Irish Plays and Playwrights

Plays and Playwrights, by
Cornelius Weygandt

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Title: Irish Plays and Playwrights
Author: Cornelius Weygandt
Release Date: August 11, 2006 [EBook #19028]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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IRISH PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHTS
BY

CORNELIUS WEYGANDT
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY CORNELIUS WEYGANDT ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED
Published February 1913
[Illustration]

PREFACE
There are so many who have helped me with this book that I cannot
begin to thank them one by one. If I name any, however, there are four
I would name together. There is my old friend, long since dead,
Lawrence Kelly, of County Wexford, who first told me Irish
folk-stories, adding to the wonderment of my boyhood with his tales of
Finn McCool, Dean Swift, and "The Red-haired Man." There is Dr.
Robert Ellis Thompson, of Philadelphia, who quickened, by his
enthusiasm, over "twenty golden years ago," my interest in all things
Irish. There is Dr. Clarence Griffin Child, my colleague, who
recognized the power of these men I write of in "Irish Plays and
Playwrights" when there were fewer to recognize their power than there
are to-day. There is Mr. John Quinn, of New York, without whose aid
ten years ago the current Irish dramatic movement would not have
progressed as it has. He has lent for reproduction here the sketches by
Mr. J.B. Yeats of Synge, Mr. George Moore, and Mr. Padraic Colum.
All but all of the writers I mention particularly in these chapters have
put me under obligation by cheerful response to many letters full of
questions as to their work. Mr. James H. Cousins and Mr. S. Lennox
Robinson have taken especial trouble in my behalf, and Lady Gregory,

Mr. W.B. Yeats, and Mr. George W. Russell have put themselves out in
many ways that I might learn of Irish Letters.
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, December 28, 1912.

CONTENTS
I. THE CELTIC RENAISSANCE 1
II. THE PLAYERS AND THEIR PLAYS, THEIR AUDIENCE AND
THEIR ART 13
III. MR. WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 37
IV. MR. EDWARD MARTYN AND MR. GEORGE MOORE 72
V. MR. GEORGE W. RUSSELL ("A.E.") 114
VI. LADY GREGORY 138
VII. JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE 160
VIII. THE YOUNGER DRAMATISTS--MR. PADRAIC COLUM;
MR. WILLIAM BOYLE; MR. T.C. MURRAY; MR. S. LENNOX
ROBINSON; MR. RUTHERFORD MAYNE; "NORREYS
CONNELL"; MR. ST. JOHN G. ERVINE; MR. JOSEPH CAMPBELL
198
IX. WILLIAM SHARP ("FIONA MACLEOD") 251
APPENDIX 297 PLAYS PRODUCED, IN DUBLIN, BY THE
ABBEY THEATRE COMPANY
INDEX 305

ILLUSTRATIONS

W.B. YEATS Frontispiece From a photograph by Alice Boughton.
DOUGLAS HYDE 10 From a photograph by Alice Boughton.
SARA ALLGOOD 24 From a photograph by Alice Boughton.
SCENE FROM "CATHLEEN NI HOULIHAN" 50
GEORGE MOORE 72 Reproduced by courtesy of John Quinn, Esq.
GEORGE W. RUSSELL 114
LADY GREGORY 138
JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE 160 Reproduced by courtesy of John
Quinn, Esq.
PADRAIC COLUM 198 Reproduced by courtesy of John Quinn, Esq.
T.C. MURRAY 216
LENNOX ROBINSON 222 From a photograph by Alice Boughton.
WILLIAM SHARP 250

IRISH PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHTS
CHAPTER I
THE CELTIC RENAISSANCE
To the general reader the Celtic Renaissance was a surprise, and even
to Irish writers deeply interested in their country the phenomenon or
movement, call it which you will, was not appreciated as of much
significance at its beginning. Writing in 1892, Miss Jane Barlow was
not hopeful for the immediate future of English literature in Ireland;--it
seemed to her "difficult to point out any quarter of the horizon as a

probable source of rising light." Yet Mr. Yeats had published his
"Wanderings of Oisin" three years before; Mr. Russell had already
gathered about him a group of eager young writers; and Dr. Hyde was
organizing the Gaelic League, to give back to Ireland her language and
civilization, and translating from the Gaelic "The Love Songs of
Connacht" (1894) into an English of so new and masterful a rhythm,
that it was to dominate the style of many of the writers of the
movement, as the burden of the verse was to confirm them in the
feelings and attitudes of mind, centuries old and of to-day, that are
basic to the Irish Gael. Even in 1894, when Mrs. Katherine Tynan
Hinkson wrote the article that for the first time brought before America
so many of the younger English poets, all that