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presentation of the play in Dublin, Mr. Yeats writing in "The Dome," "Our Irish playgoers sympathized with this man so perfectly that they hissed the doctors who found that he was mad." Such an attitude is characteristically Irish; and equally characteristically English was the reception of this play when Mr. Thomas Kingston presented it at a matinee at the Strand Theatre in London. Mr. Yeats is again the authority: "The London playgoers ... sympathized with the doctors, and held the divine vision a dream." Mr. Moore praises "The Heather Field" more forthrightly in "Samhain" of October, 1901, holding that "'The Heather Field' has been admitted to be the most thoughtful of modern prose plays written in English, the best constructed, the most endurable to a thoughtful audience." Patriotism or kinship, love of paradox or desire to assuage feelings hurt by the rough treatment of "A Tale of a Town," may any or all of them be called upon to explain so sweeping a statement. But none of such motives could account for its praise by Mr. Beerbohm in the London "Saturday Review." "Max" is often paradoxical, but he is not paradoxical here: "Not long ago this play was published as a book, with a preface by Mr. George Moore, and it was more or less vehemently disparaged by the critics. Knowing that it was to be produced later in Dublin, and knowing how hard it is to dogmatize about a play until one has seen it acted, I confined myself to a very mild disparagement of it. Now that I have seen it acted, I am sorry that I disparaged it at all. It turns out to be a very powerful play indeed." I have quoted Mr. Yeats and Mr. Moore and Mr. Beerbohm,