No More Learning

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. She has enabled me to carry out an old thought for
which my own knowledge is insufficient and to commingle the ancient
phantasies of poetry with the rough, vivid, ever-contemporaneous
tumult of the road-side; to create for a moment a form that otherwise
I could but dream of, though I do that always, an art that prophesies
though with worn and failing voice of the day when Quixote and Sancho
Panza long estranged may once again go out gaily into the bleak air.
Ever since I began to write I have awaited with impatience a linking,
all Europe over, of the hereditary knowledge of the country-side, now
becoming known to us through the work of wanderers and men of learning,
with our old lyricism so full of ancient frenzies and hereditary
wisdom, a yoking of antiquities, a Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

_The Unicorn from the Stars_ was first played at the Abbey Theatre
on November 23rd, 1907, with the following cast:--Father John, Ernest
Vaughan; Thomas Hearne, a coachbuilder, Arthur Sinclair; Andrew Hearne,
brother of Thomas, J. A. O'Rourke; Martin Hearne, nephew of Thomas, F.
J. Fay; Johnny Bacach, a beggar, W. G. Fay; Paudeen, J. M. Kerrigan;
Biddy Lally, Maire O'Neill; Nanny, Brigit O'Dempsey.

W. B. YEATS.

_March, 1908. _

FOOTNOTE:

[B] Mr. Synge has outdone me with his _Play Boy of the Western World_,
which towards the end of the week had more than three times the number
in the pit alone.