seem a divine being fallen into our mortal infirmity. Since then
the part has been twice played in America by women who insisted on
keeping their young faces, and one of these when she came to the door
dropped her cloak, as I have been told, and showed a white satin
dress embroidered with shamrocks. Upon another,—or was it the same
occasion?—the player of Bridget wore a very becoming dress of the time
of Louis the Fourteenth. The most beautiful woman of her time, when
she played my Cathleen, ‘made up’ centuries old, and never should the
part be played but with a like sincerity. This was the first play of
our Irish School of folk-drama, and in it that way of quiet movement
and careful speech which has given our players some little fame first
showed itself, arising partly out of deliberate opinion and partly out
of the ignorance of the players. Does art owe most to ignorance or
to knowledge? Certainly it comes to its deathbed full of knowledge.
I cannot imagine this play, or any folk-play of our school, acted by
players with no knowledge of the peasant, and of the awkwardness and
stillness of bodies that have followed the plough, or too lacking in
humility to copy these things without convention or caricature.
The lines beginning ‘Do not make a great keening’ and ‘They shall be
remembered for ever’ are said or sung to an air heard by one of the
players in a dream. This music is with the other music at the end of
the third volume.
APPENDIX III
_THE GOLDEN HELMET._
_The Golden Helmet_ was produced at the Abbey Theatre on March 19,
1908, with the following cast:—Cuchulain, J. M. Kerrigan; Conal, Arthur
Sinclair; Leagerie, Fred. O’ Donovan; Laeg, Sydney Morgan; Emer, Sara
Allgood; Conal’s Wife, Maire O’Neill; Leagerie’s Wife, Eileen O’
Doherty; Red Man, Ambrose Power; Horseboys, Scullions, and Black Men,
S. Hamilton, T. J. Fox, U. Wright, D. Robertson, T. O’Neill, I. A.
O’Rourke, P. Kearney.
In performance we left the black hands to the imagination, and probably
when there is so much noise and movement on the stage they would
always fail to produce any effect. Our stage is too small to try the
experiment, for they would be hidden by the figures of the players.
We staged the play with a very pronounced colour-scheme, and I have
noticed that the more obviously decorative is the scene and costuming
of any play, the more it is lifted out of time and place, and the
nearer to faeryland do we carry it. One gets also much more effect
out of concerted movements—above all, if there are many players—when
all the clothes are the same colour. No breadth of treatment gives
monotony when there is movement and change of lighting. It concentrates
attention on every new effect and makes every change of outline or of
light and shadow surprising and delightful. Because of this one can
use contrasts of colour, between clothes and background, or in the
background itself, the complementary colours for instance, which would
be too obvious to keep the attention in a painting. One wishes to make
the movement of the action as important as possible, and the simplicity
which gives depth of colour does this, just as, for precisely similar
reasons, the lack of colour in a statue fixes the attention upon the
form.
The play is founded upon an old Irish story, _The Feast of Bricriu_,
given in _Cuchulain of Muirthemne_, and is meant as an introduction to
_On Baile’s Strand_.
APPENDIX IV
DATES AND PLACES OF THE FIRST PERFORMANCE OF NEW PLAYS PRODUCED BY THE
NATIONAL THEATRE SOCIETY AND ITS PREDECESSORS:—
1899.
IRISH LITERARY THEATRE AT ANTIENT CONCERT ROOMS.
May 8th. _The Countess Cathleen_, by W. B. Yeats.
May 9th. _The Heather Field_, by Edward Martyn.
1900.
IRISH LITERARY THEATRE AT THE GAIETY THEATRE.
{_The Last Feast of the Fianna_, by Alice Milligan.
Feb. 19th. {
{_Maeve_, by Edward Martyn.
Feb. 20th. _The Bending of the Bough_, by George Moore.
1901.
Oct. 21st. _Diarmuid and Grania_, by W. B. Yeats and George
Moore.
_The Twisting of the Rope_, by Douglas Hyde (first
Gaelic play produced in a theatre).
1902.
MR. W. G. FAY’S IRISH NATIONAL DRAMATIC COMPANY AT ST. TERESA’S HALL,
CLARENDON STREET.
{_Deirdre_, by ‘A.E.’
April 2nd. {
{_Cathleen ni Houlihan_, by W. B. Yeats.
