Yeats's Introduction of the Heroic Type

YEATS'S INTRODUCTION OF THE HEROIC TYPE To WRITE OF THE HERO IN Yeats's dramas on Irish legend beginning in 1903 is to confront a critical problem, namely the ambivalent critical attitude towards these figures. Although critics seem to recognize that there are differences between these heroes and those in Yeats's earlier dramas, they tend to group all the central figures in his dramas under one general category exemplifying the so-called "Yeatsian hero." An example of one of the best definitions of that illusory figure is Richard EHmann's description in The Identity oj Yeats: His tragic heroes act upon an old theory of his: they play the part they have decided upon, and the moment of their actual death is the moment of their stage triumph, for death fuses them to their chosen image of themselves. This is what they have aimed at and found, and in finding lost.! The difficulty with such a definition is that it is too inclusive. The definition does not apply to the central characters in Yeats's earliest "miracle plays" based on Irish folklore for a very important reason. EHmann describes the Yeatsian heroic prototype as one who has an independent force of will, suggested by the following excerpts from his definition: "the part they have decided on," "their chosen image of themselves," and "what they have aimed at." Terms involving choice and purpose, however, run counter to the nature of the saints of Yeats's early plays, for it is precisely their lack of will, or suspension of choice, which makes them different from the later heroes. Yeats introduced in 1903 an essentially different hero in the dramas On Baile's Strand and The Kints Threshold. The distinguishing element in that hero is his force of wil1.2 In expressing that force of will, the hero follows a peculiar pattern which establishes him as a distinct dramatic type. Before 1899 there was a basic conflict of two general tendencies within the poet, the one to glorify spiritual intensity, the other to 1 (London. 1954), p. 816. 2 Maud Bodkin, Archetypal Patterns in Poetry (New York, 1958), p. 22, calls attention to the universal pattern of associations evoked by Shakespeare's Hamlet when he defies Claudius, stirring in us both impulses towards "self-assertion and submission." 409 410 MODERN DRAMA February glorify "earth power."s After 1899, I believe, the latter tendency, subdued during his Celtic Twilight period, became dominant. Yeats's biographers tend to emphasize those changes in the poet which manifested themselves after the shock of Maude Gonne's marriage in February, 1903. These changes in his work are the search for a more firm, strong, concrete style, a preoccupation with dramatic rather than lyrical verse, with critical theorizing rather than with emotional states.4 Yeats also showed a new insistence that the poet express and embody "1i£e";5 he assumed a more vigorous public life himself. He lectured in America and superintended the development of the Irish dramatic renaissance in an administrative as well as a critical capacity. Yeats, in effect, made a "calculated effort ... to live a more external life."6 Such an effort required no less than a transformation of his personality: "By nature a shy, feeling-thinking rather than executive person, he must at all costs get out of himself and into the world."7 But there are evidences of that "calculated effort" before Maude Gonne was swept off her feet by the dashing Major MacBride. To refuse to recognize these evidences at work before 1903 is to give undue prominence to Maude Gonne's elopement as a factor in determining the character of his work, particularly in the nature of his dramatic heroes who appear in 1903. It is very tempting to read these heroes as images rising out of the shock of Miss Gonne's elopement; it is tempting to see these heroes' qualities reflecting those which Yeats believed drew Maude to the dashing Major.s But in so viewing these heroes we not only lose sight of their complexity, but we give a false impression of the poet's own development. Even before Maude Gonne's marriage Yeats was growing...