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_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._

  THE SECRET ROSE.
  THE CELTIC TWILIGHT.
  POEMS.
  THE WIND AMONG THE REEDS.
  THE SHADOWY WATERS.
  IDEAS OF GOOD AND EVIL.




PLAYS FOR AN IRISH THEATRE

VOLUME III.




  THE KING'S THRESHOLD:
  AND
  ON BAILE'S STRAND:

  BEING VOLUME THREE OF PLAYS
  FOR AN IRISH THEATRE:

  BY W. B. YEATS


  LONDON: A. H. BULLEN,
  47, GREAT RUSSELL STREET, W.C.
  1904

  CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
  TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.




NOTE


Both these plays have been written for Mr. Fay's "Irish National
Theatre." "The King's Threshold" was played in October, 1903, and "On
Baile's Strand" will be played in February or March, 1904. Both are
founded on Old Irish Prose Romances, but I have borrowed some ideas for
the arrangement of my subject in "The King's Threshold" from "Sancan the
Bard," a play published by Mr. Edwin Ellis some ten years ago.

                                                      W. B. Y.




CONTENTS


                               PAGE

  THE KING'S THRESHOLD            1

  ON BAILE'S STRAND              67




THE KING'S THRESHOLD




LIST OF CHARACTERS

  KING GUAIRE.
  THE CHAMBERLAIN OF KING GUAIRE.
  A Soldier.
  A Monk.
  THE MAYOR OF KINVARA.
  A <DW36>.
  Another <DW36>.
  AILEEN,   } Ladies of the Court.
  ESSA,     }
  PRINCESS BUAN.
  PRINCESS FINNHUA, her Sister.
  FEDELM, Seanchan's Sweetheart.
  CIAN,     } Servants of Seanchan.
  BRIAN,    }
  SENIAS,   } Pupils of Seanchan.
  ARIAS,    }
  SEANCHAN (pronounced Shanahan), Chief Poet of Ireland.

  Pupils, Courtiers.




A PROLOGUE.[1]

  Footnote 1: Written for the first production of "The King's
    Threshold" in Dublin, but not used, as, owing to the smallness
    of the company, nobody could be spared to speak it.


    _An OLD MAN with a red dressing-gown, red slippers and red
    nightcap, holding a brass candlestick with a guttering candle in it,
    comes on from side of stage and goes in front of the dull green
    curtain._

_Old Man._ I've got to speak the prologue. [_He shuffles on a few
steps._] My nephew, who is one of the play actors, came to me, and I in
my bed, and my prayers said, and the candle put out, and he told me
there were so many characters in this new play, that all the company
were in it, whether they had been long or short at the business, and
that there wasn't one left to speak the prologue. Wait a bit, there's a
draught here. [_He pulls the curtain closer together._] That's better.
And that's why I'm here, and maybe I'm a fool for my pains.

And my nephew said, there are a good many plays to be played for you,
some to-night and some on other nights through the winter, and the most
of them are simple enough, and tell out their story to the end. But as
to the big play you are to see to-night, my nephew taught me to say what
the poet had taught him to say about it. [_Puts down candlestick and
puts right finger on left thumb._] First, he who told the story of
Seanchan on King Guaire's threshold long ago in the old books told it
wrongly, for he was a friend of the king, or maybe afraid of the king,
and so he put the king in the right. But he that tells the story now,
being a poet, has put the poet in the right.

And then [_touches other finger_] I am to say: Some think it would be a
finer tale if Seanchan had died at the end of it, and the king had the
guilt at his door, for that might have served the poet's cause better in
the end. But that is not true, for if he that is in the story but a
shadow and an image of poetry had not risen up from the death that
threatened him, the ending would not have been true and joyful enough to
be put into the voices of players and proclaimed in the mouths of
trumpets, and poetry would have been badly served.

    [_He takes up the candlestick again._

And as to what happened Seanchan after, my nephew told me he didn't
know, and the poet didn't know, and it's likely there's nobody that
knows. But my nephew thinks he never sat down at the king's table again,
after the way he had been treated, but that he went to some quiet green
place in the hills with Fedelm, his sweetheart, where the poor people
made much of him because he was wise, and where he made songs and
poems, and it's likely enough he made some of the old songs and the old
poems the poor people on the hillsides are saying and singing to-day.

    [_A trumpet-blast._

Well, it's time for me to be going. That trumpet means that the curtain
is going to rise, and after a while the stage there will be filled up
with great ladies and great gentlemen, and poets, and a king with a
crown on him, and all of them as high up in themselves with the pride of
their youth and their strength and their fine clothes as if there was no
such thing in the world as cold in the shoulders, and speckled shins,
and the pains in the bones and the stiffness in the joints that make an
old man that has the whole load of the world on him ready for his bed.

    [_He begins to shuffle away, and then stops._

And it would be better for me, that nephew of mine to be thinking less
of his play-acting, and to have remembered to boil down the knap-weed
with a bit of three-penny sugar, for me to be wetting my throat with
now and again through the night, and drinking a sup to ease the pains in
my bones.

