Title: Our Irish Theatre - A chapter of autobiography
Author: Gregory, Lady Augusta
Language: English
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_By Lady Gregory_


  Irish Folk-History Plays

    First Series: The Tragedies
      Grania. Kincora. Dervorgilla

    Second Series: The Tragic Comedies
      The Canavans. The White Cockade. The Deliverer


  New Comedies
      The Bogie Men. The Full Moon. Coats. Damer’s Gold. McDonough’s Wife


  Our Irish Theatre
      A Chapter of Autobiography



[Illustration: Augusta Gregory (signature)]



  Our Irish Theatre

  A Chapter of Autobiography


  By

  Lady Gregory


  _Illustrated_


  G. P. Putnam’s Sons
  New York and London
  The Knickerbocker Press
  1914



CONTENTS

                                                        Page
  Chapter I     The Theatre in the Making                  1

  Chapter II    The Blessing of the Generations           50

  Chapter III   Play-Writing                              78

  Chapter IV    The Fight Over “The Playboy”             109

  Chapter V     Synge                                    119

  Chapter VI    The Fight with the Castle                140

  Chapter VII   “The Playboy” in America                 169

                The Binding                              253


  Appendix II   “The Nation” on “Blanco Posnet”          267

  Appendix III  “The Playboy” in America                 280

  Appendix IV   In the Eyes of Our Enemies               306

  Appendix V    In the Eyes of Our Friends               314



ILLUSTRATIONS

                                                        PAGE
  LADY GREGORY                                _Frontispiece_

  THE ABBEY THEATRE, DUBLIN                               40
  From a photograph by Keogh Bros., Ireland.

  MISS SARA ALLGOOD                                       80
  From a drawing by Robert Gregory.

  J. M. SYNGE                                            120
  From a drawing by Robert Gregory in 1904.

  Threatening Letter                                     296



Our Irish Theatre



CHAPTER I

THE THEATRE IN THE MAKING


_To Richard Gregory.--Little Grandson: When I go into the garden in
the morning to find you a nectarine or tell you the names of flowers,
Catalpa, Lovelies-bleeding, Balsam, Phlox, you ask me why I cannot
stay but must go back to the house, and when I say it is to write
letters, you ask, “What for?” And when winter comes, you will ask me
why I must go away over the sea instead of waiting for your Christmas
stocking and your tree._

_The other day I was sitting outside the door, where the sweet-peas
grow, with an old man, and when you came and called me he got up to
go away, and as he wished me good-bye, he said: “They were telling
me you are going to America, and says I, ‘Whatever the Lady does, I
am certain she is doing nothing but what she thinks to be right.’
And that the Lord may keep you safe and protect you from the power of
your enemy.”_

_Some day when I am not here to answer, you will maybe ask, “What
were they for, the writing, the journeys, and why did she have an
enemy?” So I will put down the story now, that you may know all about
it bye and bye._

       *       *       *       *       *

Fourteen or fifteen years ago I still wrote from time to time in a
diary I used to keep till the sand in the hour-glass on my table
began to run so fast that I had to lay by the book as well as
embroidery, and archæology, and drying lavender, and visits to the
houses of friends.

I was in London in the beginning of 1898, and I find written, “Yeats
and Sir Alfred Lyall to tea, Yeats stayed on. He is very full of
play-writing.... He with the aid of Miss Florence Farr, an actress
who thinks more of a romantic than of a paying play, is very keen
about taking or building a little theatre somewhere in the suburbs
to produce romantic drama, his own plays, Edward Martyn’s, one of
Bridges’, and he is trying to stir up Standish O’Grady and Fiona
Macleod to write some. He believes there will be a reaction after
the realism of Ibsen, and romance will have its turn. He has put a
‘great deal of himself’ into his own play _The Shadowy Waters_ and
rather startled me by saying about half his characters have eagles’
faces.”

Later in the year I was staying for a few days with old Count de
Basterot, at Duras, that is beyond Kinvara and beside the sea. He had
been my husband’s warm friend, and always in the summer time we used
to go and spend at least one long day with him,--we two at first, and
then later I went with my son and the boy and girl friends of his
childhood. They liked to go out in a hooker and see the seals showing
their heads, or to paddle delicately among the jellyfish on the
beach. It was a pleasant place to pass an idle day. The garden was
full of flowers. Lavender and carnations grew best, and there were
roses also and apple trees, and many plums ripened on the walls. This
seemed strange, because outside the sheltered garden there were only
stone-strewn fields and rocks and bare rock-built hills in sight, and
the bay of Galway, over which fierce storms blow from the Atlantic.
The Count remembered when on Garlic Sunday men used to ride races,
naked, on unsaddled horses out into the sea; but that wild custom
had long been done away with by decree of the priests. Later still,
when Harrow and Oxford took my son away and I had long spaces of time
alone, I would sometimes go to Duras to spend a few days.

I always liked to talk and to listen to the Count. He could tell me
about French books and French and Italian history and politics, for
he lived but for the summer months in Ireland and for the rest of the
year in Paris or in Rome. Mr. Arthur Symons has written of him and
his talks of race,--to which he attributed all good or bad habits and
politics--as they took long drives on the Campagna. M. Paul Bourget
came more than once to stay in this Burren district, upon which he
bestowed a witty name, “Le Royaume de Pierre.” It was to M. Bourget
that on his way to the modest little house and small estate, the
Count’s old steward and servant introduced the Atlantic, when on the
road from the railway station at Gort its waters first come in sight:
_Voila la mer qui baigne L’Amérique et les terres de Monsieur le
Comte_. For he--the steward--had been taken by his master on visits
to kinsmen in France and Italy--their names are recorded in that sad,
pompous, black-bordered document I received one day signed by those
who have _l’honneur de vous faire part de la perte douloureuse qu’ils
viennent d’éprouver en la personne de Florimond Alfred Jacques, Comte
de Basterot, Chevalier de l’ordre du Saint Sépulcre, leur cousin
germain et cousin_ [who died at Duras (Irlande) September 15, 1904];
_la Marquise de la Tour Maubourg, le Vicomte et la Vicomtesse de
Bussy, la Baronne d’Acker de Montgaston, le Marquis et la Marquise de
Courcival, le Comte et la Comtesse Gromis de Trana, la Comtesse Irène
d’Entreves_, and so on, and so on. I do not know whether the bearers
of these high-sounding names keep him in their memory--it may well be
that they do, for he was a friend not easily forgotten--but I know
there is many a prayer still said on the roads between Kinvara and
Burren and Curranroe and Ballinderreen for him who “never was without
a bag of money to give in charity, and always had a heart for the
poor.”

On one of those days at Duras in 1898, Mr. Edward Martyn, my
neighbour, came to see the Count, bringing with him Mr. Yeats, whom I
did not then know very well, though I cared for his work very much
and had already, through his directions, been gathering folk-lore.
They had lunch with us, but it was a wet day, and we could not go
out. After a while I thought the Count wanted to talk to Mr. Martyn
alone; so I took Mr. Yeats to the office where the steward used to
come to talk,--less about business I think than of the Land War or
the state of the country, or the last year’s deaths and marriages
from Kinvara to the headland of Aughanish. We sat there through that
wet afternoon, and though I had never been at all interested in
theatres, our talk turned on plays. Mr. Martyn had written two, _The
Heather Field_ and _Maeve_. They had been offered to London managers,
and now he thought of trying to have them produced in Germany where
there seemed to be more room for new drama than in England. I said it
was a pity we had no Irish theatre where such plays could be given.
Mr. Yeats said that had always been a dream of his, but he had of
late thought it an impossible one, for it could not at first pay its
way, and there was no money to be found for such a thing in Ireland.

We went on talking about it, and things seemed to grow possible as
we talked, and before the end of the afternoon we had made our plan.
We said we would collect money, or rather ask to have a certain sum
of money guaranteed. We would then take a Dublin theatre and give a
performance of Mr. Martyn’s _Heather Field_ and one of Mr. Yeats’s
own plays, _The Countess Cathleen_. I offered the first guarantee of
£25.

A few days after that I was back at Coole, and Mr. Yeats came over
from Mr. Martyn’s home, Tillyra, and we wrote a formal letter to send
out. We neither of us write a very clear hand, but a friend had just
given me a Remington typewriter and I was learning to use it, and I
wrote out the letter with its help. That typewriter has done a great
deal of work since that day, making it easy for the printers to read
my plays and translations, and Mr. Yeats’s plays and essays, and
sometimes his poems. I have used it also for the many, many hundreds
of letters that have had to be written about theatre business in each
of these last fifteen years. It has gone with me very often up and
down to Dublin and back again, and it went with me even to America
last year that I might write my letters home. And while I am writing
the leaves are falling, and since I have written those last words
on its keys, she who had given it to me has gone. She gave me also
the great gift of her friendship through more than half my lifetime,
Enid, Lady Layard, Ambassadress at Constantinople and Madrid, helper
of the miserable and the wounded in the Turkish-Russian war; helper
of the sick in the hospital she founded at Venice, friend and hostess
and guest of queens in England and Germany and Rome. She was her
husband’s good helpmate while he lived--is not the Cyprus treaty
set down in that clear handwriting I shall never see coming here
again? And widowed, she kept his name in honour, living after him for
fifteen years, and herself leaving a noble memory in all places where
she had stayed, and in Venice where her home was and where she died.

Our statement--it seems now a little pompous--began:

“We propose to have performed in Dublin, in the spring of every year
certain Celtic and Irish plays, which whatever be their degree of
excellence will be written with a high ambition, and so to build up a
Celtic and Irish school of dramatic literature. We hope to find in
Ireland an uncorrupted and imaginative audience trained to listen by
its passion for oratory, and believe that our desire to bring upon
the stage the deeper thoughts and emotions of Ireland will ensure for
us a tolerant welcome, and that freedom to experiment which is not
found in theatres of England, and without which no new movement in
art or literature can succeed. We will show that Ireland is not the
home of buffoonery and of easy sentiment, as it has been represented,
but the home of an ancient idealism. We are confident of the support
of all Irish people, who are weary of misrepresentation, in carrying
out a work that is outside all the political questions that divide
us.”

I think the word “Celtic” was put in for the sake of Fiona Macleod
whose plays however we never acted, though we used to amuse ourselves
by thinking of the call for “author” that might follow one, and the
possible appearance of William Sharp in place of the beautiful woman
he had given her out to be, for even then we had little doubt they
were one and the same person. I myself never quite understood the
meaning of the “Celtic Movement,” which we were said to belong to.
When I was asked about it, I used to say it was a movement meant to
persuade the Scotch to begin buying our books, while we continued not
to buy theirs.

We asked for a guarantee fund of £300 to make the experiment, which
we hoped to carry on during three years. The first person I wrote to
was the old poet, Aubrey de Vere. He answered very kindly, saying,
“Whatever develops the genius of Ireland, must in the most effectual
way benefit her; and in Ireland’s genius I have long been a strong
believer. Circumstances of very various sorts have hitherto tended
much to retard the development of that genius; but it cannot fail to
make itself recognised before very long, and Ireland will have cause
for gratitude to all those who have hastened the coming of that day.”

I am glad we had this letter, carrying as it were the blessing of
the generation passing away to that which was taking its place. He
was the first poet I had ever met and spoken with; he had come in
my girlhood to a neighbour’s house. He was so gentle, so fragile,
he seemed to have been wafted in by that “wind from the plains of
Athenry” of which he wrote in one of his most charming little poems.
He was of the Lake School, and talked of Wordsworth, and I think
it was as a sort of courtesy or deference to him that I determined
to finish reading _The Excursion_, which though a reader of poetry
it had failed me, as we say, to get through. At last one morning I
climbed up to a wide wood, Grobawn, on one of the hillsides of Slieve
Echtge, determined not to come down again until I had honestly read
every line. I think I saw the sun set behind the far-off Connemara
hills before I came home, exhausted but triumphant! I have a charming
picture of Aubrey de Vere in my mind as I last saw him, at a garden
party in London. He was walking about, having on his arm, in the
old-world style, the beautiful Lady Somers, lovely to the last as in
Thackeray’s day, and as I had heard of her from many of that time,
and as she had been painted by Watts.

Some gave us their promise with enthusiasm but some from good will
only, without much faith that an Irish Theatre would ever come to
success. One friend, a writer of historical romance, wrote: “October
15th. I enclose a cheque for £1, but confess it is more as a proof
of regard for _you_ than of belief in the drama, for I cannot with
the best wish in the world to do so, feel hopeful on that subject.
My experience has been that any attempt at treating Irish history
is a fatal handicap, not to say absolute _bar_, to anything in the
shape of popularity, and I cannot see how any drama can flourish
which is not to some degree supported by the public, as it is even
more dependent on it than literature is. There _are_ popular Irish
dramatists, of course, and _very_ popular ones, but then unhappily
they did not treat of Irish subjects, and _The School for Scandal_
and _She Stoops to Conquer_ would hardly come under your category.
You will think me very discouraging, but I cannot help it, and I am
also afraid that putting plays experimentally on the boards is a very
costly entertainment. Where will they be acted in the first instance?
And has any stage manager undertaken to produce them? Forgive my
tiresomeness; it does not come from want of sympathy, only from a
little want of hope, the result of experience.”

“October 19th. I seize the opportunity of writing again as I am
afraid you will have thought I wrote such an unsympathetic letter.
It is not, believe me, that I would not give anything to see Irish
literature and Irish drama taking a good place, as it ought to do,
and several of the authors you name I admire extremely. It is only
from the practical and _paying_ point of view that I feel it to be
rather rash. Plays cost more, I take it, to produce than novels, and
one would feel rather rash if one brought out a novel at one’s own
risk.”

I think the only actual refusals I had were from three members of the
Upper House. I may give their words as types of the discouragement
we have often met with from friends: “I need not, I am sure, tell
you how gladly I would take part in anything for the honour of Old
Ireland and especially anything of the kind in which you feel an
interest; but I must tell you frankly that I do not much believe in
the movement about which you have written to me. I have no sympathy,
you will be horrified to hear, with the ‘London Independent Theatre,’
and I am sure that if Ibsen and Co. could know what is in my mind,
they would regard me as a ‘Philistine’ of the coarsest class! Alas!
so far from wishing to see the Irish characters of Charles Lever
supplanted by more refined types, they have always been the delight
of my heart, and there is no author in whose healthy, rollicking
company, even nowadays, I spend a spare hour with more thorough
enjoyment. I am very sorry that I cannot agree with you in these
matters, and I am irreclaimable; but all the same I remain with many
pleasant remembrances and good wishes for you and yours, Yours very
truly----”

Another, the late Lord Ashbourne, wrote: “I know too little of the
matter or the practicability of the idea to be able to give my name
to your list, but I shall watch the experiment with interest and be
glad to attend. The idea is novel and curious, and how far it is
capable of realisation I am not at all in a position to judge. Some
of the names you mention are well known in literature but not as
dramatists or play-writers, and therefore the public will be one to
be worked up by enthusiasm and love of country. The existing class of
actors will not, of course, be available, and the existing playgoers
are satisfied with their present attractions. Whether ‘houses’ can be
got to attend the new plays, founded on new ideas and played by new
actors, no one can foretell.”

One, who curiously has since then become an almost too zealous
supporter of our theatre, says: “I fear I am not sanguine about the
success in a pecuniary way of a ‘Celtic Theatre,’ nor am I familiar
with the works, dramatic or otherwise, of Mr. Yeats or of Mr. Martyn.
Therefore, at the risk of branding myself in your estimation as a
hopeless Saxon and Philistine, I regret I cannot see my way to giving
my name to the enterprise or joining in the guarantee.” On the other
hand, Professor Mahaffy says, rather unexpectedly, writing from
Trinity College: “I am ready to risk £5 for your scheme and hope they
may yet play their drama in Irish. It will be as intelligible to the
nation as Italian, which we so often hear upon our stage.”

And many joined who had seemed too far apart to join in any scheme.
Mr. William Harpole Lecky sent a promise of £5 instead of the £1 I
had asked. Lord Dufferin, Viceroy of India and Canada, Ambassador at
Paris, Constantinople, St. Petersburg, and Rome, not only promised
but sent his guarantee in advance. I returned it later, for the
sums guaranteed were never called for, Mr. Martyn very generously
making up all loss. Miss Jane Barlow, Miss Emily Lawless, the
Lord Chancellor of Ireland (“Peter the Packer” as he was called by
Nationalists), John O’Leary, Mr. T. M. Healy, Lord and Lady Ardilaun,
the Duchess of St. Albans, Doctor Douglas Hyde, the Rt. Hon. Horace
Plunkett, Mr. John Dillon, M.P., all joined. Mr. John Redmond
supported us, and afterwards wrote me a letter of commendation with
leave to use it. Mr. William O’Brien was another supporter. I did not
know him personally but I remember one day long ago going to tea at
the Speaker’s house, after I had heard him in a debate, and saying
I thought him the most stirring speaker of all the Irish party; and
I was amused when my gentle and dignified hostess, Mrs. Peel, said,
“I quite agree with you. When I hear William O’Brien make a speech,
I feel that if I were an Irishwoman, I should like to go and break
windows.”

Then Mr. Yeats and Mr. Martyn went to Dublin to make preparations,
but the way was unexpectedly blocked by the impossibility of getting
a theatre. The only Dublin theatres, the Gaiety, the Royal, and the
Queen’s, were engaged far ahead, and in any case we could not have
given them their price. Then we thought of taking a hall or a concert
room, but there again we met with disappointment. We found there was
an old Act in existence, passed just before the Union, putting a
fine of £300 upon any one who should give a performance for money in
any unlicensed building. As the three large theatres were the only
buildings licensed, a claim for a special license would have to be
argued by lawyers, charging lawyers’ fees, before the Privy Council.
We found that even amateurs who acted for charities were forced to
take one of the licensed theatres, so leaving but little profit for
the charity. There were suggestions made of forming a society like
the Stage Society in London, to give performances to its members
only, but this would not have been a fit beginning for the National
Theatre of our dreams. I wrote in a letter at that time: “I am all
for having the Act repealed or a Bill brought in, empowering the
Municipality to license halls when desirable.” And although this was
looked on as a counsel of perfection, it was actually done within the
year. I wrote to Mr. Lecky for advice and help, and he told me there
was a Bill actually going through the House of Commons, the Local
Government (Ireland) Bill, in which he thought it possible a Clause
might be inserted that would meet our case. Mr. John Redmond and Mr.
Dillon promised their help; so did Mr. T. M. Healy, who wrote to Mr.
Yeats: “I am acquainted with the state of the law in Dublin which I
should gladly assist to alter as proposed. Whether the Government
are equally well disposed may be doubted, as the subject is a little
outside their Bill, and no adequate time exists for discussing it and
many other important questions. They will come up about midnight or
later and will be yawned out of hearing by our masters.”

A Clause was drawn up by a Nationalist member, Mr. Clancy, but in
July, 1898, Mr. Lecky writes from the House of Commons: “I have not
been forgetting the Celtic Theatre and I think the enclosed Clause,
which the Government have brought forward, will practically meet its
requirements. The Attorney-General objected to Mr. Clancy’s Clause as
too wide and as interfering with existing patent rights, but promised
a Clause authorising amateur acting. I wrote to him, however, stating
the Celtic case, and urging that writers should be able, like those
who got up the Ibsen plays in London, to get regular actors to play
for them, and I think this Clause will allow it.... After Clause 59
insert the following Clause: (1) Notwithstanding anything in the Act
of Parliament of Ireland of the twenty-sixth year of King George
the Third, Chapter fifty-seven, intituled an Act for regulating the
stage in the city and county of Dublin, the Lord Lieutenant may on
the application of the council for the county of Dublin or the county
borough of Dublin grant an occasional license for the performance of
any stage play or other dramatic entertainment in any theatre, room,
or building where the profits arising therefrom are to be applied for
charitable purpose or in aid of the funds of any society instituted
for the purpose of science, literature, or the fine arts exclusively.
(2) The license may contain such conditions and regulations as appear
fit to the Lord Lieutenant, and may be revoked by him.”

This Clause was passed but we are independent now of it,--the Abbey
Theatre holds its own Patent. But the many amateur societies which
play so often here and there in Dublin may well call for a blessing
sometimes on the names of those by whom their charter was won.

We announced our first performance for May 8, 1899, nearly a year
after that talk on the Galway coast, at the Ancient Concert Rooms.
Mr. Yeats’ _Countess Cathleen_ and Mr. Martyn’s _Heather Field_ were
the plays chosen, as we had planned at the first. Mr. George Moore
gave excellent help in finding actors, and the plays were rehearsed
in London. But then something unexpected happened. A writer who had
a political quarrel with Mr. Yeats sent out a pamphlet in which
he attacked _The Countess Cathleen_, on the ground of religious
unorthodoxy. The plot of the play, taken from an old legend, is this:
during a famine in Ireland some starving country people, having been
tempted by demons dressed as merchants to sell their souls for money
that their bodies may be saved from perishing, the Countess Cathleen
sells her own soul to redeem theirs, and dies. The accusation made
was that it was a libel on the people of Ireland to say they could
under any circumstances consent to sell their souls and that it was a
libel on the demons that they counted the soul of a countess of more
worth than those of the poor. At Cathleen’s death the play tells us,
“God looks on the intention, not the deed,” and so she is forgiven at
the last and taken into Heaven; and this it was said is against the
teaching of the Church.

Mr. Martyn is an orthodox Catholic, and to quiet his mind, the play
was submitted to two good Churchmen. Neither found heresy enough in
it to call for its withdrawal. One of them, the Rev. Dr. Barry, the
author of _The New Antigone_, wrote:

  “BRIDGE HOUSE, WALLINGFORD,
  “March 26, 1899.

  “DEAR MR. YEATS,

“I read your _Countess Cathleen_ as soon as possible after seeing
you. It is beautiful and touching. I hope you will not be kept back
from giving it by foolish talk. Obviously, from the literal point of
view theologians, Catholic or other, would object that no one is free
to sell his soul in order to buy bread even for the starving. But St.
Paul says, ‘I wish to be anathema for my brethren’; which is another
way of expressing what you have put into a story. I would give the
play first and explanations afterwards.

“Sometime perhaps you will come and spend a night here and I shall be
charmed. But don’t take a superfluous journey now. It is an awkward
place to get at. I could only tell you, as I am doing, that if people
will not read or look at a play of this kind in the spirit which
dictated it, no change you might make would satisfy them. You have
given us what is really an Auto, in the manner of Calderon, with the
old Irish folk-lore as a perceptive; and to measure it by the iron
rule of experts and schoolmen would be most unfair to it. Some one
else will say that you have learned from the Jesuits to make the end
justify the means--and much that man will know of you or the Jesuits.
With many kind wishes for your success, and fraternal greetings in
the name of Ireland,

  “Ever yours,
  “WILLIAM BARRY.”

So our preparations went on. Mr. Yeats wrote a little time before
the first performance: “Everybody tells me we are going to have good
audiences. My play, too, in acting goes wonderfully well. The actors
are all pretty sound. The first Demon is a little over-violent and
restless but he will improve. Lionel Johnson has done a prologue
which I enclose.”

That prologue, written by so Catholic and orthodox a poet, was spoken
before the plays at the Ancient Concert Rooms on May 8, 1899:

      The May fire once on every dreaming hill
      All the fair land with burning bloom would fill;
      All the fair land, at visionary night,
      Gave loving glory to the Lord of Light.
      Have we no leaping flames of Beltaine praise
      To kindle in the joyous ancient ways;
      No fire of song, of vision, of white dream,
      Fit for the Master of the Heavenly Gleam;
      For him who first made Ireland move in chime,
      Musical from the misty dawn of time?

      Ah, yes; for sacrifice this night we bring
      The passion of a lost soul’s triumphing;
      All rich with faery airs that, wandering long,
      Uncaught, here gather into Irish song;
      Sweet as the old remembering winds that wail,
      From hill to hill of gracious Inisfail;
      Sad as the unforgetting winds that pass
      Over her children in her holy grass
      At home, and sleeping well upon her breast,
      Where snowy Deirdre and her sorrows rest.

      Come, then, and keep with us an Irish feast,
      Wherein the Lord of Light and Song is priest;
      Now, at this opening of the gentle May,
      Watch warring passions at their storm and play;
      Wrought with the flaming ecstasy of art,
      Sprung from the dreaming of an Irish heart.

But alas! His call to “watch warring passions at their storm and
play,” was no vain one. The pamphlet, _Souls for Gold_, had been
sent about, and sentences spoken by the demons in the play and given
detached from it were quoted as Mr. Yeats’ own unholy beliefs. A
Cardinal who confessed he had read none of the play outside these
sentences condemned it. Young men from the Catholic University were
roused to come and make a protest against this “insult to their
faith.” There was hooting and booing in the gallery. In the end
the gallery was lined with police, for an attack on the actors was
feared. They, being English and ignorant of Ireland, found it hard
to understand the excitement, but they went through their parts very
well. There was enthusiasm for both plays, and after the first night
London critics were sent over, Mr. Max Beerbohm among them, and gave
a good report. Yet it was a stormy beginning for our enterprise,
and a rough reception for a poetic play. The only moment, I think,
at which I saw Mr. Yeats really angry was at the last performance. I
was sitting next him, and the play had reached the point where the
stage direction says, “The Second Merchant goes out through the door
and returns with the hen strangled. He flings it on the floor.” The
merchant came in indeed, but without the strangled hen. Mr. Yeats got
up, filled with suspicions that it also might have been objected to
on some unknown ground, and went round to the back of the stage. But
he was given a simple explanation. The chief Demon said he had been
given charge of the hen, and had hung it out of a window every night,
“And this morning,” he said, “when I pulled up the string, there was
nothing on it at all.”

But that battle was not a very real one. We have put on _Countess
Cathleen_ a good many times of late with no one speaking against it
at all. And some of those young men who hissed it then are our good
supporters now.

The next year English actors were again brought over to play, this
time in the Gaiety Theatre. A little play by Miss Milligan, _The
Last Feast of the Fianna_ was given, and Mr. Martyn’s _Maeve_, and on
alternate nights _The Bending of the Bough_, founded by Mr. George
Moore on Mr. Martyn’s _Tale of a Town_. They were produced on the
evening of February 20, 1900. “On the evening before the production,”
I wrote, “Mr. Yeats gave a little address on the play, _Maeve_, in
which he said there is a wonderful literary invention, that of Peg
Inerny, the old woman in rags in the daytime, but living another and
second life, a queen in the ideal world, a symbol of Ireland. The
financial question touched in _The Bending of the Bough_ was chosen,
because on it all parties are united, but it means really the cause
nearest to each of our hearts. The materialism of England and its
vulgarity are surging up about us. It is not Shakespeare England
sends us, but musical farces, not Keats and Shelley, but _Titbits_.
A mystic friend of his had a dream in which he saw a candle whose
flame was in danger of being extinguished by a rolling sea. The waves
sometimes seemed to go over it and quench it, and he knew it to be
his own soul and that if it was quenched, he would have lost his
soul. And now our ideal life is in danger from the sea of commonness
about us.”

_The Bending of the Bough_ was the first play dealing with a
vital Irish question that had appeared in Ireland. There was a
great deal of excitement over it. My diary says: “M. is in great
enthusiasm over it, says it will cause a revolution. H. says no
young man can see that play and leave the house as he came into
it.... The Gaelic League in great force sang _Fainne Geal an Lae_
between the acts, and _The Wearing of the Green_ in Irish! And when
‘author’ could not appear, there were cries of ‘An Craoibhin,’
and cheers were given for Hyde. The actors say they never played
to so appreciative an audience, but were a little puzzled at the
applause, not understanding the political allusions. The play hits
so impartially all round that no one is really offended, certainly
not the Nationalists and we have not heard that Unionists are either.
Curiously, _Maeve_, which we didn’t think a Nationalist play at all,
has turned out to be one, the audience understanding and applauding
the allegory. There is such applause at ‘I am only an old woman, but
I tell you that Erin will never be subdued’ that Lady ----, who was
at a performance, reported to the Castle that they had better boycott
it, which they have done. G. M. is, I think, a little puzzled by his
present political position, but I tell him and E. Martyn we are not
working for Home Rule; we are preparing for it.”

In our third year, 1901, Mr. F. R. Benson took our burden on his
shoulders and gave a fine performance of _Diarmuid and Grania_, an
heroic play by Mr. George Moore and Mr. Yeats. I wrote: “I am so glad
to hear of Benson’s appreciation. Anyhow, he can hardly be supposed
to be on the side of incendiarism; he is so very respectable.
Trinity College won’t know whether to go or to stay away.” Mr.
Yeats wrote: “Yesterday we were rehearsing at the Gaiety. The kid
Benson is to carry in his arms was wandering in and out among the
stage properties. I was saying to myself, ‘Here are we, a lot of
intelligent people who might have been doing some sort of decent work
that leaves the soul free; yet here we are, going through all sorts
of trouble and annoyance for a mob that knows neither literature nor
art. I might have been away, away in the country, in Italy perhaps,
writing poems for my equals and my betters. That kid is the only
sensible creature on the stage. He knows his business and keeps to
it.’ At that very moment one of the actors called out, ‘Look at the
kid, eating the property ivy!’”

This time also we produced _Casad-an-Sugan_, (_The Twisting of the
Rope_) by the founder of the Gaelic League, Dr. Douglas Hyde. He
himself acted the chief part in it and even to those who had no
Irish, the performance was a delight, it was played with so much
gaiety, ease, and charm. It was the first time a play written in
Irish had ever been seen in a Dublin theatre.

Our three years’ experiment had ended, and we hesitated what to do
next. But a breaking and rebuilding is often for the best, and so
it was now. We had up to this time, as I have said, played only
once a year, and had engaged actors from London, some of them
Irish certainly, but all London-trained. The time had come to play
oftener and to train actors of our own. For Mr. Yeats had never
ceased attacking the methods of the ordinary theatre, in gesture, in
staging, and in the speaking of verse. It happened there were two
brothers living in Dublin, William and Frank Fay, who had been in
the habit of playing little farces in coffee palaces and such like in
their spare time. William had a genius for comedy, Frank’s ambitions
were for the production of verse. They, or one of them, had thought
of looking for work in America, but had seen our performances, and
thought something might be done in the way of creating a school of
acting in Ireland. They came to us at this time and talked matters
over. They had work to do in the daytime and could only rehearse at
night. The result was that Mr. Yeats gave his _Kathleen ni Houlihan_
to be produced by Mr. Fay at the same time as a play by Mr. George
Russell (A.E.), in St. Theresa’s Hall, Clarendon Street. I had
written to Mr. Yeats: “If all breaks up, we must try and settle
something with Fay, possibly a week of the little plays he has been
doing through the spring. I have a sketch in my head that might do
for Hyde to work on. I will see if it is too slight when I have noted
it down, and if not, will send it to you.”

Early, in 1902, Mr. Russell wrote to me: “I have finished _Deirdre_
at last. Heaven be praised! in the intervals of railway journeys,
and the Fays are going to do their best with it. I hope I shall not
suffer too much in the process, but I prefer them to English actors
as they are in love with their story.” A little hall in Camden Street
was hired for rehearsal, Mr. Russell writing in the same year: “I
will hand cheque to Fay. I know it will be a great assistance to them
as the little hall will require alterations and fittings and as none
of the Company are in possession of more than artisan’s wages. They
have elected W. B. Y. as president of the Irish National Dramatic
Society, and A. E. as vice-president, and we are the gilding at the
prow of the vessel. They have begun work already and are reading and
rehearsing drama for the autumn.”

Mr. Fay was very hopeful and full of courage. He wrote in December,
1902: “I have received your letter and parcel. I am not doing this
show on a large scale as I am leaving _The Hour-glass_ off till the
middle of January.... I am just giving a show of _The Pot of Broth_,
_The Foundations_, and _Elis and the Beggarman_, and I’m not making a
fuss about it, as I want to try how many people the hall will hold,
and what prices suit best, so it is more or less an experimental
show and then, about the middle of January, I will do the first
real show with _The Hour-glass_ as principal feature. The hall took
a great deal of work to get right, and as we had to do all the work
ourselves, we had very little time to rehearse.” And he says later:
“I received your kind note, also enclosures, for which we are very
much obliged. We are indeed getting into very flourishing conditions,
and if things only continue in the present state, I have no doubt we
shall be able to show a fairly good balance at the end of the year.
I have all but concluded an arrangement with a branch of the Gaelic
League to take our hall for three nights a week, and that will leave
us under very small rental if it comes off. About the performance and
how it worked out. I spent twenty-five shillings on printing, etc.,
and we took altogether about four pounds fifteen shillings, so I see
no reason to complain financially. But I find the stage very small,
and the want of dressing-rooms makes it very difficult to manage
about the scenery, as all your actors have to stand against the walls
while it is being changed. I think, however, we can struggle through
if we don’t attempt very large pieces. The hall was rather cold, but
I think I can manage a stove and get over that.”

That show of _The Hour-glass_ went well, and in that year--1903--two
of Mr. Yeats’s verse plays were produced, _The King’s Threshold_ and
_Shadowy Waters_. In that year also, new names came in, my own with
_Twenty-five_, Mr. Padraic Colum’s with _Broken Soil_, and that of
J. M. Synge with _The Shadow of the Glen_. I wrote to Mr. Yeats, who
was then in America: “After _Shadow of the Glen_ your sisters and
Synge came in and had some supper with me. Your sister had asked one
of her work girls how she liked Synge’s comedy, and she said, ‘Oh,
very well. I had been thinking of writing a story on that subject
myself.’ They asked quite a little girl if she thought the girl in
Colum’s play ought to have stayed with her lover or gone with her
father. ‘She was right to go with her father.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because her
young man had such a big beard.’ ‘But he might have cut it off.’
‘That would be no good. He was so dark he would look blue if he did
that.’ Saturday night brought a larger audience and all went well.
The few I knew, Harvey, etc., were quite astonished at the beauty
of _Shadowy Waters_, and some giggling young men behind were hushed
almost at once, and I heard them saying afterwards how beautiful it
was. I should like to hear it once a week through the whole year.
The only vexing part was Aibric’s helmet, which has immense horns. A
black shadow of these was thrown down, and when Aibric moved, one got
the impression there was a he-goat going to butt at him over the side
of the ship.” And again from Coole: “Synge wrote asking me if I could
provide four red petticoats, Aran men’s caps, a spinning-wheel, and
some Connacht person in Dublin who will teach the players to keen.
The last item is the most difficult. All the actors want pampooties
(the cowskin shoes worn by the Aran people), though I warned them the
smell is rather overpowering. Tell Mr. Quinn what a great comfort
his money is for such things as these, upon which the company might
think they ought not to spend their little capital, and Synge would
have been unhappy without.” Through the nuns at Gort I heard of a
spinning-wheel in a cottage some way off, which, though it had been
in her family over a hundred years, the owner wanted to sell. A cart
was sent for this, and we have had it in the theatre ever since.
As to the keening I found a Galway woman near Dublin who promised
to teach the actors. But when they arrived at her house, she found
herself unable to raise the keen in her living room. They had all
to go upstairs, and the secretary of the company had to lie under a
sheet as the corpse. The lessons were very successful, and at the
first performance in London of _Riders to the Sea_, the pit went away
keening down the street.

Mr. Yeats said of Mr. Fay and his little company, “They did what
amateurs seldom do, worked desperately.” This was the beginning of a
native school of acting, an Irish dramatic company.

I remember, in 1897, hearing Mr. Bernard Shaw make a speech before
the Irish Literary Society in London, following a lecture on “Irish
Actors of the Nineteenth Century.” He very wittily extinguished the
lecturer, who, he said, truly enough had enumerated the best actors
and actresses and then had gone on to say they were not Irish. “As to
what an Irishman is,” he said, “is a complex question, for wherever
he may have been born, if he has been brought up in Ireland, that is
quite sufficient to make him an Irishman. It is a mistake to think an
Irishman has not common sense. It is the Englishman who is devoid
of common sense or at least has so small a portion of it that he
can only apply it to the work immediately before him. That is why
he is obliged to fill the rest of his horizon with the humbugs and
hypocrisy that fill so large a part of English life. The Irishman has
a better grasp of facts and sees them more clearly; only he fails
in putting them into practice, and has a great objection to doing
anything that will lead to any practical result. It is a mistake to
think the Irishman has feeling; he has not; but the Englishman is
full of feeling. What the Irishman has is imagination; he can imagine
himself in the situation of others.” Then as if afraid of making the
Irish members of his audience too well pleased with themselves, he
gave his summing up: “But the Irish language is an effete language
and the nation is effete, and as to saying there are good Irish
actors, there are not, and there won’t be until the conditions in
Ireland are favourable for the production of drama, and when that day
comes, I hope I may be dead.”

I am glad we have shown Mr. Shaw that he can be in the wrong, and
I am glad he is not dead, for he has been a good friend to us. But
our players have proved that even the wise may be deceived. They
have won much praise for themselves and have raised the dignity of
Ireland, and I for one owe them very grateful thanks for the way they
have made the characters in my comedies laugh and live.

In May, 1903, the Irish National Theatre Society went for the first
time to London. It was hard for the actors to get away. They had
their own work to do. But they asked their employers for a whole
Saturday holiday. They left Dublin on Friday night, arrived in London
on the Saturday morning, played in the afternoon, and again in the
evening at the Queen’s Gate Hall, and were back at work in Dublin
on Monday morning. The plays taken were: Mr. Fred Ryan’s _Laying
the Foundations_, Mr. Yeats’s _Hour-glass_, _Pot of Broth_, and
_Kathleen ni Houlihan_, and my own _Twenty-five_. I was not able to
go but Mr. Yeats wrote to me: “London, May 4, ’03. The plays were a
great success. I never saw a more enthusiastic audience. I send you
some papers, all that I have found notices in. When I remember the
notices I have seen of literary adventures on the stage, I think
them better than we could have hoped.... I have noticed that the
young men, the men of my own generation or younger, are the people
who like us. It was a very distinguished audience. Blunt was there,
but went after your play as he is just recovering from influenza and
seems to be really ill. I thought your play went very well. Fay was
charming as Christy. The game of cards is still the weak place, but
with all defects, the little play has a real charm. If we could amend
the cards it would be a strong play too. Lady Aberdeen, Henry James,
Michael Field--who has sent me an enthusiastic letter about the
acting--Mrs. Wyndham--the Chief Secretary’s mother--Lord Monteagle,
Mrs. Thackeray Ritchie, and I don’t know how many other notables were
there, and all I think were moved. The evening audience was the more
Irish and _Kathleen_ and _The Pot of Broth_ got a great reception.
_The Foundations_ went well, indeed everything went well.”

This was but the first of several London visits, and the good
audience and good notices were a great encouragement. And this visit
led also to the generous help given us by Miss Horniman. She took
what had been the old Mechanics’ Institute in Abbey Street, Dublin,
adding to it a part of the site of the old Morgue, and by rebuilding
and reconstructing turned it into what has since been known as the
Abbey Theatre, giving us the free use of it together with an annual
subsidy for a term of years.

Miss Horniman did all this, as she says in a former letter to Mr.
Yeats, because of her “great sympathy with the artistic and dramatic
aims of the Irish National Theatre Company as publicly explained
by you on various occasions.” She also states in that letter: “I
can only afford to make a very little theatre, and it must be quite
simple. You all must do the rest to make a powerful and prosperous
theatre with a high artistic ideal.” We have kept through many
attacks and misunderstandings the high artistic ideal we set out
with. Our prosperity enabled us to take over the Abbey Theatre two
years ago when our Patent and subsidy came to an end. I feel sure
Miss Horniman is well pleased that we have been able to show our
gratitude by thus proving ourselves worthy of her great and generous
gift.

