By JOSEPH HOLLOWAY.
The Irish theatre and secular drama may be said to begin with the
production of James Shirley's historical play, _St. Patrick for
Ireland_, in Werburgh Street Theatre, about 1636-7; and though Dublin
was a great school for acting, and supplied many of the best players
to the English stage, such as Quin, Macklin, Peg Woffington, Miss
O'Neill, and hosts of others, it never really possessed a creative
theatre (save at the Capel Street Theatre for a few years during the
Grattan Parliament) until the modern movement in Ireland came into
being and the Abbey Theatre became its headquarters.
Of course, innumerable plays by Irish writers were written, but most
of them were not distinctively Irish in character; and the names of
Goldsmith, Sheridan, O'Keeffe, Farquhar, Sheridan Knowles, Oscar
Wilde, and dozens of others will always be remembered as great Irish
writers for the stage. And when fine impersonators of Irish character
like Tyrone Power, John Drew, or Barney Williams arrived, there were
always to be found several clever writers to fit them with parts, the
demand always creating the supply.
Even before Dion Boucicault took to writing Irish dramas of a more
palatable and less "stage-Irish" character than those of his
immediate predecessors, some excellent plays, Irish in character and
tone, had from time to time found their way to the stage. However,
Boucicault sweetened our stage by the production of _The Colleen
Bawn, Arrah-na-Pogue_, and _The Shaughraun_, and showed by his
rollicking impersonations of Myles, Shan, and Conn, how good-humored,
hearty, and self-sacrificing Irish boys in humble life can be. He had
great technical knowledge of stagecraft, and that has helped to make
his Irish plays live in the popular goodwill right up to today.
A revolt against Boucicault's Irish boys, all fun and frolic, and
charming colleens, who could do no wrong, has made our modern
playwrights go to the other extreme; so that now we find our stage
peopled with peasants, cruel, hard, and forbidding for the most part,
and with colleens who are the reverse of lovable in thought or act.
Neither picture is quite true of our people. What is really wanted is
the happy medium, which few, if any, of our new playwrights have yet
given us.
If our great popular Irish drama has yet to come, I think the Fays
have made it possible to say that a distinct and really fine dramatic
school has arisen in Ireland, evolved out of their wonderful skill in
teaching, producing, and acting; and if we are not always really
delighted with what our playwrights give us, the almost perfect way
in which the plays are served up by the actors invariably wholly
satisfies. It is the actors who have made the Abbey Theatre famous,
and not the plays. Such acting as theirs cast a spell over all who
see them. What pleasing memories do the names of W.G. Fay, Frank J.
Fay, Dudley Digges, Sara Allgood, Arthur Sinclair, Maire O'Neill,
Maire ni Shuiblaigh, J.M. Kerrigan, Fred O'Donovan, Eileen O'Doherty,
Una O'Connor, Eithne Magee, Nora Desmond, and John Connolly recall!
With the production of W.B. Yeats's poetic one-act play, _The Land of
Heart's Desire_, at the Avenue Theatre, London, on March 29, 1894,
began the modern Irish dramatic movement. When the poet had tasted
the joys of the footlights, he longed to see an Irish Literary
Theatre realized in Ireland. Five years later, in the Antient Concert
Rooms, Dublin, on May 9, 1899, his play, _The Countess Cathleen_, was
produced, and his desire gratified. The experiment was tried for
three years and then dropped; plays by Yeats, Edward Martyn, George
Moore, and Alice Milligan were staged with English-trained actors in
the casts; and a Gaelic play--the first ever presented in a theatre
in Ireland--was also given during the third season. It was _The
Twisting of the Rope_, by Dr. Douglas Hyde, and was played at the
Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, on October 21, 1901, by a Gaelic Amateur
Dramatic Society coached by W.G. Fay. The author filled the principal
part with distinction.
It was while rehearsing this play that the thought came to Fay: "Why
not have my little company of Irish-born actors--the Ormond Dramatic
Society--appear in plays by Irish writers instead of in the ones they
have been giving for years?" And the thought soon ripened into
realization. His brother, Frank, had dreamed of such a company since
he read of the small beginnings out of which the Norwegian Theatre
had grown; and just then, seeing some of "Æ's" (George Russell's)
play, _Deirdre_, in the _All Ireland Review_, he asked the author if
he would allow them to produce it, and, consent being given, the
company put it into rehearsal at once. "Æ" got for them from Yeats
_Kathleen-Ni-Houlihan_, to make up the programme. Thus it was that
this company of amateurs and poets, now known as the Abbey Players,
came into existence, and at St. Teresa's Hall, Clarendon Street,
Dublin, gave their first performance on April 2, 1902.
Shortly afterwards they took a hall at the back of a shop in Camden
Street, where they rehearsed and gave a few public performances. On
"Æ" declining to be their president, Frank Fay suggested the name of
W.B. Yeats, and he was elected, and in that way came again into the
movement in which he has figured so largely ever since.
The company played occasionally in the Molesworth Hall, and produced
there, among other pieces, Synge's _In the Shadow of the Glen_
(October 8, 1903) and _Riders to the Sea_ (February 25, 1904);
Yeats's _The Hour Glass_ (March 14, 1903) and _The King's Threshold_
(October 8, 1903); Lady Gregory's _Twenty-five_ (March 14,1903); and
Padraic Colum's _Broken Soil_ (December 3, 1903).
