No More Learning

DEIRDRE.

Has he no messenger--

[Etc. , etc. ]

The play then goes on unchanged, except that on page 151, instead of
the short speech of Deirdre, beginning 'Safety and peace,' one should
read

'Safety and peace!
I had them when a child, but from that hour
I have found life obscure and violent,
And think that I shall find it so for ever. '




APPENDIX III.

THE LEGENDARY AND MYTHOLOGICAL FOUNDATION OF THE PLAYS.


The greater number of the stories I have used, and persons I have
spoken of, are in Lady Gregory's _Gods and Fighting Men_ and _Cuchulain
of Muirthemne_. If my small Dublin audience for poetical drama grows to
any size, whether now or at some future time, I shall owe it to these
two books, masterpieces of prose, which can but make the old stories
as familiar to Irishmen at any rate as are the stories of Arthur and
his Knights to all readers of books. I cannot believe that it is from
friendship that I weigh these books with Malory, and feel no discontent
at the tally, or that it is the wish to make the substantial origin
of my own art familiar, that would make me give them before all other
books to young men and girls in Ireland. I wrote for the most part
before they were written, but all, or all but all, is there. I took the
Aengus and Edain of _The Shadowy Waters_ from poor translations of the
various Aengus stories, which, new translated by Lady Gregory, make up
so much of what is most beautiful in both her books. They had, however,
so completely become a part of my own thought that in 1897, when I was
still working on an early version of _The Shadowy Waters_, I saw one
night with my bodily eyes, as it seemed, two beautiful persons, who
would, I believe, have answered to their names. The plot of the play
itself has, however, no definite old story for its foundation, but was
woven to a very great extent out of certain visionary experiences.

The foundations of _Deirdre_ and of _On Baile's Strand_ are stories
called respectively the 'Fate of the Sons of Usnach' and 'The Son of
Aoife' in _Cuchulain of Muirthemne_.
_The King's Threshold_ is, however, founded upon a middle-Irish story
of the demands of the poets at the Court of King Guaire of Gort, but I
have twisted it about and revised its moral that the poet might have
the best of it. It owes something to a play on the same subject by my
old friend Edwin Ellis, who heard the story from me and wrote of it
long ago.




APPENDIX IV.

THE DATES AND PLACES OF PERFORMANCE OF PLAYS.


_The King's Threshold_ was first played October 7th, 1903, in the
Molesworth Hall, Dublin, by the Irish National Theatre Society, and
with the following cast:

Seanchan FRANK FAY
King Guaire P. KELLY
Lord High Chamberlain SEUMUS O'SULLIVAN
Soldier WILLIAM CONROY
Monk S. SHERIDAN-NEILL
Mayor WILLIAM FAY
A Cripple PATRICK COLUM
A Court Lady HONOR LAVELLE
Another Court Lady DORA MELVILLE
A Princess SARA ALGOOD
Another Princess DORA GUNNING
Fedelm MAIRE NI SHIUBHLAIGH
A Servant P. MACSHIUBHLAIGH
Another Servant P. JOSEPHS
A Pupil G. ROBERTS
Another Pupil CARTIA MACCORMAC

It has been revised a good many times since then, and although the play
has not been changed in the radical structure, the parts of the Mayor,
Servant, and Cripple are altogether new, and the rest is altered here
and there. It was written when our Society was beginning its fight for
the recognition of pure art in a community of which one half is buried
in the practical affairs of life, and the other half in politics and a
propagandist patriotism.

_On Baile's Strand_ was first played, in a version considerably
different from the present, on December 27th, 1904, at the opening of
the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, and with the following cast:

Cuchulain FRANK FAY
Conchubar GEORGE ROBERTS
Daire (_an old King not now in the play_) G. MACDONALD
The Blind Man SEUMUS O'SULLIVAN
The Fool WILLIAM FAY
The Young Man P. MACSHIUBHLAIGH

The old and young kings were played by the following: R. Nash, A.
Power, U.