But in Dublin a new theatre cannot be opened except under a Patent
from the Crown. This costs money even when not opposed, and if it is
opposed, the question has to be argued by counsel, and witnesses have
to be called in and examined as if some dangerous conspiracy were
being plotted. When our Patent was applied for, the other theatres
took fright and believed we might interfere with their gains, and
they opposed our application, and there was delay after delay. But
at last the enquiry was held before the Privy Council, and Mr. Yeats
wrote on its eve: “3d August, 1904. The really important things
first. This day is so hot that I have been filled with alarm lest the
lake may begin to fall again and the boat be stranded high up on the
bank and I be unable to try my new bait. I brought the boat up to a
very shallow place the day I left. I have been running about all over
the place collecting witnesses and have now quite a number. I will
wire to-morrow if there is anything definite about decision. In any
case I will write full particulars.”

[Illustration: The Abbey Theatre, Dublin

From a photograph by Keogh Bros., Ireland]

“August 4th. Final decision is postponed until Monday but the battle
is won to all intents and purposes. There appears to be no difficulty
about our getting a Patent for the plays of the Society. I sent you
a paper with the report of proceedings, ---- and ----, did well
for us; but I must say I was rather amused at their anxiety to show
that they supported us not out of love for the arts but because
of our use as anti-emigration agents and the like. I think I was
a bad witness. Counsel did not examine me but asked me to make a
statement. The result was, having expected questions and feeling
myself left to wander through an immense subject, I said very little.
I was disappointed at being hardly cross-examined at all. By that
time I had got excited and was thirsting for everybody’s blood. One
barrister in cross-examining T. P. Gill, who came after me, tried
to prove that Ibsen and Maeterlinck were immoral writers. He asked
was it not true that a play by Maeterlinck called _The Intruder_ had
raised an immense outcry in London because of its immorality. Quite
involuntarily I cried out, ‘My God!’ and Edward Martyn burst into a
loud fit of laughter. I suppose he must have meant _Monna Vanna_. He
also asked if the Irish National Theatre Society had not produced a
play which was an attack on marriage. Somebody asked him what was
the name of the play. He said it didn’t matter and dropped the
subject. He had evidently heard some vague rumour about _The Shadow
of the Glen_. I forgot to say that William Fay gave his evidence
very well, as one would expect. He had the worst task of us all,
for O’Shaughnessy, a brow-beating cross-examiner of the usual kind,
fastened on to him. Fay, however, had his answer for everything.”

The Patent was granted to me, “Dame Augusta Gregory,” as Patentee,
and in it I was amongst other things “Enjoined and commanded to
gather, entertain, govern, privilege, and keep such and so many
players,” and not to put on the stage any “exhibition of wild beasts
or dangerous performances or to allow women or children to be hung
from the flies or fixed in positions from which they cannot release
themselves.” “It being our Royal will and pleasure that for the
future our said theatre may be instrumental to the promotion of
virtue and instruction of human life.”

The building was not ready for us until the end of the year. Mr.
Yeats wrote in August: “I have just been down to see the work on
the Abbey Theatre. It is all going very quickly and the company
should be able to rehearse there in a month. The other day, while
digging up some old rubbish in the Morgue, which is being used for
dressing-rooms, they found human bones. The workmen thought they had
lit on a murder, but the caretaker said, ‘Oh, I remember, we lost a
body about seven years ago. When the time for the inquest came, it
couldn’t be found.’”

I remembered this when Mr. Yeats wrote to me lately from the Abbey:
“The other day at a performance of _Countess Cathleen_ one of the
players stopped in the midst of his speech and it was a moment or
two before he could go on. He told me afterwards his shoulder had
suddenly been grasped by an invisible hand.”

When the time for the opening came, I was ill and could not leave
home, but had reports from him through the days before the opening.
“December 24, 1904. The Company are very disappointed that you will
not be up for the first night. Fay says they would all act better if
you were here.”

“December 20, 1904. I hear from Robert that you may get up for
a little to-day. I hope you will take a long rest. I shall see
about the awning for the old woman’s stall to-night. Synge has a
photograph, which will give us a picturesque form. We changed all
the lighting on Saturday, and the costumes look much better now. In
any case everything looks so much better on the new stage. G. came
in last night with a Boer, who went to Trinity, because, so far as I
could make out, he thought he would find himself among sympathetic
surroundings. He and some other young Boers, including one who is
said to have killed more Englishmen at Spion Kop than anybody else,
had to go to a university in Europe and chose Ireland. Finding the
sort of place it is, they look at the situation with amusement and
are trying to get out more men of their own sort to form a rebellious
coterie.... I mention G., in order to say that he wants to try his
hand at translating _Œdipus the King_ for us. To-night we go on
experimenting in lighting and after that will come the great problem
of keeping the bottom of the trews from standing out like frilled
paper at the end of a ham bone.”

And finally on the very day of the opening: “December 27, ’04. I am
confident of a fairly good start with the plays,--the stars are quiet
and fairly favourable.”

Then after the first night, December 27th, I had good telegrams
and then a letter: “A great success in every way. The audience
seemed ‘heavy’ through the opening dialogue--Fool and Blind man--and
then it woke up, applauding for a long time after the exit of the
kings. There was great enthusiasm at the end. _Kathleen_ seemed
more rebellious than I ever heard it, and ---- solemnly begged me
to withdraw it for fear it would stir up a conspiracy and get us
all into trouble. Then came your play--a success from the first.
One could hardly hear for the applause. Fay was magnificent as the
melancholy man. The whole play was well played all through. I don’t
think I really like the stone wall wings. However, I was very near
and will know better to-night. I got a beautiful light effect in
_Baile’s Strand_, and the audience applauded the scene even before
the play began. The cottage, too, with the misty blue outside its
door is lovely. We never had such an audience or such enthusiasm.
The pit clapped when I came in. Our success could not have been
greater. Even ---- admits that your comedy [_Spreading the News_],
‘is undoubtedly going to be very popular.’”

We worked for several years with Mr. W. Fay as producer, as manager,
as chief actor. In 1903, when all his time was needed for the
enterprise, we paid him enough to set him free from other work, a
part coming from the earnings of the Company, a part from Mr. Yeats,
and a part from myself, for we had little capital at that time,
outside £50 given by our good friend Mr. John Quinn, Attorney and
Counsellor in New York. But even large sums of money would have been
poor payment not only for William Fay’s genius and his brother’s
beautiful speaking of verse, but for their devotion to the aim and
work of the theatre, its practical and its artistic side. But they
left us early in 1908 at a time of disagreement with other members,
and of discouragement. I am very sorry that they, who more than
almost any others had laid the foundation of the Irish Theatre, did
not wait with us for its success.

But building up an audience is a slow business when there is anything
unusual in the methods or the work. Often near midnight, after the
theatre had closed, I have gone round to the newspaper offices,
asking as a favour that notices might be put in, for we could pay for
but few advertisements and it was not always thought worth while to
send a critic to our plays. Often I have gone out by the stage door
when the curtain was up, and come round into the auditorium by the
front hall, hoping that in the dimness I might pass for a new arrival
and so encourage the few scattered people in the stalls. One night
there were so few in any part of the house that the players were for
dismissing them and giving no performance at all. But we played after
all and just after the play began, three or four priests from the
country came in. A friend of theirs and of the Abbey had gone beyond
the truth in telling them it was not a real theatre. They came round
afterwards and told us how good they thought the work and asked the
Company to come down and play in the West. Very often in the green
room I have quoted the homely proverb, heard I know not where, “Grip
is a good dog, but Hold Fast a better”! For there is some French
blood in me that keeps my spirit up, so that I see in a letter to Mr.
Yeats I am indignant at some attributions of melancholy: “I who at
church last Sunday, when I heard in the Psalms ‘Thou hast anointed
me with the joy of gladness above my fellows’, thought it must apply
to me, and that some oil of the sort must have kept me watertight
among seas of trouble.” And Mr. Yeats in his turn wrote to encourage
me in some time of attacks: “Any fool can fight a winning battle, but
it needs character to fight a losing one, and that should inspire
us; which reminds me that I dreamed the other night that I was being
hanged, but was the life and soul of the party.”

For there was not always peace inside the theatre, and there came
from time to time that breaking and rebuilding that is in the course
of nature, and one must think all for good in the end. And so I
answered some one at a time of discord, “I am myself a lover of peace
so long as it is not the peace of a dead body.” And to Mr. Yeats I
wrote: “I am much more angry really than you are with those who have
wasted so much of your time. I look on it as child-murder. _Deirdre_
might be in existence now but for this.” And to one who left us but
has since returned: “I want you to sit down and read Mr. Yeats’s
notes in the last two numbers of _Samhain_ and to ask yourself if
the work he is doing is best worth helping or hindering. Remember,
he has been for the last eight years working with his whole heart
and soul for the creation, the furtherance, the perfecting, of what
he believes will be a great dramatic movement in Ireland. I have
helped him all through, but we have lost many helpers by the way.
Mr. Lecky, who had served us well in getting the law passed that
made these dramatic experiments possible, publicly repudiated us
because of Mr. Yeats’s letter on the Queen’s visit.... Others were
lost for different reasons ----, ----, all of whom had been helpful
in their time. Now others are dropping off. It is always sad to lose
fellow-workers, but the work must go on all the same. ‘No man putting
his hand to the plough and drawing back is fit for the kingdom of
God.’ He is going on with it. I am going on with it as long as life
and strength are left to me.... It is hard to hold one’s own against
those one is living amongst, I have found that; and I have found that
peace comes, not from trying to please one’s neighbours but in making
up one’s own mind what is the right path and in then keeping to it.
And so God save Ireland, and believe me your sincere friend.”

This now, according to my memory, is how I came to work for a
National Theatre in Ireland and how that Theatre began.



CHAPTER II

THE BLESSING OF THE GENERATIONS


_On the walls of the landing outside your nursery door there are
pictures hanging, painted as you paint your own with water-colours,
but without any blot or blur. Some are of blue hills and of streams
running through brown bogs, but many of them are of young girls
and of women, barefooted and wearing home-dyed clothes, knitting
or carrying sheaves; or of fishermen dressed in white. All, girls
and women and men alike, have gentle faces. There is no sign of
the turf-smoke that dries the skin to leather. There are no lines
or wrinkles to be seen. It may be faces were like that before the
great famine came that changed soft bodies to skin and bone and
turned villages to grazing for goats. Your great-grandfather fed his
people at that time and took their sickness and died. But perhaps if
that painter were living now, he would draw likenesses in the same
way, with the furrows and ridges left out. For he could only see
gentleness like his own in whatever he had a mind to paint._

_A little lower on the staircase there are pictures you do not look
at now, likenesses of men not very young, who had done something that
made others like to meet them and who dined together at the Grillon
Club. Your grandfather is there with many of his friends; some of
them became friends of mine. Here is one that wrote books, you will
maybe read them bye and bye, about good men that once lived in
Ireland, and how Europe learned manners, and about witches that were
thrown into ponds._

_Near the library door there is a drawing of an old man. He looks
very tired and sad. He was shut up in prison for more years than
you have lived. He could not see the lime trees blooming out or the
chestnuts breaking from their husks._

_That is a younger man on the other wall. There is something like a
laugh in his eyes. He will live and work a long time, I hope, for the
work he has done is very good. He gave you a blessing in Irish one
time when I brought him to see you in your cot._

       *       *       *       *       *

Among the names on my first list of guarantors is that of Sir
Frederic Burton, painter, and for many years Director of the National
Gallery in Trafalgar Square. And this name, like that of Aubrey
de Vere, brings together movements divided by half a century; for
Frederic Burton had, through personal friendship with Thomas Davis,
come so near to that side of the National movement of 1848 which
expressed itself in writing, that he had drawn the design for the
title-page of the _Spirit of the Nation_, that book of rebel songs
and ballads. And he had known others of that time whose names have
been remembered, Ferguson and Stokes and O’Curry. It would make
my heart give a quicker beat to hear him say: “When I was in Aran
with Petrie,” or “my model for the Blind Girl at the Holy Well was
Doctor Petrie’s daughter,” or “Davis was such a dear fellow I could
refuse him nothing,” or, as an apology for not having read Mitchell’s
wonderful _Gaol Journal_, “I did not like his appearance when I saw
him. Davis took me to see him somewhere. He was a regular Northern
and did not make a good impression on me. His skin was blotched and
he had ginger-coloured hair.” Though he resented the rising fame
of Clarence Mangan, because, as he thought, it was at the expense
of Thomas Moore, “who had--though no one would class him among the
great poets--mellifluous versification, exquisite choice of language,
and was endowed at least with a delicate fancy approaching to
imagination,” the only authentic portrait of Mangan, not taken indeed
from life, but after death in an hospital, was drawn by him.

He had wandered and painted in Germany and in the west of Ireland,
in Connemara and in his own county of Clare, till his work at the
National Gallery forced him to give up his art. But in his last days
he would often speak of his early days in the West, and of country
people he remembered, a girl near Maam who was a great singer, and a
piper, Paddy Conneely, who was the best judge of sheep and cattle in
the whole country.

He was during the Land War when I first knew him, a very strong
Unionist, for his sensitive nature shrank from its harsh and violent
methods, and for a while he felt that he had no longer a country
to take pride in. In 1899 he wrote: “ ... I look forward with
some uneasiness to the advent of _Patriots_ from beyond sea, now
American citizens under the Stars and Stripes. With this outlook
before it, the Government is reducing the Irish Constabulary, a
most extraordinary proceeding and a quite unaccountable one except
indeed on the theory that every administration is doomed to fatuity
where Irish affairs have to be dealt with. For the police are the
appointed guardians of civil order, and however abused or resisted,
are recognised as such. But if the military have to be called out,
what a handle is given to vapourers on both sides of the Irish sea!
And what about the dismissed Constables? Will they not be thrown into
the ranks of the Patriots?”

And in 1895 he had written, refusing an invitation to dine with me--I
cannot remember who I said was coming, but he expressed this regret:
“Especially as I enjoy meeting Sir A. and Lady Clay, and should have
liked to see a bird so rare as an _honest_ Nationalist.” Yet he kept
a spirit of independence that was akin to rebellion, even through
those years of official position and pleasant London dinners, and
friendships, and the Athenæum Club.

During the years after the death in 1892 of my husband, who had
been a trustee of the National Gallery, and Sir Frederic’s death
in 1900, our friendship became a close one. Our talk turned very
often from pictures and Italy to Ireland. In 1897 I published _Mr.
Gregory’s Letter-box_, a political history of the years between 1812
and 1830, taken from letters to and by my husband’s grandfather,
then Under-Secretary for Ireland. Sir Frederic was much pleased with
the book. He came to see me when he had read it and said: “I am glad
you have come down on the real culprit, George III.,” and quoted one
or two people who had said his obstinacy was the cause of so many
of Ireland’s troubles. But after a little he said very gravely: “I
see a tendency to Home Rule on your own part.” I said, “I defy any
one to study Irish History without getting a dislike and distrust
of England.” He was silent for a time and then said, “That is my
feeling,” and told me how patriotic he had been as a boy though
disliking “O’Connell and his gang.” Later he accused me of having
become “A red hot Nationalist,” and said I had no Irish blood, but I
convinced him I had, both Irish and French.

He was as angry at the time of the Boer War as any Mayo ballad-singer
or Connacht Ranger’s wife. “According to the doctor I am better, but
really this war is killing me. It is the worst affair I recollect.
It is utterly inglorious.... I grieve particularly for our brave
Irishmen whose lives have been squandered to no purpose.” He was to
the end a Unionist, so far as his political doctrine went, but I
think his rooted passion for Ireland increased, and made, as such
strong passions are used to do, all politics seem but accidental,
transitory, a business that is outside the heart of life.

The language movement, of which I was able to bring him news, began
to excite him. One day I found him “excited and incredulous at
Atkinson’s evidence against the Irish language, in which he says all
Irish books are filthy and all folk-lore is at bottom abominable.”
And then he got, “on your recommendation and Doctor Hyde’s reputation
as a scholar” the History of Irish Literature and wrote: “I am
reading Dr. Hyde’s Literary History with the greatest interest. It
is a high pleasure to find the matter he deals with treated by a
true scholar and in a reasonable and philosophic spirit. But indeed
the advance in this respect since my earlier days is marvellous.
At that time the comparative method was hardly, if at all, thought
of. Rabid Irishmen, who often didn’t know their own language but at
second hand, and knew no other tongue at all, spouted the rankest
absurdities. Now true light has been let in and Irish history,
archæology, literature, and poetry are the gainers. Let us not
grudge to the Germans their meed of honour in having led the way.”
And again: “I should be exceedingly sorry if the Irish language died
out of men’s mouths altogether. I look upon the loss of a language
or even a dialect as equivalent to the extirpation of a species in
natural history....” Then, in 1899: “Those addresses of Dr. Hyde
and Mr. Yeats are very interesting and, I would fain hope, may find
a response in the hearts of the people who heard them. The subject
is one full of sadness. Self-respect, a decaying language, a dying
music, how shall they be resuscitated! I could weep when I recollect
how full Munster, Connacht, and even Ulster were in my earlier
days of exquisite native music--when in fact among the peasantry
and the Irish of the towns you heard no other; when the man at the
plough-tail had his peculiar ‘whistle,’ strange, wild, and full of
melody and rhythm. All this must now have passed away irrevocably.
May the language have a better chance! I cannot tell you how much
Doctor Hyde’s book has moved me. Principally it is a manful effort.”

When I was again in London, he showed me the Literary History close
at hand and asked me a little nervously what was Douglas Hyde’s age.
My answer, or surmise, pleased him, and he said: “Then he will be
able to work for a long time.” Once or twice, when we went on to talk
of other things, he came back to this and said, “I am so glad he is a
young man.”

He was jealous for the honour of Ireland even in lesser things. He
was very much interested in the beginning of our theatre. In 1899 he
writes: “I am happy to sign the guarantee form for the coming year,
and enclose it. You are a dreamy lot in Erin. As you say, I think the
quality comes from the atmosphere. Here there is more of the opposite
than suits me, but I dream still, as I have done all my lifetime.
I trust there will be no shindy at the performance of _Countess
Cathleen_. But if not, our compatriots will have been for once untrue
to themselves!” And later: “I am sincerely glad the experiment was
on the whole successful and that those who intended mischief after
all made but a poor effort to inflict it.... Altogether it appears
as if the old palmy days of Dublin independent appreciation of the
drama were about to be revived in our altered times. I congratulate
Mr. Yeats on the success of the drama as an acting piece, and in
everything except ---- ----’s beautiful Irish hyperbole. I recollect
an account of a concert given at Clonmel several years ago, in
which the eloquent local journalist said of one of the amateur lady
singers, after the loftiest eulogy, ‘but it was in her last song that
Miss ---- ---- gave the _coup de grace_ to her performance.’”

He cared very much for Mr. Yeats’s work, but I could never persuade
him to come and meet him. He always made some excuse. At last he
made a promise for one afternoon, but, in place of coming, he wrote,
saying he was half ashamed to confess to so much enthusiasm, but he
was so much under the spell of the poems that he was afraid that, in
meeting the writer, the spell might be broken. He told me when next
I saw him that of the poets he had known the only ones that did
not disappoint him were William Morris and Rossetti. “Swinburne was
excitable; Tennyson was grumpy and posing; Browning was charming as
a friend, but not fulfilling my idea of what a poet should be.” But
I did bring them together in the end, and he thanked me later and
confessed my faith had been justified.

In 1900, during his last illness, I was often with him. I had been
away in Dublin for our plays and I find a note written after my
return to London: “Went to see Sir F. He is in bed, and I fear, or
indeed must hope, the end is very near.... I went up to see him. He
was clear but drowsy, at first a little inarticulate, but when I got
up to go, he held my hand a long time, speaking with great kindness
... asked for Robert, and how the plays had gone. I told him of
them, and of the _Times_ notice of _Maeve_, saying its idealism had
been so well received by an Irish audience, and of the notice on the
same page telling that _Tess_ in London had been jeered at by an
audience who found it too serious. He said: ‘That is just what one
would expect.’ He asked if Robert had been abroad yet, and I said
no, he was so fond of Ireland he had not cared to go until now, and
that I myself found every year an increased delight and happiness
in Ireland. He said, ‘It is so with me. My best joys have been
connected with Ireland.’ Then he spoke of Celtic influence in English
literature and said, ‘There will some day be a great Pan-Celtic
Empire.’ And so we parted.”

I am glad that he who had been even a little moved by that stir in
the mind, that rush of revolutionary energy that moved the poets
and patriots and rebels of ’48, should after half a hundred years
have been stirred by the intellectual energy that came with a new
generation, as its imagination turned for a while from the Parliament
where all was to have been set right, after the break in the Irish
party and after Parnell’s death.

       *       *       *       *       *

“I enclose you a guarantee paper filled up for such a sum as I can
afford (or perhaps more) to lose, but I hope there will be no loss
for anybody in the matter, while there will certainly be some gain
to Ireland! I’d have answered sooner but that I am suffering from
a horrible form of dyspepsia, with exceptional langour.” It is no
wonder if the old man who sent with this his promise for twenty
shillings was somewhat broken in health. He was the last of the
Fenian triumvirate,--Kickham, Luby, O’Leary,--and he had come back to
Dublin after fifteen years of banishment and five of penal servitude
at Portland. John O’Leary had been turning over books on the stalls
by the Seine in Paris, when one day somebody had come to him and
asked him to come back to Ireland where a rising was being planned,
and he had come.

A part of the romance of my early days had been the whispered rumours
of servants, and the overheard talk of my elders, of the threatened
rising of the Fenians:

      “An army of Papists grim
      With a green flag o’er them.
      Red coats and black police
      Flying before them.”

The house of Roxborough, my old home, had once been attacked by
Whiteboys. My father had defended it, firing from the windows, and
it was not hard to believe that another attack might be made. It
seemed a good occasion for being allowed to learn to shoot with my
brothers, but that was in those days not thought fitting, even in
self-defence, for a girl, and my gun was never loaded with anything
more weighty than a coppercap. So when this new business of the
theatre brought me to meet, amongst many others till then unknown,
John O’Leary, I remembered those old days and the excitement of
a Fenian’s escape--might he not be in hiding in our own woods or
hay-lofts? And I wondered to find that not only Nationalists admired
and respected so wild and dangerous a rebel. So I asked Mr. Yeats to
tell me the reason, for he had known him well and had even shared a
lodging with him for a while; so that his friends would say: “You
have the advantage over us. O’Leary takes so long to convert to any
new thing, and you can begin with him at breakfast.” And he wrote
to me: “When John O’Leary returned from exile, he found himself in
the midst of a movement which inherited the methods of O’Connell and
a measure of his success. Journalists and politicians were alike
in his eyes untruthful men, thinking that any means that brought
the end were justified, and for that reason certain, as he thought,
to miss the end desired. The root of all was, though I doubt if he
put the thought into words, that journalists and politicians looked
for their judges among their inferiors, and assumed those opinions
and passions that moved the largest number of men. Their school is
still dominant, and John O’Leary had seen through half his life, as
we have seen, men coarsening their thought and their manners, and
exaggerating their emotions in a daily and weekly press that was
like the reverie of an hysterical woman. He was not of O’Connell’s
household. His master had been Davis, and he was quick to discover
and condemn the man who sought for judgment not among his equals or
in himself. He saw, as no one else in modern Ireland has seen, that
men who make this choice are long unpopular, all through their lives
it may be, but grow in sense and courage with their years, and have
the most gazers even in the end.

“Yet he was not unjust to those who went the other way. He imputed
to them no bad motives, for I have heard him say of a man that
he distrusted, ‘He would not sacrifice himself but he would risk
himself,’ and of a man who seemed to him to appeal always to low
motives, the chief mischief-maker of his kind, ‘He would sacrifice
himself.’ Yet, what he himself commended with his favourite word
‘_morale_’ was the opposite of that sudden emotional self-sacrifice,
the spurious heroism of popular movements, being life-long hardness
and serenity, a choice made every day anew. He thought but little of
opinions, even those he had sacrificed so much for, and I have heard
him say, ‘There was never cause so bad that it has not been defended
by good men for good reasons.’ And of Samuel Ferguson, poet and
antiquarian, who was not of his party or any Nationalist party, ‘He
has been a better patriot than I.’ He knew that in the end, whatever
else had temporary use, it was simple things that mattered, the
things a child can understand, a man’s courage and his generosity.

“I do not doubt that his prison life had been hard enough, but he
would not complain, having been in ‘the hands of his enemies’; and he
would often tell one of that life, but not of its hardships. A famous
popular leader of that time, who made a great noise because he was
in prison as a common felon for a political offence, made him very
angry. I said ‘It is well known that he has done this, not because
he shrinks from hardship but because there is a danger in a popular
movement that the obscure men who can alone carry it to success, may
say, “our leaders are treated differently.”’ He answered, ‘There are
things a man must not do, even to save a nation.’ And when I asked
‘What things?’ he said, ‘He must not weep in public.’ He knew that a
doctrine expediency cries out on would have but few to follow, and
he would say, ‘Michael Davitt wants his converts by the thousand.
I shall be satisfied with half a dozen.’ Most complained of his
impracticability, and there was a saying that an angel could not find
a course of action he would not discover a moral flaw in, and it is
probable that his long imprisonment and exile, while heightening his
sense of ideal law, had deprived him of initiative by taking away its
opportunities. He would often complain that the young men would not
follow him, and I once said, ‘Your power is that they do not. We can
do nothing till we have converted you; you are our conscience.’ Yet
he lived long enough to see the young men grow to middle life and
assume like their fathers before them that a good Irishman is he who
agreed with the people. Yet we, when we withstand the people, owe it
to him that we can feel we have behind us an Irish tradition. ‘My
religion,’ he would say, ‘is the old Persian one, “To pull the bow
and speak the truth.”’

“I do not know whether he would have liked our unpopular plays, but I
cannot imagine him growing excited because he thought them slanders
upon Ireland. O’Connell had called the Irish peasantry the finest
peasantry upon earth, and his heirs found it impossible to separate
patriotism and flattery. Again and again John O’Leary would return
to this, and I have heard him say, ‘I think it probable that the
English national character is finer than ours, but that does not make
me want to be an Englishman.’ I have often heard him defend Ireland
against one charge or another, and he was full of knowledge, but the
patriotism he had sacrificed so much for marred neither his justice
nor his scholarship.

“He disapproved of much of Parnell’s policy, but Parnell was the
only man in Irish public life of his day who had his sympathy, and I
remember hearing some one say in those days before the split that are
growing vague to me, that Parnell never came to Dublin without seeing
him. They were perhaps alike in some hidden root of character though
the one had lived a life of power and excitement, while the other
had been driven into contemplation by circumstance and as I think by
nature. Certainly they were both proud men.”

He was, when I knew him, living in a little room, books all around
him and books in heaps upon the floor. I would send him sometimes
snipe or golden plover from Kiltartan bog or woodcock from the hazel
woods at Coole, hoping to tempt him with something that might better
nourish the worn body than the little custard pudding that was used
to serve him for his two days’ dinner, because of that “horrible
dyspepsia” that often makes those who have been long in prison live
starving after their release, mocked with the sight of food.

It was through reading Davis’s poems he had become a Nationalist, and
his own influence had helped to shape this other poet in the same
fashion, for from the time of Yeats’s boyhood there had been a close
friendship between them, the old man admiring the young man’s genius,
and taking his side in the quarrels that arose about patriotism in
poetry and the like. I remember their both dining with me one evening
in London and coming on to see a very poor play, very badly acted by
some Irish society. At its end Yeats was asked to say some words of
gratitude for the performance, during which we had all felt impatient
and vexed. He did speak at some length, and held his audience, and
without telling any untruth left them feeling that all had gone well.
John O’Leary turned to me and said fervently, “I don’t think there
is anything on God’s earth that Willie Yeats could not make a speech
about!”

There is a bust of John O’Leary in the Municipal Gallery. The grand
lines of the massive head, the eyes full of smouldering fire, might
be those of some ancient prophet understanding his people’s doom.

       *       *       *       *       *

There is nothing of storm or unrest about that other Dublin monument,
that bronze figure sitting tranquilly within the gates of Trinity
College and within its quadrangle. Lecky was the reasoner, the
philosopher, the looker-on, writing his histories, even of Ireland,
through the uproar of the Land War with the same detachment as did
the Four Masters, writing their older history amongst the wars and
burnings of the seventeenth century that were so terrible in Ireland.

He had been a debater while an undergraduate of Trinity, and it was
fitting that he should have represented it in Parliament during his
last years.

Trinity, where Wolfe Tone had been an undergraduate a hundred years
earlier had changed in that hundred years. I was in Paris in 1900 and
went to see an old acquaintance, that most imaginative archæologist,
Salomon Reinach. He told me he had been lately to Ireland and he
had been astonished by two things, the ignorance of the Irish
language--it was not known even by the head of the Dublin Museum or
the head of its archæological side--and by the hostility of Trinity
College to all things Irish. “It is an English fort, nothing else.”
“Its garrison,” the students, had gone out and broken the windows of
a newspaper office while he was there, and he had spent an evening
with Doctor Mahaffy, who was “much astonished that I was no longer
taken up with Greek things, and that I found Irish antiquity so much
more interesting.”

I have already told of Lecky’s help to our theatre. He had a real
affection for his country, but was not prone to join societies or
leagues. He had given us his name as one of our first guarantors,
offering £5 instead of the £1 I had asked. But he publicly withdrew
his name later, without his usual reasonableness, because of letters
written by Mr. Yeats and Mr. George Moore at the time of Queen
Victoria’s visit to Dublin. This had been announced as a private
visit, and Nationalists had promised a welcome. Then it was turned
into a public one, and there was a good deal of angry feeling, and
it seemed as if the theatre--although quite outside politics--would
suffer for a while. Though Mr. Yeats, wrote: “I don’t think you need
be anxious about next year’s theatre. Clever Unionists will take us
on our merits, and the rest would never like us at any time. I have
found a greatly increased friendliness on the part of some of the
younger men here. In a battle like Ireland’s, which is one of poverty
against wealth, one must prove one’s sincerity by making oneself
unpopular to wealth. One must accept the baptism of the gutter. Have
not all teachers done the like?” I answered that I preferred the
baptism of clean water. I was troubled by the misunderstanding of
friends.

Trinity College is not keeping aloof now, and as to Mr. Lecky
himself, the House of Commons took away some prejudices. He spoke
to me of Mr. John Redmond and his leadership with great admiration
and esteem. I find a note written after a pleasant dinner with him
and Mrs. Lecky in Onslow Gardens: “He grieved over the exaggerated
statements of the financial reformers. I pressed Land Purchase as the
solution of our trouble, but he says what is true, ‘It means changing
every hundred pounds into seventy.’ Talking of Robert’s future, he
said, ‘It is a great thing to have a competence behind one.’ He said
he had been brought up for the Church, but found he could not enter
it, and went abroad and drifted, never thinking he would marry, and
leading a solitary life, and so took to letters and succeeded. He
thinks Parliament lessens one’s interest in political questions,--so
much connected with them is of no value, and there is so much empty
noise.”

I often heard of his speaking well and even boasting of our Theatre
and its work, but though he often came to see me, he would not quite
give up fault-finding. “Dined at Lecky’s; he rather cross. He took
me down to dinner and said first thing, ‘What silly speeches your
Celtic people have been making.’ ‘Moore?’ I asked. ‘Yes, and Yeats.
Oh, very silly!’ He is in bad humour because Blackrock, which he has
known, and known to speak English all his life, has sent him a copy
of resolutions in favour of the revival of Irish. In revenge I told
him how a Deputy Lieutenant (Edward Martyn) was proclaiming himself a
convert to Nationalism through reading his _Leaders of Public Opinion
in Ireland_. But that book, he used to say, had been a long time in
influencing anybody, for of its first edition only thirty copies had
been sold.”

He forgave us all after a while, used to come and ask for news
whenever I had come to London from home, and told me quite proudly
after a visit to Oxford that the undergraduates there accepted no
living poet but Yeats. But to the last he would say to me plaintively
on parting, “Do not do anything incendiary when you go back to
Ireland.”

       *       *       *       *       *

My first meeting with Douglas Hyde had been when he came in one day
with a broken bicycle during lunch at my neighbour Mr. Martyn’s
house where I was staying. He had been coming by train, but had got
out at a village, Craughwell (as I myself did a good while afterwards
on the same errand), in search of memories of Raftery, the Connacht
poet. I had my own pony carriage with me, and that afternoon I drove
to the Round Tower and the seven churches of Kilmacduagh, taking with
me Douglas Hyde and Mr. William Sharp, whom I even then suspected
of being “Fiona Macleod.” Mr. Sharp--not by my invitation--took the
place beside me, and left the back seat for the poet-dramatist, the
founder of the Gaelic League of Ireland.

He often came to stay with me and my son at Coole after that. The
first time was in winter, for a shooting party. Some old ladies--our
neighbours--asked our keeper who our party was, and on hearing that
one was a gentleman who spoke to the beaters in Irish, they said,
“he can not be a gentleman if he speaks Irish.” With all his culture
and learning, his delight was in talking with the people and hearing
their poems and fragments of the legends. I remember one day, he
went into a thatched cottage to change his boots after shooting
snipe on Kilmacduagh bog, and talked with an old woman who had not
much English and who welcomed him when he spoke in her own tongue.
But when she heard he was from Mayo, looked down on by dwellers in
Galway, she laughed very much and repeated a line of a song in Irish
which runs:

“There’ll be boots on me yet, says the man from the county Mayo!”

Near Kilmacduagh also he was told a long story, having Aristotle for
its hero. Sometimes he was less lucky. I brought an old man to see
him, I was sure could give him stories. But he only told one of a
beggar who went to Castle ----, a neighbouring house, the master of
which had given him a half-penny, saying, “that is for my father’s
and mother’s soul.” “And the beggar added another half-penny to it,
and laid it down on the step, and, ‘There’s a half-penny for my
father’s soul and a half-penny for my mother’s, and I wouldn’t go to
the meanness of putting them both in one.’”

He has done his work by methods of peace, by keeping quarrels out
of his life, with all but entire success. I find in a letter to
Mr. Yeats: “I will send you Claideam that you may see some of the
attacks by recalcitrant Gaelic Leaguers on the Craoibhin. Well, I am
sorry, but if he can’t keep from making enemies, what chance is there
for the like of us?”

He was one of the vice-presidents of our Society for a while and we
are always grateful to him for that _Twisting of the Rope_ in which
he played with so much gaiety, ease, and charm. But in founding the
Gaelic League, he had done far more than that for our work. It was
a movement for keeping the Irish language a spoken one, with, as
a chief end, the preserving of our own nationality. That does not
sound like the beginning of a revolution, yet it was one. It was the
discovery, the disclosure of the folk-learning, the folk-poetry, the
folk-tradition. Our Theatre was caught into that current, and it is
that current, as I believe, that has brought it on its triumphant
way. It is chiefly known now as a folk-theatre. It has not only the
great mass of primitive material and legend to draw on, but it has
been made a living thing by the excitement of that discovery. All our
writers, Mr. Yeats himself, were influenced by it. Mr. Synge found
what he had lacked before--fable, emotion, style. Writing of him I
have said “He tells what he owes to that collaboration with the
people, and for all the attacks, he has given back to them what they
will one day thank him for.... The return to the people, the reunion
after separation, the taking and giving, is it not the perfect
circle, the way of nature, the eternal wedding-ring?”



CHAPTER III

PLAY-WRITING


When we first planned our Theatre, there were very few plays to
choose from, but our faith had no bounds and as the Irish proverb
says, “When the time comes, the child comes.”

The plays that I have cared for most all through, and for love of
which I took up this work, are those verse ones by Mr. Yeats _The
Countess Cathleen_ with which we began, _The Shadowy Waters_, _The
King’s Threshold_, and the rest. They have sometimes seemed to go
out of sight because the prose plays are easier to put on and to
take from place to place; yet they will always be, if I have my way,
a part of our year’s work. I feel verse is more than any prose can
be, the apex of the flame, the point of the diamond. The well-to-do
people in our stalls sometimes say, “We have had enough of verse
plays, give us comedy.” But the people in the sixpenny places do
not say they get too much of them, and the players themselves work
in them with delight. I wrote to Mr. Yeats when _On Bath’s Strand_
was being rehearsed: “Just back from rehearsal, and cheered up on
the whole. The Molière goes very well, and will be quite safe when
the two servants have been given a little business. Synge says it
was quite different to-night. They all waked up in honour of me. As
to _Baile’s Strand_, it will be splendid.... The only real blot at
present is the song, and it is very bad. The three women repeat it
together. Their voices don’t go together. One gets nervous listening
for the separate ones. No one knows how you wish it done. Every one
thinks the words ought to be heard. I got Miss Allgood to speak it
alone, and that was beautiful, and we thought if it didn’t delay
the action too long, she might speak it, and at the end she and the
others might sing or hum some lines of it to a definite tune. If you
can quite decide what should be done, you can send directions, but if
you are doubtful, I almost think you must come over. You mustn’t risk
spoiling the piece. It is quite beautiful. W. Fay most enthusiastic,
says you are a wonderful man, and keeps repeating lines. He says,
‘There is nothing like that being written in London.’”

But the listeners, and this especially when they are lovers of verse,
have to give so close an attention to the lines, even when given
their proper value and rhythm as by our players, that ear and mind
crave ease and unbending, and so comedies were needed to give this
rest. That is why I began writing them, and it is still my pride when
one is thought worthy to be given in the one evening with the poetic
work.

I began by writing bits of dialogue, when wanted. Mr. Yeats used to
dictate parts of _Diarmuid and Grania_ to me, and I would suggest a
sentence here and there. Then I, as well as another, helped to fill
spaces in _Where There is Nothing_. Mr. Yeats says in dedicating it
to me: “I offer you a book which is in part your own. Some months
ago, when our Irish dramatic movement took its present form, I saw
that somebody must write a number of plays in prose if it was to have
a good start. I did not know what to do, although I had my dramatic
fables ready and a pretty full sketch of one play, for my eyes were
troubling me, and I thought I could do nothing but verse, which one
can carry about in one’s head for a long time, and write down, as
De Musset put it, with a burnt match. You said I might dictate to
you, and we worked in the mornings at Coole, and I never did anything
that went so easily and quickly; for when I hesitated you had the
right thought ready and it was almost always you who gave the right
turn to the phrase and gave it the ring of daily life. We finished
several plays, of which this is the longest, in so few weeks that if
I were to say how few, I do not think anybody would believe me.”

[Illustration: Miss Sara Allgood

From a drawing by Robert Gregory]

_Where There is Nothing_ was given by the Stage Society in London,
but Mr. Yeats was not satisfied with it, and we have since re-written
it as _The Unicorn from the Stars_. Yet it went well and was vital.
It led to an unexpected result: “I hear that some man of a fairly
respectable class was taken up with a lot of tinkers somewhere in
Munster, and that the Magistrate compared him to ‘Paul Ruttledge.’
The next night one of the tinkers seems to have said something to the
others about their being in a book. The others resented this in some
way, and there was a fight, which brought them all into Court again.
I am trying to get the papers.”

Later in the year we wrote together _Kathleen ni Houlihan_ and to
that he wrote an introductory letter addressed to me: “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 Kathleen ni Houlihan for whom so many
songs have been sung 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
from 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, _Kathleen ni Houlihan_, 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.”

