hard service they take that help me.
Many that are red-cheeked now will be pale-cheeked;
many that have been free to walk the
hills and the bogs and the rushes, will be sent
to walk hard streets in far countries; many a
good plan will be broken; many that have
gathered money will not stay to spend it; many
a child will be born and there will be no father
at its christening to give it a name. They
that had red cheeks will have pale cheeks for
my sake; and for all that, they will think they
are well paid.</p>

<div class="right">[<i>She goes out; her voice is heard outside singing.</i></div>

<div class="poetry-container">
  <div class="poetry">
    <div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">They shall be remembered for ever,</div>
<div class="verse">They shall be alive for ever,</div>
<div class="verse">They shall be speaking for ever,</div>
<div class="verse">The people shall hear them for ever.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET [<i>to <span class="small">PETER</span></i>].</div>

<p>Look at him, Peter; he has the look of a
man that has got the touch. [<i>Raising her voice.</i>]
Look here, Michael, at the wedding clothes.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
Such grand clothes as these are! You have a
right to fit them on now, it would be a pity
to-morrow if they did not fit. The boys would
be laughing at you. Take them, Michael, and
go into the room and fit them on.</p>

<div class="right">[<i>She puts them on his arm.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL.</div>

<p>What wedding are you talking of? What
clothes will I be wearing to-morrow?</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>These are the clothes you are going to wear
when you marry Delia Cahel to-morrow.</p>

<div class="speakerc">MICHAEL.</div>

<p>I had forgotten that.</p>

<div class="hang2">[<i>He looks at the clothes and turns towards the
inner room, but stops at the sound of cheering
outside.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>There is the shouting come to our own door.
What is it has happened?</p>

<div class="hang2">[<i><span class="normal">Neighbours</span> come crowding in, <span class="small">PATRICK</span> and
<span class="small">DELIA</span> with them.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">PATRICK.</div>

<p>There are ships in the Bay; the French are
landing at Killala!</p>

<div class="hang2">[<i><span class="small">PETER</span> takes his pipe from his mouth and his
hat off and stands up. The clothes slip from
<span class="smcap">MICHAEL’S</span> arm.</i></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">DELIA.</div>

<p>Michael! [<i>He takes no notice.</i>] Michael! [<i>He
turns towards her.</i>] Why do you look at me
like a stranger?</p>

<div class="right">[<i>She drops his arm. <span class="small">BRIDGET</span> goes over towards her.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">PATRICK.</div>

<p>The boys are all hurrying down the hill-sides
to join the French.</p>

<div class="speakerc">DELIA.</div>

<p>Michael won’t be going to join the French.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET [<i>to <span class="small">PETER</span></i>].</div>

<p>Tell him not to go, Peter.</p>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.</div>

<p>It’s no use. He doesn’t hear a word we’re
saying.</p>

<div class="speakerc">BRIDGET.</div>

<p>Try and coax him over to the fire.</p>

<div class="speakerc">DELIA.</div>

<p>Michael, Michael! You won’t leave me!
You won’t join the French, and we going to
be married!</p>

<div class="right">[<i>She puts her arms about him, he turns towards
her as if about to yield.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">OLD WOMAN’S <i>voice outside</i>.</div>

<div class="poetry-container">
  <div class="poetry">
    <div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">They shall be speaking for ever,</div>
<div class="verse">The people shall hear them for ever.<br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

<div class="hang2">[<i><span class="small">MICHAEL</span> breaks away from <span class="small">DELIA</span>, stands for a
second at the door, then rushes out, following
the <span class="small">OLD WOMAN’S</span> voice. <span class="small">BRIDGET</span> takes <span class="small">DELIA</span>,
who is crying silently, into her arms.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">PETER.<br />
[<i>To <span class="small">PATRICK</span>, laying a hand on his arm.</i>]</div>

<p>Did you see an old woman going down the
path?</p>

<div class="speakerc">PATRICK.</div>

<p>I did not, but I saw a young girl, and she
had the walk of a queen.</p>

<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a><br /><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p>
<h2>THE GOLDEN HELMET</h2>



<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span></p>




<h3><i>PERSONS IN THE PLAY</i></h3>



<ul class="cast">
<li><span class="smcap">Cuchulain</span></li>
<li><span class="smcap">Leagerie</span></li>
<li><span class="smcap">Conal</span></li>
<li><span class="smcap">Emer</span>, <i>Cuchulain’s wife</i></li>
<li><span class="smcap">Leagerie’s Wife</span></li>
<li><span class="smcap">Conal’s Wife</span></li>
<li><span class="smcap">Laeg</span>, <i>Cuchulain’s chariot-driver</i></li>
<li><span class="smcap">Red Man</span></li>
<li><span class="smcap">Horseboys and Scullions</span></li>
<li><span class="smcap">Three Black Men</span></li>
</ul>



<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span></p>




<h2>THE GOLDEN HELMET</h2>


<div class="hang1"><i>A house made of logs. There are two windows at
the back and a door which cuts off one of the
corners of the room. Through the door one can
see rocks, which make the ground outside the door
higher than it is within, and the sea. Through the
windows one can see nothing but the sea. There
are three great chairs at the opposite side to the
door, with a table before them. There are cups
and a flagon of ale on the table.</i><br />
<br />
<i>At the Abbey Theatre the house is orange red,
and the chairs, tables and flagons black, with a
slight purple tinge which is not clearly distinguishable
from the black. The rocks are black, with a
few green touches. The sea is green and luminous,
and all the characters, except the <span class="small">RED MAN</span> and
the <span class="normal">Black Men</span> are dressed in various tints of
green, one or two with touches of purple which
looks nearly black. The <span class="normal">Black Men</span> are in dark
purple and the <span class="small">RED MAN</span> is altogether dressed in
red. He is very tall and his height is increased
by horns on the Golden Helmet. The Helmet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
has in reality more dark green than gold about
it. The <span class="normal">Black Men</span> have cats’ heads painted on
their black cloth caps. The effect is intentionally
violent and startling.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL.</div>

<p>Not a sail, not a wave, and if the sea were not
purring a little like a cat, not a sound. There
is no danger yet. I can see a long way for the
moonlight is on the sea.</p>

<div class="right">[<i>A horn sounds.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">LEAGERIE.</div>

<p>Ah, there is something.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL.</div>

<p>It must be from the land, and it is from the
sea that danger comes. We need not be afraid
of anything that comes from the land. [<i>Looking
out of door.</i>] I cannot see anybody, the rocks
and the trees hide a great part of the pathway
upon that side.</p>

<div class="speakerc">LEAGERIE [<i>sitting at table</i>].</div>

<p>It sounded like Cuchulain’s horn, but that’s
not possible.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL.</div>

<p>Yes, that’s impossible. He will never come
home from Scotland. He has all he wants there.
Luck in all he does. Victory and wealth and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
happiness flowing in on him, while here at home
all goes to rack, and a man’s good name drifts
away between night and morning.</p>

<div class="speakerc">LEAGERIE.</div>

<p>I wish he would come home for all that, and
put quiet and respect for those that are more
than she is into that young wife of his. Only
this very night your wife and my wife had to
forbid her to go into the dining-hall before
them. She is young, and she is Cuchulain’s
wife, and so she must spread her tail like a
peacock.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL [<i>at door</i>].</div>

<p>I can see the horn-blower now, a young man
wrapped in a cloak.</p>

<div class="speakerc">LEAGERIE.</div>

<p>Do not let him come in. Tell him to go
elsewhere for shelter. This is no place to seek
shelter in.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL.</div>

<p>That is right. I will tell him to go away, for
nobody must know the disgrace that is to fall
upon Ireland this night.</p>

<div class="speakerc">LEAGERIE.</div>

<p>Nobody of living men but us two must ever
know that.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL [<i>outside door</i>].</div>

<p>Go away, go away!</p>

<div class="right">[<i>A <span class="small">YOUNG MAN</span> covered by a long cloak is standing
upon the rocks outside door.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">YOUNG MAN.</div>

<p>I am a traveller, and I am looking for sleep
and food.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL.</div>

<p>A law has been made that nobody is to come
into this house to-night.</p>

<div class="speakerc">YOUNG MAN.</div>

<p>Who made that law?</p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL.</div>

<p>We two made it, and who has so good a
right? for we have to guard this house and to
keep it from robbery, and from burning and
from enchantment.</p>

<div class="speakerc">YOUNG MAN.</div>

<p>Then I will unmake the law. Out of my way!</p>

<div class="right">[<i>He struggles with <span class="small">CONAL</span> and shoves past into
the house.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL.</div>

<p>I thought no living man but Leagerie could
have stood against me; and Leagerie himself
could not have shoved past me. What is more,
no living man could if I were not taken by
surprise. How could I expect to find so great
a strength?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">LEAGERIE.</div>

<p>Go out of this: there is another house a little
further along the shore; our wives are there
with their servants, and they will give you food
and drink.</p>

<div class="speakerc">YOUNG MAN.</div>

<p>It is in this house I will have food and drink.</p>

<div class="speakerc">LEAGERIE [<i>drawing his sword</i>].</div>

<p>Go out of this, or I will make you.</p>

<div class="hang2">[<i>The <span class="small">YOUNG MAN</span> seizes <span class="smcap">LEAGERIE’S</span> arm, and
thrusting it up, passes him, and puts his shield
over the chair where there is an empty place.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">YOUNG MAN [<i>at table</i>].</div>

<p>It is here I will spend the night, but I won’t
tell you why till I have drunk. I am thirsty.
What, the flagon full and the cups empty and
Leagerie and Conal there! Why, what’s in the
wind that Leagerie and Conal cannot drink?</p>

<div class="speakerc">LEAGERIE.</div>

<p>It is Cuchulain.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL.</div>

<p>Better go away to Scotland again, or if you
stay here ask no one what has happened or what
is going to happen.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CUCHULAIN.</div>

<p>What more is there that can happen so strange
as that I should come home after years and that
you should bid me begone?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL.</div>

<p>I tell you that this is no fit house to welcome
you, for it is a disgraced house.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CUCHULAIN.</div>

<p>What is it you are hinting at? You were
sitting there with ale beside you and the door
open, and quarrelsome thoughts. You are waiting
for something or someone. It is for some
messenger who is to bring you to some spoil,
or to some adventure that you will keep for
yourselves.</p>

<div class="speakerc">LEAGERIE.</div>

<p>Better tell him, for he has such luck that it
may be his luck will amend ours.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL.</div>

<p>Yes, I had better tell him, for even now at
this very door we saw what luck he had. He
had the slope of the ground to help him. Is
the sea quiet?</p>

<div class="speakerc">LEAGERIE [<i>looks out of window</i>].</div>

<p>There is nothing stirring.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL.</div>

<p>Cuchulain, a little after you went out of this
country we were sitting here drinking. We
were merry. It was late, close on to midnight,
when a strange-looking man with red hair and
a great sword in his hand came in through that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
door. He asked for ale and we gave it to him,
for we were tired of drinking with one another.
He became merry, and for every joke we made
he made a better, and presently we all three
got up and danced, and then we sang, and then
he said he would show us a new game. He
said he would stoop down and that one of us
was to cut off his head, and afterwards one of
us, or whoever had a mind for the game, was
to stoop down and have his head whipped off.
‘You take off my head,’ said he, ‘and then I
take off his head, and that will be a bargain
and a debt between us. A head for a head, that
is the game,’ said he. We laughed at him and
told him he was drunk, for how could he whip
off a head when his own had been whipped off?
Then he began abusing us and calling us names,
so I ran at him and cut his head off, and the
head went on laughing where it lay, and presently
he caught it up in his hands and ran out and
plunged into the sea.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CUCHULAIN [<i>laughs</i>].</div>

<p>I have imagined as good, when I had as much
ale, and believed it too.</p>

<div class="speakerc">LEAGERIE [<i>at table</i>].</div>

<p>I tell you, Cuchulain, you never did. You
never imagined a story like this.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL.</div>

<p>Why must you be always putting yourself up
against Leagerie and myself? and what is more,
it was no imagination at all. We said to ourselves
that all came out of the flagon, and we
laughed, and we said we will tell nobody about
it. We made an oath to tell nobody. But
twelve months after when we were sitting by
this table, the flagon between us—</p>

<div class="speakerc">LEAGERIE.</div>

<p>But full up to the brim—</p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL.</div>

<p>The thought of that story had put us from
our drinking—</p>

<div class="speakerc">LEAGERIE.</div>

<p>We were telling it over to one another—</p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL.</div>

<p>Suddenly that man came in with his head on
his shoulders again, and the big sword in his
hand. He asked for payment of his debt, and
because neither I nor Leagerie would let him
cut off our heads he began abusing us and
making little of us, and saying that we were a
disgrace, and that all Ireland was disgraced
because of us. We had not a word to say.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">LEAGERIE.</div>

<p>If you had been here you would have been
as silent as we were.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL.</div>

<p>At last he said he would come again in twelve
months and give us one more chance to keep
our word and pay our debt. After that he went
down into the sea again. Will he tell the whole
world of the disgrace that has come upon us,
do you think?</p>

<div class="speakerc">CUCHULAIN.</div>

<p>Whether he does or does not, we will stand
there in the door with our swords out and drive
him down to the sea again.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL.</div>

<p>What is the use of fighting with a man whose
head laughs when it has been cut off?</p>

<div class="speakerc">LEAGERIE.</div>

<p>We might run away, but he would follow us
everywhere.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL.</div>

<p>He is coming; the sea is beginning to splash
and rumble as it did before he came the last time.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CUCHULAIN.</div>

<p>Let us shut the door and put our backs
against it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">LEAGERIE.</div>

<p>It is too late. Look, there he is at the door.
He is standing on the threshold.</p>

<div class="hang2">[<i>A <span class="small">MAN</span> dressed in red, with a great sword and
red ragged hair, and having a Golden Helmet
on his head, is standing on the threshold.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">CUCHULAIN.</div>

<p>Go back into the sea, old red head! If you
will take off heads, take off the head of the sea
turtle of Muirthemne, or of the pig of Connaught
that has a moon in his belly, or of that
old juggler Manannan, son of the sea, or of the
red man of the Boyne, or of the King of the
Cats, for they are of your own sort, and it may
be they understand your ways. Go, I say, for
when a man’s head is off it does not grow again.
What are you standing there for? Go down, I
say. If I cannot harm you with the sword I
will put you down into the sea with my hands.
Do you laugh at me, old red head? Go down
before I lay my hands upon you.</p>

<div class="speakerc">RED MAN.</div>

<p>So you also believe I was in earnest when I
asked for a man’s head? It was but a drinker’s
joke, an old juggling feat, to pass the time. I
am the best of all drinkers and tipsy companions,
the kindest there is among the Shape-changers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
of the world. Look, I have brought this Golden
Helmet as a gift. It is for you or for Leagerie
or for Conal, for the best man, and the bravest
fighting-man amongst you, and you yourselves
shall choose the man. Leagerie is brave, and
Conal is brave. They risk their lives in battle,
but they were not brave enough for my jokes
and my juggling. [<i>He lays the Golden Helmet on
the ground.</i>] Have I been too grim a joker?
Well, I am forgiven now, for there is the
Helmet, and let the strongest take it.</p>

<div class="right">[<i>He goes out.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL [<i>taking Helmet</i>].</div>

<p>It is my right. I am a year older than
Leagerie, and I have fought in more battles.</p>

<div class="speakerc">LEAGERIE [<i>strutting about stage, sings</i>].</div>


<div class="poetry-container">
  <div class="poetry">
  <div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Leagerie of the Battle</div>
<div class="verse">Has put to the sword</div>
<div class="verse">The cat-headed men</div>
<div class="verse">And carried away</div>
<div class="verse">Their hidden gold.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

<div class="right">[<i>He snatches Helmet at the last word.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL.</div>

<p>Give it back to me, I say. What was the
treasure but withered leaves when you got to
your own door?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">CUCHULAIN.<br />
[<i>Taking the Helmet from <span class="small">LEAGERIE</span>.</i>]</div>

<p>Give it to me, I say.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL.</div>

<p>You are too young, Cuchulain. What deeds
have you to be set beside our deeds?</p>

<div class="speakerc">CUCHULAIN.</div>

<p>I have not taken it for myself. It will belong
to us all equally. [<i>He goes to table and begins
filling Helmet with ale.</i>] We will pass it round
and drink out of it turn about and no one will
be able to claim that it belongs to him more
than another. I drink to your wife, Conal,
and to your wife, Leagerie, and I drink to
Emer my own wife. [<i>Shouting and blowing of
horns in the distance.</i>] What is that noise?</p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL.</div>

<p>It is the horseboys and the huntboys and
the scullions quarrelling. I know the sound,
for I have heard it often of late. It is a good
thing that you are home, Cuchulain, for it is
your own horseboy and chariot-driver, Laeg,
that is the worst of all, and now you will keep
him quiet. They take down the great hunting-horns
when they cannot drown one another’s
voices by shouting. There—there—do you
hear them now? [<i>Shouting so as to be heard
above the noise.</i>] I drink to your good health,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
Cuchulain, and to your young wife, though it
were well if she did not quarrel with my wife.</p>

<div class="enter"><i>Many men, among whom is <span class="small">LAEG</span>, chariot-driver
of <span class="small">CUCHULAIN</span>, come in with great horns of
many fantastic shapes.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">LAEG.</div>

<p>I am Cuchulain’s chariot-driver, and I say
that my master is the best.</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANOTHER.</div>

<p>He is not, but Leagerie is.</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANOTHER.</div>

<p>No, but Conal is.</p>

<div class="speakerc">LAEG.</div>

<p>Make them listen to me, Cuchulain.</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANOTHER.</div>

<p>No, but listen to me.</p>

<div class="speakerc">LAEG.</div>

<p>When I said Cuchulain should have the
Helmet, they blew the horns.</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANOTHER.</div>

<p>Conal has it. The best man has it.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CUCHULAIN.</div>

<p>Silence, all of you. What is all this uproar,
Laeg, and who began it?</p>

<div class="hang2">[<i>The <span class="normal">Scullions</span> and the <span class="normal">Horseboys</span> point at
<span class="small">LAEG</span> and cry, ‘<span class="normal">He began it</span>.’ They keep up
an all but continual murmur through what
follows.</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></div>

<div class="speakerc">LAEG.</div>

<p>A man with a red beard came where we
were sitting, and as he passed me he cried out
that they were taking a golden helmet or some
such thing from you and denying you the
championship of Ireland. I stood up on that
and I cried out that you were the best of the
men of Ireland. But the others cried for
Leagerie or Conal, and because I have a big
voice they got down the horns to drown my
voice, and as neither I nor they would keep
silent we have come here to settle it. I
demand that the Helmet be taken from Conal
and be given to you.</p>

<div class="right">[<i>The <span class="normal">Horseboys</span> and the <span class="normal">Scullions</span> shout, ‘<span class="normal">No,
no; give it to Leagerie</span>,’ ‘<span class="normal">The best man
has it</span>,’ etc.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">CUCHULAIN.</div>

<p>It has not been given to Conal or to anyone.
I have made it into a drinking-cup that it may
belong to all. I drank and then Conal drank.
Give it to Leagerie, Conal, that he may drink.
That will make them see that it belongs to all
of us.</p>

<div class="speakerc">A SCULLION OR HORSEBOY.</div>

<p>Cuchulain is right.</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANOTHER.</div>

<p>Cuchulain is right, and I am tired blowing
on the big horn.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">LAEG.</div>

<p>Cuchulain, you drank first.</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANOTHER.</div>

<p>He gives it to Leagerie now, but he has
taken the honour of it for himself. Did you
hear him say he drank the first? He claimed
to be the best by drinking first.</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANOTHER.</div>

<p>Did Cuchulain drink the first?</p>

<div class="speakerc">LAEG [<i>triumphantly</i>].</div>

<p>You drank the first, Cuchulain.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL.</div>

<p>Did you claim to be better than us by
drinking first?</p>

<div class="right">[<i><span class="small">LEAGERIE</span> and <span class="small">CONAL</span> draw their swords.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">CUCHULAIN.</div>

<p>Is it that old dried herring, that old red
juggler who has made us quarrel for his own
comfort? [<i>The <span class="normal">Horseboys</span> and the <span class="normal">Scullions</span>
murmur excitedly.</i>] He gave the Helmet to set us
by the ears, and because we would not quarrel
over it, he goes to Laeg and tells him that I
am wronged. Who knows where he is now,
or who he is stirring up to make mischief
between us? Go back to your work and do
not stir from it whatever noise comes to you
or whatever shape shows itself.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">A SCULLION.</div>

<p>Cuchulain is right. I am tired blowing on
the big horn.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CUCHULAIN.</div>

<p>Go in silence.</p>

<div class="hang2">[<i>The <span class="normal">Scullions</span> and <span class="normal">Horseboys</span> turn towards
the door, but stand still on hearing the voice
of <span class="small">LEAGERIE’S WIFE</span> outside the door.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">LEAGERIE’S WIFE.</div>

<p>My man is the best. I will go in the first.
I will go in the first.</p>

<div class="speakerc">EMER.</div>

<p>My man is the best, and I will go in first.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL’S WIFE.</div>

<p>No, for my man is the best, and it is I that
should go first.</p>

<div class="right">[<i><span class="small">LEAGERIE’S WIFE</span> and <span class="small">CONAL’S WIFE</span> struggle
in the doorway.</i></div>


<div class="speakerc">LEAGERIE’S WIFE <i>sings.</i></div>

<div class="poetry-container">
  <div class="poetry">
    <div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">My man is the best.</div>
<div class="verse">What other has fought</div>
<div class="verse">The cat-headed men</div>
<div class="verse">That mew in the sea</div>
<div class="verse">And carried away</div>
<div class="verse">Their long-hidden gold?</div>
<div class="verse">They struck with their claws</div>
<div class="verse">And bit with their teeth,</div>
<div class="verse">But Leagerie my husband</div>
<div class="verse">Put all to the sword.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL’S WIFE.<br />
[<i>Putting her hand over the other’s mouth
and getting in front of her.</i>]</div>

<div class="poetry-container">
  <div class="poetry">
    <div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">My husband has fought</div>
<div class="verse">With strong men in armour.</div>
<div class="verse">Had he a quarrel</div>
<div class="verse">With cats, it is certain</div>
<div class="verse">He’d war with none</div>
<div class="verse">But the stout and heavy</div>
<div class="verse">With good claws on them.</div>
<div class="verse">What glory in warring</div>
<div class="verse">With hollow shadows</div>
<div class="verse">That helplessly mew?</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

<div class="speakerc">EMER.<br />
[<i>Thrusting herself between them and forcing
both of them back with her hands.</i>]</div>

<p>I am Emer, wife of Cuchulain, and no one
shall go in front of me, or sing in front of me, or
praise any that I have not a mind to hear praised.</p>

<div class="right">[<i><span class="small">CUCHULAIN</span> puts his spear across the door.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">CUCHULAIN.</div>

<p>All of our three wives shall come in together,
and by three doors equal in height
and in breadth and in honour. Break down
the bottoms of the windows.</p>

<div class="hang2">[<i>While <span class="small">CONAL</span> and <span class="small">LEAGERIE</span> are breaking down
the bottoms of the windows each of their wives
goes to the window where her husband is.</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span></div>

<div class="enter">
<i>While the windows are being broken down
<span class="small">EMER</span> sings.</i></div>

<div class="poetry-container">
  <div class="poetry">
    <div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">My man is the best.</div>
<div class="verse">And Conal’s wife</div>
<div class="verse">And the wife of Leagerie</div>
<div class="verse">Know that they lie</div>
<div class="verse">When they praise their own</div>
<div class="verse">Out of envy of me.</div>
<div class="verse">My man is the best,</div>
<div class="verse">First for his own sake,</div>
<div class="verse">Being the bravest</div>
<div class="verse">And handsomest man</div>
<div class="verse">And the most beloved</div>
<div class="verse">By the women of Ireland</div>
<div class="verse">That envy me,</div>
<div class="verse">And then for his wife’s sake</div>
<div class="verse">Because I’m the youngest</div>
<div class="verse">And handsomest queen.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>


<div class="hang2">[<i>When the windows have been made into doors,
<span class="small">CUCHULAIN</span> takes his spear from the door
where <span class="small">EMER</span> is, and all three come in at the
same moment.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">EMER.</div>

<p>I am come to praise you and to put courage
into you, Cuchulain, as a wife should, that they
may not take the championship of the men of
Ireland from you.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">LEAGERIE’S WIFE.</div>

<p>You lie, Emer, for it is Cuchulain and Conal
who are taking the championship from my
husband.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL’S WIFE.</div>

<p>Cuchulain has taken it.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CUCHULAIN.</div>

<p>Townland against townland, barony against
barony, kingdom against kingdom, province
against province, and if there be but two door-posts
to a door the one fighting against the
other. [<i>He takes up the Helmet which <span class="small">LEAGERIE</span>
had laid down upon the table when he went to break
out the bottom of the window.</i>] This Helmet will
bring no more wars into Ireland. [<i>He throws it
into the sea.</i>]</p>

<div class="speakerc">LEAGERIE’S WIFE.</div>

<p>You have done that to rob my husband.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL’S WIFE.</div>

<p>You could not keep it for yourself, and so
you threw it away that nobody else might
have it.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL.</div>

<p>You should not have done that, Cuchulain.</p>

<div class="speakerc">LEAGERIE.</div>

<p>You have done us a great wrong.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span></p>

<div class="speakerc">EMER.</div>

<p>Who is for Cuchulain?</p>

<div class="speakerc">CUCHULAIN.</div>

<p>Let no one stir.</p>

<div class="speakerc">EMER.</div>

<p>Who is for Cuchulain, I say?</p>

<div class="hang2">
[<i>She draws her dagger from her belt and sings
the same words as before, flourishing it about.
While she has been singing, <span class="smcap">CONAL’S WIFE</span> and
<span class="smcap">LEAGERIE’S WIFE</span> have drawn their daggers
and run at her to kill her, but <span class="small">CUCHULAIN</span>
has forced them back. <span class="small">CONAL</span> and <span class="small">LEAGERIE</span>
have drawn their swords to strike <span class="small">CUCHULAIN</span>.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">CONAL’S WIFE.<br />
[<i>While <span class="small">EMER</span> is still singing.</i>]</div>

<p>Silence her voice, silence her voice, blow
the horns, make a noise!</p>

<div class="hang2">[<i>The <span class="normal">Scullions</span> and <span class="normal">Horseboys</span> blow their horns
or fight among themselves. There is a deafening
noise and a confused fight. Suddenly three
black hands holding extinguishers come through
the window and extinguish the torches. It is
now pitch dark but for a very faint light outside
the house which merely shows that there
are moving forms, but not who or what they are,
and in the darkness one can hear low terrified
voices.</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span></div>

<div class="speakerc">FIRST VOICE.</div>

<p>Did you see them putting out the torches?</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANOTHER VOICE.</div>

<p>They came up out of the sea, three black men.</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANOTHER VOICE.</div>

<p>They have heads of cats upon them.</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANOTHER VOICE.</div>

<p>They came up mewing out of the sea.</p>

<div class="speakerc">ANOTHER VOICE.</div>

<p>How dark it is! one of them has put his
hand over the moon.</p>

<div class="hang2">[<i>A light gradually comes into the windows as if
shining from the sea. The <span class="small">RED MAN</span> is seen
standing in the midst of the house.</i></div>

<div class="speakerc">RED MAN.</div>

<p>I demand the debt that is owing. I demand
that some man shall stoop down that I may
cut his head off as my head was cut off. If
my debt is not paid, no peace shall come to
Ireland, and Ireland shall lie weak before her
enemies. But if my debt is paid there shall
be peace.</p>

<div class="speakerc">CUCHULAIN.</div>

<p>The quarrels of Ireland shall end. What is
one man’s life? I will pay the debt with my
own head. [<i><span class="small">EMER</span> wails.</i>] Do not cry out, Emer,
for if I were not myself, if I were not Cuchulain,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
one of those that God has made reckless, the
women of Ireland had not loved me, and you
had not held your head so high. [<i>He stoops,
bending his head. Three <span class="normal">Black Men</span> come to the
door. Two hold torches, and one stooping between
them holds up the Golden Helmet. The <span class="small">RED MAN</span>
gives one of the <span class="normal">Black Men</span> his sword and takes the
Helmet.</i>] What do you wait for, old man?
Come, raise up your sword!</p>

<div class="speakerc">RED MAN.</div>

<p>I will not harm you, Cuchulain. I am the
guardian of this land, and age after age I come
up out of the sea to try the men of Ireland. I
give you the championship because you are
without fear, and you shall win many battles
with laughing lips and endure wounding and
betrayal without bitterness of heart; and when
men gaze upon you, their hearts shall grow
greater and their minds clear; until the day
come when I darken your mind, that there
may be an end to the story, and a song on the
harp-string.</p>

<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span></p>

<h2>THE IRISH DRAMATIC MOVEMENT</h2>


<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span></p>




<p><i>The Irish dramatic movement began in May, 1899,
with the performance of certain plays by English actors
who were brought to Dublin for the purpose; and in the
spring of the following year and in the autumn of the year
after that, performances of like plays were given by like
actors at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin. In the third year
I started <span class="smcap">Samhain</span> to defend the work, and on re-reading
it and reading it for the first time throughout, have found
it best to reprint my part of it unchanged. A number has
been published about once a year till very lately, and the
whole series of notes are a history of a movement which is
important because of the principles it is rooted in whatever
be its fruits, and these principles are better told of in words
that rose out of the need, than were I to explain all again
and with order and ceremony now that the old enmities
and friendships are ruffled by new ones that have other
things to be done and said.</i></p>

<p><i>March, 1908.</i></p>

<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p>




<h2>SAMHAIN: 1901</h2>


<p class="unindent"><span class="smcap">When</span> Lady Gregory, Mr. Edward Martyn, and
myself planned the Irish Literary Theatre, we decided
that it should be carried on in the form we had projected
for three years. We thought that three years
would show whether the country desired to take up
the project, and make it a part of the national life,
and that we, at any rate, could return to our proper
work, in which we did not include theatrical management,
at the end of that time. A little later, Mr.
George Moore<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> joined us; and, looking back now
upon our work, I doubt if it could have been done
at all without his knowledge of the stage; and certainly
if the performances of this present year bring
our adventure to a successful close, a chief part of the
credit will be his. Many, however, have helped us in
various degrees, for in Ireland just now one has only
to discover an idea that seems of service to the country
for friends and helpers to start up on every hand.
While we needed guarantors we had them in plenty,
and though Mr. Edward Martyn’s public spirit made
it unnecessary to call upon them, we thank them none
the less.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span></p>
<p>Whether the Irish Literary Theatre has a successor
made on its own model or not, we can claim that a
dramatic movement which will not die has been started.
When we began our work, we tried in vain to get a
play in Gaelic. We could not even get a condensed
version of the dialogue of Oisin and Patrick. We
wrote to Gaelic enthusiasts in vain, for their imagination
had not yet turned towards the stage, and now
there are excellent Gaelic plays by Dr. Douglas Hyde,
by Father O’Leary, by Father Dineen, and by Mr.
MacGinlay; and the Gaelic League has had a competition
for a one-act play in Gaelic, with what results
I do not know. There have been successful performances
of plays in Gaelic at Dublin and at Macroom,
and at Letterkenny, and I think at other places; and
Mr. Fay has got together an excellent little company
which plays both in Gaelic and English. I may say,
for I am perhaps writing an epitaph, and epitaphs
should be written in a genial spirit, that we have
turned a great deal of Irish imagination towards the
stage. We could not have done this if our movement
had not opened a way of expression for an impulse
that was in the people themselves. The truth is that
the Irish people are at that precise stage of their
history when imagination, shaped by many stirring
events, desires dramatic expression. One has only to
listen to a recitation of Raftery’s <i>Argument with Death</i>
at some country Feis to understand this. When
Death makes a good point, or Raftery a good point,
the audience applaud delightedly, and applaud, not
as a London audience would, some verbal dexterity,
some piece of smartness, but the movements of a
simple and fundamental comedy. One sees it too in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
the reciters themselves, whose acting is at times all
but perfect in its vivid simplicity. I heard a little
Claddagh girl tell a folk-story at Galway Feis with a
restraint and a delightful energy that could hardly
have been bettered by the most careful training.</p>

