Irish Plays and Playwrights | Page 6

drama must be native, and in color and in atmosphere, in ideals and in
character the Abbey Theatre drama is Irish. Reading of life and style

are personal qualities, qualities of the artist himself, though they, too,
may take tone and color from national life, and in the drama of many of
the Abbey dramatists they do. These dramatists have been more
resolutely native, in fact, many of them, than the national dramatists of
other countries have been, of France and Germany to-day, of the Spain
or the England of the Renaissance. It would seem idle to be saying this
were not the contention being raised all the time by certain patriotic
groups of Irishmen in America as well as in Ireland that the new drama
is not a native drama. It is, as a matter of fact, no less natively Irish
than the Elizabethan drama is natively English; it is really more native,
for no part of it of moment veils its nationality under even so slight a
disguise as "the Italian convention" of that drama. The new Irish drama
is more native in its stories than is the Elizabethan drama, as these
stories, even when they are stories found in variant forms in other
countries, are given the tones of Irish life. The structural forms and the
symbolic presentation of ideas of which the Abbey dramatists have
availed themselves have no more denationalized their plays than has
the Church, a Church from oversea, to which most of them belong,
denationalized the Irish people.
Synge, the master dramatist of the new movement, while he does not
reproduce the average Irishman, is just as natively Irish in his
extravagance and irony as the old folk-tale of the "Two Hags"; Lady
Gregory in her farces is in a similar way representative of the riot of
West-Country imagination; and Mr. Yeats, if further removed from the
Irishmen of to-day, is very like, in many of his moods, to the riddling
bards of long ago. The later men, many of them, are altogether Irish,
representative of the folk of one or another section of the country, Mr.
Murray and Mr. Robinson of Cork, Mr. Mayne and Mr. Ervine of
Down, Mr. Colum and Mr. Boyle of the Midlands.
One need not say that the Irishman is a born actor; all the Celts are
famed for "the beautiful speaking"; for eloquence; for powers of
impersonation; for quick changes of mood; for ease in running the
gamut of the emotions. Of these things come art of the stage, and these
things are the Irishman's in fullest measure. The Abbey Players have,
however, gone abroad for some elements of their art, perhaps for their

repose of manner, a quietude that is not the quietude of moodiness, a
condition not unusual in the Irishman; and in addition to this repose of
manner, which is fundamental and common to their presentation of
realistic modern plays and of poetic plays of legendary times, for a
slowness and dignity of gesture in the plays of legend, which is perhaps
a borrowing from the classic stage. Their repose of manner may come
from modern France; at least so held Mr. Yeats, pointing to such a
source in "Samhain" of 1902.
The other day [he writes] I saw Sara Bernhardt and DeMax in
"Phèdre," and understood where Mr. Fay, who stage-manages the
National Theatrical Company, had gone for his model. For long periods
the performers would merely stand and pose, and I once counted
twenty-seven quite slowly before anybody on a fairly well-filled stage
moved, as it seemed, so much as an eyelash. The periods of stillness
were generally shorter, but I frequently counted seventeen, eighteen, or
twenty before there was a movement. I noticed, too, that the gestures
had a rhythmic progression. Sara Bernhardt would keep her hands
clasped over, let us say, her right breast for some time, and then move
them to the other side, perhaps, lowering her chin till it touched her
hands, and then, after another long stillness, she would unclasp them
and hold one out, and so on, not lowering them till she had exhausted
all the gestures of uplifted hands. Through one long scene DeMax, who
was quite as fine, never lifted his hand above his elbow, and it was only
when the emotion came to its climax that he raised it to his breast.
Beyond them stood a crowd of white-robed men who never moved at
all, and the whole scene had the nobility of Greek sculpture, and an
extraordinary reality and intensity. It was the most beautiful thing I had
ever seen upon the stage, and made me understand, in a new way, that
saying of Goethe's which is understood everywhere but in England,
"Art is art because it is not nature." Of course, our