The contemporary drama of Ireland

Contents

OHAPTSB PAOB

I The Irish Literary Theatre . ; . . 1

II Edward Martyn 12

CHAPTER I The Irish Literary Theatre

The last decade of the nineteenth century was marked, in Germany, France, and England, by a strong reaction against the decadence into which the art of the theatre had fallen. When the Freie Biihne, Theatre Libre and Independent Theatre were established their task was the by no means inconsiderable one of driving from the stage the incredible sentimentalities and the machine-made effects of the popular drama* Most of the names which had for years occupied the attention of playgoers are now lost in the obscurity from which they should never have emerged. Occasionally touring companies are found, in the more unsophisticated regions, to galvanize the corpses of those plays which excited the indignant ambition of the progressive dramatists a quarter of a century ago. Yet, in spite of undeniable progress, perhaps best appreciated when the mid-Victorian play confers an unmerited luster upon its modern Broadway equivalent, in spite of the advantages enjoyed by the successful play of to-day compared with its predecessors of the "eighties'', it is generally admitted that the theatre badly responds to the intellectual demands of our time.

There is, however, one country whose drama shows a more than usual consistency in its intention to realize the ideals of the dramatic reformers who instituted the revolt against "Sardoodledom." Ireland did not escape the influences that were at work in Western Europe during the " eighteen-nineties " and which gave us, under Ibsen's impulse, a Hauptmann, a Brieux, and a Shaw. Instead, however, of springing up as an unrelated movement, in the midst of a universal acceptance of literary and dramatic commercialization, the Irish Dramatic Revival became at once a part of the comprehensive intellectual awakening which had then come to be known as "the Celtic Renaissance." Ever since 1880, when Standish O'Grady's epic history of Ireland had fired the imagination of a young generation of poets, Ireland had been giving forth unmistakable signs of the creative urge in national literature. W. B. Yeats and A. E. were already known to wide audiences, and the existence of a group of Irish poets and prose writers with a song and message refreshingly unlike the literature associated with The Yellow Booh school, confirmed the truth of Ireland's Literary Revival. Consequently, when the wave of dramatic reform reached that country, just as the nineteenth century closed, it did not break against a stony in-

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difference, nor was it diverted into shallow streams which soon dried up; it flowed naturally into the vital current of national literary activity.

The result has been that while the contemporaneous movements towards the reorganization of the theatre are now memories, with only here and there an isolated dramatist to testify to their passage, there is in Ireland to-day a national theatre, devoted, in the main, to the production of uncommercial drama. Without the State subvention necessary to the proper support of such an institution, the Irish Theatre has, for more than fifteen years, given practical effect to the plans and theories which inspired the "free stage" propagandists in Berlin, Paris, and London. The latter had to resign themselves to more temporary achievements, pending the time when their best talent might be absorbed by the theatre of commerce. The Irish Dramatic Movement has had to make concessions in order to obviate the difficulties arising out of economic dependence, but its evolution has been uninterruptedly in the direction of permanent success. It has not been supported by a coterie only but has enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing its public grow to meet its expansion, and above all, it has been creatively fruitful. That is to say, the Irish Theatre has not only educated the playgoer and influenced the dramatist, but has created a dramatic literature, and given birth to a number of playwrights whose genius would never have responded to any other call.

The association of the Irish drama with the Literary Revival is, therefore, so intimate that the limitations imposed upon the student are self-evident. He will concern himself neither with plays which accidentally or incidentally have their setting in Ireland, nor with the work of Irishmen whose spirit is as remote from their country as the scene in which their plays are laid. Either of these conditions will exclude from consideration that excellent dramatization of Irish politics, John BulVs Other Island. On the other hand, the works of Oscar Wilde are, for obvious reasons, even more alien to the study of Irish drama than those of Calderon, who wrote 8t. Patricks Purgatory, or of that sixteenth-century Italian dramatist, Giovanni Giraldi, whose Arrenopia found its scene in Limerick. Just as the non-Gaelic reader understands by Irish literature that body of prose and poetry which has been written during the past thirty years under the influence of the Celtic Renaissance, so he will apply the term Irish drama to the manifestation of that influence which has centered about the theatre. There is an interesting Gaelic literature in the process of creation, and still more remarkable Gaelic drama, but neither calls for attention at the present time. It will suSice to have recalled their existence, for they are the all important background in any attempt to picture the Anglo-Irish expression of our national life.