<p>The organization of this movement is of immediate
importance. Some of our friends propose that somebody
begin at once to get a small stock company
together, and that he invite, let us say, Mr. Benson,
to find us certain well-trained actors, Irish if possible,
but well trained of a certainty, who will train our
actors, and take the more difficult parts at the beginning.
These friends contend that it is necessary
to import our experts at the beginning, for our company
must be able to compete with travelling English
companies, but that a few years will be enough to
make many competent Irish actors. The Corporation
of Dublin should be asked, they say, to give a small
annual sum of money, such as they give to the
Academy of Music; and the Corporations of Cork
and Limerick and Waterford, and other provincial
towns, to give small endowments in the shape of a
hall and attendants and lighting for a week or two
out of every year; and the Technical Board to give a
small annual sum of money to a school of acting
which would teach fencing and declamation, and gesture
and the like. The stock company would perform
in Dublin perhaps three weeks in spring, and three
weeks in autumn, and go on tour the rest of the time
through Ireland, and through the English towns
where there is a large Irish population. It would
perform plays in Irish and English, and also, it is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
proposed, the masterpieces of the world, making a
point of performing Spanish and Scandinavian, and
French, and perhaps Greek masterpieces rather more
than Shakespeare, for Shakespeare one sees, not well
done indeed, but not unendurably ill done in the
Theatre of Commerce. It would do its best to give
Ireland a hardy and shapely national character by
opening the doors to the four winds of the world,
instead of leaving the door that is towards the east
wind open alone. Certainly, the national character,
which is so essentially different from the English that
Spanish and French influences may well be most
healthy, is at present like one of those miserable thorn
bushes by the sea that are all twisted to one side by
some prevailing wind.</p>

<p>It is contended that there is no reason why the
company should not be as successful as similar companies
in Germany and Scandinavia, and that it would
be even of commercial advantage to Dublin by making
it a pleasanter place to live in, besides doing incalculable
good to the whole intellect of the country.
One, at any rate, of those who press the project on
us has much practical knowledge of the stage and of
theatrical management, and knows what is possible
and what is not possible.</p>

<p>Others among our friends, and among these are
some who have had more than their share of the hard
work which has built up the intellectual movement
in Ireland, argue that a theatre of this kind would
require too much money to be free, that it could not
touch on politics, the most vital passion and vital<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
interest of the country, as they say, and that the attitude
of continual compromise between conviction and
interest, which it would necessitate, would become
demoralising to everybody concerned, especially at
moments of political excitement. They tell us that
the war between an Irish Ireland and an English Ireland
is about to become much fiercer, to divide families
and friends it may be, and that the organisations that
will lead in the war must be able to say everything
the people are thinking. They would have Irishmen
give their plays to a company like Mr. Fay’s, when
they are within its power, and if not, to Mr. Benson
or to any other travelling company which will play
them in Ireland without committees, where everybody
compromises a little. In this way, they contend, we
would soon build up an Irish theatre from the ground,
escaping to some extent the conventions of the ordinary
theatre, and English voices which give a foreign
air to one’s words. And though we might have to
wait some years, we would get even the masterpieces
of the world in good time. Let us, they think, be
poor enough to whistle at the thief who would take
away some of our thoughts, and after Mr. Fay has
taken his company, as he plans, through the villages
and the country towns, he will get the little endowment
that is necessary, or if he does not some other will.</p>

<p>I do not know what Lady Gregory or Mr. Moore
think of these projects. I am not going to say what I
think. I have spent much of my time and more of
my thought these last ten years on Irish organisation,
and now that the Irish Literary Theatre has completed
the plan I had in my head ten years ago, I want to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
go down again to primary ideas. I want to put old
stories into verse, and if I put them into dramatic
verse it will matter less to me henceforward who plays
them than what they play, and how they play. I hope
to get our heroic age into verse, and to solve some
problems of the speaking of verse to musical notes.</p>

<p>There is only one question which is raised by the
two projects I have described on which I will give an
opinion. It is of the first importance that those among
us who want to write for the stage study the dramatic
masterpieces of the world. If they can get them on
the stage so much the better, but study them they
must if Irish drama is to mean anything to Irish intellect.
At the present moment, Shakespeare being
the only great dramatist known to Irish writers has
made them cast their work too much on the English
model. Miss Milligan’s <i>Red Hugh</i>, which was successfully
acted in Dublin the other day, had no business
to be in two scenes; and Father O’Leary’s <i>Tadg Saor</i>,
despite its most vivid and picturesque, though far
too rambling dialogue, shows in its half dozen changes
of scene the influence of the same English convention
which arose when there was no scene painting, and is
often a difficulty where there is, and is always an absurdity
in a farce of thirty minutes, breaking up the
emotion and sending one’s thoughts here and there.
Mr. MacGinlay’s <i>Elis agus an bhean deirce</i> has not
this defect, and though I had not Irish enough to
follow it when I saw it played, and excellently played,
by Mr. Fay’s company, I could see from the continual
laughter of the audience that it held them with an
unbroken emotion. The best Gaelic play after Dr.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
Hyde’s is, I think, Father Dineen’s <i>Creideamh agus
gorta</i>, and though it changes the scene a little oftener
than is desirable under modern conditions, it does
not remind me of an English model. It reminds me
of Calderon by its treatment of a religious subject,
and by something in Father Dineen’s sympathy with
the people that is like his. But I think if Father
Dineen had studied that great Catholic dramatist he
would not have failed, as he has done once or twice, to
remember some necessary detail of a situation. In the
first scene he makes a servant ask his fellow-servants
about things he must have known as well as they;
and he loses a dramatic moment in his third scene by
forgetting that Seagan Gorm has a pocket-full of
money which he would certainly, being the man he
was, have offered to the woman he was urging into
temptation. The play towards the end changes from
prose to verse, and the reverence and simplicity of
the verse makes one think of a mediæval miracle play.
The subject has been so much a part of Irish life that
it was bound to be used by an Irish dramatist, though
certainly I shall always prefer plays which attack a
more eternal devil than the proselytiser. He has been
defeated, and the arts are at their best when they are
busy with battles that can never be won. It is possible,
however, that we may have to deal with passing
issues until we have re-created the imaginative tradition
of Ireland, and filled the popular imagination
again with saints and heroes. These short plays
(though they would be better if their writers knew the
masters of their craft) are very dramatic as they are,
but there is no chance of our writers of Gaelic, or our
writers of English, doing good plays of any length if<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
they do not study the masters. If Irish dramatists had
studied the romantic plays of Ibsen, the one great
master the modern stage has produced, they would
not have sent the Irish Literary Theatre imitations
of Boucicault, who had no relation to literature, and
Father O’Leary would have put his gift for dialogue,
a gift certainly greater than, let us say, Mr. Jones’ or
Mr. Grundy’s, to better use than the writing of that
long rambling dramatisation of the <i>Tain bo Cuailgne</i>,
in which I hear in the midst of the exuberant Gaelic
dialogue the worn-out conventions of English poetic
drama. The moment we leave even a little the folk-tradition
of the peasant, as we must in drama, if we
do not know the best that has been said and written
in the world, we do not even know ourselves. It is
no great labour to know the best dramatic literature,
for there is very little of it. We Irish must know it
all, for we have, I think, far greater need of the severe
discipline of French and Scandinavian drama than of
Shakespeare’s luxuriance.</p>

<p>If the <i>Diarmuid and Grania</i> and the <i>Casadh an
t-Sugain</i> are not well constructed, it is not because
Mr. Moore and Dr. Hyde and myself do not understand
the importance of construction, and Mr.
Martyn has shown by the triumphant construction
of <i>The Heather Field</i> how much thought he has given
to the matter; but for the most part our Irish plays
read as if they were made without a plan, without a
‘scenario,’ as it is called. European drama began
so, but the European drama had centuries for its
growth, while our art must grow to perfection in a
generation or two if it is not to be smothered before it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
is well above the earth by what is merely commercial
in the art of England.</p>

<p>Let us learn construction from the masters, and
dialogue from ourselves. A relation of mine has
just written me a letter, in which he says: ‘It is
natural to an Irishman to write plays, he has an inborn
love of dialogue and sound about him, of a
dialogue as lively, gallant, and passionate as in the
times of great Eliza. In these days an Englishman’s
dialogue is that of an amateur, that is to say, it is
never spontaneous. I mean in <i>real life</i>. Compare
it with an Irishman’s, above all a poor Irishman’s,
reckless abandonment and naturalness, or compare
it with the only fragment that has come down to us of
Shakespeare’s own conversation.’ (He is remembering
a passage in, I think, Ben Jonson’s <i>Underwoods</i>.)
‘Petty commerce and puritanism have brought to
the front the wrong type of Englishman; the lively,
joyous, yet tenacious man has transferred himself to
Ireland. We have him and we will keep him unless
the combined nonsense of ... and ... and ...
succeed in suffocating him.’</p>

<p>In Dublin the other day I saw a poster advertising
a play by a Miss ... under the patronage of certain
titled people. I had little hope of finding any reality
in it, but I sat out two acts. Its dialogue was above
the average, though the characters were the old rattle-traps
of the stage, the wild Irish girl, and the Irish
servant, and the bowing Frenchman, and the situations
had all been squeezed dry generations ago.
One saw everywhere the shadowy mind of a woman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
of the Irish upper classes as they have become to-day,
but under it all there was a kind of life, though it
was but the life of a string and a wire. I do not
know who Miss ... is, but I know that she is
young, for I saw her portrait in a weekly paper, and
I think that she is clever enough to make her work
of some importance. If she goes on doing bad work
she will make money, perhaps a great deal of money,
but she will do a little harm to her country. If, on
the other hand, she gets into an original relation
with life, she will, perhaps, make no money, and she
will certainly have her class against her.</p>

<p>The Irish upper classes put everything into a money
measure. When anyone among them begins to write
or paint they ask him ‘How much money have you
made?’ ‘Will it pay?’ Or they say, ‘If you do this
or that you will make more money.’ The poor Irish
clerk or shopboy,<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> who writes verses or articles in his
brief leisure, writes for the glory of God and of his
country; and because his motive is high, there is not
one vulgar thought in the countless little ballad books
that have been written from Callinan’s day to this.
They are often clumsily written for they are in English,
and if you have not read a great deal, it is difficult to
write well in a language which has been long separated,
from the ‘folk-speech’; but they have not a thought
a proud and simple man would not have written.
The writers were poor men, but they left that money
measure to the Irish upper classes. All Irish writers
have to choose whether they will write as the upper
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>classes have done, not to express but to exploit this
country; or join the intellectual movement which
has raised the cry that was heard in Russia in the
seventies, the cry ‘to the people.’</p>

<p>Moses was little good to his people until he had
killed an Egyptian; and for the most part a writer or
public man of the upper classes is useless to this
country till he has done something that separates him
from his class. We wish to grow peaceful crops, but
we must dig our furrows with the sword.</p>

<p>Our plays this year will be produced by Mr. Benson
at the Gaiety Theatre on October the 21st, and on
some of the succeeding days. They are Dr. Douglas
Hyde’s <i>Casadh an t-Sugain</i>, which is founded on a
well known Irish story of a wandering poet; and
<i>Diarmuid and Grania</i>, a play in three acts and in prose
by Mr. George Moore and myself, which is founded
on the most famous of all Irish stories, the story of
the lovers whose beds were the cromlechs. The first
act of <i>Diarmuid and Grania</i> is in the great banqueting
hall of Tara, and the second and third on the slopes of
Ben Bulben in Sligo. We do not think there is anything
in either play to offend anybody, but we make
no promises. We thought our plays inoffensive last
year and the year before, but we were accused the one
year of sedition, and the other of heresy.</p>

<p>I have called this little collection of writings
<i>Samhain</i>, the old name for the beginning of winter,
because our plays this year are in October, and because
our Theatre is coming to an end in its present
shape.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span></p>


<h3>1902</h3>

<p>The Irish Literary Theatre wound up its three
years of experiment last October with <i>Diarmuid and
Grania</i>, which was played by Mr. Benson’s Company,
Mr. Benson himself playing Diarmuid with poetry
and fervour, and <i>Casadh an t-Sugain</i>, played by Dr.
Hyde and some members of the Gaelic League.
<i>Diarmuid and Grania</i> drew large audiences, but its
version of the legend was a good deal blamed by
critics, who knew only the modern text of the story.
There are two versions, and the play was fully justified
by Irish and Scottish folk-lore, and by certain
early Irish texts, which do not see Grania through
very friendly eyes. Any critic who is interested in
so dead a controversy can look at the folk-tales
quoted by Campbell in, I think, <i>West Highland Superstitions</i>,
and at the fragment translated by Kuno
Meyer, at page 458 of Vol. I. of <i>Zeitschrift für Keltische
Philologie</i>. Dr. Hyde’s play, on the other hand,
pleased everybody, and has been played a good many
times in a good many places since. It was the first
play in Irish played in a theatre, and did much
towards making plays a necessary part in Irish propaganda.</p>

<p>The Irish Literary Theatre has given place to a
company of Irish actors. Its Committee saw them
take up the work all the more gladly because it had
not formed them or influenced them. A dramatic
society with guarantors and patrons can never have
more than a passing use, because it can never be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>
quite free; and it is not successful until it is able to
say it is no longer wanted. Amateur actors will
perform for <i>Cumann-na-Gael</i> plays chosen by themselves,
and written by A.E., by Mr. Cousins, by
Mr. Ryan, by Mr. MacGinlay and by myself. These
plays will be given at the Antient Concert Rooms
at the end of October, but the National Theatrical
Company will repeat their successes with new work
in a very little hall they have hired in Camden Street.
If they could afford it they would have hired some
bigger house, but, after all, M. Antoine founded his
<i>Théâtre Libre</i> with a company of amateurs in a hall
that only held three hundred people.</p>

<p>The first work of theirs to get much attention
was their performance, last spring, at the invitation
of <i>Inghinidhe h-Eireann</i> of A.E.’s <i>Deirdre</i>, and my
<i>Cathleen ni Houlihan</i>. They had Miss Maud Gonne’s
help, and it was a fine thing for so beautiful a woman
to consent to play my poor old Cathleen, and she
played with nobility and tragic power. She showed
herself as good in tragedy as Dr. Hyde is in comedy,
and stirred a large audience very greatly. The
whole company played well, too, but it was in <i>Deirdre</i>
that they interested me most. They showed plenty
of inexperience, especially in the minor characters,
but it was the first performance I had seen since I
understood these things in which the actors kept
still enough to give poetical writing its full effect
upon the stage. I had imagined such acting, though
I had not seen it, and had once asked a dramatic
company to let me rehearse them in barrels that they
might forget gesture and have their minds free to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
think of speech for a while. The barrels, I thought,
might be on castors, so that I could shove them about
with a pole when the action required it. The other
day I saw Sara Bernhardt and De Max in <i>Phèdre</i>,
and understood where Mr. Fay, who stage-manages
the National Theatrical Company, had gone for his
model.<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a> For long periods the performers would
merely stand and pose, and I once counted twenty-seven
quite slowly before anybody on a fairly well-filled
stage moved, as it seemed, so much as an eye-lash.
The periods of stillness were generally shorter,
but I frequently counted seventeen, eighteen or
twenty before there was a movement. I noticed,
too, that the gestures had a rhythmic progression.
Sara Bernhardt would keep her hands clasped over,
let us say, her right breast for some time, and then
move them to the other side, perhaps, lowering her
chin till it touched her hands, and then, after another
long stillness, she would unclasp them and hold one
out, and so on, not lowering them till she had exhausted
all the gestures of uplifted hands. Through
one long scene De Max, who was quite as fine, never
lifted his hand above his elbow, and it was only when
the emotion came to its climax that he raised it to
his breast. Beyond them stood a crowd of white-robed
men who never moved at all, and the whole
scene had the nobility of Greek sculpture, and an
extraordinary reality and intensity. It was the most
beautiful thing I had ever seen upon the stage, and
made me understand, in a new way, that saying of
Goethe’s which is understood everywhere but in
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>England, ‘Art is art because it is not nature.’ Of
course, our amateurs were poor and crude beside
those great actors, perhaps the greatest in Europe,
but they followed them as well as they could, and
got an audience of artisans, for the most part, to
admire them for doing it. I heard somebody who
sat behind me say, ‘They have got rid of all the
nonsense.’</p>

<p>I thought the costumes and scenery, which were
designed by A.E. himself, good, too, though I did
not think them simple enough. They were more
simple than ordinary stage costumes and scenery, but
I would like to see poetical drama, which tries to
keep at a distance from daily life that it may keep
its emotion untroubled, staged with but two or three
colours. The background, especially in small theatres,
where its form is broken up and lost when the stage
is at all crowded, should, I think, be thought out as
one thinks out the background of a portrait. One
often needs nothing more than a single colour with
perhaps a few shadowy forms to suggest wood or
mountain. Even on a large stage one should leave
the description of the poet free to call up the martlet’s
procreant cradle or what he will. But I have written
enough about decorative scenery elsewhere, and will
probably lecture on that and like matters before we
begin the winter’s work.</p>

<p>The performances of <i>Deirdre</i> and <i>Cathleen ni
Houlihan</i>, which will be repeated in the Antient
Concert Rooms, drew so many to hear them that
great numbers were turned away from the doors of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
St. Theresa’s Hall. Like the plays of the Irish
Literary Theatre, they started unexpected discussion.
Mr. Standish O’Grady, who had done more than any
other to make us know the old legends, wrote in his
<i>All Ireland Review</i> that old legends could not be staged
without danger of ‘banishing the soul of the land.’
The old Irish had many wives for instance, and one
had best leave their histories to the vagueness of
legend. How could uneducated people understand
heroes who lived amid such different circumstances?
And so we were to ‘leave heroic cycles alone, and
not to bring them down to the crowd.’ A.E. replied
in the <i>United Irishman</i> with an impassioned letter.
‘The old, forgotten music’ he writes about in his
letter is, I think, that regulated music of speech at
which both he and I have been working, though on
somewhat different principles. I have been working
with Miss Farr and Mr. Arnold Dolmetsch, who has
made a psaltery for the purpose, to perfect a music
of speech which can be recorded in something like
ordinary musical notes; while A.E. has got a musician
to record little chants with intervals much smaller
than those of modern music.</p>

<p>After the production of these plays the most important
Irish dramatic event was, no doubt, the acting
of Dr. Hyde’s <i>An Posadh</i>, in Galway. Through an
accident it had been very badly rehearsed, but his own
acting made amends. One could hardly have had a
play that grew more out of the life of the people who
saw it. There may have been old men in that audience
who remembered its hero the poet Raftery, and
there was nobody there who had not come from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
hearing his poems repeated at the Galway Feis. I
think from its effect upon the audience that this play
in which the chief Gaelic poet of our time celebrates
his forerunner in simplicity, will be better liked in
Connaught at any rate than even <i>Casadh an t-Sugain</i>.
His <i>Tincear agus Sidheog</i>, acted in Mr. Moore’s garden,
at the time of the Oireachtas, is a very good play, but
is, I think, the least interesting of his plays as literature.
His imagination, which is essentially the folk-imagination,
needs a looser construction, and probably
a more crowded stage. A play that gets its effect by
keeping close to one idea reminds one, when it comes
from the hands of a folk-poet, of Blake’s saying, that
‘Improvement makes straight roads, but the crooked
roads are the roads of genius.’ The idea loses the
richness of its own life, while it destroys the wayward
life of his mind by bringing it under too stern a law.
Nor could charming verses make amends for that
second kiss in which there was profanation, and for
that abounding black bottle. Did not M. Trebulet
Bonhommie discover that one spot of ink would kill
a swan?</p>

<p>Among the other plays in Irish acted during the
year Father Dineen’s <i>Tobar Draoidheachta</i> is probably
the best. He has given up the many scenes of his
<i>Creadeamh agus Gorta</i>, and has written a play in one
scene, which, as it can be staged without much trouble,
has already been played in several places. One
admires its <i>naïveté</i> as much as anything else. Father
Dineen, who, no doubt, remembers how Finn mac
Cumhal when a child was put in a field to catch hares
and keep him out of mischief, has sent the rival lovers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
of his play when he wanted them off the scene for a
moment, to catch a hare that has crossed the stage.
When they return the good lover is carrying it by
the heels, and modestly compares it to a lame jackass.
One rather likes this bit of nonsense when one
comes to it, for in that world of folk-imagination one
thing seems as possible as another. On the other
hand, there is a moment of beautiful dramatic tact.
The lover gets a letter telling of the death of a relative
in America, for whom he has no particular
affection, and who has left him a fortune. He cannot
lament, for that would be insincere, and his first words
must not be rejoicing. Father Dineen has found for
him the one beautiful thing he could say, ‘It’s a lonesome
thing death is.’ With, perhaps, less beauty than
there is in the closing scene of <i>Creadeamh agus Gorta</i>,
the play has more fancy and a more sustained energy.</p>

<p>Father Peter O’Leary has written a play in his
usual number of scenes which has not been published,
but has been acted amid much Munster enthusiasm.
But neither that or <i>La an Amadan</i>, which has also
been acted, are likely to have any long life on our
country stages. A short play, with many changes of
scene, is a nuisance in any theatre, and often an impossibility
on our poor little stages. Some kind of
play, in English, by Mr. Standish O’Grady, has been
acted in the open air in Kilkenny. I have not seen
it, and I cannot understand anything by the accounts
of it, except that there were magic lantern slides and
actors on horseback, and Mr. Standish O’Grady as an
Elizabethan night-watchman, speaking prologues, and
a contented audience of two or three thousand people.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span></p>

<p>As we do not think that a play can be worth acting
and not worth reading, all our plays will be published
in time. Some have been printed in <i>The United Irishman</i>
and <i>The All Ireland Review</i>. I have put my
<i>Cathleen ni Houlihan</i> and a little play by Dr. Hyde
into this <i>Samhain</i>. Once already this year I have had
what somebody has called the noble pleasure of praising,
and I can praise this <i>Lost Saint</i> with as good a
conscience as I had when I wrote of <i>Cuchulain of
Muirthemne</i>. I would always admire it, but just now,
when I have been thinking that literature should
return to its old habit of describing desirable things,
I am in the mood to be stirred by that old man
gathering up food for fowl with his heart full of
love, and by those children who are so full of the
light-hearted curiosity of childhood, and by that
schoolmaster who has mixed prayer with his gentle
punishments. It seems natural that so beautiful a
prayer as that of the old saint should have come out
of a life so full of innocence and peace. One could
hardly have thought out the play in English, for
those phrases of a traditional simplicity and of a too
deliberate prettiness which become part of an old
language would have arisen between the mind and
the story. One might even have made something as
unreal as the sentimental schoolmaster of the Scottish
novelists, and how many children, who are but literary
images, would one not have had to hunt out of one’s
mind before meeting with those little children? Even
if one could have thought it out in English one
could not have written it in English, unless perhaps
in that dialect which Dr. Hyde had already used in
the prose narrative that flows about his <i>Love Songs of
Connaught</i>.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span></p>

<p>Dr. Hyde has written a little play about the birth
of Christ which has the same beauty and simplicity.
These plays remind me of my first reading of <i>The
Love Songs of Connaught</i>. The prose parts of that book
were to me, as they were to many others, the coming
of a new power into literature. I find myself now,
as I found myself then, grudging to propaganda, to
scholarship, to oratory, however necessary, a genius
which might in modern Irish or in that idiom of the
English-speaking country people discover a new region
for the mind to wander in. In Ireland, where we
have so much to prove and to disprove, we are ready
to forget that the creation of an emotion of beauty is
the only kind of literature that justifies itself. Books
of literary propaganda and literary history are merely
preparations for the creation or understanding of such
an emotion. It is necessary to put so much in order,
to clear away so much, to explain so much, that
somebody may be moved by a thought or an image
that is inexplicable as a wild creature.</p>

<p>I cannot judge the language of his Irish poetry,
but it is so rich in poetical thought, when at its best,
that it seems to me that if he were to write more he
might become to modern Irish what Mistral was to
modern Provençal. I wish, too, that he could put
away from himself some of the interruptions of that
ceaseless propaganda, and find time for the making
of translations, loving and leisurely, like those in
<i>Beside the Fire</i> and <i>The Love Songs of Connaught</i>. He
has begun to get a little careless lately. Above all I
would have him keep to that English idiom of the
Irish-thinking people of the west which he has begun<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
to use less often. It is the only good English spoken
by any large number of Irish people to-day, and one
must found good literature on a living speech.
English men of letters found themselves upon the
English Bible, where religious thought gets its living
speech. Blake, if I remember rightly, copied it out
twice, and I remember once finding a few illuminated
pages of a new decorated copy that he began in his
old age. Byron read it for the sake of style, though
I think it did him little good, and Ruskin founded
himself in great part upon it. Indeed, one finds everywhere
signs of a book which is the chief influence in
the lives of English children. The translation used
in Ireland has not the same literary beauty, and if we
are to find anything to take its place we must find it
in that idiom of the poor, which mingles so much of
the same vocabulary with turns of phrase that have
come out of Gaelic. Even Irish writers of considerable
powers of thought seem to have no better
standard of English than a schoolmaster’s ideal of
correctness. If their grammar is correct they will
write in all the lightness of their hearts about ‘keeping
in touch,’ and ‘object-lessons,’ and ‘shining examples,’
and ‘running in grooves,’ and ‘flagrant violations’ of
various things. Yet, as Sainte-Beuve has said, there is
nothing immortal except style. One can write well in
that country idiom without much thought about one’s
words, the emotion will bring the right word itself,
for there everything is old and everything alive and
nothing common or threadbare. I recommend to the
Intermediate Board—a body that seems to benefit by
advice—a better plan than any they know for teaching
children to write good English. Let every child<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
in Ireland be set to turn a leading article or a piece
of what is called excellent English, written perhaps
by some distinguished member of the Board, into the
idiom of his own country side. He will find at once
the difference between dead and living words, between
words that meant something years ago, and words that
have the only thing that gives literary quality—personality,
the breath of men’s mouths. Zola, who is
sometimes an admirable critic, has said that some of
the greatest pages in French literature are not even
right in their grammar, ‘They are great because they
have personality.’</p>

<p>The habit of writing for the stage, even when it is
not country people who are the speakers, and of considering
what good dialogue is, will help to increase
our feeling for style. Let us get back in everything
to the spoken word, even though we have to speak
our lyrics to the Psaltery or the Harp, for, as A.E.
says, we have begun to forget that literature is but
recorded speech, and even when we write with care
we have begun ‘to write with elaboration what could
never be spoken.’ But when we go back to speech
let us see that it is either the idiom of those who
have rejected, or of those who have never learned,
the base idioms of the newspapers.</p>

<p>Mr. Martyn argued in <i>The United Irishman</i> some
months ago that our actors should try to train themselves
for the modern drama of society. The acting of
plays of heroic life or plays like <i>Cathleen ni Houlihan</i>,
with its speech of the country people, did not seem
to him a preparation. It is not; but that is as it should
be. Our movement is a return to the people, like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
the Russian movement of the early seventies, and
the drama of society would but magnify a condition
of life which the countryman and the artisan could
but copy to their hurt. The play that is to give them
a quite natural pleasure should either tell them of
their own life, or of that life of poetry where every
man can see his own image, because there alone does
human nature escape from arbitrary conditions. Plays
about drawing-rooms are written for the middle
classes of great cities, for the classes who live in
drawing-rooms, but if you would uplift the man of
the roads you must write about the roads, or about
the people of romance, or about great historical people.
We should, of course, play every kind of good play
about Ireland that we can get, but romantic and historical
plays, and plays about the life of artisans and
country people are the best worth getting. In time,
I think, we can make the poetical play a living
dramatic form again, and the training our actors will
get from plays of country life, with its unchanging
outline, its abundant speech, its extravagance of
thought, will help to establish a school of imaginative
acting. The play of society, on the other hand, could
but train up realistic actors who would do badly, for
the most part, what English actors do well, and
would, when at all good, drift away to wealthy English
theatres. If, on the other hand, we busy ourselves
with poetry and the countryman, two things which
have always mixed with one another in life as on the
stage, we may recover, in the course of years, a lost
art which, being an imitation of nothing English,
may bring our actors a secure fame and a sufficient
livelihood.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span></p>


<h3>1903</h3>

<p class="unindent"><span class="smcap">I cannot</span> describe the various dramatic adventures
of the year with as much detail as I did last year,
mainly because the movement has got beyond me.
The most important event of the Gaelic Theatre has
been the two series of plays produced in the Round
Room of the Rotunda by the Gaelic League. Father
Dineen’s <i>Tobar Draoidheachta</i>, and Dr. Hyde’s <i>An
Posadh</i>, and a chronicle play about Hugh O’Neill,
and, I think, some other plays, were seen by immense
audiences. I was not in Ireland for these plays, but
a friend tells me that he could only get standing-room
one night, and the Round Room must hold about
3,000 people. A performance of <i>Tobar Draoidheachta</i>
I saw there some months before, was bad, but I believe
there was great improvement, and that the
players who came up from somewhere in County Cork
to play it at this second series of plays were admirable.
The players, too, that brought Dr. Hyde’s <i>An
Posadh</i> from Ballaghadereen, in County Mayo, where
they had been showing it to their neighbours, were
also, I am told, careful and natural. The play-writing,
always good in dialogue, is still very poor in construction,
and I still hear of plays in many scenes,
with no scene lasting longer than four or six minutes,
and few intervals shorter than nine or ten minutes,
which have to be filled up with songs. The Rotunda
chronicle play seems to have been rather of this sort,
and I suspect that when I get Father Peter O’Leary’s
<i>Meadhbh</i>, a play in five acts produced at Cork, I shall
find the masterful old man, in spite of his hatred of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
English thought, sticking to the Elizabethan form.
I wish I could have seen it played last week, for the
spread of the Gaelic Theatre in the country is more
important than its spread in Dublin, and of all the
performances in Gaelic plays in the country during
the year I have seen but one—Dr. Hyde’s new play,
<i>Cleamhnas</i>, at Galway Feis. I got there a day late
for a play by the Master of Galway Workhouse,
but heard that it was well played, and that his
dialogue was as good as his construction was bad.
There is no question, however, about the performance
of <i>Cleamhnas</i> being the worst I ever saw. I do not
blame the acting, which was pleasant and natural, in
spite of insufficient rehearsal, but the stage-management.
The subject of the play was a match-making.
The terms were in debate between two old men in an
inner room. An old woman, according to the stage
directions, should have listened at the door and reported
what she heard to her daughter’s suitor, who
is outside the window, and to her daughter. There
was no window on the stage, and the young man
stood close enough to the door to have listened for
himself. The door, where she listened, opened now
on the inner room, and now on the street, according
to the necessities of the play, and the young men
who acted the fathers of grown-up children, when they
came through the door were seen to have done nothing
to disguise their twenty-five or twenty-six
birthdays. There had been only two rehearsals, and
the little boy who should have come in laughing at
the end came in shouting, ‘Ho ho, ha ha,’ evidently
believing that these were Gaelic words he had never
heard before. Playwrights will have to be careful who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
they permit to play their work if it is to be played
after only two rehearsals, and without enough attention
to the arrangement of the stage to make the
action plausible.</p>

