Hyacinth Halvey is most nearly rounded out, but then Lady Gregory has taken two little plays in which to present his portrait, "The Full Moon" (1911) recording some of his later experiences in Cloon and his final departure from the town, his introduction to which was recorded in the play bearing his name.
"The Workhouse Ward" (1908), reaching from wild farce to sentimental comedy, is hardly more than a dialogue, but it is given body by the truth to Irish life out of which it is written, that quarreling is better than loneliness. Lady Gregory has disowned "Twenty-five" (1902), which is frankly melodrama, her only other experiment in which, in her plays of modern Ireland, is "The Rising of the Moon" (1903). This play relates the allowed escape from a police officer of a political prisoner through that prisoner's persuading the officer that "patriotism" is above his sworn duty to England.
Of the plays that may be called historical, "The Canavans" (1906) is the best, because it is of the peasantry, I suppose, who change so little with the years, and whom Lady Gregory presents so amusingly and so truly in her modern farce comedy. "Kincora" (1903) takes us all the way back to the eleventh century, deriving its name from Brian's Seat on the Shannon and ending with his death at Clontarf. It is undistinguished melodrama. "The White Cockade" (1905) is better only in so far as it involves farce, farce in the kitchen of an inn on the Wexford coast just after the Battle of the Boyne. "Devorgilla" (1908) is of a time between the times of the two other historical plays, of the time a generation later than