For _The Pot of Broth_ also I wrote dialogue and I worked as well at
the plot and the construction of some of the poetic plays, especially
_The King’s Threshold_ and _Deirdre_; for I had learned by this time
a good deal about play-writing to which I had never given thought
before. I had never cared much for the stage, although when living a
good deal in London, my husband and I went, as others do, to see some
of each season’s plays. I find, in looking over an old diary, that
many of these have quite passed from my mind, although books I read
ever so long ago, novels and the like, have left at least some faint
trace by which I may recognise them.

We thought at our first start it would make the whole movement more
living and bring it closer to the people if the Gaelic League would
put on some plays written in Irish. Dr. Hyde thought well of the
idea, and while staying here at Coole, as he did from time to time,
he wrote _The Twisting of the Rope_, based on one of Mr. Yeats’s
Hanrahan stories; _The Lost Saint_ on a legend given its shape by Mr.
Yeats, and _The Nativity_ on a scenario we wrote together for him.
Afterwards he wrote _The Marriage_ and _The Poorhouse_, upon in each
case a scenario written by me. I betray no secret in telling this,
for Dr. Hyde has made none of the collaboration, giving perhaps too
generous acknowledgment, as in Galway, where he said, when called
before the curtain after _The Marriage_, that the play was not his
but that Lady Gregory had written it and brought it to him, saying
“_Cur Gaedilge air_,” “Put Irish on it.” I find in a letter of mine
to Mr. Yeats: “Thanks for sending back Raftery. I haven’t sent it
to Hyde yet. The real story was that Raftery by chance went into a
house where such a wedding was taking place ‘that was only a marriage
and not a wedding’ and where there was ‘nothing but a herring for
the dinner,’ and he made a song about it and about all the imaginary
grand doings at it that has been remembered ever since. But it didn’t
bring any practical good to the young people, for Raftery himself
‘had to go to bed in the end without as much as a drop to drink, but
he didn’t mind that, where they hadn’t it to give.’”

But it went through some changes after that: “I have a letter from
the Craoibhin. He has lost his Trinity College play and must re-write
it from my translation. He is not quite satisfied with Raftery (_The
Marriage_). ‘I don’t think Maire’s uncertainty if it be a ghost or
not is effective on the stage. I would rather have the ghost “out
and out” as early as possible, and make it clear to the audience.’ I
rather agree with him. I think I will restore the voice at the door
in my published version.”

And again I wrote from Galway: “I came here yesterday for a few days’
change, but the journey, or the little extra trouble at leaving, set
my head aching, and I had to spend all yesterday in a dark room.
In the evening, when the pain began to go, I began to think of the
Raftery play, and I want to know if this end would do. After the
miser goes out, Raftery stands up and says, ‘I won’t be the only
one in the house to give no present to the woman of the house,’ and
hands her the plate of money, telling them to count it. While they
are all gathered round counting it, he slips quietly from the door.
As he goes out, wheels or horse steps are heard, and a farmer comes
in and says, ‘What is going on? All the carts of the country gathered
at the door, and Seaghan, the Miser, going swearing down the road?’
They say it is a wedding party called in by Raftery. But where is
Raftery? Is he gone? They ask the farmer if he met him outside--the
poet Raftery--and he says, ‘I did not, but I stood by his grave at
Killeenin yesterday.’ Do you think that better? It gets rid of the
good-byes and the storm, and I don’t think any amount of hints convey
the ghostly idea strongly enough. Let me know at once; just a word
will do.”

As to _The Poorhouse_, the idea came from a visit to Gort Workhouse
one day when I heard that the wife of an old man, who had been long
there, maimed by something, a knife I think, that she had thrown at
him in a quarrel, had herself now been brought in to the hospital.
I wondered how they would meet, as enemies or as friends, and I
thought it likely they would be glad to end their days together for
old sake’s sake. This is how I wrote down my fable: “Scene, ward of
a workhouse; two beds containing the old men; they are quarrelling.
Occupants of other invisible beds are heard saying, ‘There they are
at it again; they are always quarrelling.’ They say the matron will
be coming to call for order, but another says the matron has been
sent for to see somebody who wants to remove one of the paupers.
Both old men wish they could be removed from each other and have the
whole ridge of the world between them. The fight goes on. One old man
tells the other that he remembers the time he used to be stealing
ducks, and he a boy at school. The other old man remembers the time
his neighbour was suspected of going to Souper’s school, etc., etc.
They remember the crimes of each other’s lives. They fight like two
young whelps that go on fighting till they are two old dogs. At last
they take their pillows and throw them at each other. Other paupers
(invisible) cheer and applaud. Then they take their porringers,
pipes, prayer-books, or whatever is in reach, to hurl at each other.
They lament the hard fate that has put them in the same ward for five
years and in beds next each other for the last three months, and
they after being enemies the whole of their lives. Suddenly a cry
that the matron is coming. They settle themselves hurriedly. Each
puts his enemy’s pillow under his head and lies down. The matron
comes in with a countrywoman comfortably dressed. She embraces one
old man. She is his sister. Her husband died from her lately and she
is lonesome and doesn’t like to think of her brother being in the
workhouse. If he is bedridden itself, he would be company for her.
He is delighted, asks what sort of house she has. She says, a good
one, a nice kitchen, and he can be doing little jobs for her. He can
be sitting in a chair beside the fire and stirring the stirabout for
her and throwing a bit of food to the chickens when she is out in the
field. He asks when he can go. She says she has the chance of a lift
for him on a neighbour’s cart. He can come at once. He says he will
make no delay. A loud sob from the old man in the other bed. He says,
‘Is it going away you are, you that I knew through all my lifetime,
and leaving me among strangers?’ The first old man asks his sister if
she will bring him too. She is indignant, says she won’t. First old
man says maybe he’d be foolish to go at all. How does he know if he’d
like it. She says, he is to please himself; if he doesn’t come, she
can easily get a husband, having, as she has, a nice way of living,
and three lambs going to the next market. The first man says, well,
he won’t go; if she would bring the other old man, he would go. She
turns her back angrily. Paupers in other beds call out she’ll find
a good husband amongst them. She pulls on her shawl scornfully to
go away. She gives her brother one more chance; he says he won’t go.
She says good-bye and bad luck to him. She leaves. He says that man
beyond would be lonesome with no one to contradict him. The other
man says he would not. The first man says, ‘You want some one to be
arguing with you always.’ The second man, ‘I do not.’ The first man
says, ‘You are at your lies again.’ The second takes up his pillow to
heave at him again. Curtain falls on two men arming themselves with
pillows.”

I intended to write the full dialogue myself, but Mr. Yeats thought
a new Gaelic play more useful for the moment, and rather sadly I
laid that part of the work upon Dr. Hyde. It was all for the best in
the end, for the little play, when we put it on at the Abbey, did
not go very well. It seemed to ravel out into loose ends, and we did
not repeat it; nor did the Gaelic players like it as well as _The
Marriage_ and _The Lost Saint_. After a while, when the Fays had left
us, I wanted a play that would be useful to them, and with Dr. Hyde’s
full leave I re-wrote the _Poorhouse_ as _The Workhouse Ward_. I
had more skill by that time, and it was a complete re-writing, for
the two old men in the first play had been talking at an imaginary
audience of other old men in the ward. When this was done away with
the dialogue became of necessity more closely knit, more direct
and personal, to the great advantage of the play, although it was
rejected as “too local” by the players for whom I had written it.
The success of this set me to cutting down the number of parts in
later plays until I wrote _Grania_ with only three persons in it, and
_The Bogie Men_ with only two. I may have gone too far, and have, I
think, given up an intention I at one time had of writing a play for
a man and a scarecrow only, but one has to go on with experiment or
interest in creation fades, at least so it is with me.

In 1902, my _Twenty-five_ was staged; a rather sentimental comedy,
not very amusing. It was useful at the time when we had so few, but
it was weak, ending, as did for the most part the Gaelic plays that
began to be written, in a piper and a dance. I tried to get rid of it
afterwards by writing _The Jackdaw_ on the same idea, but in which
I make humour lay the ghost of sentiment. But _Twenty-five_ may yet
be re-written and come to a little life of its own. _Spreading the
News_ was played at the opening of the Abbey Theatre, December 27,
1904. I heard it attacked at that time on the ground that Irish
people never were gossips to such an extent, but it has held its own,
and our audiences have had their education as well as writers and
players, and know now that a play is a selection not a photograph and
that the much misquoted “mirror to nature” was not used by its author
or any good play-writer at all.

Perhaps I ought to have written nothing but these short comedies, but
desire for experiment is like fire in the blood, and I had had from
the beginning a vision of historical plays being sent by us through
all the counties of Ireland. For to have a real success and to come
into the life of the country, one must touch a real and eternal
emotion, and history comes only next to religion in our country.
And although the realism of our young writers is taking the place
of fantasy and romance in the cities, I still hope to see a little
season given up every year to plays on history and in sequence at the
Abbey, and I think schools and colleges may ask to have them sent and
played in their halls, as a part of the day’s lesson. I began with
the daring and lightheartedness of a schoolboy to write a tragedy in
three acts upon a great personality, Brian the High King. I made many
bad beginnings, and if I had listened to Mr. Yeats’s advice I should
have given it up, but I began again and again till it was at last
moulded in at least a possible shape. It went well with our audience.
There was some enthusiasm for it, being the first historical play
we had produced. An old farmer came up all the way from Kincora,
the present Killaloe, to see it, and I heard he went away sad at
the tragic ending. He said, “Brian ought not to have married that
woman. He should have been content with a nice, quiet girl from his
own district.” For stormy treacherous Gormleith of many husbands had
stirred up the battle that brought him to his death. _Dervorgilla_ I
wrote at a time when circumstances had forced us to accept an English
stage-manager for the Abbey. I was very strongly against this. I
felt as if I should be spoken of some day as one who had betrayed
her country’s trust. I wrote so vehemently and sadly to Mr. Yeats
about it that he might have been moved from the path of expediency,
which I now think was the wise one, had the letter reached him in
time, but it lay with others in the Kiltartan letter-box during a
couple of weeks, Christmas time or the wintry weather giving an
excuse to the mail-car driver whose duty it is to clear the box
as he nightly passed it by. So he wrote: “I think we should take
Vedrenne’s recommendation unless we have some strong reason to the
contrary. If the man is not Irish, we cannot help it. If the choice
is between filling our country’s stomach or enlarging its brains by
importing precise knowledge, I am for scorning its stomach for the
present.... I should have said that I told Vedrenne that good temper
is essential, and he said the man he has recommended is a vegetarian
and that Bernard Shaw says that vegetables are wonderful for the
temper.”

Mr. Synge had something of my feeling about alien management. He
wrote later: “The first show of ---- was deplorable. It came out as a
bastard literary pantomime, put on with many of the worst tricks of
the English stage. That is the end of all the Samhain principles and
this new tradition that we were to lay down! I felt inclined to walk
out of the Abbey and go back no more. The second Saturday was much
less offensive. ---- is doing his best obviously and he may perhaps
in time come to understand our methods.”

       *       *       *       *       *

To come back to play-writing, I find in a letter to Mr. Yeats. “You
will be amused to hear that although, or perhaps because, I had
evolved out of myself ‘Mr. Quirke’ as a conscious philanthropist, an
old man from the workhouse told me two days ago that he had been a
butcher of Quirke’s sort and was quite vainglorious about it, telling
me how many staggery sheep and the like he had killed, that would,
if left to die, have been useless or harmful. ‘But I often stuck
a beast and it kicking yet and life in it, so that it could do no
harm to a Christian or a dog or an animal.’” And later: “Yet another
‘Mr. Quirke’ has been to see me. He says there are no sick pigs now,
because they are all sent off to ... no, I mustn’t give the address.
Has not a purgatory been imagined where writers find themselves
surrounded by the characters they have created?”

The _Canavans_, as I say in a note to it, was “written I think less
by logical plan than in one of those moments of lightheartedness
that, as I think, is an inheritance from my great-grandmother Frances
Algoin, a moment of that ‘sudden Glory, the Passion which maketh
those Grimaces called Laughter.’ Some call it farce, some like it the
best of my comedies. This very day, October 16th, I have been sent
a leaf from the examination papers of the new University, in which
the passage chosen from literature to ‘put Irish on’ is that speech
of Peter Canavan’s beginning. ‘Would any one now think it a thing to
hang a man for, that he had striven to keep himself safe?’”

But we never realise our dreams. I think it was _The Full Moon_ that
was in the making when I wrote: “I am really getting to work on a
little comedy, of which I think at present that if its feet are of
clay, its high head will be of rubbed gold, and that people will stop
and dance when they hear it and not know for a while the piping was
from beyond the world! But no doubt if it ever gets acted, it will be
‘what Lady Gregory calls a comedy and everybody else, a farce!’”

The _Deliverer_ is a crystallising of the story, as the people
tell it, of Parnell’s betrayal. Only yesterday some beggar from
Crow Lane, the approach to Gort, told me he heard one who had been
Parnell’s friend speak against him at the time of the split: “He
brought down O’Shea’s wife on him and said he was not fit to be left
at large. The people didn’t like that and they hooted him and he was
vexed and said he could buy up the whole of them for half a glass
of porter!” I may look on _The Rising of the Moon_ as an historical
play, as my history goes, for the scene is laid in the historical
time of the rising of the Fenians in the sixties. But the real fight
in the play goes on in the sergeant’s own mind, and so its human side
makes it go as well in Oxford or London or Chicago as in Ireland
itself. But Dublin Castle finds in it some smell of rebellion and has
put us under punishment for its sins. When we came back from America
last March, we had promised to give a performance on our first day in
Dublin and _The Rising of the Moon_ was one of the plays announced.
But the stage costumes had not yet arrived, and we sent out to hire
some from a depot from which the cast uniforms of the Constabulary
may be lent out to the companies performing at the theatres--the
Royal, the Gaiety, and the Queens. But our messenger came back
empty-handed. An order had been issued by the authorities that “no
clothes were to be lent to the Abbey because _The Rising of the Moon_
was derogatory to His Majesty’s forces.” So we changed the bill and
put on the _Workhouse Ward_, in which happily a quilt and blanket
cover any deficiency of clothes.

We wanted to put on some of Molière’s plays. They seemed akin to our
own. But when one translation after another was tried, it did not
seem to carry, to “go across the footlights.” So I tried putting one
into our own Kiltartan dialect, _The Doctor in Spite of Himself_,
and it went very well. I went on, therefore, and translated _Scapin_
and _The Miser_. Our players give them with great spirit; the chief
parts--Scapin, Harpagon, and Frosine--could hardly be bettered in any
theatre. I confess their genius does not suit so well the sentimental
and artificial young lovers.

Mr. Yeats wrote from Paris: “Dec. 19, ’08, I saw two days ago a
performance of _Scapin_ at the Odeon. I really like our own better.
It seemed to me that a representation so traditional in its type as
that at the Odeon has got too far from life, as we see it, to give
the full natural pleasure of comedy. It was much more farcical than
anything we have ever done. I have recorded several pieces of new
business and noted costumes which were sometimes amusing. The acting
was amazingly skilful and everything was expressive in the extreme.
I noticed one difference between this production and ours which
almost shocked me, so used am I to our own ways. There were cries
of pain and real tears. Scapin cried when his master threatened him
in the first act, and the old man, beaten by the supposed bully,
was obviously very sore. I have always noticed that with our people
there is never real suffering even in tragedy. One felt in the French
comedians an undercurrent of passion--passion which our people never
have. I think we give in comedy a kind of fancifulness and purity.”

It is the existence of the Theatre that has created play-writing
among us. Mr. Boyle had written stories, and only turned to plays
when he had seen our performances in London. Mr. Colum claimed to
have turned to drama for our sake, and Mr. Fitzmaurice, Mr. Ray, and
Mr. Murray--a National schoolmaster--would certainly not have written
but for that chance of having their work acted. A. E. wrote to me:
“I think the Celtic Theatre will emerge all right, for if it is not a
manifest intention of the gods that there should be such a thing, why
the mania for writing drama which is furiously absorbing our Irish
writers?” And again almost sadly: “Would it be inconvenient for me to
go to Coole on Monday next ...? I am laying in a stock of colours and
boards for painting and hope the weather will keep up. I hear Synge
is at Coole, and as an astronomer of human nature, calculating the
probable effect of one heavenly body on another which is invisible,
I suppose W. B. Y. is at drama again and that the summer of verse is
given over.”

I asked Mr. Lennox Robinson how he had begun, and he said he had seen
our players in Cork, and had gone away thinking of nothing else than
to write a play for us to produce. He wrote and sent us _The Clancy
Name_. We knew nothing of him, but saw there was good stuff in the
play, and sent it back with suggestions for strengthening it and
getting rid of some unnecessary characters. He altered it and we put
it on. Then he wrote a three-act play _The Cross Roads_, but after
he had seen it played he took away the first act, making it a far
better play, for it is by seeing one’s work on the stage that one
learns best. Then he wrote _Harvest_ with three strong acts, and this
year _Patriots_, which has gone best of all.

One of our heaviest tasks had been reading the plays sent in. For
some years Mr. Yeats and I read every one of these; but now a
committee reports on them first and sends back those that are quite
impossible with a short printed notice:

  “The Reading Committee of the National Theatre Society regret to
  say that the enclosed play, which you kindly submitted to them,
  is, for various reasons, not suitable for production by the Abbey
  Company.”

If a play is not good enough to produce, but yet shows some skill in
construction or dialogue, we send another printed form written by Mr.
Yeats:

  “ADVICE TO PLAYWRIGHTS WHO ARE SENDING PLAYS TO THE ABBEY, DUBLIN.

  The Abbey Theatre is a subsidised theatre with an educational
  object. It will, therefore, be useless as a rule to send it plays
  intended as popular entertainments and that alone, or originally
  written for performance by some popular actor at the popular
  theatres. A play to be suitable for performance at the Abbey
  should contain some criticism of life, founded on the experience
  or personal observation of the writer, or some vision of life, of
  Irish life by preference, important from its beauty or from some
  excellence of style; and this intellectual quality is not more
  necessary to tragedy than to the gayest comedy.

  “We do not desire propagandist plays, nor plays written mainly
  to serve some obvious moral purpose; for art seldom concerns
  itself with those interests or opinions that can be defended by
  argument, but with realities of emotion and character that become
  self-evident when made vivid to the imagination.

  “The dramatist should also banish from his mind the thought that
  there are some ingredients, the love-making of the popular stage
  for instance, especially fitted to give dramatic pleasure; for any
  knot of events, where there is passionate emotion and clash of
  will, can be made the subject matter of a play, and the less like
  a play it is at the first sight the better play may come of it in
  the end. Young writers should remember that they must get all their
  effects from the logical expression of their subject, and not by
  the addition of extraneous incidents; and that a work of art can
  have but one subject. A work of art, though it must have the effect
  of nature, is art because it is not nature, as Goethe said: and it
  must possess a unity unlike the accidental profusion of nature.

  “The Abbey Theatre is continually sent plays which show that their
  writers have not understood that the attainment of this unity by
  what is usually a long shaping and reshaping of the plot, is the
  principal labour of the dramatist, and not the writing of the
  dialogue.

  “Before sending plays of any length, writers would often save
  themselves some trouble by sending a ‘Scenario,’ or scheme of the
  plot, together with one completely written act and getting the
  opinion of the Reading Committee as to its suitability before
  writing the whole play.”

I find a note from Mr. Yeats: “Some writer offers us a play which
‘unlike those at the Abbey,’ he says, is so constructed as to
admit any topic or a scene laid in any country. It will under the
circumstances, he says, ‘do good to all.’ I am sending him ‘Advice to
Playwrights.’”

The advice was not always gratefully received. I wrote to Mr. Yeats:
“Such an absurd letter in the _Cork Sportsman_, suggesting that
you make all other dramatists rewrite their plays to hide your own
idiosyncrasy!”

If a play shows real promise and a mind behind it, we write
personally to the author, making criticisms and suggestions. We were
accused for a while of smothering the work of young writers in order
that we might produce our own, but time has done away with that
libel, and we are very proud of the school of drama that has come
into being through the creation of our Theatre. We were advised also
to put on more popular work, work that would draw an audience for the
moment from being topical, or because the author had friends in some
league. But we went on giving what we thought good until it became
popular. I wrote once, thinking we had yielded over much: “I am sorry
----’s play has been so coldly received (a play that has since become
a favourite one), but I think it is partly our own fault. It would
have got a better welcome a year ago. We have been humouring our
audience instead of educating it, which is the work we ought to do.
It is not only giving so much ---- and ----, it is the want of good
work pressed on, and I believe the want of verse, which they respect
anyhow.... I think the pressing on of Synge’s two plays the best
thing we can do for this season. We have a great backing now in his
reputation. In the last battle, when we cried up his genius, we were
supposed to do it for our own interest.... I only read Gerothwohl’s
speech after you left, and thought that sentence most excellent about
the theatre he was connected with being intended ‘for art and a
thinking Democracy.’ It is just what we set out to do, and now we are
giving in to stupidity in a Democracy. I think the sentence should be
used when we can.”

One at least of the many gloomy prophecies written to Mr. Yeats
at some time of trouble has not come true: “I am giving you the
situation as it appears to me. Remember there is ---- and ---- and
----. An amalgamation of all the dissentients with a Gaelic dramatic
society would leave Synge, Lady Gregory, and Boyle with yourself,
and none of these have drawing power in Dublin.... You who initiated
the theatre movement in Ireland, will be out of it.”

Neither Mr. Yeats nor I take the writing of our plays lightly. We
work hard to get clearly both fable and idea. _The Travelling Man_
was first my idea and then we wrote it together. Then Mr. Yeats wrote
a variant of it as a Pagan play, _The Black Horse_, and to this we
owe the song, “There’s many a strong farmer whose heart would break
in two.” It did not please him however, and then I worked it out in
my own way. I wrote to him: “I am not sure about your idea, for if
the Stranger wanted the child to be content with the things near him,
why did he make the image of the Garden of Paradise and ride to it? I
am more inclined to think the idea is the soul having once seen the
Christ, the Divine Essence, must always turn back to it again. One
feels sure the child will though all its life. And the mother, with
all her comforts, has never been quite satisfied, because she wants
to see the Christ again. But the earthly side of her built up the
dresser, and the child will build up other earthly veils; yet never
be quite satisfied. What do you think?”

And again: “I am trying so hard to get to work on a play and first
excuses came--Thursday headache; now I feel myself longing to take
over the saw-mill, which has stopped with the head sawyer’s departure
and only wants a steady superintendent; or to translate _L’Avare_
or the Irish fairy tales, or anything rather than creative work!
You feel just the same with the Theatre; anything that is more or
less external administration is so easy! Why were we not born to be
curators of museums?”

At another time he writes: “Every day up to this I have worked at
my play in the greatest gloom and this morning half the time was
the worst yet--all done against the grain. I had half decided to
throw it aside, till I had got back my belief in myself with some
sheer poetry. When I began, I got some philosophy and my mind became
abundant and therefore cheerful. If I can make it obey my own
definition of tragedy, passion defined by motives, I shall be all
right. I was trying for too much character. If, as I think you said,
farce is comedy with character left out, melodrama is, I believe,
tragedy with passion left out.”

As to our staging of plays, in 1903, the costumes for _The
Hour-Glass_ were designed by my son, and from that time a great
deal of the work was done by him. _The Hour-Glass_ dresses were
purple played against a green curtain. It was our first attempt at
the decorative staging long demanded by Mr. Yeats. Mr. Yeats says,
in _Samhain_, 1905, “Our staging of _Kincora_, 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.”

The first acts of the play are laid in King Brian’s great hall at
Kincora. It was hung with green curtains, there were shields embossed
with designs in gold upon the walls, and heavy mouldings over the
doors. The last act showed Brian’s tent at Clontarf; a great orange
curtain filled the background, and it is hard to forget the effect
at the end of three figures standing against it, in green, in red,
in grey. For a front scene there was a curtain--we use it still
in its dimness and age--with a pattern of tree stems interlaced
and of leaves edged with gold. This was the most costly staging we
had yet attempted: it came with costumes to £30. A great deal of
unpaid labour went into it. Mr. Fay discovered a method of making
papier mâché, a chief part of which seemed to be the boiling down of
large quantities of our old programmes, for the mouldings and for
the shields. I have often seen the designer himself on his knees
by a great iron pot--one we use in cottage scenes--dying pieces of
sacking, or up high on a ladder painting his forests or leaves. His
staging of _The Shadowy Waters_ was almost more beautiful; the whole
stage is the sloping deck of a galley, blue and dim, the sails and
dresses are green, the ornaments all of copper. He staged for us
also, for love of his art and of the work, my own plays, _The White
Cockade_, _The Image_, _Dervorgilla_, and Mr. Yeats’s _On Baile’s
Strand_ with the great bronze gates used in other plays as well, in
Lord Dunsany’s _Glittering Gate_ and in _The Countess Cathleen_. It
was by him the scenery for Mr. Yeats’s _Deirdre_ was designed and
painted, and for Synge’s _Deirdre of the Sorrows_. I am proud to
think how much “excellent beauty” he has brought to the help of our
work.



CHAPTER IV

THE FIGHT OVER “THE PLAYBOY”


When Synge’s _Shadow of the Glen_ was first played in the Molesworth
Hall in 1903, some attacks were made on it by the _Sinn Fein_ weekly
newspaper. In the play the old husband pretends to be dead, the young
wife listens to the offers of a young farmer, who asks her to marry
him in the chapel of Rathvanna when “Himself will be quiet a while
in the Seven Churches.” The old man jumps up, drives her out of the
house, refusing to make peace, and she goes away with a tramp, a
stranger from the roads. Synge was accused of having borrowed the
story from another country, from “a decadent Roman source,” the story
of the widow of Ephesus, and given it an Irish dress. He declared he
had been told this story in the West of Ireland. It had already been
given in Curtin’s tales. Yet the same cry has been made from time to
time. But it happened last winter I was at Newhaven, Massachusetts,
with the Company, and we were asked to tea at the house of a Yale
professor. There were a good many people there, and I had a few words
with each, and as they spoke of the interest taken in the plays, a
lady said: “My old nurse has been reading _The Shadow of the Glen_,
but she says it is but a hearth tale; she had heard it long ago in
Ireland.” Then others came to talk to me, and next day I went on
to speak at Smith College. It was not till later I remembered the
refusal to take Synge’s word, and that now _Shadow of the Glen_ had
been called a “hearth tale.” I was sorry I had not asked for the
old woman’s words to be put down, but I could not remember among so
many strangers who it was that had told me of them. But a little
later, in New York, one of the younger Yale professors came round
during the plays to the little sitting-room at the side of the stage
at the Maxine Elliott Theatre where I received friends. I asked him
to find out what I wanted to know, and after a while I was sent the
words of the old woman, who is a nurse in a well-known philanthropic
family: “Indeed, Miss, I’ve heard that story many’s the time. It’s
what in the old country we call a fireside story. In the evening the
neighbours would be coming in and sitting about the big fire, in
a great stone chimney like you know, and the big long hearthstone
in front, and the men would be stretching out on their backs on the
stones and telling stories just the like of that; how that an old man
had a young wife, and he began to fear she wasn’t true to him, and he
got himself into the bed and a big thorn stick with him, and made out
to be dead, and when his wife was watching beside him in the night
and thinking him safe dead, the other man came in and began talking
to her to make her marry him; and himself jumped up out of the bed
and gave them the great beating, just the same as in the book, Miss,
only it reads more nice and refined like. Oh, there were many of
those fireside stories they’d tell!”

But the grumbling against this play was only in the papers and in
letters, and it soon died out, although I find in a letter from Mr.
Yeats before the opening of the Abbey: “The _Independent_ has waked
up and attacked us again with a note and a letter of a threatening
nature warning us not to perform Synge again.” The _Well of the
Saints_ was let pass without much comment, though we had very small
audiences for it, for those were early days at the Abbey. It was
another story when in 1907 _The Playboy of the Western World_ was put
on. There was a very large audience on the first night, a Saturday,
January 26th. Synge was there, but Mr. Yeats was giving a lecture
in Scotland. The first act got its applause and the second, though
one felt the audience were a little puzzled, a little shocked at the
wild language. Near the end of the third act there was some hissing.
We had sent a telegram to Mr. Yeats after the first act--“Play great
success”; but at the end we sent another--“Audience broke up in
disorder at the word shift.” For that plain English word was one of
those objected to, and even the papers, in commenting, followed the
example of some lady from the country, who wrote saying “the word
omitted but understood was one she would blush to use even when she
was alone.”

On the Monday night _Riders to the Sea_, which was the first piece,
went very well indeed. But in the interval after it, I noticed on
one side of the pit a large group of men sitting together, not a
woman among them. I told Synge I thought it a sign of some organised
disturbance and he telephoned to have the police at hand. The first
part of the first act went undisturbed. Then suddenly an uproar
began. The group of men I had noticed booed, hooted, blew tin
trumpets. The editor of one of the Dublin weekly papers was sitting
next to me, and I asked him to count them. He did so and said there
were forty making the disturbance. It was impossible to hear a word
of the play. The curtain came down for a minute, but I went round
and told the actors to go on playing to the end, even if not a word
could be heard. The police, hearing the uproar, began to file in, but
I thought the disturbers might tire themselves out if left alone, or
be satisfied with having made their protest, and I asked them to go
outside but stay within call in case of any attempt being made to
injure the players or the stage. There were very few people in the
stalls, but among them was Lord Walter Fitzgerald, grand-nephew of
the patriot, the adored Lord Edward. He stood up and asked that he
and others in the audience might be allowed to hear the play, but
this leave was refused. The disturbance lasted to the end of the
evening, not one word had been heard after the first ten minutes.

Next day Mr. Yeats arrived and took over the management of affairs.
Meanwhile I had asked a nephew at Trinity College to come and bring
a few fellow athletes, that we might be sure of some ablebodied
helpers in case of an attack on the stage. But, alas! the very
sight of them was as a match to the resin of the pit, and a roar
of defiance was flung back,--townsman against gownsman, hereditary
enemies challenging each other as they are used to do when party or
political processions march before the railings on College Green.
But no iron railings divided pit and stalls, some scuffles added to
the excitement, and it was one of our defenders at the last who was
carried out bodily by the big actor who was playing Christy Mahon’s
slain father, and by Synge himself.

I had better help from another nephew. A caricature of the time
shows him in evening dress with unruffled shirt cuffs, leading out
disturbers of the peace. For Hugh Lane would never have worked the
miracle of creating that wonderful gallery at sight of which Dublin
is still rubbing its eyes, if he had not known that in matters of art
the many count less than the few. I am not sure that in the building
of our nation he may not have laid the most lasting stone; no fear
of a charge of nepotism will scare me from “the noble pleasure of
praising,” and so I claim a place for his name above the thirty,
among the chief, of our own mighty men.

There was a battle of a week. Every night protestors with their
trumpets came and raised a din. Every night the police carried some
of them off to the police courts. Every afternoon the papers gave
reports of the trial before a magistrate who had not heard or read
the play and who insisted on being given details of its incidents by
the accused and by the police.

We held on, as we had determined, for the week during which we had
announced the play would be acted. It was a definite fight for
freedom from mob censorship. A part of the new National movement had
been, and rightly, an attack on the stage Irishman, the vulgar and
unnatural butt given on the English stage. We had the destroying of
that scarecrow in mind among other things in setting up our Theatre.
But the societies were impatient. They began to dictate here and
there what should or should not be played. Mr. Colum’s plays and Mr.
Boyle’s were found too harsh in their presentment of life. I see in
a letter about a tour we were arranging: “Limerick has not yet come
to terms. They have asked for copies of proposed plays that they may
‘place same before the branch of the Gaelic League there.’”

At Liverpool a priest had arranged an entertainment. The audience did
not like one of the plays and hooted. The priest thereupon appeared
and apologised, saying he would take the play off. In Dublin, Mr.
Martin Harvey, an old favourite, had been forced to take off after
the first night a little play because its subject was Irish belief
in witchcraft. The widow of a writer of Irish plays that had been
fairly popular was picketed through Ireland with her company and was
nearly ruined, no one being allowed to enter the doors. Finally,
at, I think, Athlone, she was only allowed to produce a play after
it had been cut and rearranged by a local committee, made up of the
shopkeepers of the town. We would not submit Mr. Synge’s work or any
of the work we put on to such a test, nor would we allow any part of
our audience to make itself final judge through preventing others
from hearing and judging for themselves. We have been justified,
for Synge’s name has gone round the world, and we should have been
ashamed for ever if we had not insisted on a hearing for his most
important work. But, had it been a far inferior play and written
by some young writer who had never been heard of, we should have
had to do the same thing. If we had been obliged to give in to such
organised dictation, we should of necessity have closed the Theatre.
I respected the opinion of those among that group who were sincere.
They, not used to works of imagination and wild fantasy, thought
the play a libel on the Irish countryman, who has not put parricide
upon his list of virtues; they thought the language too violent or
it might be profane. The methods were another thing; when the tin
trumpets were blown and brandished, we had to use the same loud
methods and call in the police. We lost some of our audience by the
fight; the pit was weak for a while, but one after another said,
“There is no other theatre to go to,” and came back. The stalls,
curiously, who appeared to approve of our stand, were shy of us for a
long time. They got an idea we were fond of noise and quarrels. That
was our second battle, and even at the end of the week, we had won
it.

An organiser of agriculture, sent to County Clare, reported that the
District Councils there were engaged in passing resolutions, “Against
the French Government and _The Playboy_.” Mrs. Coppinger in _The
Image_ says, on some such occasion, “Believe me there is not a Board
or a Board Room west of the Shannon but will have a comrade cry put
out between this and the Feast of Pentecost.” And anyhow in our case
some such thing happened.

But Synge’s fantasy is better understood now even by those “who have
never walked in Apollo’s garden,” and _The Playboy_ holds its place
in the repertory of the Abbey from year to year.



CHAPTER V

SYNGE


_It is October now and leaves have fallen from the branches of the
big copper-beech in the garden; I saw the stars shining through them
last night. You were asleep then, but in the daytime you can see the
sky all blue through their bareness. And the dry red heaps under them
are noisy when pheasants, looking for mast, hurry away as you come
calling, running, down the hill. The smooth trunk of the tree that
was in shadow all through the summer time shines out now like silver.
You stop to look at letters cut in the bark. You can read most of
them yourself. You came under the wide boughs a few weeks ago, when
a soldier who has gone now to set in order all the British dominions
over sea, carved that “Ian H.” far out of your reach, as high as his
own high head. There is another name higher again, for the painter
who cut that “A” and that “J” climbed up to write it again where we
could not follow him, higher than the birds make their nests. There
are letters of other names, “G. B. S.” and “W. B. Y.” Strangers know
the names they stand for; they are easily known. But there to the
north those letters, “J. M. S.,” stand for a name that was not known
at all at the time it was cut there, a few years before you were
born._

_The days are getting short and in the evening, when you ask me for
something to paint or to scribble on, I sometimes give you one from a
bundle of old sheets of paper, with three names printed at the head
of it, with the picture of a woman and a dog. The names are those of
three friends who worked together for a while: Yeats’s name and my
own and the name of John Millington Synge._

       *       *       *       *       *

I first saw Synge in the north island of Aran. I was staying there,
gathering folk-lore, talking to the people, and felt quite angry
when I passed another outsider walking here and there, talking also
to the people. I was jealous of not being alone on the island among
the fishers and sea-weed gatherers. I did not speak to the stranger,
nor was he inclined to speak to me. He also looked on me as an
intruder. I heard only his name. But a little later in the summer
Mr. Yeats, who was staying with us at Coole, had a note from Synge,
saying he was in Aran. They had met in Paris. Yeats wrote of him from
there: “He is really a most excellent man. He lives in a little room
which he has furnished himself; he is his own servant. He works very
hard and is learning Breton; he will be a very useful scholar.”

[Illustration: J. M. Synge

From a drawing by Robert Gregory in 1904]

I asked him here and we became friends at once. I said of him in a
letter: “One never has to rearrange one’s mind to talk to him.” He
was quite direct, sincere, and simple, not only a good listener but
too good a one, not speaking much in general society. His fellow
guests at Coole always liked him, and he was pleasant and genial
with them, though once, when he had come straight from life on a
wild coast, he confessed that a somewhat warlike English lady in the
house was “civilisation in its most violent form.” There could be a
sharp edge to his wit, as when he said that a certain actress (not
Mrs. Campbell), whose modern methods he disliked, had turned Yeats’
_Deirdre_ into _The Second Mrs. Conchubar_. And once, when awakened
from the anæsthetic after one of those hopeless operations, the
first words that could be understood were, “Those damned English
can’t even swear without vulgarity.”

He sent me later, when we had been long working at the Theatre,
some reviews of his work from a German newspaper. “What gives
me a sympathy with this new man is that he does not go off into
sentimentality. Behind this legend I see a laughing face; then he
raises his eyebrows in irony and laughs again. Herr Synge may not be
a dramatist, he may not be a great poet, but he has something in him
that I like, a thing that for many good Germans is a book with seven
seals, that is, Humour.” He writes a note with this, “I’d like to
quote about ‘Humour,’ but I don’t want to tell Dublin I’m maybe no
dramatist; that wouldn’t do.”

Of his other side, Mr. J. B. Yeats wrote to me: “Coleridge said that
all Shakespeare’s characters from Macbeth to Dogberry are ideal
realities, his comedies are poetry as an unlimited jest, and his
tragedies ‘poetry in deepest earnest.’ Had he seen Synge’s plays he
would have called them, ‘Poetry in unlimited sadness.’”

While with us, he hardly looked at a newspaper. He seemed to look on
politics and reforms with a sort of tolerant indifference, though he
spoke once of something that had happened as “the greatest tragedy
since Parnell’s death.” He told me that the people of the play he
was writing often seemed the real people among whom he lived, and I
think his dreamy look came from this. He spent a good deal of time
wandering in our woods where many shy creatures still find their
homes--marten cats and squirrels and otters and badgers,--and by the
lake where wild swans come and go. He told Mr. Yeats he had given up
wearing the black clothes he had worn for a while, when they were a
fashion with writers, thinking they were not in harmony with nature,
which is so sparing in the use of the harsh colour of the raven.

Simple things always pleased him. In his long illness in a Dublin
hospital where I went to see him every day, he would ask for every
detail of a search I was making for a couple of Irish terrier puppies
to bring home, and laugh at my adventures again and again. And when
I described to him the place where I had found the puppies at last,
a little house in a suburb, with a long garden stretching into wide
fields, with a view of the hills beyond, he was excited and said
that it was just such a Dublin home as he wanted, and as he had been
sure was somewhere to be found. He asked me at this time about a
village on the Atlantic coast, where I had stayed for a while, over
a post-office, and where he hoped he might go for his convalescence
instead of to Germany, as had been arranged for him. I said, in
talking, that I felt more and more the time wasted that was not spent
in Ireland, and he said: “That is just my feeling.”

The rich, abundant speech of the people was a delight to him. When
my _Cuchulain of Muirthemme_ came out, he said to Mr. Yeats he had
been amazed to find in it the dialect he had been trying to master.
He wrote to me: “Your _Cuchulain_ is a part of my daily bread.” I
say this with a little pride, for I was the first to use the Irish
idiom as it is spoken, with intention and with belief in it. Dr. Hyde
indeed has used it with fine effect in his _Love Songs of Connacht_,
but alas! gave it up afterwards, in deference to some Dublin editor.
He wrote to me after his first visit: “I had a very prosperous
journey up from Gort. At Athenry an old Irish-speaking wanderer
made my acquaintance. He claimed to be the best singer in England,
Ireland, and America. One night, he says, he sang a song at Moate,
and a friend of his heard the words in Athenry. He was so much struck
by the event, he had himself examined by one who knew, and found that
his singing did not come out of his lungs but out of his heart, which
is a ‘winged heart’!”