<p>The only Gaelic performances I have seen during
the year have been ill-done, but I have seen them
sufficiently well done in other years to believe my
friends when they tell me that there have been good
performances. <i>Inghinidhe na h-Eireann</i> is always
thorough, and one cannot doubt that the performance
of Dr. Hyde’s <i>An Naom ar Iarriad</i>, by the children
from its classes, was at least careful. A powerful little
play in English against enlisting, by Mr. Colum, was
played with it, and afterwards revived, and played
with a play about the Royal Visit, also in English.
I have no doubt that we shall see a good many of
these political plays during the next two or three
years, and it may be even the rise of a more or less
permanent company of political players, for the revolutionary
clubs will begin to think plays as necessary
as the Gaelic League is already thinking them. Nobody
can find the same patriotic songs and recitations
sung and spoken by the same people, year in year
out, anything but mouldy bread. It is possible that
the players who are to produce plays in October for
the Samhain festival of <i>Cumann na n-Gaedheal</i> may
grow into such a company.</p>

<p>Though one welcomes every kind of vigorous life,
I am, myself, most interested in ‘The Irish National
Theatre Society,’ which has no propaganda but that
of good art. The little Camden Street Hall it had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
taken has been useful for rehearsal alone, for it proved
to be too far away, and too lacking in dressing-rooms
for our short plays, which involve so many changes.
Successful performances were given, however, at
Rathmines, and in one or two country places.</p>

<p><i>Deirdre</i>, by A.E., <i>The Racing Lug</i>, by Mr. Cousins,
<i>The Foundations</i>, by Mr. Ryan, and my <i>Pot of Broth</i>,
and <i>Cathleen ni Houlihan</i>, were repeated, but no new
plays were produced until March 14th, when Lady
Gregory’s <i>Twenty-five</i> and my <i>Hour-Glass</i>, drew a
good audience. On May 2nd the <i>Hour-Glass</i>, <i>Twenty-five</i>,
<i>Cathleen ni Houlihan</i>, <i>Pot of Broth</i>, and <i>Foundations</i>
were performed before the Irish Literary Society
in London, at the Queen’s Gate Hall, and plays and
players were generously commended by the Press—very
eloquently by the critic of <i>The Times</i>. It is
natural that we should be pleased with this praise,
and that we should wish others to know of it, for is it
not a chief pleasure of the artist to be commended in
subtle and eloquent words? The critic of <i>The Times</i>
has seen many theatres and he is, perhaps, a little
weary of them, but here in Ireland there are one or
two critics who are so much in love, or pretend to be
so much in love, with the theatre as it is, that they
complain when we perform on a stage two feet wider
than Molière’s that it is scarce possible to be interested
in anything that is played on so little a stage.
We are to them foolish sectaries who have revolted
against that orthodoxy of the commercial theatre,
which is so much less pliant than the orthodoxy of
the church, for there is nothing so passionate as a
vested interest disguised as an intellectual conviction.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
If you inquire into its truth it becomes as angry as a
begging-letter writer, when you find some hole in that
beautiful story about the five children and the broken
mangle. In Ireland, wherever the enthusiasts are
shaping life, the critic who does the will of the commercial
theatre can but stand against his lonely pillar
defending his articles of belief among a wild people,
and thinking mournfully of distant cities, where nobody
puts a raw potato into his pocket when he is
going to hear a musical comedy.</p>

<p>The <i>Irish Literary Society</i> of New York, which has
been founded this year, produced <i>The Land of Heart’s
Desire</i>, <i>The Pot of Broth</i>, and <i>Cathleen ni Houlihan</i>, on
June 3rd and 4th, very successfully, and propose to
give Dr. Hyde’s Nativity Play, <i>Drama Breithe
Chriosta</i>, and his <i>Casadh an t-Sugain</i>, <i>Posadh</i> and
<i>Naom ar Iarriad</i> next year, at the same time of year,
playing them both in Irish and English. I heard too
that his Nativity Play will be performed in New
York this winter, but I know no particulars except
that it will be done in connection with some religious
societies. <i>The National Theatre Society</i> will, I hope,
produce some new plays of his this winter, as well as
new plays by Mr. Synge, Mr. Colum, Lady Gregory,
myself, and others. They have taken the Molesworth
Hall for three days in every month, beginning
with the 8th, 9th, and 10th of October, when they
will perform Mr. Synge’s <i>Shadow of the Glen</i>, a little
country comedy, full of a humour that is at once
harsh and beautiful, <i>Cathleen ni Houlihan</i>, and a longish
one-act play in verse of my own, called <i>The King’s
Threshold</i>. This play is founded on the old story of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
Seanchan the poet, and King Guaire of Gort, but I
have seen the story from the poet’s point of view,
and not, like the old storytellers, from the king’s.
Our repertory of plays is increasing steadily, and
when the winter’s work is finished, a play<a name="FNanchor_D_4" id="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a> Mr.
Bernard Shaw has promised us may be ready to open
the summer session. His play will, I imagine, unlike
the plays we write for ourselves, be long enough to
fill an evening, and it will, I know, deal with Irish
public life and character. Mr. Shaw, more than
anybody else, has the love of mischief that is so near
the core of Irish intellect, and should have an immense
popularity among us. I have seen a crowd
of many thousands in possession of his spirit, and
keeping the possession to the small hours.</p>

<p>This movement should be important even to those
who are not especially interested in the Theatre, for
it may be a morning cock-crow to that impartial
meditation about character and destiny we call the
artistic life in a country where everybody, if we
leave out the peasant who has his folk-songs and his
music, has thought the arts useless unless they have
helped some kind of political action, and has, therefore,
lacked the pure joy that only comes out of
things that have never been indentured to any cause.
The play which is mere propaganda shows its leanness
more obviously than a propagandist poem or
essay, for dramatic writing is so full of the stuff of
daily life that a little falsehood, put in that the moral
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>may come right in the end, contradicts our experience.
If Father Dineen or Dr. Hyde were asked why
they write their plays, they would say they write them
to help their propaganda; and yet when they begin
to write the form constrains them, and they become
artists—one of them a very considerable artist, indeed.
Dr. Hyde’s early poems have even in translation a
<i>naïveté</i> and wildness that sets them, as I think, among
the finest poetry of our time; but he had ceased to
write any verses but those Oireachtas odes that are
but ingenious rhetoric. It is hard to write without
the sympathy of one’s friends, and though the country
people sang his verses the readers of Irish read them
but little, partly it may be because he had broken
with that elaborate structure of later Irish poetry
which seemed a necessary part of their propaganda.
They read plenty of pamphlets and grammars, but
they disliked—as do other people in Ireland—serious
reading, reading that is an end and not a means, that
gives us nothing but a beauty indifferent to our profuse
purposes. But now Dr. Hyde with his cursing
Hanrahan, his old saint at his prayers, is a poet
again; and the Leaguers go to his plays in thousands—and
applaud in the right places, too—and the
League puts many sixpences into its pocket.</p>

<p>We who write in English have a more difficult
work, for English has been the language in which the
Irish cause has been debated; and we have to struggle
with traditional phrases and traditional points of view.
Many would give us limitless freedom as to the choice
of subject, understanding that it is precisely those
subjects on which people feel most passionately, and,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
therefore, most dramatically, we would be forbidden
to handle if we made any compromise with powers.
But fewer know that we must encourage every writer
to see life afresh, even though he sees it with strange
eyes. Our National Theatre must be so tolerant, and,
if this is not too wild a hope, find an audience so
tolerant that the half-dozen minds, who are likely to
be the dramatic imagination of Ireland for this generation,
may put their own thoughts and their own
characters into their work; and for that reason no
one who loves the arts, whether among Unionists or
among the Patriotic Societies, should take offence if
we refuse all but every kind of patronage. I do not
say every kind, for if a mad king, a king so mad that
he loved the arts and their freedom, should offer us
unconditioned millions, I, at any rate, would give my
voice for accepting them.</p>

<p>We will be able to find conscientious playwrights
and players, for our young men have a power of
work, when they are interested in their work, one
does not look for outside a Latin nation, and if we
were certain of being granted this freedom we would
be certain that the work would grow to great importance.
It is a supreme moment in the life of a nation
when it is able to turn now and again from its preoccupations,
to delight in the capricious power of the
artist as one delights in the movement of some wild
creature, but nobody can tell with certainty when that
moment is at hand.</p>

<p>The two plays in this year’s <i>Samhain</i> represent the
two sides of the movement very well, and are both<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
written out of a deep knowledge of the life of the
people. It should be unnecessary to praise Dr.
Hyde’s comedy,<a name="FNanchor_E_5" id="FNanchor_E_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_E_5" class="fnanchor">[E]</a> that comes up out of the foundation
of human life, but Mr. Synge is a new writer and a
creation of our movement. He has gone every
summer for some years past to the Arran Islands, and
lived there in the houses of the fishers, speaking
their language and living their lives, and his play<a name="FNanchor_F_6" id="FNanchor_F_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_F_6" class="fnanchor">[F]</a>
seems to me the finest piece of tragic work done in
Ireland of late years. One finds in it, from first to
last, the presence of the sea, and a sorrow that has
majesty as in the work of some ancient poet.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span></p>

<h4>THE REFORM OF THE THEATRE.</h4>

<p>I think the theatre must be reformed in its plays,
its speaking, its acting, and its scenery. That is to
say, I think there is nothing good about it at present.</p>

<p><i>First.</i> We have to write or find plays that will make
the theatre a place of intellectual excitement—a place
where the mind goes to be liberated as it was liberated
by the theatres of Greece and England and France
at certain great moments of their history, and as it is
liberated in Scandinavia to-day. If we are to do this
we must learn that beauty and truth are always justified
of themselves, and that their creation is a greater
service to our country than writing that compromises
either in the seeming service of a cause. We will,
doubtless, come more easily to truth and beauty
because we love some cause with all but all our
heart; but we must remember when truth and beauty
open their mouths to speak, that all other mouths
should be as silent as Finn bade the Son of Lugaidh
be in the houses of the great. Truth and beauty
judge and are above judgment. They justify and
have no need of justification.</p>

<p>Such plays will require, both in writers and audiences,
a stronger feeling for beautiful and appropriate
language than one finds in the ordinary theatre. Sainte-Beuve
has said that there is nothing immortal in
literature except style, and it is precisely this sense
of style, once common among us, that is hardest for
us to recover. I do not mean by style words with
an air of literature about them, what is ordinarily<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
called eloquent writing. The speeches of Falstaff
are as perfect in their style as the soliloquies of
Hamlet. One must be able to make a king of faery
or an old countryman or a modern lover speak that
language which is his and nobody else’s, and speak
it with so much of emotional subtlety that the hearer
may find it hard to know whether it is the thought
or the word that has moved him, or whether these
could be separated at all.</p>

<p>If one does not know how to construct, if one
cannot arrange much complicated life into a single
action, one’s work will not hold the attention or
linger in the memory, but if one is not in love with
words it will lack the delicate movement of living
speech that is the chief garment of life; and because
of this lack the great realists seem to the lovers of
beautiful art to be wise in this generation, and for
the next generation, perhaps, but not for all generations
that are to come.</p>

<p><i>Second.</i> But if we are to restore words to their
sovereignty we must make speech even more important
than gesture upon the stage.</p>

<p>I have been told that I desire a monotonous chant,
but that is not true, for though a monotonous chant
may be a safer beginning for an actor than the broken
and prosaic speech of ordinary recitation, it puts one
to sleep none the less. The sing-song in which a
child says a verse is a right beginning, though the
child grows out of it. An actor should understand
how to so discriminate cadence from cadence, and to
so cherish the musical lineaments of verse or prose
that he delights the ear with a continually varied
music. Certain passages of lyrical feeling, or where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
one wishes, as in the Angel’s part in <i>The Hour-Glass</i>,
to make a voice sound like the voice of an immortal,
may be spoken upon pure notes which are carefully
recorded and learned as if they were the notes of a
song. Whatever method one adopts one must always
be certain that the work of art, as a whole, is masculine
and intellectual, in its sound as in its form.</p>

<p><i>Third.</i> We must simplify acting, especially in poetical
drama, and in prose drama that is remote from real
life like my <i>Hour-Glass</i>. We must get rid of everything
that is restless, everything that draws the attention
away from the sound of the voice, or from the
few moments of intense expression, whether that
expression is through the voice or through the hands;
we must from time to time substitute for the movements
that the eye sees the nobler movements that
the heart sees, the rhythmical movements that seem
to flow up into the imagination from some deeper
life than that of the individual soul.</p>

<p><i>Fourth.</i> Just as it is necessary to simplify gesture
that it may accompany speech without being its rival,
it is necessary to simplify both the form and colour
of scenery and costume. As a rule the background
should be but a single colour, so that the persons in
the play, wherever they stand, may harmonize with
it and preoccupy our attention. In other words, it
should be thought out not as one thinks out a landscape,
but as if it were the background of a portrait,
and this is especially necessary on a small stage where
the moment the stage is filled the painted forms of
the background are broken up and lost. Even when
one has to represent trees or hills they should be
treated in most cases decoratively, they should be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
little more than an unobtrusive pattern. There must
be nothing unnecessary, nothing that will distract
the attention from speech and movement. An art is
always at its greatest when it is most human. Greek
acting was great because it did everything with the
voice, and modern acting may be great when it does
everything with voice and movement. But an art
which smothers these things with bad painting, with
innumerable garish colours, with continual restless
mimicries of the surface of life, is an art of fading
humanity, a decaying art.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span></p>

<h4>MORAL AND IMMORAL PLAYS.</h4>

<p>A writer in <i>The Leader</i> has said that I told my
audience after the performance of <i>The Hour-Glass</i>
that I did not care whether a play was moral or immoral.
He said this without discourtesy, and as I
have noticed that people are generally discourteous
when they write about morals, I think that I owe him
upon my part the courtesy of an explanation. I did
not say that I did not care whether a play was moral
or immoral, for I have always been of Verhaeren’s
opinion that a masterpiece is a portion of the conscience
of mankind. My objection was to the rough-and-ready
conscience of the newspaper and the pulpit
in a matter so delicate and so difficult as literature.
Every generation of men of letters has been called
immoral by the pulpit or the newspaper, and it has
been precisely when that generation has been illuminating
some obscure corner of the conscience that the
cry against it has been more confident.</p>

<p>The plays of Shakespeare had to be performed on
the south side of the Thames because the Corporation
of London considered all plays immoral. Goethe
was thought dangerous to faith and morals for two
or three generations. Every educated man knows
how great a portion of the conscience of mankind is
in Flaubert and Balzac, and yet their books have been
proscribed in the courts of law, and I found some
time ago that our own National Library, though it
had two books on the genius of Flaubert, had refused
on moral grounds to have any books written by him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
With these stupidities in one’s memory, how can one,
as many would have us, arouse the mob, and in this
matter the pulpit and the newspaper are but voices of
the mob, against the English theatre in Ireland upon
moral grounds? If that theatre became conscientious
as men of letters understand the conscience, many
that now cry against it would think it even less moral,
for it would be more daring, more logical, more
free-spoken. The English Theatre is demoralizing,
not because it delights in the husband, the wife and
the lover, a subject which has inspired great literature
in most ages of the world, but because the
illogical thinking and insincere feeling we call bad
writing, make the mind timid and the heart effeminate.
I saw an English play in Dublin a few months
ago called <i>Mice and Men</i>. It had run for five hundred
nights in London, and been called by all the newspapers
‘a pure and innocent play,’ ‘a welcome relief,’
and so on. In it occurred this incident: The typical
scapegrace hero of the stage, a young soldier, who is
in love with the wife of another, goes away for a
couple of years, and when he returns finds that he is
in love with a marriageable girl. His mistress, who
has awaited his return with what is represented as
faithful love, sends him a letter of welcome, and because
he has grown virtuous of a sudden he returns
it unopened, and with so careless a scorn that the
husband intercepts it; and the dramatist approves
this manner of crying off with an old love, and rings
down the curtain on his marriage bells. Men who
would turn such a man out of a club bring their wives
and daughters to look at him with admiration upon
the stage, so demoralizing is a drama that has no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
intellectual tradition behind it. I could not endure it,
and went out into the street and waited there until
the end of the play, when I came in again to find the
friends I had brought to hear it, but had I been accustomed
to the commercial theatre I would not even
have known that anything strange had happened upon
the stage. If a man of intellect had written of such an
incident he would have made his audience feel for the
mistress that sympathy one feels for all that have
suffered insult, and for that young man an ironical
emotion that might have marred the marriage bells,
and who knows what the curate and the journalist
would have said of him? Even Ireland would have
cried out: Catholic Ireland that should remember
the gracious tolerance of the Church when all nations
were its children, and how Wolfram of Eisenbach
sang from castle to castle of the courtesy of Parzival,
the good husband, and of Gawain, the light lover, in
that very Thuringia where a generation later the lap
of St. Elizabeth was full with roses. A Connaught
Bishop told his people a while since that they ‘should
never read stories about the degrading passion of
love,’ and one can only suppose that being ignorant
of a chief glory of his Church, he has never understood
that this new puritanism is but an English
cuckoo.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span></p>

<h4>AN IRISH NATIONAL THEATRE.</h4>

<div class="blockquot">

<p>[The performance of Mr. Synge’s <i>Shadow of the Glen</i>
started a quarrel with the extreme national party, and the
following paragraphs are from letters written in the play’s
defence. The organ of the party was at the time <i>The United
Irishman</i> (now <i>Sinn Fein</i>), but the first severe attack began in
<i>The Independent</i>. <i>The United Irishman</i>, however, took up
the quarrel, and from that on has attacked almost every play
produced at our theatre, and the suspicion it managed to arouse
among the political clubs against Mr. Synge especially led
a few years later to the organised attempt to drive <i>The Playboy
of the Western World</i> from the stage.]</p></div>

<p>When we were all fighting about the selection of
books for the New Irish Library some ten years ago, we
had to discuss the question, What is National Poetry?
In those days a patriotic young man would have
thought but poorly of himself if he did not believe
that <i>The Spirit of the Nation</i> was great lyric poetry,
and a much finer kind of poetry than Shelley’s <i>Ode
to the West Wind</i>, or Keats’s <i>Ode to a Grecian Urn</i>.
When two or three of us denied this, we were told
that we had effeminate tastes or that we were putting
Ireland in a bad light before her enemies. If one
said that <i>The Spirit of the Nation</i> was but salutary
rhetoric, England might overhear us and take up the
cry. We said it, and who will say that Irish literature
has not a greater name in the world to-day than
it had ten years ago?</p>

<p>To-day there is another question that we must
make up our minds about, and an even more pressing
one, What is a National Theatre? A man may
write a book of lyrics if he have but a friend or two
that will care for them, but he cannot write a good
play if there are not audiences to listen to it. If we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>
think that a national play must be as near as possible
a page out of <i>The Spirit of the Nation</i> put into dramatic
form, and mean to go on thinking it to the end, then
we may be sure that this generation will not see the
rise in Ireland of a theatre that will reflect the life of
Ireland as the Scandinavian theatre reflects the Scandinavian
life. The brazen head has an unexpected
way of falling to pieces. We have a company of
admirable and disinterested players, and the next few
months will, in all likelihood, decide whether a great
work for this country is to be accomplished. The
poetry of Young Ireland, when it was an attempt to
change or strengthen opinion, was rhetoric; but it
became poetry when patriotism was transformed into
a personal emotion by the events of life, as in that
lamentation written by Doheny on his keeping among
the hills. Literature is always personal, always one
man’s vision of the world, one man’s experience, and
it can only be popular when men are ready to welcome
the visions of others. A community that is
opinion-ridden, even when those opinions are in
themselves noble, is likely to put its creative minds
into some sort of a prison. If creative minds preoccupy
themselves with incidents from the political
history of Ireland, so much the better, but we must
not enforce them to select those incidents. If in the
sincere working-out of their plot, they alight on a
moral that is obviously and directly serviceable to
the National cause, so much the better, but we must
not force that moral upon them. I am a Nationalist,
and certain of my intimate friends have made Irish
politics the business of their lives, and this made
certain thoughts habitual with me, and an accident
made these thoughts take fire in such a way that I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
could give them dramatic expression. I had a very
vivid dream one night, and I made <i>Cathleen ni Houlihan</i>
out of this dream. But if some external necessity
had forced me to write nothing but drama with an
obviously patriotic intention, instead of letting my
work shape itself under the casual impulses of dreams
and daily thoughts, I would have lost, in a short
time, the power to write movingly upon any theme.
I could have aroused opinion; but I could not have
touched the heart, for I would have been busy at the
oakum-picking that is not the less mere journalism
for being in dramatic form. Above all, we must not
say that certain incidents which have been a part of
literature in all other lands are forbidden to us. It
may be our duty, as it has been the duty of many
dramatic movements, to bring new kinds of subjects
into the theatre, but it cannot be our duty to make
the bounds of drama narrower. For instance, we are
told that the English theatre is immoral, because it
is pre-occupied with the husband, the wife and the
lover. It is, perhaps, too exclusively pre-occupied with
that subject, and it is certain it has not shed any new
light upon it for a considerable time, but a subject
that inspired Homer and about half the great literature
of the world will, one doubts not, be a necessity
to our National Theatre also. Literature is, to my
mind, the great teaching power of the world, the
ultimate creator of all values, and it is this, not only
in the sacred books whose power everybody acknowledges,
but by every movement of imagination in
song or story or drama that height of intensity and
sincerity has made literature at all. Literature must
take the responsibility of its power, and keep all its
freedom: it must be like the spirit and like the wind
that blows where it listeth, it must claim its right to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
pierce through every crevice of human nature, and
to describe the relation of the soul and the heart to
the facts of life and of law, and to describe that relation
as it is, not as we would have it be, and in so
far as it fails to do this it fails to give us that foundation
of understanding and charity for whose lack
our moral sense can be but cruelty. It must be as
incapable of telling a lie as nature, and it must sometimes
say before all the virtues, ‘The greatest of these
is charity.’ Sometimes the patriot will have to falter
and the wife to desert her home, and neither be followed
by divine vengeance or man’s judgment. At
other moments it must be content to judge without
remorse, compelled by nothing but its own capricious
spirit that has yet its message from the foundation of
the world. Aristophanes held up the people of Athens
to ridicule, and even prouder of that spirit than of
themselves, they invited the foreign ambassadors to
the spectacle.</p>

<p>I would sooner our theatre failed through the indifference
or hostility of our audiences than gained
an immense popularity by any loss of freedom. I ask
nothing that my masters have not asked for, but I
ask all that they were given. I ask no help that would
limit our freedom from either official or patriotic
hands, though I am glad of the help of any who love
the arts so dearly that they would not bring them
into even honourable captivity. A good Nationalist
is, I suppose, one who is ready to give up a great
deal that he may preserve to his country whatever
part of her possessions he is best fitted to guard, and
that theatre where the capricious spirit that bloweth
as it listeth has for a moment found a dwelling-place,
has good right to call itself a National Theatre.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span></p>

<h4>THE THEATRE, THE PULPIT, AND THE
NEWSPAPERS.</h4>

<p>I was very well content when I read an unmeasured
attack in <i>The Independent</i> on the Irish National
Theatre. There had, as yet, been no performance,
but the attack was confident, and it was evident that
the writer’s ears were full of rumours and whisperings.
One knew that some such attack was inevitable,
for every dramatic movement that brought any new
power into literature arose among precisely these
misunderstandings and animosities. Drama, the most
immediately powerful form of literature, the most
vivid image of life, finds itself opposed, as no other
form of literature does, to those enemies of life, the
chimeras of the Pulpit and the Press. When a country
has not begun to care for literature, or has forgotten
the taste for it, and most modern countries seem to
pass through this stage, these chimeras are hatched
in every basket. Certain generalisations are everywhere
substituted for life. Instead of individual men
and women and living virtues differing as one star
differeth from another in glory, the public imagination
is full of personified averages, partisan fictions,
rules of life that would drill everybody into the one
posture, habits that are like the pinafores of charity-school
children. The priest, trained to keep his mind
on the strength of his Church and the weakness of
his congregation, would have all mankind painted
with a halo or with horns. Literature is nothing to
him, he has to remember that Seaghan the Fool<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
might take to drinking again if he knew of pleasant
Falstaff, and that Paudeen might run after Red Sarah
again if some strange chance put Plutarch’s tale of
Anthony or Shakespeare’s play into his hands, and
he is in a hurry to shut out of the schools that Pandora’s
box, <i>The Golden Treasury</i>. The newspaper he
reads of a morning has not only the haloes and horns
of the vestry, but it has crowns and fools’ caps of its
own. Life, which in its essence is always surprising,
always taking some new shape, always individualising,
is nothing to it, it has to move men in squads, to
keep them in uniform, with their faces to the right
enemy, and enough hate in their hearts to make the
muskets go off. It may know its business well, but
its business is building and ours is shattering. We
cannot linger very long in this great dim temple
where the wooden images sit all round upon thrones,
and where the worshippers kneel, not knowing
whether they tremble because their gods are dead or
because they fear they may be alive. In the idol-house
every god, every demon, every virtue, every
vice, has been given its permanent form, its hundred
hands, its elephant trunk, its monkey head. The man
of letters looks at those kneeling worshippers who
have given up life for a posture, whose nerves have
dried up in the contemplation of lifeless wood. He
swings his silver hammer and the keepers of the
temple cry out, prophesying evil, but he must not
mind their cries and their prophecies, but break the
wooden necks in two and throw down the wooden
bodies. Life will put living bodies in their place till
new image-brokers have set up their benches.</p>

<p>Whenever literature becomes powerful, the priest,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
whose forerunner imagined St. Patrick driving his
chariot-wheels over his own erring sister, has to acknowledge,
or to see others acknowledge, that there
is no evil that men and women may not be driven
into by their virtues all but as readily as by their
vices, and the politician, that it is not always clean
hands that serve a country or foul hands that ruin it.
He may even have to say at last, as an old man who
had spent many years in prison to serve a good cause
said to me, ‘There never was a cause so evil that it
has not been served by good men for what seemed
to them sufficient reasons.’ And if the priest or the
politician should say to the man of letters, ‘Into how
dangerous a state of mind are you not bringing us?’
the man of letters can but answer, ‘It is dangerous,
indeed,’ and say, like my Seanchan, ‘When did we
promise safety?’</p>

<p>Thought takes the same form age after age, and
the things that people have said to me about this intellectual
movement of ours have, I doubt not, been
said in every country to every writer who was a disturber
of the old life. When <i>The Countess Cathleen</i>
was produced, the very girls in the shops complained
to us that to describe an Irishwoman as selling her
soul to the devil was to slander the country. The
silver hammer had threatened, as it seems, one of
those personifications of an average. Someone said
to me a couple of weeks ago, ‘If you put on the stage
any play about marriage that does not point its moral
clearly, you will make it difficult for us to go on
attacking the English theatre for its immorality.’
Again, we were disordering the squads, the muskets
might not all point in the same direction.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span></p>

<p>Now that these opinions have found a leader and
a voice in <i>The Independent</i>, it is easy at anyrate to
explain how much one differs from them. I had
spoken of the capricious power of the artist and compared
it to the capricious movements of a wild
creature, and <i>The Independent</i>, speaking quite logically
from its point of view, tells me that these movements
were only interesting when ‘under restraint.’ The
writers of the Anglo-Irish movement, it says, ‘will
never consent to serve except on terms that never
could or should be conceded.’ I had spoken of the
production of foreign masterpieces, but it considers
that foreign masterpieces would be very dangerous.
I had asked in <i>Samhain</i> for audiences sufficiently
tolerant to enable the half-dozen minds who are
likely to be the dramatic imagination of Ireland for
this generation to put their own thought and their
own characters into their work. That is to say, I had
asked for the amount of freedom which every nation
has given to its dramatic writers. But the newspaper
hopes and believes that no ‘such tolerance will be
extended to Mr. Yeats and his friends.’</p>

<p>I have written these lines to explain our thoughts
and intentions to many personal friends, who live too
deep in the labour of politics to give the thought to
these things that we have given, and because not only
in our theatre, but in all matters of national life, we
have need of a new discovery of life—of more precise
thought, of a more perfect sincerity. I would see, in
every branch of our National propaganda, young
men who would have the sincerity and the precision
of those Russian revolutionists that Kropotkin and
Stepniak tell us of, men who would never use an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
argument to convince others which would not convince
themselves, who would not make a mob drunk
with a passion they could not share, and who would
above all seek for fine things for their own sake,
and for precise knowledge for its own sake, and not
for its momentary use. One can serve one’s country
alone out of the abundance of one’s own heart, and
it is labour enough to be certain one is in the right,
without having to be certain that one’s thought is
expedient also.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span></p>


<h3>1904<br />

THE DRAMATIC MOVEMENT</h3>

<p class="unindent">The National Theatre Society has had great difficulties
because of the lack of any suitable playhouse.
It has been forced to perform in halls without
proper lighting for the stage, and almost without
dressing-rooms, and with level floors in the auditorium
that prevented all but the people in the front
row from seeing properly. These halls are expensive
too, and the players of poetical drama in an age
of musical comedy have light pockets. But now a
generous English friend, Miss Horniman, has rearranged
and in part re-built, at very considerable
expense, the old Mechanic’s Institute Theatre, now
the Abbey Theatre, and given us the use of it without
any charge, and I need not say that she has gained
our gratitude, as she will gain the gratitude of our
audience. The work of decoration and alteration has
been done by Irishmen, and everything, with the exception
of some few things that are not made here,
or not of a good enough quality, has been manufactured
in Ireland. The stained glass in the entrance
hall is the work of Miss Sarah Purser and her apprentices,
the large copper mirror frames are from the new
metal works at Youghal, and the pictures of some of
our players are by an Irish artist. These details and
some details of form and colour in the building, as a
whole, have been arranged by Miss Horniman
herself.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span></p>

<p>Having been given the free use of this Theatre,
we may look upon ourselves as the first endowed
Theatre in any English-speaking country, the English-speaking
countries and Venezuela being the only
countries which have never endowed their theatres;
but the correspondents who write for parts in our
plays or posts in the Theatre at a salary are in error.
We are, and must be for some time to come, contented
to find our work its own reward, the player
giving<a name="FNanchor_G_7" id="FNanchor_G_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_G_7" class="fnanchor">[G]</a> his work, and the playwright his, for nothing;
and though this cannot go on always, we start our
winter very cheerfully with a capital of some forty
pounds. We playwrights can only thank these players,
who have given us the delight of seeing our work
so well performed, working with so much enthusiasm,
with so much patience, that they have
found for themselves a lasting place among the
artists, the only aristocracy that has never been sold
in the market or seen the people rise up against it.</p>

<p>It is a necessary part of our plan to find out how
to perform plays for little money, for it is certain
that every increase in expenditure has lowered the
quality of dramatic art itself, by robbing the dramatist
of freedom in experiment, and by withdrawing attention
from his words and from the work of the players.
Sometimes one friend or another has helped us with
costumes or scenery, but the expense has never been
very great, ten or twenty pounds being enough in
most cases for quite a long play. These friends
have all accepted the principles I have explained from
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>time to time in <i>Samhain</i>, but they have interpreted
them in various ways according to their temperament.</p>

