Chapter II: Appendix: IV (2)

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.

LEAGERIE.

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

CONAL.

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?

LEAGERIE [_looks out of window_].

There is nothing stirring.

CONAL.

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 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.

CUCHULAIN [_laughs_].

I have imagined as good, when I had as much ale, and believed it too.

LEAGERIE [_at table_].

I tell you, Cuchulain, you never did. You never imagined a story like this.

CONAL.

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—

LEAGERIE.

But full up to the brim—

CONAL.

The thought of that story had put us from our drinking—

LEAGERIE.

We were telling it over to one another—

CONAL.

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.

LEAGERIE.

If you had been here you would have been as silent as we were.

CONAL.

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?

CUCHULAIN.

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.

CONAL.

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

LEAGERIE.

We might run away, but he would follow us everywhere.

CONAL.

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

CUCHULAIN.

Let us shut the door and put our backs against it.

LEAGERIE.

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

[_A MAN dressed in red, with a great sword and red
ragged hair, and having a Golden Helmet on his head, is
standing on the threshold._

CUCHULAIN.

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.

RED MAN.

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 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. [_He lays the Golden Helmet on the ground._] Have I been too grim a joker? Well, I am forgiven now, for there is the Helmet, and let the strongest take it.

[_He goes out._

CONAL [_taking Helmet_].

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

LEAGERIE [_strutting about stage, sings_].

Leagerie of the Battles
Has put to the sword
The cat-headed men
And carried away
Their hidden gold.

[_He snatches Helmet at the last word._

CONAL.

Give it back to me, I say. What was the treasure but withered leaves when you got to your own door?

CUCHULAIN.

[_Taking the Helmet from LEAGERIE._]

Give it to me, I say.

CONAL.

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

CUCHULAIN.

I have not taken it for myself. It will belong to us all equally. [_He goes to table and begins filling Helmet with ale._] 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. [_Shouting and blowing of horns in the distance._] What is that noise?

CONAL.

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? [_Shouting so as to be heard above the noise._] I drink to your good health, Cuchulain, and to your young wife, though it were well if she did not quarrel with my wife.

_Many men, among whom is LAEG, chariot-driver of
CUCHULAIN, come in with great horns of many fantastic
shapes._

LAEG.

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

ANOTHER.

He is not, but Leagerie is.

ANOTHER.

No, but Conal is.

LAEG.

Make them listen to me, Cuchulain.

ANOTHER.

No, but listen to me.

LAEG.

When I said Cuchulain should have the Helmet, they blew the horns.

ANOTHER.

Conal has it. The best man has it.

CUCHULAIN.

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

[_The _Scullions_ and the _Horseboys_ point at LAEG and
cry, ‘_He began it_.’ They keep up an all but continual
murmur through what follows._

LAEG.

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.

[_The _Horseboys_ and the _Scullions_ shout, ‘_No, no;
give it to Leagerie_,’ ‘_The best man has it_,’ etc._

CUCHULAIN.

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.

A SCULLION OR HORSEBOY.

Cuchulain is right.

ANOTHER.

Cuchulain is right, and I am tired blowing on the big horn.

LAEG.

Cuchulain, you drank first.

ANOTHER.

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.

ANOTHER.

Did Cuchulain drink the first?

LAEG [_triumphantly_].

You drank the first, Cuchulain.

CONAL.

Did you claim to be better than us by drinking first?

[_LEAGERIE and CONAL draw their swords._

CUCHULAIN.

Is it that old dried herring, that old red juggler who has made us quarrel for his own comfort? [_The _Horseboys_ and the _Scullions_ murmur excitedly._] 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.

A SCULLION.

Cuchulain is right. I am tired blowing on the big horn.

CUCHULAIN.

Go in silence.

[_The _Scullions_ and _Horseboys_ turn towards
the door, but stand still on hearing the voice of
LEAGERIE’S WIFE outside the door._

LEAGERIE’S WIFE.

My man is the best. I will go in the first. I will go in the first.

EMER.

My man is the best, and I will go in first.

CONAL’S WIFE.

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

[_LEAGERIE’S WIFE and CONAL’S WIFE struggle in the
doorway._

_LEAGERIE’S WIFE sings._

My man is the best.
What other has fought
The cat-headed men
That mew in the sea
And carried away
Their long-hidden gold?
They struck with their claws
And bit with their teeth,
But Leagerie my husband
Put all to the sword.

CONAL’S WIFE.

[_Putting her hand over the other’s mouth and getting
in front of her._]

My husband has fought
With strong men in armour.
Had he a quarrel
With cats, it is certain
He’d war with none
But the stout and heavy
With good claws on them.
What glory in warring
With hollow shadows
That helplessly mew?

EMER.

[_Thrusting herself between them and forcing both of
them back with her hands._]

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.

[_CUCHULAIN puts his spear across the door._

CUCHULAIN.

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.

[_While CONAL and LEAGERIE are breaking down the
bottoms of the windows each of their wives goes to the
window where her husband is._

_While the windows are being broken down EMER sings._

My man is the best.
And Conal’s wife
And the wife of Leagerie
Know that they lie
When they praise their own
Out of envy of me.
My man is the best,
First for his own sake,
Being the bravest
And handsomest man
And the most beloved
By the women of Ireland
That envy me,
And then for his wife’s sake
Because I’m the youngest
And handsomest queen.

[_When the windows have been made into doors, CUCHULAIN
takes his spear from the door where EMER is, and all
three come in at the same moment._

EMER.