At the time of his first visit to Coole he had written some poems,
not very good for the most part, and a play, which was not good at
all. I read it again after his death when, according to his written
wish, helping Mr. Yeats in sorting out the work to be published
or set aside, and again it seemed but of slight merit. But a year
later he brought us his two plays, _The Shadow of the Glen_, and the
_Riders to the Sea_, both masterpieces, both perfect in their way. He
had got emotion, the driving force he needed, from his life among the
people, and it was the working in dialect that had set free his style.

He was anxious to publish his book on Aran and these two plays, and
so have something to add to that “£40 a year and a new suit when I
am too shabby,” he used with a laugh to put down as his income. He
wrote to me from Paris in February, 1902: “I don’t know what part of
Europe you may be in now, but I suppose this will reach you if I send
it to Coole. I want to tell you the evil fate of my Aran book and
ask your advice. It has been to two London publishers, one of whom
was sympathetic, though he refused it, as he said it would not be a
commercial success, and the other inclined to be scornful.

“Now that you have seen the book, do you think that there would be
any chance of Mr. N---- taking it up? I am afraid he is my only
chance, but I don’t know whether there is any possibility of getting
him to bring out a book of the kind at his own expense, as after all
there is very little folk-lore in it.”

I took the book to London and had it retyped, for Synge, as I myself
do, typed his own manuscripts, and the present one was very faint and
rubbed. Both Mr. Yeats and I took it to publishers, but they would
not accept it. Synge writes in March, 1903:

“My play came back from the _Fortnightly_ as not suitable for their
purpose. I don’t think that Mr. J---- intends to bring out the Aran
book. I saw him on my way home, but he seemed hopelessly undecided,
saying one minute he liked it very much, and that it might be a great
success, and that he wanted to be in touch with the Irish movement,
and then going off in the other direction, and fearing that it might
fall perfectly flat! Finally he asked me to let him consider it a
little longer!”

I was no more successful. I wrote to Mr. Yeats, who was in America:
“I went to Mr. B. about the music for your book ... I think I told
you he had never opened the Synge MS., and said he would rather have
nothing to do with it. Masefield has it now.”

Then I had a note: “Dear Lady Gregory, I saw Mr. N. yesterday and
spoke to him about Synge’s new play [_Riders to the Sea_], which
struck me as being in some ways better even than the other. He has
promised to read it if it is sent to him, though he does not much
care for plays. Will you post it to, the Editor, _Monthly Review_....
Yours very truly, Arthur Symons.”

Nothing came of that and in December Synge writes:

“I am delighted to find that there is a prospect of getting the book
out at last, and equally grateful for the trouble you have taken
with it. I am writing to Masefield to-day to thank him and ask him
by all means to get Matthews to do as he proposes. Do you think if
he brings out the book in the spring, I should add the _Tinkers_? I
was getting on well with the blind people (in _Well of the Saints_),
till about a month ago when I suddenly got ill with influenza and a
nasty attack on my lung. I am getting better now, but I cannot work
yet satisfactorily, so I hardly know when the play is likely to be
finished. There is no use trying to hurry on with a thing of that
sort when one is not in the mood.”

Yet, after all, the Aran book was not published till 1907, when
Synge’s name had already gone up. _The Shadow of the Glen_ and
_Riders to the Sea_ were published by Mr. Elkin Matthews in 1905.
_Riders to the Sea_ had already been published in _Samhain_, the
little annual of our Theatre, edited by Mr. Yeats. And in America a
friend of ours and of the Theatre had printed some of the plays in a
little edition of fifty copies, thus saving his copyright. It was of
Synge and of others as well as myself I thought when, in dedicating a
book to John Quinn during my first winter in America, I wrote, “best
friend, best helper, these half score years on this side of the sea.”

When Synge had joined us in the management of the Theatre, he took
his share of the work, and though we were all amateurs then, we got
on somehow or other. He writes about a secretary we had sent for him
to report on: “He seems very willing and I think he may do very well
if he does not take fright at us. He still thinks it was a terrible
thing for Yeats to suggest that Irish people should sell their souls
and for you to put His Sacred Majesty James II. into a barrel. He
should be very useful in working up an audience; an important part
of our work that we have rather neglected. By the way, the annual
meeting of our company must be held, I suppose, before the year is
up. It would be well to have it before we pay off Ryan, as otherwise
we shall all be sitting about, looking with curiosity and awe at the
balance sheet.”

He went on bravely with his work, but always fighting against ill
health. He writes: “Feb. 15, ’06. Many thanks for the MS. of _Le
Médecin_. I think he is entirely admirable and is certain to go well.
This is just a line to acknowledge the MS., as I suppose I shall see
you in a day or two.

“My play has made practically no headway since, as I have been down
for ten days with bronchitis. My lung is not touched, however, and I
have got off well considering. I hope I shall be all right by next
week.”

[About the same date.]: “I am pleased with the way my play is going,
but I find it is quite impossible to rush through with it now, so
I rather think I shall take it and the typewriter to some place
in Kerry where I could work. By doing so, I will get some sort of
holiday and still avoid dropping the play again, which is a rather
dangerous process. If I do this, I will be beyond posts.... If I do
not get a good summer, I generally pay for it in the winter in extra
bouts of influenza and all its miseries.”

“August 12, ’06. I shall be very glad, thanks, to go down and read
you my play (_The Playboy_), if it is finished in time, but there
is still a great deal to do. I have had a very steady week’s work
since last Sunday and have made good way, but my head is getting very
tired. Working in hot weather takes a lot out of me.”

“November 25, ’06. I have had rather a worse attack than I expected
when I wrote my last note, but I am much better now, and out as
usual. One of my lungs, however, has been a little touched, so I
shall have to be careful for a while. Would it be possible to put off
_The Playboy_ for a couple of weeks? I am afraid if I went to work
at him again now, and then rehearsed all December, I would be very
likely to knock up badly before I was done with him. My doctor says I
may do so if it is _necessary_, but he advises me to take a couple of
weeks’ rest if it can be managed. That cousin of mine who etches is
over here now, and he wants me to stay with him for a fortnight in a
sort of country house he has in Surrey; so if you think _The Playboy_
can be put off, I will go across on Thursday or Friday and get back
in time to see _The Shadowy Waters_ and get _The Playboy_ under way
for January. What do you think? If so, I would like to read the third
act of _Playboy_ to you before I go, and then make final changes
while I am away, as I shall have a quiet time.”

He worked very hard at _The Playboy_, altering it a good deal as he
went on. He had first planned the opening act in the ploughed field,
where the quarrel between Christy and his father took place. But
when he thought of the actual stage, he could not see any possible
side wings for that “wide, windy corner of high distant hills.” He
had also thought that the scene of the return of the father should
be at the very door of the chapel where Christy was to wed Pegeen.
But in the end all took place within the one cottage room. We all
tried at that time to write our plays so as to require as little
scene-shifting as possible for the sake of economy of scenery and of
stage hands.

In October, 1906, Synge wrote to Mr. Yeats: “My play, though in its
last agony, is not finished, and I cannot promise it for any definite
day. It is more than likely that when I read it to you and Fay, there
will be little things to alter that have escaped me, and with my
stuff it takes time to get even half a page of new dialogue fully
into key with what goes before it. The play, I think, will be one of
the longest we have done, and in places extremely difficult. If we
said the 19th, I could only have six or seven full rehearsals, which
would not, I am quite sure, be enough. I am very sorry, but what is
to be done?”

Then he wrote to me in November: “May I read _The Playboy_ to
you and Yeats and Fay, some time to-morrow, Saturday, or Monday,
according as it suits you all? A little verbal correction is still
necessary, and one or two structural points may need--I fancy do
need--revision, but I would like to have your opinions on it before I
go any further.”

I remember his bringing the play to us in Dublin, but he was too
hoarse to read it, and it was read by Mr. Fay. We were almost
bewildered by its abundance and fantasy, but we felt, and Mr. Yeats
said very plainly, that there was far too much “bad language.” There
were too many violent oaths, and the play itself was marred by this.
I did not think it was fit to be put on the stage without cutting.
It was agreed that it should be cut in rehearsal. A fortnight before
its production, Mr. Yeats, thinking I had seen a rehearsal, wrote: “I
would like to know how you thought _The Playboy_ acted.... Have they
cleared many of the objectionable sentences out of it?” I did not,
however, see a rehearsal and did not hear the play again until the
night of its production, and then I told Synge that the cuts were not
enough, that many more should be made. He gave me leave to do this,
and, in consultation with the players, I took out many phrases which,
though in the printed book, have never since that first production
been spoken on our stage. I am sorry they were not taken out before
it had been played at all, but that is just what happened.

On Saturday, January 26, 1907, I found a note from Synge on my
arrival in Dublin: “I do not know how things will go to-night. The
day company are all very steady but some of the outsiders in a most
deplorable state of uncertainty.... I have a sort of second edition
of influenza and I am looking gloomily at everything. Fay has worked
very hard all through, and everything has gone smoothly.”

I think the week’s rioting helped to break down his health. He was
always nervous at a first production and the unusual excitement
attending this one upset him. He took a chill and was kept to his
bed for a while. Yet he got away to wild places while he could. He
wrote to me from the Kerry coast: “My journey went off all right, and
though I had a terribly wet night in Tralee, I was able to ride on
here next day. When I came up to the house, I found to my horror a
large green tent pitched in the haggard and thought I had run my head
into a Gaelic League settlement at last. However, it turned out to
be only a band of sappers, who have since moved on.” And again: “The
day after to-morrow I move on, bag and baggage, to the Great Blasket
Island. It is probably even more primitive than Aran, and I am wild
with joy at the prospect. I will tell you of my new abode. I am to go
out in a curragh on Sunday, when the people are going back from Mass
on the mainland, and I am to lodge with the King!”

It was only in the country places he was shy of the Gaelic League.
In August, 1906, he says: “I went to the Oireactas on Thursday to
see their plays. Their propagandist play, done by the Ballaghadereen
company, was clever, with some excellent dialogue. The peasants who
acted it were quite admirable. I felt really enthusiastic about the
whole show, although the definitely propagandist fragments were, of
course, very crude. The play was called, I think, _an T-Atruighe mor_
(The big change). I think I have spelled it wrong. It would probably
read badly.”

The last year was still a struggle against failing strength: “April,
’08. I have been waiting from day to day to write, so that I might
say something definite about my ‘tin-tacks’ (an allusion to the old
man in _Workhouse Ward_ who had pains like tin-tacks in his inside)
and possible plans. I was with the doctor again to-day, and he thinks
I may have to go into hospital again and perhaps have an operation,
but things are uncertain for a day or two.... I fear there is little
possibility of my being able to go to the shows this week, so I do
not know if you ought to come up, if you can without inconvenience.
I am rather afraid of slovenly shows if there are poor houses and
no one there to supervise. It is very trying having to drop my
rehearsals of _Well of the Saints_. In fact, this unlooked for
complication is a terrible upset everyway--I have so much to do.”

“August 28, ’08. I have just been with Sir C. Ball. He seems to think
I am going on very well, and says I may ride and bicycle and do what
I like! All the same I am not good for much yet. I get tired out very
easily. I am half inclined to go to the British Association matinée
on Friday. I would like to hear Yeats’ speech, and I don’t think it
would do me any harm. In any case, I will go in and see you when you
are up. I think of going away to Germany or somewhere before very
long. I am not quite well enough for the West of Ireland in this
broken weather, and I think the complete change would do me most
good. I have old friends on the Rhine I could stay with, if I decide
to go there. I hear great accounts of the Abbey this week. It almost
looks as if Dublin was beginning to know we are there. I have been
fiddling with my _Deirdre_ a little. I think I’ll have to cut it down
to two longish acts. The middle act in Scotland is impossible....
They have been playing _The Well of the Saints_ in Munich. I have
just got £3:10, royalties. It was a one-act version I have just heard
this minute, compressed from my text!”

“January 3, ’09. I have done a great deal to _Deirdre_ since I saw
you, chiefly in the way of strengthening motives and recasting the
general scenario; but there is still a good deal to be done with the
dialogue and some scenes in the first act must be rewritten to make
them fit in with the new parts I have added. I only work a little
every day, and I suffer more than I like with indigestion and
general uneasiness inside.... The doctors are vague and don’t say
much that is definite....

“They are working at the _Miser_ now and are all very pleased with it
and with themselves, as I hear. I have not been in to see a rehearsal
yet, as I keep out in the country as much as I can.”

But his strength did not last long enough to enable him to finish
_Deirdre of the Sorrows_, his last play. After he was gone, we did
our best to bring the versions together, and we produced it early in
the next year, but it needed the writer’s hand. I did my best for it,
working at its production through snowy days and into winter nights
until rheumatism seized me with a grip I have never shaken off. I
wrote to Mr. Yeats: “I still hope we can start with _Deirdre_. I will
be in Dublin for rehearsals in Christmas week, though I still hope
to get to Paris for Christmas with Robert, but it may not be worth
while. I will spend all January at the Theatre, but I must be back on
the first of February to do some planting that cannot be put off.”
And again: “I am more hopeful of _Deirdre_ now. I have got Conchubar
and Fergus off at the last in Deirdre’s long speech and that makes
an immense improvement. She looks lonely and pathetic with the other
two women crouching and rocking themselves on the floor.”

For we have done our best for Synge’s work since we lost him, as we
did while he was with us here.

He had written a poem which was in the Press at the time of his death:

      “With Fifteen-ninety or Sixteen-sixteen
      We end Cervantes, Marot, Nashe or Green;
      Then Sixteen-thirteen till two score and nine
      Is Crashaw’s niche, that honey-lipped divine.
      And so when all my little work is done
      They’ll say I came in Eighteen-seventy-one,
      And died in Dublin. What year will they write
      For my poor passage to the stall of Night?”

Early in 1909 he was sent again into a private hospital in Dublin.
A letter came to me from Mr. Yeats, dated March 24th: “In the early
morning Synge said to the nurse ‘It’s no use fighting death any
longer,’ and turned over and died.”



CHAPTER VI

THE FIGHT WITH THE CASTLE


In the summer of 1909 I went one day from London to Ayot St.
Lawrence, a Hertfordshire village, to consult Mr. Bernard Shaw on
some matters connected with our Theatre. When I was leaving, he gave
me a little book, _The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet_, which had just
been printed, although not published. It had, however, been already
rejected by the Censor, as all readers of the newspapers know; and
from that quiet cottage the fiery challenge-giving answers had been
sent out. I read the play as I went back in the train, and when at
St. Pancras Mr. Yeats met me to talk over the business that had taken
me away, I showed him the little book that had been given its black
ball, and I said, “Hypocrites.”

A little time afterwards Mr. Shaw offered us the play for the Abbey,
for the Censor has no jurisdiction in Ireland--an accidental freedom.
We accepted it and put it in rehearsal that we might produce it in
Horse Show week. We were without a regular stage manager at that
time, and thought to have it produced by one of the members of
the Company. But very soon the player who had taken it in charge
found the work too heavy and troublesome, and withdrew from the
stage management, though not from taking a part. I had a letter one
morning telling me this, and I left by the next train for Dublin.
As I left, I sent a wire to a London actor--a friend--asking if
he could come over and help us out of this knot. Meanwhile, that
evening, and before his answer came, I held a rehearsal, the first
I had ever taken quite alone. I thought out positions during the
night, and next morning, when I had another rehearsal, I began to
find an extraordinary interest and excitement in the work. I saw
that Blanco’s sermon, coming as it did after bustling action, was in
danger of seeming monotonous. I broke it up by making him deliver
the first part standing up on the Sheriff’s bench, then bringing him
down to sit on the table and speak some of the words into the face of
Elder Posnet. After that I sent him with a leap on to the table for
the last phrases. I was very much pleased with the effect of this
action, and by the time a telegram told me my London friend could
come, I was confident enough to do without him. We were very proud
and pleased when the whole production was taken to London later by
the Stage Society. I have produced plays since then, my own and a few
others. It is tiring work; one spends so much of one’s own vitality.

That is what took me away from home to Dublin in that summer time,
when cities are out of season. Mr. Yeats had stayed on at Coole at
his work, and my letters to him, and letters after that to my son and
to Mr. Shaw, will tell what happened through those hot days, and of
the battle with Dublin Castle, which had taken upon itself to make
the writ of the London Censor run at the Abbey.

I received while in Dublin, the following letter from a permanent
official in Dublin Castle:

“DEAR LADY GREGORY:

“I am directed by the Lord Lieutenant to state that His Excellency’s
attention has been called to an announcement in the Public Press that
a play entitled _The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet_ is about to be
performed in the Abbey Theatre.

“This play was written for production in a London theatre, and its
performance was disallowed by the Authority which in England is
charged with the Censorship of stage plays. The play does not deal
with an Irish subject, and it is not an Irish play in any other
sense than that its author was born in Ireland. It is now proposed
to produce this play in the Abbey Theatre, which was founded for
the express purpose of encouraging dramatic art in Ireland, and of
fostering a dramatic school growing out of the life of the country.

“The play in question does not seem well adapted to promote these
laudable objects or to belong to the class of plays originally
intended to be performed in the Abbey Theatre, as described in the
evidence on the hearing of the application for the Patent.

“However this may be, the fact of the proposed performance having
been brought to the notice of the Lord Lieutenant, His Excellency
cannot evade the responsibility cast upon him of considering whether
the play conforms in other respects to the conditions of the Patent.

“His Excellency, after the most careful consideration, has arrived
at the conclusion that in its original form the play is not in
accordance either with the assurances given by those interested when
the Patent was applied for, or with the conditions and restrictions
contained in the Patent as granted by the Crown.

“As you are the holder of the Patent in trust for the generous
founder of the Theatre, His Excellency feels bound to call
your attention, and also the attention of those with whom you
are associated, to the terms of the Patent and to the serious
consequences which the production of the play in its original form
might entail....”

I tell what followed in letters written to Coole:

“Thursday, August 12th. At the Theatre this morning the Secretary
told me Whitney & Moore (our solicitors) had telephoned that they had
a hint there would be interference with the production of _Blanco
Posnet_ by the Castle, and would like to see me.

“I went to see Dr. Moore. He said a Castle Official, whose name he
would not give, had called the day before yesterday and said, ‘As
a friend of Sir Benjamin Whitney, I have come to tell you that if
this play is produced it will be a very expensive thing for Miss
Horniman.’ Dr. Moore took this to mean the Patent would be forfeited.
I talked the matter over with him and asked if he would get further
information from his friend as to what method they meant to adopt,
for I would not risk the immediate forfeiture of the Patent, but
would not mind a threat of refusal to give a new Patent, as by that
time--1910--perhaps neither the present Lord Lieutenant nor the
present Censor would be in office.

“Dr. Moore said he would go and see his friend, and at a quarter past
two I had a message on the telephone from him that I had better see
the Castle Official or that he wished to see me (I didn’t hear very
well) before 3 o’clock. I went to the Castle and saw the Official. He
said, ‘Well.’ I said, ‘Are you going to cut off our heads?’ He said,
‘This is a very serious business; I think you are very ill-advised
to think of putting on this play. May I ask how it came about?’ I
said, ‘Mr. Shaw offered it and we accepted it.’ He said, ‘You have
put us in a most difficult and disagreeable position by putting on
a play to which the English Censor objected.’ I answered, ‘We do
not take his view of it, and we think it hypocrisy objecting to a
fallen woman in homespun on the stage, when a fallen woman in satin
has been the theme of such a great number of plays that have been
passed.’ He said, ‘It is not that the Censor objected to; it is the
use of certain expressions which may be considered blasphemous. Could
not they be left out?’ ‘Then there would be no play. The subject of
the play is a man, a horse-thief, shaking his fist at Heaven, and
finding afterwards that Heaven is too strong for him. If there were
no defiance, there could be no victory. It is the same theme that
Milton has taken in Satan’s defiance in _Paradise Lost_. I consider
it a deeply religious play, and one that could hurt no man, woman,
or child. If it had been written by some religious leader, or even
by a dramatist considered “safe,” nonconformists would admire and
approve of it.’ He said, ‘We have nothing to do with that, the fact
for us is that the Censor has banned it.’ I said, ‘Yes, and passed
_The Merry Widow_, which is to be performed here the same week, and
which I have heard is objectionable, and _The Devil_, which I saw in
London.’ He said, ‘We would not have interfered, but what can we do
when we see such paragraphs as these?’ handing me a cutting from the
_Irish Times_ headed, ‘Have we a Censor?’ I replied, ‘We have not
written or authorised it, as you might see by its being incorrect.
I am sole Patentee of the Theatre.’ He said, ‘Dublin society will
call out against us if we let it go on.’ ‘Lord Iveagh has taken six
places.’ ‘For that play?’ ‘Yes, for that play, and I believe Dublin
society is likely to follow Lord Iveagh.’ He went on, ‘And Archbishop
Walsh may object.’ I was silent. He said, ‘It is very hard on the
Lord Lieutenant. You should have had more consideration for him.’ I
replied, ‘We did not know or remember that the power rested with him,
but it is hard on him, for he can’t please everybody.’ He said, ‘Will
you not give it up?’ ‘What will you do if we go on?’ ‘Either take no
notice or take the Patent from you at once.’ I said, ‘If you decide
to forfeit our Patent, we will not give a public performance; but if
we give no performance to be judged by, we shall rest under the slur
of having tried to produce something bad and injurious.’ ‘We must not
provoke Public opinion.’ ‘We provoked Nationalist public opinion in
_The Playboy_, and you did not interfere.’ ‘Aye,’ said he, ‘exactly
so, that was quite different; that had not been banned by the
Censor.’ I said, ‘Time has justified us, for we have since produced
_The Playboy_ in Dublin and on tour with success, and it will justify
us in the case of this play.’ ‘But _Blanco Posnet_ is very inferior
to _The Playboy_.’ I said, ‘Even so, Bernard Shaw has an intellectual
position above that of Mr. Synge, though he is not above him in
imaginative power. He is recognised as an intellectual force, and
his work cannot be despised.’ ‘Lord Aberdeen will have to decide.’
‘I should like him to know,’ I said, ‘that from a business point of
view the refusal to allow this play, already announced, to be given
would do us a serious injury.’ He said, ‘No advertisements have been
published.’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘the posters have been out some days, and
there is a good deal of booking already from England as well as here.
We are just beginning to pay our way as a Theatre. We should be able
to do so if we got about a dozen more stalls regularly. The people
who would take stalls will be frightened off by your action. The
continuance of our Theatre at all may depend on what you do now. We
are giving a great deal of employment, spending in Dublin over £1500
a year, and our Company bears the highest possible character.’ He
said, ‘I know that well.’ I said, ‘I know Lord Aberdeen is friendly
to our Theatre, though he does not come to it, not liking the colour
of our carpets.’ He said ‘He is a supporter of the drama. He was
one of Sir Henry Irving’s pall-bearers.’ ‘When shall we know the
decision?’ ‘In a day or two, perhaps to-morrow. You can produce it in
Cork, Galway, or Waterford. It is only in Dublin the Lord Lieutenant
has power.’ He read from time to time a few lines from the Patent or
Act of Parliament before him, ‘just to get them into your head.’ The
last words he read were, ‘There must be no profane representation of
sacred personages’; ‘and that,’ he said, ‘applies to Blanco Posnet’s
representations of the Deity.’ I told him of the Censor’s note on
_The Playboy_, ‘The expression “Khaki cut-throats” must be cut out,
together with any others that may be considered derogatory to His
Majesty’s Forces,’ and he laughed. Then I said, ‘How can we think
much of the opinion of a man like that?’ He said, ‘I believe he was a
bank manager.’ We then said good-bye.”

“Friday, 5 o’c. Dr. Moore sent for me at 4 o’clock. I went with W.
B. Yeats, who had arrived. The Crown Solicitor at the Castle, Sir
B. Whitney’s ‘friend,’ had called and told him the Lord Lieutenant
was ‘entirely opposed to the play being proceeded with and would use
every power the law gave him to stop it,’ and that, ‘it would be much
better for us to lay the play aside.’

“We decided to go on with the performance and let the Patent be
forfeited, and if we must die, die gloriously. Yeats was for this
course, and I agreed. Then I thought it right to let the Permanent
Official know my change of intention, and, after some unsuccessful
attempts on the telephone, W. B. Y. and I went to see him at the
Castle. He was very smiling and amiable this time, and implored
us, as we had understood him to do through the telephone, to save
the Lord Lieutenant from his delicate position. ‘You defy us, you
advertise it under our very nose, at the time everyone is making
a fight with the Censor.’ He threatened to take away our Patent
before the play came on at all, if we persisted in the intention.
I said that would give us a fine case. Yeats said we intended to
do _Œdipus_, that this also was a censored play, although so
unobjectionable to religious minds that it had been performed
in the Catholic University of Nôtre Dame, and that we should be
prevented if we announced it now. He replied, ‘Leave that till the
time comes, and you needn’t draw our attention to it.’ We said the
_Irish Times_ might again draw his attention to it. He proposed our
having a private performance only. I said, ‘I had a letter from Mr.
Shaw objecting to that course.’ He moaned, and said, ‘It is very
hard upon us. Can you suggest no way out of it?’ We answered, ‘None,
except our being left alone.’ ‘Oh, Lady Gregory,’ he said, ‘appeal
to your own common sense.’ When I mentioned Shaw’s letter, he said,
‘All Shaw wants is to use the Lord Lieutenant as a whip to lay upon
the Censor.’ Yeats said, ‘Shaw would use him in that way whatever
happens.’ ‘I know he will,’ said the Official. At last he asked if we
could get Mr. Shaw to take out the passages he had already offered to
take out for the Censor. We agreed to ask him to do this, as we felt
the Castle was beaten, as the play even then would still be the one
forbidden in England.”

This is the letter I had received from Mr. Shaw:

  “10 Adelphi Terrace, W. C. 12th August, 1909.

“Your news is almost too good to be true. If the Lord Lieutenant
would only forbid an Irish play without reading it, and after it had
been declared entirely guiltless and admirable by the leading high
class journal on the side of his own party [_The Nation_], forbid
it at the command of an official of the King’s household in London,
then the green flag would indeed wave over Abbey Street, and we
should have questions in Parliament and all manner of reverberating
advertisement and nationalist sympathy for the Theatre.

“I gather from your second telegram that the play has, perhaps, been
submitted for approval. If so, that will be the worse for us, as
the Castle can then say they forbade it on its demerits without the
slightest reference to the Lord Chamberlain.

“In any case, do not threaten them with a contraband performance.
Threaten that we shall be suppressed; that we shall be made martyrs
of; that we shall suffer as much and as publicly as possible. Tell
them that they can depend on me to burn with a brighter blaze and
louder yells than all Foxe’s martyrs.”

Mr. Shaw telegraphed his answer to the demand for cuts:

“The _Nation_ article gives particulars of cuts demanded, which I
refused as they would have destroyed the religious significance of
the play. The line about moral relations is dispensable as they are
mentioned in several other places; so it can be cut if the Castle is
silly enough to object to such relations being called immoral, but
I will cut nothing else. It is an insult to the Lord Lieutenant to
ignore him and refer me to the requirements of a subordinate English
Official. I will be no party to any such indelicacy. Please say I
said so, if necessary.”

I give in the Appendix the _Nation_ article to which he refers. My
next letter home says:

“August 14. Having received the telegram from Shaw and the _Nation_
article, we went to the Castle to see the Official, but only found
his secretary, who offered to speak to him through a telephone, but
the telephone was wheezy, and after long trying, all we could arrive
at was that he wanted to know if we had seen Sir H. Beerbohm Tree’s
evidence, in which he said there were passages in _Blanco_ that would
be better out. Then he proposed our going to see him at his house, as
he has gout and rheumatism and couldn’t come to us.

“We drove to his house. He began on Tree, but Yeats told him Tree was
the chief representative of the commercial theatre we are opposed
to. He then proposed our giving a private performance, and we again
told him Shaw had forbidden that. I read him the telegram refusing
cuts, but he seemed to have forgotten that he had asked for cuts,
and repeated his appeal to spare the Lord Lieutenant. I showed him
the _Nation_ article, and he read it and said ‘But the _Book of Job_
is not by the same author as _Blanco Posnet_.’ Yeats said, ‘Then if
you could, you would censor the Deity?’ ‘Just so,’ said he. He asked
if we could make no concession. We said, ‘no,’ but that if they
decided to take away the Patent, we should put off the production
till the beginning of our season, end of September, and produce it
with _Œdipus_; then they would have to suppress both together. He
brightened up and said, if we could put it off, things would be much
easier, as the Commission would not be sitting then or the Public
be so much interested in the question. I said ‘Of course we should
have to announce at once that it was in consequence of the threatened
action of the Castle we had postponed it.’ ‘Oh, you really don’t mean
that! You would let all the bulls loose. It would be much better
not to say anything at all, or to say the rehearsals took longer
than you expected.’ ‘The public announcement will be more to our own
advantage.’ ‘Oh, that is dreadful!’ I said, ‘We did not give in one
quarter of an inch to Nationalist Ireland at _The Playboy_ time, and
we certainly cannot give in one quarter of an inch to the Castle.’

“‘We must think of Archbishop Walsh!’ I said, ‘The Archbishop would
be slow to move, for if he orders his flock to keep away from our
play, he can’t let them attend many of the Censor’s plays, and the
same thing applies to the Lord Lieutenant.’ The Official said, ‘I
know that.’ We said ‘We did not give in to the Church when Cardinal
Logue denounced the _Countess Cathleen_. We played it under police
protection.’ ‘I never heard of that. Why did he object?’ Yeats
said, ‘For exactly the same objection as is made to the present one,
speeches made by demons in the play.’

“Yeats spoke very seriously then about the principle involved;
pointing out that we were trying to create a model on which a great
national theatre may be founded in the future, that if we accepted
the English Censor’s ruling in Ireland, he might forbid a play like
Wills’ _Robert Emmet_, which Irving was about to act, and was made
to give up for political reasons. He said, ‘You want, in fact, to
have liberty to produce all plays refused by the Censor.’ I said, ‘We
have produced none in the past and not only that, we have refused
plays that we thought would hurt Catholic religious feeling. We
refused, for instance, to produce Synge’s _Tinker’s Wedding_, much
as we uphold his work, because a drunken priest made ridiculous
appears in it. That very play was directly after Synge’s death asked
for by Tree, whom you have been holding up to us, for production in
London.’ He said, ‘I am very sorry attention was drawn to the play.
If no attention had been drawn to it by the papers, we should be all
right. It is so wrong to produce it while the Commission is actually
sitting and the whole question _sub judice_. We are in close official
relation with the English officials of whom the Lord Chamberlain
is one; that is the whole question.’ We said, ‘We see no way out
of it. We are determined to produce the play. We cannot accept the
Censor’s decision as applying to Ireland and you must make up your
mind what course to take, but we ask to be let known as soon as
possible because if we are to be suppressed, we must find places for
our players, who will be thrown out of work.’ He threw up his hands
and exclaimed, ‘Oh, my dear lady, but do not speak of such a thing
as possible!’ ‘Why,’ I asked, ‘what else have you been threatening
all the time?’ He said, ‘Well, the Lord Lieutenant will be here on
Tuesday and will decide. He has not given his attention to the matter
up to this’ (this does not bear out the Crown Solicitor’s story);
‘Perhaps you had better stay to see him.’ I told him that I wanted to
get home, but would stay if absolutely necessary. He said, ‘Oh, yes,
stay and you will probably see Lady Aberdeen also.’”

Mr. Shaw’s next letter was from Kerry where he was motoring. In it
he said: “I saw an _Irish Times_ to-day with _Blanco_ announced for
production; so I presume the Castle has not put its foot down. The
officials made an appalling technical blunder in acting as agents of
the Lord Chamberlain in Ireland; and I worded my telegram in such a
way as to make it clear that I knew the value of that indiscretion.

“I daresay the telegram reached the Castle before it reached you.”

Meanwhile on August 15th I had written to the Castle:

“I am obliged to go home to-morrow, so if you have any news for us,
will you very kindly let us have it at Coole.

“We are, as you know, arranging to produce _Blanco_ on Wednesday,
25th, as advertised and booked for, unless you serve us with a
‘Threatening notice,’ in which case we shall probably postpone it
till September 30th and produce it with the already promised _Œdipus_.

“I am very sorry to have given you so much trouble and worry, and,
as we told you, we had no idea the responsibility would fall on any
shoulders but our own; but I think we have fully explained to you
the reasons that make it necessary for us now to carry the matter
through.”

I received the following answer:

“I am sorry you have been obliged to return to Galway. His
Excellency, who arrived this morning, regrets that he has missed the
opportunity of seeing you and desires me to say that if you wished an
interview with him on Thursday, he would be glad to receive you at
the Viceregal Lodge.

“He will give the subject which has been discussed between us his
earliest attention.”

I received by the same post a long and very kind letter from the
Lord Lieutenant, written with his own hand. I am sorry that it was
marked “Private,” and so I cannot give it here. I may, however, quote
the words that brought us back to Dublin. “It would seem that some
further personal conference might be very desirable and therefore
I hope that it may be possible for you to revisit Dublin on the
earliest available day. I shall, of course, be most happy to have an
opportunity for a talk with Mr. Yeats.”

So my next letter home says: “Friday, 20th. We arrived at the
Broadstone yesterday at 2.15, and were met by the Official’s
secretary, who asked us to go to the Viceregal Lodge. Arrived there,
another secretary came and asked me to go and see the Lord Lieutenant
alone, saying Mr. Yeats could go in later.”

Alas! I must be discreet and that conversation with the King’s
representative must not be given to the world, at least by me. I
can only mention external things: Mr. Yeats, until he joined the
conference, being kept by the secretary, whether from poetical or
political reasons, to the non-committal subject of Spring flowers; my
grieved but necessary contumacy; our joint and immovable contumacy;
the courtesy shown to us and, I think, also by us; the kindly offers
of a cup of tea; the consuming desire for that tea after the dust of
the railway journey all across Ireland; our heroic refusal, lest its
acceptance should in any way, even if it did not weaken our resolve,
compromise our principles.... His Excellency’s gracious nature has
kept no malice and he has since then publicly taken occasion to show
friendship for our Theatre. I felt it was a business forced upon him,
who had used his high office above all for reconcilement, as it was
upon me, who had lived under a peaceful star for some half a hundred
years. I think it was a relief to both of us when at last he asked
us to go on to the Castle and see again “a very experienced Official.”

I may now quote again from my letters: “We found the Official rather
in a temper. He had been trying to hear Lord Aberdeen’s account
of the interview through the telephone and could not. We gave our
account, he rather threatening in tone, repeating a good deal of what
he had said before. He said we should be as much attacked as they,
whatever happened, and that men connected with two newspapers had
told him they were only waiting for an opportunity of attacking not
only the Lord Lieutenant but the Abbey, if the play is allowed; so
we should also catch it. I said, ‘_Après vous_.’ He said Mr. Yeats
had stated in the Patent Enquiry, the Abbey was for the production of
romantic work. I quoted Parnell, ‘Who shall set bounds to the march
of a Nation?’ We told him our Secretary had reported, ‘Very heavy
booking, first class people, _a great many from the Castle_.’

“He said he would see the Lord Lieutenant on his way home. We went to
Dame Street Post Office and wired to Mr. Shaw: ‘Have seen Viceroy.
Deleted immoral relations, refused other cuts. He is writing to King,
who supports Censor.”

Then, as holder of the Patent, I took counsel’s opinion on certain
legal points, of which the most vital was this:

“Should counsel be of opinion that the Crown will serve notice
requiring the play to be discontinued, then counsel will please
say what penalty he thinks querist would expose herself to
by disregarding the notice of the Crown and continuing the
representation?”

The answer to this question was:

“If the theatre ceases to be licensed, as pointed out above, and
any performance for gain takes place there, the penalty under the
26. Geo. III. cap 57, sec. (2) _is £300 for each offence_, to be
recovered in a ‘_qui tam_’ action; one half of the £300 going to the
Rotunda Hospital, the other half to the informer who sues.”

Mr. Yeats and I were just going to a rehearsal at the Abbey on the
evening of August 21st when we received a letter from the Castle,
telling us that a formal legal document, forbidding the performance
of the play, would reach us immediately. The matter had now become
a very grave one. We knew that we should, if we went on and this
threat were carried out, lose not only the Patent but that the few
hundred pounds that we had been able to save and with which we could
have supported our players till they found other work, would be
forfeited. This thought of the players made us waver, and very sadly
we agreed that we must give up the fight. We did not say a word of
this at the Abbey but went on rehearsing as usual. When we had left
the Theatre and were walking through the lamp-lighted streets, we
found that during those two or three hours our minds had come to the
same decision, that we had given our word, that at all risks we must
keep it or it would never be trusted again; that we must in no case
go back, but must go on at any cost.

We wrote a statement in which we told of the pressure put upon us and
the objections made, but of these last we said: “there is nothing
to change our conviction that so far from containing offence for
any sincere and honest mind, Mr. Shaw’s play is a high and weighty
argument upon the working of the Spirit of God in man’s heart, or to
show that it is not a befitting thing for us to set upon our stage
the work of an Irishman, who is also the most famous of living
dramatists, after that work has been silenced in London by what we
believe an unjust decision.

“One thing” we continued, “is plain enough, an issue that swallows
up all else and makes the merit of Mr. Shaw’s play a secondary
thing. If our Patent is in danger, it is because the decisions of
the English Censor are being brought into Ireland, and because the
Lord Lieutenant is about to revive, on what we consider a frivolous
pretext, a right not exercised for a hundred and fifty years to
forbid, at the Lord Chamberlain’s pleasure, any play produced in any
Dublin theatre, all these theatres holding their Patents from him.

“We are not concerned with the question of the English Censorship
now being fought out in London, but we are very certain that the
conditions of the two countries are different, and that we must not,
by accepting the English Censor’s ruling, give away anything of the
liberty of the Irish Theatre of the future. Neither can we accept
without protest the revival of the Lord Lieutenant’s claim at the
bidding of the Censor or otherwise. The Lord Lieutenant is definitely
a political personage, holding office from the party in power, and
what would sooner or later grow into a political Censorship cannot
be lightly accepted.”

Having sent this out for publication, we went on with our rehearsals.

In rehearsal I came to think that there was a passage that would
really seem irreverent and give offence to the genuinely religious
minds we respect. It was where Blanco said: “Yah! What about the
croup? I guess He made the croup when He was thinking of one thing;
and then He made the child when He was thinking of something else;
and the croup got past Him and killed the child. Some of us will have
to find out how to kill the croup, I guess. I think I’ll turn doctor
just on the chance of getting back on Him by doing something He
couldn’t do.”

I wrote to Mr. Shaw about this, and he answered in this very
interesting letter:

  “Parknasilla, 19 August, 1909.

“I have just arrived and found all your letters waiting for me. I am
naturally much entertained by your encounters and Yeats’ with the
Castle. I leave that building cheerfully in your hands.

“But observe the final irony of the situation. The English Censorship
being too stupid to see the real blasphemy, makes a fool of itself.
But you, being clever enough to put your finger on it at once,
immediately proceed to delete what Redford’s blunders spared.