<p>Miss Horniman staged <i>The King’s Threshold</i> at
her own expense, and she both designed and made
the costumes. The costumes for the coming performances
of <i>On Baile’s Strand</i> are also her work
and her gift and her design. She made and paid for
the costumes in <i>The Shadowy Waters</i>, but in this case
followed a colour-scheme of mine. The colour-scheme
in <i>The Hour-Glass</i>, our first experiment, was
worked out by Mr. Robert Gregory and myself, and
the costumes were made by Miss Lavelle, a member
of the company; while Mr. Robert Gregory has
designed the costumes and scenery for <i>Kincora</i>. As
we gradually accumulate costumes in all the main
colours and shades, we will be able to get new effects
by combining them in different ways without buying
new ones. Small dramatic societies, and our example
is beginning to create a number, not having so many
friends as we have, might adopt a simpler plan, suggested
to us by a very famous decorative artist. Let
them have one suit of clothes for a king, another for
a queen, another for a fighting-man, another for a
messenger, and so on, and if these clothes are loose
enough to fit different people, they can perform any
romantic play that comes without new cost. The
audience would soon get used to this way of symbolising,
as it were, the different ranks and classes of
men, and as the king would wear, no matter what
the play might be, the same crown and robe, they
could have them very fine in the end. Now, one
wealthy theatre-goer and now another might add a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
pearl to the queen’s necklace, or a jewel to her
crown, and be the more regular in attendance at the
theatre because that gift shone out there like a good
deed.</p>

<p>We can hardly do all we hope unless there are
many more of these little societies to be centres of
dramatic art and of the allied arts. But a very few
actors went from town to town in ancient Greece,
finding everywhere more or less well trained singers
among the principal townsmen to sing the chorus
that had otherwise been the chief expense. In the
days of the stock companies two or three well-known
actors would go from town to town finding actors
for all the minor parts in the local companies. If we
are to push our work into the small towns and villages,
local dramatic clubs must take the place of the
old stock companies. A good-sized town should be
able to give us a large enough audience for our
whole, or nearly our whole, company to go there;
but the need for us is greater in those small towns
where the poorest kind of farce and melodrama have
gone and Shakespearean drama has not gone, and it
is here that we will find it hardest to get intelligent
audiences. If a dramatic club existed in one of the
larger towns near, they could supply us not only with
actors, should we need them, in their own town, but
with actors when we went to the small towns and to
the villages where the novelty of any kind of drama
would make success certain. These clubs would play
in Gaelic far better than we can hope to, for they
would have native Gaelic speakers, and should we
succeed in stirring the imagination of the people
enough to keep the rivalry between plays in English<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>
and Irish to a rivalry in quality, the certain development
of two schools with distinct though very kindred
ideals would increase the energy and compass of our art.</p>

<p>At a time when drama was more vital than at
present, unpaid actors, and actors with very little
training, have influenced it deeply. The Mystery
Plays and the Miracle Plays got their players at no
great distance from the Church door, and the classic
drama of France had for a forerunner performances
of Greek and Latin Classics, given by students and
people of quality, and even at its height Racine wrote
two of his most famous tragedies to be played by
young girls at school. This was before acting had
got so far away from our natural instincts of expression.
When the play is in verse, or in rhythmical
prose, it does not gain by the change, and a company
of amateurs, if they love literature, and are not self-conscious,
and really do desire to do well, can often
make a better hand of it than the ordinary professional
company.</p>

<p>The greater number of their plays will, in all likelihood,
be comedies of Irish country life, and here
they need not fear competition, for they will know
an Irish countryman as no professional can know him;
but whatever they play, they will have one advantage
the English amateur has not: there is in their blood
a natural capacity for acting, and they have never,
like him, become the mimics of well-known actors.
The arts have always lost something of their sap
when they have been cut off from the people as a
whole; and when the theatre is perfectly alive, the
audience, as at the Gaelic drama to-day in Gaelic-speaking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
districts, feels itself to be almost a part of
the play. I have never felt that the dignity of art
was imperilled when the audience at Dr. Hyde’s <i>An
Posadh</i> cheered the bag of flour or the ham lent by
some local shopkeepers to increase the bridal gifts.
It was not merely because of its position in the play
that the Greek chorus represented the people, and
the old ballad singers waited at the end of every verse
till their audience had taken up the chorus; while
Ritual, the most powerful form of drama, differs from
the ordinary form, because everyone who hears it is
also a player. Our modern theatre, with the seats
always growing more expensive, and its dramatic art
drifting always from the living impulse of life, and
becoming more and more what Rossetti would have
called ‘soulless self-reflections of man’s skill,’ no
longer gives pleasure to any imaginative mind. It is
easy for us to hate England in this country, and we
give that hatred something of nobility if we turn it
now and again into hatred of the vulgarity of commercial
syndicates, of all that commercial finish and
pseudo-art she has done so much to cherish. Mr.
Standish O’Grady has quoted somebody as saying
‘the passions must be held in reverence, they must
not, they cannot be excited at will,’ and the noble
using of that old hatred will win for us sympathy and
attention from all artists and people of good taste,
and from those of England more than anywhere, for
there is the need greatest.</p>

<p>Before this part of our work can be begun, it will be
necessary to create a household of living art in Dublin,
with principles that have become habits, and a public<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>
that has learnt to care for a play because it is a play,
and not because it is serviceable to some cause. Our
patent is not so wide as we had hoped for, for we had
hoped to have a patent as little restricted as that of the
Gaiety or the Theatre Royal. We were, however, vigorously
opposed by these theatres and by the Queen’s
Theatre, and the Solicitor-General, to meet them half
way, has restricted our patent to plays written by Irishmen
or on Irish subjects or to foreign masterpieces,
provided these masterpieces are not English. This
has been done to make our competition against the
existing theatres as unimportant as possible. It does
not directly interfere with the work of our society to
any serious extent, but it would have indirectly helped
our work had such bodies as the Elizabethan Stage
Society, which brought <i>Everyman</i> to Dublin some
years ago, been able to hire the theatre from Miss
Horniman, when it is not wanted by us, and to perform
there without the limitations imposed by a
special license.</p>

<p>Everything that creates a theatrical audience is an
advantage to us, and the small number of seats in
our theatre would have kept away that kind of drama,
in whatever language, which spoils an audience for
good work.</p>

<p>The enquiry itself was not a little surprising, for
the legal representatives of the theatres, being the
representatives of Musical Comedy, were very anxious
for the morals of the town. I had spoken of the
Independent Theatre, and a lawyer wanted to know
if a play of mine which attacked the institution of
marriage had not been performed by it recently. I
had spoken of M. Maeterlinck and of his indebtedness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
to a theatre somewhat similar to our own,
and one of our witnesses, who knew no more about
it than the questioner, was asked if a play by M.
Maeterlinck called <i>L’Intruse</i> had not been so immoral
that it was received with a cry of horror in
London. I have written no play about marriage, and
the Independent Theatre died some twelve years
ago, and <i>L’Intruse</i> might be played in a nursery with
no worse effects than a little depression of spirits.
Our opponents having thus protested against our
morals, went home with the fees of Musical Comedy
in their pockets.</p>

<p>For all this, we are better off so far as the law is concerned
than we would be in England. The theatrical
law of Ireland was made by the Irish Parliament, and
though the patent system, the usual method of the
time, has outlived its use and come to an end everywhere
but in Ireland, we must be grateful to that
ruling caste of free spirits, that being free themselves
they left the theatre in freedom. In England there is
a censor, who forbids you to take a subject from the
Bible, or from politics, or to picture public characters,
or certain moral situations which are the foundation
of some of the greatest plays of the world. When I
was at the great American Catholic University of
Notre-Dame I heard that the students had given a
performance of <i>Œdipus the King</i>, and <i>Œdipus the King</i>
is forbidden in London. A censorship created in the
eighteenth century by Walpole, because somebody
had written against election bribery, has been distorted
by a puritanism, which is not the less an English
invention for being a pretended hatred of vice and a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
real hatred of intellect. Nothing has ever suffered
so many persecutions as the intellect, though it is
never persecuted under its own name. It is but according
to old usage when a law that cherishes Musical
Comedy and permits to every second melodrama the
central situation of <i>The Sign of the Cross</i>, attempted
rape, becomes one of the secondary causes of the
separation of the English Theatre from life. It does
not interfere with anything that makes money, and
Musical Comedy, with its hints and innuendoes, and
its consistently low view of life, makes a great deal,
for money is always respectable; but would a group
of artists and students see once again the masterpieces
of the world, they would have to hide from the
law as if they had been a school of thieves; or were
we to take with us to London that beautiful Nativity
Play of Dr. Hyde’s, which was performed in Sligo
Convent a few months ago, that holy vision of the
central story of the world, as it is seen through the
minds and the traditions of the poor, the constables
might upset the cradle. And yet it is precisely these
stories of The Bible that have all to themselves, in
the imagination of English people, especially of the
English poor, the place they share in this country
with the stories of Fion and of Oisin and of Patrick.</p>

<p>Milton set the story of Sampson into the form of
a Greek play, because he knew that Sampson was,
in the English imagination, what Herakles was in the
imagination of Greece; and I have never been able to
see any other subjects for an English Dramatist who
looked for some common ground between his own
mind and simpler minds. An English poet of genius
once told me that he would have tried his hand in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
plays for the people, if they knew any story the
censor would pass, except Jack and the Beanstalk.</p>

<p>The Gaelic League has its great dramatic opportunity
because of the abundance of stories known in
Irish-speaking districts, and because of the freedom
of choice and of treatment the leaders of a popular
movement can have if they have a mind for it. The
Gaelic plays acted and published during the year
selected their subjects from the popular mind, but the
treatment is disappointing. Dr. Hyde, dragged from
gathering to gathering by the necessities of the movement,
has written no new play; and Father Peter
O’Leary has thrown his dramatic power, which is
remarkable, into an imaginative novel. Father Dineen
has published a little play that has some life-like
dialogue, but the action is sometimes irrelevant, and
the motives of the principal character are vague and
confused, as if it were written in a hurry. Father
Dineen seems to know that he has not done his best,
for he describes it as an attempt to provide more vivid
dialogue for beginners than is to be found in the
reading-books rather than a drama. An anonymous
writer has written a play called <i>The Money of the
Narrow Cross</i>, which tells a very simple tale, like that
of a child’s book, simply and adequately. It is very
slight, in low relief as it were, but if its writer is a
young man it has considerable promise.</p>

<p>A Play called <i>Seaghan na Scuab</i> was described in
the <i>United Irishman</i> as the best play ever written in
Irish; but though the subject of it is a dramatic old
folk-tale, which has shown its vigour by rooting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
itself in many countries, the treatment is confused
and conventional and there is a flatness of dialogue
unusual in these plays. There is, however, an occasional
sense of comic situation which may come to
something if its writer will work seriously at his craft.
One is afraid of quenching the smoking flax, but this
play was selected for performance at the <i>Oireachtas</i>
before a vast audience in the Rotunda. It was accompanied
by <i>The Doctor</i> in English and Irish, written by
Mr. O’Beirne, and performed by the Tawin players,
who brought it from their seaside village in Galway.
Mr. O’Beirne deserves the greatest praise for getting
this company together, as well as for all he has done
to give the Tawin people a new pleasure in their
language; but I think a day will come when he will
not be grateful to the <i>Oireachtas</i> Committee for bringing
this first crude work of his into the midst of so
many thousand people. It would be very hard for a
much more experienced dramatist to make anything
out of the ugly violence, the threadbare, second-hand
imaginations that flow in upon one out of the
newspapers, when one has founded one’s work on
proselytizing zeal, instead of one’s experience of life
and one’s curiosity about it. These two were the
only plays, out of a number that have been played in
Irish, that I have seen this year. I went to Galway
Feis, like many others, to see Dr. Hyde’s <i>Lost Saint</i>,
for I had missed every performance of it hitherto
though I had read it to many audiences in America,
and I awaited the evening with some little excitement.
Although the <i>Lost Saint</i> was on the programme, an
Anti-Emigration play was put in its place. I did not
wait for this, but, whatever its merits, it is not likely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
to have contained anything so beautiful as the old
man’s prayer in the other: ‘O Lord, O God, take
pity on this little soft child. Put wisdom in his head,
cleanse his heart, scatter the mist from his mind and
let him learn his lessons like the other boys. O Lord,
Thou wert Thyself young one time; take pity on
youth. O Lord, Thou, Thyself, shed tears; dry the
tears of this little lad. Listen, O Lord, to the prayer
of Thy servant, and do not keep from him this little
thing he is asking of Thee. O Lord, bitter are the
tears of a child, sweeten them: deep are the thoughts
of a child, quiet them: sharp is the grief of a child,
take it from him: soft is the heart of a child, do not
harden it.’</p>

<p>A certain number of propagandist plays are unavoidable
in a popular movement like the Gaelic
revival, but they may drive out everything else. The
plays, while Father Peter O’Leary and Father Dineen
and Dr. Hyde were the most popular writers and the
chief influence, were full of the traditional folk-feeling
that is the mastering influence in all old Irish literature.
Father O’Leary chose for his subjects a traditional
story of a trick played upon a simple villager, a
sheep-stealer frightened by what seemed to him a
ghost, the quarrels between Maeve and Aleel of
Cruachan; Father Dineen chose for his a religious
crisis, alive as with the very soul of tragedy, or a well
sacred to the fairies; while Dr. Hyde celebrated old
story-tellers and poets, and old saints, and the Mother
of God with the countenance she wears in Irish eyes.
Hundreds of men scattered through the world, angry
at the spectacle of modern vulgarity, rejoiced in this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
movement, for it seemed impossible for anything
begun in so high a spirit, so inspired by whatever is
ancient, or simple, or noble, to sink into the common
base level of our thought. This year one has heard
little of the fine work, and a great deal about plays
that get an easy cheer, because they make no discoveries
in human nature, but repeat the opinions
of the audience, or the satire of its favourite newspapers.
I am only speaking of the plays of a year,
and that is but a short period in what one hopes may
be a great movement, but it is not wise to say, as do
many Gaelic Leaguers, who know the weaknesses of
their movement, that if the present thinks but of
grammar and propaganda the future will do all the
rest. A movement will often in its first fire of
enthusiasm create more works of genius than whole
easy-going centuries that come after it.</p>

<p>Nearly everything that is greatest as English prose
was written in a generation or two after the first
beautiful use of prose in England: and Mistral has
made the poems of modern Provençe, as well as
reviving and all but inventing the language: for
genius is more often of the spring than of the middle
green of the year. We cannot settle times and seasons,
flowering-time and harvest-time are not in our hands,
but we are to blame if genius comes and we do not
gather in the fruit or the blossom. Very often we
can do no more for the man of genius than to distract
him as little as may be with the common business of
the day. His own work is more laborious than any
other, for not only is thought harder than action, as
Goethe said, but he must brood over his work so
long and so unbrokenly that he find there all his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
patriotism, all his passion, his religion even—it is not
only those that sweep a floor that are obedient to
heaven—until at last he can cry with Paracelsus, ‘In
this crust of bread I have found all the stars and all
the heavens.’</p>

<p>The following new plays were produced by the
National Theatre Society during the last twelve
months:—<i>The Shadow of the Glen</i> and <i>Riders to the
Sea</i>, by Mr. J. M. Synge; <i>Broken Soil</i>, by Mr. Colm;
<i>The Townland of Tamney</i>, by Mr. Seumas MacManus;
<i>The Shadowy Waters</i> and <i>The King’s Threshold</i>, by
myself. The following plays were revived:—<i>Deirdre</i>,
by A.E.; <i>Twenty-five</i>, by Lady Gregory; <i>Cathleen ni
Houlihan</i>, <i>The Pot of Broth</i>, and <i>The Hour-Glass</i>, by
myself. We could have given more plays, but difficulties
about the place of performance, the shifting of
scenery from where we rehearsed to where we acted,
and so on, always brought a great deal of labour upon
the Society. The Society went to London in March
and gave two performances at The Royalty to full
houses. They played there Mr. Synge’s two plays,
Mr. Colm’s play, and my <i>King’s Threshold</i> and <i>Pot of
Broth</i>. We were commended by the critics with
generous sympathy, and had an enthusiastic and
distinguished audience.</p>

<p>We have many plays awaiting performance during
the coming winter. Mr. Synge has written us a play
in three acts called <i>The Well of the Saints</i>, full, as few
works of our time are, with temperament, and of a
true and yet bizarre beauty. Lady Gregory has written
us an historical tragedy in three acts about King Brian<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
and a very merry comedy of country life. Mr. Bernard
Shaw has written us a play<a name="FNanchor_H_8" id="FNanchor_H_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_H_8" class="fnanchor">[H]</a> in four acts, his first experiment
in Irish satire; Mr. Tarpey, an Irishman
whose comedy <i>Windmills</i> was successfully prepared
by the Stage Society some years ago, a little play
which I have not yet seen; and Mr. Boyle, a village
comedy in three acts; and I hear of other plays by
competent hands that are coming to us. My own
<i>Baile’s Strand</i> is in rehearsal, and I hope to have ready
for the spring a play on the subject of <i>Deirdre</i>, with
choruses somewhat in the Greek manner. We are,
of course, offered from all parts of the world great
quantities of plays which are impossible for literary
or dramatic reasons. Some of them have a look of
having been written for the commercial theatre and
of having been sent to us on rejection. It will save
trouble if I point out that a play which seems to its
writer to promise an ordinary London or New York
success is very unlikely to please us, or succeed with
our audience if it did. Writers who have a better
ambition should get some mastery of their art in little
plays before spending many months of what is almost
sure to be wasted labour on several acts.</p>

<p>We were invited to play in the St. Louis Exhibition,
but thought that our work should be in Ireland
for the present, and had other reasons for refusing.</p>

<p>A Company, which has been formed in America by
Miss Witcherly, who played in <i>Everyman</i> during a
part of its tour in America, to take some of our plays
on tour, has begun with three one-act plays of mine,
<i>Cathleen ni Houlihan</i>, <i>The Hour-Glass</i>, and <i>The Land
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>of Heart’s Desire</i>. It announces on its circulars that
it is following the methods of our Theatre.</p>

<p>Though the commercial theatre of America is as
unashamedly commercial as the English, there is a
far larger audience interested in fine drama than here.
When I was lecturing in, I think, Philadelphia—one
town mixes with another in my memory at times—some
one told me that he had seen the <i>Duchess of
Malfi</i> played there by one of the old stock companies
in his boyhood; and <i>Everyman</i> has been far more of
a success in America than anywhere else. They have
numberless University towns each with its own
character and with an academic life animated by a
zeal and by an imagination unknown in these countries.
There is nearly everywhere that leaven of
highly-cultivated men and women so much more
necessary to a good theatrical audience to-day than
were ever Raleigh and Sidney, when the groundling
could remember the folk-songs and the imaginative
folk-life. The more an age is busy with temporary
things, the more must it look for leadership in
matters of art to men and women whose business or
whose leisure has made the great writers of the world
their habitual company. Literature is not journalism
because it can turn the imagination to whatever is
essential and unchanging in life.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span></p>

<h4>FIRST PRINCIPLES.</h4>

<p>Two Irish writers had a controversy a month ago,
and they accused one another of being unable to
think, with entire sincerity, though it was obvious to
uncommitted minds that neither had any lack of
vigorous thought. But they had a different meaning
when they spoke of thought, for the one, though in
actual life he is the most practical man I know,
meant thought as Paschal, as Montaigne, as Shakespeare,
or as, let us say, Emerson, understood it—a
reverie about the adventures of the soul, or of the
personality, or some obstinate questioning of the
riddle. Many who have to work hard always make
time for this reverie, but it comes more easily to the
leisured, and in this it is like a broken heart, which
is, a Dublin newspaper assured us lately, impossible
to a busy man. The other writer had in mind, when
he spoke of thought, the shaping energy that keeps
us busy, and the obstinate questionings he had most
respect for were, how to change the method of
government, how to change the language, how to
revive our manufactures, and whether it is the
Protestant or the Catholic that scowls at the other
with the darker scowl. Ireland is so poor, so misgoverned,
that a great portion of the imagination of
the land must give itself to a very passionate consideration
of questions like these, and yet it is precisely
these loud questions that drive away the reveries
that incline the imagination to the lasting work of
literature and give, together with religion, sweetness,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
and nobility, and dignity to life. We should desire
no more from these propagandist thinkers than that
they carry out their work, as far as possible, without
making it more difficult for those, fitted by Nature
or by circumstance for another kind of thought, to
do their work also; and certainly it is not well that
Martha chide at Mary, for they have the One Master
over them.</p>

<p>When one all but despairs, as one does at times,
of Ireland welcoming a National Literature in this
generation, it is because we do not leave ourselves
enough of time, or of quiet, to be interested in men
and women. A writer in <i>The Leader</i>, who is unknown
to me, elaborates this argument in an article full of
beauty and dignity. He is speaking of our injustice
to one another, and he says that we are driven into
injustice ‘not wantonly but inevitably, and at call
of the exacting qualities of the great things. Until
this latter dawning, the genius of Ireland has been
too preoccupied really to concern itself about men
and women; in its drama they play a subordinate
part, born tragic comedians though all the sons and
daughters of the land are. A nation is the heroic
theme we follow, a mourning, wasted land its moving
spirit; the impersonal assumes personality for us.’
When I wrote my <i>Countess Cathleen</i>, I thought, of
course, chiefly of the actual picture that was forming
before me, but there was a secondary meaning that
came into my mind continuously. ‘It is the soul of
one that loves Ireland,’ I thought, ‘plunging into
unrest, seeming to lose itself, to bargain itself away
to the very wickedness of the world, and to surrender<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
what is eternal for what is temporary,’ and I know
that this meaning seemed natural to others, for that
great orator, J. F. Taylor, who was not likely to
have searched very deeply into any work of mine,
for he cared little for mine, or, indeed, any modern
work, turned the play into such a parable in one of
his speeches.</p>

<p>There is no use being angry with necessary conditions,
or failing to see that a man who is busy with
some reform that can only be carried out in a flame
of energetic feeling, will not only be indifferent to
what seems to us the finer kind of thinking, but that
he will support himself by generalisations that seem
untrue to the man of letters. A little play, <i>The
Rising of the Moon</i>, which is in the present number
of <i>Samhain</i>, and is among those we are to produce
during the winter, has, for instance, roused the suspicions
of a very resolute leader of the people, who
has a keen eye for rats behind the arras. A Fenian
ballad-singer partly converts a policeman, and is it
not unwise under any circumstances to show a policeman
in so favourable a light? It is well known that
many of the younger policemen were Fenians: but
it is necessary that the Dublin crowds should be kept
of so high a heart that they will fight the police at
any moment. Are not morals greater than literature?
Others have objected to Mr. Synge’s <i>Shadow of the
Glen</i> because Irish women, being more chaste than
those of England and Scotland, are a valuable part
of our national argument. Mr. Synge should not,
it is said by some, have chosen an exception for the
subject of his play, for who knows but the English<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
may misunderstand him? Some even deny that such
a thing could happen at all, while others that know
the country better, or remember the statistics, say
that it could but should never have been staged. All
these arguments, by their methods even more than
by what they have tried to prove, misunderstand how
literature does its work. Men of letters have sometimes
said that the characters of a romance or of a
play must be typical. They mean that the character
must be typical of something which exists in all men
because the writer has found it in his own mind. It
is one of the most inexplicable things about human
nature that a writer, with a strange temperament, an
Edgar Allan Poe, let us say, made what he is by
conditions that never existed before, can create personages
and lyric emotions, which startle us by being
at once bizarre and an image of our own secret
thoughts. Are we not face to face with the microcosm,
mirroring everything in universal nature? It
is no more necessary for the characters created by a
romance writer, or a dramatist, to have existed before,
than for his own personality to have done so; characters
and personality alike, as is perhaps true in the
instance of Poe, may draw half their life not from
the solid earth but from some dreamy drug. This is
true even of historical drama, for it was Goethe, the
founder of the historical drama of Germany, who
said ‘we do the people of history the honour of
naming after them the creations of our own minds.’
All that a dramatic writer need do is to persuade us,
during the two hours’ traffic of the stage, that the
events of his play did really happen. He must
know enough of the life of his country, or of history,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
to create this illusion, but no matter how much he
knows, he will fail if his audience is not ready to give
up something of the dead letter. If his mind is full
of energy he will not be satisfied with little knowledge,
but he will be far more likely to alter incidents
and characters, wilfully even as it may seem, than to
become a literal historian. It was one of the complaints
against Shakespeare, in his own day, that he made
Sir John Falstaff out of a praiseworthy old Lollard
preacher. One day, as he sat over Holinshed’s History
of England, he persuaded himself that Richard the
Second, with his French culture, ‘his too great friendliness
to his friends,’ his beauty of mind, and his fall
before dry, repelling Bolingbroke, would be a good
image for an accustomed mood of fanciful, impracticable
lyricism in his own mind. The historical
Richard has passed away for ever and the Richard of
the play lives more intensely, it seems, than did ever
living man. Yet Richard the Second, as Shakespeare
made him, could never have been born before the
Renaissance, before the Italian influence, or even one
hour before the innumerable streams that flowed in
upon Shakespeare’s mind; the innumerable experiences
we can never know, brought Shakespeare to
the making of him. He is typical not because he ever
existed, but because he has made us know of something
in our own minds we had never known of had
he never been imagined.</p>

<p>Our propagandists have twisted this theory of the
men of letters into its direct contrary, and when
they say that a writer should make typical characters
they mean personifications of averages, of statistics,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
or even personified opinions, or men and women so
faintly imagined that there is nothing about them to
separate them from the crowd, as it appears to our
hasty eyes. We must feel that we could engage a
hundred others to wear the same livery as easily as
we could engage a coachman. We must never forget
that we are engaging them to be the ideal young
peasant, or the true patriot, or the happy Irish wife,
or the policeman of our prejudices, or to express
some other of those invaluable generalisations, without
which our practical movements would lose their
energy. Who is there that likes a coachman to be
too full of human nature, when he has his livery on?
No one man is like another, but one coachman should
be as like another as possible, though he may assert
himself a little when he meets the gardener. The
patriots would impose on us heroes and heroines,
like those young couples in the Gaelic plays, who
might all change brides or bridegrooms in the dance
and never find out the difference. The personifications
need not be true even, if they are about our
enemy, for it might be more difficult to fight out our
necessary fight if we remembered his virtue at wrong
moments; and might not Teig and Bacach, that are
light in the head, go over to his party?</p>

<p>Ireland is indeed poor, is indeed hunted by misfortune,
and has indeed to give up much that makes
life desirable and lovely, but is she so very poor that
she can afford no better literature than this? Perhaps
so, but if it is a Spirit from beyond the world that
decides when a nation shall awake into imaginative
energy, and no philosopher has ever found what
brings the moment, it cannot be for us to judge.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
It may be coming upon us now, for it is certain that
we have more writers who are thinking, as men of
letters understand thought, than we have had for a
century, and he who wilfully makes their work
harder may be setting himself against the purpose
of that Spirit.</p>

<p>I would not be trying to form an Irish National
Theatre if I did not believe that there existed in
Ireland, whether in the minds of a few people or of
a great number I do not know, an energy of thought
about life itself, a vivid sensitiveness as to the reality
of things, powerful enough to overcome all those
phantoms of the night. One thing calls up its
contrary, unreality calls up reality, and, besides, life
here has been sufficiently perilous to make men
think. I do not think it a national prejudice that
makes me believe we are a harder, a more masterful
race than the comfortable English of our time, and
that this comes from an essential nearness to reality
of those few scattered people who have the right to
call themselves the Irish race. It is only in the
exceptions, in the few minds, where the flame has
burnt as it were pure, that one can see the permanent
character of a race. If one remembers the men who
have dominated Ireland for the last hundred and
fifty years, one understands that it is strength of
personality, the individualizing quality in a man,
that stirs Irish imagination most deeply in the end.
There is scarcely a man who has led the Irish people,
at any time, who may not give some day to a great
writer precisely that symbol he may require for the
expression of himself. The critical mind of Ireland<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
is far more subjugated than the critical mind of
England by the phantoms and misapprehensions of
politics and social necessity, but the life of Ireland
has rejected them more resolutely. Indeed, it is in
life itself in England that one finds the dominion of
what is not human life.</p>

<p>We have no longer in any country a literature as
great as the literature of the old world, and that is
because the newspapers, all kinds of second-rate
books, the preoccupation of men with all kinds of
practical changes, have driven the living imagination
out of the world. I have read hardly any books
this summer but Cervantes and Boccaccio and some
Greek plays. I have felt that these men, divided
from one another by so many hundreds of years,
had the same mind. It is we who are different; and
then the thought would come to me, that has come
to me so often before, that they lived at times when
the imagination turned to life itself for excitement.
The world was not changing quickly about them.
There was nothing to draw their imagination from
the ripening of their fields, from the birth and death
of their children, from the destiny of their souls,
from all that is the unchanging substance of literature.
They had not to deal with the world in such great
masses that it could only be represented to their
minds by figures and by abstract generalisations.
Everything that their minds ran on came to them
vivid with the colour of the senses, and when they
wrote it was out of their own rich experience, and
they found their symbols of expression in things that
they had known all their life long. Their very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
words were more vigorous than ours, for their phrases
came from a common mint, from the market, or the
tavern, or from the great poets of a still older time.
It is the change, that followed the Renaissance and
was completed by newspaper government and the
scientific movement, that has brought upon us all
these phrases and generalisations, made by minds
that would grasp what they have never seen.
Yesterday I went out to see the reddening apples
in the garden, and they faded from my imagination
sooner than they would have from the imagination
of that old poet, who made the songs of the seasons
for the Fianna, or out of Chaucer’s, that celebrated
so many trees. Theories, opinions, these opinions
among the rest, flowed in upon me and blotted them
away. Even our greatest poets see the world with
preoccupied minds. Great as Shelley is, those theories
about the coming changes of the world, which he
has built up with so much elaborate passion, hurry
him from life continually. There is a phrase in
some old cabalistic writer about man falling into his
own circumference, and every generation we get
further away from life itself, and come more and
more under the influence which Blake had in his
mind when he said, ‘Kings and Parliament seem to
me something other than human life.’ We lose
our freedom more and more as we get away from
ourselves, and not merely because our minds are
overthrown by abstract phrases and generalisations,
reflections in a mirror that seem living, but because
we have turned the table of value upside down, and
believe that the root of reality is not in the centre but
somewhere in that whirling circumference. How can<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
we create like the ancients, while innumerable considerations
of external probability or social utility or
of what is becoming in so meritorious a person as
ourselves, destroy the seeming irresponsible creative
power that is life itself? Who to-day could set
Richmond’s and Richard’s tents side by side on the
battlefield, or make Don Quixote, mad as he was,
mistake a windmill for a giant in broad daylight?
And when I think of free-spoken Falstaff I know of
no audience, but the tinkers of the roadside, that
could encourage the artist to an equal comedy. The
old writers were content if their inventions had but
an emotional and moral consistency, and created out
of themselves a fantastic, energetic, extravagant art.
A Civilisation is very like a man or a woman, for it
comes in but a few years into its beauty and its
strength, and then, while many years go by, it gathers
and makes order about it, the strength and beauty
going out of it the while, until in the end it lies there
with its limbs straightened out and a clean linen cloth
folded upon it. That may well be, and yet we need
not follow among the mourners, for it may be, before
they are at the tomb, a messenger will run out of the
hills and touch the pale lips with a red ember, and
wake the limbs to the disorder and the tumult that
is life. Though he does not come, even so we will keep
from among the mourners and hold some cheerful
conversation among ourselves; for has not Virgil, a
knowledgeable man and a wizard, foretold that other
Argonauts shall row between cliff and cliff, and other
fair-haired Achæans sack another Troy?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span></p>

<p>Every argument carries us backwards to some
religious conception, and in the end the creative
energy of men depends upon their believing that they
have, within themselves, something immortal and
imperishable, and that all else is but as an image
in a looking-glass. So long as that belief is not a
formal thing, a man will create out of a joyful energy,
seeking little for any external test of an impulse that
may be sacred, and looking for no foundation outside
life itself. If Ireland could escape from those phantoms
of hers she might create, as did the old writers; for
she has a faith that is as theirs, and keeps alive in
the Gaelic traditions—and this has always seemed to
me the chief intellectual value of Gaelic—a portion
of the old imaginative life. When Dr. Hyde or
Father Peter O’Leary is the writer, one’s imagination
goes straight to the century of Cervantes, and, having
gone so far, one thinks at every moment that they
will discover his energy. It is precisely because of
this reason that one is indignant with those who
would substitute for the ideas of the folk-life the
rhetoric of the newspapers, who would muddy what
had begun to seem a fountain of life with the feet of
the mob. Is it impossible to revive Irish and yet to
leave the finer intellects a sufficient mastery over the
more gross, to prevent it from becoming, it may be,
the language of a Nation, and yet losing all that has
made it worthy of a revival, all that has made it a
new energy in the mind?</p>

