THE IRISH DRAMA

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Most Americans know about the Irish people only that they are not averse to drink, and that they make brutal policemen and corrupt politicians. But those who are familiar with the revolutionary movements of the past are aware of the fortitude and courage, aye, of the heroism of the Irish, manifested during their uprisings, and especially in the Fenian movement—the people's revolt against political despotism and land robbery.

And though for years Ireland has contributed to the very worst features of American life, those interested in the fate of its people did not despair; they knew that the spirit of unrest in Ireland was not appeased, and that it would make itself felt again in no uncertain form.

The cultural and rebellious awakening in that country within the last twenty-five years once more proves that neither God nor King can for long suppress the manifestation of the latent possibilities of a people. The possibilities of the Irish must indeed be great if they could inspire the rich humor of a Lady Gregory, the deep symbolism of a Yeats, the poetic fancy of a Synge, and the rebellion of a Robinson and Murray.

Only a people unspoiled by the dulling hand of civilization and free from artifice can retain such simplicity of faith and remain so imaginative, so full of fancy and dreams, wild and fiery, which have kindled the creative spark in the Irish dramatists of our time. It is true that the work of only the younger element among them is of social significance, yet all of them have rendered their people and the rest of the world a cultural service of no mean value. William Butler Yeats is among the latter, together with Synge and Lady Gregory; his art, though deep in human appeal, has no bearing on the pressing questions of our time. Mr. Yeats himself would repudiate any implication of a social character, as he considers such dramas too "topical" and therefore "half bad" plays. In view of this attitude, it is difficult to reconcile his standard of true art with the repertoire of the Abbey Theater, which consists mainly of social dramas. Still more difficult is it to account for his work, "Where There is Nothing," which is no less social in its philosophy and tendency than Ibsen's "Brand."

WHERE THERE IS NOTHING

"Where There Is Nothing" is as true an interpretation of the philosophy of Anarchism as could be given by its best exponents. I say this not out of any wish to tag Mr. Yeats, but because the ideal of Paul Ruttledge, the hero of the play, is nothing less than Anarchism applied to everyday life.

Paul Ruttledge, a man of wealth, comes to the conclusion, after a long process of development and growth, that riches are wrong, and that the life of the propertied is artificial, useless and inane.

Paul Ruttledge. When I hear these people talking I always hear some organized or vested interest chirp or quack, as it does in the newspapers. I would like to have great iron claws, and to put them about the pillars, and to pull and pull till everything fell into pieces.... Sometimes I dream I am pulling down my own house, and sometimes it is the whole world that I am pulling down.... When everything was pulled down we would have more room to get drunk in, to drink contentedly out of the cup of life, out of the drunken cup of life.

He decides to give up his position and wealth and cast his lot in with the tinkers—an element we in America know as "hoboes," men who tramp the highways making their living as they go about, mending kettles and pots, earning an honest penny without obligation or responsibility to anyone. Paul Ruttledge longs for the freedom of the road,—to sleep under the open sky, to count the stars, to be free. He throws off all artificial restraint and is received with open arms by the tinkers. To identify himself more closely with their life, he marries a tinker's daughter—not according to the rites of State or Church, but in true tinker fashion—in freedom—bound only by the promise to be faithful and "not hurt each other."

In honor of the occasion, Paul tenders to his comrades and the people of the neighborhood a grand feast, full of the spirit of life's joy,—an outpouring of gladness that lasts a whole week.

Paul's brother, his friends, and the authorities are incensed over the carousal. They demand that he terminate the "drunken orgy."

Mr. Joyce. This is a disgraceful business, Paul; the whole countryside is demoralized. There is not a man who has come to sensible years who is not drunk.

Mr. Dowler. This is a flagrant violation of all propriety. Society is shaken to its roots. My own servants have been led astray by the free drinks that are being given in the village. My butler, who has been with me for seven years, has not been seen for the last two days.

