a plea for the revival of the irish literary theatre

Irish Review (Dublin)

A Plea for the Revival of the Irish Literary TheatreAuthor(s): Edward MartynSource: The Irish Review (Dublin), Vol. 4, No. 38 (Apr., 1914), pp. 79-84Published by: Irish Review (Dublin)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30063737 .Accessed: 14/06/2014 06:41

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A PLEA FOR THE REVIVAL OF THE IRISH LITERARY THEATRE.

By EDWARD MARTYN

THAT the Abbey Theatre has survived its numerous contem- poraries and rivals in theatrical experiment must be a genuine satisfaction to those who have so ably guided its

fortunes. The whole of its success is due to two persons-namely, Mr. W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory. Without them it would never have been heard of. When they disappear (and may they live long) it will most likely go the way of our other dramatic enterprises.

The qualities by which Mr. Yeats has made the theatre are Napoleonic and consummate. A fine poet and subtle literary critic, he has, above all a weird appearance, which is triumphant with middle-aged masculine women, and a dictatorial manner which is irresistible with 'the considerable bevy of female and male mediocrities interested in intellectual things. In this way he practically dictates to the critics who reproduce his opinions. Lady Gregory, although not intellectually profound, is intellectually acute in the most extreme degree. She has a knowledge of mankind and a social mastery and tact that can only be described as genius. Thus equipped, she sympathetically leads the leaders and parasites of society who may affect letters, to make the theatre fashionable. A combination of two such unique and efficient personalities for the special work they had to do, I suppose, the world has never seen before. The result is that Mr. Yeats and Lady Gregory have defied opposition, and have built up from nothing at all a remarkable and lasting structure.

The manner in which they commenced the work always seems to me, who have had some experience in such concerns, as particularly wonderful. We all know how useless it is to push persons without talent. You may give them all advantages, but they cannot avail themselves of any, and soon are extinguished by ridicule. These were the sort of persons, however, whom Mr. Yeats and Lady Gregory triumphantly succeeded in pushing. Mr. Yeats discovered them trying to act in a little hall among the by-streets of Dublin. Their acting and performances were puerile, if acting is to be considered more than feebly drawling out the words, and stage-managing more than occasionally wandering about the stage at individual whim. Mr. Yeats at once pounced upon these most unpromising players, and proclaimed a wonderful discovery. He proclaimed their merits in his most dictatorial vein until they actually got to believe in them-

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selves, and even to show signs of improvement. Meanwhile, the mediocrities, taking their cue from the dictator, went on fussing over the marvellous new art of these players who exhibited themselves in Cathleen Ni Houlihan and The Pot of Broth-both silly little plays for silly liitle people - to the amused surprise of those who were in the habit of thinking for themselves. Afterwards, by degrees, some of the company improved, some left, others came along, and much good work was gradually done, until the Abbey artistes are now recognised as the best actors of peasant plays probably in the world. This is a truly wonderful result from such beginnings, and one worth careful study by those who want to promote successful production of Irish drama.

Going to work, therefore, like a student of strategy and tactics when he examines the campaigns of great generals, I will endeavour from examination of the means whereby Mr. Yeats and Lady Gregory made the Abbey Theatre such a success, to lay bare for other Irish impresarios the causes of their several failures, and myself to imbibe such salutary lessons as may help me to make a success of the dramatic project which I propose to unfold in this treatise. At the same time, I am humbly conscious of my inferiority as an impresario to the two experts whose feats I have the temerity to imitate. Indeed, beside them I am only as a duc de Bourgogne compared with a Marlborough and a Prince Eugene. But while that unhappy novice, owing to his inexperience and unfortunate advisers, went to pieces before his great adversaries, I by no means an adversary but a sincere admirer of my models, hope with patience and application to their methods to arrive at a tolerable success, and so establish what will be in no wise a rival, but rather a rounding-off, so to speak, or a complement to their work.

After a careful examination of the material in the Abbey Theatre the fact that appears to have aided chiefly the impresarios all along is this-namely, whether intentionally or not, the type of actor and actress evolved by the undertaking is such as would be practically useless for making money on the English stage. By confining themselves to acting peasants and the lower middle-class, they are become unfitted to portray the upper classes. There may possibly be exceptions in a few of the men who, having especial talent for acting, might with study arrive at success in such parts; but the rest are hopeless. This limitation has been the strongest band for holding the company together; and to hold a company together is the chief difficulty for the impresario of an Irish theatre. Another cause of cohesion is the ill-success of the various off-shoots from the Abbey Theatre. They simply became other peasant acting companies

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inferior to the parent stock, and lacking the most important asset of all, the prestige of Mr. Yeats and Lady Gregory. Then the individual players, who seceded at various times and could find no field on the English stage for their peculiar talents, if they did not return to the fold, sank quietly into obscurity. Thus all these causes contributed to the conviction that it was better to be famous under directors so able, if perhaps often provoking, than obscure on the great commonplace commercial stage.

