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one quality, which is the very seal of creative genius, it shares with The Well of the Saints, as indeed with all his plays, it is homogeneous: all the men and women in it, even if none of them be as rich tempered as he or she might be, draw sustenance from the same impulse of creation: their little vessels of being have all been filled at the same fount, wherever in the western world that fount may be. They differ from each other, each remaining the whole time harmonious with himself, yet all tread upon the same enchanted ground and are true children of it. perhaps the playboy’s speech at the very end of the first act, where he half regrets not having killed his father long ago, is the only blunder in the play. It is the only passage in which the playboy is truly a playboy, consciously rogue. In the real sense of the term, a playboy lives by roguery, is conscious of it, is conscious too that to the initiated his roguery is an open book; is one moreover who enjoys not only his own roguery, but the sensations, half-looked for by them, that it excites in the initiated. Christy Mahon is no such playboy. If his words at the end of act I. really give us his very self, if he is truly a rogue, he cannot but behave quite differently from what he does all through act II. and act III. a real playboy would not allow himself to be tied up by the simple Mayo men; he would, one thinks, rather have got them to tie up his father. Christy Mahon is an innocent rather than a rogue; and the play in which he is the chief figure is, therefore, not a piece of picaresque drama. The Playboy of the Western World is a gaudy reckless spectacle; yet it was no small magic that raised it from the rather drab and meagre scheme of life of one of our poorest seaboards. In hidden places, and with the most crazy gear, the peasants there distil that potent spirit poteen which, Synge tells us, sends a shock of joy to the blood. No more, no less than that, did he ever wish this handful of living people to do for us. * * * The Colonial Branch of anglo-Irish Literature1 as to the name of the whole of this literature: anglo-Irish, since it prevents confusion and makes for peace. anyway it is accepted. You’ll find a chapter in the Cambridge History of English Literature headed ‘anglo-Irish Literature.’ and if some, resisting authority so eminently respectable, still persist in calling it Irish literature, let them beware of Dr. Gogarty, who rages when a punic name falls on his ear. Part Two. Representing Ireland 149 As to the future of this literature: it lies in the bosoms of Hobbs and Nobbs, and Nokes and Stokes.2 Not certainly in the bosom of Paddy McGinty (friend of mine, friend whose judgement goes with me – Mr. O’Faoláin asserts it,3 though Mr. O’Connor is kind enough to say that my books, like his own, are read by those who have reached the Turgenev standard:4 having said which Mr. O’Connor invites me to weep with him tear for tear in our unfrequented booth). What remains to be discussed? Swamped by English culture, or not swamped? The bookshop long since has settled that question for me. Not for Mr. O’Connor. Bless you, not English culture but international fills our bookshops! he cries, lifting his eyebrows. I reply: International literature in English, which is to say that brand of it England chooses. But I think ‘most people’(arbiter chosen by Mr. O’Faoláin, highbrow), will agree that you can cut from the bookshop all that is international in it without sensibly disturbing the pattern.Trash! Mr. O’Connor calls the lot, international books and all. I agree. But there must be trash.‘Most people’will have it so. Then why not green trash? Cabbage green or shamrock green, which is more Hibernian, though I’d prefer to either, the green that the poet (joker!) saw in the eye of ‘Gile na Gile’– rinn-uaine –5 perhaps because there’s a little in my own. Red trash in the English book-shop, I therefore look for, green trash in the Irish, yellow in the Chinese; and nobody swamped. I’m afraid...

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