Mr. Mayne. Their styles, respectively, in "Nan" and "Red Turf," have in them more than echoes of the style of Synge. The "wambling" old men of Mr. Hardy come also to mind as one thinks of these old men of Mr. Masefield and Mr. Mayne and Mr. Boyle. All in a sense play "chorus" to the action of the play, but there is no one of them that is in the story or play in which he appears on such grounds only. There are, of course, old men everywhere, in all life they are an integral part, and everywhere they are commentators on life once they feel that their day is done, spectators of a pageant from the forefront of which they have dropped to watch the following troupe pass by.
There is little mating in these plays of Mr. Mayne, and love of woman worthy of the name of love only in "The Turn of the Road"; there is parental love, too, but perhaps more of parental tyranny. Such parental love as there is, however, actually expressed, makes one of the memorable passages of Mr. Mayne. Mary Burke, after taunting her husband to madness, tries to turn him from murder when she sees him, gun in hand, by crying: "For the love of God, would you leave it down. Leave it down and go in and look at the child sleeping. It would take the badness from your mind the same as it did with me."
Though Mr. Mayne is a writer for the Ulster Literary Theatre of Belfast, his allegiance to the Abbey group is clearly indicated in "Red Turf," which is the result of a study of Synge. I do not mean to say that Mr. Mayne is not familiar with the speech of Connacht, but that it is Synge who has taught him how to listen to it. There is
