Irish Plays and Playwrights | Page 4

an earlier generation. "Luke Delmege" (1900) is,
however, an interesting character study, and "My New Curate" (1899)
very illuminative of the conservatism of the peasantry.
Mr. Shan Bullock, writing of the farmers and farm laborers of the
North, has not unwisely gone to Mr. Hardy to learn his art. "Irish
Pastorals" (1901) is racy of Fermanagh as "Tess" is of Wessex. "The
Squireen" (1903) is a strong and gloomy story. From "By Thrasna
River" (1895) to "Dan the Dollar" (1905), Mr. Bullock did no story
without power in it. Ireland still looks to him as it looked to Mr.
William Buckley, ten years ago, for better work. "Croppies Lie Down"
brought Mr. Buckley before the public in 1903, but his writing since
then has fallen far short of this his best book. Now, however, the young
man with a future, in the estimation of many is Mr. James Stephens.
There is more hope in him, in his twenties, than there is now in
"George A. Birmingham" (Rev. J.O. Hannay), another man who ten
years ago was like Mr. Buckley, a young man of promise. "The
Seething Pot" (1904) was a serious study of conditions in Ireland but
since its author conceived of the character of the Rev. Joseph John
Meldon, he has found it more discreet to continue the adventures of
that clergyman than to write seriously out of his own varied experience
of West-Country Irish life.
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It is perhaps because the energy that in many countries goes into the
writing of the essay is absorbed in controversy in Ireland that in the
past Ireland has produced few essayists. In the battles of the dramatic
movement with the patriotic societies and with the official class, Mr.
Yeats and Mr. Moore have dealt good blows, and Mr. Russell and
"John Eglinton" (Mr. W.K. Magee) have led the disputants out of their
confusion. Among these men, "John Eglinton" is the one who has
thrown his greatest energy into the essay, almost all his energy, and in
it, in the chapters of "Two Essays on the Remnant" (1896), "Pebbles
from a Brook" (1901), and "Bards and Saints" (1906), he has written
with subtlety and illumination.
In the collection and clarification and retelling of folk-literature

William Larminie and Lady Gregory and Dr. Hyde stand out as the
leading workers. Mr. Larminie's "West Irish Folk-Tales" (1895) are
model work of their kind as are Lady Gregory's several books, of which
I speak in detail later. The work of Dr. Hyde is the most important
work of this sort, however, and it is not too much to say, as I intimated
at the outset, that, without his translation of "The Love Songs of
Connacht" (1894) and "The Religious Songs of Connacht" (1906), the
prose of the movement would never have attained that distinction of
rhythm which reveals English almost as a new language. I would gladly
have written at length of Dr. Hyde, but he has chosen to write his plays
in Irish as well as most of his verses. Yet so winning are the plays as
translated by Lady Gregory, and so greatly have they influenced the
folk-plays in English of the Abbey Theatre, that there is almost warrant
for including him. I cannot, of course, but I must at least bear testimony
to the many powers of these plays. Dr. Hyde can be trenchant, when
satire is his object, as in "The Bursting of the Bubble" (1903); or alive
with merriment when merriment is his desire, as in "The Poorhouse"
(1903); or full of quiet beauty when he writes of holy things, as in the
"Lost Saint" (1902). There are many other playwrights in Irish than Dr.
Hyde, but as no other plays in Irish than his have reacted to any extent
on the plays in English of the movement, I do not consider them, my
object in this book being to consider the dramatic writing in English of
the Celtic Renaissance, with relation to its value as a contribution to the
art of English letters. That there is a great deal else in the Celtic
Renaissance than its drama, I would, however, emphasize, though it is
true that every man of first literary power in the movement, except
Lionel Johnson and "John Eglinton," has tried his hand on at least one
Irish play. That Johnson would have come to write drama I firmly
believe, for in drama he could have reconciled two of the four loves
that were his life. He could not have put his love of Winchester, his
school, or his love of the classics into plays, but his love of Ireland and
his love of the Catholic Church would have blended, I believe, into
plays, still with the cloistered life of the seventh century, that would
have rivaled "The Hour-Glass,"