Our Irish Theatre: A chapter of autobiography

by Lady Gregory

Where There is Nothing was given by the Stage Society in London, but Mr. Yeats was not satisfied with it, and we have since re-written it as The Unicorn from the Stars. Yet it went well and was vital. It led to an unexpected result: “I hear that some man of a fairly respectable class was taken up with a lot of tinkers somewhere in Munster, and that the Magistrate compared him to ‘Paul Ruttledge.’ The next night one of the tinkers seems to have said something to the others about their being in a book. The others resented this in some way, and there was a fight, which brought them all into Court again. I am trying to get the papers.”

Later in the year we wrote together Kathleen ni Houlihan and to that he wrote an introductory letter addressed to me: “One night I had a dream almost as distinct as a vision, of a cottage where there was well-being and firelight and talk of a marriage, and into the midst of that cottage there came an old woman in a long cloak. She was Ireland herself, that Kathleen ni Houlihan for whom so many songs have been sung and for whose sake so many have gone to their death. I thought if I could write this out as a little play, I could make others see my dream as I had seen it, but I could not get down from that high window of dramatic verse, and in spite of all you had done for me, I had not the country speech. One has to live among the people, like you, of whom an old man said in my hearing, ‘She has been a serving maid among us,’ before one can think the thoughts of the people and speak with their tongue. We turned my dream into the little play, Kathleen ni Houlihan, and when we gave it to the little theatre in Dublin and found that the working people liked it, you helped me to put my other dramatic fables into speech.”

For The Pot of Broth also I wrote dialogue and I worked as well at the plot and the construction of some of the poetic plays, especially The King’s Threshold and Deirdre; for I had learned by this time a good deal about play-writing to which I had never given thought before. I had never cared much for the stage, although when living a good deal in London, my husband and I went, as others do, to see some of each season’s plays. I find, in looking over an old diary, that many of these have quite passed from my mind, although books I read ever so long ago, novels and the like, have left at least some faint trace by which I may recognise them.

We thought at our first start it would make the whole movement more living and bring it closer to the people if the Gaelic League would put on some plays written in Irish. Dr. Hyde thought well of the idea, and while staying here at Coole, as he did from time to time, he wrote The Twisting of the Rope, based on one of Mr. Yeats’s Hanrahan stories; The Lost Saint on a legend given its shape by Mr. Yeats, and The Nativity on a scenario we wrote together for him. Afterwards he wrote The Marriage and The Poorhouse, upon in each case a scenario written by me. I betray no secret in telling this, for Dr. Hyde has made none of the collaboration, giving perhaps too generous acknowledgment, as in Galway, where he said, when called before the curtain after The Marriage, that the play was not his but that Lady Gregory had written it and brought it to him, saying “Cur Gaedilge air,” “Put Irish on it.” I find in a letter of mine to Mr. Yeats: “Thanks for sending back Raftery. I haven’t sent it to Hyde yet. The real story was that Raftery by chance went into a house where such a wedding was taking place ‘that was only a marriage and not a wedding’ and where there was ‘nothing but a herring for the dinner,’ and he made a song about it and about all the imaginary grand doings at it that has been remembered ever since. But it didn’t bring any practical good to the young people, for Raftery himself ‘had to go to bed in the end without as much as a drop to drink, but he didn’t mind that, where they hadn’t it to give.’”

But it went through some changes after that: “I have a letter from the Craoibhin. He has lost his Trinity College play and must re-write it from my translation. He is not quite satisfied with Raftery (The Marriage). ‘I don’t think Maire’s uncertainty if it be a ghost or not is effective on the stage. I would rather have the ghost “out and out” as early as possible, and make it clear to the audience.’ I rather agree with him. I think I will restore the voice at the door in my published version.”

And again I wrote from Galway: “I came here yesterday for a few days’ change, but the journey, or the little extra trouble at leaving, set my head aching, and I had to spend all yesterday in a dark room. In the evening, when the pain began to go, I began to think of the Raftery play, and I want to know if this end would do. After the miser goes out, Raftery stands up and says, ‘I won’t be the only one in the house to give no present to the woman of the house,’ and hands her the plate of money, telling them to count it. While they are all gathered round counting it, he slips quietly from the door. As he goes out, wheels or horse steps are heard, and a farmer comes in and says, ‘What is going on? All the carts of the country gathered at the door, and Seaghan, the Miser, going swearing down the road?’ They say it is a wedding party called in by Raftery. But where is Raftery? Is he gone? They ask the farmer if he met him outside—the poet Raftery—and he says, ‘I did not, but I stood by his grave at Killeenin yesterday.’ Do you think that better? It gets rid of the good-byes and the storm, and I don’t think any amount of hints convey the ghostly idea strongly enough. Let me know at once; just a word will do.”

