No More Learning

Fay has got together an excellent little company which
plays both in Gaelic and English. I may say, for I am perhaps writing
an epitaph, and epitaphs should be written in a genial spirit, that
we have turned a great deal of Irish imagination towards the stage.
We could not have done this if our movement had not opened a way of
expression for an impulse that was in the people themselves. The truth
is that the Irish people are at that precise stage of their history
when imagination, shaped by many stirring events, desires dramatic
expression. One has only to listen to a recitation of Raftery's
_Argument with Death_ at some country Feis to understand this. When
Death makes a good point, or Raftery a good point, the audience applaud
delightedly, and applaud, not as a London audience would, some verbal
dexterity, some piece of smartness, but the movements of a simple and
fundamental comedy. One sees it too in the reciters themselves, whose
acting is at times all but perfect in its vivid simplicity. I heard a
little Claddagh girl tell a folk-story at Galway Feis with a restraint
and a delightful energy that could hardly have been bettered by the
most careful training.

The organization of this movement is of immediate importance. Some of
our friends propose that somebody begin at once to get a small stock
company together, and that he invite, let us say, Mr. Benson, to find
us certain well-trained actors, Irish if possible, but well trained of
a certainty, who will train our actors, and take the more difficult
parts at the beginning. These friends contend that it is necessary to
import our experts at the beginning, for our company must be able to
compete with travelling English companies, but that a few years will be
enough to make many competent Irish actors. The Corporation of Dublin
should be asked, they say, to give a small annual sum of money, such
as they give to the Academy of Music; and the Corporations of Cork
and Limerick and Waterford, and other provincial towns, to give small
endowments in the shape of a hall and attendants and lighting for a
week or two out of every year; and the Technical Board to give a small
annual sum of money to a school of acting which would teach fencing and
declamation, and gesture and the like. The stock company would perform
in Dublin perhaps three weeks in spring, and three weeks in autumn,
and go on tour the rest of the time through Ireland, and through the
English towns where there is a large Irish population. It would perform
plays in Irish and English, and also, it is proposed, the masterpieces
of the world, making a point of performing Spanish and Scandinavian,
and French, and perhaps Greek masterpieces rather more than
Shakespeare, for Shakespeare one sees, not well done indeed, but not
unendurably ill done in the Theatre of Commerce.
It would do its best
to give Ireland a hardy and shapely national character by opening the
doors to the four winds of the world, instead of leaving the door that
is towards the east wind open alone. Certainly, the national character,
which is so essentially different from the English that Spanish and
French influences may well be most healthy, is at present like one of
those miserable thorn bushes by the sea that are all twisted to one
side by some prevailing wind.

It is contended that there is no reason why the company should not be
as successful as similar companies in Germany and Scandinavia, and
that it would be even of commercial advantage to Dublin by making it
a pleasanter place to live in, besides doing incalculable good to the
whole intellect of the country. One, at any rate, of those who press
the project on us has much practical knowledge of the stage and of
theatrical management, and knows what is possible and what is not
possible.

Others among our friends, and among these are some who have had more
than their share of the hard work which has built up the intellectual
movement in Ireland, argue that a theatre of this kind would require
too much money to be free, that it could not touch on politics, the
most vital passion and vital interest of the country, as they say,
and that the attitude of continual compromise between conviction and
interest, which it would necessitate, would become demoralising to
everybody concerned, especially at moments of political excitement.
They tell us that the war between an Irish Ireland and an English
Ireland is about to become much fiercer, to divide families and friends
it may be, and that the organisations that will lead in the war must
be able to say everything the people are thinking. They would have
Irishmen give their plays to a company like Mr. Fay's, when they are
within its power, and if not, to Mr. Benson or to any other travelling
company which will play them in Ireland without committees, where
everybody compromises a little. In this way, they contend, we would
soon build up an Irish theatre from the ground, escaping to some extent
the conventions of the ordinary theatre, and English voices which
give a foreign air to one's words. And though we might have to wait
some years, we would get even the masterpieces of the world in good
time. Let us, they think, be poor enough to whistle at the thief who
would take away some of our thoughts, and after Mr. Fay has taken his
company, as he plans, through the villages and the country towns, he
will get the little endowment that is necessary, or if he does not some
other will.

I do not know what Lady Gregory or Mr. Moore think of these projects.
I am not going to say what I think.