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.