The almost immediate absorption of the "new drama" tendencies by the forces of the Literary Revival in Ireland must not, however, blind us to the fact that the Irish Theatre owes its birth to that general impulse of the period, and is not the purely "Celtic" creation generally supposed. It was, at its

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inception, a local reaction to the prevalent stimulus, which impelled men to seek the renovation of an art abandoned to commercial speculation. The current misconception as to the origins and founders of our Dramatic Revival is due to the fame which accom* panied the second phase of that revival, making of it the best known aspect of the Celtic Renaissance. We must, therefore, first establish the separate identity of the original Irish Literary Theatre, before coming to the now famous achievements of the Irish National Theatre Society. The former was essentially a part of the so-called "Ibsenite movement", which led to the establishment of the Independent Theatre in London; the latter was a part of the general renascence of Irish literature, whose progress made it possible for the national to embrace and transform the international movement of ideas.

Founded in 1899, the Irish Literary Theatre owed its title and, in a large measure its existence, to Edward Martyn, whose interest in the drama was avowedly stimulated by the revelation of Ibsen and the Scandinavian and Russian dramatists to a belated London public. With his friends George Moore and W. B. Yeats, of whom the former had contributed to the repertoire of the Independent Theatre, he projected his plan of giving Ireland a similar stage upon which literary plays might be performed, without being exposed to the exigencies of pure profiteering. His resolve was strengthened by the fact that he had been unable to find a London manager sufficiently appreciative to produce either Maeve or The Heather Field. These composed his first volume of plays, which was published in 1899 and received most favorably by the critics, thus emphasizing the necessity for a theatre where such work could secure a hearing. Prior to that date Martyn and Yeats had come over to Ireland with a view to enlisting aid for their project. Lady Gregory, A. E., Standish O'Grady, and a host of others prominent in various departments of Irish life, associated themselves with the proposal, and soon a sufficient number of guarantors was found to bring the Irish Literary Theatre into existence.

At the inaugural performance, which took place on May 8, 1899, The Countess Cathleen by W. B. Yeats occupied the program, and the following evening Edward Martyn's The Heather Field was produced. In February, 1900, a second season opened with The Bending of the Bough by George Moore, which was succeeded by Edward Martyn's Maeve, and a heroic drama of ancient Ireland, The Last Feast of the Fianna, by Alice Milligan, the sole contribution of importance by this distinguished poetess to our dramatic literature. Finally, in October, 1901, the Irish Literary Theatre terminated its official career, after the production of Diarmuid and Grania, written in collaboration by Yeats and Moore, and of the first Gaelic play performed in any theatre, Casadh an t-Sugdin (The Twisting of the Rope) by Douglas Hyde. In brief summary, its achievement was the performance of six plays in English, and one in Gaelic, all with Irish themes, but played, with the exception of the last, by English actors. It will be seen then, that while

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an important step had been taken in the direction of a National Theatre, the essential condition of national drama, namely, native interpretation, was lacking.

It is doubtful, however, if the creation of a national drama was ever the main purpose of the enterprise. W. B. Yeats certainly had this object in view, but both his coadjutors were far more concerned to facilitate the production of literary drama, without special reference to its nationality. Consequently the plays produced reflect, as we shall see, this double tendency. Yeats, with the almost negligible support of Alice Milligan, represented the character which the Irish Theatre was subsequently to assume, whereas Martyn and Moore stood for the more cosmopolitan " drama of ideas" which they had learned to admire in London. The institution which they conceived would have given room to the poetic and folk plays of Yeats's ambition, but only on the same terms as would have been accorded to Chekhov or Strindberg. Elements of dissolution were contained in this clash of motives, so that the association of effort lasted only long enough to lay the foundation of the movement which was to give us a national theatre.

