"Where There Is Nothing" is as true an interpretation of the philosophy
of Anarchism as could be given by its best exponents. I say this not out
of any wish to tag Mr. Yeats, but because the ideal of _Paul Ruttledge_,
the hero of the play, is nothing less than Anarchism applied to everyday
life.
_Paul Ruttledge_, a man of wealth, comes to the conclusion, after a long
process of development and growth, that riches are wrong, and that the
life of the propertied is artificial, useless and inane.
_Paul Ruttledge._ When I hear these people talking I always hear
some organized or vested interest chirp or quack, as it does in the
newspapers. I would like to have great iron claws, and to put them
about the pillars, and to pull and pull till everything fell into
pieces.... Sometimes I dream I am pulling down my own house, and
sometimes it is the whole world that I am pulling down.... When
everything was pulled down we would have more room to get drunk in,
to drink contentedly out of the cup of life, out of the drunken cup
of life.
He decides to give up his position and wealth and cast his lot in with
the tinkers--an element we in America know as "hoboes," men who tramp
the highways making their living as they go about, mending kettles and
pots, earning an honest penny without obligation or responsibility to
anyone. _Paul Ruttledge_ longs for the freedom of the road,--to sleep
under the open sky, to count the stars, to be free. He throws off all
artificial restraint and is received with open arms by the tinkers. To
identify himself more closely with their life, he marries a tinker's
daughter--not according to the rites of State or Church, but in true
tinker fashion--in freedom--bound only by the promise to be faithful and
"not hurt each other."
In honor of the occasion, _Paul_ tenders to his comrades and the people
of the neighborhood a grand feast, full of the spirit of life's joy,--an
outpouring of gladness that lasts a whole week.
_Paul's_ brother, his friends, and the authorities are incensed over the
carousal. They demand that he terminate the "drunken orgy."
_Mr. Joyce._ This is a disgraceful business, Paul; the whole
countryside is demoralized. There is not a man who has come to
sensible years who is not drunk.
_Mr. Dowler._ This is a flagrant violation of all propriety. Society
is shaken to its roots. My own servants have been led astray by the
free drinks that are being given in the village. My butler, who has
been with me for seven years, has not been seen for the last two
days.
_Mr. Algie._ I endorse his sentiments completely. There has not been
a stroke of work done for the last week. The hay is lying in ridges
where it has been cut, there is not a man to be found to water the
cattle. It is impossible to get as much as a horse shod in the
village.
_Paul Ruttledge._ I think _you_ have something to say, Colonel
Lawley?
_Colonel Lawley._ I have undoubtedly. I want to know when law and
order are to be reëstablished. The police have been quite unable to
cope with the disorder. Some of them have themselves got drunk. If
my advice had been taken the military would have been called in.
_Mr. Green._ The military are not indispensable on occasions like
the present. There are plenty of police coming now. We have wired to
Dublin for them, they will be here by the four o'clock train.
_Paul Ruttledge._ But you have not told me what you have come here
for. Is there anything I can do for you?
_Mr. Green._ We have come to request you to go to the public-houses,
to stop the free drinks, to send the people back to their work. As
for those tinkers, the law will deal with them when the police
arrive.
_Paul Ruttledge._ I wanted to give a little pleasure to my
fellow-creatures.
_Mr. Dowler._ This seems rather a low form of pleasure.
_Paul Ruttledge._ I daresay it seems to you a little violent. But
the poor have very few hours in which to enjoy themselves; they must
take their pleasure raw; they haven't the time to cook it. Have we
not tried sobriety? Do you like it? I found it very dull.... Think
what it is to them to have their imagination like a blazing
tar-barrel for a whole week. Work could never bring them such
blessedness as that.
_Mr. Dowler._ Everyone knows there is no more valuable blessing than
work.
_Paul Ruttledge_ decides to put his visitors "on trial," to let them see
themselves as they are in all their hypocrisy, all their corruption.
He charges the military man, _Colonel Lawley_, with calling himself a
Christian, yet following the business of man-killing. The Colonel is
forced to admit that he had ordered his men to fight in a war, of the
justice of which they knew nothing, or did not believe in, and yet it is
"the doctrine of your Christian church, of your Catholic church, that he
who fights in an unjust war, knowing it to be unjust, loses his own
soul." Of the rich man _Dowler_, _Paul Ruttledge_ demands whether he
could pass through the inside of a finger ring, and on _Paul's_
attention being called by one of the tinkers to the fine coat of _Mr.
Dowler_, he tells him to help himself to it. Threatened by _Mr. Green_,
the spokesman of the law, with encouraging robbery, _Ruttledge_
admonishes him.
_Ruttledge._ Remember the commandment, "Give to him that asketh
thee"; and the hard commandment goes even farther, "Him that taketh
thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also."
But the worst indictment _Ruttledge_ hurls against _Mr. Green_. The
other professed Christians kill, murder, do not love their enemies, and
do not give to any man that asks of them. But the Greens, _Rutledge_
says, are the worst of all. For the others break the law of Christ for
their own pleasure, but "you take pay for breaking it; when their goods
are taken away you condemn the taker; when they are smitten on one cheek
you punish the smiter. You encourage them in their breaking of the Law
of Christ."
