At Liverpool a priest had arranged an entertainment. The audience did not like one of the plays and hooted. The priest thereupon appeared and apologised, saying he would take the play off. In Dublin, Mr. Martin Harvey, an old favourite, had been forced to take off after the first night a little play because its subject was Irish belief in witchcraft. The widow of a writer of Irish plays that had been fairly popular was picketed through Ireland with her company and was nearly ruined, no one being allowed to enter the doors. Finally, at, I think, Athlone, she was only allowed to produce a play after it had been cut and rearranged by a local committee, made up of the shopkeepers of the town. We would not submit Mr. Synge’s work or any of the work we put on to such a test, nor would we allow any part of our audience to make itself final judge through preventing others from hearing and judging for themselves. We have been justified, for Synge’s name has gone round the world, and we should have been ashamed for ever if we had not insisted on a hearing for his most important work. But, had it been a far inferior play and written by some young writer who had never been heard of, we should have had to do the same thing. If we had been obliged to give in to such organised dictation, we should of necessity have closed the Theatre. I respected the opinion of those among that group who were sincere. They, not used to works of imagination and wild fantasy, thought the play a libel on the Irish countryman, who has not put parricide upon his list of virtues; they thought the language too violent or it might be profane. The methods were another thing; when the tin trumpets were blown and brandished, we had to use the same loud methods and call in the police. We lost some of our audience by the fight; the pit was weak for a while, but one after another said, “There is no other theatre to go to,” and came back. The stalls, curiously, who appeared to approve of our stand, were shy of us for a long time. They got an idea we were fond of noise and quarrels. That was our second battle, and even at the end of the week, we had won it.
An organiser of agriculture, sent to County Clare, reported that the District Councils there were engaged in passing resolutions, “Against the French Government and The Playboy.” Mrs. Coppinger in The Image says, on some such occasion, “Believe me there is not a Board or a Board Room west of the Shannon but will have a comrade cry put out between this and the Feast of Pentecost.” And anyhow in our case some such thing happened.
But Synge’s fantasy is better understood now even by those “who have never walked in Apollo’s garden,” and The Playboy holds its place in the repertory of the Abbey from year to year.
CHAPTER V
SYNGE
It is October now and leaves have fallen from the branches of the big copper-beech in the garden; I saw the stars shining through them last night. You were asleep then, but in the daytime you can see the sky all blue through their bareness. And the dry red heaps under them are noisy when pheasants, looking for mast, hurry away as you come calling, running, down the hill. The smooth trunk of the tree that was in shadow all through the summer time shines out now like silver. You stop to look at letters cut in the bark. You can read most of them yourself. You came under the wide boughs a few weeks ago, when a soldier who has gone now to set in order all the British dominions over sea, carved that “Ian H.” far out of your reach, as high as his own high head. There is another name higher again, for the painter who cut that “A” and that “J” climbed up to write it again where we could not follow him, higher than the birds make their nests. There are letters of other names, “G. B. S.” and “W. B. Y.” Strangers know the names they stand for; they are easily known. But there to the north those letters, “J. M. S.,” stand for a name that was not known at all at the time it was cut there, a few years before you were born.
The days are getting short and in the evening, when you ask me for something to paint or to scribble on, I sometimes give you one from a bundle of old sheets of paper, with three names printed at the head of it, with the picture of a woman and a dog. The names are those of three friends who worked together for a while: Yeats’s name and my own and the name of John Millington Synge.
I first saw Synge in the north island of Aran. I was staying there, gathering folk-lore, talking to the people, and felt quite angry when I passed another outsider walking here and there, talking also to the people. I was jealous of not being alone on the island among the fishers and sea-weed gatherers. I did not speak to the stranger, nor was he inclined to speak to me. He also looked on me as an intruder. I heard only his name. But a little later in the summer Mr. Yeats, who was staying with us at Coole, had a note from Synge, saying he was in Aran. They had met in Paris. Yeats wrote of him from there: “He is really a most excellent man. He lives in a little room which he has furnished himself; he is his own servant. He works very hard and is learning Breton; he will be a very useful scholar.”