“To me, of course, the whole purpose of the play lies in the problem,
‘What about the croup?’ When Lady ----, in her most superior manner,
told me, ‘He is the God of Love,’ I said, ‘He is also the God of
Cancer and Epilepsy.’ That does not present any difficulty to me.
All this problem of the origin of evil, the mystery of pain, and
so forth, does not puzzle me. My doctrine is that God proceeds by
the method of ‘Trial and error,’ just like a workman perfecting an
aeroplane; he has to make hands for himself and brains for himself in
order that his will may be done. He has tried lots of machines--the
diphtheria bacillus, the tiger, the cockroach; and he cannot
extirpate them, except by making something that can shoot them, or
walk on them, or, cleverer still, devise vaccines and anti-toxins to
prey on them. To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching
Man to regard himself as an experiment in the realisation of God,
to regard his hands as God’s hands, his brain as God’s brain, his
purpose as God’s purpose. He must regard God as a helpless longing,
which _longed_ him into existence by its desperate need for an
executive organ. You will find it all in _Man and Super Man_, as you
will find it all behind _Blanco Posnet_. Take it out of my play, and
the play becomes nothing but the old cry of despair--Shakespeare’s,
‘As flies to wanton boys, so we are to the Gods; they kill us for
their sport’--the most frightful blasphemy ever uttered.” Mr. Shaw
enclosed with this the passage rewritten, as it now appears in the
published play.

We put on _Blanco_ on the date announced, the 25th of August. We
were anxious to the last, for counsel were of the opinion that if we
were stopped, it would be on the Clause in the Patent against “Any
representation which should be deemed or construed immoral,” and that
if Archbishop Walsh or Archbishop Peacocke or especially the Head of
the Lord Lieutenant’s own Church, the Moderator of the Presbyterian
Assembly, should say anything which might be “deemed and construed”
to condemn the play, the threats made would be carried out. There
were fears of a riot also, for newspapers and their posters had kept
up the excitement, and there was an immense audience. It is a pity
we had not thought in time of putting up our prices. Guineas were
offered even for standing room in the wings.

The play began, and till near the end it was received in perfect
silence. Perhaps the audience were waiting for the wicked bits to
begin. Then, at the end, there was a tremendous burst of cheering,
and we knew we had won. Some stranger outside asked what was going
on in the Theatre. “They are defying the Lord Lieutenant” was the
answer; and when the crowd heard the cheering, they took it up and it
went far out through the streets.

There were no protests made on any side. And the play, though still
forbidden in England, is still played by us, and always with success.
And even if the protests hoped for had been made and we had suffered,
does not Nietzsche say “A good battle justifies every cause”?



CHAPTER VII

“THE PLAYBOY” IN AMERICA


On September 7, 1911, I received a letter from Mr. Yeats: “I am
trying possible substitutes for Miss O’Neill and some will not do.
As a last resource I have told Miss Magee to understudy the part of
‘Pegeen Mike.’ She was entirely natural and delightful in that small
part in _The Mineral Workers_ the day before yesterday. I said to
some one that she had the sweet of the apple, and would be a Pegeen
Mike if she could get the sour of the apple too. Now the serious
difficulty of the moment is that there is nobody in the theatre
capable of teaching a folk part to an inexperienced person. If there
was, I would at once put Miss Magee into Pegeen Mike; by the time she
had played it through the States she could come back Miss O’Neill’s
successor. Now I am going to ask you if you feel well enough for a
desperate measure. Can you, if it seem necessary to-morrow, take my
place in the steamboat on Tuesday evening? Allowing eight days for
the passage--for the boat is slow--you would arrive in Boston on
the 20th. _The Playboy_ cannot come till about the 28th; you would
be able to train Miss Magee for the part, or, of course, another if
you prefer her.... I can wire to-morrow and get the necessary papers
made out (you have to swear you are not an Anarchist). If they want
me I can follow next boat and possibly arrive before you. I will go
steerage if necessary; that will be quite an amusing adventure, and
I shall escape all interviewers. One thing I am entirely sure of,
that there is no one but you with enough knowledge of folk to work a
miracle.”

I could not set out on the same day as the Company. I was needed
at home. But I promised to follow in the _Cymric_, sailing from
Queenstown a week later.

I think from the very first day Mr. Yeats and I had talked at Duras
of an Irish Theatre, and certainly ever since there had been a
company of Irish players, we had hoped and perhaps determined to go
to _An t-Oilean ur_ “the New Island,” the greater Ireland beyond the
Atlantic. But though, as some Connacht girls said to me at Buffalo,
“Since ever we were the height of the table, America it was always
our dream,” and though we had planned that if for any cause our
Theatre should seem to be nearing its end we would take our reserve
fund and spend it mainly on that voyage and that venture, we did not
ourselves make the opportunity at the last. After we had played in
the summer of 1911 at the Court Theatre, as ever for a longer period
and to a larger audience, we were made an offer by the theatrical
managers, Liebler & Co., to play for three or four months in the
United States, and the offer had been accepted. They had mentioned
certain plays as essential, among them _The Playboy of the Western
World_. Miss O’Neill, who had played its heroine, had married and
left us; that is how the difficulty had arisen.

On September 19th I said good-bye to home, where I had meant to
spend a quiet winter, writing and planting trees, and to the little
granddaughter for whose first appearance in the world I had waited.
There had not been many days for preparation, but it was just as
well I did not require large trunks, for on the eve of my journey a
railway strike was declared in Ireland and there were no trains to
take any one to Queenstown. Motors are still few in the country. We
wired to Limerick but all were engaged already; to Galway which did
not answer at all; and to Loughrea, where the only one had already
been engaged by my neighbour, Lord Gough, who had friends with him
who also wanted means to travel. I could but send over a message to
his home, Lough Cutra Castle, in the dark of night; and a kindly
answer came that he would yield his claim to mine. So at midday on
September 19th, I set out with such luggage as I could take, to cross
the five counties that lay between me and Queenstown harbour. One
of the tires broke at intervals, once on the top of a wild mountain
in, I think, the County Limerick, and people came out from a lonely
cottage to say how far we were from any town or help; and these
delays kept us from reaching Cork till after dark. Then we went on
towards Queenstown in a fine rain which had begun, and after a while
when we stopped to ask the way we were told we had gone eight miles
beyond it. But I was in time after all, went out in the tender and
joined the _Cymric_ next morning, and so made my first voyage across
the ocean. The weather was rather cold and rough and I was glad of a
rest, and stayed a good deal in my cabin. I knew no one on board and
I had leisure to write a little play, _MacDonough’s Wife_, which had
been forming itself in my mind for a while past.

I had always had a passion for the sea, as I saw it from our coasts
and in our bays and invers, and when going through the Mediterranean
and the Indian Ocean. But the great Atlantic seemed dark and dead and
monotonous, and it was a relief when on the last day or two one could
see whales spouting, and a sparrow came and perched on the ship; and
then fishing boats, looking strange in shape and rigging, came in
sight, and I felt like Christopher Columbus.

Mr. Yeats, who had gone on with the Company, came to meet me on board
ship as we arrived at Boston on September 29th, St. Michael’s Day,
and told me of the success of the first performances there; and that
evening I went to the Plymouth Theatre and found a large audience,
and a very enthusiastic one, listening to the plays. I could not but
feel moved when I saw this, and remembered our small beginnings and
the years of effort and of discouragement.

The interviewers saved me the trouble of writing letters these first
days. I sent papers home instead. It was my first experience of this
way of giving news, and I was amused by it. One always, I suppose,
likes talking about oneself and what one is interested in, and that
is what they asked me to do. I found them everywhere courteous,
mannerly, perhaps a little over-insistent. I think I only offended
one, a lady in a provincial town. She wanted to talk about _The
Playboy_, and for reasons of policy I didn’t. She avenged herself by
saying I had no sense of humour and that my dress (Paris!) “had no
relation to the prevailing modes.”

I had plenty to do at first. I had not much time to go about, for I
rehearsed all the mornings and could not leave the theatre in the
evenings, but when I got free of constant rehearsal I was taken by
friends to see, as I longed to see, something of the country. I
wanted especially to know what the coast here was like--whether it
was very different from our own of Galway and of Clare; and I had
a wonderful Sunday at a fine country house on the North Shore,
and saw the islands and the reddish rocks, not like our grey ones
opposite; and the lovely tints of the autumn leaves, a red and yellow
undergrowth among the dark green trees. My hostess’s grandchildren
were playing about. One said, “I am going to be a bear,” and grunted.
It made me so glad to think the little grandson at home has a
playfellow in the making--in the cradle!

Boston is a very friendly place. There are so many Irish there that I
had been told at home there is a part of it called Galway, and I met
many old friends. Some I had known as children, sons of tenants and
daughters, now comfortably settled in their own houses. I had known
of the nearness of America before I came, for I remember asking an
old woman at Kiltartan why her daughter who had been home on a visit
had left her again, and she had said, “Ah, her teeth were troubling
her and her dentist lives at Boston.” England, on the other hand,
seems a long way off, and there are many tears shed if a child goes
even to a good post over the Channel. Two dear old ladies came to
see me, daughters of an old steward of my father’s. One of them said
she used to “braid my hair” as a child that I might be in time for
family prayers, and had wept when she saw the snapshots in the papers
after I landed, and found I was so changed. She said, weeping, “I
hope the people of America know you are a real lady; if not, I could
testify to it!” And I was able to write to my son of the well-being
of tenants’ children: “T. C. and his wife came to the theatre and
brought me a beautiful bouquet of pink carnations. I had a visit from
M. R., such a handsome, smart girl, and from N. H., sending up her
visiting card, very pleased with herself. Many of the ladies I meet
tell me the cook or laundress or manservant are so excited at their
meeting me and know all about me.” And the son of a Welsh carpenter
who had lived at Roxborough in my childhood met me at the theatre
door after _Spreading the News_ and said, “I never thought, when you
used to teach us in Sunday School, you would ever write such merry
comedies.” This reminded me of the tailor from Gort who wrote home
after a visit to the Abbey, “No one who knows Lady Gregory would ever
think she had so much fun in her.”

On October 8th I wrote home: “I send a paper with opinions for and
against the plays. I am afraid there may be demonstrations against
_Harvest_ and _The Playboy_. The Liebler people don’t mind, think it
will be an advertisement. I was cheered by a visit from some members
of the Gaelic League, saying they were on our side and asking me to
an entertainment next Sunday, and from D. K., who is very religious
and wants to go into a convent. She says the attacks on the plays
are by very few and don’t mean anything. Most of the society people
are in the country, but they motor in sixty or eighty miles for the
plays. Last night we had a little party on the stage: some Gaelic
Leaguers, who brought me a bouquet; some people from the Aran
colony--including Synge’s friend, McDonough, whom I had also known
in Aran; and from Kiltartan Mary R. and a cousin and Mrs. Hession’s
daughters, with the husband of one. They were very smart, one in a
white blouse, another in a blue one with pearl necklace. You must
tell Mrs. Hession they are looking so well. The management gave us
sandwiches on the stage, and punchbowls of claret cup, and we had
Irish songs and I called for a cheer for Ireland in Boston. I enjoyed
very much watching the Hession women at the play. They nearly got
hysterics in _Workhouse Ward_, and when the old woman comes on, they
did not laugh but bent forward and took it quite seriously. It shows
the plays would have a great success in the country. The County
Galway Woman’s League have asked me to be their president.... Members
of the Gaelic League are working a banner for me. They showed me the
painted design at a party given in our honour. Yeats leaves for New
York to-day, but comes back for first night of _The Playboy_ next
Monday and sails Tuesday. They are rather afraid of trouble, but I
think the less controversy the better now. It should be left between
the management and the audience.

“The manager says we may stay longer in Boston, we are doing so well.
I should like to stay on. It is a homey sort of place. I am sent
quantities of flowers, my room is full of roses and carnations.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Now as to the trouble over _The Playboy_. We were told, when we
arrived, that opposition was being organised from Dublin, and I
was told there had already been some attacks in a Jesuit paper,
_America_. But the first I saw was a letter in the _Boston Post_
of October 4th, the writer of which did not wait for _The Playboy_
to appear but attacked plays already given, _Birthright_ and
_Hyacinth Halvey_. The letter was headed in large type, “Dr. J. T.
Gallagher denounces the Irish Plays, says they are Vulgar, Unnatural,
Anti-National, and Anti-Christian.” The writer declared himself
astonished at “the parrot-like praise of the dramatic critics.”
He himself had seen these two plays and “my soul cried out for a
thousand tongues to voice my unutterable horror and disgust....
I never saw anything so vulgar, vile, beastly, and unnatural, so
calculated to calumniate, degrade, and defame a people and all they
hold sacred and dear.”

_Birthright_, written by a young National schoolmaster in County
Cork, had not been attacked in Ireland; both it and my own _Hyacinth_
have been played not only at the Abbey but in the country towns and
villages with the approval of the priests and of the Gaelic League.
_Birthright_ is founded on some of the most ancient of stories, Cain
and Abel, Joseph and the pit, jealousy of the favoured younger by
the elder, a sudden anger, and “the voice of thy brother’s blood
crieth to me from the ground.” In a photograph of the last scene a
Boston photographer had, to fill his picture, brought on the father
and mother looking at the struggle between the brothers, instead of
coming in, as in the play, to find but a lifeless body before them.
This heartlessness was often brought up against us by some who had
seen the picture but not the play, and sometimes by those who had
seen both.

_The Playboy_ was announced for October 16th, and on the 14th the
_Gaelic American_ printed a resolution of the United Irish Societies
of New York, in which they pledged themselves to “drive the vile
thing from the stage.”

There was, however, very little opposition in the Plymouth Theatre.
There was a little booing and hissing, but there were a great many
Harvard boys among the audience and whenever there was a sign of
coming disapproval they cheered enough to drown it. Then they took to
cheering if any sentence or scene was coming that had been objected
to in the newspaper attacks, so, I am afraid, giving the impression
that they had a particular liking for strong expressions. We had,
as I have already told, cut out many of these long ago in Dublin,
and had never put them back when we played in England or elsewhere;
and so the enemy’s paper confessed almost sadly, “it was a revised
and amended edition that they saw ... the most offensive parts were
eliminated. It was this that prevented a riot.... But most of those
present and all the newspaper men had read the excised portions in
the _Gaelic American_ and were able to fill the gaps.”

Because of the attacks in some papers, the Mayor of Boston sent his
secretary, Mr. William A. Leahy, to report upon _The Playboy_, and
the Police Commissioners also sent their censor. Both reports agreed
that the performance was not such as to “justify the elimination
of any portion of the play.” Mr. Leahy had already written of the
other plays: “I have seen the plays and admire them immensely. They
are most artistic, wonderfully acted, and to my mind absolutely
inoffensive to the patriotic Irishman. I regret the sensitiveness
that makes certain men censure them. Knowing what Mr. Yeats and Lady
Gregory want to do, I cannot but hope that they succeed and that
they are loyally supported in America. My commendation cannot be
expressed too forcibly.” And after he had seen _The Playboy_, he
wrote: “If obscenity is to be found on the stage in Boston, it must
be sought elsewhere and not at the Plymouth Theatre.” After speaking
with some sympathy of the objections made to the plays, he says:
“The mistake, however, lies in taking the pictures literally. Some
of these playwrights, of course, are realists or copyists of life
and like others of their kind they happen to prefer strong brine to
rosewater and see truth chiefly in the ugliness of things. But as it
happens the two remarkable men among the Irish playwrights are not
realists at all. Yeats and Synge are symbolists, and their plays are
as fantastic and fabulous as the Tales of the Round Table.”

There was no further trouble at Boston. There was nothing but a
welcome for all the plays, many of them already so well known,
especially through Professor Baker’s dramatic classes at Harvard,
that we were now and again reproved by some one in the audience if a
line or passage were left out, by design or forgetfulness. I wrote
home on October 22nd: “Gaston Mayer came yesterday, representing
Liebler. They are delighted with our success, and want us, urged us,
to stay till May. We refused this, but will certainly stay January,
possibly a little longer. It is rather a question for the Company.
They want me to stay all the time. I said I would stay for the
present. If I get tired, Yeats will come back.... We had the sad news
last night that we are only to have one more week here, and are to
do some three night places, opening at Providence on the 30th. Mrs.
Gardner came to the theatre this morning, furious at our going so
soon.”

We said farewell to Boston October 30th. Yet it was not quite
farewell, for on our last day in America--March 5th--we stopped there
on the way from Chicago to New York and gave a “flying matinée”; and
I brought home the impression of that kind, crowded audience, and the
knowledge that having come among strangers, we left real friends.

On October 13th I had written from Boston: “I am sorry to say Flynn
(Liebler’s special agent), who has been to Providence, announces
strong opposition to _The Playboy_. A delegation came to demand
its withdrawal, but he refused. I had also a letter saying the
Clan-na-Gael was very strong there, and advising that we have police
at hand. Of course, had we known this, we should not have put on
_The Playboy_, but we must fight it out now. The danger is in not
knowing whether we shall get any strong support there. A Harvard lad
has interviewed me for a magazine. He promised to try and make up a
party to go to Providence Tuesday night, and also to stir up Brown
University.”

Though we all grieved at leaving friendly Boston, we found friends
also at Providence, with its pleasant name and hilly streets and
stately old dwelling houses. But a protest had been made before we
arrived, and a committee had waited on the Police Commissioners and
presented a petition asking them to forbid the performance of _The
Playboy_.

“I had to appear before the Police Commissioners this morning. The
accusations were absurd and easy to answer; most of them founded upon
passages which have never been said upon the stage. I wish I had
been allowed to take a copy. There was one clause which accused us
of ‘giving the world to understand a barbarous marriage custom was
in ordinary use in Ireland.’ This alluded to the ‘drift of chosen
females from the Eastern World,’ one of those flights of Christy
Mahon’s fancy which have given so much offence. I showed them the
prompt copy with the acting version we have always used. Unluckily
the enemy didn’t turn up. Of course the play is to be let go on, and
there are to be plenty of policemen present in case of disturbance.
The police people said they had had the same trouble about a negro
play said to misrepresent people of colour.

“The Police Commissioners themselves attended and have published
a report, saying they not only found nothing to object to in the
play but enjoyed every minute of it. Nevertheless, the protesting
committee published its statement: ‘How well our objections were
founded may be judged from the fact that the Company acting this play
has agreed to eliminate from it each and every scene, situation,
and word to which we objected, and it is on the basis of this
elimination that the play has been permitted to go on.’ And I gave
my answer: ‘I think it may be as well to state that we gave the play
to-night exactly as it has been given in London, Oxford, Cambridge,
Manchester, and many cities in Ireland and the other night in
Boston. The players have never at any time anywhere spoken all the
lines in the published book.’” And after its production I wrote home:
“Nov. 1st. _The Playboy_ went very well last night, not an attempt to
hiss.”

From another town--Lowell--I wrote: “A newspaper man from Tyrone
lamented last night the _Playboy_ fight. He said all nationalities
here are very sensitive. The Swedes had a play taken off that
represented some Swedish women drinking. The French Canadians, he
says, are as touchy as the Irish. He said that in consequence of this
sensitiveness, in the police reports the nationality of those brought
up before the court is not given. I looked in the Lowell newspaper
next day, and I saw that this was true. One José Viatchka was brought
up charged with the theft of two yards of cloth. She was found guilty
and her nationality was not given. Allan Carter made his second
appearance for drunkenness. Being an American citizen, even his
dwelling place, Canaan, N. H., was not kept secret. Thomas Kilkelly
and Daniel O’Leary were fined for drunkenness. I felt very glad that
their nationality was not given!”

Yale like Harvard demanded _The Playboy_, and we put it on for one
night at New Haven. Synge’s plays and others on our list are being
used in the course of English literature there, and professors and
students wanted to see them. We were there for Monday and Tuesday,
the 6th and 7th of November. On the first night we put on other
plays. Next day there was a matinée and we gave Mr. Bernard Shaw’s
_Blanco Posnet_ and my own _Image_. I left before the matinée was
over for Northampton, as I was to lecture that night at Smith
College. Next day I was astonished to see a paragraph in a New
Haven paper, saying that the Mayor, having been asked to forbid
the performance of _The Playboy_, had sent his censor, the Chief
of Police, Mr. Cowles, to attend a rehearsal of it; that several
passages had been objected to by him and that the manager had in
consequence suppressed them, and it had been given at the evening
performance without the offending passages. I was astounded. I knew
the report could not be correct, must be wholly incorrect, and yet
one knows there is never smoke without even a sod of turf. The
players, who arrived at Northampton that morning, were equally
puzzled. There had been no rehearsal, and the play had been given as
ever before. I wired to a friend, the head of the University Press
at Yale, to investigate the matter. The explanation came: “Chief
Cowles,” as the papers called him, had attended, not a rehearsal but
the matinée. He was said to have objected to certain passages, though
he had not sent word of this to any of our people. The passages
he objected to were not spoken at the evening performance of _The
Playboy_, because the play in which they are spoken was _Blanco
Posnet_. Yale laughed over this till we could almost hear the echoes,
indeed the echoes appeared in the next day’s papers. _The Gaelic
American_, however, announced that in New Haven one of our plays
“was allowed to be presented only after careful excision of obscene
passages.”

Washington was the next place where _The Playboy_ was to appear. I
wrote home from there on November 12th: “Liebler’s Manager wired
for me to come on here and skip Albany. To-day two or three priests
preached against us, and a pamphlet has been given away at the chapel
doors denouncing us. I think it would be a good thing to put it up
in the Hall of the Abbey framed for Dublin people to see. The worst
news is that the players have arrived without Sinclair. He had a fall
down six steps when coming down to the stage at Albany and hurt his
back. The doctor said it was only the muscles that were hurt and that
he would be all right to-day, but he has wired to-day that he cannot
move. A bad performance would worry me more than the pamphlet.

“These are some of its paragraphs:

“‘The attention of fair-minded Washingtonians is called to a most
malignant travesty of Irish life and religion about to be presented
upon the stage of a local theatre by the “Irish Players.” This
travelling Company is advertised as “coming from the Abbey Theatre,
Dublin.” True, but they came from Dublin, followed by the hisses and
indignation of an outraged populace!

“‘A storm of bitter protest has been raised in every city in which
they have presented their false and revolting pictures of Irish life.
Dublin people never accepted the plays. They virtually kicked them
from the stage. England gave them no reception.’

“Then they quote ‘a Boston critic’ (this is Dr. Gallagher, who wrote
that letter to the Boston papers):

“‘“Nothing but hell-inspired ingenuity and a satanic hatred of
the Irish people and their religion could suggest, construct, and
influence the production of such plays. On God’s earth the beastly
creatures of the plays never existed.”

“‘Such are the productions which, hissed from Dublin, hawked around
England by the “Irish Players” for the delectation of those who
wished to see Irishmen shown unfit for self-government, are now
offered to the people of Washington. Will Washington tolerate the lie?

  “‘THE ALOYSIUS TRUTH SOCIETY.’

“This is the first time any section of the Catholic Church has come
into the fight. It is a good thing they denounce all the plays, not
only _The Playboy_. On the other hand, the Gaelic Association, of
which Monsignor Shahan, President of the Catholic University, is
head, has asked me to address its meeting next Thursday, and, of
course, I shall do so.

“This invitation was incorrectly reported in the papers, and
Monsignor Shahan, who is just leaving for Rome, has denied having
‘invited the Irish Players to speak.’ The invitations sent out,
printed cards with his printed signature, had asked people to come
and hear me speak, and I did so and had a good audience; and a
resolution was proposed, praising all I had done for literature
and the theatre, and making me the first Honorary Member of the
Association, and this was agreed to by the whole meeting with
applause.”

For among the surprises of the autumn I had suddenly found that I
could speak. I was quite miserable when, on arriving in Boston, I
found it had been arranged for me to “say a few words” at various
clubs or gatherings. I thought a regular lecture would be better.
If it failed, I would not be asked again or I would have an excuse
for silence. It would be easier, too, in a way than the “few words,”
for I should know how long the lecture ought to be and what people
wanted to hear about, and I would have the assurance that they knew
what they were coming for instead of having a stranger let loose on
them just as they were finishing their lunch. It was at one of these
lunches that that wonderful woman who has in Boston, as the Medici
in Florence, spent wealth and vitality and knowledge in making such
a collection of noble pictures as proves once more that it is the
individual, the despot, who is necessary for such a task--bringing
the clear conception, the decision of one mind in place of the
confusion of many--liked what I said and offered me for my first
trial the spacious music room of Fenway Court.

I spoke on play-writing, for I had begun that art so late in life that
its rules, those I had worked out for myself or learned from others,
were still fresh in my mind; and I wrote home with more cheerfulness
than I had felt during the days of preparation, that I thought and
was assured my address had gone well; “what I was most proud of was
keeping it exactly to the hour. I was glad to find I could fill up
so much time. I had notes on the table and just glanced at them now
and again but didn’t hesitate for a word or miss my points. It is a
great relief to me and the discovery of a new faculty. I shan’t feel
nervous again; that is a great thing.”

I had boasted of this a little too soon, for the next letter says:
“I had a nice drive yesterday, twenty-five miles to B. A lady called
for me in her motor, and we passed through several pretty little New
England villages and through woods. Then a wait of an hour before
lecture, keeping up small talk and feeling nervous all the time, then
the lecture. I forgot to bring my watch and gave them twenty minutes
over the hour! It was a difficult place to speak in, a private
house,--a room to the right, a room to the left, and a room behind.
However they seemed to hear all right.... I had a nice run home alone
in the dark.”

I gave my ideas on “play-writing” again at Philadelphia, and was told
just before I began that there were several dramatists in the room,
including the author of _Madame Butterfly_. So I had to apologise
on the ground of an inferior cook being flattered at being asked to
give recipes, whereas a real _chef_ keeps the secrets to himself. And
sometimes at the end of all my instruction on the rules I gave the
hearers as a benediction,

      “And may you better reck the rede
      Than ever did the adviser!”

Mr. Yeats, when lecturing in America, had written to me from Bryn
Mawr: “I have just given my second lecture.... They are getting all
our books here now. Do you know I have not met a single woman here
who puts ‘tin-tacks in the soup,’ and I find that the woman who does,
is recognised as an English type. One teacher explained to me the
difference in this way: ‘We prepare the girls to live their lives,
but in England they are making them all teachers.’”

And I also was delighted with the girls’ colleges and wrote home:

“At Vassar the girls were playing a football game in sympathy with
the Harvard and Yale match going on. They were all dressed as boys,
had made up trousers, or knickers, and some were playing on combs
to represent a band, and singing the Yale song, though the sham
Harvard had beaten the sham Yale by 25 to 5. They are nice, merry
girls, I think as nice as at Smith’s, where I promised to suggest
my granddaughter should be educated. I had an audience of about six
hundred, a very good and pleasant one, nearly all girls and a few
men. The President was sitting close to the door, and I asked him
to call out to me to speak up if he didn’t hear, as I was young as
a lecturer and always afraid my voice might not reach. He said he
would not like to do that, but would hold up a handkerchief if I
was to speak louder. About the middle of the lecture I saw him very
slowly raise a handkerchief to the level of his face, but I could
not catch his eye, so I stopped and asked if that was the signal.
He was quite confused and said, No, he wanted to blow his nose, and
the girls shrieked with delight. He told me afterwards he had held
out as long as he could. The girls had acted some of my plays. _The
Jackdaw_ is a great favourite there as well as at Smith’s, where they
have conjugated a verb ‘to Jackdaw.’ One of the ‘Faculty’ said she
doubted if our players could do _Gaol Gate_ as well as Mr. Kennedy,
the author of _The Servant in the House_, reads it....”

These lectures gave me opportunity of seeing many places where our
plays did not go, and I have delighted memories of rushing waters in
Detroit, and of little girls dancing in cruciform Columbus, and of
the roar of Niagara Falls, and the stillness of the power house that
sends that great energy to create light and motion a hundred or two
hundred miles away, and of many another wide-spreading, kindly city
where strangers welcomed me, and I seemed to say good-bye to friends.
Dozing in midnight trains, I would remember, as in a dream, “the
flight of a bird through a lighted hall,” the old parable of human
life.

To return to the meeting at Washington:

“I had to get away early because Mrs. Taft had asked me to the White
House to hear the Mormon choir. I arrived there rather late but the
music was going on. It was a very pretty sight, the long white room
with fine old glass chandeliers, and two hundred Mormons--the men
in black, the women in white--and about fifty guests. I heard one
chorus, and they sang ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ and everyone stood
up. Then we moved about and chatted, and I was presented to the
President--pleasant enough, but one doesn’t feel him on the stage
like Roosevelt.

“To-day I had a very scattered rehearsal of _Spreading the News_. The
players kept slipping out by a back door, and I found the negroes
were dancing and singing out there, it being their dinner hour. It
was, of course, irresistible.”

One day when we went to rehearsal, the sun was shining and I offered
the players a holiday and picnic to Mount Vernon, and we crossed
the river and spent the day there very pleasantly. Donovan said,
“No wonder a man should fight for such a home as this.” I told them
the holiday was not a precedent, for we might go to a great many
countries before finding so great a man to honour. Washington had
been a friend of my grandfather’s, who had been in America with his
regiment. There was a case of stuffed birds at Roxborough which was
said to have been a present from Washington, and there was a field
there called Mount Vernon. My grandfather had built a little sea
lodge on the Burren coast and had called that also Mount Vernon, so
I was specially interested in seeing the house. It is beautifully
kept and filled with memorials of its owner and with furniture that
belonged to him. The Americans keep their sacred places well. A
school at which I lectured wanted to give me a fee; but I did not
wish to take one, and I said when they pressed it, that I had seen
in a shop window an old jug with portraits of Washington and of
Lafayette on it, and had wished for it, but it was nine dollars and
I was refraining from luxuries, and that I would accept that if they
liked. So it was sent to me, and I brought it safely home to add
to my collection of historic delft. It has the date 1824. It was
made to commemorate Lafayette’s visit at that time, and the words on
it are, “A Republic is not always ungrateful.” It now stands near
another jug of about the same date, on which there is the portrait of
that other patriot beloved by his people, O’Connell.

On November 18th I arrived at New York. All my work was easier from
that time through the help of my friend of some ten years, Mr. John
Quinn. I had a pleasant little set of rooms at the Algonquin Hotel.
I said to Mr. Flynn, Liebler’s manager, when I arrived there, “Is it
near the theatre? Shall I be able to walk there?” “Walk there,” he
said, “why you could throw a cricket ball to it.” I did walk there
and back many times a day during my stay, and grew fond of the little
corner of the city I got to know so well; but I sometimes envied the
cricket ball that would have escaped the dangerous excitement of the
five crossings, one of them across 6th Avenue, with motors dashing in
all directions, and railway trains thundering overhead. The theatre
was charming, I wish we could carry it about on all our tours, and
I was given a little room off the stage, which had been Maxine
Elliott’s own room, and where players and guests often had tea with
me.

“Hotel Algonquin, New York, Monday, 20th November. We opened very
well last night. A crowded house and very enthusiastic, _Rising of
the Moon_, _Birthright_, and _Spreading the News_ were given. All got
five or more curtains. One man made rather a disturbance at the fight
in _Birthright_, saying it was ‘not Irish,’ but his voice was drowned
and he left. I was told that ---- one of the enemy who was there,
said, ‘Such things do not happen in Ireland; they may happen in Lady
Gregory’s own family.’ _The Playboy_ is to be put on next week. J.
Q. seems a bit anxious about _The Playboy_; says they may ‘throw
things,’ and that seems what the _Gaelic American_ is inviting them
to do when it says _The Playboy_ ‘must be squelched’ and a lesson
taught to Mr. Yeats and his fellow-agents of England, and that I have
no right to appeal for respect for my sex.

“Last night as I went into the theatre I heard my name spoken, and a
girl told me she was the daughter of old Matt Cahel, the blacksmith
who had lived at Roxborough, and she had come to see the plays and
said her father would have been so proud, if he had lived, to know
I was here. I am glad of this, for I hear the plays were preached
against by some priests last Sunday. Father Flanagan thinks the
attacks all come from Dublin. The players are convinced they are from
some of our non-paying guests.... I think we must revise that list.
_The Playboy_ is to be put on next Monday. I am glad they are not
putting off the fight any longer. It tries the players’ nerves. It
will be on for four nights and a matinée. By going behind myself and
gathering a party and cheering with what voice I had left, I at last
got the shouts for Hughie in _Birthright_ to be less of a mournful
wail.”

“Friday, November 24th. I have been to-day to lunch with Mrs. ----,
a Catholic lady I had met in London, who gave a lunch to me to show
she was on our side. There was a Father X. there, who is not in this
diocese and is very much shocked at the action of the priests. One
told his congregation on Sunday from the altar, it would be a mortal
sin to come to the plays, and another, Father X. says, to his certain
knowledge advised his people from the altar if they did come, to
bring eggs to throw. Mr. Hackett was sitting behind a woman who said
in _Birthright_ ‘it’s a pity it ain’t Lady Gregory they are choking.’
Mr. Quinn heard I held a salon at the theatre and it is wonderful
how many people turn up or come to express sympathy. I got a good
rehearsal to-day of _Mixed Marriage_, which I think might take very
well here.”

“26th. Plenty of booking for _Playboy_ whether by friends or enemies.
I went to lecture at Vassar yesterday. I had no idea the Hudson was
so beautiful. The train was close to the brink all the way, and
opposite are wooded cliffs and heights, and at night, coming back,
the lighted towns on the other side gave a magic atmosphere. I find
new scenery an extraordinary excitement and delight. I am going off
just now to Oyster Bay for the night to visit the Roosevelts. I have
been to church this morning and feel fresher.”

“Algonquin, Monday, 27th. When John Quinn came yesterday afternoon,
he brought Gregg with him. Both had heard from different sources that
_The Playboy_ is to be attacked to-night. The last _Gaelic American_
says, ‘The New York Irish will send the Anti-Irish Players back to
Dublin like whipped curs with their tails between their legs.’ Quinn
heard it from a man he knows well, who had called him up to say there
is a party of rowdies coming to the theatre to-night to make their
demonstration. They thought it possible this might be stopped by
letting the enemy know we are prepared, but I thought it better to
let them show themselves. They have been threatening us so long; we
shall see who they are.

“This morning I saw Flynn and Gaston Mayer and told them the matter
was out of my hands now, that we don’t want interviews or argument,
and that it is a question between Liebler and the mob. Flynn went off
to the police, and I have not heard anything since. I have not told
the players.”

“Tuesday, November 28th. The papers give a fairly accurate account
of what happened last night.[1] There was a large audience, _The
Gaol Gate_ was put on first, which, of course, has never offended
anyone in Ireland, but there was a good deal of coughing going on
and there was unrest in the gallery. But one man was heard saying to
another, ‘This is all right. You needn’t interrupt this. Irishmen
do die for their neighbours.’ Another said, ‘This is a part of _The
Playboy_ that is going on now, but they are giving it under another
name.’ Very soon after the curtain went up on _The Playboy_ the
interruptions began. The managers had been taking much too confident
a view, saying, ‘These things don’t happen in New York.’ When this
did happen, there were plenty of police, but they wouldn’t arrest
anyone because no one gave the order, and the disturbance was let
go on nearly all through the first act. I went round, when the
disturbance began, and knelt in the opening of the hearth, calling
to every actor who came within earshot that they must not stop for
a moment but must spare their voices, as they could not be heard,
and we should do the whole act over again. At the end Tyler came
round and I was delighted when he shouted that it should be played
again. O’Donovan announced this and there were great cheers from the
audience. And the whole play was given then in perfect peace and
quiet. The editor of the _Gaelic American_ and his bodyguard were
in the stalls, two rows of them. They were pointed out to me when I
came in. The disturbers were very well arranged; little groups here
and there. In the box office this morning they have a collection of
spoils left by the enemy (chiefly stink-pots and rosaries). A good
many potatoes were thrown on the stage and an old watch, and a tin
box with a cigar in it and a cigarette box. Our victory was complete
in the end.

[1] See extract in appendix.

“Ten men were arrested. Two of them were bar-tenders; one a liquor
dealer; two clerks; one a harness-maker; one an instructor; one a
mason; one a compositor, and one an electrician.

“Some of the police who protected us were Irish. One of them said
to our manager, Mr. Robinson: ‘There’s a Kerryman says he has you
pictured and says he’ll have your life.’ Mr. Robinson had had some
words with this Kerryman and had said: ‘We’ll give you a supper when
you come to Dublin,’ and the Kerryman had answered, ‘We’ll give you a
wake.’

“The disturbers were fined sums from three to ten dollars each.”

“28th. I was talking to Roosevelt about the opposition on Sunday and
he said he could not get in to the plays: Mrs. Roosevelt not being
well, he did not like to leave home. But when I said it would be a
help to us, he said, ‘Then I will certainly come,’ and settled that
to-night he will dine with me and come on.”

“Wednesday, 29th. I was in such a rush last night I sent off my
letters very untidily. I hadn’t time even to change my dress for
dinner. It went off very well. John Quinn, Col. Emmet, grand-nephew
of the Patriot, Mr. Flynn. I had asked Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley)
but he was engaged to dinner at eight at the Guinnesses. He came,
however, at seven and sat through ours. He was very amusing, and he
and Roosevelt chaffed each other.... When we got to the theatre and
into the box, people saw Roosevelt and began to clap and at last he
had to get up, and he took my hand and dragged me on my feet too, and
there was renewed clapping.... Towards the end of _Gaol Gate_ there
was a great outbreak of coughing and sneezing, and then there was a
scuffle in the gallery and a man throwing pepper was put out. There
was a scuffle now and then during _The Playboy_ but nothing violent
and always great clapping when the offender was thrown out. We played
with the lights up. After the first act I took my party on to the
stage and introduced the players, and Roosevelt spoke separately to
them and then made a little speech, saying how much he admired them
and that he felt they were doing a great deal to increase the dignity
of Ireland (he has adopted my phrase) and that he ‘envied them and
Lady Gregory for America.’ They were quite delighted and Kerrigan had
tears in his eyes. Roosevelt’s daughter, who was with another party,
then appeared and he introduced her to them, remembering all the
names, ‘This is Mr. Morgan, this is Miss Magee....’ I brought him a
cup of tea and it was hard to tear him away when the curtain went up.

“I stayed in my room writing letters through the second act, and when
I came back, a swarm of reporters was surrounding Roosevelt and he
was declaring from the box, ‘I would as soon discuss the question as
discuss a pipe dream with an out-patient of Bedlam.’ This was about
an accusation they had just shown him in some paper, saying he had
had a secret understanding with some trusts. He was shaking his fist
and saying, ‘I am giving you that straight; mind you, take it down as
I say it.’ When the play was over, he stayed in the box a few minutes
discussing it; he said he would contribute a note on an article he
wants John Quinn to write about us. When we left the box, we found
the whole route to the door packed, just a narrow lane we could walk
through, and everyone taking off hats and looking at him with real
reverence and affection, so unlike those royal crowds in London. It
was an extraordinary kindness that he did us.”

The Mayor had received a protest against the play and on that second
night he sent as his representative the Chief Magistrate, Mr. McAdoo,
who had formerly been a member of Congress, had served as Assistant
Secretary of the Navy and as Police Commissioner of New York, and is
a leading citizen of the city.

The _New York Sun_, in the issue of November 30th, summarised his
report:

“Chief Magistrate McAdoo, who was sent by Mayor Gaynor on Tuesday
night to see _The Playboy of the Western World_, wrote to the Mayor
yesterday that he had sat through the play and had seen nothing in
it to warrant the fuss which some Irishmen were making. Magistrate
McAdoo told the Mayor that it was not nearly as objectionable as
scores of American plays he had seen in this city and that there was
no reason why the Mayor should either order the withdrawal of the
play or suspend the licence of Maxine Elliott’s Theatre. The Mayor
said that the letter had satisfied him that there was no need of any
action by the city and that so far as he was concerned the matter was
closed.”

“Of the few arrested on the second night one was an Englishman, who
objected to British soldiers being spoken of as ‘khaki cut-throats,’
and one was a Jew, who did not give his reasons. For the accusations
were getting more and more mixed. A man was heard asking outside the
Maxine Elliott Theatre during the riot, ‘What is on to-night?’ and
the answer was, ‘There’s a Jewman inside has a French play and he’s
letting on it’s Irish, and some of the lads are inside talking to
them.’