Mr. Algie. I endorse his sentiments completely. There has not been a stroke of work done for the last week. The hay is lying in ridges where it has been cut, there is not a man to be found to water the cattle. It is impossible to get as much as a horse shod in the village.

Paul Ruttledge. I think you have something to say, Colonel Lawley?

Colonel Lawley. I have undoubtedly. I want to know when law and order are to be reëstablished. The police have been quite unable to cope with the disorder. Some of them have themselves got drunk. If my advice had been taken the military would have been called in.

Mr. Green. The military are not indispensable on occasions like the present. There are plenty of police coming now. We have wired to Dublin for them, they will be here by the four o'clock train.

Paul Ruttledge. But you have not told me what you have come here for. Is there anything I can do for you?

Mr. Green. We have come to request you to go to the public-houses, to stop the free drinks, to send the people back to their work. As for those tinkers, the law will deal with them when the police arrive.

Paul Ruttledge. I wanted to give a little pleasure to my fellow-creatures.

Mr. Dowler. This seems rather a low form of pleasure.

Paul Ruttledge. I daresay it seems to you a little violent. But the poor have very few hours in which to enjoy themselves; they must take their pleasure raw; they haven't the time to cook it. Have we not tried sobriety? Do you like it? I found it very dull.... Think what it is to them to have their imagination like a blazing tar-barrel for a whole week. Work could never bring them such blessedness as that.

Mr. Dowler. Everyone knows there is no more valuable blessing than work.

Paul Ruttledge decides to put his visitors "on trial," to let them see themselves as they are in all their hypocrisy, all their corruption.

He charges the military man, Colonel Lawley, with calling himself a Christian, yet following the business of man-killing. The Colonel is forced to admit that he had ordered his men to fight in a war, of the justice of which they knew nothing, or did not believe in, and yet it is "the doctrine of your Christian church, of your Catholic church, that he who fights in an unjust war, knowing it to be unjust, loses his own soul." Of the rich man Dowler, Paul Ruttledge demands whether he could pass through the inside of a finger ring, and on Paul's attention being called by one of the tinkers to the fine coat of Mr. Dowler, he tells him to help himself to it. Threatened by Mr. Green, the spokesman of the law, with encouraging robbery, Ruttledge admonishes him.

Ruttledge. Remember the commandment, "Give to him that asketh thee"; and the hard commandment goes even farther, "Him that taketh thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also."

But the worst indictment Ruttledge hurls against Mr. Green. The other professed Christians kill, murder, do not love their enemies, and do not give to any man that asks of them. But the Greens, Rutledge says, are the worst of all. For the others break the law of Christ for their own pleasure, but "you take pay for breaking it; when their goods are taken away you condemn the taker; when they are smitten on one cheek you punish the smiter. You encourage them in their breaking of the Law of Christ."

For several years Ruttledge lives the life of the tinkers. But of weak physique, he finds himself unable to withstand the rigors of the road. His health breaks down, and his faithful comrades carry him to his native town and bring him to a monastery where Paul is cared for by the priests. While there he begins to preach a wonderful gospel, a gospel strange to the friars and the superior,—so rebellious and terrible that he is declared a dissenter, a heathen and a dangerous character.

Paul Ruttledge. Now I can give you the message that has come to me.... Lay down your palm branches before this altar; you have brought them as a sign that the walls are beginning to be broken up, that we are going back to the joy of the green earth.... For a long time after their making men and women wandered here and there, half blind from the drunkenness of Eternity; they had not yet forgotten that the green Earth was the Love of God, and that all Life was the Will of God, and so they wept and laughed and hated according to the impulse of their hearts. They gathered the great Earth to their breasts and their lips, ... in what they believed would be an eternal kiss. It was then that the temptation began. The men and women listened to them, and because when they had lived ... in mother wit and natural kindness, they sometimes did one another an injury, they thought that it would be better to be safe than to be blessed, they made the Laws. The Laws were the first sin. They were the first mouthful of the apple; the moment man had made them he began to die; we must put out the Laws as I put out this candle. And when they had lived amidst the green Earth that is the Love of God, they were sometimes wetted by the rain, and sometimes cold and hungry, and sometimes alone from one another; they thought it would be better to be comfortable than to be blessed. They began to build big houses and big towns. They grew wealthy and they sat chattering at their doors; and the embrace that was to have been eternal ended.... We must put out the towns as I put out this candle. But that is not all, for man created a worse thing.... Man built up the Church. We must destroy the Church, we must put it out as I put out this candle.... We must destroy everything that has Law and Number.

