Irish Plays
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Lady Gregory's name has become a household word in America and her works should occupy an exclusive niche in every library. Mr. George Bernard Shaw, in a recently published interview, said Lady Gregory "is the greatest living Irishwoman.... Even in the plays of Lady Gregory, penetrated as they are by that intense love of Ireland which is unintelligible to the many drunken blackguards with Irish names who make their nationality an excuse for their vices and their worthlessness, there is no flattery of the Irish; she writes about the Irish as Molière wrote about the French, having a talent curiously like Molière."
"The witchery of Yeats, the vivid imagination of Synge, the amusing literalism mixed with the pronounced romance of their imitators, have their place and have been given their praise without stint. But none of these can compete with Lady Gregory for the quality of universality. The best beauty in Lady Gregory's art is its spontaneity. It is never forced.... She has read and dreamed and studied, and slept and wakened and worked, and the great ideas that have come to her have been nourished and trained till they have grown to be of great stature."—Chicago Tribune.
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
Irish Folk-History Plays
By
First Series. The Tragedies
Second Series. The Tragic Comedies
2 vols. Each, $1.50 net. By mail, $1.65
Lady Gregory has preferred going for her material to the traditional folk-history rather than to the anthorised printed versions, and she has been able, in to doing, to make her plays more living. One of these, Kincora, telling of Brian Boru, who reigned in the year 1000, evoked such keen local interest that an old farmer travelled from the neighborhood of Kincora to aee it acted in Dublin.
The story of Grania, on which lady Gregory has founded one of these plays, was taken entirely from tradition. Grania was a beautiful young woman and was to have been married to Finn, the great leader of the Fenians; but before the marriage, she went away from the bridegroom with his handsome young kinsman, Diarmuid. After many years, when Diarmuid had died (and Finn had a hand in his death), she went back to Finn and became his queen.
Another of Lady Gregory's plays, The Canavans dealt with the stormy times of Queen Elizabeth, whose memory is a horror in Ireland second only to that of Cromwell.
The White Cockade is founded on a tradition of King James having escaped from Ireland after the battle of the Boyne in a wine barrel.
The choice of folk history rather than written history gives a freshness of treatment and elasticity of material which made the late J. M. Synge say that "Lady Gregory's method had brought back the possibility of writing historic plays."
All theae plays, except Grania, which has not yet been staged, have been very successfully performed in Ireland. They are written in the dialect of Kiltartan, which had already become familiar to readers of Lady Gregory's books.
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
New Comedies
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The Bogie Men—The Full Moon—Coats Damer's Gold—McDonough's Wife
8°, With Portrait in Photogravure. $1.50 net. By Mail, $1.65
The plays have been acted with great success by the Abbey Company, and have been highly extolled by appreciative audiences and an enthusiastic press. They are distinguished by a humor of unchallenged originality.
One of the plays in the collection, "Coats," depends for its plot upon the rivalry of two editors, each of whom has written an obituary notice of the other. The dialogue is full of crisp humor. "McDonough's Wife," another drama that appears in the volume, is based on a legend, and explains how a whole town rendered honor against its will. "The Bogie Men" has as its underlying situation an amusing misunderstanding of two chimney-sweeps. The wit and absurdity of the dialogue are in Lady Gregory's best vein. "Damer's Gold" contains the story of a miser beset by his gold-hungry relations. Their hopes and plans are upset by one they had believed to be of the simple of the world, but who confounds the Wisdom of the Wise. "The Full Moon" presents a little comedy enacted on an Irish railway station. It is characterized by humor of an original and delightful character and repartee that is distinctly clever.
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
Seven Short Plays
By
Author of "New Comedies," "Our Irish Theatre," etc. 12º. $1.50
The plays in this volume are the following: Spreading the News, Hyacinth Halvey, The Rising of the Moon, The Jackdaw, The Workhouse Ward, The Travelling Man, The Gaol Gate, The volume also contains music for the songs in the plays and notes explaining the conception of the plays.
Among the three great exponents of the modern Celtic movement in Ireland, Lady Gregory holds an unusual place. It is she from whom came the chief historical impulse which resulted in the recreation for the present generation of the elemental poetry of early Ireland, its wild disorders, its loves and hates—all the passionate light and shadow of that fierce and splendid race.
G. P. Putnam's Sons