“I have had a nice letter from Rothenstein. He is here painting some
portraits. He says, ‘I would have been to pay you my respects but
unhappily I have for the second time been laid up. I hope I may still
get the chance, and that the charming and brilliant people I saw
with such delight in London are getting their due. I want to bring
some friends to see them this week, and am looking forward to the
pleasure of seeing them again.’ This was written on the morning of
the 28th, and he adds a postscript: ‘Since writing I see at breakfast
an account of a big fuss you had last night. I think it is a fine
thing that a work of art should have so vital an effect on people
that they feel towards it as they do towards life, and wish to exalt
or to destroy it. In these days when there is so little understanding
of the content and so much said about the technique of these things,
I do feel refreshed that such a thing can happen. I hope the physical
experience was not too trying. I admire the courage and determination
which both sides showed. If a country can produce so great a man as
Synge and a public so spirited that it will protest against what
seems a wrong presentment of life to them, then we may still have
hope that art will find a place by the fireside. I take my hat off to
you all.’”

“December 1st. All well last night. Galleries filled, and apparently
with Irish, all applauding, not one hiss.

“I was asked at a tea-party ‘what was my moral purpose in writing
_The Playboy_!’”

Mr. Yeats wrote from Dublin when he heard of the riot: “December 3d.
What a courageous man Roosevelt is! I mean courageous to go so much
beyond official routine. I think it is the best thing that has ever
happened to us so far as opinion here is concerned. The papers here
have been exceedingly venomous. I am having a baize-covered board
with a glass frame to fit in it put up in the vestibule, and promised
the audience yesterday, speaking from the stage, that I would put
up the American notices as they reached us, good and bad alike. At
present I have put up an old picture frame with the rather lengthy
London notices of the row. I think it wise that our own people should
know that they see there on the board some proof of the reception we
are getting.... Shaw has just sent me a copy of an interview he is
sending to the _New York Sun_. He says you are ‘the greatest living
Irishwoman,’ and adds you will beat the Clan na Gael as you beat the
Castle. He makes a most amusing and ferocious attack on the Clan na
Gael, and says they are not Irish.... But I forgot, you will have
read it before this reaches you. I hope he will not have left you all
in the plight the little boy was in after Don Quixote had beaten
his master. He will, at any rate, have amused New York, which does
not care for the Clan, and all fuel helps when one wants a fire. I
am pleased that he has seen the issue--that we are the true Ireland
fighting the false.”

I wrote home on December 1st. “The Company have signed on till end of
February, so I shall most likely stay till then. The only thing I am
at all afraid of is want of sleep. I don’t get much. Everyone says
the climate here is exciting, but I may get used to it, and we have
had exciting times.

“I have made my little room off the stage into a greenroom, and
brought some books there and made regular arrangements for tea.
There are no greenrooms in these theatres and the Company look
rather miserable straying about. Mrs. G. is lending me her motor
this afternoon and I am taking some of the players for a drive and
to Quinn’s for tea. He is such a help to me, so capable and kind. My
December horoscope, I remember, said, ‘Benefit through friends’ and
I think it comes about a month wrong and that things happen in the
previous month, for in November I had help from him and Bernard Shaw
and Roosevelt!

“A priest came in yesterday to express his sympathy, and attended
the plays, and I took him round to see the players. So far ‘the
Church’ has not pronounced against us, only individual priests....
The servant maids are told we are ‘come to mock Ireland.’ We are
answering nothing now, just going on. Bernard Shaw’s article is
splendid, going to the root of the matter, as you say. I am just now
going over to the theatre to see the start of the voice-production
classes.... I determined there should be a beginning.”

“Dec. 12th. The luncheon with the _Outlook_ was great fun. There were
present the editors, an Admiral, and some other military heroes, and
after lunch some one called for silence ‘that Lady Gregory might
be questioned.’ So they asked questions from here and there, and
I gave answers. For instance, they asked if the riot had affected
our audience, and I said, yes, I was afraid more people had come
to see us pelted than playing. And that I had met a few nights
before in Buffalo a General Green, who told me that when driving
through crowds cheering for Roosevelt, he had said to Roosevelt,
‘Theodore, don’t you feel elated by this?’ And Mr. Roosevelt had
said, ‘Frank, I always keep in mind what the Duke of Wellington said
on a similar occasion, “How many more would come to see me hanged”’
(great applause).... Someone asked me why I had worked so hard at the
Theatre, and I quoted Blake:

      I will not cease from mental strife
      Or let the sword fall from my hand
      Till we have built Jerusalem
      In--Ireland’s--fair and lovely land.

“For, I said, it was a part of the building of Jerusalem. This went
very well, and in my lecture at Brooklyn in the evening I tried it
again, but it was received with roars of delighted laughter. It was
explained to me afterwards that a part of Brooklyn is full of Jews,
who are trying to turn it into a Jerusalem of their own!

“Oh, I am tired to-night!”

“Dec. 15th. Mrs. ----, the Catholic friend who is working for us, is
sending to-day to the _Tablet_ a very good notice of us written by
a priest. She says educated priests and Catholics generally are so
much ashamed of the riot that they give out it was got up by the
management! She wanted me to have this contradicted, but of course
it would be useless. I have just had the _Outlook_ and will send it
on to you. Roosevelt ‘commanded’ Quinn to write an article on us. He
said he couldn’t, but I think it is charming.”

“Sunday, 27th. I don’t think the Church will really turn on us. It
would bring it into a fight with all the theatres and that would make
it unpopular. Here Catholics take care to say, ‘It is not the Church
that is against you, only certain priests.’ Father Y. telephoned me
this afternoon, saying he was praying for us every day and for the
success of our work, and that he thinks _Workhouse Ward_ as fine as
Shakespeare! Another priest, Father Z., Chaplain in the Navy, has
asked me to tea, and says he will come to see the plays, only not
_The Playboy_.”

“A nice matinée yesterday. My friend the wild Irishman who comes to
the theatre, tells me the Irish are ‘waiting for us’ in Chicago, but
I don’t see what they can do.

“The _Gaelic American_ is firing a very distant and random gun now
though it has headed an article ‘_Playboy_ as dead as a nail in a
door.’ I have just been reading Masefield’s _Everlasting Mercy_.
How fine it is, as fine as _Nan_, but leading to Heaven and the
wholesomeness of earth instead of poison pies!

“Mrs. ---- gave a tea for me yesterday, and people seemed
enthusiastic and there is evidently a great deal of talk about us;
but it is just like London, we are building downwards from the
intellectuals. _Image_ went so well last night I was glad I had put
it on. Quinn was delighted with the scene and grouping. He thought
each scene like an Augustus John drawing.... I believe the critics
are bewildered because of so much new work. Priests keep dropping
in and seem to enjoy the plays, and O’S. told me last night all the
young men are either coming to see us or if they have no money, are
reading our plays at the library and getting up debates concerning
them.

“A lady at Philadelphia said to another, ‘What did you really think
of _Lady Gregory’s_ play, _The “Cowboy” of the Western World_!’

“Many happy New Years to you!”

“December 29th. I am too tired to write a letter. This is just to say
all is going well, big houses on these last nights. _Kathleen_ and
_The Playboy_ both go extremely well. We have got the audience, and
I believe, and everyone says, we could now run on for weeks, but the
theatre is let to someone else. It is just as well leaving at the top
of the wave. Next week six towns, then Philadelphia.”

“January 2d. I had a talk with Tyler. He was nice, and they want us
to confirm the contract for next year. Talking of the opposition he
said, ‘The Irish seem to be always afraid of things.’ ... Last week
was a real triumph.”

“Philadelphia, January 9, 1912. I am staying here with Mr. and Mrs.
Jayne, in a beautiful house, with great kindness from my host and
hostess. We opened very well last night. We had a very appreciative
audience. Mr. and Mrs. ---- afterwards gave a supper for me and
presented me with an immense basket of roses.

“We dined on Sunday night with Dr. Furness, the old Shakesperean
scholar. We went by rail and had to walk a little way to his
house. It was four degrees above zero but so still it didn’t seem
cold. There has been a good deal of snow, and the streets are very
slippery. It is impossible to walk at all without goloshes.

“Mr. Jayne went after dinner to a meeting of a philosophical society
founded by Franklin. He brought back philosophers and learned men of
all sorts. We talked on astronomy. I told them I had once walked down
the tube of Lord Rosse’s big telescope. Mr. Jayne told of Herschel
having his telescope brought to him when he was old that he might
look at Orion and remember it as his last view of the heavens.

“The Jaynes and some of the philosophers went on to a ball at the
Assembly Rooms, and I was invited. It gave me a sense of Philadelphia
being a community of its own--very entertaining.

“A Rev. John ---- called on me yesterday, sending in a message that I
used to teach him his catechism at Killinane Church. I had forgotten,
but remembered him as a little Protestant boy. Something made me ask
what church he belonged to. ‘Catholic.’ I said: ‘My catechism didn’t
do much good then?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I was an Anglican clergyman for
a great many years.’ ‘Why did you change?’ ‘Because of authority. I
wanted authority, and I cannot give up the belief in the divinity
of our dear Lord.’ ‘But we believe that.’ ‘No, it’s being given
up little by little, and the bishops seemed uncertain. I wanted
authority.’

“When we parted we talked about Roxborough thirty-eight years ago. I
said, ‘We must say a little prayer now and again for each other.’ He
said, ‘Will you please say a great many for me.’

“By orders from New York two secret service men were sent to see me
safely home from the theatre, quite unnecessary for Mr. Jayne, who is
a leading lawyer, was sufficient escort.”

“January 16th. We had a little trouble last night, the first of
_The Playboy_. The first act hadn’t gone far when a man got up and
protested loudly and wouldn’t stop. Others shouted to him to go out
or keep quiet, and called out ‘New York Irish,’ but it was a good
while before the police could be stirred up to remove him. By that
time another man in the stalls was calling out ‘This is an insult.’
The men near were calling to him to clear out, but they didn’t help
to evict him. It was Robinson who came at last and led him out like
a lamb, but I believe he made some disturbance in the hall. By this
time others had started a demonstration in the balcony and there
was a good deal of noise, so that for about ten minutes the play
couldn’t be heard. I went round, but didn’t make the actors repeat
it, for I thought the audience ought to be made to suffer for not
being more helpful. About twenty-five men were ejected or walked
out, but all were given back their money at the box office, and I am
sure will think it a sacred duty to spend it in the same way again.
Two were arrested for assault. Nothing was thrown but a slice of
currant cake, which hit Sinclair, and two or three eggs, which missed
him--he says they were fresh ones. I lectured at the University this
afternoon; some of the students had come and invited me. A very fine
attendance, many of the audience standing. I spoke only half an hour,
but made quite a new little lecture and it held them. I gave eight
tickets to be given to athletes among the Pennsylvania students as A.
D. C.’s for me to-night. They would have been very useful putting out
offenders and taking messages to the stage. I rehearsed this morning,
and then lectured and went to a ‘College Club’ tea--and I am tired
and won’t write more.”

“January 17th. The riot last night was not so serious as I had
expected. The agitators had been so gently dealt with the first
night and had had their money returned, one felt sure they would
try again, and when I got to the theatre, one of the officials told
me he had been watching the box office during the day, and had seen
‘murderers’ taking four or five seats together. The auditorium was
very full, and at the back, where I sat, there were a great many
suspicious-looking characters. One of them began to cough loudly
during _Kathleen ni Houlihan_ when Miss Allgood was singing the first
little song, and to mutter, so that people near told him he was not
the only person in the theatre. Others joined in coughing, but I sent
a message round to have the lights put up, and the moment they were
turned on, the coughs stopped. I pointed out this man, and was amused
to see him sit through the play looking sullen but silent except
for an occasional mutter or cough, which was stopped at once, for a
policeman in plain clothes had been put on each side of him. Near the
end, where all on the stage rush out after Christy when he is going
to ‘kill his father the second time,’ he could not resist laughing,
and then he walked out discomfited.

“There was a man behind me who coughed loudly at intervals all
through and sounded as if making ready to spit, so that it took all
my courage not to move. In the third act, when Christy boasts of
having ‘cleft his father to the breeches belt,’ he called out ‘Shame,
shame!’ several times and walked out. However, whether he repented
or looked through the glass screen at back of the stalls and saw the
father come to life again, I don’t know, but he returned and stayed
to the end.

“The first man who made a noise was the most difficult to deal with.
He crooked his legs round the legs of his chair, and it took four
men to take him out. One, with a large roll of paper in his hand,
stood up and called out that he represented the County Down. There
were fifteen evicted altogether, all from the stalls, and some others
walked out shouting protests.

“The police were more energetic last night and did their work very
well and with joy, as Irish policemen would. The inspector too was
there and seemed very determined. Also, I had my eight young athletes
from the University at hand, ready and willing to give aid. The play
was not interrupted for more than a minute or two at a time. I
told the players to stop speaking whenever there was a row, and to
resume when it was over, so nothing was really lost. A good half of
the protesters last night stayed till the end of the play. I think
they were waiting for the bad bits to begin, so they saw it at all
events. The papers say snuff was thrown, but I think not. I think
it was premeditated coughing, but the throats didn’t hold out very
long. On the other hand, there were a lot of rough-looking Irishmen
near me, three together on my bench, who did not take any part in
the disturbance, and seemed to enjoy the play. I am sure, therefore,
that there will be two parties.... I am having my University boys
again to-night. Flynn had to leave in the middle of the evening
and Robinson took Mrs. Flynn to the opera, so we were a little
short-handed, but got on all right. John Quinn is coming from New
York and will stay the night, so I shall be quite easy.”

“January 17th. At two o’clock I was just finishing lunch alone, Mrs.
Jayne lunching out and Mr. Jayne being in bed with a cold, when I
was rung up by Mr. Bradford, our manager at the Adelphi, to say that
he had warning from Lieblers that we might have to change the bill
to-night and take off _The Playboy_. I said that could not be done,
but he said it might be necessary. There is some legal point, and Mr.
Bradford thought that we might all be arrested if we went on. I said
I would rather be arrested than withdraw the play and could answer
for the players feeling the same. He said there was also danger that
Shubert, to whom the theatre belongs, might close it. I said that
would be bad but not so bad as withdrawing _The Playboy_, for it
would be Shubert’s doing not ours, though that might not be much help
in the public view. I was anxious, and I told Bradford not to consent
to anything without consulting me. Then I called up John Quinn at
New York, got him at his office, and asked him to see the Lieblers,
and said that I need not tell him I would sooner go to my death than
give in. He said he would see them at once, and that he would be here
this evening, as he had intended. At 4 o’clock I heard again from
Bradford. He said it had been decided to go on, and that a bail bond
had been prepared. He asked if there was anyone to represent me in
case of my arrest. I said I would wait to consult Quinn. It is such
a mercy he is coming. My only fear is lest they should get out an
injunction to stop the matinée to-morrow; even that would be claimed
as a victory. They had told me at the theatre this morning there
would probably be trouble to-night. The men arrested were let out,
had their money returned, and were escorted through the streets by an
admiring crowd. However, I should like to avoid arrest, because of
the publicity; one would feel like a suffragette.”

“Thursday, 18th. When Quinn arrived, we went straight to the
theatre--it was then 7:15--and found the whole cast had already
been technically arrested! The tactics of the enemy had been to
arrest them in the theatre at 8 o’clock and so make a performance
impossible. But the theatre lawyer had managed to circumvent them,
and the Chief of Police, now our warm friend, had said he would not
only refuse to let his men arrest the actors, but he would have
anyone arrested who came on the stage to do so. In the end the
warrants of arrest were issued and the manager of the theatre signed
bail bonds for the appearance of the Company on Friday morning. The
warrants are founded on a bill passed last year in the municipality
before S. Bernhardt’s visit, forbidding ‘immoral or indecent plays.’
Our accuser is a liquor dealer. I should have been completely
bewildered by the whole thing, but Quinn seemed to unravel it. We had
a consultation with the theatre lawyer, and Mr. Jayne’s partners,
Mr. Biddle and Mr. Yocum, to whom he had sent me. The question seems
to be whether it is best to have the hearing put off and brought
before a judge, or whether to have it settled straight off to-morrow.
The danger is that our case may come up for trial after some weeks,
bringing us back here, making it possible for the enemy to boast that
we were under bail. Quinn is this morning seeing all the lawyers
again, and some decision as to our course will be come to.

“The Commissioner of Public Safety attended the play last night, and
said the attack on it must be a joke.... I have been interrupted in
this by the correspondent of the _Telegraph_ coming to ask if it is
true, as stated by the Irish Societies, that I am an envoy of the
English Government. I referred him to Mr. Bryce, who, I suppose,
would be my paymaster!”

“Saturday, 20th. I have been too anxious and hard worked to write
since Thursday. That was the last performance of _The Playboy_, and
there was an immense audience. I could not get a seat. Even the
little boxes at the top--it is a very high theatre with eight boxes
at each side--were all taken. I had made appointments with reporters
and others, and had to get a high stool from the office put in the
passage and sit there or at the back of the stage. It was the record
matinée of the Adelphi. There was tremendous enthusiasm and not a
sign of any disturbance. Of course, we had a good many policemen in
the house, to the great regret of the management, who had to turn so
much good money away. So that was quite a cheerful day. Someone in
the audience was heard declaring that the players are not Irish, but
all Jews. I had an anonymous letter from some one, who accuses me of
the usual crimes and winds up: ‘The writer has never saw the play,
but has read all about you and it’! That is the way with most of the
letter writers, I think.

“Yesterday, Friday morning, we attended the Magistrate’s Court at
nine o’clock. We had to wait nearly an hour in a tiny, stuffy room.
When the hearing began, I was given a chair behind the Magistrate,
but the others had either to sit at the back of the inner room,
where they could not see or hear, or stand as they did, for over an
hour. The liquor-seller, our prosecutor, was the first witness. He
had stayed only till Shawneen’s ‘coat of a Christian man’ was left
in Michael James’s hands. He made a disturbance then and was turned
out, but was able to find as much indecency even in that conversation
as would demoralise a monastery. His brother, a priest, had stayed
all through, and found we had committed every sin mentioned in the
Act. Another witness swore that sentences were used in the play and
that he had heard them, though they are not either in book nor play.
Several witnesses were examined or asked to speak, all giving the
same story, ‘or if it was not the same story, anyway it was no less
than the first story.’

“Our actors were furious. Kerrigan tried hard to keep from breaking
out and risking all when the priest was attacking his (that is Shawn
Keogh’s) character and intentions. At last he called out, ‘My God!’
and the Magistrate said, ‘If that man interrupts the Court again,
turn him out,’ forgetting that he was speaking of a prisoner at the
bar! Indeed, as the prosecutors grew excited, the trial of the Irish
Players seemed to be forgotten, and it became the trial of Christy
Mahon for the attempted murder of his father. Mr. Gray demanded that
the actors should be ‘held for Court,’ but Quinn, knowing what would
happen, had arranged for this, and our lawyers ‘sued out a writ
of _habeas corpus_’ (I hope this is the right expression) and had
arranged with Judge Carr to try the case in the afternoon. Mr. Gray
wanted then to have it tried at once. He said he had to leave town
in the afternoon, but in the end the Judge said he could not arrange
for the trial before three o’clock. This gave me time to telephone
to John Quinn, who had thought the trial was not to be till next
morning, and was attending cases of his own in New York. He answered
that he would come if he possibly could. Then there was a message
that he had missed the train by one minute, but had caught another,
ten minutes later. At three o’clock we went to the Court, a large
one this time. The Judge didn’t know anything about the play, and
had to be told the whole story as it went on, just like old Wall in
Dublin at our first riot, so before the case had gone far audience
and officials were in a broad grin. The liquor-dealer got a different
hearing this time, was asked some pertinent questions instead of
being simply encouraged, as he was by the Magistrate.

“The dramatic event was the arrival of Quinn while a witness
was being examined. We had got leave from the Judge for him to
cross-examine, and the witness had to confess that the people of
Ireland do use the name of God at other times than in blessing or
thanking those who have been kind to them, and in gratitude or
prayer, as he had at first asserted upon oath. Also when he based his
attack on indecency by quoting the ‘poacher’s love,’ spoken of by
Christy, he was made to admit that, a few sentences earlier, marriage
had been spoken of, ‘in a fortnight’s time when the banns will be
called.’ Whether this made it more or less moral, he was not asked to
say. He called the play ‘libidinous.’

“J. Q. asked one witness if anything immoral had happened on the
stage, and he answered ‘Not while the curtain was up!’ I think it
was the same witness who said, ‘A theatre is no place for a sense
of humour.’ The players beamed and the audience enjoyed themselves,
and then when the Director of Public Safety was called and said he
and his wife had enjoyed the play very much and had seen nothing to
shock anybody, the enemy had received, as Quinn said, ‘a knock-out
blow.’ He made a very fine speech then. There is just a little bit
of it in the _North American_, but Mr. Gray made objections to its
being reported, but anyhow, it turned the tables completely on the
enemy. It was a little disappointment that the Judge did not give his
verdict there and then, that we might have cabled home.

“A lot of people have been expressing sympathy. A young man from the
University, who had been bringing a bodyguard for me on the riot
nights, has just been to say good-bye, and told me the students are
going to hold an indignation meeting. The Drama League, six hundred
strong, has so far done or said nothing, though it is supposed to
have sent out a bulletin endorsing the favourable opinion of Boston
upon our plays, a week after we came here, not having had time to
form an opinion of its own. Can you imagine their allowing such a
thing to happen here as the arrest of a company of artists engaged
in producing a masterpiece, and at such hands! The Administration has
been re-formed of late and is certainly on the mend, but there is
plenty more to be done, although the city has an innocent look, as
if it had gone astray in the fields, and its streets are named after
trees. The Company are in a state of fury, but they adore John Quinn,
and his name will pass into folk-lore like those stories of O’Connell
suddenly appearing at trials. He spoke splendidly, with fire and
full knowledge. You will see what he said about the witnesses in the
_North American_ and even Robinson says he ‘came like an angel.’

“Sunday, 21st. Yesterday was a little depressing, for the Judge had
not yet given out his decision; so we are still under bail and the
imputations of indecency, etc. The Philadelphians say it is because
the Act is such a new one, it requires a great deal of consideration.

“A reporter came yesterday to ask whether I considered _The Playboy_
immoral. I said my taking it about was answer enough, but that if
he wished to give interesting news, he would go to the twenty-six
witnesses produced against us (we were not allowed to produce one
on our side) and try to get at their opinions, and on what they were
founded. He answered that he had already been to ten of them that
morning, that they all answered in the same words, not two words
of difference--that their opinion was founded on the boy and the
girl being left alone in the house for the night. They can hardly
have heard Quinn making the clerical witness withdraw his statement
that immorality was implied by their being left together. I advised
him also to look at the signed articles on the play in so many
English and American magazines, and to remember that even here the
plays have been taught in the dramatic classes of the University
of Pennsylvania, that the President of Bryn Mawr had invited the
players to the College for the day, and had sent a large party of
students to the last matinée of _The Playboy_, leave being asked to
introduce them to me. I told him he might print all this opposite the
witnesses’ opinions.

“Yesterday’s matinée, _Rising of the Moon_, _Well of the Saints_, and
_Workhouse Ward_, was again so crowded that I could not get a place
and went and sat in the side-wings, where a cinematograph man came
to ask if I would allow _The Playboy_ to be used for a moving-picture
exhibition, as it would be ‘such a good advertisement for us!’ Last
night also there was a very good audience. We took just one dollar
short of eight thousand dollars in the week. Such a pity the dollars
were returned to the disturbers or we should have gone above it.”

“I was advised to go to a certain newspaper office to get evidence
that was considered necessary as to the standing of the magistrate
who had issued the writ and before whom we had been brought (we had
been advised to take an action for malicious arrest). The editor
was generous enough to let me have from the files, classified in
the newspaper office as ‘Obituary Notices,’ ready for use at the
proper time an envelope containing reports of some curious incidents
in the record of the magistrate in question. The editor lamented
his troubles of the evening before when he had gone for supper to
the Bellevue where I had met him. He had taken to the restaurant a
young niece, who wanted something delicate for supper, whereas the
editor himself wanted two soft-boiled eggs with rice and cream. These
simple dishes, however, could not be had at the fashionable Bellevue
and he was able but to pick at a little of the delicate food.
After he had taken the niece home, he made off to his own little
homely restaurant, where he secured his rice and eggs. This, and an
interview I had seen with Yeats, who supposes that our arrest was due
to the fact that Philadelphia is a Puritan town, brought back the
rural atmosphere.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Our friends at home were naturally amazed, especially in London
where the posters of the newspapers had in large letters, “ARREST
OF THE IRISH PLAYERS.” Mr. Yeats wrote from Dublin, January 21st:
“I need not tell you how startled I was when a reporter came to
me on Thursday evening and asked me whether I had anything to say
regarding the arrest of the Abbey Players. While I was talking to him
and telling him I didn’t really know anything about it (he was as
ignorant of your crime as I was), a second reporter came in, equally
urgent and ignorant. Then a wire came from the London correspondent
of the _New York Sun_, asking for an opinion on the arrest of Abbey
Players. We were speculating as to what it could mean, and I was
surmising it was _Blanco_, when a telegram came from the _Manchester
Guardian_, saying it was _The Playboy_ and asking me to see their
reporter. Then a young man arrived with a telegram, and I thought he
was the reporter and became very eloquent. He was sympathetic and
interested, and when I had finished, explained that he was only the
post-office messenger. Then another reporter turned up and after that
the _Manchester Guardian_ man. You will have had the papers before
this. I think for the moment it has made us rather popular here in
Dublin, for no matter how much evil people wish for the Directors,
they feel amiable towards the players. If only Miss Allgood could get
a fortnight, I think the pit would love even _The Playboy_. However,
I imagine that after a few days of the correspondence columns, we
shall discover our enemies again.

“We have done very well this week with the school. I am rather
anxious that the school, or No. 2 Company, as it will be, should have
in its repertory some of our most popular pieces.... The great thing
achieved is that if Philadelphia had permanently imprisoned the whole
Company, our new Company would in twelve months have taken their
place here in Dublin. We have now a fine general effect, though we
have no big personalities.”

       *       *       *       *       *

“Philadelphia, Monday. I forget what I have written, and I don’t know
if I have explained that we were allowed no witnesses, either at the
Magistrate’s or the Judge’s Court, and with our hastily instructed
lawyers we should not have been able to make even any defence through
them but for the miraculous appearance of John Quinn. And this is the
fifth day we have been under bail on charge of indecency, and its
like.”

“January 22d, Hotel Algonquin, New York. Contrary to my directions
Liebler’s man had put on _The Playboy_ for Pittsburg. It was asked
for by some ladies who are taking the whole house for a charity
performance. Now they have written to ask for another bill instead,
_Hyacinth_, _Riders_, _Workhouse_; and the papers say that _The
Playboy_ has been taken off on religious grounds.”

“Richmond, Indiana, January 24th. The journey to Pittsburg is a quite
lovely journey, like Switzerland but less monotonous; the sunshine
and snow exhilarating. The plays had begun when I arrived. There was
a very good audience and _Hyacinth_ and _Workhouse Ward_ made them
laugh a great deal. Carnegie Hall is all gilding and marbles, and a
gilded organ towers above the butcher’s shop in _Hyacinth_. I had
to make a little speech and was able to tell of the telegram from
Philadelphia, saying the Judge had dismissed the case. We came on
here through the night.

“An interviewer who came this morning has sent me an interesting book
on Indiana book plates, and an old lady brought me an Irish Bible,
and the jeweller who packed my watch would take nothing, and Miss
Allgood has sent me a box of roses. So the stars must be in a good
mood. I think we ought to start with _The Playboy_ in Chicago and get
that over. It would show we are not damped by Philadelphia.”

We went on that night to Indianapolis. _The Playboy_ had been
specially asked for in Indianapolis. Protests against its production
were made to the manager of the theatre by the Ancient Order of
Hibernians and others, but the manager said he was powerless. They
also called upon Superintendent of Police Hyland, who said: “I will
have plenty of men at the theatre to quell a disturbance. I don’t
believe, however, that there will be any trouble. If there are
persons who do not like the show, they can stay away. But there is
one thing certain; if they do not stay away and come to the show to
make trouble, they will find plenty of it on hand.”

The Mayor was also appealed to, but he did not see his way to stop
the play. The Irish Societies then decided to stay away, and though
the theatre was packed, the play went through in perfect peace.

“Chicago, Hotel La Salle, January 26th. Tyler wired me to come on
here, so I left the Company at Indianapolis this morning and came
on. We don’t begin playing here till the 5th. No theatre is ready.
Gaston Mayer was very urgent we should stay another week on account
of getting here so late. I told the Company of this and they decided
to stay. We shall therefore finish here March 2d and sail on the 6th.
We had no trouble at Indianapolis last night. The police authorities
were very firm and the threats collapsed. I wish Philadelphia had
been as firm. They are all afraid of the politicians....

“I was sorry to leave the Company. I feel like Wilhelm Meister going
through ever-fresh adventures with the little troop. As to the rows,
I don’t think there is anything you (Yeats) could have done, except
that you would have done things yourself while others have done them
for me. The Company insist on giving John Quinn a silver cup, in
gratitude for his help. I haven’t seen Flynn for a fortnight. He is
astray among the one-night towns and talked to us at Indianapolis
through the telephone, with a bad cold.”

“25th or 26th. I see by the papers that at the La Salle Hotel,
where I am staying, a meeting of Irishmen has been held at which an
‘Anti-Irish Players’ League’ was formed, beginning with a membership
of three hundred. Such a pity I couldn’t have slipped in to the
meeting! A petition had also been written and was being sent out for
signature, demanding the suppression of _The Playboy_. This petition
was said to have been signed by eight thousand persons, and twenty
thousand signatures were expected. Meanwhile the Anti-Cruelty Society
of Chicago, at the head of which are various benevolent ladies, had
asked leave to buy up the whole house for the first performance of
_The Playboy of the Western World_. They meant to resell these seats
at an increased price for their charity and believed it was likely
to draw the largest audience. So they have taken the theatre for
Tuesday, February 6, and the public performance of _The Playboy_ will
take place the next day.”

“January 29th. My typewriter is mended at last, and I am getting
settled. Last night one of the boy interviewers--they are all boys
here--came in from one of the papers. He showed me two statements
written by Liebler’s manager here, one colourless, the other offering
a reward of five thousand dollars to anyone who could prove the
management had bribed rioters for the first night, as has been stated
in the papers. I advised that this be put in, as people really seem
to believe it is true. This young man had been to see many of the
objectors. They said Synge was a ‘degenerate,’ who had lived abroad
to collect a bad atmosphere, which he put round Irish characters
afterwards. A nice young interviewer; he wants to write a play around
his mother’s life, to show what a mother’s devotion can be. Another
of them is twenty-five and is going to be married next summer. He
showed me his fiancée’s portrait, and another went and hunted for a
Don Quixote I wanted, to distract my mind from present-day things.

“This morning one came who is in with the Irish Clubs and had all the
objections, but now seems quite friendly. He says one of the chief
officers of the ‘Anti-Irish Players’ League’ is a man called H., a
son of old Mrs. H.! He has hinted that my sympathies are with the
landlord side, and that he could tell tales of hard treatment. The
interviewer wanted to know if a rehearsal could be held for the Mayor
so that he might judge the play, but I said the first night under the
patronage of the Anti-Cruelty Society would give him his opportunity.
A lady interviewer then came, but I made her take her pencil and
write down what I did say, which is more than the boys do. I tell
them I put in my pig and it comes out sausage.”

“Tuesday, January 30th. I am so tired! Last night I dined with
the Hamills, friends of John Quinn. It was a very pleasant dinner
and we all went afterwards to see _The Woman_, a good play in its
realistic way. I came home quite cheery but found in the passage
one of my young interviewers, who told me the Town Council had
unanimously voted against _The Playboy_ being put on. He had been
sent to ask me for a statement, but advised me not to make one, and
there was nothing to say. I was going to bed near midnight when
another interviewer arrived, and said the Mayor had acted on the
recommendation of the Council and suppressed the play. He showed me
an article which was to appear in the morning issue of his paper
telling this. I was very sad for it seemed as if there was an end of
the fight. The hot water-apparatus in my room, which is always out
of order, began grunting and groaning between one and two when I was
asleep and wakened me; so I got no more sleep till late morning, and
then was awaked by interviewers at the telephone. They even knocked
at my door while I was dressing.

“When I went down, however, I found that the Mayor had not ordered
the play off, and the article in the paper had had to be re-printed.
Also Flynn arrived and was a help with the army who came in,
entertaining them while I typed out a statement about the adventures
of _The Playboy_ so far, and this statement I gave them. Then I
’phoned to Mr. Hamill, who is a lawyer and who had said last night
he would help me in any legal difficulty. He came at once and was
splendid. He went into the law of the case, and believes that if the
Mayor does forbid it, we can take him into the Federal Court, and go
on all right. He says another lawyer, who was at dinner last night,
has also volunteered to serve. He went to try and see the Mayor but
missed him. He is, however, to see him at noon to-morrow. He came
back at five for another talk, and says he doesn’t think the Mayor
has power to stop it. He has seen the Corporation lawyer.

“I was engaged to lunch with a nice Mrs. ---- at one, but got there
after the hour and had to be back here before two, and it was an
absurd thing: I had had my room changed. I had suffered so much from
the unmanageable hot water that I threatened the manager that I
would tell the interviewers about it, and he at once gave me another
suite. My things were being brought up, and I couldn’t find hat or
coat, therefore had to go just as I was. However the lunch was very
pleasant and good, what I had of it....

“I came back to find a Mr. Field, editor of one of the papers, who
had brought ‘an enemy,’ who announced he had come but for five
minutes to hear my views, and spent at least ten in giving his own.
Then Liebler’s local manager came in. He also thinks we shall be able
to circumvent the Mayor. He believes, however, the Mayor will give
the order for political reasons, though he has some culture and would
not like to be classed with the Aldermen. A couple of ladies called.
One comfort of being attacked is that one finds friends to help....

“I have nice rooms now on the ninth floor--there are twenty-two
floors altogether--the place riddled with telephones, radiators, etc.
I was glad to hear the voice of a fat housemaid from Mayo a while ago.

“It is a strange fate that sends me into battle after my peaceful
life for so many years, and especially over _Playboy_, that I have
never really loved, but one has to carry through one’s job. One of
the accusations has been that there are no Irish persons connected
with the Company, and my answer is given accurately in one of the
papers. ‘The Players are all Irish by birth. They had never left
Ireland until they came to England on the tours made by us. With two
exceptions all are Roman Catholics.

“‘I believe the play is quite honestly considered by some of my
countrymen out here to be injurious to Ireland and her claim for
self-government, but I know that such an assumption is wrong and that
the dignity of Ireland has been very much increased by the work of
the Theatre, of which the genius of Mr. Synge is a component part.’”

“February 1st. Yesterday morning I took a holiday, went to see a
little amateur play in a private house. It was on suffrage, called
_Everywoman_, very short and rather amusing. It was given at 11
o’clock and afterwards there was an ‘informal lunch,’ rather a good
idea,--little tables, not set out, here and there. There were first
cups of delicious soup, then vegetable sandwiches with little cases
of hot mince, and peas, just a plate and fork, then ices and black
coffee, and bonbons. It was much pleasanter than sitting down to
a table; one could move about. The luncheon was all over by 1:30,
and then a Mrs. R---- took me for a drive in her motor. We drove
about thirty miles about the park and town and along the lake side,
but never really away from the town, which is immense. The lake is
lovely, a soft turquoise blue, not the blue of the sea, and there was
floating ice near the shore. It was luckily a bright day, the first
we have had. To-day there is snow again and darkness.

“When I came home, I set to work to correct a copy of _The Playboy_
according to the prompt copy I had just had sent on by the Company,
in case the Mayor wanted it. A journalist came in who wanted to know
about the cuts, and I got him to help me. Then Mr. Hamill came;
he doesn’t think there will be trouble. Then I took up a lot of
telephone addresses that had been left for me to call up, and found
one was from ‘W. Dillon.’ It was a Mr. Dillon representing the enemy,
who had been brought to see me on Tuesday. My interview with him had
appeared in a very mangled form next day and I found only then that
he was a brother of John Dillon, M.P., and the Corporation lawyer. I
called him up, and he answered from the City Hall, and said he was
writing a report on the legal aspect of the case for the Mayor, and
wanted to know if I was sure certain words had been left out of the
acting version, as I told him had always been done. I said yes, and
I could now bring him the prompt copy. He assented and I went round
to the City Hall. Mr. Dillon was sitting in his office, dictating to
a shorthand writer. He said, ‘You may listen to what I am dictating,
but you must treat it as confidential.’ I said, ‘I will go away if
you wish,’ but he said, ‘No, I will trust to your honour as a lady.’
He was just finishing his statement, as printed in the papers this
morning, denouncing the play but saying that, though in his opinion
it might lead to a riot, he did not think the Mayor had power to stop
it. I showed him the prompt copy. He asked if we could not strike out
still more. I said the passages we had changed or left out had been
changed in Mr. Synge’s lifetime and with his consent, and we did not
feel justified in meddling any more. I think he expected me to make
some concession, for he said then, ‘I think you would do much better
to take the play off altogether.’ I said we were bound by contract
to Liebler to put on whatever plays they asked for. He said, ‘Then
it is not in your power to remove it?’ I answered, ‘No,’ and that
ended the matter. I felt sorry for the moment, for it would have
been gracious to make some small concession, but afterwards I thought
of Parnell.... We may bring that play some other time, and there are
many who think his betrayal a greater slur upon Ireland than would be
even the real killing of a father.

“The _Examiner_ announces that the Mayor won’t stop the play. He has
said. ‘I do not see how the performance can be stopped. I have read
part of it and its chief characteristic seems to be stupidity rather
than immorality. I should think it would take more than a regiment of
soldiers to compel an audience to fill the Grand Opera House to see
such a poor production. I certainly shall not see it.’

“I hope I may get some breathing time. The idea of a day spent
playing with little Richard seems an impossible heaven! And I feel a
little lonely at times. It is a mercy this will be the last fight.
I don’t think it is over yet.... I like to hear of the success of
the school. It will be a great enjoyment sitting down to listen to a
verse play again if I survive to do it!”

“Feb. 3rd. I dined with the McC----s, and went on to the Opera,
_Tristan und Isolde_, which I had never seen. It was a great
delight, a change from worries. I like the people here. They are more
merry than those of the other cities somehow, at least those I have
fallen amongst. They are vital. They don’t want to die till they see
what Chicago is going to do.

“There is snow on the ground and yesterday when I went for a walk,
the cold frightened me at first,--such pain in the face, but I went
on and got used to it. The thermometer has been six below zero.”

“Feb. 8th. I seem to have been busy ever since. The first night of
_The Playboy_ was anxious. I was not really anxious the Anti-Cruelty
night, and it went off quite peaceably, but I was last night, the
open one, for, as I quoted from _Image_, ‘There are always contrary
people in a crowd.’ But the play was acted in entire peace. I nearly
fell asleep! It seems complete victory. The Corporation had to
rescind their resolution against it, and I suppose the objectors
found public opinion was too strong to permit any protest to be made.
It is a great mercy. I did not know how great the strain was till it
was over.

