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  • Cathleen ni Houlihan, Yeats's Dream, and the Double Life of Maud Gonne
  • Adrian Frazier (bio)

In the 1904 patent application of the Irish National Theatre Society for the Abbey Theatre, W. B. Yeats stated that, if the patent were granted, the plays the society staged would be, as they always had been, literary—not political. But what about its first and still most popular play, Cathleen ni Houlihan? This play certainly had a propagandizing effect upon its audiences, as many spectators testified before and after the hearings. But Yeats claimed in the patent application that Cathleen ni Houlihan was highly personal, not political. His proof was that the idea for it had come to him in a dream.

As I explain in Behind the Scenes: Yeats, Horniman, and the Struggle for the Abbey Theatre (1990), this origin appeared to some skeptics at the time as legal nicety, red herring, and barefaced fib all rolled into one. What did Yeats's dreams have to do with a public license to mount plays? To present-day scholars Yeats's patent claim about Cathleen ni Houlihan seems no more convincing. The September 1900 manuscripts of the play indicate that Lady Gregory had written most of the play's lines. Her diary indicates that she felt that the play was more hers than his. Yeats privately conceded to her, to W. G. Fay, and to Lennox Robinson as much; but he never stopped publishing the play as solely his own. This looks like a case of sexism and personal bad faith on his part.

But reconsideration of Yeats's relationship with Maud Gonne, from their first meeting in January 1889 to her performance in the title role of Cathleen ni Houlihan in April 1902, leads one to suspect there might be some truth in Yeats's claim. The facts are known to scholars, but many are still strange enough to be hard to credit by almost anyone.

The dream he had in May or June 1901 was about the sudden appearance in 1798 of a visionary old woman—an embodiment of Ireland—in a cottage in Mayo on the wedding day of the son [End Page 225] of the house, just before the invasion of the French. She comes there to recruit soldiers for the rebellion. Her appearance breaks up the impending marriage, as the groom-to-be (or in fact not to be), follows her out in a trance. At the very end of the play we hear that no poor old woman has been seen on the road, but instead a lovely young one with the walk of a queen.

The implausibility of Yeats's patent claim partly involves the dream itself. Who really dreams of 1798? He ought to be dreaming—if he is like other men—of sex, women, victories, and strokes of luck. Maybe in fact this was one such dream. Certainly Yeats often dreamt of Maud Gonne, and she of him. They wrote letters to each other about these dreams, on the mornings after. Some of them are quite spicy allegories. He uses a spear; she flies ("I went out of my body and was brought away by Lug[h]")—that sort of thing. Cathleen ni Houlihan is a dreamlike allegory, written somewhat in the female vampire genre, as often noted.

There would be good reason for Maud Gonne, 1798, and the landing of the French to be mixed up in Yeats's dream in 1901. She had given herself a very forward role in organizing centennial celebrations in 1898; she and Yeats were brought closely together on the steering committees of such organizations, and later on the speakers' platforms. Indeed, when after a considerable interval, Maud Gonne invited Yeats to breakfast in London in April 1896, she began to draw him back into political organization, ahead of the commemorative events of 1898. Her role in these events was mainly to accent the French part in the rebellion. Through lecture tours around France and across America, she raised money for a memorial to General Hoche of the French landing force. She did her best to whip up enmity between France and England. Her idea—truly held, though...

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