Deirdre. You will not give me love?
Naisi. Your liberty
I shall not give you, if I give you love.
Love is the hardest bondage in the world.
I would not put such chains on any woman
To love me....
Deirdre. Let me be with you, the name
Of being with you call it what you will—;
Bondage or freedom, I should still be happy,
Yea, for a year, yea, for a brood of years.
It is, however, in the last act that Michael Field again triumphantly proves her mettle as poet and dramatist. She had stubborn material here, harsh and crude stuff which kept the poets long at bay. For Deirdre’s end as related by the old bard is a bit of primitive savagery matched in terms of the plainest realism. Conchobar, after Naisi is enticed back to Ulster and murdered, takes possession of Deirdre; and she remains in his house for a year. But her constant reproaches and lamentation weary him; and at last, in order to subdue her, he threatens to lend her for a year to the man she hates most, Eogan, the slayer of Naisi. She is thereupon driven off in Eogan’s chariot, apparently subdued, seated in shame between him and Conchobar. At a gross taunt from Conchobar, however, she springs up, and flings herself out upon the ground. “There was a large rock near: she hurled her head at the stone so that she broke her skull, and killed herself.”
Our poet does not try to make this pretty or pleasing: and at one point at least she uses the exact terminology of the translation from which she worked. Its brutal elements are not disguised: Deirdre’s humiliation and the animal rage of Conchobar and Eogan remain hideous even after the poet, accepting all the material, has wrought it into a tragedy of consummate beauty. Its beauty has, indeed, more terror than pity in it—;it is brimmed with life’s actual bitterness—;but the depth and power of this Deirdre are not equalled by any other.
In quoting the closing passage of the play one does not afflict the reader by a comment on it; but there is a technical point which should be noticed. It is the device of the Messenger by which the poet avoids the representation of Deirdre’s death. The manner of that death was not only too awkward to present, but its horror as a spectacle was too great for artistic control. In causing it to be related by the charioteer Fergna, the poet has, in classic fashion, removed it from actual vision, but has enabled the mind to contemplate what the eyes could not have borne to look upon.
The chariot has driven off with Deirdre, Eogan, and Conchobar; and Lebarcham watches it till it passes out of sight beyond the mound that marks Naisi’s grave. Then she turns away, lamenting; and suddenly Fergna, the charioteer, re-enters, scared and breathless:
Lebarcham. Speak, Fergna! Are they dead?
Fergna. I scarce may say.
The woman’s shoulders panted on the rocks,
And over her a struggle fiercely raged
Of Conchobar with Eogan.
Lebarcham. Fosterling,
My Deirdre! Had they cast her from the car,
That thus she lay on the sharp rocks of stone?