Yeats's Repudiation of Where There Is Nothing

YEATS'S REPUDIATION OF WHERE THERE ISl NOTHfNG* ALTHOUCH EARLIER HISTORIANS OF THE Irish Renaissance, such as Boyd and Malone, thought highly of TVhere There is Nothing) modern critics are almost unanimous in their condemnation. ((TiJIhere There is N othing has been rather overlooked by Yeatsian scholars, and for good reasons: from a literary point of view it is not distinguished." "The play is a bad, clumsy one." "This five-act affair, overburdened by too much talk, is loose and vague in development." "In Where There is Nothing there is very little that is solid at all-a mist of ideas imperfectly enclosed in a ragged envelope."l Knowing that Yeats himself repudiated the play in favour of The Unicorn trom the Stars) these commentators seem unwilling to dissociate themselves from his point of view. Yet the reasons Yeats gives for this rejection are demonstrably unconvincing, as a preliminary account of the play's eventful history will help to show. Where There is Nothing was first published in a special supplement to the United Irishman of November 1, 1902. In that same issue Yeats wrote: Where There is Nothing is founded upon a subject which I suggested to George Moore when there seemed to be a sudden need of a play for the Irish Literary Theatre; we talked of collaboration , but this did not go beyond some rambling talks. Then the need went past, and I gradually put so much of myself into the fable that I felt I must write on it alone, and took it back into my own hands with his consent. Should he publish a story upon it some day, I shall rejoice that the excellent old custom of two writers taking the one fable has been revived in a new form. If he does I cannot think that my play and his story will resemble each other. I have used nothing of his, and if he uses anything of mine he will have so changed it, doubtless, as to have made it his own.2 *For permission to quote unpublished material I am grateful to the following holders of copyright: Mrs. Sealy and Mr. Richard Gregory; Mr. Stephen Fay; Mr. Diarmuid Russell; Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 1 Respectively, George Melchiori, The Whole Mystery of Art (London, 1960), p. 38; Richard EHmann, Yeats: The Man and the Masks (London, 1961), p. 136; George Brandon Saul, Prolegomena to the Study of Yeats's Plays (Philadelphia, 1958), p. 67; and Peter Ure, Yeats the Playwright (New York, 1963), p. 156. . 2 "The Freedom of the Theatre," United Irishman supplement (November I, 1902), p. 5. 127 128 MODERN DRAMA September The gentle, eminently reasonable tone betrays nothing of the secrecy and feud which surrounded the whole episode. Feelings began to run high when Yeats found Moore "gloomy and silent" at a Galway fair in July, 1902. On his return to Dublin, Moore telegraphed Yeats: "I have written a novel on that scenario we composed together. Will get an injunction if you use it."3 Yeats, with the help of Lady Gregory and Douglas Hyde, dashed off the first version of the play at Coole Park, arranged for immediate newspaper publication, and wrote to A. E. (who was acting as peacemaker): "Of course I will publish play. Tell Moore to write his story and be hanged."4 Yeats's brusqueness can be explained by his suspicion (confided to Lady Gregory) that Moore was spinning lies: He says for instance that when he consented to my writing [the] play he had an understanding that his name was to be on it also, 'second, only second-second on the title page.' This was half way to half profits.5 A long, detailed letter (hitherto unpublished) from Lady Gregory to John Quinn adds to our knowledge of the affair. Yeats, it appears, first tried to place the MS. with his usual publisher, A. H. Bullen, sending him all the relevant correspondence and telling him exactly what had occurred, "though he knew Bullen to be weak before a possible enemy." After some delay, Bullen refused (as Yeats foresaw) to take...