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.

LEAGERIE’S WIFE.

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

CONAL’S WIFE.

Cuchulain has taken it.

CUCHULAIN.

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. [_He takes up the Helmet which LEAGERIE had laid down upon the table when he went to break out the bottom of the window._] This Helmet will bring no more wars into Ireland. [_He throws it into the sea._]

LEAGERIE’S WIFE.

You have done that to rob my husband.

CONAL’S WIFE.

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

CONAL.

You should not have done that, Cuchulain.

LEAGERIE.

You have done us a great wrong.

EMER.

Who is for Cuchulain?

CUCHULAIN.

Let no one stir.

EMER.

Who is for Cuchulain, I say?

[_She draws her dagger from her belt and sings the same
words as before, flourishing it about. While she has
been singing, CONAL’S WIFE and LEAGERIE’S WIFE have
drawn their daggers and run at her to kill her, but
CUCHULAIN has forced them back. CONAL and LEAGERIE have
drawn their swords to strike CUCHULAIN._

CONAL’S WIFE.

[_While EMER is still singing._]

Silence her voice, silence her voice, blow the horns, make a noise!

[_The _Scullions_ and _Horseboys_ 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._

FIRST VOICE.

Did you see them putting out the torches?

ANOTHER VOICE.

They came up out of the sea, three black men.

ANOTHER VOICE.

They have heads of cats upon them.

ANOTHER VOICE.

They came up mewing out of the sea.

ANOTHER VOICE.

How dark it is! one of them has put his hand over the moon.

[_A light gradually comes into the windows as if
shining from the sea. The RED MAN is seen standing in
the midst of the house._

RED MAN.

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.

CUCHULAIN.

The quarrels of Ireland shall end. What is one man’s life? I will pay the debt with my own head. [_EMER wails._] Do not cry out, Emer, for if I were not myself, if I were not Cuchulain, 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. [_He stoops, bending his head. Three _Black Men_ come to the door. Two hold torches, and one stooping between them holds up the Golden Helmet. The RED MAN gives one of the _Black Men_ his sword and takes the Helmet._] What do you wait for, old man? Come, raise up your sword!

RED MAN.

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.

THE IRISH DRAMATIC MOVEMENT

_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 SAMHAIN 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._

_March, 1908._

SAMHAIN: 1901

When 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] 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.

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 _Argument with Death_ 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 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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 _Red Hugh_, which was successfully acted in Dublin the other day, had no business to be in two scenes; and Father O’Leary’s _Tadg Saor_, 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 _Elis agus an bhean deirce_ 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. Hyde’s is, I think, Father Dineen’s _Creideamh agus gorta_, 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 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 _Tain bo Cuailgne_, 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.

If the _Diarmuid and Grania_ and the _Casadh an t-Sugain_ 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 _The Heather Field_ 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 is well above the earth by what is merely commercial in the art of England.

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 _real life_. 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 _Underwoods_.) ‘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.’

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 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.

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,[B] 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 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.’

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.

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 _Casadh an t-Sugain_, which is founded on a well known Irish story of a wandering poet; and _Diarmuid and Grania_, 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 _Diarmuid and Grania_ 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.

I have called this little collection of writings _Samhain_, 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.

1902

The Irish Literary Theatre wound up its three years of experiment last October with _Diarmuid and Grania_, which was played by Mr. Benson’s Company, Mr. Benson himself playing Diarmuid with poetry and fervour, and _Casadh an t-Sugain_, played by Dr. Hyde and some members of the Gaelic League. _Diarmuid and Grania_ 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, _West Highland Superstitions_, and at the fragment translated by Kuno Meyer, at page 458 of Vol. I. of _Zeitschrift für Keltische Philologie_. 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.

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 quite free; and it is not successful until it is able to say it is no longer wanted. Amateur actors will perform for _Cumann-na-Gael_ 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 _Théâtre Libre_ with a company of amateurs in a hall that only held three hundred people.

The first work of theirs to get much attention was their performance, last spring, at the invitation of _Inghinidhe h-Eireann_ of A.E.’s _Deirdre_, and my _Cathleen ni Houlihan_. 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 _Deirdre_ 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 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 _Phèdre_, and understood where Mr. Fay, who stage-manages the National Theatrical Company, had gone for his model.[C] 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 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.’

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.

The performances of _Deirdre_ and _Cathleen ni Houlihan_, 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 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 _All Ireland Review_ 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 _United Irishman_ 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.

After the production of these plays the most important Irish dramatic event was, no doubt, the acting of Dr. Hyde’s _An Posadh_, 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 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 _Casadh an t-Sugain_. His _Tincear agus Sidheog_, 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?

Among the other plays in Irish acted during the year Father Dineen’s _Tobar Draoidheachta_ is probably the best. He has given up the many scenes of his _Creadeamh agus Gorta_, 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 _naïveté_ 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 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 _Creadeamh agus Gorta_, the play has more fancy and a more sustained energy.

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 _La an Amadan_, 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.

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 _The United Irishman_ and _The All Ireland Review_. I have put my _Cathleen ni Houlihan_ and a little play by Dr. Hyde into this _Samhain_. Once already this year I have had what somebody has called the noble pleasure of praising, and I can praise this _Lost Saint_ with as good a conscience as I had when I wrote of _Cuchulain of Muirthemne_. 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 _Love Songs of Connaught_.

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 _The Love Songs of Connaught_. 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.