Page:Irish plays and playwrights (IA irishplaysplaywr00weygrich).pdf/246

And yet, definite as are these distinctions, life in the various parts of Ireland seems much alike, class for class, as it is represented by the many contemporaneous playwrights, whether the scenes of their plays are Down or Kerry, Galway or Wicklow. A tinker is a tinker wherever you find him, a strong farmer a strong farmer, a landlord a landlord. The same emotions dominate rival brothers in "The Turn of the Road" and in "Birthright," though the Orangeman turned actor wrote the one and the Cork schoolmaster the other. Mr. T. C. Murray is one of those to whom Mr. Yeats has given the name "Cork Realists." His first play, "The Wheel o' Fortune," was produced by the Cork Dramatic Society at the Dun, Cork, December 2, 1909. It has not been published, so far as I know, and all that I learn from the references to it in newspapers is that it is a one-act ironic comedy about matchmaking. Mr. Murray brought his next play, "Birthright," to the Abbey Theatre, where it was performed on October 27, 1910. If "Maurice Harte" (1912) stands the test of time and travel as has "Birthright," Mr. Murray has come to the Abbey Theatre to take a place of prominence among its playwrights. Some of the appeal of "Birthright" is in its story, the story of Cain and Abel, if you like, a story that is as lasting in its appeal as is "The Eternal Triangle," but there is as much appeal in the characterization, which you feel as you read almost as intimately as you come to know it on the stage. There are many plays that are altogether colorless in the reading unless you have unusual power of visualization and can see them as you sit in your study as if they were embodied before you