Now in the new theatrical company which we hope to establish for the production of native works dealing with the lives and problems of people more complex at all events, if not more refined than the characters represented by Abbey dramatists, we have no such safe- guards as I have described for keeping our players from deserting us to take lucrative parts in the fashionable drawingroom plays of England. In fact, this has been a chief difficulty with me hitherto in the production of my own plays, which are of a nature requiring performers who can create characters of complexity and intellectu- ality. When those players are, or believe themselves to be, really capable, they have only one desire, which is to get on the English stage, and in pursuit of this object they are most difficult to interest in the literary and psychological drama; so that the dramatist who practises such an art doubtless fascinating to himself, if tiresome to the frivolous, is at more disadvantage at present in Ireland than the rest of his brethren. That is why, although I have written more plays than anyone else, which are, of course, quite useless for commercial purposes, I so seldom get a chance of being produced. If I could have written capable peasant plays, which I could not because they do not interest me, in that the peasant's primitive mind is too crude for any sort of interesting complexity in treatment, I have no doubt I should have found my place naturally in the Abbey Theatre. But as I could not, and as the Abbey Theatre could not produce work like mine, which was obviously not suited to their powers (they acted during one week-end The Heather Field, on the whole so unsatisfactorily, that they never attempted it again), I naturally became an isolated figure, who had to depend on my own efforts with amateur players of varied efficiency for seeing my dramas on the stage.

My experiences were anything but encouraging; for, although I met with considerable talent, it was not accompanied with any sort of taste. I suppose I have no right to be surprised that the only thoughts of those amateurs was to show themselves off. Any idea of discovering a native work of art and interpreting it with under- standing was as far from their minds as from the mind of an average

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English actor or actress. Would it be believed that one day when I was discussing the possibilities of a society for producing native drama and Continental masterpieces, the leading lady proposed that I should produce Madame Sans Gine at the Antient Concert Rooms, with an elaborate series of dresses for herself in the title part? That poor lady evidently thought that the fascination of silly players was the real motive of my interest in intellectual drama! It is little wonder that the Abbey Company is the only theatre that has come to anything.

Thus, with this material, which was alone capable of grappling with the work that interested me, I produced some plays of Ibsen and of my own with varying results. There were individual performers of extraordinary merit; but it was impossible, owing to laziness, want of discipline, and irregularity of attendance at rehearsal, to get anything like finish or to avoid tiresome accident. In the case of works previously produced with success, carelessness in performance at revivals is bad enough, notwithstanding the fact that the actors alone must be blamed for any failure of representation which at the first production was absent. On the other hand, when it is a case of a piece being first produced, the delinquencies of the actors are generally visited by an indiscriminating audience on the head of the unfortunate author, as was the case at the original production of my play, An Enchanted Sea, where the performers, with few exceptions, such as the fine impersonations of Guy and Lord Mask, seemed to vie with each other in an unconscious contest as to whether they should make themselves or the work more ridiculous.

After this misfortune, I was naturally not over anxious to try my luck again with amateurs. However, some years later Count Markievicz, the able director of the Independent Theatre Company, whose absence since from Ireland is an irreparable loss to the drama, produced my Grangecolman with intelligence and success. This has naturally revived my hopes somewhat, and emboldened me to come forward with a project which, if carried out with care, might lead to something like such fame for our amateur actors as those of the Abbey Theatre have so deservedly won.

The failure of the Repertory to vie with the Professional Theatre, although it exhibited some clever acting, has only proved to me that Dublin playgoers will not patronise the amateur in plays that they are accustomed to see acted by the best professionals. This is the chief fact of the situation, which had better be faced at once. When the Repertory Theatre, doubtless in the vain hope of making money, chose to act plays of this sort they at once wrote down their doom. Of course they tried to pose as professionals;

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and I wished to consider them so; but the public would not look at them as other than amateurs who just wanted to show themselves off before their friends, like other amateurs, without a thought of helping by intelligent interpretations the production of native drama that was not first seen in on the English stage. How different was this folly from the intelligent displayed in the management of the Abbey Theatre, which created a flourishing school of native drama.

