Theatre: Dublin Dramatist

Last week the Abbey Theatre Players, who began their second U. S. tour since 1914 in Manhattan fortnight ago (TIME, Oct. 31), had an important little play called The Words Upon The Window Pane to introduce to the U. S. Scene is in a spiritualist seance where a sleazy medium calls upon her control, “Little Lulu,” to bring tidings from the beyond for her customers. Suddenly there is a babble of tongues in the medium’s mouth. The spirit of Jonathan Swift, no less, is deranging communication between Ireland and the astral shores. All the customers save a young Cambridge man want the savage Dean’s spirit exorcised so that they can get on to more personal business, but Jonathan Swift has the upper hand, begins speaking with despairing eloquence about Vanessa, who proposed marriage to him; Stella, whom he loved; Ireland, which he admired; himself, whom he despised. The poetic Swift confessional is interesting, intelligible to none except the eager student. The charlatan medium dismisses her congregation, counts her money, prepares to retire. But as she makes her way to bed, Swift’s spirit returns, keeps on talking even through her uncomprehending yawns.

“Author! We want the author!” cried the Abbey Players’ audience. They got him. As the curtain fell on his one-act play, famed William Butler Yeats, 67, a portly, grey-haired gentleman, stepped upon the stage. Then one great Irishman spoke briefly about another. The spirit of Swift, Poet-Senator Yeats explained, still broods over the Emerald Isle. The tragedy and wisdom of Swift permeate, he feels, the Irish character. That was what he had tried to get at in his play. He thanked one & all for their attention, left the theatre as the curtain rose on Synge’s Playboy of the Western World.

Since arriving in Manhattan the day before, Poet Yeats had been given a dinner by and made the thirty-sixth honorary member of the New York Authors Club, had delivered himself at length to reporters. The Irish Academy of Letters, which he and George Bernard Shaw founded last summer, has had setbacks, he admitted. James Joyce refused to join because “living in France, he finds it difficult to realize how important the academy seems to men of Irish letters.” Lord Dunsany refused “because he could not endure being only an associate member.” Another Yeatsism: “I am not one who believes in waiting for inspiration. I start writing poetry at 11 every day. Poetry is quite a heavy job. Two hours work is a good day. Sometimes I finish six lines in a day. Never more than a dozen. When I was young poetry was harder than it is now.”