The rebel is driven from the monastery. He is followed by only two faithful friars, his disciples, who go among the people to disseminate the new gospel. But the people fail to understand them. Immersed in darkness and superstition, they look upon these strange men as evildoers. They accuse them of casting an evil spell on their cattle and disturbing the people's peace. The path of the crusader is thorny, and Colman, the friar disciple of Paul, though faithful for a time, become discouraged in the face of opposition and persecution. He weakens.

Colman. It's no use stopping waiting for the wind; if we have anything to say that's worth the people listening to, we must bring them to hear it one way or another. Now, it is what I was saying to Aloysius, we must begin teaching them to make things, they never had the chance of any instruction of this sort here. Those and other things, we got a good training in the old days. And we'll get a grant from the Technical Board. The Board pays up to four hundred pounds to some of its instructors.

Paul Ruttledge. Oh, I understand; you will sell them. And what about the dividing of the money? You will need to make laws about that. Oh, we will grow quite rich in time.

Colman. We'll build workshops and houses for those who come to work from a distance, good houses, slated, not thatched.... They will think so much more of our teaching when we have got them under our influence by other things. Of course we will teach them their meditations, and give them a regular religious life. We must settle out some little place for them to pray in—there's a high gable over there where we could hang a bell—

Paul Ruttledge. Oh, yes, I understand. You would weave them together like this, you would add one thing to another, laws and money and church and bells, till you had got everything back again that you have escaped from. But it is my business to tear things asunder.

Aloysius. Brother Paul, it is what I am thinking; now the tinkers have come back to you, you could begin to gather a sort of an army; you can't fight your battle without an army. They would call to the other tinkers, and the tramps and the beggars, and the sieve-makers and all the wandering people. It would be a great army.

Paul Ruttledge. Yes, that would be a great army, a great wandering army.

Aloysius. The people would be afraid to refuse us then; we would march on—

Paul Ruttledge. We could march on. We could march on the towns, and we could break up all settled order; we could bring back the old joyful, dangerous, individual life. We would have banners. We will have one great banner that will go in front, it will take two men to carry it, and on it we will have Laughter—

Aloysius. That will be the banner for the front. We will have different troops, we will have captains to organize them, to give them orders.

Paul Ruttledge. To organize? That is to bring in law and number. Organize—organize—that is how all the mischief has been done. I was forgetting,—we cannot destroy the world with armies; it is inside our minds that it must be destroyed.

Deserted, Paul Ruttledge stands alone in his crusade, like most iconoclasts. Misunderstood and persecuted, he finally meets his death at the hands of the infuriated mob.

"Where There Is Nothing" is of great social significance, deeply revolutionary in the sense that it carries the message of the destruction of every institution—State, Property, and Church—that enslaves humanity. For where there is nothing, there man begins.

A certain critic characterized this play as a "statement of revolt against the despotism of facts." Is there a despotism more compelling and destructive than that of the facts of property, of the State and Church? But "Where There Is Nothing" is not merely a "statement" of revolt. It embodies the spirit of revolt itself, of that most constructive revolt which begins with the destruction of every obstacle in the path of the new life that is to grow on the débris of the old, when the paralyzing yoke of institutionalism shall have been broken, and man left free to enjoy Life and Laughter.

LENOX ROBINSON

HARVEST

Timothy Hurley, an old farmer, slaves all his life and mortgages his farm in order to enable his children to lead an idle, parasitic life.

Started on this road toward so-called culture by the school-master, William Lordan, Hurley's children leave their father's farm and in due time establish themselves in society as priest, lawyer, secretary and chemist, respectively.