    [_He goes out at side of stage._




THE KING'S THRESHOLD.


    SCENE: _Steps before the Palace of KING GUAIRE at Gort. A table in
    front of steps to right with food on it. SEANCHAN lying on steps to
    left. PUPILS before steps. KING on top of steps at centre._

  _King._ I welcome you that have the mastery
  Of the two kinds of music; the one kind
  Being like a woman, the other like a man;
  Both you that understand stringed instruments,
  And how to mingle words and notes together
  So artfully, that all the art is but speech
  Delighted with its own music; and you that carry
  The long twisted horn and understand
  The heady notes that being without words
  Can hurry beyond time and fate and change;
  For the high angels that drive the horse of time,
  The golden one by day, by night the silver,
  Are not more welcome to one that loves the world
  For some fair woman's sake.

                              I have called you hither
  To save the life of your great master, Seanchan,
  For all day long it has flamed up or flickered
  To the fast-cooling hearth.

  _Senias._ When did he sicken?
  Is it a fever that is wasting him?

  _King._ He did not sicken, but three days ago
  He said he would not eat, and lay down there
  And has not eaten since. Till yesterday
  I thought that hunger and weakness had been enough,
  But finding them too trifling and too light
  To hold his mouth from biting at the grave
  I called you hither, and have called others yet.
  The girl he is to wed at harvest-time,
  That should be of all living the most dear,
  Is coming from the South, and had I known
  Of any other neighbours or good friends
  That might persuade him, I had brought them hither,
  Even though I'd to ransack the world for them.

  _Senias._ What was it put him to this work, High King?

  _King._ You will call it no great matter. Three days ago
  I yielded to the outcry of my courtiers,
  Bishops, soldiers, and makers of the law,
  Who long had thought it against their dignity
  For a mere man of words to sit among them
  At my own table; and when the meal was spread
  I ordered Seanchan to good company,
  But to a lower table; and when he pleaded
  The poet's right, established when the world
  Was first established, I said that I was King
  And made and unmade rights at my own pleasure.
  And that it was the men who ruled the world,
  And not the men who sang to it, who should sit
  Where there was the most honour. My courtiers,
  Bishops, soldiers, and makers of the law
  Shouted approval, and amid that noise
  Seanchan went out, and from that hour to this,
  Although there is good food and drink beside him,
  Has eaten nothing. If a man is wronged,
  Or thinks that he is wronged, and will lie down
  Upon another's threshold until he dies,
  The common people for all time to come
  Will raise a heavy cry against that threshold,
  Even though it is the King's. He lies there now
  Perishing; he is calling against my majesty,
  That old custom that has no meaning in it,
  And as he perishes, my name in the world
  Is perishing also. I cannot give way
  Because I am King, because if I give way
  My nobles would call me a weakling, and it may be
  The very throne be shaken; but should you
  That are his friends speak to him and persuade him
  To turn his mouth from the ill-savouring grave
  And eat good food, he shall not lack my favour;
  For I will give plough-land and grazing-land,
  Or all but anything he has set his heart on.
  It is not all because of my good name
  I'd have him live, for I have found him a man
  That might well hit the fancy of a king
  Banished out of his country, or a woman's,
  Or any other's that can judge a man
  For what he is. But I that sit a throne,
  And take my measure from the needs of the state,
  Call his wild thought that over-runs the measure,
  Making words more than deeds, and his proud will
  That would unsettle all, most mischievous,
  And he himself a most mischievous man.

  _Senias._ King, whether you did right or wrong in this
  Let the King say, for all that I need say
  Is that there's nothing that cries out for death
  In the withholding of that ancient right,
  And that I will persuade him. Your own words
  Had been enough persuasion were it not
  That he is lost in dreams that hunger makes,
  And therefore heedless, or lost in heedless sleep.

  _King._ I leave him to your love, that it may promise
  Plough-lands and grass-lands, jewels and silken wear,
  Or anything but that old right of the poets.

    [_He goes out. The PUPILS, who have been standing perfectly quiet,
    all turn towards SEANCHAN, and move a step nearer._

  _Senias._ The King did wrong to abrogate our right,
  But Seanchan, who talks of dying for it,
  Talks foolishly. Look at us, Seanchan,
  Waken out of your dream and look at us,
  Who have ridden under the moon and all the day,
  Until the moon has all but come again,
  That we might be beside you.

    [_SEANCHAN turns half round leaning on his elbow, and speaks as if
    in a dream._

  _Seanchan._                  I was but now
  At Almhuin, in a great high-raftered house,
  With Finn and Osgar. Odours of roast flesh
  Rose round me and I saw the roasting spits,
  And then the dream was broken, and I saw
  Grania dividing salmon by a pool,
  And then I was awakened by your voice.

  _Senias._ It is your hunger that makes you dream of flesh
  Roasting, and for your hunger I could weep;
  And yet the hunger of the crane that starves
  Because the moonlight glittering on the pool
  And