The quarrel with Mr. Yeats over "Diarmid and Grania," coming as it did at the end of the three years' venture of "The Irish Literary Theatre," explains why Mr. Moore wrote no plays for the Irish National Dramatic Company and its successors on through the Abbey Theatre Players. He was still interested, however, in the "cause" as far as it was possible for one of his temperament and taste, and he was conspicuous on first nights at the Abbey Theatre down to the time of his departure from Dublin in 1911.
Since "Diarmid and Grania" (1901) Mr. Moore has published the two books of his that since "A Drama in Muslin" (1886) reveal his deepest knowledge of Irish life, the volume of stories of varying length to which he gives that title, so symbolic, "The Untilled Field" (1903), and "The Lake" (1905), but there are few incidents in either that he is likely to develop into plays. "The Lake" could not be dramatized, but if it could be dramatized, it would be as little likely to be presented in Ireland as "The Tinker's Wedding." Mr. Moore, for all that he was born a Catholic, would not hesitate any more than did the son of the Protestant minister to put a priest into a realistic modern play, and that, of course, would be a mild audacity for Mr. Moore now that he has published the scenario of "The Apostle" (1911). His Paul, in "The Apostle," a "thick-set man, of rugged appearance, hairy in the face and with a belly," is wonderfully alive, and his Jesus is a distinct and realizable personality, if not the Jesus of Christian dream. It is a curious illustration of Mr. Moore's almost disciple-like attitude toward Mr. G.W. Russell that he should make his Christ talk like "A.E." It seemed to me, as I read the words that Mr. Moore puts first on the lips of Jesus, that they were phrases that I had heard on the lips of Mr. Russell. They are of the very quality of his speech and writing: "How beautiful is the evening light as it dies, revealing every crest; the outline of the hills is evident now, evident as the will of God." And now each time, as I re-read them, they sound in my ears to the remembered rhythm of Mr. Russell's voice. Should Mr. Moore ever evolve a play from this scenario, and the play be played—and why should it not, now that the way is so plainly blazed by the score and more of miracle plays of the past decade?—it will have to be chanted as "A.E." chants his verse, as one would wish mass to be chanted.
Only a year ago Mr. Moore made his last adventure of the theatre. With the help of Mr. Lennox Robinson he dramatized "Esther Waters," but later he threw out the latter's work, feeling, no doubt, about it as Mr. Martyn felt about Mr. Moore's rewriting of his "A Tale of a Town"; and when it was put on, in the early winter of 1911-12 by the Stage Society, "Esther Waters" the play was like "Esther Waters" the novel, solely the work of Mr. Moore. The critics seem agreed that it was long drawn out and undramatic, but that it was well written and well acted. I suppose that the preoccupation with "Esther Waters" that this dramatization reveals is because "Esther Waters" was written in that period of his life when Mr. Moore was most himself. After ten years in London he had escaped considerably from the French influence of his young manhood, and his genius had not been warped out of its true plane, as he would doubtless now say, by Irish mists. Mr. Moore must have felt that there was something not wholly himself in much of "The Untilled Field" and in much of "The Lake," that the minds of Mr. Yeats and Mr. Russell had in a way dominated his mind, and that not even the hardly tolerated Mr. Martyn had been without influence upon him.
Such a realization is not the professed motive for the return of Mr. Moore to England, but I have no doubt at all that it is somewhere in the back of his mind, where he would like it to be hidden and forgot. At any rate, by the time of his return to England, Mr. Moore had come to see clearly that the Celtic episode of his maturity was closed.
It is not, I think, particularly difficult for one who understands the old-fashioned camp-meeting "getting of religion" to understand this "Celtic episode." Mr. Moore got Celtomania; a sort of "spiritual consumption," he calls his possession in one place, as a certain other type of sinner "got religion" in the old shouting days. That is, Mr. Moore wrought himself up partly in the spirit of the Playboy, and was wrought up to some degree willy-nilly until he could write his speech of February, 1900, on "Literature and the Irish Language," and, finally, a little later, could return happily to the country that until then he could endure only now and again.
But as a matter of fact the motive that led Mr. Moore back to Ireland matters not at all to literature. What beauty of writing that return led to matters a great deal. Had he not returned to Ireland, we should not have had a good deal that adds to the joy we win from satiric laughter, we should not have had "Hail and Farewell"; had he not returned we should not have had a book that adds to the treasure of beautiful feeling and beautiful writing there is in English literature, a treasure that there is no chance of ever having too large; we should not have had "The Lake," which is Ireland, West Ireland, Catholic Ireland, a land under gray skies that the priests its masters would, too many of them, make a land of gray lives.