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The only Gaelic performances I have seen during the year have been ill-done, but I have seen them sufficiently well done in other years to believe my friends when they tell me that there have been good performances. Inghinidhe na h-Eireann is always thorough, and one cannot doubt that the performance of Dr. Hydes An Naom ar Iarriad , by the children from its classes, was at least careful. A powerful little play in English against enlisting, by Mr. Colum, was played with it, and afterwards revived, and played with a play about the Royal Visit, also in English. I have no doubt that we shall see a good many of these political plays during the next two or three years, and it may be even the rise of a more or less permanent company of political players, for the revolutionary clubs will begin to think plays as necessary as the Gaelic League is already thinking them. Nobody can find the same patriotic songs and recitations sung and spoken by the same people, year in year out, anything but mouldy bread. It is possible that the players who are to produce plays in October for the Samhain festival of Cumann na n-Gaedheal may grow into such a company.
Though one welcomes every kind of vigorous life, I am, myself, most interested in The Irish National Theatre Society, which has no propaganda but that of good art. The little Camden Street Hall it had taken has been useful for rehearsal alone, for it proved to be too far away, and too lacking in dressing-rooms for our short plays, which involve so many changes. Successful performances were given, however, at Rathmines, and in one or two country places.
Deirdre , by A.E., The Racing Lug , by Mr. Cousins, The Foundations , by Mr. Ryan, and my Pot of Broth , and Cathleen ni Houlihan , were repeated, but no new plays were produced until March 14th, when Lady Gregorys Twenty-five
and my Hour-Glass , drew a good audience. On May 2nd the Hour-Glass , Twenty-five , Cathleen ni Houlihan , Pot of Broth , and Foundations were performed before the Irish Literary Society in London, at the Queens Gate Hall, and plays and players were generously commended by the Press very eloquently by the critic of The Times . It is natural that we should be pleased with this praise, and that we should wish others to know of it, for is it not a chief pleasure of the artist to be commended in subtle and eloquent words? The critic of The Times has seen many theatres and he is, perhaps, a little weary of them, but here in Ireland there are one or two critics who are so much in love, or pretend to be so much in love, with the theatre as it is, that they complain when we perform on a stage two feet wider than Molières that it is scarce possible to be interested in anything that is played on so little a stage. We are to them foolish sectaries who have revolted against that orthodoxy of the commercial theatre, which is so much less pliant than the orthodoxy of the church, for there is nothing so passionate as a vested interest disguised as an intellectual conviction. If you inquire into its truth it becomes as angry as a begging-letter writer, when you find some hole in that beautiful story about the five children and the broken mangle. In Ireland, wherever the enthusiasts are shaping life, the critic who does the will of the commercial theatre can but stand against his lonely pillar defending his articles of belief among a wild people, and thinking mournfully of distant cities, where nobody puts a raw potato into his pocket when he is going to hear a musical comedy.
The Irish Literary Society of New York, which has been founded this year, produced The Land of Hearts Desire , The Pot of Broth , and Cathleen ni Houlihan , on June 3rd and 4th, very successfully, and propose to give Dr. Hydes Nativity Play, Drama Breithe Chriosta , and his Casadh an t-Sugain , Posadh and Naom ar Iarriad next year, at the same time of year, playing them both in Irish and English. I heard too that his Nativity Play will be performed in New York this winter, but I know no particulars except that it will be done in connection with some religious societies. The National Theatre Society will, I hope, produce some new plays of his this winter, as well as new plays by Mr. Synge, Mr. Colum, Lady Gregory, myself, and others. They have taken the Molesworth Hall for three days in every month, beginning with the 8th, 9th, and 10th of October, when they will perform Mr. Synges Shadow of the Glen , a little country comedy, full of a humour that is at once harsh and beautiful, Cathleen ni Houlihan , and a longish one-act play in verse of my own, called The Kings Threshold . This play is founded on the old story of Seanchan the poet, and King Guaire of Gort, but I have seen the story from the poets point of view, and not, like the old storytellers, from the kings. Our repertory of plays is increasing steadily, and when the winters work is finished, a play Mr. Bernard Shaw has promised us may be ready to open the summer session. His play will, I imagine, unlike the plays we write for ourselves, be long enough to fill an evening, and it will, I know, deal with Irish public life and character. Mr. Shaw, more than anybody else, has the love of mischief that is so near the core of Irish intellect, and should have an immense popularity among us. I have seen a crowd of many thousands in possession of his spirit, and keeping the possession to the small hours.