The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 4 (of 8): The Hour-glass. Cathleen ni Houlihan. The Golden Helmet. The Irish Dramatic Movement — John Shaqi
The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 4 (of 8): The Hour-glass. Cathleen ni Houlihan. The Golden Helmet. The Irish Dramatic MovementYeats, W. B. (William Butler)
General
The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 4 (of 8): The Hour-glass. Cathleen ni Houlihan. The Golden Helmet. The Irish Dramatic Movement
Yeats, W. B. (William Butler)
English literature -- Irish authors
There had been only two rehearsals, and the little boy who
should have come in laughing at the end came in shouting, ‘Ho ho, ha
ha,’ evidently believing that these were Gaelic words he had never
heard before. Playwrights will have to be careful who they permit to
play their work if it is to be played after only two rehearsals, and
without enough attention to the arrangement of the stage to make the
action plausible.
The only Gaelic performances I have seen during the year have been
ill-done, but I have seen them sufficiently well done in other years
to believe my friends when they tell me that there have been good
performances. _Inghinidhe na h-Eireann_ is always thorough, and one
cannot doubt that the performance of Dr. Hyde’s _An Naom ar Iarriad_,
by the children from its classes, was at least careful. A powerful
little play in English against enlisting, by Mr. Colum, was played with
it, and afterwards revived, and played with a play about the Royal
Visit, also in English. I have no doubt that we shall see a good many
of these political plays during the next two or three years, and it
may be even the rise of a more or less permanent company of political
players, for the revolutionary clubs will begin to think plays as
necessary as the Gaelic League is already thinking them. Nobody can
find the same patriotic songs and recitations sung and spoken by
the same people, year in year out, anything but mouldy bread. It is
possible that the players who are to produce plays in October for the
Samhain festival of _Cumann na n-Gaedheal_ may grow into such a company.
Though one welcomes every kind of vigorous life, I am, myself, most
interested in ‘The Irish National Theatre Society,’ which has no
propaganda but that of good art. The little Camden Street Hall it had
taken has been useful for rehearsal alone, for it proved to be too far
away, and too lacking in dressing-rooms for our short plays, which
involve so many changes. Successful performances were given, however,
at Rathmines, and in one or two country places.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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