An examination of the work of Edward Martyn will enable us to estimate precisely the significance of his role in the evolution of contemporary Irish drama. It will then be evident why the Irish Literary Theatre must be traced to other sources than those from which the Irish National Theatre derives. At the same time, we shall notice the point of transition, which might have become one of fusion, had more foresight been possible at the time. Martyn was not only the prime mover of the Literary Theatre, but he most perfectly embodies the dramatic ideal which that institution represented, as against the aims subsequently formulated by the theory and practice of the Irish National Theatre Society. While the plays of Yeats and Alice Milligan contained no element irreconcilable with the latter, those of Martyn have never become part of the Irish Players' repertoire.

In order to appreciate the relation of theory to practice in Martyn's case, we must preface an analysis of his writings by a brief exposition of the principles which attended their production. These will be found in Beliaine, which was, during the years 1899 and 1900, "the organ of the Irish Literary Theatre." In the first issue we read : " Everywhere critics and writers, who wish for something better than the ordinary play of commerce, turn to Norway for an example and an inspiration." Then follows a reference to the Theatre Libre and Independent Theatre, and such inexpensive theatres "which associations of men of letters hire from time to time, that they may see on the stage the plays of Henrik Ibsen, Maurice Maeterlinck, Gerard Hauptmann, Jose 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." The examples and influences which prompted Martyn, Moore, and Yeats are evident from these opening lines of their manifesto, and, that there should be no doubt as to their intentions, they announce: "The Irish Literary Theatre will

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attempt to do in Dublin something of what has been done in London and Paris;" adding, "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."

There is nothing in these statements which would expressly preclude the performance of the folk-plays and peasant drama now so completely identified with the Irish Theatre. Indeed, the editor of Beltaine seemed to have some such departure from the English and Continental models in his mind when he wrote : "The plays will differ from those produced by associations of men of letters in London and Paris, because times have changed, and because the intellect of Ireland is romantic and spiritual, rather than scientific and analytical." Nevertheless, it is impossible, w^hen turning over the pages of Beltaine, to escape the feeling that the Scandinavian theatre, with its French and English disciples, was constantly in the minds of those who planned to give Ireland something analogous. Even the convention of the printed play, that essentially Shavian-English escape from the limitations of the commercial stage, was accepted. "In all or almost all cases the plays must be published before they are acted, and no play will be accepted which could not hope to succeed as a book." The popularity of the printed play has been largely due to the virtue which the "advanced dramatists" had to make of necessity, in the heroic days of the Ibsen-Shaw crusade. It has facilitated the de-dramatization of the contemporary "theatre of ideas", and does not deserve any more respect than many another stage convention displaced by the advent of the talking play — the "arguments", "conversations", and other substitutes for drama in recent years. Yet we find the Irish Literary Theatre beginning its career with this conventional novelty of the period, convinced apparently that some special quality attaches to the work of a playwright who addresses himself to the reader first, to the playgoer afterwards.

Significantly, it will be found that the vast majority of the plays in the repertoire of the National Theatre make their appeal primarily to the eye and ear. They appear in book form, it is true, but that is by no means a condition precedent of their acceptance or success. W. B. Yeats has written eloquently and at length upon the claims of the poetic play, and of the relation between "literature and the living voice", clearly indicating a constant preoccupation far removed from the interest of the printed plays as such. The speaking of verse has always been his chief concern in the theatre, and the well-known superiority of the Irish Players in their interpretation of poetic and peasant plays is due to the rhythm of their speech. The English actors, with the exception of Florence Farr, who played during the three years of the Literary Theatre, could not assert the superiority of the human voice over print so wonderfully as the later group of players, trained by the brothers Fay for the Irish National Theatre. Consequently, this fact alone constituted a serious obstacle to the reconcilement of the conflicting ideals cherished by the founders of the original Theatre.

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In the second number of Beltaine we find Yeats already confessing to a certain disappointment in his hope of having plays in verse adequately performed. After his experience with The Countess Cathleen, he writes : "I rather shrink from producing another verse play, unless I get some opportunity for experiment with my actors in the speaking of verse."

