Modern Irish Drama: W. B. Yeats to Marina Carr, Second Edition

6. The Founders

34 The Founders L A DY G R E G OR Y (1852–1932) BOR N I S A BE L L A AUGUS TA PE R S S E , twelfth in a family of sixteen children, at Roxborough, County Galway, in the West of Ireland, and educated privately, Lady Gregory was a child of the Protestant Anglo-Irish Ascendancy, whose manorial estates in rural Ireland and the accompanying townhouses were sites of political unionism, authority, and gentility. But in childhood and adolescence, Augusta, as she was always called by family and friends, developed artistic sensibilities and grew sympathetic to the Republican views of many of the common people of the estates and the small towns and villages . Sean O’Casey, born in Dublin, was quite correct when, late in Lady Gregory’s life, he wrote to her: “You can always walk with your head up. . . . [R]emember you had to fight against your birth into position and comfort, as others had to fight against their birth into hardship and poverty.” Lady Gregory read Fenian political tracts and collected folk ballads . As a young woman, she tried to help local farmers in their economic struggle with wholesalers and retailers of their produce. As a married woman, she wrote pamphlets supporting certain liberal Irish causes that were intended to ease British control, but she was against Home Rule for Ireland. In 1880, Augusta Persse married Sir William Gregory and came to live at Coole Park, near Gort, County Galway. The mansion, T H E FOU N DE R S | 35 surrounding park, and supporting farms became a place of inspiration and sustenance for many Irish writers because of Lady Gregory ’s generous patronage. Yeats came almost every summer to enjoy the park and the lake, the good food and conversation, and the opportunity to relax, think, and create. No wonder that when he chose a home for his bride and family to come to, he settled only a few miles away from Coole. Sir William was a widower of sixty-three and Lady Gregory twenty-eight at the time of their marriage. She had suitors near her own age, but her mother had rejected them as not having enough social status for the family. The Gregorys had one child, Robert, much beloved by his mother, but he was killed in action with the Royal Flying Corps in 1918. One of Yeats’s most famous poems, “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death,” was written to try to comfort his grieving friend. When Lady Gregory’s husband died in 1892, she commenced to edit his autobiography for publication, and she wore black for the rest of her life. Most important, however, she served her apprenticeship as a writer in this dutiful work, developing a clear and fluid style. Also significant was her ability to make and keep friends whether they agreed with her political views or not. Lady Gregory studied Irish Gaelic with her son and became fluent in the language. Finally, she began what became a major architectonic of her life as a writer: the collection and editing of West Country folklore and history, sometimes in the local Kiltartan Irish-English dialect. Her published works in this genre include Poets and Dreamers (1903), A Book of Saints and Wonders (1906), The Kiltartan History Book (1909), The Kiltartan Wonder Book (1910), and the two-volume Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland (1920). Of wider impact were Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902) and Gods and Fighting Men (1904), in which she compiled, translated, and adapted the ancient Irish epics so that Ireland would have texts to stand next to 36 | PL A Y W R IG H T S A N D PL A Y S Malory’s version of the Arthuriad, Morte D’Arthur, and the Welsh Mabinogion. It is as a playwright and as a cofounder and guiding light of the Abbey Theatre that Lady Gregory will be best remembered. She wrote twenty-seven original plays, even though she was nearly fifty when she began playwriting professionally. Her reputation as a dramatist rests primarily on Seven Short Plays (1909) and a few other one-act and two-act plays. Her frequently performed comedies are Spreading the News (1905), Hyacinth Halevy (1906), and The Jackdaw (1909). The Rising of the Moon (1904), The Workhouse Ward (1909), and The Gaol Gate (1909) are popular one-act political plays. Her longer works...