For several years _Ruttledge_ lives the life of the tinkers. But of weak
physique, he finds himself unable to withstand the rigors of the road.
His health breaks down, and his faithful comrades carry him to his
native town and bring him to a monastery where _Paul_ is cared for by
the priests. While there he begins to preach a wonderful gospel, a
gospel strange to the friars and the superior,--so rebellious and
terrible that he is declared a dissenter, a heathen and a dangerous
character.
_Paul Ruttledge._ Now I can give you the message that has come to
me.... Lay down your palm branches before this altar; you have
brought them as a sign that the walls are beginning to be broken up,
that we are going back to the joy of the green earth.... For a long
time after their making men and women wandered here and there, half
blind from the drunkenness of Eternity; they had not yet forgotten
that the green Earth was the Love of God, and that all Life was the
Will of God, and so they wept and laughed and hated according to
the impulse of their hearts. They gathered the great Earth to their
breasts and their lips, ... in what they believed would be an
eternal kiss. It was then that the temptation began. The men and
women listened to them, and because when they had lived ... in
mother wit and natural kindness, they sometimes did one another an
injury, they thought that it would be better to be safe than to be
blessed, they made the Laws. The Laws were the first sin. They were
the first mouthful of the apple; the moment man had made them he
began to die; we must put out the Laws as I put out this candle. And
when they had lived amidst the green Earth that is the Love of God,
they were sometimes wetted by the rain, and sometimes cold and
hungry, and sometimes alone from one another; they thought it would
be better to be comfortable than to be blessed. They began to build
big houses and big towns. They grew wealthy and they sat chattering
at their doors; and the embrace that was to have been eternal
ended.... We must put out the towns as I put out this candle. But
that is not all, for man created a worse thing.... Man built up the
Church. We must destroy the Church, we must put it out as I put out
this candle.... We must destroy everything that has Law and Number.
The rebel is driven from the monastery. He is followed by only two
faithful friars, his disciples, who go among the people to disseminate
the new gospel. But the people fail to understand them. Immersed in
darkness and superstition, they look upon these strange men as
evildoers. They accuse them of casting an evil spell on their cattle and
disturbing the people's peace. The path of the crusader is thorny, and
_Colman_, the friar disciple of _Paul_, though faithful for a time,
become discouraged in the face of opposition and persecution. He
weakens.
_Colman._ It's no use stopping waiting for the wind; if we have
anything to say that's worth the people listening to, we must bring
them to hear it one way or another. Now, it is what I was saying to
Aloysius, we must begin teaching them to make things, they never had
the chance of any instruction of this sort here. Those and other
things, we got a good training in the old days. And we'll get a
grant from the Technical Board. The Board pays up to four hundred
pounds to some of its instructors.
_Paul Ruttledge._ Oh, I understand; you will sell them. And what
about the dividing of the money? You will need to make laws about
that. Oh, we will grow quite rich in time.
_Colman._ We'll build workshops and houses for those who come to
work from a distance, good houses, slated, not thatched.... They
will think so much more of our teaching when we have got them under
our influence by other things. Of course we will teach them their
meditations, and give them a regular religious life. We must settle
out some little place for them to pray in--there's a high gable over
there where we could hang a bell--
_Paul Ruttledge._ Oh, yes, I understand. You would weave them
together like this, you would add one thing to another, laws and
money and church and bells, till you had got everything back again
that you have escaped from. But it is my business to tear things
asunder.
_Aloysius._ Brother Paul, it is what I am thinking; now the tinkers
have come back to you, you could begin to gather a sort of an army;
you can't fight your battle without an army. They would call to the
other tinkers, and the tramps and the beggars, and the sieve-makers
and all the wandering people. It would be a great army.
_Paul Ruttledge._ Yes, that would be a great army, a great wandering
army.
_Aloysius._ The people would be afraid to refuse us then; we would
march on--
_Paul Ruttledge._ We could march on. We could march on the towns,
and we could break up all settled order; we could bring back the old
joyful, dangerous, individual life. We would have banners. We will
have one great banner that will go in front, it will take two men to
carry it, and on it we will have Laughter--
_Aloysius._ That will be the banner for the front. We will have
different troops, we will have captains to organize them, to give
them orders.
_Paul Ruttledge._ To organize? That is to bring in law and number.
Organize--organize--that is how all the mischief has been done. I
was forgetting,--we cannot destroy the world with armies; it is
inside our minds that it must be destroyed.
Deserted, _Paul Ruttledge_ stands alone in his crusade, like most
iconoclasts. Misunderstood and persecuted, he finally meets his death at
the hands of the infuriated mob.
"Where There Is Nothing" is of great social significance, deeply
revolutionary in the sense that it carries the message of the
destruction of every institution--State, Property, and Church--that
enslaves humanity. _For where there is nothing, there man begins._
A certain critic characterized this play as a "statement of revolt
against the despotism of facts." Is there a despotism more compelling
and destructive than that of the facts of property, of the State and
Church? But "Where There Is Nothing" is not merely a "statement" of
revolt. It embodies the spirit of revolt itself, of that most
constructive revolt which begins with the destruction of every obstacle
in the path of the new life that is to grow on the débris of the old,
when the paralyzing yoke of institutionalism shall have been broken, and
man left free to enjoy Life and Laughter.