“On Monday we opened to a fairly large house with comedies and
they were well received. The Hull House Players came and gave me a
lovely bunch of roses. They have been acting some of my plays. When
I got back to the hotel, I found a threatening letter written in
vile language, and with picture of coffin and pistol, saying I would
‘never see the hills of Connemara again,’ and was about to meet with
my death. It seems a miracle to have got through such a Wood of
Dangers with flags flying.”

“Feb. 12th. Everything goes on so peaceably we are astonished. _The
Playboy_ finished its five days’ run on Saturday with never a boo or
a hiss. I believe the enemy are making some excuse for themselves,
saying they won’t riot because it was said they were paid to do so,
but it is an extraordinary defeat for them. Quinn was much excited
over it when he was here, and he did not know the extent of our
victory. He thinks it the pricking of the bubble of all the societies
that have been terrorising people. Fibs go on, of course, and a Mrs.
F---- told me that her Irish maid said she had been forbidden to go
to _The Playboy_ because it runs down the courage of the Irish.’ She
was sad, and said ‘The Irish always had courage.’

“It makes one think _The Playboy_ more harmless even than one had
thought, their having to make up these inventions. One is glad to put
it on for them to see. I feel like Pegeen showing off Christy to the
Widow Quinn, ‘See now is he roaring, romping?’ The author of ‘An Open
Letter to Lady Gregory’ came to me at some Club to ask if I had seen
it. I said yes, and that the paper had telephoned to know if I would
answer it, but I had said no, and that I wished all my critics would
write me open letters instead of personal ones, as I could leave them
unanswered without discourtesy.

“We have a good following among the intellectuals, and a good many
Irish begin to come in. We know that by the reception of _Rising of
the Moon_.

“Coming back from my lecture at Detroit, I was to have arrived at
Chicago at eight o’clock. I awoke to find we were in a blizzard. The
train got stuck in a suburb of Chicago, and after hours of waiting we
had to wade across the track, ankle deep in snow, I in my thin shoes!
After fighting the blizzard, we had to sit in a shed for another hour
or two. Then they said we must wade back to the train. They thought
it could be run to the station. I thought I might as well wait for my
end where I was, as I could not carry my baggage and there was no one
to help me, so stayed on my bench. After a bit some omnibuses came
to our relief, and I being near the door was put in first, and got
to the hotel at three o’clock. I had not had breakfast, expecting we
should be in, and when I asked for it later, the car had been taken
off, so all the food I had was a dry roll I had taken from the hotel
on Sunday. However, I was none the worse, and glad to have seen a
blizzard. It was the worst they had had for many years, deaths were
caused by it, and much damage was done.

“I have been walking to the theatre every night as usual in spite of
that threatening letter. I don’t feel anxious, for I don’t think from
the drawing that the sender has much practical knowledge of firearms.

“I can hardly believe we shall sail next week! It will be a great
rest surely.... Well, we have had a great victory!”



THE BINDING


I had but just written these pages and put together these letters
when in last Christmas week we set out again for America. We spent
there the first four months of this year, but this time there were
no riots and we were of the happy people who have no history, unless
it may be of the continued kindness of America, and of the growing
kindness and better understanding on the part of our own countrymen.

Last year, it was often said to me in New York and elsewhere, “You
must not think that we Americans helped in these attacks.” And I
would answer, “No; our countrymen took care to make that clear by
throwing our national potato. If you had attacked us you would
have thrown pumpkins, and we should have fared worse than Æsop’s
philosopher under the oak.”

I think the facts I have given show that the opposition was in every
case planned and ordered before the plays had been seen--before
we landed, and by a very small group working through a political
organisation. As to the reason and meaning of that attack, it is for
those who made it to set that out. I cannot but remember Alexander
Hamilton’s words when the building of America began: “After this war
is over, will come the real war, the great battle of ideas”; and that
the long political war in Ireland may be, and seems to be, nearing
its end. I think too of Laeg looking out from the wounded Cuchulain’s
tent and making his report at Ilgaireth: “I see a little herd of
cattle breaking out from the west of Ailell’s camp, and there are
lads following after them and trying to bring them back, and I see
more lads coming out from the army of Ulster to attack them”; and how
Cuchulain said: “That little herd on the plain is the beginning of
a great battle.” The battle of ideas has been fought elsewhere and
against other dramatists. Was not Ibsen banished from his country,
and Molière refused Christian burial?

It is after all the old story of the two sides of the shield. Some
who are lovers of Ireland believe we have lessened the dignity of
Ireland by showing upon the stage countrymen who drink and swear
and admire deeds of violence, or who are misers and covetous or
hungering after land. We who are lovers of Ireland believe that our
Theatre with its whole mass of plays has very greatly increased that
dignity, and we are content to leave that judgment to the great
arbitrator, Time. And amongst the Irish in America it was easy to
rouse feeling against us. Is not the new baby always the disturber in
the household? Our school of drama is the newest birth in Ireland,
that Ireland which had become almost consecrated by distance and by
romance. An old Irishwoman who loves her country very much said while
I was in America: “I don’t want to go back and see Ireland again.
It is a finished picture in my mind.” But Ireland cannot always be
kept as a sampler upon the wall. It has refused to be cut off from
the creative work of the intellect, and the other countries creating
literature have claimed her as of their kin.

I wish my countrymen, before coming into the fight, had known it to
be so unequal. They had banished from the stage one or two plays
that had given them offence and no one had greatly cared. But works
of imagination such as those of Synge could not be suppressed even
if burned in the market place. They had not realised the tremendous
support we had, that we were not fighting alone, but with the
intellect of America as well as of Europe at our back.

There was another thing they had not reckoned with. It had been put
down in words by Professor William James: “Democracy is still upon
its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark and
neither laws nor monuments, neither battleships nor public libraries,
nor churches nor universities can save us from degeneration if the
inner mystery be lost. That mystery, at once the secret and glory of
our English-speaking race, consists in nothing but two common habits,
two inveterate habits, carried into public life. One of these is the
habit of trained and disciplined good temper towards the opposite
party when it fairly wins its innings. The other is that of fierce
and merciless resentment towards every man or set of men who break
the public peace.”

The civic genius of America decided that not we but our opponents had
broken the public peace.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Now, little Richard, that is the whole story of my journey; and I
wonder if by the time you can read it you will have forgotten my
coming home with a big basket of grapes and bananas and grapefruit
and oranges for you, and a little flag with the Stars and Stripes._

_I was very glad to be at home with you again while the daffodils
were blooming out, and to have no more fighting, perhaps for ever.
And if it is hard to fight for a thing you love, it is harder to
fight for one you have no great love for. And you will read some day
in one of those books in the library that are too high now for you
to reach, the story of a man who was said to be mad but has outlived
many who were not, and who went about fighting for the sake of some
one who was maybe “the fright of seven townlands with her biting
tongue” though he still called out after every battle, “Dulcinea is
the most beautiful woman of the world!” So think a long time before
you choose your road, little Richard, but when you have chosen it,
follow it on to the end._

  COOLE, July 24, 1913.



Appendices



APPENDIX I

PLAYS PRODUCED BY THE ABBEY THEATRE CO. AND ITS PREDECESSORS, WITH
DATES OF FIRST PERFORMANCES


IRISH LITERARY THEATRE AT ANTIENT CONCERT ROOMS

  May 8th, 1899.      “The Countess Cathleen.”         W. B. Yeats
   “  9th,  “         “The Heather Field.”             Edward Martyn


IRISH LITERARY THEATRE AT THE GAIETY THEATRE

  Feb. 19th, 1900.    “The Bending of the Bough.”      George Moore
   “   19th,  “       “The Last Feast of the Fianna.”  Alice Milligan
   “   20th,  “       “Maeve.”                         Edward Martyn
  Oct. 21st, 1901.    “Diarmuid and Grania.”           W. B. Yeats and
                                                           George Moore
   “   21st,  “       “The Twisting of the Rope.”      Douglas Hyde
         (The first Gaelic Play produced in any Theatre.)


MR. W. G. FAY’S IRISH NATIONAL DRAMATIC COMPANY AT ST. TERESA’S HALL,
CLARENDON STREET.

  Apr. 2nd, 1902.     “Deirdre.”                       “A.E.”
   “   2nd,  “        “Kathleen Ni Houlihan.”          W. B. Yeats.


IRISH NATIONAL DRAMATIC COMPANY AT ANTIENT CONCERT ROOMS

  Oct. 29th, 1902.    “The Sleep of the King.”         Seumas O’Cuisin
  Oct. 29th, 1902.    “The Laying of the Foundations.” Fred Ryan
   “   30th,  “       “A Pot of Broth.”                W. B. Yeats
   “   31st,  “       “The Racing Lug.”                Seumas O’Cuisin


IRISH NATIONAL THEATRE SOCIETY, MOLESWORTH HALL

  (The first prospectus of this Society, dated March, 1903, and
  signed by Mr. Fred Ryan began as follows: “The Irish National
  Theatre Society was formed to continue on a more permanent basis
  the work of the Irish Literary Theatre.”)

  Mar. 14th, 1903.    “The Hour Glass.”                W. B. Yeats
   “   14th,  “       “Twenty-Five.”                   Lady Gregory
  Oct.  8th,  “       “The King’s Threshold.”          W. B. Yeats
   “    8th,  “       “In the Shadow of the Glen.”     J. M. Synge
  Dec.  3rd,  “       “Broken Soil.”                   Padraic Colum
  Jan. 14th, 1904.    “The Shadowy Waters.”            W. B. Yeats
   “   14th,  “       “The Townland of Tamney.”        Seumas McManus
  Feb. 25th,  “       “Riders to the Sea.”             J. M. Synge


IRISH NATIONAL THEATRE SOCIETY AT THE ABBEY THEATRE.

  Dec. 27th, 1904.    “On Baile’s Strand.”             W. B. Yeats
   “   27th,  “       “Spreading the News.”            Lady Gregory
  Feb.  4th, 1905.    “The Well of the Saints.”        J. M. Synge
  Mar. 25th,  “       “Kincora.”                       Lady Gregory
  Apr. 25th,  “       “The Building Fund.”             William Boyle
  June 9th,   “       “The Land.”                      Padraic Colum


NATIONAL THEATRE SOCIETY, LTD. (ABBEY COMPANY)

  Dec.  9th, 1905.    “The White Cockade.”             Lady Gregory
  Jan. 20th, 1906.    “The Eloquent Dempsy.”           William Boyle
  Feb. 19th,  “       “Hyacinth Halvey.”               Lady Gregory
  Oct. 20th,  “       “The Gaol Gate.”                 Lady Gregory
   “   20th,  “       “The Mineral Workers.”           William Boyle
  Nov. 24th,  “       “Deirdre.”                       W. B. Yeats
  Dec.  8th,  “       “The Canavans.”                  Lady Gregory
  Dec.  8th, 1906.    New Version of “The Shadowy      W. B. Yeats
                          Waters.”
  Jan. 26th, 1907.    “The Playboy of the              J. M. Synge
                          Western World.”
  Feb. 23rd,  “       “The Jackdaw.”                   Lady Gregory
  Mar.  9th,  “       “The Rising of the Moon.”        Lady Gregory
  Apr.  1st,  “       “The Eyes of the Blind.”         Miss W. M. Letts
  Apr.  3rd, 1907.    “The Poorhouse.”                 Douglas Hyde and
                                                           Lady Gregory
   “   27th,  “       “Fand.”                          Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
  Oct.  3rd,  “       “The Country Dressmaker.”        George Fitzmaurice
   “   31st,  “       “Dervorgilla.”                   Lady Gregory
  Nov. 21st,  “       “The Unicorn from the Stars.”    W. B. Yeats and
                                                           Lady Gregory
  Feb. 13th, 1908.    “The Man who missed the Tide.”   W. F. Casey
   “   13th,  “       “The Piper.”                     Norreys Connell
  Mar. 10th,  “       “The Piedish.”                   George Fitzmaurice
  Mar. 19th,  “       “The Golden Helmet.”             W. B. Yeats
  Apr. 20th,  “       “The Workhouse Ward.”            Lady Gregory
  Oct.  1st,  “       “The Suburban Groove.”           W. F. Casey
   “    8th,  “       “The Clancy Name.”               Lennox Robinson
   “   15th,  “       “When the Dawn is come.”         Thomas MacDonogh
   “   21st,  “       New Version, “The Man who        W. F. Casey
                          missed the Tide.”
  Feb. 11th, 1909.    Revised Version of “Kincora.”    Lady Gregory
  Mar. 11th,  “       “Stephen Grey.”                  D. L. Kelleher
  Apr.  1st,  “       “The Cross Roads.”               Lennox Robinson
   “    1st,  “       “Time.”                          Norreys Connell
   “   29th,  “       “The Glittering Gate.”           Lord Dunsany
  May  27th,  “       “An Imaginary Conversation.”     Norreys Connell
  Aug. 25th,  “       “The Shewing-up of Blanco        Bernard Shaw
                           Posnet.”
  Sept. 16th, “       “The White Feather.”             R. J. Ray
  Oct. 14th,  “       “The Challenge.”                 Miss W. M. Letts
  Nov. 11th,  “       “The Image.”                     Lady Gregory
  Jan. 13th, 1910.    “Deirdre of the Sorrows.”        J. M. Synge
  Feb. 10th,  “       “The Green Helmet.”              W. B. Yeats
  Mar.  2nd,  “       “The Travelling Man.”            Lady Gregory
  May  12th,  “       “Thomas Muskerry.”               Padraic Colum
   “   26th,  “       “Harvest.“                       Lennox Robinson
  Sept. 28th, 1910    “The Casting-out of              R. J. Ray
                           Martin Whelan.”
  Oct. 27th,  “       “Birthright.”                    T. C. Murray
  Nov. 10th,  “       “The Full Moon.”                 Lady Gregory
   “   24th,  “       “The Shuiler’s Child.”[2]        Seumas O’Kelly
  Dec.  1st,  “       “Coats.”                         Lady Gregory
  Jan. 12th, 1911.    “The Deliverer.”                 Lady Gregory
   “   26th,  “       “King Argimenes and the          Lord Dunsany
                          Unknown Warrior.”
  Feb. 16th,  “       “The Land of Heart’s Desire.”[3] W. B. Yeats
  Mar. 30th,  “       “Mixed Marriage.”                St. John G. Ervine
  Nov. 23rd,  “       “The Interlude of Youth.”        Anon., first
                                                           printed 1554
   “   23rd,  “       “The Second Shepherds’ Play.”    Anon., _circa_ 1400
   “   30th,  “       “The Marriage.”                  Douglas Hyde
  Dec.  7th,  “       “Red Turf.”                      Rutherford Mayne
   “   14th,  “       Revival of “The Countess         W. B. Yeats
                          Cathleen.”
  Jan.  4th, 1912.    “The Annunciation.”              _circa_ 1400
   “    4th,  “       “The Flight into Egypt.”         _circa_ 1400
   “   11th,  “       “MacDarragh’s Wife.”             Lady Gregory
  Feb.  1st,  “       Revival of “The Country          George Fitzmaurice
                          Dressmaker.”
   “   15th,  “       “The Tinker and the Fairy.”      Douglas Hyde
                          (Played in Gaelic)
   “   29th,  “       “The Worlde and the Chylde.”     15th century
  Mar. 28th,  “       “Family Failing.”                William Boyle
  Apr. 11th,  “       “Patriots.”                      Lennox Robinson
   “   15th,  “       “Judgment.”                      Joseph Campbell
  June 20th,  “       “Maurice Harte.”                 T. C. Murray
  July  4th,  “       “The Bogie Men.”                 Lady Gregory
  Oct. 17th,  “       “The Magnanimous Lover.”         St. John G. Ervine
  Nov. 21st,  “       “Damer’s Gold.”                  Lady Gregory

[2] First produced by an amateur company at the Molesworth Hall in
1909.

[3] First produced at the Avenue Theatre, London, in 1894.


TRANSLATIONS OF THE FOLLOWING HAVE BEEN PRODUCED

  Apr. 16th, 1906.    “The Doctor in spite of          (Molière.)
                        Himself.”                          Translated by
                                                           Lady Gregory
  Mar. 16th, 1907.    “Interior.”                      (Maeterlinck.)
   “   19th, 1908.    “Teja.”                          (Sudermann.)
                                                           Translated by
                                                           Lady Gregory
  Apr.  4th,  “       “The Rogueries of Scapin.”       (Molière.)
                                                           Translated by
                                                           Lady Gregory
  Jan. 21st, 1909.    “The Miser.”                     (Molière.)
                                                           Translated by
                                                           Lady Gregory
  Feb. 24th, 1910.    “Mirandolina.”                   (Goldoni.)
                                                           Translated by
                                                           Lady Gregory
  Jan.  5th, 1911.    “Nativity Play.”                 (Douglas Hyde.)
                                                           Translated by
                                                           Lady Gregory


NEW PRODUCTIONS

  Nov. 21st, 1912.    “The Hour Glass” Revised.
   “    “     “       “Damer’s Gold.”
  Jan. 23rd, 1913.    “The Dean of St. Patrick’s.”     G. Sidney
                                                          Paternoster
  Feb.  6th,   “      Revival, “Casting-out of         R. J. Ray
                          Martin Whelan.”
   “   20th,   “      “Hannele.”                       Gerhardt Hauptmann
  Mar.  6th,   “      “There are Crimes and Crimes.”   August Strindberg
   “   13th,   “      “The Cuckoo’s Nest.”             John Guinan
  Apr. 10th,   “      “The Homecoming.”                Gertrude Robins
   “   17th,   “      “The Stronger.”                  August Strindberg
   “   24th,   “      “The Magic Glasses.”             George Fitzmaurice
   “   24th,   “      “Broken Faith.”                  S. R. Day and
                                                         G. D. Cummins
  May  17th,   “      “The Post Office.”               Rabindranath Tagore



APPENDIX II

“THE NATION” ON “BLANCO POSNET”


We have often spoken in these columns of the condition of the
British drama and the various ways of mending it. But there is one
of its features, or, rather, one of its disabilities, as to which
some present decision must clearly be taken. That is the power of
the Censorship to warp it for evil, and to maim it for good. There
can be no doubt at all that this is the double function of the Lord
Chamberlain and his office. The drama that they pass on and therefore
commend to the people is a drama that is always earthly, often
sensual, and occasionally devilish; the drama which they refuse to
the people is a drama that seeks to be truthful, and is therefore
not concerned with average sensual views of life, and that might, if
it were encouraged, powerfully touch the neglected spheres of morals
and religion. As to the first count against the Censorship there is
and can be no defence. _Habemus confitentem reum._ The man who would
pass _Dear Old Charlie_ would pass anything. He has bound himself to
tolerate the drama of Wycherley and Congreve, of which it is a fairly
exact and clever revival, suited to modern hypocrisy as to ways of
expression, but equally audacious in its glorification of lying,
adultery, mockery, and light-mindedness.

The case on the other count is, we think, sufficiently made out by
the Censor’s refusal to license Mr. Bernard Shaw’s one-act play, _The
Showing-up of Blanco Posnet_. It is fair to the Censor to explain
the grounds of his refusal. Mr. Shaw has been good enough to let the
editor of this paper see a copy both of his drama and of the official
letter refusing a “license for representation” unless certain
passages were expunged. There were two such passages. On the second
Mr. Shaw assures us that no difficulty could have occurred. It raised
a question of taste, on which he was willing to meet Mr. Redford’s
views. It seems to us outspoken rather than gross, but as it was not
the subject of controversy we dismiss it, and recur to the critical
point on which Mr. Shaw, considering--and, in our view, rightly
considering--that the heart and meaning of his play were at issue,
refused to give way. In order that we may explain the quarrel, it is
necessary to give some slight sketch of the character and intention
of _The Showing-up of Blanco Posnet_. We suggest as the simplest clue
to its tone and atmosphere that it reproduces in some measure the
subject and the feeling of Bret Harte’s _Luck of Roaring Camp_. It
depicts a coarse and violent society, governed by emotions and crude
wants rather than by principles and laws, a society of drunkards,
lynchers, duellists at sight, and, above all, horse-stealers--in
other words, a world of conventionally bad men, liable to good
impulses. The “hero” is something of a throw-back to Dick Dudgeon,
of the _Devil’s Disciple_; that is to say, he is reckless and an
outcast, who retains the primitive virtue of not lying to himself.

The scene of the play is a trial for horse-stealing. Blanco is a
nominal--not a real--horse-stealer, that is to say, he has committed
the sin which a society of horsemen does not pardon. He has run away
with the Sheriff’s horse, believing it to be his brother’s, and
taking it on account of a fraudulent settlement of the family estate.
A man of his hands, he has yet allowed himself to be tamely captured
and brought before a jury of lynchers. Why? Well, he has been
upset, overtaken, his plan of life twisted and involved out of all
recognition. On his way with the horse, a woman met him with a child
dying of croup. She stopped him, thrust the sick child on to the
horse, and “commandeered” it for a ride to the nearest doctor’s. The
child has thrust its weak arms round his neck, and with that touch
all the strength has gone out of him. He gives up the horse and flies
away into the night, covering his retreat from this new superior
force with obscene curses, and surrendering, dismounting, dazed, and
helpless, to the Sheriff when the _posse comitatus_ catches him.

Thenceforward two opposing forces rend him, and make life
unintelligible and unendurable while they struggle for his soul.
Dragged into the Sheriff’s court, he is prepared to fight for his
neck with the rascals who sit in judgment on him, to lie against
them, and to browbeat them. Unjust and filthy as they are, he will
be unjust and filthy too. But then there was this apparition of
the child. What did it mean? Why has it unmanned him? And here it
seems to him that God has at once destroyed and tricked him, for
the child is dead, and yet his life is forfeit to these brutes.
The situation--this sketch of a sudden, ruthless, unintelligible
interference with the lives of men--though apparently unknown to the
Censor, will be familiar to readers of the Bible and of religious
poetry and prose, and Mr. Shaw’s treatment of it could only offend
either the non-religious mind or the sincerely, but conventionally,
pious man who is so wrapt up in the emotional view of religion that
its sterner and deeper moralities escape him. The literary parallels
will at once occur. Browning chooses the subject in _Pippa Passes_,
and in the poem in which he describes how the strong man who had
hemmed in and surrounded his enemy suddenly found himself stayed by
the “arm that came across” and saved the wretch from vengeance. Ibsen
dwells on this divine thwarting and staying power in _Peer Gynt_,
and it is, of course, the opening theme of the _Pilgrim’s Progress_.
As it presents itself to a coarse and reckless, but sincere, man he
deals with it in coarse but sincere language--the language which the
Censor refuses to pass. Here is the offending passage, which occurs
in a dialogue between Blanco and his drunken hypocrite of a brother:--

  “BLANCO: Take care, Boozy. He hasn’t finished with you yet. He
  always has a trick up his sleeve.

  “ELDER DANIELS: Oh, is that the way to speak of the Ruler of the
  Universe--the great and almighty God?

  “BLANCO: He’s a sly one. He’s a mean one. He lies low for you. He
  plays cat and mouse with you. He lets you run loose until you think
  you’re shut of Him; and then when you least expect it, He’s got you.

  “ELDER DANIELS: Speak more respectful, Blanco--more reverent.

  “BLANCO: Reverent! Who taught you your reverent cant? Not your
  Bible. It says, ‘He cometh like a thief in the night’--aye, like a
  thief--a horse-thief. And it’s true. That’s how He caught me and
  put my neck into the halter. To spite me because I had no use for
  Him--because I lived my own life in my own way, and would have no
  truck with His ‘Don’t do this,’ and ‘You mustn’t do that,’ and
  ‘You’ll go to hell if you do the other.’ I gave Him the go-bye, and
  did without Him all these years. But He caught me out at last. The
  laugh is with Him as far as hanging goes.”

Now, let us first note the incapacity of the critic of such an
outburst as this to think in terms of the dramatic art--to divine the
_état d’âme_ of the speaker, and to recognise the method, and, within
bounds, the idiosyncracy of the playwright. But having regard to all
that the Censor has done and all that he has left undone, let us
also mark his resolve to treat as mere blasphemy on Mr. Shaw’s part
the artist’s endeavour to depict a rough man’s first consciousness of
a Power that, selecting Blanco as it selected Paul and John Bunyan,
threatens to drag him through moral shame and physical death, if need
be, to life, and not to let him go till He has wrought His uttermost
purpose on him. Mr. Shaw naturally makes Blanco talk as an American
horse-stealer would talk. But how does Job talk of God, or the
Psalmist, or the Author of the Parables? Nearly every one of Blanco
Posnet’s railings can be paralleled from Job. Listen to this:--

  “The tabernacles of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are
  secure, into whose hand God bringeth abundantly.

  “He removeth away the speech of the trusty, and taketh away the
  understanding of the aged.

  “He taketh the heart of the chief of the people of the earth and
  causeth them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way.

  “They grope in the dark without light, and He maketh them to
  stagger like a drunken man.

       *       *       *       *       *

  “Know now that God hath overthrown me, and hath compassed me with
  His net.

  “He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass, and He hath set
  darkness in my paths.

  “He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone: and mine hope
  hath He removed like a tree.”

Is this blasphemy? Is not Mr. Shaw’s theme and its expression a
reflection of Job’s, save that in the one case a bad man speaks,
and in the other a good one? If the answer is that these subjects,
these moral and religious relationships, must not be treated on the
stage, then we reply first that the Censor is grossly inconsistent,
for he did not veto the entire play, but only that passage which
most clearly revealed its meaning; secondly, that the licensing
of _Everyman_, and of Mr. Jerome’s _The Third Floor Back_, where
God appears, not merely as an influence on the lives of men, but
as a man, sitting at their table and sharing their talk, forbids
such an hypothesis; and thirdly, that if Mr. Redford holds this
view, he is convicted of opening the drama to horrible mockery of
life and sensual trifling with it, and closing it to those close
questionings of its purpose, which constitute the main theme of all
serious playwrights from Æschylus to Ibsen. That Mr. Shaw could have
consented to the omission of the passage we have quoted was out of
the question. It is vital. The entire play turns on it. For when
the woman comes into court and tells her story, it is seen that the
leaven which works in Blanco’s mind has leavened the lump; that the
prostitute who is for swearing away his life cannot speak, that
the ferocious jury will not convict, and the unjust judge will not
sentence.

Mr. Shaw had, therefore, to fight for his play, and the Censor has to
come into the open and face the music; to reveal his theory of the
British drama, and illustrate his continual practice of it; which is
to warn off the artist and the preacher, and to clear the path for
the scoffer and the clown.


LETTER FROM W. G. BERNARD SHAW TO LADY GREGORY AFTER THE PRODUCTION
OF “BLANCO POSNET”

  DEAR LADY GREGORY:

Now that the production of _Blanco Posnet_ has revealed the character
of the play to the public, it may be as well to clear up some of the
points raised by the action of the Castle in the matter.

By the Castle, I do not mean the Lord Lieutenant. He was in Scotland
when the trouble began. Nor do I mean the higher officials and law
advisers. I conclude that they also were either in Scotland, or
preoccupied by the Horse Show, or taking their August holiday in
some form. As a matter of fact the friction ceased when the Lord
Lieutenant returned. But in the meantime the deputies left to attend
to the business of the Castle found themselves confronted with a
matter which required tactful handling and careful going. They did
their best; but they broke down rather badly in point of law, in
point of diplomatic etiquette, and in point of common knowledge.

First, they committed the indiscretion of practically conspiring with
an English official who has no jurisdiction in Ireland in an attempt
to intimidate an Irish theatre.

Second, they assumed that this official acts as the agent of the
King, whereas, as Sir Harry Poland established in a recent public
controversy on the subject, his powers are given him absolutely by
Act of Parliament (1843). If the King were to write a play, this
official could forbid its performance, and probably would if it were
a serious play and were submitted without the author’s name, or with
mine.

Third, they assumed that the Lord Lieutenant is the servant of the
King. He is nothing of the sort. He is the Viceroy: that is, he _is_
the King in the absence of Edward VII. To suggest that he is bound
to adopt the views of a St. James’s Palace official as to what is
proper to be performed in an Irish theatre is as gross a solecism
as it would be to inform the King that he must not visit Marienbad
because some Castle official does not consider Austria a sufficiently
Protestant country to be a fit residence for an English monarch.

Fourth, they referred to the Select Committee which is now
investigating the Censorship in London whilst neglecting to inform
themselves of its purpose. The Committee was appointed because
the operation of the Censorship had become so scandalous that the
Government could not resist the demand for an inquiry. At its very
first sitting it had to turn the public and press out of the room
and close its doors to discuss the story of a play licensed by the
official who barred _Blanco Posnet_; and after this experience it
actually ruled out all particulars of licensed plays as unfit for
public discussion. With the significant exception of Mr. George
Edwards, no witness yet examined, even among those who have most
strongly supported the Censorship as an institution, has defended the
way in which it is now exercised. The case which brought the whole
matter to a head was the barring of this very play of mine, _The
Shewing up of Blanco Posnet_. All this is common knowledge. Yet the
Castle, assuming that I, and not the Censorship, am the defendant
in the trial now proceeding in London, treated me, until the Lord
Lieutenant’s return, as if I were a notoriously convicted offender.
This, I must say, is not like old times in Ireland. Had I been a
Catholic, a Sinn Feiner, a Land Leaguer, a tenant farmer, a labourer,
or anything that from the Castle point of view is congenitally
wicked and coercible, I should have been prepared for it; but if the
Protestant landed gentry, of which I claim to be a perfectly correct
member, even to the final grace of absenteeism, is to be treated in
this way by the Castle, then English rule must indeed be going to the
dogs. Of my position of a representative of literature I am far too
modest a man to speak; but it was the business of the Castle to know
it and respect it; and the Castle did neither.

Fifth, they reported that my publishers had refused to supply a copy
of the play for the use of the Lord Lieutenant, leaving it to be
inferred that this was done by my instructions as a deliberate act of
discourtesy. Now no doubt my publishers were unable to supply a copy,
because, as it happened, the book was not published, and could not
be published until the day of the performance without forfeiting my
American copyright, which is of considerable value. Private copies
only were available; but if the holiday deputies of the Castle think
that the Lord Lieutenant found the slightest difficulty in obtaining
such copies, I can only pity their total failure to appreciate either
his private influence or his public importance.

Sixth, they claimed that Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who highly values
good understanding with the Dublin public, had condemned the play.
What are the facts? Sir Herbert, being asked by the Select Committee
whether he did not think that my play would shock religious feeling,
replied point-blank, “No, it would heighten religious feeling.” He
announced the play for production at his theatre; the Censorship
forced him to withdraw it; and the King instantly shewed his opinion
of the Censorship by making Sir Herbert a Knight. But it also
happened that Sir Herbert, who is a wit, and knows the weight of the
Censor’s brain to half a scruple, said with a chuckle when he came
upon the phrase “immoral relations” in the play, “They won’t pass
that.” And they did not pass it. That the deputy officials should
have overlooked Sir Herbert’s serious testimony to the religious
propriety of the play, and harped on his little jest at the Censor’s
expense as if it were at my expense, is a fresh proof of the danger
of transacting important business at the Castle when all the
responsible officials are away bathing.

On one point, however, the Castle followed the established Castle
tradition. It interpreted the patent (erroneously) as limiting the
theatre to Irish plays. Now the public is at last in possession of
the fact that the real protagonist in my play who does not appear
in person on the stage at all, is God. In my youth the Castle view
was that God is essentially Protestant and English; and as the
Castle never changes its views, it is bound to regard the divine
protagonist as anti-Irish and consequently outside the terms of the
patent. Whether it will succeed in persuading the Lord Lieutenant to
withdraw the patent on that ground will probably depend not only on
His Excellency’s theological views, but on his private opinion of
the wisdom with which the Castle behaves in his absence. The Theatre
thought the risk worth while taking; and I agreed with them. At all
events Miss Horniman will have no difficulty in insuring the patent
at an extremely reasonable rate.

In conclusion, may I say that from the moment when the Castle made
its first blunder I never had any doubt of the result, and that I
kept away from Dublin, in order that our national theatre might
have the entire credit of handling and producing a new play without
assistance from the author or from any other person trained in the
English theatres. Nobody who has not lived, as I have to live, in
London, can possibly understand the impression the Irish players
made there this year, or appreciate the artistic value of their
performances, their spirit, and their methods. It has been suggested
that I placed _Blanco Posnet_ at their disposal only because it was,
as an unlicensed play, the refuse of the English market. As a matter
of fact there was no such Hobson’s choice in the matter. I offered
a licensed play as an alternative, and am all the more indebted to
Lady Gregory and Mr. Yeats for not choosing it. Besides, Ireland is
really not so negligible from the commercial-theatrical point of
view as some of our more despondent patriots seem to suppose. Of the
fifteen countries outside Britain in which my plays are performed, my
own is by no means the least lucrative; and even if it were, I should
not accept its money value as a measure of its importance.

  G. BERNARD SHAW.

  PARKNASILLA,
  27 August, 1909.



APPENDIX III

“THE PLAYBOY IN AMERICA”


(_Note to page 180_)

From “THE GAELIC AMERICAN,” Oct. 14, 1911

IRISHMEN WILL STAMP OUT THE “PLAYBOY”

October 14, 1911:--“Resolved--That we, the United Irish-American
Societies of New York, make every reasonable effort, through a
committee, to induce those responsible for the presentation of _The
Playboy_ to withdraw it, and failing in this we pledge ourselves as
one man to use every means in our power to drive the vile thing from
the stage, as we drove _McFadden’s Row of Flats_ and the abomination
produced by the Russell Brothers, and we ask the aid in this work of
every decent Irish man and woman, and of the Catholic Church, whose
doctrines and devotional practices are held up to scorn and ridicule
in Synge’s monstrosity.”


(_Note to page 202_)

From THE NEW YORK “TIMES”

November 28, 1911:--When Christopher Mahon said: “I killed my father
a week and a half ago for the likes of that,” instantly voices began
to call from all over the theatre:

“Shame! Shame!”

A potato swept through the air from the gallery and smashed against
the wings. Then came a shower of vegetables that rattled against the
scenery and made the actors duck their heads and fly behind the stage
setting for shelter.

A potato struck Miss Magee, and she, Irish like, drew herself up
and glared defiance. Men were rising in the gallery and balcony and
crying out to stop the performance. In the orchestra several men
stood up and shook their fists.

“Go on with the play,” came an order from the stage manager, and the
players took their places and began again to speak their lines.

The tumult broke out more violently than before, and more vegetables
came sailing through the air and rolled about the stage. Then began
the fall of soft cubes that broke as they hit the stage. At first
these filled the men and women in the audience and on the stage with
fear, for only the disturbers knew what they were.

Soon all knew. They were capsules filled with asafœtida, and their
odour was suffocating and most revolting.

One of the theatre employes had run to the street to ask for police
protection at the outset of the disturbance, but the response was
so slow that the ushers and the doortenders raced up the stairs and
threw themselves into a knot of men who were standing and yelling
“Shame!”


(_Note to page 205_)

From THE NEW YORK “SUN”

Wednesday, November 29, 1911:--Col. Theodore Roosevelt, who had
been entertained at dinner prior to the play by Lady Gregory, the
author-producer of many of the Irish plays, and Chief Magistrate
McAdoo sat with Lady Gregory in one of the lower tier boxes. Col.
Roosevelt was there representing the _Outlook_, for he said that if
he had any ideas on the subject of the morals and merits of Synge’s
play he would write them in Dr. Abbott’s paper, and Magistrate McAdoo
was there for Mayor Gaynor to stop the play if he saw anything
contrary to the public morals in it. Mr. McAdoo said that his task
was a light one and Col. Roosevelt did not have to say anything. He
just applauded.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Col. Roosevelt appeared on a side aisle escorting Lady Gregory
to a seat in the box there was a patter of hand clapping and the
Colonel gallantly insisted that Lady Gregory should stand and receive
the applause.

“He’s here because he smells a fight,” said some one in a whisper
that rebounded from the acoustic board overhead and was audible all
over the house.

When Magistrate McAdoo arrived somebody asked him if he were serving
in an official capacity, to which he replied that the Mayor had asked
him to drop in and see the play which had so roused the wrath of
reputed Irishmen on the night before. He had orders, McAdoo said, to
squash it the minute that he should see or hear anything that might
be considered to have tobogganed over the line of discretion. But Mr.
McAdoo said that he thought he would understand in a fair spirit,
withal, the satire and irony of the play, if there was such, and he
did not intend to be a martinet. The players graciously handed him
out the prompt book between acts to see for himself that the line
about “shifts” which had raised a storm of protest in Dublin as being
indelicate had been deleted.

Nothing happened during the playing of the little curtain-raiser,
_The Gaol Gate_, Lady Gregory’s grim little tragedy of suffering
Ireland, except that near the end of the single act in the playlet
people in the gallery began a noisy warming up on their coughs and
sneezes. Some of the plain-clothes men there began to amble around
back of the aisles, and they laid their eyes on one individual with
a thick neck who seemed about to pull something out from under his
coat. Him they landed just as a quick curtain fell on the act and
without ado they ousted him.

The citizen began to protest loudly that he was wedged in his seat
and could not stir, but two of the strong arms persuaded him that he
might as well unwedge himself before something happened. The little
interlude was not sufficiently stirring even to attract the notice of
those in the balcony and orchestra below.

Everybody believed that the trouble was all past with the second act,
but the third and last was the noisiest of the three.

It appeared that, failing to find any single line to which they could
take exception, those who had come to protest against what they
conceived to be the libelling of the Irish race were ready to take it
out in one long spell of hissing.

The cue was given when the drunken Michael James, the inn keeper,
came on the stage to unite with a maudlin blessing the lovers,
Christopher and Margaret.

As in the second act the seat of disturbance was in the balcony
and thither six plain-clothes men were hastened. Three heads were
together and one man was beating time with his hand while they took
relays in hissing. The plain-clothes men descended and the three were
yanked from their seats without benefit of explanation.

“But we’re Englishmen,” said one of them, “and we take exception to
the line, ‘Khaki clad cut-throats,’ meaning of course the English
constabulary.”

“And don’t call me an Irishman,” said the third, while he adjusted
his neck gingerly in the collar that had been tightened by the cop’s
grip. “I’m a Jew and I was born in St. Joe, Missoury, and I think
this play’s rotten, just on general principles. And if I think so
I’ve got a right to show it. The law holds that anybody has got as
good a right to show displeasure at a play as pleasure and I saw my
lawyer before I came here, and----”


LETTER FROM MR. JOHN QUINN

TO THE EDITOR OF A DUBLIN NEWSPAPER

DEAR SIR: Now that the Irish players have been to New York and their
work seen and judged, the readers of your paper may be interested
in the publication of one or two facts in connection with their
visit. For some time before the company came to New York there had
been threats of an organised attempt by a small coterie of Irishmen
to prevent the performance of Synge’s _Playboy_. It was difficult
for many people in New York who are interested in the drama and art
to take these rumours seriously. The attempt to prevent the New
York public from hearing the work of these Irish players of course
failed. There was an organised attempt by perhaps a hundred or a
hundred and fifty Irishmen on the first night _The Playboy_ was
given here to prevent the performance by hissing and booing, and by
throwing potatoes and other objects at the actors, and red pepper and
asafœtida among the audience. The disturbers were ejected from the
theatre by the police. All the great metropolitan papers, morning and
evening, condemned this organised disturbance. The second night, some
six or seven disturbers were put out of the theatre by the police,
and that was the end of the long-threatened attempt to break up the
performance of these plays. The issue was not between the plays and
the players and the disturbers, but between the New York public
and the disturbers. This fight over Synge was of vast importance
for us as a city. One night settled that question and settled it
conclusively.

