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[The Horseboys and the Scullions shout, No, no; give it to Leagerie, The best man has it, etc.
[LEAGERIE and CONAL draw their swords.
[The Scullions and Horseboys turn towards the door, but stand still on hearing the voice of LEAGERIES WIFE outside the door.
[LEAGERIES WIFE and CONALS WIFE struggle in the doorway.
[CUCHULAIN puts his spear across the door.
[While CONAL and LEAGERIE are breaking down the bottoms of the windows each of their wives goes to the window where her husband is.
[When the windows have been made into doors, CUCHULAIN takes his spear from the door where EMER is, and all three come in at the same moment.
[She draws her dagger from her belt and sings the same words as before, flourishing it about. While she has been singing, CONALS WIFE and LEAGERIES WIFE have drawn their daggers and run at her to kill her, but CUCHULAIN has forced them back. CONAL and LEAGERIE have drawn their swords to strike CUCHULAIN.
her voice, silence her voice, blow the horns, make a noise!
[The Scullions and Horseboys blow their horns or fight among themselves. There is a deafening noise and a confused fight. Suddenly three black hands holding extinguishers come through the window and extinguish the torches. It is now pitch dark but for a very faint light outside the house which merely shows that there are moving forms, but not who or what they are, and in the darkness one can hear low terrified voices.
[A light gradually comes into the windows as if shining from the sea. The RED MAN is seen standing in the midst of the house.
THE IRISH DRAMATIC MOVEMENT
The Irish dramatic movement began in May, 1899, with the performance of certain plays by English actors who were brought to Dublin for the purpose; and in the spring of the following year and in the autumn of the year after that, performances of like plays were given by like actors at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin. In the third year I started Samhain to defend the work, and on re-reading it and reading it for the first time throughout, have found it best to reprint my part of it unchanged. A number has been published about once a year till very lately, and the whole series of notes are a history of a movement which is important because of the principles it is rooted in whatever be its fruits, and these principles are better told of in words that rose out of the need, than were I to explain all again and with order and ceremony now that the old enmities and friendships are ruffled by new ones that have other things to be done and said.March, 1908.
SAMHAIN: 1901
Whether the Irish Literary Theatre has a successor made on its own model or not, we can claim that a dramatic movement which will not die has been started. When we began our work, we tried in vain to get a play in Gaelic. We could not even get a condensed version of the dialogue of Oisin and Patrick. We wrote to Gaelic enthusiasts in vain, for their imagination had not yet turned towards the stage, and now there are excellent Gaelic plays by Dr. Douglas Hyde, by Father OLeary, by Father Dineen, and by Mr. MacGinlay; and the Gaelic League has had a competition for a one-act play in Gaelic, with what results I do not know. There have been successful performances of plays in Gaelic at Dublin and at Macroom, and at Letterkenny, and I think at other places; and Mr. Fay has got together an excellent little company which plays both in Gaelic and English. I may say, for I am perhaps writing an epitaph, and epitaphs should be written in a genial spirit, that we have turned a great deal of Irish imagination towards the stage. We could not have done this if our movement had not opened a way of expression for an impulse that was in the people themselves. The truth is that the Irish people are at that precise stage of their history when imagination, shaped by many stirring events, desires dramatic expression. One has only to listen to a recitation of Rafterys Argument with Death at some country Feis to understand this. When Death makes a good point, or Raftery a good point, the audience applaud delightedly, and applaud, not as a London audience would, some verbal dexterity, some piece of smartness, but the movements of a simple and fundamental comedy. One sees it too in the reciters themselves, whose acting is at times all but perfect in its vivid simplicity. I heard a little Claddagh girl tell a folk-story at Galway Feis with a restraint and a delightful energy that could hardly have been bettered by the most careful training.