What is my project, then? It is not original. It is simply to apply the methods of the Abbey Theatre to an organisation of the most talented amateurs for the encouragement and production of native Irish drama other than the peasant species, and thereby see if, by study and perseverance, we may similarly create a school of young dramatists who will devote themselves to this particular department. I feel that, however depressed and ruined we may have been by English government and our own inept acquiescence by often playing into the hands of the enemy, we have still some inhabitants left in Ireland besides peasants, and that a theatre which only treats of peasant life can never be considered, no matter how good it may be, more than a folk theatre. Consequently only partially representative of Ireland, it cannot be compared with those national theatres in Europe which represent so completely the minds of the various countries where they exist. And it will be seen, too, that this project is not strange nor original any more than others which have benefited us, such as the Agricultural Organisation Society, which, invented and tried by men of great ability on the Continent, was known to be a success, and had only to be properly applied in Ireland to be the success it undoubtedly has turned out to be. Thus, in the same way we have only to apply the methods of that undoubted success, the Abbey Theatre, intelligently upon the talented amateurs of the stage here in Dublin, and after time and perseverance I feel sure to produce equally good results. The great question is, of course, will the amateurs respond to my invitation? I know I am a very inferior showman compared with Mr. Yeats and Lady Gregory, and am, moreover, attempting what they never hoped for, since their choice of plays was at first from among the lowly and unsophisticated, while my selection now is to be from the superior and refined. It would indeed have appeared presumptuous in the highest degree to have attempted this at any previous time; but now, when they have met with such repeated failure, it behoves the more intelligent, who have an ambition beyond showing themselves off in amateur theatricals before their friends (whose surprise at their least accomplishment is so great that it makes them consider it wonderful, just as are a few words from a parrot so considered) to

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pause and see if this project of mine is not at least the one most conducive to permanence, and perhaps even to fame. We can begin tentatively in the Abbey Theatre if they will let it to us; if not, in some hall. Our plays, both native and translations of foreign masterpieces, shall be those not usually acted by professionals. We will also act plays, co-operating with the Gaelic League players, in the Irish language, from which, of course, peasant subjects must not be excluded. Here they are fitting in every way. Above all, we will take the greatest pains, so that our performances may be intelligent and finished. We will not expect to make money; and in this respect we can be no worse off than we have been hitherto-nor than the Abbey Theatre was for many years when it had to bravely forge ahead before empty benches. But the Abbey plan was intellectually sound, and it triumphed by creating a thinking audience for itself, as I hope we may for ourselves in the end. To do this we must persevere. Well, we have now what the Abbey Theatre had not- namely, a successful example before us. I can hardly think that the more intelligent may not at last understand that this is the only possible way by which they may be taken seriously as artists. Ever since I helped to found the Irish dramatic movement in 1899, I have had this scheme in my mind, and made repeated efforts to carry it out. But owing to the blighting effect of the English stage on our giddy amateurs, I have met with disappointment, and even disaster. However, now after their numerous failures to emulate the commercial theatre, I may hope perhaps for some sympathy in intellectual ideals, at least from the more intelligent among them, although I must confess that I never expect to be understood by types of players represented by the lady who wanted me to run her as Madame Sans Ge ne. Those sort of people always will be hopeless in all artistic enterprises; but when I can point to actors like Mr. George Nesbitt, who, in the ordinary commercial drama, is merely mediocre, while in such psychological characters as Almers in Little Eyolf, or as Carden Tyrrell in The Heather Field, excels all professionals I have seen in those parts, it would seem nothing short of blind perversity for such to continue in their former methods. As the same criticism applies to others in a lesser degree, perhaps there is reason to expect that performances of merit and interest might with diligent work be given that would end like those at the Abbey in compelling recognition and success. The artistic success of the Ibsen performances also at the Theatrical Club should strengthen this expectation; so let us go forward with the title, The Irish Literary Theatre, which I invented for the foundation of the Irish dramatic movement in 1899.

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Article Contentsp. 79p. 80p. 81p. 82p. 83p. 84

Issue Table of ContentsThe Irish Review (Dublin), Vol. 4, No. 38 (Apr., 1914), pp. 57-112Front MatterPicture: North Strand, RushEconomicsFrom "Coffin Ship" to "Atlantic Greyhound" [pp. 57-67]The Policy of "The Department." [pp. 68-74]

PoetryFour Poems [pp. 75-78]

Dramatic CriticismA Plea for the Revival of the Irish Literary Theatre [pp. 79-84]

PoetryTwo Poems [pp. 85-86]Two Poems [pp. 87-88]

EssayThe Tree of the Field Is Man's Life [pp. 89-92]

BiographyGeorge Henry Moore [pp. 93-103]

StoryAn Odd Volume [pp. 104-112]

Back Matter

a plea for the revival of the irish literary theatre

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