By way of summary we may say that the dominant note of Beltaine is cosmopolitan rather than national. While Yeats was pleading for dramas of Irish legend and classical history, his collaborators were arguing from the example of the dramatic innovations of Continental Europe. In support of the former there is little beyond vague announcements of plays, which have never materialized, by Fiona Macleod and Standish 0' Grady; in support of the latter, there came articles dealing with the rise of the intellectual drama, and some of the most remarkable pieces written in English under the influence of Ibsen. On the one side was the theatre of beauty, on the other the theatre of ideas, concerned respectively for the importance of rhythm and diction and for the importance of the printed play. All the circumstances were propitious to the success of the latter, and unfavorable to the duration of an enterprise based upon so slight an identity of purpose. The only common ground was the general desire to follow an almost universal revolt against the stereotyped drama of the commercial theatre.

Chapter II

George Moore's veracious essay in indiscreet autobiography, Hail and Farewell, contains no figure more interesting than Edward Martyn, who survives the ordeal of fictional reconstruction as successfully as A. E., and John Eglinton, in that all three emerge undiminished. Those three volumes of Irish literary history drew attention to the personality of many writers who would have preferred to let their own books speak for them, and Edward Martyn may be counted amongst their number. Biographically there is little to relate of him that bears upon his work for the Irish Theatre. A Nationalist of strong convictions, he has found himself involved in conflicts arising out of the clash of his political opinions with his social position as a landed gentleman and magistrate, in a country where these qualifications were traditionally dissociated from nationalism. He had long been a discriminating critic and lover of music, before the Dramatic Movement engaged his attention, a fact with which his country was made gratefully acquainted, when he donated fifty thousand dollars to found a Palestrina choir in the Catholic Pro-Cathedral, Dublin.

EDWAKD MARTYN 13

His artistic bent was not, however, solely in that direction which has provided the author of Ave with material for the exercise of a peculiar talent. When he left Dublin to complete his education at Oxford University, his fancy had turned to thoughts of poetry, and in 1885 he had prepared a book of verse for publication, but in spite of his twenty-six years and his Irish birth, he resisted the impulse, and destroyed the manuscript. It was not until 1890 that he made his iSrst venture into literature, when he published Morgante the Lesser, under the pseudonym, "Sirius." This extraordinary novel did not reveal anything of the future dramatist. It was a brutal satire, Swiftian in its manner, upon the scientifico-materialistic philosophy of that period when the omnipotence of Darwinian rationalism had not yet been rationally disputed. Written in the elaborate, discursive fashion of the eighteenth-century satirists, the book was not one to appeal to the average novel reader, but it deserves attention, if only because of a reflected interest which his subsequent works have conferred upon it. We shall see that his conception of the nature of satire did not materially alter when he came to project his fancies upon the stage.

In 1899 he published The Heather Field and Maeve in one volume, with a preface by George Moore, and these were the two plays which constituted the greatest successes of the Irish Literary Theatre, where they were almost immediately produced. So successful was The Heather Field that it was performed shortly afterwards in London and New York, and was translated for production in Germany. In confirmation of what has already been said as to the examples by which the founders of the Irish Literary Theatre were inspired, we find in George Moore's preface a characteristic analysis of the Independent Theatre movement in London. With considerable irony he describes his adventures with Mr. William Archer, the champion of Ibsen, and with the managers or actors who professed to be interested in literary drama. As he rightly says, the collapse of the theatre of ideas in London was mainly due to the indiscriminate enthusiasm of the critics, and the public led by them, for all plays which seemed in any way to depart from the conventional success of the Sardou-Rostand type. Pinero, in particular, is accused by Moore of having utterly demoralized the advocates of progress, who mistook his suburban audacities for advanced ideas, and his literary melodrama for a new technique. Incidentally, it transpires that neither the producers nor the critics could be induced by Moore to consider favorably The Heather Field. Obviously, we must conclude that Martyn's aim was to write for the existing London theatres open to literary plays, and not to found a theatre for the special purpose. Finding no encouragement he then bethought hunself of a joint undertaking, with Yeats and Moore as his active supporters, — the former having experienced London production, when his Land of Heart's Desire was played at the Avenue Theatre in 1894, the latter having shared in the work of the Independent Theatre, where The Strike at Arlingford was produced in 1893.