<p>Before the modern movement, and while it was
but new, the ordinary man, whether he could read and
write or not, was ready to welcome great literature.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
When Ariosto found himself among the brigands,
they repeated to him his own verses, and the audience
in the Elizabethan Theatres must have been all but as
clever as an Athenian audience. But to-day we come
to understand great literature by a long preparation,
or by some accident of nature, for we only begin to
understand life when our minds have been purified
of temporary interests by study.</p>

<p>But if literature has no external test, how are we
to know that it is indeed literature? The only test
that nature gives, to show when we obey her, is that
she gives us happiness, and when we are no longer
obedient she brings us to pain sooner or later. Is it
not the same with the artist? The sign that she makes
to him is that happiness we call delight in beauty.
He can only convey this in its highest form after he
has purified his mind with the great writers of the
world; but their example can never be more than a
preparation. If his art does not seem, when it comes,
to be the creation of a new personality, in a few years
it will not seem to be alive at all. If he is a dramatist
his characters must have a like newness. If they could
have existed before his days, or have been imagined
before his day, we may be certain that the spirit of
life is not in them in its fulness. This is because art,
in its highest moments, is not a deliberate creation,
but the creation of intense feeling, of pure life; and
every feeling is the child of all past ages and would
be different if even a moment had been left out.
Indeed, is it not that delight in beauty, which tells
the artist that he has imagined what may never die,
itself but a delight in the permanent yet ever-changing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>
form of life, in her very limbs and lineaments? When
life has given it, has she given anything but herself?
Has she any other reward, even for the saints? If
one flies to the wilderness, is not that clear light that
falls about the soul when all irrelevant things have
been taken away, but life that has been about one
always, enjoyed in all its fulness at length? It is as
though she had put her arms about one, crying: ‘My
beloved, you have given up everything for me.’ If
a man spend all his days in good works till there is
no emotion in his heart that is not full of virtue, is
not the reward he prays for eternal life? The artist,
too, has prayers and a cloister, and if he do not turn
away from temporary things, from the zeal of the
reformer and the passion of revolution, that zealous
mistress will give him but a scornful glance.</p>

<p>What attracts one to drama is that it is, in the
most obvious way, what all the arts are upon a last
analysis. A farce and a tragedy are alike in this
that they are a moment of intense life. An action
is taken out of all other actions; it is reduced to its
simple form, or at anyrate to as simple a form as it
can be brought to without our losing the sense of
its place in the world. The characters that are
involved in it are freed from everything that is not
a part of that action; and whether it is, as in the
less important kinds of drama, a mere bodily activity,
a hair-breadth escape or the like, or as it is in the
more important kinds, an activity of the souls of the
characters, it is an energy, an eddy of life purified
from everything but itself. The dramatist must
picture life in action, with an unpreoccupied mind,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
as the musician pictures her in sound and the
sculptor in form.</p>

<p>But if this be true, has art nothing to do with
moral judgments? Surely it has, and its judgments
are those from which there is no appeal. The
character, whose fortune we have been called in to
see, or the personality of the writer, must keep our
sympathy, and whether it be farce or tragedy, we
must laugh and weep with him and call down
blessings on his head. This character who delights
us may commit murder like Macbeth, or fly the
battle for his sweetheart as did Antony, or betray his
country like Coriolanus, and yet we will rejoice in
every happiness that comes to him and sorrow at his
death as if it were our own. It is no use telling us
that the murderer and the betrayer do not deserve
our sympathy. We thought so yesterday, and we
still know what crime is, but everything has been
changed of a sudden; we are caught up into another
code, we are in the presence of a higher court.
Complain of us if you will, but it will be useless,
for before the curtain falls a thousand ages, grown
conscious in our sympathies, will have cried <i>Absolvo te</i>.
Blame if you will the codes, the philosophies, the
experiences of all past ages that have made us what
we are, as the soil under our feet has been made
out of unknown vegetations: quarrel with the
acorns of Eden if you will, but what has that to do
with us? We understand the verdict and not the
law; and yet there is some law, some code, some
judgment. If the poet’s hand had slipped, if Antony
had railed at Cleopatra in the tower, if Coriolanus<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
had abated that high pride of his in the presence of
death, we might have gone away muttering the Ten
Commandments. Yet may be we are wrong to speak
of judgment, for we have but contemplated life, and
what more is there to say when she that is all virtue,
the gift and the giver, the fountain whither all flows
again, has given all herself? If the subject of drama
or any other art, were a man himself, an eddy of
momentary breath, we might desire the contemplation
of perfect characters; but the subject of all art is
passion, the flame of life itself, and a passion can
only be contemplated when separated by itself,
purified of all but itself, and aroused into a perfect
intensity by opposition with some other passion, or it
may be with the law, that is the expression of the
whole whether of Church or Nation or external nature.
Had Coriolanus not been a law-breaker neither he
nor we had ever discovered, it may be, that noble
pride of his, and if we had not seen Cleopatra
through the eyes of so many lovers, would we have
known that soul of hers to be all flame, and wept at
the quenching of it? If we were not certain of law
we would not feel the struggle, the drama, but the
subject of art is not law, which is a kind of death,
but the praise of life, and it has no commandments
that are not positive.</p>

<p>But if literature does not draw its substance from
history, or anything about us in the world, what is
a National literature? Our friends have already told
us, writers for the Theatre in Abbey Street, that we
have no right to the name, some because we do not
write in Irish, and others because we do not plead<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
the National cause in our plays, as if we were writers
for the newspapers. I have not asked my fellow-workers
what they mean by the words National
literature, but though I have no great love for
definitions, I would define it in some such way as
this: It is the work of writers, who are moulded
by influences that are moulding their country, and
who write out of so deep a life that they are
accepted there in the end. It leaves a good deal
unsettled—was Rossetti an Englishman, or Swift
an Irishman?—but it covers more kinds of National
literature than any other I can think of. If one
says a National literature must be in the language
of the country, there are many difficulties. Should
it be written in the language that one’s country does
speak or the language that it ought to speak? Was
Milton an Englishman when he wrote in Latin or
Italian, and had we no part in Columbanus when he
wrote in Latin the beautiful sermon comparing life
to a highway and to a smoke? And then there is
Beckford, who is in every history of English literature,
and yet his one memorable book, a story of
Persia, was written in French.</p>

<p>Our theatre is of no great size, for though we know
that if we write well we shall find acceptance among
our countrymen in the end, we would think our
emotions were on the surface if we found a ready
welcome. Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman are
National writers of America, although the one had
his first true acceptance in France and the other in
England and Ireland. When I was a boy, six persons,
who, alone out of the whole world it may be, believed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
Walt Whitman a great writer, sent him a message of
admiration, and of those names four were English
and two Irish, my father’s and Prof. Dowden’s. It
is only in our own day that America has begun to
prefer him to Lowell, who is not a poet at all.</p>

<p>I mean by deep life that men must put into their
writing the emotions and experiences that have been
most important to themselves. If they say, ‘I will
write of Irish country people and make them charming
and picturesque like those dear peasants my great
grandmother used to put in the foreground of her
water-colour paintings,’ then they had better be satisfied
with the word ‘provincial.’ If one condescends
to one’s material, if it is only what a popular novelist
would call local colour, it is certain that one’s real
soul is somewhere else. Mr. Synge, upon the other
hand, who is able to express his own finest emotions
in those curious ironical plays of his, where, for all
that, by the illusion of admirable art, everyone seems
to be thinking and feeling as only countrymen could
think and feel, is truly a National writer, as Burns
was when he wrote finely and as Burns was not when
he wrote <i>Highland Mary</i> and <i>The Cotter’s Saturday
Night</i>.</p>

<p>A writer is not less National because he shows the
influence of other countries and of the great writers of
the world. No nation, since the beginning of history,
has ever drawn all its life out of itself. Even The Well
of English Undefiled, the Father of English Poetry
himself, borrowed his metres, and much of his way of
looking at the world, from French writers, and it is
possible that the influence of Italy was more powerful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
among the Elizabethan poets than any literary influence
out of England herself. Many years ago, when I was
contending with Sir Charles Gavan Duffy over what
seemed to me a too narrow definition of Irish
interests, Professor York Powell either said or wrote
to me that the creative power of England was always
at its greatest when her receptive power was greatest.
If Ireland is about to produce a literature that is
important to her, it must be the result of the influences
that flow in upon the mind of an educated Irishman
to-day, and, in a greater degree, of what came into
the world with himself. Gaelic can hardly fail to do
a portion of the work, but one cannot say whether it
may not be some French or German writer who will
do most to make him an articulate man. If he really
achieve the miracle, if he really make all that he has
seen and felt and known a portion of his own intense
nature, if he put it all into the fire of his energy, he
need not fear being a stranger among his own people
in the end. There never have been men more unlike
an Englishman’s idea of himself than Keats and
Shelley, while Campbell, whose emotion came out of
a shallow well, was very like that idea. We call certain
minds creative because they are among the moulders
of their nation and are not made upon its mould, and
they resemble one another in this only—they have
never been fore-known or fulfilled an expectation.</p>

<p>It is sometimes necessary to follow in practical
matters some definition which one knows to have but
a passing use. We, for instance, have always confined
ourselves to plays upon Irish subjects, as if no others
could be National literature. Our theatre inherits
this limitation from previous movements, which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
found it necessary and fruitful. Goldsmith and
Sheridan and Burke had become so much a part of
English life, were so greatly moulded by the movements
that were moulding England, that, despite
certain Irish elements that clung about them, we
could not think of them as more important to us than
any English writer of equal rank. Men told us that
we should keep our hold of them, as it were, for they
were a part of our glory; but we did not consider
our glory very important. We had no desire to turn
braggarts, and we did suspect the motives of our
advisers. Perhaps they had reasons, which were not
altogether literary, for thinking it might be well if
Irishmen of letters, in our day also, would turn their
faces to England. But what moved me always the
most, and I had something to do with forcing this
limitation upon our organisations, is that a new
language of expression would help to awaken a new
attitude in writers themselves, and that if our organisations
were satisfied to interpret a writer to his own
countrymen merely because he was of Irish birth, the
organisations would become a kind of trade union for
the helping of Irishmen to catch the ear of London
publishers and managers, and for upholding writers
who had been beaten by abler Englishmen. Let a
man turn his face to us, accepting the commercial
disadvantages that would bring upon him, and talk
of what is near to our hearts, Irish Kings and
Irish Legends and Irish Countrymen, and we would
find it a joy to interpret him. Our one philosophical
critic, Mr. John Eglinton, thinks we were very
arbitrary, and yet I would not have us enlarge our
practice. England and France, almost alone among<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
nations, have great works of literature which have
taken their subjects from foreign lands, and even in
France and England this is more true in appearance
than reality. Shakespeare observed his Roman crowds
in London, and saw, one doubts not, somewhere in
his own Stratford, the old man that gave Cleopatra
the asp. Somebody I have been reading lately finds
the Court of Louis the Fourteenth in Phèdre and
Andromaque. Even in France and England almost
the whole prose fiction professes to describe the life
of the country, often of the districts where its writers
have lived, for, unlike a poem, a novel requires so
much minute observation of the surface of life that
a novelist who cares for the illusion of reality will
keep to familiar things. A writer will indeed take
what is most creative out of himself, not from observation,
but experience, yet he must master a definite
language, a definite symbolism of incident and scene.
Flaubert explains the comparative failure of his
Salammbô by saying ‘one cannot frequent her.’ He
could create her soul, as it were, but he could not
tell with certainty how it would express itself before
Carthage fell to ruins. In the small nations which
have to struggle for their National life, one finds that
almost every creator, whether poet or novelist, sets
all his stories in his own country. I do not recollect
that Björnson ever wrote of any land but Norway,
and Ibsen, though he lived in exile for many years,
driven out by his countrymen, as he believed, carried
the little seaboard towns of Norway everywhere in
his imagination. So far as one can be certain of
anything, one may be certain that Ireland with her
long National struggle, her old literature, her unbounded<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
folk-imagination, will, in so far as her
literature is National at all, be more like Norway
than England or France.</p>

<p>If Literature is but praise of life, if our writers
are not to plead the National Cause, nor insist upon
the Ten Commandments, nor upon the glory of their
country, what part remains for it, in the common
life of the country? It will influence the life of the
country immeasurably more, though seemingly less,
than have our propagandist poems and stories. It
will leave to others the defence of all that can be
codified for ready understanding, of whatever is the
especial business of sermons, and of leading articles;
but it will bring all the ways of men before that
ancient tribunal of our sympathies. It will measure
all things by the measure not of things visible but
of things invisible. In a country like Ireland, where
personifications have taken the place of life, men
have more hate than love, for the unhuman is nearly
the same as the inhuman, but literature, which is a
part of that charity that is the forgiveness of sins,
will make us understand men no matter how little
they conform to our expectations. We will be more
interested in heroic men than in heroic actions, and
will have a little distrust for everything that can be
called good or bad in itself with a very confident
heart. Could we understand it so well, we will say,
if it were not something other than human life?
We will have a scale of virtues, and value most
highly those that approach the indefinable. Men
will be born among us of whom it is possible to say,
not ‘What a philanthropist,’ ‘What a patriot,’ ‘How<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
practical a man,’ but, as we say of the men of the
Renaissance, ‘What a nature,’ ‘How much abundant
life.’ Even at the beginning we will value qualities
more than actions, for these may be habit or accident;
and should we say to a friend, ‘You have advertised
for an English cook,’ or ‘I hear that you have no
clerks who are not of your own faith,’ or ‘You have
voted an address to the king,’ we will add to our
complaint, ‘You have been unpatriotic and I am
ashamed of you, but if you cease from doing any of
these things because you have been terrorized out
of them, you will cease to be my friend.’ We will
not forget how to be stern, but we will remember
always that the highest life unites, as in one fire, the
greatest passion and the greatest courtesy.</p>

<p>A feeling for the form of life, for the graciousness
of life, for the dignity of life, for the moving limbs
of life, for the nobleness of life, for all that cannot
be written in codes, has always been greatest among
the gifts of literature to mankind. Indeed, the
Muses being women, all literature is but their love-cries
to the manhood of the world. It is now one
and now another that cries, but the words are the
same—‘Love of my heart, what matter to me that
you have been quarrelsome in your cups, and have
slain many, and have given your love here and there?
It was because of the whiteness of your flesh and
the mastery in your hands that I gave you my love,
when all life came to me in your coming.’ And
then in a low voice that none may overhear—‘Alas!
I am greatly afraid that the more they cry against
you the more I love you.’<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span></p>

<p>There are two kinds of poetry, and they are co-mingled
in all the greatest works. When the tide
of life sinks low there are pictures, as in <i>The Ode
to a Grecian Urn</i> and in Virgil at the plucking of
the Golden Bough. The pictures make us sorrowful.
We share the poet’s separation from what he describes.
It is life in the mirror, and our desire for it is as the
desire of the lost souls for God; but when Lucifer
stands among his friends, when Villon sings his dead
ladies to so gallant a rhythm, when Timon makes
his epitaph, we feel no sorrow, for life herself has
made one of her eternal gestures, has called up into
our hearts her energy that is eternal delight. In
Ireland, where the tide of life is rising, we turn,
not to picture-making, but to the imagination of
personality—to drama, gesture.</p>

<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span></p>





<h4>THE PLAY, THE PLAYER, AND THE
SCENE.</h4>


<p>I have been asked to put into this year’s <i>Samhain</i>
Miss Horniman’s letter offering us the use of the
Abbey Theatre. I have done this, but as Miss
Horniman begins her letter by stating that she has
made her offer out of ‘great sympathy with the Irish
National Theatre Company as publicly explained
by Mr. Yeats on various occasions,’ she has asked
me to go more into detail as to my own plans and
hopes than I have done before. I think they are
the plans and hopes of my fellow dramatists, for we
are all of one movement, and have influenced one
another, and have in us the spirit of our time. I
discussed them all very shortly in last <i>Samhain</i>. And
I know that it was that <i>Samhain</i>, and a certain speech
I made in front of the curtain, that made Miss
Horniman entrust us with her generous gift. But
last <i>Samhain</i> is practically out of print, and my speech
has gone even out of my own memory. I will
repeat, therefore, much that I have said already, but
adding a good deal to it.</p>

<p><i>First.</i> Our plays must be literature or written in
the spirit of literature. The modern theatre has died
away to what it is because the writers have thought
of their audiences instead of their subject. An old
writer saw his hero, if it was a play of character; or
some dominant passion, if it was a play of passion,
like Phèdre or Andromaque, moving before him,
living with a life he did not endeavour to control. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
persons acted upon one another as they were bound
by their natures to act, and the play was dramatic,
not because he had sought out dramatic situations
for their own sake, but because will broke itself upon
will and passion upon passion. Then the imagination
began to cool, the writer began to be less alive, to
seek external aids, remembered situations, tricks of
the theatre, that had proved themselves again and
again. His persons no longer will have a particular
character, but he knows that he can rely upon the
incidents, and he feels himself fortunate when there is
nothing in his play that has not succeeded a thousand
times before the curtain has risen. Perhaps he has
even read a certain guide-book to the stage published
in France, and called ‘The Thirty-six Situations of
Drama.’ The costumes will be magnificent, the
actresses will be beautiful, the Castle in Spain will
be painted by an artist upon the spot. We will come
from his play excited if we are foolish, or can condescend
to the folly of others, but knowing nothing
new about ourselves, and seeing life with no new
eyes and hearing it with no new ears. The whole
movement of theatrical reform in our day has been
a struggle to get rid of this kind of play, and the
sincere play, the logical play, that we would have in its
place, will always seem, when we hear it for the first
time, undramatic, unexciting. It has to stir the heart
in a long disused way, it has to awaken the intellect to
a pleasure that ennobles and wearies. I was at the
first performance of an Ibsen play given in England.
It was <i>The Doll’s House</i>, and at the fall of the curtain
I heard an old dramatic critic say, ‘It is but a series
of conversations terminated by an accident.’ So far,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
we here in Dublin mean the same thing as do Mr.
Max Beerbohm, Mr. Walkley, and Mr. Archer, who
are seeking to restore sincerity to the English stage,
but I am not certain that we mean the same thing all
through. The utmost sincerity, the most unbroken
logic, give me, at any rate, but an imperfect pleasure
if there is not a vivid and beautiful language. Ibsen
has sincerity and logic beyond any writer of our
time, and we are all seeking to learn them at his
hands; but is he not a good deal less than the greatest
of all times, because he lacks beautiful and vivid
language? ‘Well, well, give me time and you shall
hear all about it. If only I had Peter here now,’ is
very like life, is entirely in its place where it comes,
and when it is united to other sentences exactly like
itself, one is moved, one knows not how, to pity and
terror, and yet not moved as if the words themselves
could sing and shine. Mr. Max Beerbohm wrote
once that a play cannot have style because the people
must talk as they talk in daily life. He was thinking,
it is obvious, of a play made out of that typically
modern life where there is no longer vivid speech.
Blake says that a work of art must be minutely
articulated by God or man, and man has too little
help from that occasional collaborateur when he writes
of people whose language has become abstract and
dead. Falstaff gives one the sensation of reality, and
when one remembers the abundant vocabulary of a
time when all but everything present to the mind
was present to the senses, one imagines that his words
were but little magnified from the words of such a
man in real life. Language was still alive then, alive
as it is in Gaelic to-day, as it is in English-speaking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
Ireland where the Schoolmaster or the newspaper
has not corrupted it. I know that we are at the
mere beginning, laboriously learning our craft, trying
our hands in little plays for the most part, that we
may not venture too boldly in our ignorance; but I
never hear the vivid, picturesque, ever-varied language
of Mr. Synge’s persons without feeling that
the great collaborateur has his finger in our business.
May it not be that the only realistic play that will
live as Shakespeare has lived, as Calderon has lived, as
the Greeks have lived, will arise out of the common
life, where language is as much alive as if it were
new come out of Eden? After all, is not the greatest
play not the play that gives the sensation of an
external reality but the play in which there is the
greatest abundance of life itself, of the reality that is
in our minds? Is it possible to make a work of art,
which needs every subtlety of expression if it is to
reveal what hides itself continually, out of a dying,
or at any rate a very ailing language? and all language
but that of the poets and of the poor is already bed-ridden.
We have, indeed, persiflage, the only speech
of educated men that expresses a deliberate enjoyment
of words: but persiflage is not a true language.
It is impersonal; it is not in the midst but on the
edge of life; it covers more character than it discovers:
and yet, such as it is, all our comedies are
made out of it.</p>

<p>What the ever-moving delicately-moulded flesh
is to human beauty, vivid musical words are to passion.
Somebody has said that every nation begins
with poetry and ends with algebra, and passion has
always refused to express itself in algebraical terms.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span></p>

<p>Have we not been in error in demanding from
our playwrights personages who do not transcend
our common actions any more than our common
speech? If we are in the right, all antiquity has
been in error. The scholars of a few generations
ago were fond of deciding that certain persons were
unworthy of the dignity of art. They had, it may
be, an over-abounding preference for kings and
queens, but we are, it may be, very stupid in thinking
that the average man is a fit subject at all for the
finest art. Art delights in the exception, for it
delights in the soul expressing itself according to its
own laws and arranging the world about it in its own
pattern, as sand strewn upon a drum will change
itself into different patterns, according to the notes
of music that are sung or played to it. But the
average man is average because he has not attained
to freedom. Habit, routine, fear of public opinion,
fear of punishment here or hereafter, a myriad of
things that are ‘something other than human life,’
something less than flame, work their will upon his
soul and trundle his body here and there. At the
first performance of <i>Ghosts</i> I could not escape from
an illusion unaccountable to me at the time. All
the characters seemed to be less than life-size; the
stage, though it was but the little Royalty stage,
seemed larger than I had ever seen it. Little
whimpering puppets moved here and there in the
middle of that great abyss. Why did they not speak
out with louder voices or move with freer gestures?
What was it that weighed upon their souls perpetually?
Certainly they were all in prison, and
yet there was no prison. In India there are villages<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>
so obedient that all the jailer has to do is to draw a
circle upon the ground with his staff, and to tell his
thief to stand there so many hours; but what law
had these people broken that they had to wander
round that narrow circle all their lives? May not
such art, terrible, satirical, inhuman, be the medicine
of great cities, where nobody is ever alone with his
own strength? Nor is Maeterlinck very different,
for his persons ‘enquire after Jerusalem in the
regions of the grave, with weak voices almost
inarticulate, wearying repose.’ Is it the mob that
has robbed those angelic persons of the energy of
their souls? Will not our next art be rather of the
country, of great open spaces, of the soul rejoicing
in itself? Will not the generations to come begin
again to have an over-abounding faith in kings and
queens, in masterful spirits, whatever names we call
them by? I had Molière with me on my way to
America, and as I read I seemed to be at home in
Ireland listening to that conversation of the people
which is so full of riches because so full of leisure,
or to those old stories of the folk which were made
by men who believed so much in the soul, and so
little in anything else, that they were never entirely
certain that the earth was solid under the foot-sole.
What is there left for us, that have seen the newly-discovered
stability of things changed from an enthusiasm
to a weariness, but to labour with a high
heart, though it may be with weak hands, to rediscover
an art of the theatre that shall be joyful, fantastic,
extravagant, whimsical, beautiful, resonant, and
altogether reckless? The arts are at their greatest
when they seek for a life growing always more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
scornful of everything that is not itself and passing
into its own fulness, as it were, ever more completely,
as all that is created out of the passing mode of
society slips from it; and attaining that fulness,
perfectly it may be—and from this is tragic joy and
the perfectness of tragedy—when the world itself
has slipped away in death. We, who are believers,
cannot see reality anywhere but in the soul itself,
and seeing it there we cannot do other than rejoice
in every energy, whether of gesture, or of action, or
of speech, coming out of the personality, the soul’s
image, even though the very laws of nature seem as
unimportant in comparison as did the laws of Rome
to Coriolanus when his pride was upon him. Has
not the long decline of the arts been but the shadow
of declining faith in an unseen reality?</p>

<div class="poetry-container">
  <div class="poetry">

<div class="verse">‘If the sun and moon would doubt,</div>
<div class="verse">They’d immediately go out.’</div>
</div>
</div>

<p><i>Second.</i> If we are to make a drama of energy, of
extravagance, of phantasy, of musical and noble
speech, we shall need an appropriate stage management.
Up to a generation or two ago, and to our
own generation, here and there, lingered a method
of acting and of stage-management, which had come
down, losing much of its beauty and meaning on the
way, from the days of Shakespeare. Long after
England, under the influence of Garrick, began the
movement towards Naturalism, this school had a
great popularity in Ireland, where it was established
at the Restoration by an actor who probably remembered
the Shakespearean players. France has
inherited from Racine and from Molière an equivalent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
art, and, whether it is applied to comedy or to tragedy,
its object is to give importance to the words. It is
not only Shakespeare whose finest thoughts are
inaudible on the English stage. Congreve’s <i>Way
of the World</i> was acted in London last Spring, and
revived again a month ago, and the part of Lady
Wishfort was taken by a very admirable actress, an
actress of genius who has never had the recognition
she deserves. There is a scene where Lady Wishfort
turns away a servant with many words. She cries—‘Go,
set up for yourself again, do; drive a trade, do,
with your three pennyworth of small ware, flaunting
upon a packthread under a brandy-seller’s bulk, or
against a dead wall by a ballad-monger; go, hang
out an old frisoneer-gorget, with a yard of yellow
colberteen again, do; an old gnawed mask, two
rows of pins, and a child’s fiddle; a glass necklace
with the beads broken, and a quilted nightcap with
one ear. Go, go, drive a trade.’ The conversation
of an older time, of Urquhart, the translator of
Rabelais, let us say, awakes with a little of its old
richness. The actress acted so much and so admirably
that when she first played it—I heard her better a
month ago, perhaps because I was nearer to the
stage—I could not understand a word of a passage
that required the most careful speech. Just as the
modern musician, through the over-development of
an art that seems exterior to the poet, writes so many
notes for every word that the natural energy of
speech is dissolved and broken and the words made
inaudible, so did this actress, a perfect mistress of
her own art, put into her voice so many different
notes, so run up and down the scale under an impulse<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>
of anger and scorn, that one had hardly been more
affronted by a musical setting. Everybody who has
spoken to large audiences knows that he must speak
difficult passages, in which there is some delicacy of
sound or of thought, upon one or two notes. The
larger his audience, the more he must get away,
except in trivial passages, from the methods of conversation.
Where one requires the full attention of
the mind, one must not weary it with any but the
most needful changes of pitch and note, or by an
irrelevant or obtrusive gesture. As long as drama
was full of poetical beauty, full of description, full of
philosophy, as long as its words were the very vesture
of sorrow and laughter, the players understood that
their art was essentially conventional, artificial, ceremonious.</p>

<p>The stage itself was differently shaped, being more
a platform than a stage, for they did not desire to
picture the surface of life, but to escape from it. But
realism came in, and every change towards realism
coincided with a decline in dramatic energy. The
proscenium was imported into England at the close
of the seventeenth century, appropriate costumes a
generation later. The audience were forbidden to
sit upon the stage in the time of Sheridan, the last
English-speaking playwright whose plays have lived.
And the last remnant of the platform, the part of the
stage that still projected beyond the proscenium,
dwindled in size till it disappeared in their own day.
The birth of science was at hand, the birth-pangs of
its mother had troubled the world for centuries.
But now that Gargantua is born at last, it may be
possible to remember that there are other giants.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span></p>

<p>We can never bring back old things precisely as
they were, but must consider how much of them is
necessary to us, accepting, even if it were only out of
politeness, something of our own time. The necessities
of a builder have torn from us, all unwilling as we
were, the apron, as the portion of the platform that
came in front of the proscenium used to be called,
and we must submit to the picture-making of the
modern stage. We would have preferred to be able
to return occasionally to the old stage of statue-making,
of gesture. On the other hand, one accepts,
believing it to be a great improvement, some appropriateness
of costume, but speech is essential to us.
An Irish critic has told us to study the stage-management
of Antoine, but that is like telling a good
Catholic to take his theology from Luther. Antoine,
who described poetry as a way of saying nothing, has
perfected naturalistic acting and carried the spirit of
science into the theatre. Were we to study his
methods, we might, indeed, have a far more perfect
art than our own, a far more mature art, but it is
better to fumble our way like children. We may
grow up, for we have as good hopes as any other
sturdy ragamuffin.</p>

<p>An actor must so understand how to discriminate
cadence from cadence, and so cherish the musical
lineaments of verse or prose, that he delights the ear
with a continually varied music. This one has to say
over and over again, but one does not mean that his
speaking should be a monotonous chant. Those who
have heard Mr. Frank Fay speaking verse will understand
me. That speech of his, so masculine and so
musical, could only sound monotonous to an ear that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
was deaf to poetic rhythm, and one should never, as
do London managers, stage a poetical drama according
to the desire of those who are deaf to poetical rhythm.
It is possible, barely so, but still possible, that some
day we may write musical notes as did the Greeks,
it seems, for a whole play, and make our actors speak
upon them—not sing, but speak. Even now, when
one wishes to make the voice immortal and passionless,
as in the Angel’s part in my <i>Hour-Glass</i>, one finds
it desirable for the player to speak always upon pure
musical notes, written out beforehand and carefully
rehearsed. On the one occasion when I heard the
Angel’s part spoken in this way with entire success,
the contrast between the crystalline quality of the
pure notes and the more confused and passionate
speaking of the Wise Man was a new dramatic effect
of great value.</p>

<p>If a song is brought into a play it does not matter
to what school the musician belongs if every word,
if every cadence, is as audible and expressive as if it
were spoken. It must be good speech, and one must
not listen to the musician if he promise to add
meaning to the words with his notes, for one does
not add meaning to the word ‘love’ by putting four o’s
in the middle, or by subordinating it even slightly to
a musical note. But where will one find a musician
so mild, so quiet, so modest, unless he be a sailor
from the forecastle or some ghost out of the twelfth
century? One must ask him for music that shall
mean nothing, or next to nothing, apart from the
words, and after all he is a musician.</p>

<p>When I heard the Æschylean Trilogy at Stratford-on-Avon
last spring I could not hear a word of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
chorus, except in a few lines here and there which
were spoken without musical setting. The chorus
was not without dramatic, or rather operatic effect;
but why should those singers have taken so much
trouble to learn by heart so much of the greatest
lyric poetry of Greece? ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star,’
or any other memory of their childhood, would have
served their turn. If it had been comic verse, the
singing-master and the musician would have respected
it, and the audience would have been able to hear.
Mr. Dolmetsch and Miss Florence Farr have been
working for some time to find out some way of
setting serious poetry which will enable us to hear
it, and the singer to sing sweetly and yet never to
give a word, a cadence, or an accent, that would not
be given it in ordinary passionate speech. It is
difficult, for they are trying to re-discover an art
that is only remembered or half-remembered in
ships and in hovels and among wandering tribes of
uncivilised men, and they have to make their experiment
with singers who have been trained by a
method of teaching that professes to change a human
being into a musical instrument, a creation of science,
‘something other than human life.’ In old days
the singer began to sing over the rocking cradle
or among the wine-cups, and it was as though life
itself caught fire of a sudden; but to-day the poet,
fanatic that he is, watches the singer go up on to the
platform, wondering and expecting every moment
that he will punch himself as if he were a bag. It is
certainly impossible to speak with perfect expression
after you have been a bagpipes for many years, even
though you have been making the most beautiful
music all the time.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span></p>