The secretary son is ashamed of his lowly origin and denies it. The lawyer son is much more concerned with his motor car than with the condition of the farm that has helped him on his feet. The priest has departed for America, there to collect funds for Church work. Only Maurice, the youngest son of Timothy Hurley, remains at home as the farm drudge, the typical man with the hoe.

Jack Hurley, the chemist, and Timothy's only daughter Mary, retain some loyalty to the old place, but when they return after an absence of years, they find themselves out of touch with farm life, and they too turn their back on their native heath. Jack Hurley's notion of the country is that of most city people: nature is beautiful, the scenery lovely, so long as it is someone else who has to labor in the scorching sun, to plow and toil in the sweat of his brow.

Jack and his wife Mildred are both extremely romantic about the farm.

Jack. It stands to reason farming must pay enormously. Take a field of oats, for instance; every grain that's sown gives a huge percentage in return.... I don't know exactly how many grains a stalk carries, but several hundred I'm sure ... why, there's no investment in the world would give you a return like that.

But soon they discover that every grain of corn does not yield hundreds of dollars.

Maurice. You can't have a solicitor, and a priest, and a chemist in a family without spending money, and for the last ten years you've been all drawing money out of the farm ... there's no more to drain now.... Oh, I suppose you think I'm a bloody fool not to be able to make it pay; but sure what chance have I and I never taught how to farm? There was money and education wanted to make priests and doctors and gentlemen of you all, and wasn't there money and education wanted to make a farmer of me? No; nothing taught me only what I picked up from my father and the men, and never a bit of fresh money to put into the farm only it all kept to make a solicitor of Bob and a chemist of you.

During Jack's visit to the farm a fire breaks out and several buildings on the place are destroyed. Much to the horror of the well-bred Jack, he learns that his father himself had lit the match in order to get "compensation." He sternly upbraids the old farmer.

Jack. Didn't you see yourself how dishonest it was?

Timothy. Maybe I did, but I saw something more, and that was that I was on the way to being put out of the farm.

Jack is outraged; he threatens to inform on his own people and offers to stay on the farm to help with the work. But two weeks' experience in the field beneath the burning sun is more than delicate Jack can stand. He suffers fainting spells, and is in the end prevailed upon by his wife to leave.

Mary, old Hurley's daughter, also returns to the farm for rest and quiet. But she finds no peace there, for the city is too much in her blood. There is, moreover, another lure she cannot escape.

Mary. I was too well educated to be a servant, and I was never happy as one, so to better myself I learned typing.... It's a hard life, Jack, and I soon found out how hard it was, and I was as dissatisfied as ever. Then there only seemed one way out of it ... and he ... my employer, I mean.... I went into it deliberately with my eyes open. You see, a woman I knew chucked typing and went in for this ... and I saw what a splendid time she had, and how happy she was—and I was so miserably unhappy—and how she had everything she wanted and I had nothing, and ... and.... But this life made me unhappy, too, and so in desperation I came home; but I've grown too far away from it all, and now I'm going back. Don't you see, Jack, I'm not happy here. I thought if I could get home to the farm and the old simple life it would be all right, but it isn't. Everything jars on me, the roughness and the hard living and the coarse food—oh, it seems ridiculous—but they make me physically ill. I always thought, if I could get away home to Knockmalgloss I could start fair again.... So I came home, and everything is the same, and everyone thinks that I'm as pure and innocent as when I went away, but ... but ... But, Jack, the dreadful thing is I want to go back.... I'm longing for that life, and its excitement and splendor and color.

In her misery and struggle a great faith sustains Mary and keeps her from ruin. It is the thought of her father, in whom she believes implicitly as her ideal of honesty, strength and incorruptibility. The shock is terrible when she learns that her father, even her father, has fallen a victim to the cruel struggle of life,—that her father himself set fire to the buildings.

