A Plea for a National Theatre in Ireland.

There are many movements now for the encouragement of Irish manufacture in all its branches and for preventing the scandalous outpouring of Irish money into the pockets of Englishmen and other foreigners. Quite recently a movement has been started to turn the enormous demand for church art from the workshop of the foreign tradesman, and to get it supplied by the native Irish artist. It is impossible to calculate the sum of money that this will save the country. It will be enormous. Two such able and practical men as Mr. Horace Plunkett, and Mr. T. P. Gill are so convinced of this that they have decided to form a school for teaching the making of stained glass as a branch of the School of Art in Dublin, and have procured a teacher from probably the greatest master of the art in modern times. We shall thus have stained glass of the highest excellence executed by Irishmen in Ireland.

But there is another form of art besides church art in Ireland which needs reform, and for which there is an equally large demand, supplied, as usual, by the foreigner, and, as usual, badly supplied, almost invariably. I refer to the plays supplied to our theatres by strolling English companies of actors. It would be interesting to know how much money yearly those companies take out of Ireland as a reward for Anglicising and corrupting the taste of the Irish people. It must be as enormous even as the sum we pay the foreign purveyor of church art for disfiguring our churches. We have grappled with and, I think, solved the problem of nationalising church art. Is it not time that our dramatic art also should be placed on a national basis? Are we so degenerate that we cannot meet this demand also by a supply of national art? The first requisite is to provide a stock company of native artists because the foreign strollers are too wedded to the debased art of England to fall in with the change. This can only be done by instituting a school for the training of actors and actresses, a most important branch of which should be devoted to teaching them to act plays in the Irish language. Now it is quite legal and feasible to obtain a grant from the Department of Technical Instruction for this purpose which is the same in principle as the teaching of stained glass manufacture. It is a home industry in the best sense, and means a vast economic saving to the country, besides being a most refining educational influence 15upon the artistic and moral character of the nation. I think it will not be difficult to make the enlightened Vice-President and Secretary of the Department understand this.

With a company of artists such as I have described we might put before the people of Ireland native works, also translations of the dramatic masterworks of all lands, for it is only by accustoming a public to the highest art that it can be led to appreciate art, and that dramatists may be inspired to work in the great art tradition.

Edward Martyn.

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