<p>The success of the chorus in the performance of
<i>Hippolytus</i> last Spring—I did not see the more recent
performance, but hear upon all hands that the chorus
was too large—the expressiveness of the greater
portion as mere speech, has, I believe, re-created the
chorus as a dramatic method. The greater portion
of the singing, as arranged by Miss Farr, even when
four or five voices sang together, though never when
ten sang together, was altogether admirable speech,
and some of it was speech of extraordinary beauty.
When one lost the meaning, even perhaps where the
whole chorus sang together, it was not because of a
defective method, but because it is the misfortune
of every new artistic method that we can only judge
of it through performers who must be for a long
time unpractised and amateurish. This new art has
a double difficulty, for the training of a modern singer
makes articulate speech, as a poet understands it,
nearly impossible, and those who are masters of
speech very often, perhaps usually, are poor musicians.
Fortunately, Miss Farr, who has some knowledge of
music, has, it may be, the most beautiful voice on
the English stage, and is in her management of it an
exquisite artist.</p>

<p>That we may throw emphasis on the words in
poetical drama, above all where the words are remote
from real life as well as in themselves exacting and
difficult, the actors must move, for the most part,
slowly and quietly, and not very much, and there
should be something in their movements decorative
and rhythmical as if they were paintings on a frieze.
They must not draw attention to themselves at wrong
moments, for poetry and indeed all picturesque<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>
writing is perpetually making little pictures which
draw the attention away for a second or two from
the player. The actress who played Lady Wishfort
should have permitted us to give a part of our attention
to that little shop or wayside booth. Then,
too, one must be content to have long quiet moments,
long grey spaces, long level reaches, as it were—the
leisure that is in all fine life—for what we may
call the business-will in a high state of activity is not
everything, although contemporary drama knows of
little else.</p>

<p><i>Third.</i> We must have a new kind of scenic art.
I have been the advocate of the poetry as against
the actor, but I am the advocate of the actor as
against the scenery. Ever since the last remnant of
the old platform disappeared, and the proscenium
grew into the frame of a picture, the actors have
been turned into a picturesque group in the foreground
of a meretricious landscape-painting. The
background should be of as little importance as the
background of a portrait-group, and it should, when
possible, be of one colour or of one tint, that the
persons on the stage, wherever they stand, may
harmonise with it or contrast with it and preoccupy
our attention. Their outline should be clear and
not broken up into the outline of windows and
wainscotting, or lost into the edges of colours. In
a play which copies the surface of life in its dialogue
one may, with this reservation, represent anything
that can be represented successfully—a room, for
instance—but a landscape painted in the ordinary
way will always be meretricious and vulgar. It will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
always be an attempt to do something which cannot
be done successfully except in easel painting, and the
moment an actor stands near to your mountain, or
your forest, one will perceive that he is standing
against a flat surface. Illusion, therefore, is impossible,
and should not be attempted. One should
be content to suggest a scene upon a canvas, whose
vertical flatness one accepts and uses, as the decorator
of pottery accepts the roundness of a bowl or a jug.
Having chosen the distance from naturalism, which
will keep one’s composition from competing with
the illusion created by the actor, who belongs to a
world with depth as well as height and breadth, one
must keep this distance without flinching. The
distance will vary according to the distance the playwright
has chosen, and especially in poetry, which is
more remote and idealistic than prose, one will insist
on schemes of colour and simplicity of form, for
every sign of deliberate order gives remoteness and
ideality. But, whatever the distance be, one’s treatment
will always be more or less decorative. We
can only find out the right decoration for the different
types of play by experiment, but it will probably
range between, on the one hand, woodlands made
out of recurring pattern, or painted like old religious
pictures upon gold background, and upon the other
the comparative realism of a Japanese print. This
decoration will not only give us a scenic art that will
be a true art because peculiar to the stage, but it will
give the imagination liberty, and without returning
to the bareness of the Elizabethan stage. The poet
cannot evoke a picture to the mind’s eye if a second-rate
painter has set his imagination of it before the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
bodily eye; but decoration and suggestion will
accompany our moods, and turn our minds to
meditation, and yet never become obtrusive or
wearisome. The actor and the words put into his
mouth are always the one thing that matters, and the
scene should never be complete of itself, should
never mean anything to the imagination until the
actor is in front of it.</p>

<p>If one remembers that the movement of the actor,
and the graduation and the colour of the lighting,
are the two elements that distinguish the stage picture
from an easel painting, one will not find it difficult
to create an art of the stage ranking as a true fine
art. Mr. Gordon Craig has done wonderful things
with the lighting, but he is not greatly interested in
the actor, and his streams of coloured direct light,
beautiful as they are, will always seem, apart from
certain exceptional moments, a new externality. One
should rather desire, for all but exceptional moments,
an even, shadowless light, like that of noon, and it
may be that a light reflected out of mirrors will give
us what we need.</p>

<p>M. Appia and M. Fortuni are making experiments
in the staging of Wagner for a private theatre in
Paris, but I cannot understand what M. Appia is
doing, from the little I have seen of his writing,
excepting that the floor of the stage will be uneven
like the ground, and that at moments the lights and
shadows of green boughs will fall over the player
that the stage may show a man wandering through a
wood, and not a wood with a man in the middle of
it. One agrees with all the destructive part of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
criticism, but it looks as if he himself is seeking, not
convention, but a more perfect realism. I cannot
persuade myself that the movement of life is flowing
that way, for life moves by a throbbing as of a pulse,
by reaction and action. The hour of convention and
decoration and ceremony is coming again.</p>

<p>The experiments of the Irish National Theatre
Society will have of necessity to be for a long time
few and timid, and we must often, having no money
and not a great deal of leisure, accept for a while
compromises, and much even that we know to be
irredeemably bad. One can only perfect an art very
gradually; and good playwriting, good speaking, and
good acting are the first necessity.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span></p>


<h3>1905</h3>

<p class="unindent"><span class="smcap">Our</span> first season at the Abbey Theatre has been
tolerably successful. We drew small audiences, but
quite as big as we had hoped for, and we end the
year with a little money. On the whole we have
probably more than trebled our audiences of the
Molesworth Hall. The same people come again and
again, and others join them, and I do not think we
lose any of them. We shall be under more expense
in our new season, for we have decided to pay some
of the company and send them into the provinces,
but our annual expenses will not be as heavy as the
weekly expenses of the most economical London
manager. Mr. Philip Carr, whose revivals of Elizabethan
plays and old comedies have been the finest
things one could see in a London theatre, spent three
hundred pounds and took twelve pounds during his
last week; but here in Ireland enthusiasm can do half
the work, and nobody is accustomed to get much
money, and even Mr. Carr’s inexpensive scenery
costs more than our simple decorations. Our staging
of <i>Kincora</i>, the work of Mr. Robert Gregory, was
beautiful, with a high, grave dignity and that strangeness
which Ben Jonson thought to be a part of all
excellent beauty, and the expense of scenery, dresses
and all was hardly above thirty pounds. If we find a
good scene we repeat it in other plays, and in course
of time we shall be able to put on new plays without
any expense for scenery at all. I do not think that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
even the most expensive decoration would increase
in any way the pleasure of an audience that comes to
us for the play and the acting.</p>

<p>We shall have abundance of plays, for Lady
Gregory has written us a new comedy besides her
<i>White Cockade</i>, which is in rehearsal; Mr. Boyle, a
satirical comedy in three acts; Mr. Colum has made a
new play out of his <i>Broken Soil</i>; and I have made
almost a new one out of my <i>Shadowy Waters</i>; and
Mr. Synge has practically finished a longer and more
elaborate comedy than his last. Since our start last
Christmas we have shown eleven plays created by our
movement and very varied in substance and form,
and six of these were new: <i>The Well of the Saints</i>,
<i>Kincora</i>, <i>The Building Fund</i>, <i>The Land</i>, <i>On Baile’s
Strand</i>, and <i>Spreading the News</i>.</p>

<p>One of our plays, <i>The Well of the Saints</i>, has been
accepted for immediate production by the Deutsches
Theatre of Berlin; and another, <i>The Shadow of the
Glen</i>, is to be played during the season at the National
Bohemian Theatre at Prague; and my own <i>Cathleen
ni Houlihan</i> has been translated into Irish and been
played at the Oireachtas, before an audience of
some thousands. We have now several dramatists
who have taken to drama as their most serious business,
and we claim that a school of Irish drama exists,
and that it is founded upon sincere observation and
experience.</p>

<p>As is natural in a country where the Gaelic League
has created a pre-occupation with the countryman,
the greatest number of our plays are founded on the
comedy and tragedy of country life, and are written
more or less in dialect. When the Norwegian<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
National movement began, its writers chose for their
maxim, ‘To understand the saga by the peasant and
the peasant by the saga.’ Ireland in our day has re-discovered
the old heroic literature of Ireland, and
she has re-discovered the imagination of the folk.
My own pre-occupation is more with the heroic
legend than with the folk, but Lady Gregory in her
<i>Spreading the News</i>, Mr. Synge in his <i>Well of the Saints</i>,
Mr. Colum in <i>The Land</i>, Mr. Boyle in <i>The Building
Fund</i>, have been busy, much or little, with the folk
and the folk-imagination. Mr. Synge alone has
written of the peasant as he is to all the ages; of the
folk-imagination as it has been shaped by centuries
of life among fields or on fishing-grounds. His
people talk a highly-coloured musical language, and
one never hears from them a thought that is of to-day
and not of yesterday. Lady Gregory has written of
the people of the markets and villages of the West,
and their speech, though less full of peculiar idiom
than that of Mr. Synge’s people, is still always that
vivid speech which has been shaped through some
generations of English speaking by those who still
think in Gaelic. Mr. Colum and Mr. Boyle, on the
other hand, write of the countryman or villager of
the East or centre of Ireland, who thinks in English,
and the speech of their people shows the influence
of the newspaper and the National Schools. The
people they write of, too, are not the true folk.
They are the peasant as he is being transformed by
modern life, and for that very reason the man of the
towns may find it easier to understand them. There
is less surprise, less wonder in what he sees, but there
is more of himself there, more of his vision of the
world and of the problems that are troubling him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span></p>

<p>It is not fitting for the showman to overpraise the
show, but he is always permitted to tell you what is
in his booths. Mr. Synge is the most obviously
individual of our writers. He alone has discovered
a new kind of sarcasm, and it is this sarcasm that
keeps him, and may long keep him, from general
popularity. Mr. Boyle satirises a miserly old woman,
and he has made a very vivid person of her, but as
yet his satire is such as all men accept; it brings no
new thing to judgment. We have never doubted
that what he assails is evil, and we are never afraid
that it is ourselves. Lady Gregory alone writes out
of a spirit of pure comedy, and laughs without
bitterness and with no thought but to laugh. She
has a perfect sympathy with her characters, even with
the worst of them, and when the curtain goes down
we are so far from the mood of judgment that we do
not even know that we have condoned many sins.
In Mr. Colum’s <i>Land</i> there is a like comedy when
Cornelius and Sally fill the scene, but then he is too
young to be content with laughter. He is still interested
in the reform of society, but that will pass,
for at about thirty every writer, who is anything of
an artist, comes to understand that all a work of art
can do is to show one the reality that is within our
minds, and the reality that our eyes look on. He is
the youngest of us all by many years, and we are all
proud to foresee his future.</p>

<p>I think that a race or a nation or a phase of life
has but few dramatic themes, and that when these
have been once written well they must afterwards
be written less and less well until one gets at last but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
‘Soulless self-reflections of man’s skill.’ The first
man writes what it is natural to write, the second
man what is left to him, for the imagination cannot
repeat itself. The hoydenish young woman, the
sentimental young woman, the villain and the hero
alike ever self-possessed, of contemporary drama,
were once real discoveries, and one can trace their
history through the generations like a joke or a folk-tale,
but, unlike these, they grow always less interesting
as they get farther from their cradle. Our
opportunity in Ireland is not that our playwrights
have more talent, it is possible that they have less
than the workers in an old tradition, but that the
necessity of putting a life that has not hitherto been
dramatised into their plays excludes all these types
which have had their origin in a different social
order.</p>

<p>An audience with National feeling is alive, at the
worst it is alive enough to quarrel with. One man
came up from the scene of Lady Gregory’s <i>Kincora</i>
at Killaloe that he might see her play, and having
applauded loudly, and even cheered for the Dalcassians,
became silent and troubled when Brian took
Gormleith for his wife. ‘It is a great pity,’ he said
to a man next to him, ‘that he didn’t marry a quiet
girl from his own district.’ Some have quarrelled with
me because I did not take some glorious moment of
Cuchulain’s life for my play, and not the killing of
his son, and all our playwrights have been attacked
for choosing bad characters instead of good, and called
slanderers of their country. In so far as these attacks
come from National feeling, that is to say, out of an
interest or an affection for the life of this country<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
now and in past times, as did the countryman’s
trouble about Gormleith, they are in the long run
the greatest help to a dramatist, for they give him
something to startle or to delight. Every writer has
had to face them where his work has aroused a genuine
interest. The Germans at the beginning of the nineteenth
century preferred Schiller to Goethe, and
thought him the greater writer, because he put nobler
characters into his books; and when Chaucer met
Eros walking in the month of May, that testy god
complains that though he had ‘sixty bookkes olde
and newe,’ and all full of stories of women and the
life they led, and though for every bad woman there
are a hundred good, he has chosen to write only of
the bad ones. He complains that Chaucer by his
<i>Troilus</i> and his <i>Romaunt of the Rose</i> has brought love
and women to discredit. It is the same in painting
as in literature, for when a new painter arises men
cry out, even when he is a painter of the beautiful
like Rossetti, that he has chosen the exaggerated or
the ugly or the unhealthy, forgetting that it is the
business of art and of letters to change the values and
to mint the coinage. Without this outcry there is
no movement of life in the arts, for it is the sign of
values not yet understood, of a coinage not yet mastered.
Sometimes the writer delights us, when we
grow to understand him, with new forms of virtue
discovered in persons where one had not hitherto
looked for it, and sometimes, and this is more and
more true of modern art, he changes the values not
by the persons he sets before one, who may be mean
enough, but by his way of looking at them, by the
implications that come from his own mind, by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
tune they dance to as it were. Eros, into whose
mouth Chaucer, one doubts not, puts arguments that
he had heard from his readers and listeners, objected
to Chaucer’s art in the interests of pedantic mediæval
moralising; the contemporaries of Schiller commended
him for reflecting vague romantic types
from the sentimental literature of his predecessors;
and those who object to the peasant as he is seen in
the Abbey Theatre have their imaginations full of
what is least observant and most sentimental in the
Irish novelists. When I was a boy I spent many an
afternoon with a village shoemaker who was a great
reader. I asked him once what Irish novels he liked,
and he told me there were none he could read, ‘They
sentimentalised the people,’ he said angrily; and it
was against Kickham that he complained most. ‘I
want to see the people,’ he said, ‘shown up in their
naked hideousness.’ That is the peasant mind as I
know it, delight in strong sensations whether of
beauty or of ugliness, in bare facts, and quite without
sentimentality. The sentimental mind is the bourgeois
mind, and it was this mind which came into
Irish literature with Gerald Griffin and later on with
Kickham.</p>

<p>It is the mind of the town, and it is a delight to
those only who have seen life, and above all country
life, with unobservant eyes, and most of all to the
Irish tourist, to the patriotic young Irishman who
goes to the country for a month’s holiday with his
head full of vague idealisms. It is not the art of
Mr. Colum, born of the people, and when at his
best looking at the town and not the country with
strange eyes, nor the art of Mr. Synge spending<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
weeks and months in remote places talking Irish to
fishers and islanders. I remember meeting, about
twenty years ago, a lad who had a little yacht at
Kingstown. Somebody was talking of the sea
paintings of a great painter, Hook, I think, and this
made him very angry. No yachtsman believed in
them or thought them at all like the sea, he said.
Indeed, he was always hearing people praise pictures
that were not a bit like the sea, and thereupon he
named certain of the greatest painters of water—men
who more than all others had spent their lives
in observing the effects of light upon cloud and wave.
I met him again the other day, well on in middle life,
and though he is not even an Irishman, indignant
with Mr. Synge’s and Mr. Boyle’s<a name="FNanchor_I_9" id="FNanchor_I_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_I_9" class="fnanchor">[I]</a> peasants. He
knew the people, he said, and neither he nor any
other person that knew them could believe that they
were properly represented in <i>The Well of the Saints</i>
or <i>The Building Fund</i>. Twenty years ago his imagination
was under the influence of popular pictures,
but to-day it was under the conventional idealisms
which writers like Kickham and Griffin substitute
for the ever-varied life of the cottages, and that
conventional idealism that the contemporary English
Theatre substitutes for all life whatsoever. I saw
<i>Caste</i>, the earliest play of the modern school, a few
days ago, and found there more obviously than I
expected, for I am not much of a theatre-goer, the
English half of the mischief. Two of the minor
persons had a certain amount of superficial characterization,
as if out of the halfpenny comic papers;
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>but the central persons, the man and woman that
created the dramatic excitement, such as it was, had
not characters of any kind, being vague ideals, perfection
as it is imagined by a common-place mind.
The audience could give them its sympathy without
the labour that comes from awakening knowledge.
If the dramatist had put any man and woman of his
acquaintance that seemed to him nearest perfection
into his play, he would have had to make it a study,
among other things, of the little petty faults and
perverted desires that come out of the nature or its
surroundings. He would have troubled that admiring
audience by making a self-indulgent sympathy more
difficult. He might have even seemed, like Ibsen
or the early Christians, an enemy of the human race.
We have gone down to the roots, and we have made
up our minds upon one thing quite definitely—that
in no play that professes to picture life in its daily
aspects shall we admit these white phantoms. We
can do this, not because we have any special talent,
but because we are dealing with a life which has for
all practical purposes never been set upon the stage
before. The conventional types of the novelists do
not pervert our imagination, for they are built, as it
were, into another form, and no man who has chosen
for himself a sound method of drama, whether it be
the drama of character or of crisis, can use them.
The Gaelic League and <i>Cumann na nGaedheal</i> play
does indeed show the influence of the novelists; but
the typical Gaelic League play is essentially narrative
and not dramatic. Every artist necessarily imitates
those who have worked in the same form before him,
and when the preoccupation has been with the same<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
life he almost always, consciously or unconsciously,
borrows more than the form, and it is this very borrowing—affecting
thought, language, all the vehicles
of expression—which brings about the most of what
we call decadence.</p>

<p>After all, if our plays are slanders upon their
country; if to represent upon the stage a hard old
man like Cosgar, or a rapacious old man like Shan,
or a faithless wife like Nora Burke, or to select from
history treacherous Gormleith for a theme, is to
represent this nation at something less than its full
moral worth; if every play played in the Abbey
Theatre now and in times to come be something of
a slander, is anybody a penny the worse? Some
ancient or mediæval races did not think so. Jusserand
describes the French conquerors of mediæval
England as already imagining themselves in their
literature, as they have done to this day, as a great
deal worse than they are, and the English imagining
themselves a great deal better. The greater portion
of the <i>Divine Comedy</i> is a catalogue of the sins of
Italy, and Boccaccio became immortal because he
exaggerated with an unceasing playful wit the vices
of his countryside. The Greeks chose for the themes
of their serious literature a few great crimes, and
Corneille, in his article on the theory of the drama,
shows why the greatness and notoriety of these
crimes is necessary to tragic drama. The public life
of Athens found its chief celebration in the monstrous
caricature of Aristophanes, and the Greek nation was
so proud, so free from morbid sensitiveness, that it
invited the foreign ambassadors to the spectacle.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
And I answer to those who say that Ireland cannot
afford this freedom because of her political circumstances,
that if Ireland cannot afford it, Ireland cannot
have a literature. Literature has never been the
work of slaves, and Ireland must learn to say—</p>

<p>
‘Stone walls do not a prison make,<br />
Nor iron bars a cage.’<br />
</p>

<p>The misrepresentation of the average life of a
nation that follows of necessity from an imaginative
delight in energetic characters and extreme types,
enlarges the energy of a people by the spectacle of
energy. A nation is injured by the picking out of
a single type and setting that into print or upon the
stage as a type of the whole nation. Ireland suffered
in this way from that single whisky-drinking,
humorous type which seemed for a time the accepted
type of all. The Englishwoman is, no doubt, injured
in the same way in the minds of various Continental
nations by a habit of caricaturing all Englishwomen
as having big teeth. But neither nation can be
injured by imaginative writers selecting types that
please their fancy. They will never impose a general
type on the public mind, for genius differs from the
newspapers in this, that the greater and more confident
it is, the more is its delight in varieties and
species. If Ireland were at this moment, through a
misunderstanding terror of the stage Irishman, to
deprive her writers of freedom, to make their
imaginations timid, she would lower her dignity in
her own eyes and in the eyes of every intellectual
nation. That old caricature did her very little harm
in the long run, perhaps a few car-drivers have copied<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
it in their lives, while the mind of the country
remained untroubled; but the loss of imaginative
freedom and daring would turn us into old women.
In the long run, it is the great writer of a nation
that becomes its image in the minds of posterity,
and even though he represent no man of worth in
his art, the worth of his own mind becomes the
inheritance of his people. He takes nothing away
that he does not give back in greater volume.</p>

<p>If Ireland had not lost the Gaelic she never would
have had this sensitiveness as of a <i>parvenu</i> when
presented at Court for the first time, or of a nigger
newspaper. When Ireland had the confidence of her
own antiquity, her writers praised and blamed according
to their fancy, and even as throughout all
mediæval Europe, they laughed when they had a
mind to at the most respected persons, at the sanctities
of Church and State. The story of <i>The Shadow
of the Glen</i>, found by Mr. Synge in Gaelic-speaking
Aran, and by Mr. Curtain in Munster; the Song of
<i>The Red-haired Man’s Wife</i>, sung in all Gaelic Ireland;
<i>The Midnight Court of MacGiolla Meidhre</i>;
<i>The Vision of MacCoinglinne</i>; the old romancers, with
their Bricriu and their Conan, laughed and sang as
fearlessly as Chaucer or Villon or Cervantes. It
seemed almost as if those old writers murmured to
themselves: ‘If we but keep our courage let all the
virtues perish, for we can make them over again; but
if that be gone, all is gone.’ I remember when I was
an art student at the Metropolitan School of Art a
good many years ago, saying to Mr. Hughes the
sculptor, as we looked at the work of our fellow-students,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
‘Every student here that is doing better
work than another is doing it because he has a more
intrepid imagination; one has only to look at the
line of a drawing to see that’; and he said that was
his own thought also. All good art is extravagant,
vehement, impetuous, shaking the dust of time from
its feet, as it were, and beating against the walls of
the world.</p>

<p>If a sincere religious artist were to arise in Ireland
in our day, and were to paint the Holy Family, let
us say, he would meet with the same opposition that
sincere dramatists are meeting with to-day. The
bourgeois mind is never sincere in the arts, and one
finds in Irish chapels, above all in Irish convents, the
religious art that it understands. A Connaught convent
a little time ago refused a fine design for stained
glass, because of the personal life in the faces and in
the attitudes, which seemed to them ugly, perhaps
even impious. They sent to the designer an insipid
German chromo-lithograph, full of faces without expression
or dignity, and gestures without personal
distinction, and the designer, too anxious for success
to reject any order, has carried out this ignoble design
in glass of beautiful colour and quality. Let us
suppose that Meister Stefan were to paint in Ireland
to-day that exquisite Madonna of his, with her lattice
of roses; a great deal that is said of our plays would
be said of that picture. Why select for his model a
little girl selling newspapers in the streets, why
slander with that miserable little body the Mother
of God? He could only answer, as the imaginative
artist always answers, ‘That is the way I have seen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
her in my mind, and what I have made of her is very
living.’ All art is founded upon personal vision, and
the greater the art the more surprising the vision;
and all bad art is founded upon impersonal types
and images, accepted by average men and women
out of imaginative poverty and timidity, or the exhaustion
that comes from labour.</p>

<p>Nobody can force a movement of any kind to take
any prearranged pattern to any very great extent;
one can, perhaps, modify it a little, and that is all.
When one says that it is going to develop in a certain
way, one means that one sees, or imagines that
one sees, certain energies which left to themselves
are bound to give it a certain form. Writing in
<i>Samhain</i> some years ago, I said that our plays would
be of two kinds, plays of peasant life and plays of a
romantic and heroic life, such as one finds in the
folk-tales. To-day I can see other forces, and can
foretell, I think, the form of technique that will arise.
About fifty years ago, perhaps not so many, the playwrights
of every country in the world became persuaded
that their plays must reflect the surface of
life; and the author of <i>Caste</i>, for instance, made a
reputation by putting what seemed to be average
common life and average common speech for the
first time upon the stage in England, and by substituting
real loaves of bread and real cups of tea for
imaginary ones. He was not a very clever nor a very
well-educated man, and he made his revolution superficially;
but in other countries men of intellect and
knowledge created that intellectual drama of real life,
of which Ibsen’s later plays are the ripened fruit.
This change coincided with the substitution of science<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
for religion in the conduct of life, and is, I believe,
as temporary, for the practice of twenty centuries
will surely take the sway in the end. A rhetorician
in that novel of Petronius, which satirises, or perhaps
one should say celebrates, Roman decadence, complains
that the young people of his day are made
blockheads by learning old romantic tales in the
schools, instead of what belongs to common life.
And yet is it not the romantic tale, the extravagant
and ungovernable dream which comes out of youth;
and is not that desire for what belongs to common
life, whether it comes from Rome or Greece or
England, the sign of fading fires, of ebbing imaginative
desire? In the arts I am quite certain that it is
a substitution of apparent for real truth. Mr. George
Moore has a very vivid character; he is precisely one
of those whose characters can be represented most
easily upon the stage. Let us suppose that some
dramatist had made even him the centre of a play in
which the moderation of common life was carefully
preserved, how very little he could give us of that
headlong intrepid man, as we know him, whether
through long personal knowledge or through his
many books. The more carefully the play reflected
the surface of life the more would the elements be
limited to those that naturally display themselves
during so many minutes of our ordinary affairs. It
is only by extravagance, by an emphasis far greater
than that of life as we observe it, that we can crowd
into a few minutes the knowledge of years. Shakespeare
or Sophocles can so quicken, as it were, the
circles of the clock, so heighten the expression of life,
that many years can unfold themselves in a few<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>
minutes, and it is always Shakespeare or Sophocles,
and not Ibsen, that makes us say, ‘How true, how
often I have felt as that man feels’; or ‘How intimately
I have come to know those people on the
stage.’ There is a certain school of painters that has
discovered that it is necessary in the representation
of light to put little touches of pure colour side by
side. When you went up close to that big picture
of the Alps by Segantini, in Mr. Lane’s Loan Exhibition
a year ago, you found that the grass seeds,
which looked brown enough from the other side of
the room, were full of pure scarlet colour. If you
copy nature’s moderation of colour you do not imitate
her, for you have only white paint and she has
light. If you wish to represent character or passion
upon the stage, as it is known to the friends, let us
say, of your principal persons, you must be excessive,
extravagant, fantastic even, in expression; and you
must be this, more extravagantly, more excessively,
more fantastically than ever, if you wish to show
character and passion as they would be known to the
principal person of your play in the depths of his own
mind. The greatest art symbolises not those things
that we have observed so much as those things that
we have experienced, and when the imaginary saint
or lover or hero moves us most deeply, it is the
moment when he awakens within us for an instant
our own heroism, our own sanctity, our own desire.
We possess these things—the greatest of men not
more than Seaghan the Fool—not at all moderately,
but to an infinite extent, and though we control or
ignore them, we know that the moralists speak true
when they compare them to angels or to devils,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>
or to beasts of prey. How can any dramatic art,
moderate in expression, be a true image of hell or
heaven or the wilderness, or do anything but create
those faint histories that but touch our curiosity,
those groups of persons that never follow us into
our intimate life, where Odysseus and Don Quixote
and Hamlet are with us always?</p>

<p>The scientific movement is ebbing a little everywhere,
and here in Ireland it has never been in flood
at all. And I am certain that everywhere literature
will return once more to its old extravagant fantastical
expression, for in literature, unlike science, there are
no discoveries, and it is always the old that returns.
Everything in Ireland urges us to this return, and it
may be that we shall be the first to recover after the
fifty years of mistake.</p>

<p>The antagonism of imaginative writing in Ireland
is not a habit of scientific observation but our interest
in matters of opinion. A misgoverned country seeking
a remedy by agitation puts an especial value upon
opinion, and even those who are not conscious of any
interest in the country are influenced by the general
habit. All fine literature is the disinterested contemplation
or expression of life, but hardly any Irish
writer can liberate his mind sufficiently from questions
of practical reform for this contemplation. Art for
art’s sake, as he understands it, whether it be the art
of the <i>Ode to a Grecian Urn</i> or of the imaginer of
Falstaff, seems to him a neglect of public duty. It
is as though the telegraph-boys botanised among the
hedges with the undelivered envelopes in their
pockets; one must calculate the effect of one’s words<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
before one writes them, who they are to excite and to
what end. We all write if we follow the habit of the
country not for our own delight but for the improvement
of our neighbours, and this is not only true of
such obviously propagandist work as <i>The Spirit of the
Nation</i> or a Gaelic League play, but of the work of
writers who seemed to have escaped from every
national influence, like Mr. Bernard Shaw, Mr.
George Moore, or even Mr. Oscar Wilde. They
never keep their head for very long out of the flood
of opinion. Mr. Bernard Shaw, the one brilliant
writer of comedy in England to-day, makes these
comedies something less than life by never forgetting
that he is a reformer, and Mr. Wilde could hardly
finish an act of a play without denouncing the British
public; and Mr. Moore—God bless the hearers!—has
not for ten years now been able to keep himself
from the praise or blame of the Church of his fathers.
Goethe, whose mind was more busy with philosophy
than any modern poet, has said, ‘The poet needs all
philosophy, but he must keep it out of his work.’
One remembers Dante, and wishes that Goethe had
left some commentary upon that saying, some definition
of philosophy perhaps, but one cannot be less than
certain that the poet, though it may be well for him
to have right opinions, above all if his country be at
death’s door, must keep all opinion that he holds to
merely because he thinks it right, out of his poetry,
if it is to be poetry at all. At the enquiry which preceded
the granting of a patent to the Abbey Theatre
I was asked if <i>Cathleen ni Houlihan</i> was not written
to affect opinion. Certainly it was not. I had a
dream one night which gave me a story, and I had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>
certain emotions about this country, and I gave those
emotions expression for my own pleasure. If I had
written to convince others I would have asked myself,
not ‘Is that exactly what I think and feel?’ but
‘How would that strike so-and-so? How will they
think and feel when they have read it?’ And all
would be oratorical and insincere. We only understand
our own minds, and the things that are striving
to utter themselves through our minds, and we move
others, not because we have understood or thought
about them at all, but because all life has the same
root. Coventry Patmore has said, ‘The end of art
is peace,’ and the following of art is little different
from the following of religion in the intense preoccupation
that it demands. Somebody has said,
‘God asks nothing of the highest soul except attention’;
and so necessary is attention to mastery in any
art, that there are moments when one thinks that
nothing else is necessary, and nothing else so difficult.
The religious life has created for itself monasteries
and convents where men and women may forget in
prayer and contemplation everything that seems
necessary to the most useful and busy citizens of
their towns and villages, and one imagines that even
in the monastery and the convent there are passing
things, the twitter of a sparrow in the window, the
memory of some old quarrel, things lighter than air,
that keep the soul from its joy. How many of those
old religious sayings can one not apply to the life of
art? ‘The Holy Spirit,’ wrote S. Thomas à Kempis,
‘has liberated me from a multitude of opinions.’
When one sets out to cast into some mould so much
of life merely for life’s sake, one is tempted at every<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
moment to twist it from its eternal shape to help
some friend or harm some enemy. Alas, all men, we
in Ireland more than others, are fighters, and it is a
hard law that compels us to cast away our swords
when we enter the house of the Muses, as men cast
them away at the doors of the banqueting-hall at
Tara. A weekly paper in reviewing last year’s <i>Samhain</i>,
convinced itself, or at any rate its readers—for
that is the heart of the business in propaganda—that
I only began to say these things a few months ago
under I know not what alien influence; and yet I
seem to have been saying them all my life. I took
up an anthology of Irish verse that I edited some ten
years ago, and I found them there, and I think they
were a chief part of an old fight over the policy of
the <i>New Irish Library</i>. Till they are accepted by
writers and readers in this country it will never have
a literature, it will never escape from the election
rhyme and the pamphlet. So long as I have any
control over the National Theatre Society it will be
carried on in this spirit, call it art for art’s sake if
you will; and no plays will be produced at it which
were written, not for the sake of a good story or fine
verses or some revelation of character, but to please
those friends of ours who are ever urging us to attack
the priests or the English, or wanting us to put our
imagination into handcuffs that we may be sure of
never seeming to do one or the other.</p>