On March 26, 1904, the company paid a flying one-day visit to the
Royalty, London, and Miss A.E.F. Horniman, who had given Shaw, Yeats,
and Dr. John Todhunter their first real start as playwrights at the
Avenue, London, in March-April, 1894 (Shaw had had his first play,
_Widowers' Houses_, played by the Independent Theatre in 1892), saw
the performance, and was so impressed that she thought she would like
to find a suitable home for such talent in Dublin, and fixed upon the
old Mechanics' Institute and its surrounding buildings, and there the
Abbey Theatre soon afterwards--on December 27, 1904--came into
existence.
In writing of this Irish dramatic movement, one must always bear in
mind that it was Yeats who first conceived the idea of such a
movement; the Fays who founded the school of Irish acting; and Miss
Horniman who, like a fairy godmother, waved the wand, and gave it a
habitation and a name--the Abbey Theatre--and endowed it for six
years.
Play followed play with great rapidity, and dramatic societies sprang
up all over the country, playing home-made productions in Gaelic and
English. All Ireland seemed to be play-acting and play-writing; so
much so that Frank Fay was heard to say that "he thought everyone had
a play in his pocket, and that anyone in the street could be picked
up and shaped into an actor or actress with a little training,
Ireland was so teeming with talent!"
Dramatic Ireland had slumbered for a long while, and awoke with
tremendous vigor for work. New dramatists sprang up in all parts of
Ireland; The Ulster Literary Theatre started in Belfast; The Cork
Dramatic Society, in Cork; The Theatre of Ireland, in Dublin; and
others in Galway and Waterford soon followed. In Dublin at present
more than half a dozen dramatic societies are continually producing
new plays and discovering new acting talent. There are also two
Gaelic dramatic societies. And nearly every town in Ireland now has
its own dramatic class and its own dramatists. All this activity has
come about within the last ten or twelve years, where, before, in
many places, drama and acting were almost unknown.
Many Gaelic societies throughout the country put on Gaelic plays by
Dr. Douglas Hyde, Pierce Beasley, Thomas Haynes, Canon Peter O'Leary,
and others; and the _Oireachtas_ (the Gaelic musical and literary
festival) held each year in Dublin usually presents several Irish
plays and offers prizes for new ones at each festival.
Of all the Irish playwrights who have arisen in recent years, Lady
Gregory has produced most and W.B. Yeats is the most poetic. He is
more a lyric poet than a dramatist, and is never satisfied with his
work for the stage, but keeps eternally chopping and changing it. His
_Kathleen-Ni-Houlihan_, though a dream-play, always appeals to an
audience of Irish people. Perhaps his one-act _Deirdre_ is the
nearest approach to real drama he has done. Some of Lady Gregory's
earlier one-act farces, such as _The Workhouse-Ward_, are very
amusing; _The Rising of the Moon_ is a little dramatic gem, and _The
Gaol Gate_ is touched with genuine tragedy. Synge wrote only one
play--_Riders to the Sea_--that acts well. The others are admired by
critics for the strangeness of their diction and the beauty of the
nature-pictures scattered through them. His much-discussed _Playboy
of the Western World_ has become famous for the rows it has created
at home and abroad from its very first production on January 26,
1907. William Boyle, who gets to the heart of those he writes about,
has produced the most popular play of the movement in _The Eloquent
Dempsey_, and a perfectly constructed one in _The Building Fund_.
W.F. Casey's two plays--_The Man Who Missed the Tide_ and _The
Suburban Groove_--are both popular and actable. Padraic Colum's
plays--_The Land_ and _Broken Soil_ (the latter rewritten and renamed
_The Fiddler's House_)--are almost idyllic scenes of country life.
Lennox Robinson's plays are harsh in tone, but dramatically
effective, and T.C. Murray's _Birthright_ and _Maurice Harte_ are
fine dramas, well constructed and full of true knowledge of the
people he writes about. Seumas O'Kelly has written two strong dramas
in _The Shuiler's Child_ and _The Bribe_, and Seumas O'Brien one of
the funniest Irish farces ever staged in _Duty_. R.J. Ray's play,
_The Casting Out of Martin Whelan_, is the best this dramatist has as
yet given us, and George Fitzmaurice's _The Country Dressmaker_ has
the elements of good drama in it. St. John G. Ervine has written a
very human drama in _Mixed Marriage_. He hails from the north of
Ireland; but Rutherford Mayne is the best of the Northern
playwrights, and his plays, _The Drone_ and _The Turn of the Road_,
are splendid homely county Down comedies.
Bernard Shaw's _John Bull's Other Island_, as Irish plays go, is a
fine specimen; Canon Hannay has written two successful comedies,
_Eleanor's Enterprise_ and _General John Regan_--the latter not
wholly to the taste of the people of the west. James Stephens and
Jane Barlow have also tried their hands at playwriting, with but
moderate success. Perhaps the modern drama that made the most
impression when first played was _The Heather Field_, by Edward
Martyn. It gripped and remains a lasting memory with all who saw it
in 1899. But I think I have written enough to show that the Irish
Theatre of today is in a very alive condition, and that if the great
National Dramatist has not yet arrived, he is sure to emerge. When
that time comes, the actors are here ready to interpret such work to
perfection.
An article, however brief, on the Irish Theatre, would be incomplete
without mention of the world-famous tragedians, John Edward
MacCullough, Lawrence Patrick Barrett, and Barry Sullivan; of genial
comedians like Charles Sullivan and Hubert O'Grady; of sterling
actors like Shiel Barry, John Brougham, Leonard Boyne, J.D.
Beveridge, and Thomas Nerney; or of operatic artists like Denis
O'Sullivan and Joseph O'Mara--many of whom have passed away, but
some, fortunately, are with us still.