Yeats and Lady Gregory: A Unique Dramatic Collaboration

YEATS AND LADY GREGORY: A UNIQUE DRAMATIC COLLABORATION IN 1954 OLIVER ST. JOHN GOGARTY published as fact certain rumors that had apparently circulated in Dublin for fifty years. He wrote that Yeats had finally admitted to him that he had written Lady Gregory's plays, in particular The Rising of the Moon: The Old Lady of the Abbey Theatre repelled me by continually inserting the few plays she was supposed to have written and attaching them to everyone else's work. Once I tackled Yeats about those so-called plays of Lady Gregory. "You cannot tell me she wrote The Rising of the Moon." He acknowledged this: "We decided that whoever found a suitable title might have the words too." As I suspected, Yeats, who had a fine sense of humor, did not want the comic to interfere with his fame as an outstanding poet . . . so he let Lady Gregory get away with the comics.1 Gogarty is not known for his veracity, and he undoubtedly invented the conversation he attributes to Yeats. Yeats did not write Lady Gregory's plays, but he did help her whenever he could. Of The Rising of the Moon, Lady Gregory, in an unpublished letter to Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, wrote (July 26, 1903): "I have also been writing a little play 'The Rising of the Moon' in which Yeats helped me, as I helped him in 'Cathleen' and 'Pot of Broth.''' What occurred, then, was a collaboration between Lady Gregory and W. B. Yeats in some early plays. Yeats, in a Preface to his Collected Plays, noted that he had explained his indebtedness to Lady Gregory in Plays and Plays and Controversies and then added: "If I could have persuaded her, she would have signed The Unicorn from the Stars, her share in it is so great. She had generally some part wherever there is dialect, and often where there is not."2 One would think from this note that Lady Gregory's contribution to his plays was something less than her contribution to The Unicorn from the Stars. And this is true to some extent. But what is not true, and what is implied, is that Lady Gregory's share in other plays by 1 Oliver St. John Gogarty, It Isn't That Time of Year at All (Garden City, 1954), p. 246. 2 The Collected Plays of w. B. Yeats (New York, 1934). 1964 YEATS AND LADY GREGORY 323 Yeats is insignificant. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Not only did Lady Gregory have a share in all Yeats's plays before he began the Noh plays under the influence of Ezra Pound with At the Hawk's Well in 1917, but she also helped him with other work, particularly with the Stories of Red Hanrahan (Cuala, 1904). Lady Gregory's involvement in Yeats's work came about gradually. She had little or no interest in the theater before she met Yeats in London at the beginning of 1897.3 He talked to her about playwriting and about his desire for a theater where he could have his plays performed . Later that same year in Ireland, after further discussing the project with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn, it was decided to seek a guarantee of £ 300 and to put on some plays the following year in Dublin.4 Lady Gregory's only contribution at this stage was that she had some money, lots of energy, and an established position from which to solicit funds. The first plays were produced in the spring of 1899 in Dublin with imported English actors, and English actors were imported again in 1900 and 1901. In 1902, however, William and Frank Fay, two gifted Irish amateur actors, organized a company of Irish actors, and, for the first time, Irish plays written on Irish subjects were performed by Irish actors. The Abbey theater was established as a repertory company, playing each spring and fall in Dublin and touring England in the early summer . A repertory company needs a stable group of actors capable of playing a wide variety of roles; it needs an ever increasing number of new plays. The Fays initially provided a company with a...