<p>I have had very little to say this year in <i>Samhain</i>,
and I have said it badly. When I wrote <i>Ideas of Good
and Evil</i> and <i>Celtic Twilight</i>, I wrote everything very
slowly and a great many times over. A few years<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
ago, however, my eyesight got so bad that I had to
dictate the first drafts of everything, and then rewrite
these drafts several times. I did the last <i>Samhain</i> this
way, dictating all the thoughts in a few days, and
rewriting them in two or three weeks; but this time
I am letting the first draft remain with all its carelessness
of phrase and rhythm. I am busy with a
practical project which needs the saying of many
things from time to time, and it is better to say them
carelessly and harshly than to take time from my
poetry. One casts something away every year, and
I shall, I think, have to cast away the hope of ever
having a prose style that amounts to anything. After
all, dictation gives one a certain vitality as of vehement
speech.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span></p>


<h3>1906<br />

LITERATURE AND THE LIVING VOICE.<a name="FNanchor_J_10" id="FNanchor_J_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_J_10" class="fnanchor">[J]</a></h3>

<h4>I</h4>

<p class="unindent"><span class="smcap">One</span> Sunday, in summer, a few years ago, I went to
the little village of Killeenan, that is not many miles
from Galway, to do honour to the memory of Raftery,
a Gaelic poet who died a little before the famine. A
headstone had been put over his grave in the half-ruined
churchyard, and a priest had come to bless it,
and many country people to listen to his poems.
After the shawled and frieze-coated people had knelt
down and prayed for the repose of his soul, they
gathered about a little wooden platform that had
been put up in a field. I do not remember whether
Raftery’s poem about himself was one of those they
listened to, but certainly it was in the thoughts of
many, and it was the image reflected in that poem
that had drawn some of them from distant villages.</p>

<div class="poetry-container">
  <div class="poetry">
    <div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">I am Raftery the poet,</div>
<div class="verse">Full of hope and love;</div>
<div class="verse">With eyes without light;</div>
<div class="verse">With gentleness without misery.</div>
    </div>
    <div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Going west on my journey</div>
<div class="verse"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>With the light of my heart;</div>
<div class="verse">Weak and tired</div>
<div class="verse">To the end of my road.</div>
    </div>
    <div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">I am now</div>
<div class="verse">And my back to a wall,</div>
<div class="verse">Playing music</div>
<div class="verse">To empty pockets.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

<p>Some few there remembered him, and one old
man came out among the reciters to tell of the
burying, where he himself, a young boy at the time,
had carried a candle.</p>

<p>The verses of other Gaelic poets were sung or
recited too, and, although certainly not often fine
poetry, they had its spirit, its <i>naïveté</i>—that is to say,
its way of looking at the world as if it were but an
hour old—its seriousness even in laughter, its personal
rhythm.</p>

<p>A few days after I was in the town of Galway, and
saw there, as I had often seen in other country towns,
some young men marching down the middle of a
street singing an already outworn London music-hall
song, that filled the memory, long after they had
gone by, with a rhythm as pronounced and as impersonal
as the noise of a machine. In the shop
windows there were, I knew, the signs of a life very
unlike that I had seen at Killeenan; halfpenny comic
papers and story papers, sixpenny reprints of popular
novels, and, with the exception of a dusty Dumas or
Scott strayed thither, one knew not how, and one or
two little books of Irish ballads, nothing that one
calls literature, nothing that would interest the few
thousands who alone out of many millions have
what we call culture. A few miles had divided the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>
sixteenth century, with its equality of culture, of
good taste, from the twentieth, where if a man has
fine taste he has either been born to leisure and
opportunity or has in him an energy that is genius.
One saw the difference in the clothes of the people
of the town and of the village, for, as the Emerald
tablet says, outward and inner things answer to one
another. The village men wore their bawneens,
their white flannel jackets; they had clothes that
had a little memory of clothes that had once been
adapted to their calling by centuries of continual
slight changes. They were sometimes well dressed,
for they suggested nothing but themselves and wore
little that had suited another better. But in the
town nobody was well dressed; for in modern life,
only a few people—some few thousands—set the
fashion, and set it to please themselves and to fit
their lives, and as for the rest they must go shabby—the
ploughman in clothes cut for a life of leisure,
but made of shoddy, and the tramp in the ploughman’s
cast-off clothes, and the scarecrow in the tramp’s
battered coat and broken hat.</p>

<h4>II</h4>

<p>All that love the arts or love dignity in life have
at one time or another noticed these things, and some
have wondered why the world has for some three or
four centuries sacrificed so much, and with what
seems a growing recklessness, to create an intellectual
aristocracy, a leisured class—to set apart, and above
all others, a number of men and women who are not
very well pleased with one another or the world they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>
have to live in. It is some comparison, like this
that I have made, which has been the origin, as I
think, of most attempts to revive some old language
in which the general business of the world is no
longer transacted. The Provençal movement, the
Welsh, the Czech, have all, I think, been attempting,
when we examine them to the heart, to restore
what is called a more picturesque way of life, that
is to say, a way of life in which the common man
has some share in imaginative art. That this is the
decisive element in the attempt to revive and to
preserve the Irish language I am very certain. A
language enthusiast does not put it that way to
himself; he says, rather, ‘If I can make the people
talk Irish again they will be the less English’; but
if you talk to him till you have hunted the words
into their burrow you will find that the word ‘Ireland’
means to him a form of life delightful to his imagination,
and that the word ‘England’ suggests to him
a cold, joyless, irreligious and ugly life. The life of
the villages, with its songs, its dances and its pious
greetings, its conversations full of vivid images
shaped hardly more by life itself than by innumerable
forgotten poets, all that life of good nature and
improvisation grows more noble as he meditates
upon it, for it mingles with the middle ages until he
no longer can see it as it is but as it was, when it
ran, as it were, into a point of fire in the courtliness
of kings’ houses. He hardly knows whether what
stirred him yesterday was that old fiddler, playing
an almost-forgotten music on a fiddle mended with
twine, or a sudden thought of some king that was
of the blood of that old man, some O’Loughlin or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
O’Byrne, listening amid his soldiers, he and they at
the one table, they too, lucky, bright-eyed, while
the minstrel sang of angry Cuchulain, or of him men
called ‘Golden salmon of the sea, clean hawk of the
air.’ It will not please him, however, if you tell him
that he is fighting the modern world, which he calls
‘England,’ as Mistral and his fellows called it Paris,
and that he will need more than language if he is to
make the monster turn up its white belly. And yet
the difference between what the word England means
and all that the word Gaelic suggests is greater than
any that could have been before the imagination of
Mistral. Ireland, her imagination at its noon before
the birth of Chaucer, has created the most beautiful
literature of a whole people that has been anywhere
since Greece and Rome, while English literature, the
greatest of all literatures but that of Greece, is yet
the literature of a few. Nothing of it but a handful
of ballads about Robin Hood has come from the folk
or belongs to them rightly, for the good English
writers, with a few exceptions that seem accidental,
have written for a small cultivated class; and is not
this the reason? Irish poetry and Irish stories were
made to be spoken or sung, while English literature,
alone of great literatures, because the newest of them
all, has all but completely shaped itself in the printing-press.
In Ireland to-day the old world that sang
and listened is, it may be for the last time in Europe,
face to face with the world that reads and writes,
and their antagonism is always present under some
name or other in Irish imagination and intellect.
I myself cannot be convinced that the printing-press
will be always victor, for change is inconceivably<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>
swift, and when it begins—well, as the proverb has
it, everything comes in at the hole. The world soon
tires of its toys, and our exaggerated love of print
and paper seems to me to come out of passing
conditions and to be no more a part of the final
constitution of things than the craving of a woman
in child-bed for green apples. When one takes a
book into the corner, one surrenders so much life
for one’s knowledge, so much, I mean, of that
normal activity that gives one life and strength, one
lays away one’s own handiwork and turns from one’s
friend, and if the book is good one is at some pains
to press all the little wanderings and tumults of the
mind into silence and quiet. If the reader be poor,
if he has worked all day at the plough or the desk,
he will hardly have strength enough for any but a
meretricious book; nor is it only when the book is
on the knees that one’s life must be given for it.
For a good and sincere book needs the preparation
of the peculiar studies and reveries that prepare for
good taste, and make it easier for the mind to find
pleasure in a new landscape; and all these reveries
and studies have need of so much time and thought
that it is almost certain a man cannot be a successful
doctor, or engineer, or Cabinet Minister, and have a
culture good enough to escape the mockery of the
ragged art student who comes of an evening sometimes
to borrow a half-sovereign. The old culture
came to a man at his work; it was not at the expense
of life, but an exaltation of life itself; it came in at
the eyes as some civic ceremony sailed along the
streets, or as one arrayed oneself before the looking-glass,
or it came in at the ears in a song as one bent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>
over the plough or the anvil, or at that great table
where rich and poor sat down together and heard
the minstrel bidding them pass around the wine-cup
and say a prayer for Gawain dead. Certainly it came
without a price; it did not take one from one’s
friends and one’s handiwork; but it was like a good
woman who gives all for love and is never jealous
and is ready to do all the talking when we are tired.</p>

<p>How the old is to come again, how the other side
of the penny is to come up, how the spit is to turn
the other side of the meat to the fire, I do not know,
but that the time will come I am certain; when one
kind of desire has been satisfied for a long time it
becomes sleepy, and other kinds, long quiet, after
making a noise begin to order life. Of the many
things, desires or powers or instruments, that are to
change the world, the artist is fitted to understand
but two or three, and the less he troubles himself
about the complexity that is outside his craft, the
more will he find it all within his craft, and the more
dexterous will his hand and his thought become. I
am trying to see nothing in the world but the arts,
and nothing in this change—which one cannot prove
but only foretell—but the share my own art will
have in it.</p>

<p>III</p>

<p>One thing is entirely certain. Wherever the old
imaginative life lingers it must be stirred into life,
and kept alive, and in Ireland this is the work, it may
be, of the Gaelic movement. But the nineteenth
century, with its moral zeal, its insistence upon
irrelevant interests, having passed over, the artist can<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>
admit that he cares about nothing that does not give
him a new subject or a new technique. Propaganda
would be for him a dissipation, but he may compare
his art, if he has a mind to, with the arts that belonged
to a whole people, and discover, not how to imitate
the external form of an epic or a folk-song, but how
to express in some equivalent form whatever in the
thoughts of his own age seem, as it were, to press into
the future. The most obvious difference is that when
literature belonged to a whole people, its three great
forms, narrative, lyrical and dramatic, found their
way to men’s minds without the mediation of print
and paper. That narrative poetry may find its
minstrels again, and lyrical poetry adequate singers,
and dramatic poetry adequate players, he must spend
much of his time with these three lost arts, and the
more technical is his interest the better. When I first
began working in Ireland at what some newspaper has
called the Celtic Renaissance, I saw that we had still
even in English a sufficient audience for song and
speech. Certain of our young men and women, too
restless and sociable to be readers, had amongst them
an interest in Irish legend and history, and years of
imaginative politics had kept them from forgetting,
as most modern people have, how to listen to serious
words. I always saw that some kind of theatre would
be a natural centre for a tradition of feeling and
thought, but that it must—and this was its chief
opportunity—appeal to the interest appealed to by
lively conversation or by oratory. In other words,
that it must be made for young people who were
sufficiently ignorant to refuse a pound of flesh even
though the Nine Worthies offered their wisdom in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>
return. They are not, perhaps, very numerous, for
they do not include the thousands of conquered spirits
who in Dublin, as elsewhere, go to see <i>The Girl from
Kay’s</i>, or when Mr. Tree is upon tour, <i>The Girl from
Prospero’s Island</i>; and the peasant in Ireland, as elsewhere,
has not taken to the theatre, and can, I think,
be moved through Gaelic only.</p>

<p>If one could get them, I thought, one could draw
to oneself the apathetic people who are in every
country, and people who don’t know what they like
till somebody tells them. Now, a friend has given
me that theatre. It is not very big, but it is quite
big enough to seat those few thousands and their
friends in a seven days’ run of a new play; and I have
begun my real business. I have to find once again
singers, minstrels, and players who love words more
than any other thing under heaven, for without fine
words there is no literature.</p>

<h4>IV</h4>

<p>I will say but a little of dramatic technique, as I
would have it in this theatre of speech, of romance,
of extravagance, for I have written of all that so many
times. In every art, when it seems to one that it
has need of a renewing of life, one goes backwards
till one lights upon a time when it was nearer to
human life and instinct, before it had gathered about
it so many mechanical specialisations and traditions.
One examines that earlier condition and thinks out
its principles of life, and one may be able to separate
accidental from vital things. William Morris, for
instance, studied the earliest printing, the founts of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
type that were made when men saw their craft with
eyes that were still new, and with leisure, and without
the restraints of commerce and custom. And then he
made a type that was really new, that had the quality
of his own mind about it, though it reminds one of
its ancestry, of its high breeding as it were. Coleridge
and Wordsworth were influenced by the publication
of Percy’s <i>Reliques</i> to the making of a simplicity
altogether unlike that of old ballad-writers. Rossetti
went to early Italian painting, to Holy Families and
choirs of angels, that he might learn how to express an
emotion that had its roots in sexual desire and in the
delight of his generation in fine clothes and in beautiful
rooms. Nor is it otherwise with the reformers
of churches and of the social order, for reform must
justify itself by a return in feeling to something that
our fathers have told us in the old time.</p>

<p>So it is with us. Inspired by players who played
before a figured curtain, we have made scenery,
indeed, but scenery that is little more than a suggestion—a
pattern with recurring boughs and leaves
of gold for a wood, a great green curtain with a red
stencil upon it to carry the eye upward for a palace,
and so on. More important than these, we have
looked for the centre of our art where the players of
the time of Shakespeare and of Corneille found theirs,
in speech, whether it be the perfect mimicry of the
conversation of two countrymen of the roads, or that
idealised speech poets have imagined for what we
think but do not say. Before men read, the ear and
the tongue were subtle, and delighted one another
with the little tunes that were in words; every word
would have its own tune, though but one main note<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>
may have been marked enough for us to name it.
They loved language, and all literature was then,
whether in the mouth of minstrels, players, or singers,
but the perfection of an art that everybody practised,
a flower out of the stem of life. And language continually
renewed itself in that perfection, returning
to daily life out of that finer leisure, strengthened
and sweetened as from a retreat ordered by religion.
The ordinary dramatic critic, when you tell him that
a play, if it is to be of a great kind, must have
beautiful words, will answer that you have misunderstood
the nature of the stage and are asking of it
what books should give. Sometimes when some
excellent man, a playgoer certainly and sometimes a
critic, has read me a passage out of some poet, I have
been set wondering what books of poetry can mean
to the greater number of men. If they are to read
poetry at all, if they are to enjoy beautiful rhythm,
if they are to get from poetry anything but what it
has in common with prose, they must hear it spoken
by men who have music in their voices and a learned
understanding of its sound. There is no poem so
great that a fine speaker cannot make it greater or
that a bad ear cannot make it nothing. All the arts
when young and happy are but the point of the spear
whose handle is our daily life. When they grow old
and unhappy they perfect themselves away from life,
and life, seeing that they are sufficient to themselves,
forgets them. The fruit of the tree that was in
Eden grows out of a flower full of scent, rounds and
ripens, until at last the little stem, that brought to it
the sap out of the tree, dries up and breaks, and the
fruit rots upon the ground.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span></p>

<p>The theatre grows more elaborate, developing the
player at the expense of the poet, developing the
scenery at the expense of the player, always increasing
in importance whatever has come to it out of the
mere mechanism of a building or the interests of a
class, specialising more and more, doing whatever is
easiest rather than what is most noble, and creating
a class before the footlights as behind, who are stirred
to excitements that belong to it and not to life;
until at last life, which knows that a specialised
energy is not herself, turns to other things, content
to leave it to weaklings and triflers, to those in whose
body there is the least quantity of herself.</p>

<h4>V</h4>

<p>But if we are to delight our three or four thousand
young men and women with a delight that will follow
them into their own houses, and if we are to add
the countryman to their number, we shall need more
than the play, we shall need those other spoken arts.
The player rose into importance in the town, but the
minstrel is of the country. We must have narrative
as well as dramatic poetry, and we are making room
for it in the theatre in the first instance, but in this
also we must go to an earlier time. Modern recitation
is not, like modern theatrical art, an over-elaboration
of a true art, but an entire misunderstanding. It
has no tradition at all. It is an endeavour to do
what can only be done well by the player. It has
no relation of its own to life. Some young man in
evening clothes will recite to you <i>The Dream of
Eugene Aram</i>, and it will be laughable, grotesque and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>
a little vulgar. Tragic emotions that need scenic
illusion, a long preparation, a gradual heightening of
emotion, are thrust into the middle of our common
affairs. That they may be as extravagant, as little
tempered by anything ideal or distant as possible, he
will break up the rhythm, regarding neither the
length of the lines nor the natural music of the
phrases, and distort the accent by every casual impulse.
He will gesticulate wildly, adapting his
movements to the drama as if Eugene Aram were
in the room before us, and all the time we see
a young man in evening dress who has become
unaccountably insane. Nothing that he can do or
say will make us forget that he is Mr. Robinson the
bank clerk, and that the toes of his boots turn upward.
We have nothing to learn here. We must go to the
villages or we must go back hundreds of years to
Wolfram of Eisenbach and the castles of Thuringia.
In this, as in all other arts, one finds its law and its
true purpose when one is near the source. The
minstrel never dramatised anybody but himself. It
was impossible, from the nature of the words the
poet had put into his mouth, or that he had made
for himself, that he should speak as another person.
He will go no nearer to drama than we do in daily
speech, and he will not allow you for any long time
to forget himself. Our own Raftery will stop the
tale to cry, ‘This is what I, Raftery, wrote down in
the book of the people’; or ‘I, myself, Raftery,
went to bed without supper that night.’ Or, if it is
Wolfram, and the tale is of Gawain or Parsival, he
will tell the listening ladies that he sings of happy
love out of his own unhappy love, or he will interrupt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>
the story of a siege and its hardships to remember
his own house, where there is not enough food for
the mice. He knows how to keep himself interesting
that his words may have weight—so many lines of
narrative, and then a phrase about himself and his
emotions. The reciter cannot be a player, for that is
a different art; but he must be a messenger, and he
should be as interesting, as exciting, as are all that
carry great news. He comes from far off, and he
speaks of far-off things with his own peculiar
animation, and instead of lessening the ideal and
beautiful elements of speech, he may, if he has a
mind to, increase them. He may speak to actual
notes as a singer does if they are so simple that he
never loses the speaking-voice, and if the poem is
long he must do so, or his own voice will become
weary and formless. His art is nearer to pattern
than that of the player. It is always allusion, never
illusion; for what he tells of, no matter how impassioned
he may become, is always distant, and for
this reason he may permit himself every kind of
nobleness. In a short poem he may interrupt the
narrative with a burden, which the audience will soon
learn to sing, and this burden, because it is repeated
and need not tell a story to a first hearing, can have
a more elaborate musical notation, can go nearer to
ordinary song. Gradually other devices will occur
to him—effects of loudness and softness, of increasing
and decreasing speed, certain rhythmic movements
of his body, a score of forgotten things, for the art
of speech is lost, and when one begins at it every day
is a discovery. The reciter must be made exciting
and wonderful in himself, apart from what he has to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span>
tell, and that is more difficult than it was in the
middle ages. We are not mysterious to one another;
we can come from far off and yet be no better than
our neighbours. We are no longer like those
Egyptian birds that flew out of Arabia, their claws
full of spices; nor can we, like an ancient or mediæval
poet, throw into our verses the emotions and events
of our lives, or even dramatise, as they could, the
life of the minstrel into whose mouth we are to put
our words. I can think of nothing better than to
borrow from the tellers of old tales, who will often
pretend to have been at the wedding of the princess
or afterwards ‘when they were throwing out children
by the basketful,’ and to give the story-teller definite
fictitious personality and find for him an appropriate
costume. Many costumes and persons come into
my imagination. I imagine an old countryman upon
the stage of the theatre or in some little country
court-house where a Gaelic society is meeting, and
I can hear him say that he is Raftery or a brother,
and that he has tramped through France and Spain
and the whole world. He has seen everything, and
he has all country love tales at his finger-tips. I can
imagine, too—and now the story-teller is more
serious and more naked of country circumstance—a
jester with black cockscomb and black clothes. He
has been in the faery hills; perhaps he is the terrible
<i>Amadan-na-Breena</i> himself; or he has been so long
in the world that he can tell of ancient battles. It
is not as good as what we have lost, but we cannot
hope to see in our time, except by some rare accident,
the minstrel who differs from his audience in nothing
but the exaltation of his mood, and who is yet as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>
exciting and as romantic in their eyes as were Raftery
and Wolfram to their people.</p>

<p>It is perhaps nearly impossible to make recitation
a living thing, for there is no existing taste one can
appeal to; but it should not be hard here in Ireland
to interest people in songs that are made for the
word’s sake and not for the music, or for that only
in a secondary degree. They are interested in such
songs already, only the songs have little subtilty of
thought and of language. One does not find in
them that modern emotion which seems new because
it has been brought so very lately out of the cellar.
At their best they are the songs of children and of
country people, eternally young for all their centuries,
and yet not even in old days, as one thinks, the art
of kings’ houses. We require a method of setting
to music that will make it possible to sing or to speak
to notes a poem like Rossetti’s translation of <i>The
Ballad of Dead Ladies</i> in such a fashion that no word
shall have an intonation or accentuation it could not
have in passionate speech. It must be set for the
speaking-voice, like the songs that sailors make up
or remember, and a man at the far end of the room
must be able to take it down on a first hearing.
An English musical paper said the other day, in
commenting on something I had written, ‘Owing to
musical necessities, vowels must be lengthened in
singing to an extent which in speech would be
ludicrous if not absolutely impossible.’ I have but
one art, that of speech, and my feeling for music
dissociated from speech is very slight, and listening
as I do to the words with the better part of my
attention, there is no modern song sung in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>
modern way that is not to my taste ‘ludicrous’ and
‘impossible.’ I hear with older ears than the musician,
and the songs of country people and of sailors delight
me. I wonder why the musician is not content to
set to music some arrangement of meaningless liquid
vowels, and thereby to make his song like that of
the birds; but I do not judge his art for any purpose
but my own.<a name="FNanchor_K_11" id="FNanchor_K_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_K_11" class="fnanchor">[K]</a> It is worthless for my purpose
certainly, and it is one of the causes that are bringing
about in modern countries a degradation of language.
I have to find men with more music than I have,
who will develop to a finer subtilty the singing of
the cottage and the forecastle, and develop it more
on the side of speech than that of music, until it has
become intellectual and nervous enough to be the
vehicle of a Shelley or a Keats. For some purposes
it will be necessary to divine the lineaments of a still
older art, and re-create the regulated declamations
that died out when music fell into its earliest
elaborations. Miss Farr has divined enough of this
older art, of which no fragment has come down to
us—for even the music of <i>Aucassin and Nicolette</i>, with
its definite tune, its recurring pattern of sound, is
something more than declamation—to make the
chorus of <i>Hippolytus</i> and of the <i>Trojan Women</i>, at the
Court Theatre or the Lyric, intelligible speech, even
when several voices spoke together. She used very
often definite melodies of a very simple kind, but
always when the thought became intricate and the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>measure grave and slow, fell back upon declamation
regulated by notes. Her experiments have included
almost every kind of verse, and every possible
elaboration of sound compatible with the supremacy
of the words. I do not think Homer is ever so
moving as when she recites him to a little tune played
on a stringed instrument not very unlike a lyre.
She began at my suggestion with songs in plays, for
it was clearly an absurd thing that words necessary
to one’s understanding of the action, either because
they explained some character, or because they carried
some emotion to its highest intensity, should be less
intelligible than the bustling and ruder words of the
dialogue. We have tried our art, since we first tried
it in a theatre, upon many kinds of audiences, and
have found that ordinary men and women take
pleasure in it and sometimes tell one that they never
understood poetry before. It is, however, more
difficult to move those, fortunately for our purpose
but a few, whose ears are accustomed to the abstract
emotion and elaboration of notes in modern music.</p>

<h4>VI</h4>

<p>If we accomplish this great work, if we make it
possible again for the poet to express himself, not
merely through words, but through the voices of
singers, of minstrels, of players, we shall certainly
have changed the substance and the manner of our
poetry. Everyone who has to interest his audience
through the voice discovers that his success depends
upon the clear, simple and varied structure of his
thought. I have written a good many plays in verse<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>
and prose, and almost all those plays I have rewritten
after performance, sometimes again and again,
and every change that has succeeded has been an
addition to the masculine element, an increase of
strength in the bony structure.</p>

<p>Modern literature, above all poetical literature, is
monotonous in its structure and effeminate in its
continual insistence upon certain moments of strained
lyricism. William Morris, who did more than any
modern to recover mediæval art, did not in his
<i>Earthly Paradise</i> copy from Chaucer, from whom he
copied so much that was <i>naïve</i> and beautiful, what
seems to me essential in Chaucer’s art. He thought
of himself as writing for the reader, who could return
to him again and again when the chosen mood had
come, and became monotonous, melancholy, too
continuously lyrical in his understanding of emotion
and of life. Had he accustomed himself to read out
his poems upon those Sunday evenings that he gave
to Socialist speeches, and to gather an audience of
average men, precisely such an audience as I have
often seen in his house, he would have been forced
to Chaucer’s variety, to his delight in the height and
depth, and would have found expression for that
humorous many-sided nature of his. I owe to him
many truths, but I would add to those truths the
certainty that all the old writers, the masculine writers
of the world, wrote to be spoken or to be sung, and
in a later age to be read aloud, for hearers who had
to understand swiftly or not at all, and who gave up
nothing of life to listen, but sat, the day’s work over,
friend by friend, lover by lover.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span></p>


<h3>THE ARROW: 1906.<a name="FNanchor_L_12" id="FNanchor_L_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_L_12" class="fnanchor">[L]</a></h3>

<h4>THE SEASON’S WORK.</h4>

<p>A character of the winter’s work will be the large
number of romantic, poetic and historical plays—that
is to say, of plays which require a convention
for their performance; their speech, whether it be
verse or prose, being so heightened as to transcend
that of any form of real life. Our first two years of
The Abbey Theatre have been expended mostly on
the perfecting of the Company in peasant comedy
and tragedy. Every national dramatic movement or
theatre in countries like Bohemia and Hungary, as
in Elizabethan England, has arisen out of a study of
the common people, who preserve national characteristics
more than any other class, and out of an
imaginative recreation of national history or legend.
The life of the drawing-room, the life represented in
most plays of the ordinary theatre of to-day, differs
but little all over the world, and has as little to do
with the national spirit as the architecture of, let us
say, St. Stephen’s Green, or Queen’s Gate, or of the
Boulevards about the Arc de Triomphe.</p>

<p>As we wish our work to be full of the life of this
country, our stage-manager has almost always to train
our actors from the beginning, always so in the case
of peasant plays, and this makes the building up of
a theatre like ours the work of years. We are now
fairly satisfied with the representation of peasant life,
and we can afford to give the greater part of our
attention to other expressions of our art and of our
life. The romantic work and poetical work once
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>reasonably good, we can, if but the dramatist arrive,
take up the life of our drawing-rooms, and see if
there is something characteristic there, something
which our nationality may enable us to express better
than others, and so create plays of that life and means
to play them as truthful as a play of Hauptmann’s
or of Ibsen’s upon the German or Scandinavian stage.
I am not myself interested in this kind of work, and
do not believe it to be as important as contemporary
critics think it is, but a theatre such as we project
should give a reasonably complete expression to the
imaginative interests of its country. In any case it
was easier, and therefore wiser, to begin where our
art is most unlike that of others, with the representation
of country life.</p>

<p>It is possible to speak the universal truths of
human nature whether the speakers be peasants or
wealthy men, for—</p>

<div class="poetry-container">
  <div class="poetry">
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">‘Love doth sing</span></div>
<div class="verse">As sweetly in a beggar as a king.’</div>
</div>
</div>

<p class="unindent">So far as we have any model before us it is the
national and municipal theatre in various Continental
towns, and, like the best of these, we must have in
our repertory masterpieces from every great school
of dramatic literature, and play them confidently,
even though the public be slow to like that old stern
art, and perhaps a little proudly, remembering that
no other English-speaking theatre can be so catholic.
Certainly the weathercocks of our imagination will
not turn those painted eyes of theirs too long to the
quarter of the Scandinavian winds. If the wind blow
long from the Mediterranean, the paint may peel
before we pray for a change in the weather.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span></p>


<h4>THE CONTROVERSY OVER<br />
<i>THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD</i>.</h4>

<p>We have claimed for our writers the freedom to
find in their own land every expression of good and
evil necessary to their art, for Irish life contains, like
all vigorous life, the seeds of all good and evil, and a
writer must be free here as elsewhere to watch where
weed or flower ripen. No one who knows the work of
our Theatre as a whole can say we have neglected
the flower; but the moment a writer is forbidden to
take pleasure in the weed, his art loses energy and
abundance. In the great days of English dramatic
art the greatest English writer of comedy was free to
create <i>The Alchemist</i> and <i>Volpone</i>, but a demand born of
Puritan conviction and shop-keeping timidity and insincerity,
for what many second-rate intellects thought
to be noble and elevating events and characters, had
already at the outset of the eighteenth century ended
the English drama as a complete and serious art.
Sheridan and Goldsmith, when they restored comedy
after an epoch of sentimentalities, had to apologise for
their satiric genius by scenes of conventional love-making
and sentimental domesticity that have set
them outside the company of all, whether their genius
be great or little, whose work is pure and whole.
The quarrel of our Theatre to-day is the quarrel of
the Theatre in many lands; for the old Puritanism,
the old dislike of power and reality have not changed,
even when they are called by some Gaelic name.</p>

<div class="blockquot">

<p>[On the second performance of <i>The Playboy of the Western
World</i> about forty men who sat in the middle of the pit
succeeded in making the play entirely inaudible. Some of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>
them brought tin-trumpets, and the noise began immediately
on the rise of the curtain. For days articles in the Press
called for the withdrawal of the play, but we played for
the seven nights we had announced; and before the week’s
end opinion had turned in our favour. There were, however,
nightly disturbances and a good deal of rioting in the
surrounding streets. On the last night of the play there
were, I believe, five hundred police keeping order in the
theatre and in its neighbourhood. Some days later our enemies,
though beaten so far as the play was concerned, crowded into
the cheaper seats for a debate on the freedom of the stage.
They were very excited, and kept up the discussion until near
twelve. The last paragraphs of my opening statement ran as
follows.]</p></div>

