Front Matter

Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-76911-2 - Yeats and European Drama Michael McAteer Frontmatter More information

YEATS AND EUROPEAN DRAMA

Michael McAteer examines the plays of W. B. Yeats, considering their place in European theatre during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This original study considers the rela- tionship Yeats’s work bore with those of the foremost dramatists of the period, drawing comparisons with Henrik Ibsen, Maurice Maeterlinck, August Strindberg, Luigi Pirandello and Ernst Toller. It also shows how his plays addressed developments in theatre at the time, with regard to the Naturalist, Symbolist, Surrealist and Expressionist movements, and how Symbolism identiﬁed Yeats’s ideas concerning labour, commerce and social alienation. This book is invaluable to graduates and academics studying Yeats but also provides a fascinating account for those in Irish studies and the wider ﬁeld of drama.

mich a el mc ateer is a lecturer at the school of English, Queen’s University Belfast.

YEATS AND EUROPEAN DRAMA

MICHAEL MCATEER

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For My Mother In Loving Memory

Contents

List of illustrations page ix Acknowledgements x List of abbreviations xii

Introduction 1

part 1 early plays

1 Revolutionary revelation: The Land of Heart’s Desire, The Countess Cathleen, Cathleen ni Houlihan 13

2 Space, power, protest: The King’s Threshold and Deirdre 41

part 2 the cuchulain cycle

3 ‘I’ll not be bound’: On Baile’s Strand and The Green Helmet 65

4 The turn to Noh:At the Hawk’s Well and The Only Jealousy of Emer 87

5 ‘When everything sublunary must change’: The Death of Cuchulain 110

part 3 later plays

6 ‘The heart of a phantom is beating’:The Dreaming of the Bones and Calvary 131

vii

viii Contents 7 ‘O self-born mockers’: The Player Queen, The Words upon the Window-pane, The Herne’s Egg 152

8 History inside out: Purgatory 176

Conclusion 193

Bibliography 200 Index 219

List of illustrations

Figure 1 Sketch for lighting plan for the steps in The King’s Threshold. W. B. Yeats Collection, Stony Brook. page 55

Figure 2 Edward Gordon Craig, ‘The Steps’ (1905),Towards a New Theatre: Forty Designs for Stage Scenes with Critical Notes (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1913). 56

Figure 3 Edward Gordon Craig, ‘The Masque of London’,Towards a New Theatre: Forty Designs for Stage Scenes with Critical Notes (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1913). 154

Acknowledgements

This study was carried out with the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which funded a semester leave to carry out research on this project under their Research Leave scheme in autumn 2006. I am also grateful to the British Academy for funding a research visit to the United States in March 2006. Queen’s University Belfast was support- ive in funding my visit to the W. B. Yeats Collection at Stony Brook and granted me a semester leave to work on the project. My thanks to A. P. Watt on behalf of Gráinne Yeats for permission to cite extracts from Pages Written in a Diary of Nineteen Hundred and Thirty and from the Cornell Series Manuscript Materials. Quotations taken from the manuscript and newspaper holdings of the National Library of Ireland are included here with the kind permission of the Board of the National Library of Ireland, and I am indebted to the staﬀ for their assistance during the course of my research. My thanks also to Marie J. Taylor on behalf of the Edward Gordon Craig Estate for permission to publish two of Craig’s drawings from A Living Theatre. Quotations from the following publications are reprinted with the permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved in each case: ‘The Man and the Echo’, The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, The Poems, Revised, vol. 1, edited by Richard J. Finneran. Copyright © 1940 by Georgie Yeats; copyright renewed © 1968 by Bertha Georgie Yeats, Michael Butler Yeats & Ann Yeats. ‘The Double Vision of Michael Robartes’, The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: The Poems, Revised, vol. 1, edited by Richard J. Finneran. New York: Scribner, 1997. W. B. Yeats, A Vision. Copyright © 1937 by W. B. Yeats; copyright renewed © 1965 by Bertha Georgie Yeats and Anne Butler Yeats. W. B. Yeats, Autobiography. Copyright © 1916, 1936 by Macmillan Publishing Company; copyright renewed © 1944, 1964 by Bertha Georgie Yeats. The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, vol. x, edited by Colton Johnson. New York: Scribner 2000. Writings by W. B. Yeats copyright © 2000 by Anne Butler Yeats and Michael Yeats. W. B. Yeats, Essays and Introductions. x

Acknowledgements xi Copyright © 1961 by Mrs W. B. Yeats. W. B. Yeats, Explorations. Copyright © 1962 by Mrs W. B. Yeats. W. B. Yeats, On the Boiler. Copyright © 1939 by Macmillan Publishing Company. W. B. Yeats, Plays and Controversies. Copyright © 1924 by Macmillan Publishing Company; copyright renewed © 1952 by Bertha Georgie Yeats. W. B. Yeats and Shree Purhoit Swami, The Ten Principal Upanishads. Copyright © by Shree Purhoit Swami and W. B. Yeats; copyright renewed © 1965 by Bertha Georgie Yeats and Ann Butler Yeats. W. B. Yeats, Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, vol. v. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994. W. B. Yeats, Wheels and Butterflies. Copyright © 1934 by Macmillan Publishing Company; copyright renewed © 1965 by Bertha Georgie Yeats. I am most grateful to staff of various libraries for their assistance during the course of my research. These include the Special Collections and University Archives, Frank Melville Jr Memorial Library, Stony Brook, State University of New York; the Harry Ransom Center, the University of Texas at Austin; the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, the New York Public Library; the Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Robert R. Woodruff Library, Emory University, Atlanta; the Special Collections, Queen’s University Belfast. Enjoying Martha Campbell’s hospitality and meeting with Elizabeth Cullingford made my visit to Austin all the more memorable. P. J. Dolan was very welcoming during my stay at Stony Brook. Ray Ryan was steadfast in his support of this project over the past few years at Cambridge University Press. The encouragement of Richard Cave and Christopher Morash is also much appreciated, while Terence Brown’s prompting on historical contexts for Yeats’s drama was an important catalyst to my embarking on the project. Edward Larrissy generously took the time to read and comment upon an early draft of this work. I have learnt much through discussions on Yeats at Queen’s with Eamonn Hughes, Emilie Morin, David Dwan, Fran Brearton and Aisling Mullan. Queen’s lost a great scholar with the passing of Siobhán Kilfeather in 2007; I was fortunate to have known her for a brief period as a col- league. Conversations with Edith Shillue, Nicholas Allen, Colin Graham, Joe Cleary, Cyril McDonnell and Des O’Rawe have always been lively and enriching. Participating in workshops on Yeats’s drama run by Sam MacCready and Carol Moore at the Yeats International Summer School in Sligo lent new insights into the performance aspects of Yeats’s plays. Eglantina Remport has deepened my perspectives on European cultural experience; I am indebted to her friendship. I thank dad, my sisters and brothers for the support shown over the years. I dedicate the book to my dear mother Bridget, who sadly passed away in 2009.

List of abbreviations

Berg The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, the New York Public Library. Emory William Butler Yeats Collection, Manuscripts, Archives, & Rare Book Library, The Robert W. Woodruﬀ Library, Emory University, Atlanta GA. HRHRC Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. NLI The National Library of Ireland, Dublin. Stony Brook William Butler Yeats Collection, Special Collections & University Archives, Frank Melville Jr Memorial Library, Stony Brook, State University of New York. VP The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W. B. Yeats, Peter Allt and Russell K. Alspach, ed. (London: Macmillan, 1957). VPl The Variorum Edition of the Plays of W. B. Yeats, Russell K. Alspach ed. (London: Macmillan Press, 1966).

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