I have seen in some of the daily and one of the weekly Irish papers a
statement to the effect that “_The Playboy_ was hooted from the stage
... after the worst riot ever witnessed in a New York playhouse.” The
statement that it was “hooted from the stage” is of course utterly
false. The greatest disorder occurred during the first act. A few
minutes after the curtain fell at the end of the first act it was
raised again and the statement was made by a member of the company
that the act would be given entirely over again. This announcement
was greeted with cheers and applause from the great majority of the
audience, who indignantly disapproved the attempt of the disturbers
to prevent the performance. The play was not “hooted from the stage.”

The attempt to prevent by force the hearing of the play having so
signally failed, a committee waited upon the Mayor of New York City
the next day and demanded the suppression of the plays. The Mayor
requested Chief Judge McAdoo of the Court of Special Sessions to
attend the play as his representative and report to him. Judge McAdoo
is an Irishman, born in Ireland, and has had a distinguished public
career as member of Congress, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and
Police Commissioner of New York City, and he is now Chief Judge of
the Court of Special Sessions. Judge McAdoo attended the play and
made a report to the Mayor completely rejecting the charges that had
been made against the morals and ethics of the play.

Both attempts to prevent the performance of the play, the first by
force and the second by appeal to the authorities, having completely
failed, the work of distorting in the Irish papers what actually took
place then began.

Among other things it has been stated that the Abbey Theatre company
was not a success in New York. On the contrary the success of the
company has been beyond anything in my personal experience. The
verdict of critical and artistic New York in favour of the work of
the Irish Theatre has been emphatic. The pick of the intellectual and
artistic public crowded the theatre during the weeks of the company’s
performances here and admired and enjoyed their work. In fact
intelligent New Yorkers are yet wondering what was the real cause of
the attempt to prevent the hearing of the plays. This is one of the
mysteries of this winter in New York. I am proud, as a citizen of New
York, that New York’s verdict of approval was so swift and decisive,
and I am proud of New York’s quick recognition of the excellence of
the new Irish school of drama and acting. As a man of Irish blood,
my chief regret is that organised prejudice and prejudgment should
have prevented these players from getting that welcome from a section
of their own countrymen that I feel sure they will secure in future
years. This prejudice was created and the prejudgment was largely
caused by the publication of detached sentences and quotations from
the plays, while ignoring the art of the actors and the humour and
poetry and imaginative beauty of the plays, beauties which, as Sir
Philip Sidney would say, “who knoweth not to be flowers of poetry did
never walk into Apollo’s garden.”

Not only have the New York daily papers devoted columns to the work
of this company throughout their stay, giving elaborate reviews of
their work and long interviews with Lady Gregory and others, but many
magazines have had articles on the subject of the plays and writers
and on the Irish dramatic movement generally, among others the _Yale
Review_, the _Harvard Monthly_, _Collier’s Weekly_, the _Nation_ (two
notices), the _Dramatic Mirror_ (five notices), the _Metropolitan
Magazine_, _Munsey’s Magazine_, the _Craftsman_, _Life_, _Harper’s
Weekly_ (containing repeated notices), the _Outlook_, the _Bookman_,
and others. Lady Gregory has contributed articles to the _Yale
Review_, the _World of Today_ and the _Delineator_, and has lectured
at many places upon the Irish dramatic movement. The universities
and colleges have shown the liveliest interest in the movement. The
professors have lectured upon the plays and the plays have been
studied in the college classes and the students have been advised to
read them and see the players.


“THE PLAYBOY” IN PHILADELPHIA

(_Note to page 218_)

From PHILADELPHIA “NORTH AMERICAN”

January 17, 1912:--Determined to force their dramatic views on the
public despite the arrests at Monday night’s demonstration, several
Irishmen last night vented their disapproval of _The Playboy of the
Western World_ which had its second production by Irish Players at
the Adelphi Theatre.

They started by coughing, and they caused the player-folk to become
slightly nervous. They next essayed hissing, and cries of “shame,”
and finally one of their number rose to his feet in a formal protest.

Plain-clothes men throughout the house quelled the slight
disturbance, but at every opportunity another belligerent broke into
unruly behaviour.

The disorder approached the dignity of serious rioting in the second
and third acts of the piece, and at the last a man from Connemara
rose in the body of the house, whipped a speech from his coat pocket,
and proceeded to interrupt the players with a harangue against the
morality of the play.

His philippics were short-lived. Sixteen cops in plain clothes
reached him at the same time, and the red man from Connemara
disappeared, while the play was being brought to a close....

Extra precautions were taken by the police to preserve order at last
night’s performance. The lights in the back of the house were not
turned down at any time except the first few minutes of the one-act
play _Kathleen ni Houlihan_ which was the curtain-raiser to the
longer piece.

Evidence that there would be trouble later in the evening was plain.
Nearly the whole rear part of the house downstairs was filled with
Irishmen.

As the little poetic vision of the author unrolled itself and the
enthusiastic and for the most part cultured audience was steeping
itself in the lyric beauty of the lines, two whole rows of the
auditors were seized with a desire to cough or clear their throats.
That caused a momentary lull in the play.

Up in the top gallery a thin but insistent ventriloquist piped, “This
is rotten!” Cries of “Hush!” quieted the interrupter.

In the first act of _The Playboy_ where the bulk of the disturbance
occurred Monday night, no expression of opinion was made. But just
as every one was settling down to enjoy the play, confident no more
interruptions would occur, the trouble began.

One of the clan downstairs cried out his disapprobation. The lights
were turned on full tilt, and policemen in plain clothes sprang up
from every quarter of the house. Women left their seats in fear. A
misguided youth near the orchestra threw his programme, doubled into
a ball, at Miss Magee. He was promptly arrested.

The play was stopped for fully five minutes until all the men who
showed signs of making trouble were evicted. A number of them laid
low, however, and bobbed up now and again, whenever they wanted to.
It kept the cops busy hustling them out of the doors. Superintendent
Taylor and Captain of the Detectives Souder were in charge of the
evictions and as each man was taken out two detectives were sent with
him to City Hall where all were locked in.

The climax came when near the close of the last act the man from
Connaught began his oratorical flights, drowning the speeches of the
actors on the stage. All interest then centred upon the little knot
of strugglers in the main aisle of the theatre and four more Irishmen
were escorted, hatless and without overcoats, to the street.

As the men were arraigned at the City Hall, William A. Gray, counsel
for the offenders at Monday night’s riot, appeared for them. He
said he had been sent by Joseph McLaughlin, a saloon-keeper and
vice-president of the A. O. H., and he obtained a copy of the
charges, with a view to getting the men out on bail.... Mr. Gray said
he intended taking the matter before the courts and asking for an
injunction to prohibit further productions of the play. He said his
backer was Joseph McGarrity, a wholesale liquor dealer, in business
at 144 South Third Street, who was one of those ejected from the
theatre on Monday night.

Headed by Joseph McLaughlin, a delegation of seven prominent members
of the Irish societies of the city waited on Mayor Blankenburg
yesterday with a petition asking him to stop the production of John
M. Synge’s comedy _The Playboy of the Western World_ on the ground
that it is immoral.

The Mayor heard the comments of the Irishmen, but with great
good humour pointed out that inasmuch as he could find nothing
objectionable in the play, he could not promise to stop the
production.

He informed the delegation that he had previously made inquiries of
the mayors of New York, Boston, and Providence, where the play had
been shown, and had received answers which plainly indicated it was
not necessary to stop the play.


(_Note to page 226_)

From PHILADELPHIA “NORTH AMERICAN”

IRISH PLAYERS APPEAR IN A “COURT COMEDY”; NO DECISION

ANSWER CHARGE OF “IMMORALITY” BROUGHT BY A LIQUOR DEALER--“PLAYBOY”
DEFENDED AND ATTACKED BY WITNESSES

January 20, 1912:--Second only in point of order, not in worth,
was the unadvertised comedy participated in by the Irish Players
yesterday afternoon, at a matinée performance held in Judge Carr’s
room in the quarter sessions court.

The public flocked to see, and stayed to witness, a most complete
vindication of Synge’s much discussed satirisation of the Irish
character. The actors arrested for appearing in _The Playboy of
the Western World_ kept, however, in the background, while counsel
on both sides engaged in lively tilts with two members of the
clergy and the judge and other witnesses, furnishing the crowd with
entertainment.

Eleven of the Irish Players who were held in $500 bail each by
Magistrate Carey, at a hearing in his office earlier in the day,
threw themselves upon the mercy of the quarter sessions court,
to obtain a legal decision as to whether their play violated the
McNichol act of 1911, which makes it a misdemeanor to present
“lascivious, sacrilegious, obscene or indecent plays.” The hearing
before the court was brought about by a habeas corpus proceeding.

Although no decision was handed down after the argument, the attitude
of the court was plainly shown, by the line of questions put to
various witnesses. The testimony offered by Director of Public Safety
Porter, who was called by the commonwealth, indicated that no fault
could be found with the play. Judge Carr reserved decision, and
adjourned court until Monday.

The defendants were represented by Charles Biddle, William Redheffer,
Jr., Howard H. Yocum, and John Quinn, of New York. Directly back of
them, in the courtroom, sat Lady Gregory, Mrs. Henry La Barre Jayne,
and W. W. Bradford, the latter representing Liebler & Co., managers
of the Irish Players.


SURPRISE FOR PROSECUTOR

William A. Gray represented Joseph McGarrity, the liquor dealer, who
has taken principal part in the prosecution of the actors. He was
aided at times by Assistant District Attorney Fox on behalf of the
commonwealth, although the latter’s action in calling Director Porter
to give testimony caused Mr. Gray both surprise and embarrassment,
inasmuch as Mr. Porter said there was nothing in the piece to offend
the most devout and reverent of women. He said he had attended the
theatre with his wife and that neither of them was “shocked”; on the
contrary, distinctly pleased.

Mr. Gray called Joseph McGarrity to the stand. In all seriousness and
sincerity the witness testified that, in his opinion, _The Playboy_
was a wicked piece and that he thought he had a perfect right to show
his disapproval by protesting. He was questioned by Judge Carr as to
the reason why he did not leave the theatre before he was ejected, if
he thought the play was bad. He could give no adequate reply.

Mr. Gray then read passages from the book, declaring that it had
been expurgated to make it presentable on the American stage.
Frederick O’Donovan, one of the company, who takes the part of the
Playboy, testified that productions of the play had been made in
Dublin, Belfast, Cork, London, Oxford, Cambridge, Harrowgate, Boston,
New York, New Haven, and Providence without causing any public
disturbance except in New York, and without any criminal prosecution
being brought anywhere.

It was pointed out to the court by Mr. Gray that Pennsylvania is the
only State having a statute preventing immoral or sacrilegious plays
and that this was of so recent a date that neither side could argue
that other plays of a much more objectionable nature than this had
been permitted without hindrance.

Mr. Biddle and Mr. Quinn then summed up their arguments, in which
the court concurred, openly. The New York lawyer paid a tribute to
Philadelphia concerning the testimony of Director Porter. He said:
“Philadelphia ought to be proud of the manhood displayed by such a
witness. He stood before this court and testified that he and his
wife had witnessed the performance, and that neither was displeased
by any exhibition of immorality.

“I say that any man who takes a lascivious meaning out of any of
the lines of the play, or who declares that the piece is in any way
improper, must have a depraved and an abnormal mind.

“I am ashamed that such men should come here and insult womanhood
with their views. The American people are too good a judge of the
Irish race to agree with them.”

The court then took the case under advisement, reserving decision,
counsel agreeing, under his advice, to allow the company to renew its
bail bond of $5000.


(_Note to page 242_)

“THE PLAYBOY” IN CHICAGO

From CHICAGO “DAILY TRIBUNE”

January 30, 1913:--Mayor Harrison last night was directed by an order
passed by the city council to prohibit the presentation in Chicago
of _The Playboy of the Western World_, a play which has caused riots
and organised protests in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington when
presented by the Irish Players.

What action the mayor will take he was not prepared to indicate at
the conclusion of the council session. It was stated during the
debate on the subject that the mayor holds discretionary powers, and
with the backing of the council can prevent the play if he chooses.
But there is nothing mandatory in the order of the council, which
asked the mayor to co-operate with Chief of Police McWeeny.

The Mayor said he would investigate the legal phases and also look
into the character of the play before he decided upon steps to take.

[Illustration: (Threatening letter received by Lady Gregory)]


MCINERNEY LEADS FIGHT

Ald. Michael McInerney led the movement for the council order.

“The play is a studied sarcasm on the Irish race,” asserted Mr.
McInerney, reading from a typewritten sheet; “it points no moral, and
it teaches no lesson.”

“Press agent!” shouted some one.

“No, I’m not the press agent,” asserted the alderman. “This play
pictures an Irishman a coward, something that never happened, and
it attacks the Irishwoman. There are no Irishmen connected with the
company in any way.”

In reply to a question whether Lady Gregory was Irish, McInerney
replied he had not met “the lady,” and then added:

“There’s a difference in being from Ireland and being Irish. There
are lots of people in Ireland that aren’t Irish. If you’re born in a
stable, that doesn’t make you a horse.”

Mr. Pringle stopped unanimous passage of the resolution.

“While I am not Irish,” he said, “I believe Ald. McInerney knows what
he is talking about; but I do not know enough about this subject to
vote upon it at this time.”

“Like Ald. Pringle,” said Ald. Thomson, “I am not sufficiently
informed, and I shall ask to be excused from voting.”


GERMANS STRONG FOR IRISH

“Since some leading Irish organisations have chosen Germans to lead
them,” said Ald. Henry Utpatel, “I feel that that fact alone makes
them a great race, and I shall vote with Ald. McInerney.”

“Would you like to hear from the Poles?” asked Ald. Frank P. Danisch.

“That’s all right,” said McInerney, “if this play is presented there
will come along a play insulting the Poles or some other race. It is
not right for Chicago to let any race be insulted.”

The order was then adopted, Ald. Pringle and Thomson voting in the
negative.


(_Note to page 246_)

From CHICAGO “RECORD-HERALD”

February 1, 1912:--Chicago’s City Council erred in passing an order
directing the mayor and the chief of police to stop the production
_The Playboy of the Western World_ according to an opinion sent to
Mayor Harrison yesterday by William H. Sexton, the city’s corporation
counsel.

The brief was prepared by William Dillon, brother of John Dillon, the
Irish nationalist leader, one of Mr. Sexton’s assistants. It held
that the counsel order was of no legal effect, although the mayor
could suppress the play if he decided that it was immoral or against
public policy. Mr. Dillon further declared that the mayor would not
be legally right in prohibiting the production.

“I read three pages of the book,” declared Mayor Harrison, “and
instead of finding anything immoral I found that the whole thing was
wonderfully stupid. I shall abide by the corporation’s opinion.”


Interview for NEW YORK “EVENING SUN”

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW ON THE IRISH PLAYERS

“I presume, Mr. Shaw, you have heard the latest news of your _Blanco
Posnet_ in America with the Irish Players?” he was asked.

“No. Why? Has it failed?” Mr. Shaw answered.

“Quite the contrary,” he was assured.

“Oh, in that case why should I hear about it?” he said. “Success is
the usual thing with my plays; it is what I write them for. I only
hear about them when something goes wrong.”

“But are you not interested in the success of the Irish Players? Or
was that a matter of course too?”

“By no means,” Mr. Shaw answered. “I warned Lady Gregory that America
was an extremely dangerous country to take a real Irish company to.”

“But why? Surely America, with its immense Irish element----”

“Rubbish! There are not half a dozen real Irishmen in America
outside that company of actors!” he exclaimed. “You don’t suppose
that all these Murphys and Doolans and Donovans and Farrells and
Caseys and O’Connells who call themselves by romantic names like the
Clan-na-Gael and the like are Irishmen! You know the sort of people I
mean. They call Ireland the Old Country....

“Shall I tell you what they did in Dublin to the Irish Players? There
was a very great Irish dramatic poet, who died young, named John
Synge--a real Irish name--just the sort of name the Clan-na-Gael
never think of.

“Well, John Synge wrote a wonderful play called _The Playboy of the
Western World_, which is now a classic. This play was not about an
Irish peculiarity, but about a universal weakness of mankind: the
habit of admiring bold scoundrels. Most of the heroes of history
are bold scoundrels, you will notice. English and American boys
read stories about Charles Peace, the burglar, and Ned Kelly, the
highwayman, and even about Teddy Roosevelt, the rough-rider. The
Playboy is a young man who brags of having killed his father, and
is made almost as great a hero as if he were an Italian general who
had killed several thousand other people’s fathers. Synge satirises
this like another Swift, but with a joyousness and a wild wealth of
poetic imagery that Swift never achieved. Well, sir, if you please,
this silly Dublin Clan-na-Gael, or whatever it called itself,
suddenly struck out the brilliant idea that to satirise the follies
of humanity is to insult the Irish nation, because the Irish nation
is, in fact, the human race and has no follies, and stands there pure
and beautiful and saintly to be eternally oppressed by England and
collected for by the Clan. There were just enough of them to fill
the Abbey Street Theatre for a night or two to the exclusion of the
real Irish people, who simply get sick when they hear this sort of
balderdash talked about Ireland. Instead of listening to a great
play by a great Irishman they bawled and whistled and sang ‘God Save
Ireland’ (not without reason, by the way), and prevented themselves
from hearing a word of the performance....”

“Do you think there will be trouble with the Clan in New York?”

“I think there may be trouble anywhere where there are men who have
lost touch with Ireland and still keep up the old bragging and
posing. You must bear in mind that Ireland is now in full reaction
against them. The stage Irishman of the nineteenth century, generous,
drunken, thriftless, with a joke always on his lips and a sentimental
tear always in his eye, was highly successful as a borrower of money
from Englishmen--both in Old and New England--who indulged and
despised him because he flattered their sense of superiority. But the
real Irishman of to-day is so ashamed of him and so deeply repentant
for having ever stooped to countenance and ape him in the darkest
days of the Captivity that the Irish Players have been unable to
find a single play by a young writer in which Ireland is not lashed
for its follies. We no longer brazen out the shame of our subjection
by idle boasting. Even in Dublin, that city of tedious and silly
derision where men can do nothing but sneer, they no longer sneer
at other nations. In a modern Irish play the hero doesn’t sing that
‘Ould Ireland’ is his country and his name it is Molloy; he pours
forth all his bitterness on it like the prophets of old.

“The last time I saw an Irish play in Dublin, the line on which the
hero made his most effective exit was ‘I hate Ireland.’ Even in the
plays of Lady Gregory, penetrated as they are by that intense love of
Ireland which is unintelligible to the many drunken blackguards with
Irish names who make their nationality an excuse for their vices and
their worthlessness, there is no flattery of the Irish; she writes
about the Irish as Molière wrote about the French, having a talent
curiously like Molière.

“In the plays of Mr. Yeats you will find many Irish heroes, but
nothing like ‘the broth of a boy.’ Now you can imagine the effect
of all this on the American pseudo-Irish, who are still exploiting
the old stage Ireland for all it is worth, and defiantly singing:
‘Who fears to speak of ’98?’ under the very nose of the police--that
is, the New York police, who are mostly Fenians. Their notion of
patriotism is to listen jealously for the slightest hint that Ireland
is not the home of every virtue and the martyr of every oppression,
and thereupon to brawl and bully or to whine and protest, according
to their popularity with the bystanders. When these people hear a
little real Irish sentiment from the Irish Players they will not know
where they are; they will think that the tour of the Irish company is
an Orange conspiracy financed by Mr. Balfour.”

“Have you seen what the Central Council of the Irish County
Association of Greater Boston says about the Irish Players?”

“Yes; but please do not say I said so; it would make them
insufferably conceited to know that their little literary effort had
been read right through by me. You will observe that they begin by
saying that they know their Ireland as children know their mother.
Not a very happy bit of rhetoric that, because children never do know
their mothers; they may idolise them or fear them, as the case may
be, but they don’t know them.

“But can you conceive a body of Englishmen or Frenchmen or Germans
publishing such silly stuff about themselves or their country? If
they said such a thing in Ireland they would be laughed out of the
country. They declare that they are either Irish peasants or the
sons of Irish peasants. What on earth does the son of an American
emigrant know about Ireland? Fancy the emigrant himself, the man who
has left Ireland to stew in its own juice, talking about feeling
toward Ireland as children feel toward their mother. Of course a
good many children do leave their mothers to starve; but I doubt if
that was what they meant. No doubt they are peasants--a name, by the
way, which they did not pick up in Ireland, where it is unknown--for
they feel toward literature and art exactly as peasants do in all
countries; that is, they regard them as departments of vice--of what
policemen call gayety....

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Bernard Shaw, waving a cutting from the
_Post_ in his hand, “see how they trot out all the old rubbish.
‘Noble and impulsive,’ ‘generous, harum-scarum, lovable characters,’
‘generosity, wit, and triumphant true love’; these are the national
characteristics they modestly claim as Irishmen who know Ireland as
children know their mother....”

“May I ask one more question, Mr. Shaw? Who is the greatest living
Irishman?”

“Well, there are such a lot of them. Mr. Yeats could give you
off-hand the names of six men, not including himself or myself, who
may possibly turn out to be the greatest of us all; for Ireland since
she purified her soul from the Clan-na-Gael nonsense, is producing
serious men; not merely Irishmen, you understand--for an Irishman is
only a parochial man after all--but men in the fullest international
as well as national sense--the wide human sense.”

“There is an impression in America, Mr. Shaw, that you regard
yourself as the greatest man that ever lived.”

“I dare say. I sometimes think so myself when the others are doing
something exceptionally foolish. But I am only one of the first
attempts of the new Ireland. She will do better--probably has done
better already--though the product is not yet grown up enough to be
interviewed. Good morning.”


From “THE GAELIC AMERICAN”

WHAT THE IRISH COUNTY ASSOCIATIONS OF BOSTON SAID OF BERNARD SHAW

January 13, 1912:--The writer of such fool conceptions is as blind as
an eight-hour-old puppy to the operation of all spiritual agencies
in the life of man. Shaw’s writings bear about the same relation
to genuine literature as Bryan O’Lynn’s extemporised timepiece,
a scooped out turnip with a cricket within, does to the Greenwich
Observatory....

Shaw stumbles along the bogs, morasses, and sand dunes of literature,
without a terminal, leading the benighted and lost wayfarers still
farther astray. His unhappy possession of infinite egotism and his
utter lack of common sense make of him a _rara avis_ indeed, a cross
between a peacock and a gander....

In conclusion let us say before we again notice this Barnum of
literature he must produce a clean bill of sanity, superscribed by
some reputable alienist.



APPENDIX IV

IN THE EYES OF OUR ENEMIES


From “AMERICA”

THE PLAYS OF THE “IRISH” PLAYERS

November 4, 1911:--The editors, like the patriots of the Boyle
O’Reilly Club who fêted him in Boston, took Mr. Yeats at his own
none too modest estimation. The United Irish Societies of this city
denounced _The Playboy_, and an advanced Gaelic organ exposed its
barbarities, but gave a clean bill of health to Mr. Yeats and the
rest of his programme. Doubtless they also had not read the plays
they approved. Well, we have read them. We found several among them
more vile, more false, and far more dangerous than _The Playboy_,
the ‘bestial depravity’ of which carries its own condemnation; and
we deliberately pronounce them the most malignant travesty of Irish
character and of all that is sacred in Catholic life that has come
out of Ireland. The details, which are even more shocking than those
of _The Playboy_, are too indecent for citation, but the persistent
mendacity of the Yeats press agency’s clever conspiracy of puff makes
it needful to give our readers some notion of their character.

Of Synge’s plays only _Riders to the Sea_, an un-Irish adaptation
to Connacht fishermen of Loti’s _Pecheurs d’Islande_, is fit
for a decent audience. None but the most rabidly anti-Catholic,
priest-hating bigots could enjoy _The Tinkers’ Wedding_.[4] The
plot, which involves an Irish priest in companionship with the
most degraded pagans and hinges on his love of gain, may not be
even outlined by a self-respecting pen. The open lewdness and foul
suggestiveness of the language is so revolting, the picture of
the Irish priesthood, drawn by this parson’s son, is so vile and
insulting, and the mockery of the Mass and sacraments so blasphemous,
that it is unthinkable how any man of healthy mind could father it or
expect an audience to welcome it. This is the “typical Irish play”
which the “Irish Players” have presented to a Boston audience.

       *       *       *       *       *

The twain are kindred spirits; but in vileness of caricature and
bitterness of anti-Catholic animus, even Synge must yield to Yeats.
He also goes to tinkers for his types; and whereas Synge is content
with three, and one priest, Yeats’s _Where there is Nothing_[4]
glorifies a bevy of unbelieving tinkers and presents in contrast a
dozen vulgar-spoken monks, who utter snatches of Latin in peasant
brogue, while dancing frantically around the altar of God!

[4] Neither _The Tinkers’ Wedding_ nor _Where there is Nothing_ has
ever been given by our Company.--A. G.


From “THE GAELIC AMERICAN”

YEATS’S ANTI-IRISH CAMPAIGN

November 18, 1911:--The anti-Irish players come to New York on
Nov. 20th, and will appear first in some of the other plays. _The
Playboy_, it is announced, will be given later, but the date has
not yet been given out. The presentation of the monstrosity is a
challenge to the Irish people of New York which will be taken up.
There will be no parleying with theatre managers, or appeals to Lady
Gregory’s sense of decency. _The Playboy_ must be squelched, as the
stage Irishman was squelched, and a lesson taught to Mr. Yeats and
his fellow-agents of England that they will remember while they live.

       *       *       *       *       *

When a woman chooses to put herself in the company of male
blackguards she has no right to appeal for respect for her sex.


MRS. MARY F. MCWHORTER, NATIONAL CHAIRMAN, L. A., A. O. H., IRISH
HISTORY COMMITTEE, WRITING IN “THE NATIONAL HIBERNIAN,” 1913

When it was announced about two months ago that the Abbey players
would appear in repertory at the Fine Arts Theatre, in the city of
Chicago, I made up my mind to witness all of the Abbey output, if
possible, and see if they were as black as some painted them, and now
I feel I have earned the right to qualify as a critic.

Having seen them all, I have this to say, that, with one or two
exceptions, they are the sloppiest, and in most cases the vilest,
and the most character-assassinating things, in the shape of plays
it has ever been my misfortune to see. If, as has been often stated,
the plays were written with the intention of belittling the Irish
race and the ideals and traditions of that race, the playwrights have
succeeded as far as they intended, for the majority of the plays
leave us nothing to our credit.

Thinking the matter over now, I cannot understand why _The Playboy_
was picked out as the one most dangerous to our ideals. True, _The
Playboy_ is bad and very bad, but it is so glaringly so, it defeats
its own ends by causing a revulsion of feeling.

There are other plays in the collection, however, that are apparently
harmless; comedies that will cause you to laugh heartily, ’tis true,
but in the middle of the laugh you stop as if some one slapped you
in the face. You begin to see, in place of the harmless joke, an
insidious dig at something you hold sacred, or, if it is something
you think is inspiring and patriotic, right in the midst of the thing
that carries you away for a few moments on the wings of your lofty
dreams and inspirations some monster of mockery will intrude his ugly
face, and again the doubt, “Is it ridicule?” The certainty follows
the doubt quickly, and you know it is ridicule, and immediately you
are possessed of an insane desire to seek out Lady Gregory or some
one else connected with the plays and then and there commit murder.
That is, you will, if you have the welfare of your race at heart.
Of course, if you are careless, or in some cases ignorant of the
history of Ireland, or unfamiliar with the conditions there, you will
accept the teaching of the Abbey school, and say to yourself, “The
Irish are a lazy, crafty, miserly, insincere, irreligious lot after
all.”

In _The Rising of the Moon_ our patriotism is attacked, not openly,
of course, but by innuendo. We are made to appear everything but what
we are. The policy of “Let well enough alone,” is the keynote of this
play, bringing out the avarice and selfishness that, according to the
Abbey school, is a part of our nature.

It has often been said by our enemies that to have a priest in the
family is to be considered very respectable by the average Irish
Catholic family, and to bring about this desired result we are
willing to sell our immortal souls. All this, not from motives of
piety, but to be considered respectable.

In the play _Maurice Harte_ this is brought out very forcibly. The
family sacrifices everything to keep the candidate for the priesthood
in college. The candidate has no vocation, but he is not consulted
at all. When this poor, spineless creature sees the members of the
family have set their hearts upon his becoming a priest he lets
matters drift till the day set for his ordination, and then we behold
him going mad. All very far-fetched.

We do admit that we like to have a priest in the family--what Irish
mother but will cherish this hope in her bosom for at least one of
her sons, or that one of the daughters of the house will become the
spouse of Christ? Not, however, from such an unworthy motive as
to be considered respectable, but from the pure motive of serving
Almighty God.

_The Workhouse Ward_ gives you nothing more edifying than the picture
of two hateful old men snarling at each other in a truly disgusting
manner.

_Coats_ gives the picture of two seedy, down-at-elbows editors, who,
while apparently the best of friends, still are thinking unutterable
things of each other.

_The Building Fund_ is a disgusting display of avarice and
insincerity. It strikes at the roots of all we hold sacred, and
instead of being sincere, religious Catholics, the family is depicted
as grasping, miserly creatures, who have no real love for the Church.
There is not a redeeming feature in the whole play.

_Family Failing_, to my notion, is the worst of the output. _Family
Failing_, of course, is idleness and all it carries with it. It is
a strong witness in favor of that old fallacy, so often repeated by
our enemies, that it was not the cruelty of English laws that sent
us forth wanderers, but our lazy, idle, shiftless ways. The curtain
goes down after the last act of this play on a disgusting spectacle
of a lazy uncle snoring asleep on one side of the stage, and his lazy
nephew occupying the other side, snoring also.

_Kathleen ni Houlihan_ is beautiful, but every one knows Yeats
wrote this before he became a pagan and went astray. His _Countess
Cathleen_, written since then, is a weird thing.[5] One can see he
strives after his early ideals, but it is a failure, for who can
picture a sincere, devout Catholic lady calmly selling her soul
to the devil, even though it is to purchase the souls of her poor
dependents. And it is a rather dangerous lesson it teaches to the
weak minded, when the angel comes to console the weeping peasantry
after the countess dies. Supposedly in damnation, he tells them she
is saved, because of the good intention she had in selling her soul
to Old Nick.

[5] The first performance of _The Countess Cathleen_ was in 1899;
_Kathleen ni Houlihan_ was written in 1902.

_The Magnanimous Lover_ presents the nasty problem play. Of course
our humiliation would not be complete without the “problem play.” And
the words that this play puts in the mouth of the Irish peasant girl!

My blood boiled as I listened. What on earth do our Irish peasants
know about the nasty problems so much affected by certain writers of
to-day? American newspaper correspondents have commented from time to
time on the chastity of the Irish peasants, and even the hostile ones
have marvelled at the complete absence of immorality among them. But
what is that to the Irish National (?) dramatists?

It is plain to be seen the self-styled Irish writers affect the
present-day style in vogue among French writers. We have seen the
result of all this as far as France is concerned. To-day that once
proud nation is in a pitiable condition. And so the Abbey crowd would
bring about the same undesirable conditions in Ireland if they could.
By clever innuendo they would take all the splendid ideals and noble
traditions away from the Irish and leave them with nothing high or
holy to cling to. But the Abbey butchers will not succeed. They are
reckoning without their host. The Irish character is too strong and
too noble to be slain by such unworthy methods.

The plays taken as a whole have no literary merit. The backers
of the plays preach about Art with a capital A, but they have no
artistic merit, for art is truth, and the plays are not true. The
great majority of the plays are made up of nothing more than a lot
of “handy gab.” You can hear the same any day, in any large city in
Ireland, indulged in by a lot of “pot boys,” or “corner boys,” as
they are sometimes called. (May I be permitted to use the American
vulgarism, “can-rusher,” to illustrate what is meant by “corner
boy?”) Nor is the conversation much more edifying than would be
indulged in by those doubtful denizens.

With this dangerous enemy striking at the very strands of our life
and from such a dangerous source, the necessity is greater than
ever for the men and women of our beloved society to be earnest and
honest in their efforts for the revival of Irish ideals. Brothers and
Sisters everywhere, place a little history of Ireland in the hand of
each little boy and little girl of the ancient race, and all the Lady
Gregories in the world will not be able to destroy an atom of our
splendid heritage.



APPENDIX V

IN THE EYES OF OUR FRIENDS


From “THE OUTLOOK,” December 16, 1911

THE IRISH THEATRE

BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT

In the Abbey Theatre Lady Gregory and those associated with her--and
Americans should feel proud of the fact that an American was one
of the first to give her encouragement and aid--have not only made
an extraordinary contribution to the sum of Irish literary and
artistic achievement, but have done more for the drama than has
been accomplished in any other nation of recent years. England,
Australia South Africa, Hungary, and Germany are all now seeking to
profit by this unique achievement. The Abbey Theatre is one of the
healthiest signs of the revival of the ancient Irish spirit which
has been so marked a feature of the world’s progress during the
present generation; and, like every healthy movement of the kind,
it has been thoroughly national and has developed on its own lines,
refusing merely to copy what has been outworn. It is especially
noteworthy, and is a proof of the general Irish awakening, that
this vigorous expression of Irish life, so honourable to the Irish
people, should represent the combined work of so many different
persons, and not that of only one person, whose activity might be
merely sporadic and fortuitous. Incidentally Lady Gregory teaches
a lesson to us Americans, if we only have the wit to learn it. The
Irish plays are of such importance because they spring from the
soil and deal with Irish things, the familiar home things which the
writers really knew. They are not English or French; they are Irish.
In exactly the same way, any work of the kind done here, which is
really worth doing, will be done by Americans who deal with the
American life with which they are familiar; and the American who
works abroad as a make-believe Englishman or Frenchman or German--or
Irishman--will never add to the sum of first-class achievement. This
will not lessen the broad human element in the work; it will increase
it. These Irish plays appeal now to all mankind as they would never
appeal if they had attempted to be flaccidly “cosmopolitan”; they
are vital and human, and therefore appeal to all humanity, just
because those who wrote them wrote from the heart about their own
people and their own feelings, their own good and bad traits, their
own vital national interests and traditions and history. Tolstoy
wrote for mankind; but he wrote as a Russian about Russians, and if
he had not done so he would have accomplished nothing. Our American
writers, artists, dramatists, must all learn the same lesson until
it becomes instinctive with them, and with the American public.
The right feeling can be manifested in big things as well as in
little, and it must become part of our inmost National life before
we can add materially to the sum of world achievement. When that day
comes, we shall understand why a huge ornate Italian villa or French
château or make-believe castle, or, in short, any mere inappropriate
copy of some building somewhere else, is a ridiculous feature in
an American landscape, whereas many American farm-houses, and some
American big houses, fit into the landscape and add to it; we shall
use statues of such a typical American beast as the bison--which
peculiarly lends itself to the purpose--to flank the approach to a
building like the New York Library, instead of placing there, in the
worst possible taste, a couple of lions which suggest a caricature
of Trafalgar Square; we shall understand what a great artist like
Saint-Gaudens did for our coinage, and why he gave to the head of the
American Liberty the noble and decorative eagle plume head-dress of
an American horse-Indian, instead of adopting, in servile style, the
conventional and utterly inappropriate Phrygian cap.


MARY BOYLE O’REILLY IN THE BOSTON “SUNDAY POST”

October 8, 1911;--In two shorts weeks the Irish Players have done
great and lasting service to every lover of Synge’s Irish in Boston;
a service long to be held in grateful memory, a creative force
of other good to come. Very gravely and conscientiously, Lady
Gregory and Mr. William Butler Yeats have trained their players to
interpret to the children of Irish emigrants the brave and beautiful
and touching memories which, through the ignorance of the second
generation, have ceased to be cause for gratitude or pride.

Not this alone: by their fine art, the players have dealt a death
blow to the coarse and stupid burlesque of the traditional stage
Irishman, who has, for years, outraged every man and woman of Celtic
ancestry by gorilla-like buffoonery and grotesque attempts at brogue.

... Boston owes Lady Gregory and Mr. Yeats and their company not only
grateful thanks, but a very humble apology.


From “THE FREEMAN’S JOURNAL”

October 26, 1912:--It is time the Dublin public pulled itself
together and began to take a pride in its National Theatre, this
theatre which has produced in a few years more than a hundred plays
and a company of players recognised as true artists, not only by
their fellow-countrymen, but by the critics of England and America.
The Abbey Theatre has made it possible for a writer living in Ireland
and writing on Irish subjects to win a position of equal dignity with
his fellow-artist in London or Paris; it has made it possible for an
Irish man or woman with acting ability to play in the plays of their
fellow-countrymen, and to earn a decent living and win a position of
equal respect with any English or Continental actor.


From NEW YORK “JOURNAL”

December 18, 1911:--The hysterics and rowdyism that attended the
opening of the Irish plays in New York having died away, listen to a
few facts concerning the extremely interesting and valuable work of
Lady Gregory and her associates, the Irish playwrights and actors.

Some of those entirely ignorant of that which they discussed thought
that the Irish players were wilfully irreligious, and others equally
ignorant thought that they were weakly lacking in Irish patriotism.

As a matter of fact, the Irish playwrights and actors ... are
thoroughly imbued with the Irish spirit and are trying as well as
they can to present certain Irish conditions and characters as they
are, utilising literature and the drama as mediums.

... It was thought by some good people who had not seen the plays
that they were irreligious in character and showed lack of respect
especially for the Catholic faith. But this is not true.

In the play called _Mixed Marriage_ all the bigotry and religious
stupidity is shown by the old Protestant father. The unselfishness,
real patriotism, courage, and broad-minded humanity in this play are
the possessions of the Catholics--as is, indeed, usually the case in
Ireland.

It is interesting to observe how real merit wins and overcomes
ignorant prejudice.

Many of the very men that hissed and hooted at the Irish plays on
the first night without listening to them now attend the performances
regularly.

Those that enjoy most thoroughly the wonderful wit and pathos of the
Irish race, as shown in these plays, are those Irish men and women.

Sara Allgood, as the old patient wife and mother in _Mixed Marriage_,
is a perfect picture of the womanhood that has created Ireland.

Lady Gregory and her friends have rendered a real service to this
country and to Ireland by bringing the plays here.


ANONYMOUS IN CHICAGO “DAILY TRIBUNE”

February, 1912

TO LADY GREGORY

      Long be it e’er to its last anchorage
      Thy oaken keel, O “Fighting Temeraire,”
      Shall forth beyond the busy harbour fare.
      Still mayest thou the battle royal wage
      To show a people to itself; to gauge
      The depth and quality peculiar there;
      Of its humanity to catch the air
      And croon its plaintiveness upon the stage.

      Nay, great and simple seer of Erin’s seers,
      How we rejoice that thou wouldst not remain
      Beside thy hearth, bemoaning useless years,
      But hear’st with inner ear the rhythmic strain
      Of Ireland’s mystic overburdened heart
      Nor didst refuse to play thy noble part!



  TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

  Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
  corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
  the text and consultation of external sources.

  Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
  and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.

  List of Illustrations: Added entry for ‘Threatening Letter’.
  Pg 29: ‘been see in’ replaced by ‘been seen in’.
  Pg 37: ‘a for whole’ replaced by ‘for a whole’.
  Pg 37: ‘Kathleen in Houlihan’ replaced by ‘Kathleen ni Houlihan’.
  Pg 62: ‘fifteen year of’ replaced by ‘fifteen years of’.
  Pg 174: ‘perhaps a litte’ replaced by ‘perhaps a little’.
  Pg 176: ‘tell me he cook’ replaced by ‘tell me the cook’.
  Appendix V: the header line ‘From “THE OUTLOOK,” ... ’ has been
              swapped with the next line ‘IN THE EYES ... ’.



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