Norway has a great and successful school of contemporary drama, which grew out of a national literary movement very similar to that now going on in Ireland.1 Everywhere critics and writers, who wish for something better than the ordinary play of commerce, turn to Norway for an example and an inspiration. Spain and Germany, indeed, though they have a taste for bad dramatists, which Norway has not, have good dramatists, whom they admire. Elsewhere one finds the literary drama alone, when some great work, old enough to be a national superstition, is revived, with scenery and costumes so elaborate that nobody need listen to the words unless he likes; and in little and inexpensive theatres, which associations of men of letters hire from time to time that they may see upon the stage the plays of Henrik Ibsen, Maurice Maeterlinck, Gerhart Hauptmann, José Echegaray, or some less famous dramatist who has written, in the only way literature can be written, to express a dream which has taken possession of his mind.2 These associations, the Théâtre Libre and the Independent Theatre especially, in the face of violent opposition, have trained actors who have become famous, and have had a powerful influence even upon those plays which are written to please as many people as possible, that they may make as much money as possible.3
The Irish Literary Theatre will attempt to do in Dublin something of what has been done in London and Paris; and, if it has even a small welcome, it will produce, somewhere about the old festival of Beltaine, at the beginning of every spring, a play founded upon an Irish subject. The plays will differ from those produced by associations of men of letters in London and in Paris, because times have changed, and because the intellect of Ireland is romantic and spiritual rather than scientific and analytical, but they will have as little of a commercial ambition. Their writers will appeal to that limited public which gives understanding, and not to that unlimited public which gives wealth; and if they interest those among their audience who keep in their memories the songs of Callanan and Walsh, or old Irish legends, or who love the good books of any country, they will not mind greatly if others are bored.4
The Committee think of producing in 1900 Denis Florence MacCarthy’s translation of Calderón’s St. Patrick’s Purgatory, a play about the conversion of Ireland.5 Miss Fiona Macleod has written, or is writing, three plays, The Hour of Beauty, Fand and Cuchullain, and The Tanist, an Irish historical play, and Mr. Standish O’Grady has promised an Irish historical play.6 Others, too, have written or are writing plays, so that there will be no lack of work to select from. In all or almost all cases the plays must be published before they are acted, and no play will be produced which could not hope to succeed as a book.
In a play like Mr. Martyn’s, where everything is subordinate to the central idea, and the dialogues as much like the dialogues of daily life as possible, the slightest exaggeration of detail, or effort to make points where points were not intended, becomes an insincerity.7 An endeavour has therefore been made to have it acted as simply and quietly as possible. The chief endeavour with Mr. Yeats’ play has been to get it spoken with some sense of rhythm.8
The two lyrics, which we print on a later page, are not sung, but spoken, or rather chanted, to music, as the old poems were probably chanted by bards and rhapsodists.9 Even when the words of a song, sung in the ordinary way, are heard at all, their own proper rhythm and emphasis are lost, or partly lost, in the rhythm and emphasis of the music. A lyric which is spoken or chanted to music should, upon the other hand, reveal its meaning, and its rhythm so become indissoluble in the memory. The speaking of words, whether to music or not, is, however, so perfectly among the lost arts that it will take a long time before our actors, no matter how willing, will be able to forget the ordinary methods of the stage or to perfect a new method.
Mr. Johnson, in the interpretative argument which he has written for The Countess Cathleen, places the events it describes in the sixteenth century. So Mr. Yeats originally wrote, but he has since written that he tried to suggest throughout the play that period, made out of many periods, in which the events in the folk-tales have happened.10 The play is not historic, but symbolic, and has as little to do with any definite place and time as an auto by Calderón.11 One should look for the Countess Cathleen and the peasants and the demons not in history, but, as Mr. Johnson has done, in one’s own heart; and such costumes and scenery have been selected as will preserve the indefinite.
There are many allusions in The Countess Cathleen to old Celtic legends. Usheen, or Oisin, was a legendary poet who journeyed to the Land of Youth with Niamh, an immortal woman. Adene, or Etain, was a legendary queen who left the world and found an immortal husband. Fergus was the poet of the Red Branch cycle of legends, as Oisin was of the Fenian cycle. He was the King of Uladh, but, as the legend was shaped by Ferguson, whom Mr. Yeats has followed in his lyric, he gave up his throne that he might live at peace, hunting in the woods.12 ‘The Shee’, ‘The Sheogues’, ‘The Danaan Nations’, ‘The People of the Raths’ are different names for the faery people, the great gods of an earlier time. A Thivish is a ghost, a wandering and earthbound spirit. A Sowlth is a misshapen or shapeless spirit, sometimes identified with the Jack o’ Lanthorn. ‘Barach the traitor’ was the man who made the feast for Fergus that the sons of Usna might lack his protection. The Clan Cailitin was a family of wizards among the troops of Maeve, who at last brought about the death of Cuchulain, ‘Sualtam’s and old Dectera’s child’. ‘The great king’ who ‘killed Naoise and broke Deirdre’s heart’, was, of course, Conchubar. Orchil was a Celtic goddess, who is always imagined as a kind of Lilith in Mr. Yeats’ poetry. ‘The bright spear’ which Aleel sees in his frenzy driven through the eye of Balor, the old Celtic divinity of cold and darkness, is, of course, the spear flung by Lugh, the god of warmth and light and order. The battle of Moytura was to the old Celts the battle in which the gods of light and life overcame the gods of cold and darkness and chaos. It is necessary to explain these things, as the old Irish mythology is still imperfectly known in modern Ireland.13
If any money is made by the performances it will be paid into the funds of the National Literary Society, to go towards the expenses of the Irish Literary Theatre in future years.
EDITOR OF ‘BELTAINE’.