Art. 10.-IRISH PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHTS.

1. The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats. Eight vols. Stratford-on-Avon : Shakespeare Head Press, 1908.

2. The Works of J. M. Synge. Four vols. Dublin: Maunsel, 1910.

3. Seven Short Plays. By Lady Gregory.

Maunsel, 1909.

Dublin:

4. The Land, and The Fiddler's House: Thomas Muskerry. By Padraic Colum. Dublin: Maunsel, 1907-1910. 5. Poets and Dreamers. By Lady Gregory. (Containing four plays by Douglas Hyde, translated by Lady Gregory.) London: Murray, 1903.

It is curious that until the twentieth century Ireland should have had no dramatic literature, for she has a folk literature which can rank with the Scottish and Scandinavian, and a tradition which preserved its individuality through seven centuries of disorder and oppression. Her people are born actors; they have delighted from the earliest times in a form of conventional dialogue; and the best acting plays that have been written in England since the Restoration are the work of Irishmen-Sheridan, Goldsmith, Wilde, and Shaw. Probably there is something in the essential qualities of the Celtic spirit which has prevented the Irish from turning to the stage as readily as more practical races have done.

The dominant note of Irish national literature is (to attempt no closer analysis) always somewhere in the key of mysticism. It is their inhumanity that has prevented the Irish sagas attaining popularity among more pedestrian races. A whole firmament separates the myths of the Fomor, the Fianna, and the heroes of the Red Branch from the intense humanity of Homer. In them one is conscious throughout of a race struggling to get away from reality. It is not life that they celebrate, but the desire that is beyond life. And something of this spirit has always lingered in the Celtic tradition. Its writers have belonged to that class which conceives in the mind and not through the senses. One can search the poets, Callinan, Mangan, Ferguson, de Vere, Allingham, Lionel Johnson, A. E., Katherine Hinkson,

W. B. Yeats, and scarcely find one visual image. There is something disembodied in all their passion. But the drama, though it probably traces its origin to religious ritual, is the most material of all forms of art. Nations turn to it when their interest in humanity is at its height. Its greatest epochs have been in the hey-day of the two most passionately practical races of European history, and now the humanist movement is turning to the stage once more.

It was inevitable that this quality of inhumanity in the Irish genius should make it slower to reach that period of artistic development at which a nation turns naturally from narrative to dramatic poetry; and the continual misfortunes which have pressed upon the country from the twelfth century onward have worked in the same direction. The change comes always with the organisation of social life and the development of social interests. In Ireland that development was arrested; and it is significant in this connexion that the chief fault of the modern Gaelic plays seems to lie in a tendency to be narrative rather than dramatic in treatment. The Gaelic tradition survived the Plantagenet wars, the Tudor Conquest, and the oppression of succeeding centuries, but it did no more than survive; it did not develope; and the movement which has ended in the birth of a dramatic literature has its origin in the calamities which destroyed the creative force of the old tradition. Direct descendants of the old bards survived into the nineteenth century in the persons of Raftery and Callinan; but, in the disorders which followed the Act of Union, national life became hopelessly disorganised, and the succession came to an end. The great famine almost completed what political oppression had begun ; but the rapidity with which the national spirit began to reassert itself after the disastrous years of 1846, 1847, and 1848 is a striking proof of its tenacity. This time, however, the development which centred in the Young Irish and Fenian parties was almost entirely social and political. Ferguson, Mangan, and others to some extent carried on the old tradition in a new language; but Thomas Davis, Gavan Duffy, and John Dillon, the founders of the Nation,' are the more typical figures. In their hands and those of their followers national

literature tended to become more and more identified with political and social problems, and the Gaelic language and art sank into insignificance.

The close of the nineteenth century, however, saw a reaction. Davis and his followers had recognised the necessity of an educational campaign, and their labours began to have effect. Moreover, scholarship had been at work while literature was in eclipse; and much had been done to rescue from oblivion the ancient treasures of Irish literature. With the Gladstonian reforms political energy began to find a definite object and a reasonable hope. Without abating its vehemence, it became more concentrated; while the later reforms in local government, land tenure, and agriculture helped to divert social agitation into a defined and productive channel. As a consequence interest in the old national speech and national art began to revive. The obstacles placed in the way of teaching the Gaelic language and Irish history in the schools had not succeeded in destroying either language or tradition, though both had suffered considerably; and so early as 1879 there was founded the Gaelic Union,' which in 1893 was converted by Father Eugene O'Growney and Dr Douglas Hyde into the Gaelic League. The change, however, had left its mark. The break with the past had not been complete; but a new spirit had entered into Irish literature, giving it a broader outlook and a new vitality.

