A Kiltartan Play for Children
By
Lady Gregory
Author of “Seven Short Plays”
“Our Irish Theatre”
“Irish Folk-History Plays,” etc.
_8º Eight full-page Illustrations in color_
_$1.25 net._
This play deals with the adventures of the King of Ireland’s son, who
goes in search of the Golden Apple of Healing. The scenes are laid in
the Witch’s Garden, the Giant’s House, the Wood of Wonders, and the
King of Ireland’s Room. It is both humorous and lyrical, and should
please children and their elders, alike. The colored illustrations
have the same old faery-tale air as the play itself.
Irish Folk-History Plays
By
LADY GREGORY
_First Series. The Tragedies_
GRANIA KINCORA DERVORGILLA
_Second Series. The Tragic Comedies_
THE CANAVANS THE WHITE COCKADE THE DELIVERER
_2 vols. Each, $1.5O net. By mail, $1.65_
Lady Gregory has preferred going for her material to the traditional
folk-history rather than to the authorized printed versions, and she
has been able, in so doing, to make her plays more living. One of
these, Kincora, telling of Brian Boru, who reigned in the year 1000,
evoked such keen local interest that an old farmer travelled from the
neighborhood of Kincora to see it acted in Dublin.
The story of Grania, on which Lady Gregory has founded one of these
plays, was taken entirely from tradition. Grania was a beautiful young
woman and was to have been married to Finn, the great leader of the
Fenians; but before the marriage, she went away from the bridegroom
with his handsome young kinsman, Diarmuid. After many years, when
Diarmuid had died (and Finn had a hand in his death), she went back to
Finn and became his queen.
Another of Lady Gregory’s plays, The Canavans dealt with the stormy
times of Queen Elizabeth, whose memory is a horror in Ireland second
only to that of Cromwell.
The White Cockade is founded on a tradition of King James having
escaped from Ireland after the battle of the Boyne in a wine barrel.
The choice of folk history rather than written history gives a
freshness of treatment and elasticity of material which made the late
J. M. Synge say that “Lady Gregory’s method had brought back the
possibility of writing historic plays.”
All these plays, except Grania, which has not yet been staged, have
been very successfully performed in Ireland. They are written in the
dialect of Kiltartan, which had already become familiar to readers of
Lady Gregory’s books.
New Comedies
By
LADY GREGORY
The Bogie Men—The Full Moon—Coats
Damer’s Gold—McDonough’s Wife
_8º, With Portrait in Photogravure. $1.50 net. By mail, $1.65_
The plays have been acted with great success by the Abbey Company, and
have been highly extolled by appreciative audiences and an
enthusiastic press. They are distinguished by a humor of unchallenged
originality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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