IRISH NATIONAL DRAMATIC COMPANY AT ANTIENT CONCERT ROOMS.
{_The Sleep of the King_, by Seumas O’Cuisin.
Oct. 29th. {
{_The Laying of the Foundations_, by Fred Ryan.
Oct. 30th. _A Pot of Broth_, by W. B. Yeats.
Oct. 31st. _The Racing Lug_, by Seumas O’Cuisin.
1903.
IRISH NATIONAL THEATRE SOCIETY, MOLESWORTH HALL.
{_The Hour-Glass_, by W. B. Yeats.
March 14th. {
{_Twenty-five_, by Lady Gregory.
{_The King’s Threshold_, by W. B. Yeats.
Oct. 8th. {
{_In the Shadow of the Glen_, by J. M. Synge.
Dec. 3rd. _Broken Soil_, by P. Colm.
1904.
{_The Shadowy Waters_, by W. B. Yeats.
Jan. 14th. {
{_The Townland of Tamney_, by Seumas MacManus.
Feb. 25th. _Riders to the Sea_, by J. M. Synge.
IRISH NATIONAL THEATRE SOCIETY AT THE ABBEY THEATRE.
{_On Baile’s Strand_, by W. B. Yeats.
Dec. 27th. {
{_Spreading the News_, by Lady Gregory.
1905.
Feb. 4th. _The Well of the Saints_, by J. M. Synge.
March 25th. _Kincora_, by Lady Gregory.
April 25th. _The Building Fund_, by William Boyle.
June 9th. _The Land_, by P. Colm.
NATIONAL THEATRE SOCIETY, LTD.
Dec. 9th. _The White Cockade_, by Lady Gregory.
1906.
Jan. 20th. _The Eloquent Dempsey_, by William Boyle.
Feb. 19th. _Hyacinth Halvey_, by Lady Gregory.
{_The Gaol Gate_, by Lady Gregory.
Oct. 20th. {
{_The Mineral Workers_, by William Boyle.
Nov. 24th. _Deirdre_, by W. B. Yeats.
{_The Shadowy Waters_ (new version), by W. B. Yeats.
Dec. 8th. {
{_The Canavans_, by Lady Gregory.
1907.
Jan. 26th. _The Playboy of the Western World_, by J. M. Synge.
Feb. 23rd. _The Jackdaw_, by Lady Gregory.
March 9th. _Rising of the Moon_, by Lady Gregory.
April 1st. _The Eyes of the Blind_, by Miss W. M. Letts.
April 3rd. _The Poorhouse_, by Lady Gregory and Douglas Hyde.
April 27th. _Fand_, by Wilfred Scawen Blunt.
Oct. 3rd. _The Country Dressmaker_, by George Fitzmaurice.
{_Dervorgilla_, by Lady Gregory.
Oct. 31st. {
{_The Canavans_ (new version), by Lady Gregory.
Nov. 21st. _The Unicorn from the Stars_, by Lady Gregory and
W. B. Yeats.
1908.
{_The Man who Missed the Tide_, by W. F. Casey.
Feb. 15th. {
{_The Piper_, by Norreys Connell.
{_The Pie-dish_, by George Fitzmaurice.
March 19th. {
{_The Golden Helmet_, by W. B. Yeats.
April 20th. _The Workhouse Ward_, by Lady Gregory.
In addition to these plays, many of which are
constantly revived, translations of foreign
masterpieces are given occasionally.
It was not until the opening of the Abbey Theatre that
Lady Gregory, Mr. J. M. Synge, and Mr. W. B. Yeats
became entirely responsible for the selection of plays,
though they had been mainly so from 1903.
_Corrigenda._—P. 120, l. 5, for ‘severe’ read
‘serious’; p. 143, l. 4, for ‘prepared’ read
‘performed’; p. 176, l. 29, for ‘_their_ own day’ read
‘_our_ own day.’
_Printed by A. H. BULLEN, at The Shakespeare Head Press,
Stratford-on-Avon._
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Page 22, “aoor” changed to “door” (through the kitchen door)
Page 177, “monotous” changed to “monotonous” (monotonous to an ear)
Page 202, “A’Kempis” changed to “à Kempis” (wrote S. Thomas à Kempis)