The three acts of The Heather Field are devoted to a psychological analysis of Garden Tyrrell, the Irish landowner, whose world of reality is situated in the land of his own dreams, but who has been forced to grapple with the material factors of life in the administration of his estate. Although marriage has thrust the duties and responsibilities of his position upon him, Tyrrell is temperamentally incapable of abandoning himself wholly to everyday affairs. The idealist in him soon conceived the quixotic passion of reclaiming from the Atlantic a wild field of bog and heather, and when the play opens we find him immersed in the plans and difficulties attendant upon the realization of his dream. He has mortgaged his property heavily to obtain money for the work of draining and removing the rocks from the heather field, and his wife is anxious to secure control of the estate, in order to prevent him from utterly ruining their fortunes, by raising further loans to repair the damage caused to the adjoining land, in the course of improving the field in question. Tyrrell has allowed his passion so to possess him that he has become oblivious to everything, and clings with increasing desperation to what he feels is his lost ideal. He is in a state of intense exaltation, aggravated by the constant antagonism of a very matter-of-fact wife, whose sympathy for him was never deep, and is now turned to a mixture of fear and hatred, by the spectacle of the inevitable bankruptcy into which they are drifting.

The strangeness of her husband's manner, his visionary intensity, and the obvious calamity which threatens to engulf her and their child, serve to provide Mrs.

16 THE CONTEMPOEARY DRAMA OF IRELAND

Tyrrell with the weapon she requu*es. In the typical Strindbergian manner she sets herself to have her husband declared incompetent on the ground of insanity. The alienists are on the point of giving the verdict which will place the direction of Tyrell's affairs in his wife's hands, but are dissuaded by his close friend, Barry Ussher. The latter, knowing and loving Tyrrell, cannot accept the theory of madness, and although he appreciates the difficulty of Mrs. Tyrrell's position, he cannot permit an action whose effect would assuredly be to drive the idealist insane. Tyrrell is thus saved from being put under restraint, but the catastrophe feared by Ussher is merely postponed. His mortgages and debts have transformed the erstwhile lenient landlord into a hard taskmaster, who turns to eviction, as did so many of his fellows, as the way out of his own incapacity and bad management. The evicted tenants have resorted to the violence which was long the only expression of their side of the agrarian campaign in Ireland, and Tyrrell has been provided with a police escort to protect him from the vengeance of his tenantry. This protection is so repulsive to him that he prefers to remain indoors, brooding over his dream, and slipping farther away from contact with the present.

As he lives at home, thrown back upon himself and cherishing memories as a refuge from his unhappy present, Garden Tyrrell becomes ever more engrossed in the symbolic vision of the heather field, where the winds sang to him of youth and happiness, whose flowering represents the consummation of joy and suecess. But one day his little child comes to him with a handful of heather buds, the only flowers he could find while playing in that field of fate. These announce the triumph of nature over Tyrrell's efforts; the land he would reclaim has become waste once more, so that not even this ideal world is left in which he could wander in fancy. The blow destroys his dream and his reason, but only for a moment. In ecstatic vision he reasserts his idealism, for he has crossed forever the line which divides the material from the imaginative, and the curtain falls upon the man restored at last to the period of his youth, when the earth was fair and his spirit untroubled.

The part of Ibsen in the conception of The Heather Field seems perhaps more obvious than it really is. The leitmotiv derives something from The Wild Duck, and there is more than a suggestion of Ghosts in the closing scene, when Tyrrell turns to his child, whom he believes to be his brother and cries : " See, even now the sky is darkening as in that storm scene of the old legend I told you on the Rhine. See, the rain across a saffron sun trembles like gold harp strings, through the purple Irish Spring!" And then, as they watch the rainbow: "Oh, mystic highway of man's speechless longings ! my heart goes forth upon the rainbow to that horizon of joy ! " {With fearful exaltation.) " The voices — I hear them now triumphant in a silver glory of song."

