'
In Dublin the other day I saw a poster advertising a play by a Miss
.
In Dublin the other day I saw a poster advertising a play by a Miss
.
Yeats
In these
days an Englishman's dialogue is that of an amateur, that is to say,
it is never spontaneous. I mean in _real life_. Compare it with an
Irishman's, above all a poor Irishman's, reckless abandonment and
naturalness, or compare it with the only fragment that has come down
to us of Shakespeare's own conversation. ' (He is remembering a passage
in, I think, Ben Jonson's _Underwoods_. ) 'Petty commerce and puritanism
have brought to the front the wrong type of Englishman; the lively,
joyous, yet tenacious man has transferred himself to Ireland. We have
him and we will keep him unless the combined nonsense of . . . and . . .
and . . . succeed in suffocating him.
'
In Dublin the other day I saw a poster advertising a play by a Miss
. . . under the patronage of certain titled people. I had little hope of
finding any reality in it, but I sat out two acts. Its dialogue was
above the average, though the characters were the old rattle-traps of
the stage, the wild Irish girl, and the Irish servant, and the bowing
Frenchman, and the situations had all been squeezed dry generations
ago. One saw everywhere the shadowy mind of a woman of the Irish
upper classes as they have become to-day, but under it all there was
a kind of life, though it was but the life of a string and a wire. I
do not know who Miss . . . is, but I know that she is young, for I saw
her portrait in a weekly paper, and I think that she is clever enough
to make her work of some importance. If she goes on doing bad work
she will make money, perhaps a great deal of money, but she will do a
little harm to her country. If, on the other hand, she gets into an
original relation with life, she will, perhaps, make no money, and she
will certainly have her class against her.
The Irish upper classes put everything into a money measure. When
anyone among them begins to write or paint they ask him 'How much money
have you made? ' 'Will it pay?
days an Englishman's dialogue is that of an amateur, that is to say,
it is never spontaneous. I mean in _real life_. Compare it with an
Irishman's, above all a poor Irishman's, reckless abandonment and
naturalness, or compare it with the only fragment that has come down
to us of Shakespeare's own conversation. ' (He is remembering a passage
in, I think, Ben Jonson's _Underwoods_. ) 'Petty commerce and puritanism
have brought to the front the wrong type of Englishman; the lively,
joyous, yet tenacious man has transferred himself to Ireland. We have
him and we will keep him unless the combined nonsense of . . . and . . .
and . . . succeed in suffocating him.
'
In Dublin the other day I saw a poster advertising a play by a Miss
. . . under the patronage of certain titled people. I had little hope of
finding any reality in it, but I sat out two acts. Its dialogue was
above the average, though the characters were the old rattle-traps of
the stage, the wild Irish girl, and the Irish servant, and the bowing
Frenchman, and the situations had all been squeezed dry generations
ago. One saw everywhere the shadowy mind of a woman of the Irish
upper classes as they have become to-day, but under it all there was
a kind of life, though it was but the life of a string and a wire. I
do not know who Miss . . . is, but I know that she is young, for I saw
her portrait in a weekly paper, and I think that she is clever enough
to make her work of some importance. If she goes on doing bad work
she will make money, perhaps a great deal of money, but she will do a
little harm to her country. If, on the other hand, she gets into an
original relation with life, she will, perhaps, make no money, and she
will certainly have her class against her.
The Irish upper classes put everything into a money measure. When
anyone among them begins to write or paint they ask him 'How much money
have you made? ' 'Will it pay?