It was at this time (in 1896) that Mr W. B. Yeats first conceived the idea of an uncommercial theatre disinterestedly devoted to national art. His original project was a very modest one, namely, to hire a hall for a few days every spring and there produce Irish plays with the assistance of English players. The first performances of 'The Irish Literary Theatre' took place on May 8 and 9, 1899; and the organisation, under the leadership of Mr Yeats, Lady Gregory, Mr G. Moore, and Mr E. Martyn, continued its activity for three years. During this time it produced seven plays. Undoubtedly the most important work of the 'Literary Theatre' was the production of the first Gaelic play ever acted in any theatre, Dr Douglas Hyde's 'Twisting of the Rope,' which was on October 21, 1901 acted by Dr Hyde himself and a company of amateurs before an audience whose

enthusiasm must have been a revelation to those who doubted the potentialities of the scheme.

It is to this first production of a genuinely Irish play by Irish players that the success of the later movement is to be traced; and it may have been this which induced Mr W. G. Fay, a comedian of remarkable power, who was the mainstay of the Theatre till 1908, to collect in the following year a company of amateur players to carry on Mr Yeats' enterprise. This organisation produced in the spring of 1902 two plays, the 'Deirdre' of George Russell (A. E.) and Mr Yeats' 'Kathleen ni Houlihan.' The first of these, though it seems to have contained a second act of real power, was too too instinct with the drifting disembodied spirit of its author's genius to be completely adapted to the exigencies of the theatre. A much more striking success was, however, achieved by Kathleen ni Houlihan,' a little play which is well known in London, and has become one of the most popular in the Abbey Theatre's repertoire. Here, as in 'The Twisting of the Rope' the year before, the play went straight to the heart of the audience. It is a real work of art, written with the utmost precision and economy of means, Irish in theme, in spirit, and in substance; and the first production gained additional force from the fact that Miss Maud Gonne-an heroic figure in Nationalist circlesplayed the leading part to perfection. Not a line missed fire. In the autumn Mr Fay and his company achieved two more popular successes. Mr Yeats again contributed one of them with his one-act sketch, 'A Pot of Broth,' a work of slight importance but effective on the stage; while the other was a genuine satire on Irish political life entitled, 'The Laying of the Foundations,' by Mr Fred Ryan. Mr Ryan himself has written no more for the Irish Theatre, but his play has had many successors.

With the close of 1902 the preliminary stages of the enterprise came to an end. In 1903 it took the name, by which it is still known, of the Irish National Theatre Society'; and, though it was not till 1904 that the generosity of Miss Horniman enabled the Society to take and reconstruct the Abbey Theatre, its development from the end of 1902 has been continuous and uninterrupted. In 1903 there appear among the authors of plays produced the names of the two writers who, with

Mr Yeats, still dominate the movement-Lady Gregory and J. M. Synge; and this year also witnessed the appearance of a still younger school in the production of Mr Padraic Colum's first play. The enterprise had by this time acquired an established position in Dublin; and with the introduction of these three writers its character became definitely fixed.

The position, however, had not been won without difficulty. Opinion in Dublin runs on party lines; and Mr Yeats encountered unlooked-for opposition from members of his own party, who complained that many of the plays produced exhibited the national character in an unamiable light. Feeling at times (as on the production of 'The Piper' and 'The Playboy') ran very high, but fierce opposition creates fierce support; and Mr Yeats soon had what Mr Shaw has recently declared to be as essential to the dramatist as to the preacher, a fervent congregation. Years of Nationalist propaganda had created an audience for the Irish Theatre even before its foundation, an audience of unusual intelligence, their emotions and perceptions quickened by a common enthusiasm, their feeling for national art kindled and to some extent educated by the apostles of their common creed. So disinterested indeed was the feeling at the heart of the movement that for some years the players continued to follow their ordinary avocations in shop or office, and gave their services to the theatre for nothing, while the writers of plays take no payment to this day.

The enterprise could hardly have come to life in more ideal circumstances; and from its beginning the guiding spirit of it has been that fiercest of idealists, Mr W. B. Yeats. One would hardly have expected Mr Yeats to prove an effective manager of men or affairs or a successful writer of plays. He is a mystic of the mystics, a believer in black and white magic and all the obscurer powers of mind; and he is, moreover, the most deliberate of artists. No poet has thought or written more about art, its aim, its story, its matter, its manner of presentation. Art,' he has said, 'is an asceticism of the imagination'; and no ascetic's rule has been harder than that to which Mr Yeats has subdued his muse. Nurtured on the heady juice of Shelley and on Maeterlinck's pale