George Moore asserts that it was "the first play written in English inspired by the examples of Ibsen", a fact of which he failed to convince Mr. Archer, who held, of course, that the great Scandinavian dramatist was essentially a social reformer. In that sense it is impossible to describe Edward Martyn as "an Irish Ibsen", for he has never professed any didactic intention, and it would be hard to say wherein consists the " purpose ' ' of The Heather Field. As Moore pointed out, we sympathized with Tyrrell, "although all right and good sense are on the wife's side." This, however, was not the case in London, where, we have the authority of Yeats for saying, the audience approved of the proposal to lock up Tyrrell as a madman. In Ireland the doctors were hissed by the less sophisticated members of the audience, as a sign of their disapproval of Mrs. Tyrrell's intentions I The fact is, as further examination will prove, the work of Martyn may be described as essentially Ibsenite, or not, — according as one emphasizes the propagandist aspect of Ibsen's dramas. Inasmuch as the latter has been the point upon which his English disciples have insisted, their plays have all tended to become vehicles for the expression of social theories. As the Irish playwright avoided this procedure he cannot be termed a follower of Ibsen, as the expression is usually employed.

Naturally, Edward Martyn was subjected to the Norwegian influence, and so far as the latter has colored modern dramatic technique, he is truly a product of the period. He seems, nevertheless, to have given a more personal imprint to his rendering of the lesson learned by his contemporaries from Ibsen. Instead of merely seizing upon the facilities for propaganda afforded by the abolition of worn-out conventions, he applied Ibsen's method to the portrayal of national character and the interpretation of Irish life. Consequently, his plays resemble those of his master much more than does anything written by the author of the Quintessence of Ihsenism, who has been so instrumental in obscuring the true purpose of the dramatist. While Shaw has read into Ibsen a most interesting commentary upon contemporary social problems, he has caused us to lose sight of the original spirit in which that commentary was presented. There have been innumerable minor variations upon such themes as The DolVs Ilou^e, but none of the later English playwrights has approached a local theme in the Ibsen manner. In Martyn we get the essence of Ibsenism, rather than that quintessence extracted by Bernard Shaw. He does not concentrate upon one aspect of Ibsen's genius, but envelops his subject in an atmosphere which we recognize as akin to that of Hedda Gabler or The Lady from the Sea.

A notable example of this adaptation' is Maeve, the "psychological drama in two acts", which followed The Heather Field in the published volume, as also on the stage of The Irish Literary Theatre. Maeve O'Heynes, daughter of The O'Heynes, hereditary Prince of Burren, County Clare, is an idealist of the same visionary race as Carden Tyrrell. She has submitted to betrothal with a wealthy Englishman, Hugh Fitz Walter, from a sense of duty to the impoverished nobility of her father, who cannot occupy the rank to which he is entitled without the fortune which this marriage will bring. From the moment the curtain is raised, Maeve is revealed as a dreamy, high-strung girl, whose imagination is haunted by the fairy lore and legend of the countryside. She moves on a plane of vision far above the humdrum world of her impecunious family, whose sole thought is the marriage which will restore their social dignity. Maeve has nothing in common with her young English suitor, who shows himself, indeed, strangely tolerant of the indifference, amounting to aversion, with which she meets his expressions of sentiment. It is understood, however, that the girl is more than usually sensitive and moody, and much latitude is granted her in the expression of her temperament.

The confidant of Maeve's dreams is the old nurse. Peg Inerny, who has all the West Irish peasant's poetic faith in the existence of "the good people", the superhuman beings of the Celtic land of faery. Peg is convinced that the lore of the peasantry identifying her with the Great Queen Maeve of Gaelic epic history is based upon the fact that she undergoes this metamorphosis at night upon the mountain side. She finds in Maeve O'Heynes one only too ready to follow her into this existence of the spirit, for Peg speaks to the visionary girl of things seen in moments of rapture. Thus, when the old nurse invites her out on to the mountain to meet the great figures of legend, and the noble lover revealed in her dreams, Maeve forgets her wedding eve and accompanies her. After several hours of trance on the hills, she returns to the old castle, her whole being disturbed by the ecstasy of vision. She seats herself at the open window, insensible of the piercing cold of the night, and as she broods, the spirit world opens to her, and before her eyes there passes the procession of Queen Maeve with her attendants, as they rise out of the mountain cairn and come towards the castle. On their return they are accompanied by the spirit of Maeve, which passes with the others into the mysterious realm of Tir-nanogue. When her sister comes to prepare her for the wedding she finds the bride sitting cold and lifeless at the window, her soul having gone out to meet that of the ideal lover — himself but a symbol of eternal beauty.