Mary. And I thought he was so simple, so innocent, so unspoiled!... Father, the simple, honest peasant, the only decent one of us. I cried all last night at the contrast! His unselfishness, his simplicity.... Why, we're all equally bad now—he and I—we both sell ourselves, he for the price of those old houses and I for a few years of splendor and happiness....

The only one whom life seems to teach nothing is Schoolmaster Lordan. Oblivious of the stress and storm of reality, he continues to be enraptured with education, with culture, with the opportunities offered by the large cities. He is particularly proud of the Hurley children.

Lordan. The way you've all got on! I tell you what, if every boy and girl I ever taught had turned out a failure I'd feel content and satisfied when I looked at all of you and saw what I've made of you.

Mary. What you've made of us? I wonder do you really know what you've made of us?

Lordan. Isn't it easily seen? One with a motor car, no less.... It was good, sound seed I sowed long ago in the little schoolhouse and it's to-day you're all reaping the harvest.

"Harvest" is a grim picture of civilization in its especially demoralizing effects upon the people who spring from the soil. The mock culture and shallow education which inspire peasant folk with awe, which lure the children away from home, only to crush the vitality out of them or to turn them into cowards and compromisers. The tragedy of a civilization that dooms the tillers of the soil to a dreary monotony of hard toil with little return, or charms them to destruction with the false glow of city culture and ease! Greater still this tragedy in a country like Ireland, its people taxed to the very marrow and exploited to the verge of starvation, leaving the young generation no opening, no opportunity in life.

It is inevitable that the sons and daughters of Ireland, robust in body and spirit, yearning for things better and bigger, should desert her. For as Mary says, "When the sun sets here, it's all so dark and cold and dreary." But the young need light and warmth—and these are not in the valley of ever-present misery and want.

"Harvest" is an expressive picture of the social background of the Irish people, a background somber and unpromising but for the streak of dawn that pierces that country's dark horizon in the form of the inherent and irrepressible fighting spirit of the true Irishman, the spirit of the Fenian revolt whose fires often slumber but are never put out, all the ravages of our false civilization notwithstanding.

T. G. MURRAY

MAURICE HARTE

"Maurice Harte" portrays the most sinister force which holds the Irish people in awe—that heaviest of all bondage, priestcraft.

Michael Harte, his wife Ellen, and their son Owen are bent on one purpose; to make a priest of their youngest child Maurice. The mother especially has no other ambition in life than to see her son "priested." No higher ideal to most Catholic mothers than to consecrate their favorite son to the glory of God.

What it has cost the Hartes to attain their ambition and hope is revealed by Ellen Harte in the conversation with her sister and later with her husband, when he informs her that he cannot borrow any more money to continue the boy in the seminary.

Mrs. Harte. If Michael and myself have our son nearly a priest this day, 'tis no small price at all we have paid for it.... Isn't it the terrible thing, every time you look through that window, to have the fear in your heart that 'tis the process-server you'll see and he coming up the boreen?

Old Harte impoverishes himself to enable his son to finish his studies. He has borrowed right and left, till his resources are now entirety exhausted. But he is compelled to try another loan.

Michael. He made out 'twas as good as insulting him making such a small payment, and the money that's on us to be so heavy. "If you don't wish to sign that note," says he, "you needn't. It don't matter at all to me one way or the other, for before the next Quarter Sessions 'tis Andy Driscoll, the process-server, will be marching up to your door." So what could I do but sign? Why, 'twas how he turned on me in a red passion. "And isn't it a scandal, Michael Harte," says he, "for the like o' you, with your name on them books there for a hundred and fifty pounds, and you with only the grass of nine or ten cows, to be making your son a priest? The like of it," says he, "was never heard of before."

Mrs. Harte. What business was it of his, I'd like to know? Jealous of us! There's no fear any of his sons will ever be anything much!

Michael. I was thinking it might do Maurice some harm with the Bishop if it came out on the papers that we were up before the judge for a civil bill.

Mrs. Harte. ... 'Tisn't once or twice I told you that I had my heart set on hearing Maurice say the marriage words over his own brother.

