“We drove to his house. He began on Tree, but Yeats told him Tree was the chief representative of the commercial theatre we are opposed to. He then proposed our giving a private performance, and we again told him Shaw had forbidden that. I read him the telegram refusing cuts, but he seemed to have forgotten that he had asked for cuts, and repeated his appeal to spare the Lord Lieutenant. I showed him the Nation article, and he read it and said ‘But the Book of Job is not by the same author as Blanco Posnet.’ Yeats said, ‘Then if you could, you would censor the Deity?’ ‘Just so,’ said he. He asked if we could make no concession. We said, ‘no,’ but that if they decided to take away the Patent, we should put off the production till the beginning of our season, end of September, and produce it with Œdipus; then they would have to suppress both together. He brightened up and said, if we could put it off, things would be much easier, as the Commission would not be sitting then or the Public be so much interested in the question. I said ‘Of course we should have to announce at once that it was in consequence of the threatened action of the Castle we had postponed it.’ ‘Oh, you really don’t mean that! You would let all the bulls loose. It would be much better not to say anything at all, or to say the rehearsals took longer than you expected.’ ‘The public announcement will be more to our own advantage.’ ‘Oh, that is dreadful!’ I said, ‘We did not give in one quarter of an inch to Nationalist Ireland at The Playboy time, and we certainly cannot give in one quarter of an inch to the Castle.’
“‘We must think of Archbishop Walsh!’ I said, ‘The Archbishop would be slow to move, for if he orders his flock to keep away from our play, he can’t let them attend many of the Censor’s plays, and the same thing applies to the Lord Lieutenant.’ The Official said, ‘I know that.’ We said ‘We did not give in to the Church when Cardinal Logue denounced the Countess Cathleen. We played it under police protection.’ ‘I never heard of that. Why did he object?’ Yeats said, ‘For exactly the same objection as is made to the present one, speeches made by demons in the play.’
“Yeats spoke very seriously then about the principle involved; pointing out that we were trying to create a model on which a great national theatre may be founded in the future, that if we accepted the English Censor’s ruling in Ireland, he might forbid a play like Wills’ Robert Emmet, which Irving was about to act, and was made to give up for political reasons. He said, ‘You want, in fact, to have liberty to produce all plays refused by the Censor.’ I said, ‘We have produced none in the past and not only that, we have refused plays that we thought would hurt Catholic religious feeling. We refused, for instance, to produce Synge’s Tinker’s Wedding, much as we uphold his work, because a drunken priest made ridiculous appears in it. That very play was directly after Synge’s death asked for by Tree, whom you have been holding up to us, for production in London.’ He said, ‘I am very sorry attention was drawn to the play. If no attention had been drawn to it by the papers, we should be all right. It is so wrong to produce it while the Commission is actually sitting and the whole question sub judice. We are in close official relation with the English officials of whom the Lord Chamberlain is one; that is the whole question.’ We said, ‘We see no way out of it. We are determined to produce the play. We cannot accept the Censor’s decision as applying to Ireland and you must make up your mind what course to take, but we ask to be let known as soon as possible because if we are to be suppressed, we must find places for our players, who will be thrown out of work.’ He threw up his hands and exclaimed, ‘Oh, my dear lady, but do not speak of such a thing as possible!’ ‘Why,’ I asked, ‘what else have you been threatening all the time?’ He said, ‘Well, the Lord Lieutenant will be here on Tuesday and will decide. He has not given his attention to the matter up to this’ (this does not bear out the Crown Solicitor’s story); ‘Perhaps you had better stay to see him.’ I told him that I wanted to get home, but would stay if absolutely necessary. He said, ‘Oh, yes, stay and you will probably see Lady Aberdeen also.’”
Mr. Shaw’s next letter was from Kerry where he was motoring. In it he said: “I saw an Irish Times to-day with Blanco announced for production; so I presume the Castle has not put its foot down. The officials made an appalling technical blunder in acting as agents of the Lord Chamberlain in Ireland; and I worded my telegram in such a way as to make it clear that I knew the value of that indiscretion.
“I daresay the telegram reached the Castle before it reached you.”
Meanwhile on August 15th I had written to the Castle:
“I am obliged to go home to-morrow, so if you have any news for us, will you very kindly let us have it at Coole.
“We are, as you know, arranging to produce Blanco on Wednesday, 25th, as advertised and booked for, unless you serve us with a ‘Threatening notice,’ in which case we shall probably postpone it till September 30th and produce it with the already promised Œdipus.
“I am very sorry to have given you so much trouble and worry, and, as we told you, we had no idea the responsibility would fall on any shoulders but our own; but I think we have fully explained to you the reasons that make it necessary for us now to carry the matter through.”
I received the following answer: