Lady Isabella Persse Gregory by Edward A. Kopper, Jr., and: The Modern Irish Drama II: Laying the Foundations 1902-1904 by Robert Hogan and James Kilroy (review)

Book Reviews LADY ISABELLA PERSSE GREGORY, by Edward A. Kopper, Jr. Boston: Twayne Publishers. 1976. 160 pp. $7.95 THE MODERN IRISH DRAMA II: LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS 1902. 1904, by Robert Hogan and James Kilroy. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1976. 164 pp. $18.00. We tend to think of 1896, the year in which William Butler Yeats met first, August Gregory, and later, John Millington Synge, as the year in which everything began. But the forces which were to collide and produce Ireland's dramatic renaissance were on the move long before. Anthologies appeared and literary clubs already flourished in Dublin, London, Liverpool, Belfast, Cork in the 1880's; by the mid-90's the clubs had proliferated further and more clearly defined their aims, Yeats had published The Countess Kathleen and seen a London production of The Land of Heart's Desire, George Moore had enmeshed himself in London's Independent Theatre, Edward Martyn had started writing plays, Lady Gregory had published three books and numerous articles, the Fay brothers were performing in Dublin, severa] significant Irish journals had been established, and the first assessment of the Irish literary revival was published. Nationalists, home rulers, unionists, Fenians, Parnellites and anti-Pamellites, poets, playwrights. politicians, critics, historians, linguists, novelists, publishers, artists, musicians and mystics-all were drawn in to the "movement" (though not always the same one), and most of them wrote their memoirs. Perhaps none were so entertainingly libellous as Moore in his fictional documentary, Hail and Farewell, hut most were amusing and all were opinionated. The flood continues, and these volumes under review represent two of the latest, but certainly not the last, reassessments and recapitulations of Ireland's literary renaissance. Dr. Kopper's study of Lady Gregory belongs to the Twayne series on Irish literature; although the same size. it is half the price of and much more than twice as dangerous as Layjng the Foundations by Professors Hogan and Kilroy. 337 338 BOOK REVIEWS Errors begin with the title page (why the gratuitous intrusion of Lady Gregory 's maiden name?), are compounded throughout the chronology (American and British publication dates 3fe intermingled without any indication; incidents aTe misplaced or strangely transfigured as with the "starting" of the Easter Rising in 1916; many facts arc simply wrong), and continue through the bibliography. Yel despite the bad scholarship there is a curious innocence about the book. Dr. Kopper has worked through the haze of a great many secondary sources and has read all of Lady Gregory's available works, but finally the image, like one of her own Kiltartan characters, is revealed to us through the distortion of hearsay, well-intentioned exaggeration, and oversimplified context. The book suffers from insufficient understanding of the social and historical influences behind both Lady Gregory and the Abbey Theatre. Sources which could have corrected this faulty vision-Reid's biography of John Quinn, Anne Gregory's memories of her grandmother, Donoghue's edition of Yeats's Memoirs, Hogan and Kilroy's first volume, Flannery's account of Miss Horniman, some of Lady Gregory's own articles and pamphlets- were not consulted, and those that were have been used with insufficient critical sensc. Conscquently, the denunciation of Yeats appears to be rooted more in Elizabeth Coxhead's opinions than in a careful study of the poet's own essays, speeches and poems; the unnecessarily defensive description of Lady Gregory's work with the Abbey owes perhaps more to Q'Casey's, Gogarty's and Joyce's charges than to a knowledge of the facts and changing situations of the theatre itself. The book is forcefully and sprightly written, and where Dr. Kopper has drawn his conclusions directly from the texts themselves, he provides fresh insight. His studies of folklore and mythology and the folk-history plays are particularly sensitive explorations of Lady Gregory's working methods. All the more pity, then, that for his chapter on the Abbey Theatre, no distinction appears to have been drawn between the vituperative gossip of Joseph Holloway and the reports of more serious historians, that Lady Gregory's early collaborations with Douglas Hyde are not discussed, her friendship with Shaw is underestimated, and Miss Horniman...