<h5><i>From Mr. Yeats’ opening Speech in the Debate on
February 4, 1907, at the Abbey Theatre.</i></h5>

<p>The struggle of the last week has been long a
necessity; various paragraphs in newspapers describing
Irish attacks on Theatres had made many worthy
young men come to think that the silencing of a stage
at their own pleasure, even if hundreds desired that it
should not be silenced, might win them a little fame,
and, perhaps, serve their country. Some of these
attacks have been made on plays which are in themselves
indefensible, vulgar and old-fashioned farces
and comedies. But the attack, being an annihilation
of civil rights, was never anything but an increase of
Irish disorder. The last I heard of was in Liverpool,
and there a stage was rushed, and a priest, who had
set a play upon it, withdrew his play and apologised
to the audience. We have not such pliant bones, and
did not learn in the houses that bred us a so suppliant
knee. But behind the excitement of example<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>
there is a more fundamental movement of opinion.
Some seven or eight years ago the National movement
was democratised and passed from the hands
of a few leaders into those of large numbers of young
men organised in clubs and societies. These young
men made the mistake of the newly-enfranchised
everywhere; they fought for causes worthy in themselves
with the unworthy instruments of tyranny and
violence. Comic songs of a certain kind were to be
driven from the stage, everyone was to wear Irish
cloth, everyone was to learn Irish, everyone was to
hold certain opinions, and these ends were sought
by personal attacks, by virulent caricature and violent
derision. It needs eloquence to persuade and knowledge
to expound; but the coarser means come ready
to every man’s hand, as ready as a stone or a stick,
and where these coarse means are all, there is nothing
but mob, and the commonest idea most prospers and
is most sought for.</p>

<p>Gentlemen of the little clubs and societies, do not
mistake the meaning of our victory; it means something
for us, but more for you. When the curtain
of <i>The Playboy</i> fell on Saturday night in the midst of
what <i>The Sunday Independent</i>—no friendly witness—described
as ‘thunders of applause,’ I am confident
that I saw the rise in this country of a new thought,
a new opinion, that we had long needed. It was not
all approval of Mr. Synge’s play that sent the receipts
of the Abbey Theatre this last week to twice the
height they had ever touched before. The generation
of young men and girls who are now leaving schools
or colleges are weary of the tyranny of clubs and
leagues. They wish again for individual sincerity,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>
the eternal quest of truth, all that has been given up
for so long that all might crouch upon the one roost
and quack or cry in the one flock. We are beginning
once again to ask what a man is, and to be content
to wait a little before we go on to that further question:
What is a good Irishman? There are some who
have not yet their degrees that will say to friend or
neighbour, ‘You have voted with the English, and
that is bad’; or ‘You have sent away your Irish servants,
or thrown away your Irish clothes, or blacked
your face for your singing. I despise what you have
done, I keep you still my friend; but if you are
terrorised out of doing any of these things, evil
things though I know them to be, I will not have
you for my friend any more.’ Manhood is all, and
the root of manhood is courage and courtesy.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span></p>


<h3>1907<br />

ON TAKING <i>THE PLAYBOY</i> TO LONDON.</h3>

<p>The failure of the audience to understand this
powerful and strange work (<i>The Playboy of the Western
World</i>) has been the one serious failure of our movement,
and it could not have happened but that the
greater number of those who came to shout down the
play were no regular part of our audience at all, but
members of parties and societies whose main interests
are political. We have been denounced with even
greater violence than on the first production of
the play for announcing that we should carry it to
London. We cannot see that an attack, which we
believe to have been founded on a misunderstanding
of the nature of literature, should prevent us from
selecting, as our custom is, whatever of our best comes
within the compass of our players at the time, to
show in some English theatres. Nearly all strong
and strange writing is attacked on its appearance, and
those who press it upon the world may not cease from
pressing it, for their justification is its ultimate acceptance.
Ireland is passing through a crisis in the life
of the mind greater than any she has known since
the rise of the Young Ireland party, and based upon
a principle which sets many in opposition to the
habits of thought and feeling come down from that
party, for the seasons change, and need and occupation
with them. Many are beginning to recognise
the right of the individual mind to see the world in
its own way, to cherish the thoughts which separate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span>
men from one another, and that are the creators of
distinguished life, instead of those thoughts that had
made one man like another if they could, and have
but succeeded in setting hysteria and insincerity in
place of confidence and self-possession. To the Young
Ireland writers, who have the ear of Ireland, though
not its distracted mind, truth was historical and external
and not a self-consistent personal vision, and it
is but according to ancient custom that the new truth
should force its way amid riot and great anger.</p>


<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>


<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1">[A]</a> Both Mr. Moore and Mr. Martyn dropped out of the movement after the
third performance at the Irish Literary Theatre in 1901.—W.B.Y.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2">[B]</a> That mood has gone, with Fenianism and its wild hopes. The National
movement has been commercialized in the last few years. How much real ideality
is but hidden for a time one cannot say.—W.B.Y., <i>March, 1908</i>.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3">[C]</a> An illusion, as he himself explained to me. He had never seen <i>Phèdre</i>.
The players were quiet and natural, because they did not know what else to do.
They had not learned to go wrong.—W.B.Y., <i>March, 1908</i>.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_D_4" id="Footnote_D_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_D_4">[D]</a> This play was <i>John Bull’s Other Island</i>. When it came out in the spring of
1905 we felt ourselves unable to cast it without wronging Mr. Shaw. We had
no ‘Broadbent’ or money to get one.—W.B.Y., <i>March, 1908</i>.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_E_5" id="Footnote_E_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_E_5">[E]</a> <i>The Poor House</i>, written in Irish by Dr. Hyde on a scenario by Lady Gregory.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_F_6" id="Footnote_F_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_F_6">[F]</a> <i>Riders to the Sea.</i> This play made its way very slowly with our audiences,
but is now very popular.—W.B.Y., <i>March, 1908</i>.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_G_7" id="Footnote_G_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_G_7">[G]</a> The players, though not the playwrights, are now all paid.—W.B.Y.,
<i>March, 1908</i>.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_H_8" id="Footnote_H_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_H_8">[H]</a> <i>John Bull’s Other Island.</i></p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_I_9" id="Footnote_I_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_I_9">[I]</a> Mr. Boyle has since left us as a protest against the performance of Mr.
Synge’s <i>Playboy of the Western World</i>.—W.B.Y., <i>March, 1908.</i></p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_J_10" id="Footnote_J_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_J_10">[J]</a> This essay was written immediately after the opening of the Abbey Theatre,
though it was not printed, through an accident, until the art of the Abbey has
become an art of peasant comedy. It tells of things we have never had the time
to begin. We still dream of them.—W.B.Y., <i>March, 1908</i>.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_K_11" id="Footnote_K_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_K_11">[K]</a> I have heard musicians excuse themselves by claiming that they put the
words there for the sake of the singer; but if that be so, why should not the
singer sing something she may wish to have by rote? Nobody will hear the
words; and the local time-table, or, so much suet and so many raisins, and so
much spice and so much sugar, and whether it is to be put in a quick or a slow
oven, would run very nicely with a little management.</p></div>

<div class="footnote">

<p><a name="Footnote_L_12" id="Footnote_L_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_L_12">[L]</a> <i>The Arrow</i>, a briefer chronicle than <i>Samhain</i>, was distributed with the
programme for a few months.</p></div></div>


<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span></p>


<h2>APPENDIX I<br />


<i><small>THE HOUR-GLASS.</small></i></h2>

<p>This play is founded upon the following story, recorded
by Lady Wilde in <i>Ancient Legends of Ireland</i>, 1887, vol. i.,
pp. 60-67:—</p>

<h3>THE PRIEST’S SOUL.</h3>

<p><span class="smcap">In</span> former days there were great schools in Ireland where
every sort of learning was taught to the people, and even
the poorest had more knowledge at that time than many a
gentleman has now. But as to the priests, their learning
was above all, so that the fame of Ireland went over the
whole world, and many kings from foreign lands used to
send their sons all the way to Ireland to be brought up in
the Irish schools.</p>

<p>Now, at this time there was a little boy learning at one
of them who was a wonder to every one for his cleverness.
His parents were only labouring people, and of course very
poor; but young as he was, and poor as he was, no king’s
or lord’s son could come up to him in learning. Even the
masters were put to shame; for when they were trying to
teach him he would tell them something they had never
heard of before, and show them their ignorance. One of
his great triumphs was in argument, and he would go on
till he proved to you that black was white, and then when
you gave in, for no one could beat him in talk, he would
turn round and show you that white was black, or may be
that there was no colour at all in the world. When he
grew up his poor father and mother were so proud of him
that they resolved to make him a priest, which they did at
last, though they nearly starved themselves to get the money.
Well, such another learned man was not in Ireland, and he
was as great in argument as ever, so that no one could stand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>
before him. Even the Bishops tried to talk to him, but he
showed them at once they knew nothing at all.</p>

<p>Now, there were no schoolmasters in those times, but it
was the priests taught the people; and as this man was the
cleverest in Ireland all the foreign kings sent their sons to
him as long as he had house-room to give them. So he grew
very proud, and began to forget how low he had been, and,
worst of all, even to forget God, who had made him what
he was. And the pride of arguing got hold of him, so that
from one thing to another he went on to prove that there
was no Purgatory, and then no Hell, and then no Heaven,
and then no God; and at last that men had no souls, but
were no more than a dog or a cow, and when they died
there was an end of them. ‘Who ever saw a soul?’ he
would say. ‘If you can show me one, I will believe.’ No
one could make any answer to this; and at last they all came
to believe that as there was no other world, every one might
do what they liked in this, the priest setting the example,
for he took a beautiful young girl to wife. But as no priest
or bishop in the whole land could be got to marry them, he
was obliged to read the service over for himself. It was a
great scandal, yet no one dared to say a word, for all the
kings’ sons were on his side, and would have slaughtered any
one who tried to prevent his wicked goings-on. Poor boys!
they all believed in him, and thought every word he said
was the truth. In this way his notions began to spread
about, and the whole world was going to the bad, when one
night an angel came down from Heaven, and told the priest
he had but twenty-four hours to live. He began to tremble,
and asked for a little more time.</p>

<p>But the angel was stiff, and told him that could not be.</p>

<p>‘What do you want time for, you sinner?’ he asked.</p>

<p>‘Oh, sir, have pity on my poor soul!’ urged the priest.</p>

<p>‘Oh, ho! You have a soul, then?’ said the angel. ‘Pray
how did you find that out?’</p>

<p>‘It has been fluttering in me ever since you appeared,’<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>
answered the priest. ‘What a fool I was not to think of it
before!’</p>

<p>‘A fool, indeed,’ said the angel. ‘What good was all your
learning, when it could not tell you that you had a soul?’</p>

<p>‘Ah, my lord,’ said the priest, ‘if I am to die, tell me how
soon I may be in heaven.’</p>

<p>‘Never,’ replied the angel. ‘You denied there was a
Heaven.’</p>

<p>‘Then, my lord, may I go to Purgatory?’</p>

<p>‘You denied Purgatory also; you must go straight to
Hell,’ said the angel.</p>

<p>‘But, my lord, I denied Hell also,’ answered the priest,
‘so you can’t send me there either.’</p>

<p>The angel was a little puzzled.</p>

<p>‘Well,’ said he, ‘I’ll tell you what I can do for you. You
may either live now on earth for a hundred years enjoying
every pleasure, and then be cast into Hell for ever; or you
may die in twenty-four hours in the most horrible torments,
and pass through Purgatory, there to remain till the Day of
Judgment, if only you can find some one person that
believes, and through his belief mercy will be vouchsafed to
you and your soul will be saved.’</p>

<p>The priest did not take five minutes to make up his mind.</p>

<p>‘I will have death in the twenty-four hours,’ he said, ‘so
that my soul may be saved at last.’</p>

<p>On this the angel gave him directions as to what he was
to do, and left him.</p>

<p>Then, immediately, the priest entered the large room
where all his scholars and the kings’ sons were seated, and
called out to them—</p>

<p>‘Now, tell me the truth, and let none fear to contradict
me. Tell me what is your belief. Have men souls?’</p>

<p>‘Master,’ they answered, ‘once we believed that men
had souls; but, thanks to your teaching, we believe so no
longer. There is no Hell, and no Heaven, and no God.
This is our belief, for it is thus you taught us.’<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span></p>

<p>Then the priest grew pale with fear, and cried out: ‘Listen!
I taught you a lie. There is a God, and man has an immortal
soul. I believe now all I denied before.’</p>

<p>But the shouts of laughter that rose up drowned the
priest’s voice, for they thought he was only trying them for
argument.</p>

<p>‘Prove it, master,’ they cried, ‘prove it! Who has ever
seen God? Who has ever seen the soul?’</p>

<p>And the room was stirred with their laughter.</p>

<p>The priest stood up to answer them, but no word could
he utter; all his eloquence, all his powers of argument, had
gone from him, and he could do nothing but wring his
hands and cry out—</p>

<p>‘There is a God! there is a God! Lord, have mercy on
my soul!’</p>

<p>And they all began to mock him, and repeat his own
words that he had taught them—</p>

<p>‘Show him to us; show us your God.’</p>

<p>And he fled from them groaning with agony, for he saw
that none believed, and how then could his soul be saved?</p>

<p>But he thought next of his wife.</p>

<p>‘She will believe,’ he said to himself. ‘Women never
give up God.’</p>

<p>And he went to her; but she told him that she believed
only what he taught her, and that a good wife should believe
in her husband first, and before and above all things in
heaven or earth.</p>

<p>Then despair came on him, and he rushed from the house
and began to ask every one he met if they believed. But
the same answer came from one and all: ‘We believe only
what you have taught us,’ for his doctrines had spread far
and wide through the county.</p>

<p>Then he grew half mad with fear, for the hours were
passing. And he flung himself down on the ground in a
lonesome spot, and wept and groaned in terror, for the time
was coming fast when he must die.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span></p>

<p>Just then a little child came by.</p>

<p>‘God save you kindly,’ said the child to him.</p>

<p>The priest started up.</p>

<p>‘Child, do you believe in God?’ he asked.</p>

<p>‘I have come from a far country to learn about Him,’
said the child. ‘Will your honour direct me to the best
school that they have in these parts?’</p>

<p>‘The best school and the best teacher is close by,’ said
the priest, and he named himself.</p>

<p>‘Oh, not to that man,’ answered the child, ‘for I am told
he denies God and Heaven and Hell, and even that man
has a soul, because we can’t see it; but I would soon put
him down.’</p>

<p>The priest looked at him earnestly. ‘How?’ he inquired.</p>

<p>‘Why,’ said the child, ‘I would ask him if he believed
he had life to show me his life.’</p>

<p>‘But he could not do that, my child,’ said the priest.
‘Life cannot be seen; we have it, but it is invisible.’</p>

<p>‘Then, if we have life, though we cannot see it, we may
also have a soul, though it is invisible,’ answered the child.</p>

<p>When the priest heard him speak these words he fell down
on his knees before him, weeping for joy, for now he knew
his soul was safe; he had met at last one that believed.
And he told the child his whole story: all his wickedness,
and pride, and blasphemy against the great God; and how
the angel had come to him and told him of the only way in
which he could be saved, through the faith and prayers of
some one that believed.</p>

<p>‘Now, then,’ he said to the child, ‘take this penknife and
strike it into my breast, and go on stabbing the flesh until
you see the paleness of death on my face. Then watch—for
a living thing will soar up from my body as I die, and you
will then know that my soul has ascended to the presence
of God. And when you see this thing, make haste and run to
my school and call on all my scholars to come and see that
the soul of their master has left the body, and that all he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>
taught them was a lie, for that there is a God who punishes
sin, and a Heaven and a Hell, and that man has an immortal
soul, destined for eternal happiness or misery.’</p>

<p>‘I will pray,’ said the child, ‘to have courage to do this
work.’</p>

<p>And he kneeled down and prayed. Then when he rose
up he took the penknife and struck it into the priest’s heart,
and struck and struck again till all the flesh was lacerated;
but still the priest lived, though the agony was horrible, for
he could not die until the twenty-four hours had expired.
At last the agony seemed to cease, and the stillness of death
settled on his face. Then the child, who was watching, saw
a beautiful living creature, with four snow-white wings,
mount from the dead man’s body into the air and go
fluttering round his head.</p>

<p>So he ran to bring the scholars; and when they saw it
they all knew it was the soul of their master, and they
watched with wonder and awe until it passed from sight into
the clouds.</p>

<p>And this was the first butterfly that was ever seen in
Ireland; and now all men know that the butterflies are the
souls of the dead waiting for the moment when they may
enter Purgatory, and so pass through torture to purification
and peace.</p>

<p>But the schools of Ireland were quite deserted after that
time, for people said, What is the use of going so far to
learn when the wisest man in all Ireland did not know if he
had a soul till he was near losing it; and was only saved at
last through the simple belief of a little child?</p>

<hr class="tb" />

<p><i>The Hour-Glass</i> was first played in The Molesworth Hall,
Dublin, with the following cast:—Wise Man, Mr. T. Dudley
Digges; His Wife, Miss M. T. Quinn; The Fool, Mr. F.
J. Fay; Pupils, P. J. Kelly, P. Columb, C. Caufield.</p>

<p>We always play it in front of an olive-green curtain, and
dress the Wise Man and his Pupils in various shades of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>
purple. Because in all these decorative schemes one needs,
as I think, a third colour subordinate to the other two, we
have partly dressed the Fool in red-brown, which is repeated
in the furniture. There is some green in his dress and in that
of the Wife of the Wise Man who is dressed mainly in
purple.</p>

<p>One sometimes has need of more lines of the little song,
and I have put into English rhyme three of the many verses
of a Gaelic ballad:</p>

<div class="poetry-container">
  <div class="poetry">
    <div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">I was going the road one day</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">(O the brown and the yellow beer!)</span></div>
<div class="verse">And I met with a man that was no right man</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">(O my dear, my dear).</span></div>
    <div class="stanza">
    </div>
<div class="verse">‘Give me your wife,’ said he,</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">(O the brown and the yellow beer!)</span></div>
<div class="verse">‘Till the sun goes down and an hour of the clock’</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">(O my dear, my dear).</span></div>
    <div class="stanza">
    </div>
<div class="verse">‘Good-bye, good-bye, my husband,’</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">(O the brown and the yellow beer!)</span></div>
<div class="verse">‘For a year and a day by the clock of the sun’</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">(O my dear, my dear).</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span></p>




<h2>APPENDIX II<br />
<i><small>CATHLEEN NI HOULIHAN.</small></i></h2>

<p class="unindent"><span class="smcap">My dear Lady Gregory</span>,—</p>

<p>When I was a boy I used to wander about at Rosses Point
and Ballisodare listening to old songs and stories. I wrote
down what I heard and made poems out of the stories or
put them into the little chapters of the first edition of <i>The
Celtic Twilight</i>, and that is how I began to write in the
Irish way.</p>

<p>Then I went to London to make my living, and though
I spent a part of every year in Ireland and tried to keep the
old life in my memory by reading every country tale I could
find in books or old newspapers, I began to forget the true
countenance of country life. The old tales were still alive
for me indeed, but with a new, strange, half-unreal life, as
if in a wizard’s glass, until at last, when I had finished <i>The
Secret Rose</i>, and was half-way through <i>The Wind Among the
Reeds</i>, a wise woman in her trance told me that my inspiration
was from the moon, and that I should always live
close to water, for my work was getting too full of those
little jewelled thoughts that come from the sun and have no
nation. I had no need to turn to my books of astrology to
know that the common people are under the moon, or to
Porphyry to remember the image-making power of the
waters. Nor did I doubt the entire truth of what she said
to me, for my head was full of fables that I had no longer
the knowledge and emotion to write. Then you brought
me with you to see your friends in the cottages, and to talk
to old wise men on Slieve Echtge, and we gathered together, or
you gathered for me, a great number of stories and traditional
beliefs. You taught me to understand again, and much more
perfectly than before, the true countenance of country life.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span></p>

<p>One night I had a dream almost as distinct as a vision,
of a cottage where there was well-being and firelight and
talk of a marriage, and into the midst of that cottage there
came an old woman in a long cloak. She was Ireland herself,
that Cathleen ni Houlihan for whom so many songs
have been sung and about whom so many stories have been
told and for whose sake so many have gone to their death.
I thought if I could write this out as a little play I could
make others see my dream as I had seen it, but I could
not get down out of that high window of dramatic verse,
and in spite of all you had done for me I had not the country
speech. One has to live among the people, like you, of
whom an old man said in my hearing, ‘She has been a serving-maid
among us,’ before one can think the thoughts of
the people and speak with their tongue. We turned my
dream into the little play, <i>Cathleen ni Houlihan</i>, and when
we gave it to the little theatre in Dublin and found that the
working-people liked it, you helped me to put my other
dramatic fables into speech. Some of these have already been
acted, but some may not be acted for a long time, but all
seem to me, though they were but a part of a summer’s
work, to have more of that countenance of country life than
anything I have done since I was a boy.</p>

<p class="sig">
<span class="smcap">W. B. Yeats.</span><br />
</p>

<p>
<i>Feb., 1903.</i><br />
</p>

<hr class="tb" />

<p>This play was first played on April 2, 1902, in St.
Teresa’s Hall, Dublin, with the following cast:—Cathleen,
Miss Maude Gonne; Delia Cahel, Miss Maire nic Sheublagh;
Bridget Gillan, Miss M. T. Quinn; Patrick Gillan, Mr. C.
Caufield; Michael Gillan, Mr. T. Dudley Digges; Peter
Gillan, Mr. W. G. Fay.</p>

<p>Miss Maude Gonne played very finely, and her great
height made Cathleen seem a divine being fallen into our
mortal infirmity. Since then the part has been twice played
in America by women who insisted on keeping their young
faces, and one of these when she came to the door dropped<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>
her cloak, as I have been told, and showed a white satin
dress embroidered with shamrocks. Upon another,—or was it
the same occasion?—the player of Bridget wore a very becoming
dress of the time of Louis the Fourteenth. The
most beautiful woman of her time, when she played my
Cathleen, ‘made up’ centuries old, and never should the part
be played but with a like sincerity. This was the first
play of our Irish School of folk-drama, and in it that way
of quiet movement and careful speech which has given our
players some little fame first showed itself, arising partly out
of deliberate opinion and partly out of the ignorance of
the players. Does art owe most to ignorance or to knowledge?
Certainly it comes to its deathbed full of knowledge. I
cannot imagine this play, or any folk-play of our school, acted
by players with no knowledge of the peasant, and of the
awkwardness and stillness of bodies that have followed the
plough, or too lacking in humility to copy these things without
convention or caricature.</p>

<p>The lines beginning ‘Do not make a great keening’ and
‘They shall be remembered for ever’ are said or sung to an
air heard by one of the players in a dream. This music is
with the other music at the end of the third volume.</p>

<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span></p>




<h2>APPENDIX III<br />


<i><small>THE GOLDEN HELMET.</small></i></h2>

<p><i>The Golden Helmet</i> was produced at the Abbey Theatre on
March 19, 1908, with the following cast:—Cuchulain, J. M.
Kerrigan; Conal, Arthur Sinclair; Leagerie, Fred. O’
Donovan; Laeg, Sydney Morgan; Emer, Sara Allgood;
Conal’s Wife, Maire O’Neill; Leagerie’s Wife, Eileen O’
Doherty; Red Man, Ambrose Power; Horseboys, Scullions,
and Black Men, S. Hamilton, T. J. Fox, U. Wright,
D. Robertson, T. O’Neill, I. A. O’Rourke, P. Kearney.</p>

<p>In performance we left the black hands to the imagination,
and probably when there is so much noise and movement on
the stage they would always fail to produce any effect. Our
stage is too small to try the experiment, for they would be
hidden by the figures of the players. We staged the play
with a very pronounced colour-scheme, and I have noticed
that the more obviously decorative is the scene and costuming
of any play, the more it is lifted out of time and place, and
the nearer to faeryland do we carry it. One gets also much
more effect out of concerted movements—above all, if there
are many players—when all the clothes are the same colour.
No breadth of treatment gives monotony when there is
movement and change of lighting. It concentrates attention
on every new effect and makes every change of outline or
of light and shadow surprising and delightful. Because of
this one can use contrasts of colour, between clothes and
background, or in the background itself, the complementary
colours for instance, which would be too obvious to keep the
attention in a painting. One wishes to make the movement
of the action as important as possible, and the simplicity
which gives depth of colour does this, just as, for precisely
similar reasons, the lack of colour in a statue fixes the attention
upon the form.</p>

<p>The play is founded upon an old Irish story, <i>The Feast
of Bricriu</i>, given in <i>Cuchulain of Muirthemne</i>, and is meant
as an introduction to <i>On Baile’s Strand</i>.</p>

<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span></p>




<h2>APPENDIX IV<br />
<br />
<small>DATES AND PLACES OF
THE FIRST PERFORMANCE OF NEW PLAYS
PRODUCED BY THE NATIONAL THEATRE
SOCIETY AND ITS PREDECESSORS:—</small></h2>


<div class="center">
<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary="performances by year and location">
<tr>
<td align="center" colspan="3">1899.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center" colspan="3"><span class="smcap">Irish Literary Theatre at Antient Concert Rooms.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">May 8th.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Countess Cathleen</i>, by W. B. Yeats.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">May 9th.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Heather Field</i>, by Edward Martyn.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center" colspan="3">1900.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center" colspan="3"><span class="smcap">Irish Literary Theatre at the Gaiety Theatre.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" rowspan="2">Feb. 19th.</td>
<td align="left" class="btrb" rowspan="2">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Last Feast of the Fianna</i>, by Alice Milligan.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left"><i>Maeve</i>, by Edward Martyn.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">Feb. 20th.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Bending of the Bough</i>, by George Moore.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center" colspan="3">1901.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" rowspan="2" valign="top">Oct. 21st.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>Diarmuid and Grania</i>, by W. B. Yeats and George Moore.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Twisting of the Rope</i>, by Douglas Hyde (first Gaelic play produced in a theatre).</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center" colspan="3">1902.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center" colspan="3"><span class="smcap">Mr. W. G. Fay’s<br />Irish National Dramatic Company<br />at St. Teresa’s Hall, Clarendon Street.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" rowspan="2">April 2nd.</td>
<td align="right" class="btrb" rowspan="2">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>Deirdre</i>, by ‘A.E.’</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left"><i>Cathleen ni Houlihan</i>, by W. B. Yeats.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center" colspan="3"><span class="smcap">Irish National Dramatic Company<br />at Antient Concert Rooms.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" rowspan="2">Oct. 29th.</td>
<td align="right" class="btrb" rowspan="2">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Sleep of the King</i>, by Seumas O’Cuisin.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left"><i>The Laying of the Foundations</i>, by Fred Ryan.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">Oct. 30th.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>A Pot of Broth</i>, by W. B. Yeats.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">Oct. 31st.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Racing Lug</i>, by Seumas O’Cuisin.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center" colspan="3">1903.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center" colspan="3"><span class="smcap">Irish National Theatre Society, Molesworth Hall.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" rowspan="2">March 14th.</td>
<td align="right" class="btrb" rowspan="2">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Hour-Glass</i>, by W. B. Yeats.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left"><i>Twenty-five</i>, by Lady Gregory.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" rowspan="2">Oct. 8th.</td>
<td align="right" class="btrb" rowspan="2">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The King’s Threshold</i>, by W. B. Yeats.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left"><i>In the Shadow of the Glen</i>, by J. M. Synge.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">Dec. 3rd.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>Broken Soil</i>, by P. Colm.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center" colspan="3">1904.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" rowspan="2">Jan. 14th.</td>
<td align="right" class="btrb" rowspan="2">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Shadowy Waters</i>, by W. B. Yeats.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left"><i>The Townland of Tamney</i>, by Seumas MacManus.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">Feb. 25th.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>Riders to the Sea</i>, by J. M. Synge.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center" colspan="3"><span class="smcap">Irish National Theatre Society at the Abbey Theatre.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" rowspan="2">Dec. 27th.</td>
<td align="right" class="btrb" rowspan="2">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>On Baile’s Strand</i>, by W. B. Yeats.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left"><i>Spreading the News</i>, by Lady Gregory.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center" colspan="3">1905.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">Feb. 4th.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Well of the Saints</i>, by J. M. Synge.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">March 25th.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>Kincora</i>, by Lady Gregory.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">April 25th.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Building Fund</i>, by William Boyle.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">June 9th.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Land</i>, by P. Colm.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center" colspan="3"><span class="smcap">National Theatre Society, Ltd.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">Dec. 9th.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The White Cockade</i>, by Lady Gregory.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center" colspan="3">1906.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">Jan. 20th.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Eloquent Dempsey</i>, by William Boyle.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">Feb. 19th.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>Hyacinth Halvey</i>, by Lady Gregory.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" rowspan="2">Oct. 20th.</td>
<td align="right" class="btrb" rowspan="2">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Gaol Gate</i>, by Lady Gregory.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left"><i>The Mineral Workers</i>, by William Boyle.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">Nov. 24th.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>Deirdre</i>, by W. B. Yeats.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" rowspan="2">Dec. 8th.</td>
<td align="right" class="btrb" rowspan="2">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Shadowy Waters</i> (new version), by W. B. Yeats.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left"><i>The Canavans</i>, by Lady Gregory.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center" colspan="3">1907.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">Jan. 26th.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Playboy of the Western World</i>, by J. M. Synge.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">Feb. 23rd.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Jackdaw</i>, by Lady Gregory.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">March 9th.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>Rising of the Moon</i>, by Lady Gregory.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">April 1st.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Eyes of the Blind</i>, by Miss W. M. Letts.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">April 3rd.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Poorhouse</i>, by Lady Gregory and Douglas Hyde.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">April 27th.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>Fand</i>, by Wilfred Scawen Blunt.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">Oct. 3rd.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Country Dressmaker</i>, by George Fitzmaurice.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" rowspan="2">Oct. 31st.</td>
<td align="right" class="btrb" rowspan="2">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>Dervorgilla</i>, by Lady Gregory.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left"><i>The Canavans</i> (new version), by Lady Gregory.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">Nov. 21st.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Unicorn from the Stars</i>, by Lady Gregory and W. B. Yeats.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center" colspan="3">1908.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" rowspan="2">Feb. 15th.</td>
<td align="right" class="btrb" rowspan="2">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Man who Missed the Tide</i>, by W. F. Casey.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left"><i>The Piper</i>, by Norreys Connell.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" rowspan="2">March 19th.</td>
<td align="right" class="btrb" rowspan="2">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Pie-dish</i>, by George Fitzmaurice.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left"><i>The Golden Helmet</i>, by W. B. Yeats.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">April 20th.</td>
<td align="left">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><i>The Workhouse Ward</i>, by Lady Gregory.</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>


<div class="blockquot">

<p>In addition to these plays, many of which are constantly
revived, translations of foreign masterpieces are given
occasionally.</p>

<p>It was not until the opening of the Abbey Theatre that
Lady Gregory, Mr. J. M. Synge, and Mr. W. B. Yeats
became entirely responsible for the selection of plays, though
they had been mainly so from 1903.</p></div>


<div class="blockquot">

<p><i>Corrigenda.</i>—P. 120, l. 5, for ‘severe’ read ‘serious’; p. 143, l. 4, for ‘prepared’
read ‘performed’; p. 176, l. 29, for ‘<i>their</i> own day’ read ‘<i>our</i> own day.’</p></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span></p>


<p class="copyright">
<i>Printed by <span class="smcap">A. H. Bullen</span>, at The Shakespeare Head Press,<br />
Stratford-on-Avon.</i><br />
</p></html>