where he and Mr. Yeats had been collaborating at Coole, Mr. Moore began the second act in French. He gives us enough of the dialogue (pages 370 to 376 of "Ave") to show us his high pride in his French, the tolerance of his humor, and his idea of the kind of style the play should have.
If Mr. Moore had given the subject to Mr. Yeats and to Lady Gregory, as he had some thought of doing, it would only have been a return of a subject already theirs by right of their long discussion of it together. Lady Gregory was not yet working upon it for "Gods and Fighting Men" (1904); but it was she who had reduced it to the proportions of a scenario for them to work upon. This scenario was published in "Samhain" of October, 1901, that all of the audiences of the play might be in possession of the story as a Grecian audience was in possession of the story of Elektra. And did not Mr. Moore say in his speech at the dinner given to the supporters of "The Irish Literary Theatre" in February, 1900, in speaking of his collaboration with Mr. Yeats in "Diarmid and Grania": "It would be difficult to name any poet that Ireland has yet produced more truly elected by his individual and racial genius to interpret the old legend than the distinguished poet whose contemporary and collaborateur I have the honor to be"?
The story, of course, had been retold only less often than the story of Deirdre by Irish writers, in one form or another, but there had been no memorable play made out of it. Mr. Yeats had met it in "The Death of Dermid," which Sir Samuel Ferguson included in "The Lays of the