As to The Poorhouse, the idea came from a visit to Gort Workhouse one day when I heard that the wife of an old man, who had been long there, maimed by something, a knife I think, that she had thrown at him in a quarrel, had herself now been brought in to the hospital. I wondered how they would meet, as enemies or as friends, and I thought it likely they would be glad to end their days together for old sake’s sake. This is how I wrote down my fable: “Scene, ward of a workhouse; two beds containing the old men; they are quarrelling. Occupants of other invisible beds are heard saying, ‘There they are at it again; they are always quarrelling.’ They say the matron will be coming to call for order, but another says the matron has been sent for to see somebody who wants to remove one of the paupers. Both old men wish they could be removed from each other and have the whole ridge of the world between them. The fight goes on. One old man tells the other that he remembers the time he used to be stealing ducks, and he a boy at school. The other old man remembers the time his neighbour was suspected of going to Souper’s school, etc., etc. They remember the crimes of each other’s lives. They fight like two young whelps that go on fighting till they are two old dogs. At last they take their pillows and throw them at each other. Other paupers (invisible) cheer and applaud. Then they take their porringers, pipes, prayer-books, or whatever is in reach, to hurl at each other. They lament the hard fate that has put them in the same ward for five years and in beds next each other for the last three months, and they after being enemies the whole of their lives. Suddenly a cry that the matron is coming. They settle themselves hurriedly. Each puts his enemy’s pillow under his head and lies down. The matron comes in with a countrywoman comfortably dressed. She embraces one old man. She is his sister. Her husband died from her lately and she is lonesome and doesn’t like to think of her brother being in the workhouse. If he is bedridden itself, he would be company for her. He is delighted, asks what sort of house she has. She says, a good one, a nice kitchen, and he can be doing little jobs for her. He can be sitting in a chair beside the fire and stirring the stirabout for her and throwing a bit of food to the chickens when she is out in the field. He asks when he can go. She says she has the chance of a lift for him on a neighbour’s cart. He can come at once. He says he will make no delay. A loud sob from the old man in the other bed. He says, ‘Is it going away you are, you that I knew through all my lifetime, and leaving me among strangers?’ The first old man asks his sister if she will bring him too. She is indignant, says she won’t. First old man says maybe he’d be foolish to go at all. How does he know if he’d like it. She says, he is to please himself; if he doesn’t come, she can easily get a husband, having, as she has, a nice way of living, and three lambs going to the next market. The first man says, well, he won’t go; if she would bring the other old man, he would go. She turns her back angrily. Paupers in other beds call out she’ll find a good husband amongst them. She pulls on her shawl scornfully to go away. She gives her brother one more chance; he says he won’t go. She says good-bye and bad luck to him. She leaves. He says that man beyond would be lonesome with no one to contradict him. The other man says he would not. The first man says, ‘You want some one to be arguing with you always.’ The second man, ‘I do not.’ The first man says, ‘You are at your lies again.’ The second takes up his pillow to heave at him again. Curtain falls on two men arming themselves with pillows.”

I intended to write the full dialogue myself, but Mr. Yeats thought a new Gaelic play more useful for the moment, and rather sadly I laid that part of the work upon Dr. Hyde. It was all for the best in the end, for the little play, when we put it on at the Abbey, did not go very well. It seemed to ravel out into loose ends, and we did not repeat it; nor did the Gaelic players like it as well as The Marriage and The Lost Saint. After a while, when the Fays had left us, I wanted a play that would be useful to them, and with Dr. Hyde’s full leave I re-wrote the Poorhouse as The Workhouse Ward. I had more skill by that time, and it was a complete re-writing, for the two old men in the first play had been talking at an imaginary audience of other old men in the ward. When this was done away with the dialogue became of necessity more closely knit, more direct and personal, to the great advantage of the play, although it was rejected as “too local” by the players for whom I had written it. The success of this set me to cutting down the number of parts in later plays until I wrote Grania with only three persons in it, and The Bogie Men with only two. I may have gone too far, and have, I think, given up an intention I at one time had of writing a play for a man and a scarecrow only, but one has to go on with experiment or interest in creation fades, at least so it is with me.

In 1902, my Twenty-five was staged; a rather sentimental comedy, not very amusing. It was useful at the time when we had so few, but it was weak, ending, as did for the most part the Gaelic plays that began to be written, in a piper and a dance. I tried to get rid of it afterwards by writing The Jackdaw on the same idea, but in which I make humour lay the ghost of sentiment. But Twenty-five may yet be re-written and come to a little life of its own. Spreading the News was played at the opening of the Abbey Theatre, December 27, 1904. I heard it attacked at that time on the ground that Irish people never were gossips to such an extent, but it has held its own, and our audiences have had their education as well as writers and players, and know now that a play is a selection not a photograph and that the much misquoted “mirror to nature” was not used by its author or any good play-writer at all.