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.