No More Learning

The enquiry itself was not a little surprising, for the legal
representatives of the theatres, being the representatives of Musical
Comedy, were very anxious for the morals of the town. I had spoken of
the Independent Theatre, and a lawyer wanted to know if a play of mine
which attacked the institution of marriage had not been performed by
it recently. I had spoken of M. Maeterlinck and of his indebtedness
to a theatre somewhat similar to our own, and one of our witnesses,
who knew no more about it than the questioner, was asked if a play by
M. Maeterlinck called _L'Intruse_ had not been so immoral that it was
received with a cry of horror in London. I have written no play about
marriage, and the Independent Theatre died some twelve years ago, and
_L'Intruse_ might be played in a nursery with no worse effects than
a little depression of spirits. Our opponents having thus protested
against our morals, went home with the fees of Musical Comedy in their
pockets.

For all this, we are better off so far as the law is concerned than
we would be in England. The theatrical law of Ireland was made by the
Irish Parliament, and though the patent system, the usual method of
the time, has outlived its use and come to an end everywhere but in
Ireland, we must be grateful to that ruling caste of free spirits, that
being free themselves they left the theatre in freedom. In England
there is a censor, who forbids you to take a subject from the Bible,
or from politics, or to picture public characters, or certain moral
situations which are the foundation of some of the greatest plays of
the world. When I was at the great American Catholic University of
Notre-Dame I heard that the students had given a performance of _OEdipus
the King_, and _OEdipus the King_ is forbidden in London. A censorship
created in the eighteenth century by Walpole, because somebody had
written against election bribery, has been distorted by a puritanism,
which is not the less an English invention for being a pretended hatred
of vice and a real hatred of intellect. Nothing has ever suffered
so many persecutions as the intellect, though it is never persecuted
under its own name. It is but according to old usage when a law that
cherishes Musical Comedy and permits to every second melodrama the
central situation of _The Sign of the Cross_, attempted rape, becomes
one of the secondary causes of the separation of the English Theatre
from life. It does not interfere with anything that makes money, and
Musical Comedy, with its hints and innuendoes, and its consistently low
view of life, makes a great deal, for money is always respectable; but
would a group of artists and students see once again the masterpieces
of the world, they would have to hide from the law as if they had
been a school of thieves; or were we to take with us to London that
beautiful Nativity Play of Dr.
Hyde's, which was performed in Sligo
Convent a few months ago, that holy vision of the central story of the
world, as it is seen through the minds and the traditions of the poor,
the constables might upset the cradle. And yet it is precisely these
stories of The Bible that have all to themselves, in the imagination of
English people, especially of the English poor, the place they share in
this country with the stories of Fion and of Oisin and of Patrick.

Milton set the story of Sampson into the form of a Greek play, because
he knew that Sampson was, in the English imagination, what Herakles
was in the imagination of Greece; and I have never been able to see
any other subjects for an English Dramatist who looked for some common
ground between his own mind and simpler minds. An English poet of
genius once told me that he would have tried his hand in plays for the
people, if they knew any story the censor would pass, except Jack and
the Beanstalk.

The Gaelic League has its great dramatic opportunity because of the
abundance of stories known in Irish-speaking districts, and because
of the freedom of choice and of treatment the leaders of a popular
movement can have if they have a mind for it. The Gaelic plays acted
and published during the year selected their subjects from the
popular mind, but the treatment is disappointing. Dr. Hyde, dragged
from gathering to gathering by the necessities of the movement, has
written no new play; and Father Peter O'Leary has thrown his dramatic
power, which is remarkable, into an imaginative novel. Father Dineen
has published a little play that has some life-like dialogue, but
the action is sometimes irrelevant, and the motives of the principal
character are vague and confused, as if it were written in a hurry.
Father Dineen seems to know that he has not done his best, for he
describes it as an attempt to provide more vivid dialogue for beginners
than is to be found in the reading-books rather than a drama. An
anonymous writer has written a play called _The Money of the Narrow
Cross_, which tells a very simple tale, like that of a child's book,
simply and adequately. It is very slight, in low relief as it were, but
if its writer is a young man it has considerable promise.

A Play called _Seaghan na Scuab_ was described in the _United Irishman_
as the best play ever written in Irish; but though the subject of it is
a dramatic old folk-tale, which has shown its vigour by rooting itself
in many countries, the treatment is confused and conventional and there
is a flatness of dialogue unusual in these plays. There is, however,
an occasional sense of comic situation which may come to something if
its writer will work seriously at his craft. One is afraid of quenching
the smoking flax, but this play was selected for performance at the
_Oireachtas_ before a vast audience in the Rotunda. It was accompanied
by _The Doctor_ in English and Irish, written by Mr.