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THE UNICORN FROM THE STARS

AND OTHER PLAYS


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK. BOSTON. CHICAGO
ATLANTA. SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON. BOMBAY. CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO




THE UNICORN FROM THE STARS

AND OTHER PLAYS



BY

WILLIAM B. YEATS

AND

LADY GREGORY



New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1908

_All rights reserved_


COPYRIGHT, 1904, 1908,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

New edition. Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1908.

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.




PREFACE


About seven years ago I began to dictate the first of these Plays to
Lady Gregory. My eyesight had become so bad that I feared I could
henceforth write nothing with my own hands but verses, which, as
Theophile Gautier has said, can be written with a burnt match. Our
Irish Dramatic movement was just passing out of the hands of English
Actors, hired because we knew of no Irish ones, and our little troop of
Irish amateurs--as they were at the time--could not have too many
Plays, for they would come to nothing without continued playing.
Besides, it was exciting to discover, after the unpopularity of blank
verse, what one could do with three Plays written in prose and founded
on three public interests deliberately chosen,--religion, humour,
patriot