_ Our plays must be
literature
or written in the spirit of
literature.
literature.
Yeats
--W.
B.
Y.
,
_March, 1908_.
[H] _John Bull's Other Island. _
THE PLAY, THE PLAYER, AND THE SCENE.
I have been asked to put into this year's _Samhain_ Miss Horniman's
letter offering us the use of the Abbey Theatre. I have done this, but
as Miss Horniman begins her letter by stating that she has made her
offer out of 'great sympathy with the Irish National Theatre Company as
publicly explained by Mr. Yeats on various occasions,' she has asked me
to go more into detail as to my own plans and hopes than I have done
before. I think they are the plans and hopes of my fellow dramatists,
for we are all of one movement, and have influenced one another, and
have in us the spirit of our time. I discussed them all very shortly in
last _Samhain_. And I know that it was that _Samhain_, and a certain
speech I made in front of the curtain, that made Miss Horniman entrust
us with her generous gift. But last _Samhain_ is practically out of
print, and my speech has gone even out of my own memory. I will repeat,
therefore, much that I have said already, but adding a good deal to it.
_First.
_ Our plays must be literature or written in the spirit of
literature. The modern theatre has died away to what it is because
the writers have thought of their audiences instead of their subject.
An old writer saw his hero, if it was a play of character; or some
dominant passion, if it was a play of passion, like Phedre or
Andromaque, moving before him, living with a life he did not endeavour
to control. The persons acted upon one another as they were bound
by their natures to act, and the play was dramatic, not because he
had sought out dramatic situations for their own sake, but because
will broke itself upon will and passion upon passion. Then the
imagination began to cool, the writer began to be less alive, to seek
external aids, remembered situations, tricks of the theatre, that
had proved themselves again and again. His persons no longer will
have a particular character, but he knows that he can rely upon the
incidents, and he feels himself fortunate when there is nothing in
his play that has not succeeded a thousand times before the curtain
has risen. Perhaps he has even read a certain guide-book to the stage
published in France, and called 'The Thirty-six Situations of Drama. '
The costumes will be magnificent, the actresses will be beautiful,
the Castle in Spain will be painted by an artist upon the spot. We
will come from his play excited if we are foolish, or can condescend
to the folly of others, but knowing nothing new about ourselves, and
seeing life with no new eyes and hearing it with no new ears. The whole
movement of theatrical reform in our day has been a struggle to get
rid of this kind of play, and the sincere play, the logical play, that
we would have in its place, will always seem, when we hear it for the
first time, undramatic, unexciting. It has to stir the heart in a long
disused way, it has to awaken the intellect to a pleasure that ennobles
and wearies. I was at the first performance of an Ibsen play given in
England. It was _The Doll's House_, and at the fall of the curtain I
heard an old dramatic critic say, 'It is but a series of conversations
terminated by an accident. ' So far, we here in Dublin mean the same
thing as do Mr. Max Beerbohm, Mr. Walkley, and Mr.
_March, 1908_.
[H] _John Bull's Other Island. _
THE PLAY, THE PLAYER, AND THE SCENE.
I have been asked to put into this year's _Samhain_ Miss Horniman's
letter offering us the use of the Abbey Theatre. I have done this, but
as Miss Horniman begins her letter by stating that she has made her
offer out of 'great sympathy with the Irish National Theatre Company as
publicly explained by Mr. Yeats on various occasions,' she has asked me
to go more into detail as to my own plans and hopes than I have done
before. I think they are the plans and hopes of my fellow dramatists,
for we are all of one movement, and have influenced one another, and
have in us the spirit of our time. I discussed them all very shortly in
last _Samhain_. And I know that it was that _Samhain_, and a certain
speech I made in front of the curtain, that made Miss Horniman entrust
us with her generous gift. But last _Samhain_ is practically out of
print, and my speech has gone even out of my own memory. I will repeat,
therefore, much that I have said already, but adding a good deal to it.
_First.
_ Our plays must be literature or written in the spirit of
literature. The modern theatre has died away to what it is because
the writers have thought of their audiences instead of their subject.
An old writer saw his hero, if it was a play of character; or some
dominant passion, if it was a play of passion, like Phedre or
Andromaque, moving before him, living with a life he did not endeavour
to control. The persons acted upon one another as they were bound
by their natures to act, and the play was dramatic, not because he
had sought out dramatic situations for their own sake, but because
will broke itself upon will and passion upon passion. Then the
imagination began to cool, the writer began to be less alive, to seek
external aids, remembered situations, tricks of the theatre, that
had proved themselves again and again. His persons no longer will
have a particular character, but he knows that he can rely upon the
incidents, and he feels himself fortunate when there is nothing in
his play that has not succeeded a thousand times before the curtain
has risen. Perhaps he has even read a certain guide-book to the stage
published in France, and called 'The Thirty-six Situations of Drama. '
The costumes will be magnificent, the actresses will be beautiful,
the Castle in Spain will be painted by an artist upon the spot. We
will come from his play excited if we are foolish, or can condescend
to the folly of others, but knowing nothing new about ourselves, and
seeing life with no new eyes and hearing it with no new ears. The whole
movement of theatrical reform in our day has been a struggle to get
rid of this kind of play, and the sincere play, the logical play, that
we would have in its place, will always seem, when we hear it for the
first time, undramatic, unexciting. It has to stir the heart in a long
disused way, it has to awaken the intellect to a pleasure that ennobles
and wearies. I was at the first performance of an Ibsen play given in
England. It was _The Doll's House_, and at the fall of the curtain I
heard an old dramatic critic say, 'It is but a series of conversations
terminated by an accident. ' So far, we here in Dublin mean the same
thing as do Mr. Max Beerbohm, Mr. Walkley, and Mr.
