No More Learning

Sheridan and Goldsmith, when they restored comedy after an epoch of
sentimentalities, had to apologise for their satiric genius by scenes
of conventional love-making and sentimental domesticity that have set
them outside the company of all, whether their genius be great or
little, whose work is pure and whole. The quarrel of our Theatre to-day
is the quarrel of the Theatre in many lands; for the old Puritanism,
the old dislike of power and reality have not changed, even when they
are called by some Gaelic name.

[On the second performance of _The Playboy of the
Western World_ about forty men who sat in the middle
of the pit succeeded in making the play entirely
inaudible. Some of them brought tin-trumpets, and the
noise began immediately on the rise of the curtain. For
days articles in the Press called for the withdrawal
of the play, but we played for the seven nights we
had announced; and before the week's end opinion had
turned in our favour. There were, however, nightly
disturbances and a good deal of rioting in the
surrounding streets. On the last night of the play
there were, I believe, five hundred police keeping
order in the theatre and in its neighbourhood. Some
days later our enemies, though beaten so far as the
play was concerned, crowded into the cheaper seats for
a debate on the freedom of the stage. They were very
excited, and kept up the discussion until near twelve.
The last paragraphs of my opening statement ran as
follows. ]

_From Mr. Yeats' opening Speech in the Debate on February 4, 1907, at
the Abbey Theatre. _

The struggle of the last week has been long a necessity; various
paragraphs in newspapers describing Irish attacks on Theatres had made
many worthy young men come to think that the silencing of a stage at
their own pleasure, even if hundreds desired that it should not be
silenced, might win them a little fame, and, perhaps, serve their
country. Some of these attacks have been made on plays which are in
themselves indefensible, vulgar and old-fashioned farces and comedies.
But the attack, being an annihilation of civil rights, was never
anything but an increase of Irish disorder.
The last I heard of was in
Liverpool, and there a stage was rushed, and a priest, who had set a
play upon it, withdrew his play and apologised to the audience. We have
not such pliant bones, and did not learn in the houses that bred us a
so suppliant knee. But behind the excitement of example there is a
more fundamental movement of opinion. Some seven or eight years ago the
National movement was democratised and passed from the hands of a few
leaders into those of large numbers of young men organised in clubs and
societies. These young men made the mistake of the newly-enfranchised
everywhere; they fought for causes worthy in themselves with the
unworthy instruments of tyranny and violence. Comic songs of a certain
kind were to be driven from the stage, everyone was to wear Irish
cloth, everyone was to learn Irish, everyone was to hold certain
opinions, and these ends were sought by personal attacks, by virulent
caricature and violent derision. It needs eloquence to persuade and
knowledge to expound; but the coarser means come ready to every man's
hand, as ready as a stone or a stick, and where these coarse means are
all, there is nothing but mob, and the commonest idea most prospers and
is most sought for.

Gentlemen of the little clubs and societies, do not mistake the meaning
of our victory; it means something for us, but more for you. When the
curtain of _The Playboy_ fell on Saturday night in the midst of what
_The Sunday Independent_--no friendly witness--described as 'thunders
of applause,' I am confident that I saw the rise in this country of
a new thought, a new opinion, that we had long needed. It was not
all approval of Mr. Synge's play that sent the receipts of the Abbey
Theatre this last week to twice the height they had ever touched
before. The generation of young men and girls who are now leaving
schools or colleges are weary of the tyranny of clubs and leagues. They
wish again for individual sincerity, the eternal quest of truth, all
that has been given up for so long that all might crouch upon the one
roost and quack or cry in the one flock. We are beginning once again
to ask what a man is, and to be content to wait a little before we go
on to that further question: What is a good Irishman? There are some
who have not yet their degrees that will say to friend or neighbour,
'You have voted with the English, and that is bad'; or 'You have sent
away your Irish servants, or thrown away your Irish clothes, or blacked
your face for your singing. I despise what you have done, I keep you
still my friend; but if you are terrorised out of doing any of these
things, evil things though I know them to be, I will not have you for
my friend any more.