Maurice comes home for the summer vacation, looking pale and emaciated. His mother ascribes his condition to the bad city air and hard study at school. But Maurice suffers from a different cause. His is a mental struggle: the maddening struggle of doubt, the realization that he has lost his faith, that he has no vocation, and that he must give up his divinity studies. He knows how fanatically bent his people are on having him ordained, and he is tortured by the grief his decision will cause his parents. His heart is breaking as he at last determines to inform them.

He reasons and pleads with his parents and implores them not to drive him back to college. But they cannot understand. They remain deaf to his arguments; pitifully they beg him not to fail them, not to disappoint the hope of a lifetime. When it all proves of no avail, they finally disclose to Maurice their gnawing secret: the farm has been mortgaged and many debts incurred for the sake of enabling him to attain to the priesthood.

Michael. Maurice, would you break our hearts?

Maurice. Father, would you have your son live a life of sacrilege? Would you, Father? Would you?

Mrs. Harte. That's only foolish talk. Aren't you every bit as good as the next?

Maurice. I may be, but I haven't a vocation.... My mind is finally made up.

Mrs. Harte. Maurice, listen to me—listen to me! ... If it went out about you this day, isn't it destroyed forever we'd be? Look! The story wouldn't be east in Macroom when we'd have the bailiffs walking in that door. The whole world knows he is to be priested next June, and only for the great respect they have for us through the means o' that, 'tisn't James McCarthy alone, but every other one o' them would come down on us straight for their money. In one week there wouldn't be a cow left by us, nor a horse, nor a lamb, nor anything at all!... Look at them books. 'Tis about time you should know how we stand here.... God knows, I wouldn't be hard on you at all, but look at the great load o' money that's on us this day, and mostly all on your account.

Maurice. Mother, don't make my cross harder to bear.

Mrs. Harte. An' would you be seeing a heavier cross put on them that did all that mortal man and woman could do for you?

Maurice. Look! I'll wear the flesh off my bones, but in pity spare me!

Mrs. Harte. And will you have no pity at all on us and on Owen here, that have slaved for you all our lives?

Maurice. Mother! Mother!

Mrs. Harte. You'll go back? 'Tis only a mistake?

Maurice. Great God of Heaven!...you'll kill me.

Michael. You'll go back, Maurice? The vocation will come to you in time with the help of God. It will, surely.

Maurice. Don't ask me! Don't ask me!

Mrs. Harte. If you don't how can I ever face outside this door or lift my head again?... How could I listen to the neighbors making pity for me, and many a one o' them only glad in their hearts? How could I ever face again into town o' Macroom?

Maurice. Oh, don't.

Mrs. Harte. I tell you, Maurice, I'd rather be lying dead a thousand times in the graveyard over Killnamartyra—

Maurice. Stop, Mother, stop! I'll—I'll go back—as—as you all wish it.

Nine months later there is general rejoicing at the Hartes': Maurice has passed his examinations with flying colors; he is about to be ordained, and he is to officiate at the wedding of his brother Owen and his wealthy bride.

Ellen Harte plans to give her son a royal welcome. Great preparations are on foot to greet the return of Maurice. He comes back—not in the glory and triumph expected by his people, but a driveling idiot. His mental struggle, the agony of whipping himself to the hated task, proved too much for him, and Maurice is sacrificed on the altar of superstition and submission to paternal authority.

In the whole range of the Irish drama "Maurice Harte" is the most Irish, because nowhere does Catholicism demand so many victims as in that unfortunate land. But in a deeper sense the play is of that social importance that knows no limit of race or creed.

There is no boundary of land or time to the resistance of the human mind to coercion; it is worldwide. Equally so is the rebellion of youth against the tyranny of parents. But above all does this play mirror the self-centered, narrow, ambitious love of the mother, so disastrous to the happiness and peace of her child. For it is Ellen Harte, rather than the father, who forces Maurice back to his studies. From whatever viewpoint, however, "Maurice Harte" be considered, it carries a dramatically powerful message of wide social significance.