No More Learning

Whenever literature becomes powerful, the priest, whose forerunner
imagined St. Patrick driving his chariot-wheels over his own erring
sister, has to acknowledge, or to see others acknowledge, that there
is no evil that men and women may not be driven into by their virtues
all but as readily as by their vices, and the politician, that it is
not always clean hands that serve a country or foul hands that ruin
it. He may even have to say at last, as an old man who had spent many
years in prison to serve a good cause said to me, 'There never was a
cause so evil that it has not been served by good men for what seemed
to them sufficient reasons. ' And if the priest or the politician should
say to the man of letters, 'Into how dangerous a state of mind are you
not bringing us? ' the man of letters can but answer, 'It is dangerous,
indeed,' and say, like my Seanchan, 'When did we promise safety? '

Thought takes the same form age after age, and the things that people
have said to me about this intellectual movement of ours have, I doubt
not, been said in every country to every writer who was a disturber of
the old life. When _The Countess Cathleen_ was produced, the very girls
in the shops complained to us that to describe an Irishwoman as selling
her soul to the devil was to slander the country. The silver hammer had
threatened, as it seems, one of those personifications of an average.
Someone said to me a couple of weeks ago, 'If you put on the stage any
play about marriage that does not point its moral clearly, you will
make it difficult for us to go on attacking the English theatre for its
immorality. ' Again, we were disordering the squads, the muskets might
not all point in the same direction.

Now that these opinions have found a leader and a voice in _The
Independent_, it is easy at anyrate to explain how much one differs
from them. I had spoken of the capricious power of the artist and
compared it to the capricious movements of a wild creature, and _The
Independent_, speaking quite logically from its point of view, tells
me that these movements were only interesting when 'under restraint. '
The writers of the Anglo-Irish movement, it says, 'will never consent
to serve except on terms that never could or should be conceded. ' I
had spoken of the production of foreign masterpieces, but it considers
that foreign masterpieces would be very dangerous. I had asked in
_Samhain_ for audiences sufficiently tolerant to enable the half-dozen
minds who are likely to be the dramatic imagination of Ireland for this
generation to put their own thought and their own characters into their
work.
That is to say, I had asked for the amount of freedom which every
nation has given to its dramatic writers. But the newspaper hopes and
believes that no 'such tolerance will be extended to Mr. Yeats and his
friends. '

I have written these lines to explain our thoughts and intentions to
many personal friends, who live too deep in the labour of politics to
give the thought to these things that we have given, and because not
only in our theatre, but in all matters of national life, we have need
of a new discovery of life--of more precise thought, of a more perfect
sincerity. I would see, in every branch of our National propaganda,
young men who would have the sincerity and the precision of those
Russian revolutionists that Kropotkin and Stepniak tell us of, men
who would never use an argument to convince others which would not
convince themselves, who would not make a mob drunk with a passion they
could not share, and who would above all seek for fine things for their
own sake, and for precise knowledge for its own sake, and not for its
momentary use. One can serve one's country alone out of the abundance
of one's own heart, and it is labour enough to be certain one is in the
right, without having to be certain that one's thought is expedient
also.


1904

THE DRAMATIC MOVEMENT

The National Theatre Society has had great difficulties because of
the lack of any suitable playhouse. It has been forced to perform
in halls without proper lighting for the stage, and almost without
dressing-rooms, and with level floors in the auditorium that prevented
all but the people in the front row from seeing properly. These
halls are expensive too, and the players of poetical drama in an age
of musical comedy have light pockets. But now a generous English
friend, Miss Horniman, has rearranged and in part re-built, at very
considerable expense, the old Mechanic's Institute Theatre, now the
Abbey Theatre, and given us the use of it without any charge, and I
need not say that she has gained our gratitude, as she will gain the
gratitude of our audience. The work of decoration and alteration has
been done by Irishmen, and everything, with the exception of some few
things that are not made here, or not of a good enough quality, has
been manufactured in Ireland. The stained glass in the entrance hall
is the work of Miss Sarah Purser and her apprentices, the large copper
mirror frames are from the new metal works at Youghal, and the pictures
of some of our players are by an Irish artist. These details and some
details of form and colour in the building, as a whole, have been
arranged by Miss Horniman herself.

Having been given the free use of this Theatre, we may look upon
ourselves as the first endowed Theatre in any English-speaking country,
the English-speaking countries and Venezuela being the only countries
which have never endowed their theatres; but the correspondents who
write for parts in our plays or posts in the Theatre at a salary are in
error. We are, and must be for some time to come, contented to find our
work its own reward, the player giving[G] his work, and the playwright
his, for nothing; and though this cannot go on always, we start
our winter very cheerfully with a capital of some forty pounds. We
playwrights can only thank these players, who have given us the delight
of seeing our work so well performed, working with so much enthusiasm,
with so much patience, that they have found for themselves a lasting
place among the artists, the only aristocracy that has never been sold
in the market or seen the people rise up against it.