Foss; Bridget Bruin, Miss
Charlotte
Morland; Maire Bruin,
Miss Winifred Fraser; A Faery Child, Miss Dorothy Paget.
Miss Winifred Fraser; A Faery Child, Miss Dorothy Paget.
Yeats
E.
Wilkenson as a Servant, and Miss May Whitty
as the Countess Cathleen. They had to face a very vehement opposition
stirred up by a politician and a newspaper, the one accusing me in
a pamphlet, the other in long articles day after day, of blasphemy
because of the language of the demons in the first act, and because I
made a woman sell her soul and yet escape damnation, and of a lack of
patriotism because I made Irish men and women, who it seems never did
such a thing, sell theirs. The politician or the newspaper persuaded
some forty Catholic students to sign a protest against the play, and a
Cardinal, who avowed that he had not read it, to make another, and both
politician and newspaper made such obvious appeals to the audience to
break the peace, that some score of police[B] were sent to the theatre
to see that they did not. I have, however, no reason to regret the
result, for the stalls, containing almost all that was distinguished
in Dublin, and a gallery of artisans, alike insisted on the freedom of
literature, and I myself have the pleasure of recording strange events.
The play has since been revived in New York by Miss Wycherley, but I
did not see her performance.
* * * * *
_The Land of Heart's Desire. _--This little play was produced at the
Avenue Theatre in the spring of 1894, with the following cast:--Maurteen
Bruin, Mr. James Welch; Shawn Bruin, Mr. A. E. W. Mason; Father Hart,
Mr. G. R.
Foss; Bridget Bruin, Miss Charlotte Morland; Maire Bruin,
Miss Winifred Fraser; A Faery Child, Miss Dorothy Paget. It ran for a
little over six weeks. It was revived in America in 1901, when it was
taken on tour by Mrs. Lemoyne. It was again played, under the auspices
of the Irish Literary Society of New York, in 1903, and has lately been
played in San Francisco.
* * * * *
_The Unicorn from the Stars. _--Some years ago I wrote in a fortnight
with the help of Lady Gregory and another friend a five act tragedy
called _Where there is Nothing_. I wrote at such speed that I might
save from a plagiarist a subject that seemed worth the keeping till
greater knowledge of the stage made an adequate treatment possible.
I knew that my first version was hurried and oratorical, with events
cast into the plot because they seemed lively or amusing in themselves,
and not because they grew out of the characters and the plot; and I
came to dislike a central character so arid and so dominating. We
cannot sympathise with a man who sets his anger at once lightly and
confidently to overthrow the order of the world; but our hearts can go
out to him, as I think, if he speak with some humility, so far as his
daily self carries him, out of a cloudy light of vision. Whether he
understand or know, it may be that the voices of Angels and Archangels
have spoken in the cloud and whatever wildness come upon his life,
feet of theirs may well have trod the clusters. I began with this new
thought to dictate the play to Lady Gregory, but since I had last
worked with her, her knowledge of the stage and her mastery of dialogue
had so increased that my imagination could not go neck to neck with
hers. I found myself, too, with an old difficulty, that my words flow
freely alone when my people speak in verse, or in words that are like
those we put into verse; and so after an attempt to work alone I gave
my scheme to her. The result is a play almost wholly hers in handiwork,
which I can yet read, as I have just done after the stories of _The
Secret Rose_, and recognize thoughts, a point of view, an artistic aim
which seem a part of my world. Her greatest difficulty was that I had
given her for chief character a man so plunged in trance that he could
not be otherwise than all but still and silent, though perhaps with the
stillness and the silence of a lamp; and the movement of the play as
a whole, if we were to listen to hear him, had to be without hurry or
violence. The strange characters, her handiwork, on whom he sheds his
light, delight me.
as the Countess Cathleen. They had to face a very vehement opposition
stirred up by a politician and a newspaper, the one accusing me in
a pamphlet, the other in long articles day after day, of blasphemy
because of the language of the demons in the first act, and because I
made a woman sell her soul and yet escape damnation, and of a lack of
patriotism because I made Irish men and women, who it seems never did
such a thing, sell theirs. The politician or the newspaper persuaded
some forty Catholic students to sign a protest against the play, and a
Cardinal, who avowed that he had not read it, to make another, and both
politician and newspaper made such obvious appeals to the audience to
break the peace, that some score of police[B] were sent to the theatre
to see that they did not. I have, however, no reason to regret the
result, for the stalls, containing almost all that was distinguished
in Dublin, and a gallery of artisans, alike insisted on the freedom of
literature, and I myself have the pleasure of recording strange events.
The play has since been revived in New York by Miss Wycherley, but I
did not see her performance.
* * * * *
_The Land of Heart's Desire. _--This little play was produced at the
Avenue Theatre in the spring of 1894, with the following cast:--Maurteen
Bruin, Mr. James Welch; Shawn Bruin, Mr. A. E. W. Mason; Father Hart,
Mr. G. R.
Foss; Bridget Bruin, Miss Charlotte Morland; Maire Bruin,
Miss Winifred Fraser; A Faery Child, Miss Dorothy Paget. It ran for a
little over six weeks. It was revived in America in 1901, when it was
taken on tour by Mrs. Lemoyne. It was again played, under the auspices
of the Irish Literary Society of New York, in 1903, and has lately been
played in San Francisco.
* * * * *
_The Unicorn from the Stars. _--Some years ago I wrote in a fortnight
with the help of Lady Gregory and another friend a five act tragedy
called _Where there is Nothing_. I wrote at such speed that I might
save from a plagiarist a subject that seemed worth the keeping till
greater knowledge of the stage made an adequate treatment possible.
I knew that my first version was hurried and oratorical, with events
cast into the plot because they seemed lively or amusing in themselves,
and not because they grew out of the characters and the plot; and I
came to dislike a central character so arid and so dominating. We
cannot sympathise with a man who sets his anger at once lightly and
confidently to overthrow the order of the world; but our hearts can go
out to him, as I think, if he speak with some humility, so far as his
daily self carries him, out of a cloudy light of vision. Whether he
understand or know, it may be that the voices of Angels and Archangels
have spoken in the cloud and whatever wildness come upon his life,
feet of theirs may well have trod the clusters. I began with this new
thought to dictate the play to Lady Gregory, but since I had last
worked with her, her knowledge of the stage and her mastery of dialogue
had so increased that my imagination could not go neck to neck with
hers. I found myself, too, with an old difficulty, that my words flow
freely alone when my people speak in verse, or in words that are like
those we put into verse; and so after an attempt to work alone I gave
my scheme to her. The result is a play almost wholly hers in handiwork,
which I can yet read, as I have just done after the stories of _The
Secret Rose_, and recognize thoughts, a point of view, an artistic aim
which seem a part of my world. Her greatest difficulty was that I had
given her for chief character a man so plunged in trance that he could
not be otherwise than all but still and silent, though perhaps with the
stillness and the silence of a lamp; and the movement of the play as
a whole, if we were to listen to hear him, had to be without hurry or
violence. The strange characters, her handiwork, on whom he sheds his
light, delight me.
