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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,
patriotism. I planned in those days to establish a dramatic movement
upon the popular passions, as the ritual of religion is established in
the emotions that surround birth and death and marriage, and it was
only the coming of the unclassifiable, uncontrollable, capricious,
uncompromising genius of J. M. Synge that altered the direction of the
movement and made it individual, critical, and combative. If his had
not, some other stone would have blocked up the old way, for the public
mind of Ireland, stupefied by prolonged intolerant organisation, can
take but brief pleasure in the caprice that is in all art, whatever its
subject, and, more commonly, can but hate unaccustomed personal
reverie.

I had dreamed the subject of "Cathleen ni Houlihan," but found when I
looked for words that I could not create peasant dialogue that would go
nearer to peasant life than the dialogue in "The Land of Heart's
Desire" or "The Countess Cathleen." Every artistic form has its own
ancestry, and the more elaborate it is, the more is the writer
constrained to symbolise rather than to represent life, until perhaps
his ladies of fashion are shepherds and shepherdesses, as when Colin
Clout came home again. I could not get away, no matter how closely I
watched the country life, from images and dreams which had all too
royal blood, for they were descended like the thought of every poet
from all the conquering dreams of Europe, and I wished to make that
high life mix into some rough contemporary life without ceasing to be
itself, as so many old books and Plays have mixed it and so few modern,
and to do this I added another knowledge to my own. Lady Gregory had
written no Plays, but had, I discovered, a greater knowledge of the
country mind and country speech than anybody I had ever met with, and
nothing but a burden of knowledge could keep "Cathleen ni Houlihan"
from the clouds. I needed less help for the "Hour-Glass," for the
speech there is far from reality, and so the Play is almost wholly
mine. When, however, I brought to her the general scheme for the "Pot
of Broth," a little farce which seems rather imitative to-day, though
it plays well enough, and of the first version of "The Unicorn," "Where
there is Nothing," a five-act Play written in a fortnight to save it
from a plagiarist, and tried to dictate them, her share grew more and
more considerable. She would not allow me to put her name to these
Plays, though I have always tried to explain her share in them, but has
signed "The Unicorn from the Stars," which but for a good deal of the
general plan and a single character and bits of another is wholly hers.
I feel indeed that my best share in it is that idea, which I have been
capable of expressing completely in criticism alone, of bringing
together the rough life of the road and the frenzy that the poets have
found in their ancient cellar,--a prophecy, as it were, of the time
when it will be once again possible for a Dickens and a Shelley to be
born in the one body.

The chief person of the earlier Play was very dominating, and I have
grown to look upon this as a fault, though it increases the dramatic
effect in a superficial way. We cannot sympathise with the man who sets
his anger at once lightly and confidently to overthrow the order of the
world, for such a man will seem to us alike insane and arrogant. But
our hearts can go with him, as I think, if he speak with some humility,
so far as his daily self carry him, out of a cloudy light of vision;
for whether he understand or not, it may be that voices of angels and
archangels have spoken in the cloud, and whatever wildness come upon
his life, feet of theirs may well have trod the clusters. But a man so
plunged in trance is of necessity somewhat still and silent, though it
be perhaps the silence and the stillness of a lamp; and the movement of
the Play as a whole, if we are to have time to hear him, must be
without hurry or violence.




NOTES


I cannot give the full cast of "Cathleen ni Houlihan," which was first
played at St. Teresa's Hall, Dublin, on April 3, 1902, for I have been
searching the cupboard of the Abbey Theatre, where we keep old
Play-bills, and can find no record of it, nor did the newspapers of the
time mention more than the principals. Mr. W. G. Fay played the old
countryman, and Miss Quinn his wife, while Miss Maude Gonne was
Cathleen ni Houlihan, and very magnificently she played. The Play has
been constantly revived, and has, I imagine, been played more often
than any other, except perhaps Lady Gregory's "Spreading the News," at
the Abbey Theatre, Dublin.

The "Hour-Glass" was first played at the Molesworth Hall, Dublin, on
March 14, 1903, with the following cast:--

The Wise Man                             J. W. Digges
Bridget, his wife                      Maire T. Quinn
Her children       Eithne and Padragan ni Shiubhlaigh
                                  { P. I. Kelly
Her pupils                        { Seumas O'Sullivan
                                  { P. Colum
                                  { P. MacShiubhlaigh
The Angel                        Maire ni Shiubhlaigh
The Fool                                    F. J. Fay

The Play has been revived many times since then as a part of the
repertoire at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin.


"The Unicorn from the Stars" was first played at the Abbey Theatre on
November 23, 1907, with the following cast:--

Father John                            Ernest Vaughan
Thomas Hearne                         Arthur Sinclair
Andrew Hearne                          J. A. O'Rourke
Martin Hearne                               F. J. Fay
Johnny Bacach                               W. G. Fay
Paudeen                                J. M. Kerrigan
Biddy Lally                             Maire O'Neill
Nanny                               Bridget O'Dempsey




CONTENTS


                                                       PAGE

THE UNICORN FROM THE STARS                                1
    By Lady Gregory and W. B. Yeats.

CATHLEEN NI HOULIHAN                                    135
    By W. B. Yeats.

THE HOUR-GLASS                                          169
    By W. B. Yeats.




THE UNICORN FROM THE STARS




CHARACTERS


FATHER JOHN

THOMAS HEARNE                    _a coach builder._

ANDREW HEARNE                        _his brother._

MARTIN. HEARNE                        _his nephew._

JOHNNY BACACH }
PAUDEEN       }
BIDDY LALLY   }                          _beggars._
NANNY         }




ACT I

SCENE: _Interior of a coach builder's workshop. Parts of a gilded
coach, among them an ornament representing the lion and the unicorn._
THOMAS _working at a wheel._ FATHER JOHN _coming from door of inner
room._


FATHER JOHN. I have prayed over Martin. I have prayed a long time, but
there is no move in him yet.

THOMAS. You are giving yourself too much trouble, Father. It's as good
for you to leave him alone till the doctor's bottle will come. If there
is any cure at all for what is on him, it is likely the doctor will
have it.

FATHER JOHN. I think it is not doctor's medicine will help him in this
case.

THOMAS. It will, it will. The doctor has his business learned well. If
Andrew had gone to him the time I bade him, and had not turned again to
bring yourself to the house, it is likely Martin would be walking at
this time. I am loth to trouble you, Father, when the business is not
of your own sort. Any doctor at all should be able, and well able, to
cure the falling sickness.

FATHER JOHN. It is not any common sickness that is on him now.

THOMAS. I thought at the first it was gone asleep he was. But when
shaking him and roaring at him failed to rouse him, I knew well it was
the falling sickness. Believe me, the doctor will reach it with his
drugs.

FATHER JOHN. Nothing but prayer can reach a soul that is so far beyond
the world as his soul is at this moment.

THOMAS. You are not saying that the life is gone out of him!

FATHER JOHN. No, no, his life is in no danger. But where he himself,
the spirit, the soul, is gone, I cannot say. It has gone beyond our
imaginings. He is fallen into a trance.

THOMAS. He used to be queer as a child, going asleep in the fields and
coming back with talk of white horses he saw, and bright people like
angels or whatever they were. But I mended that. I taught him to
recognise stones beyond angels with a few strokes of a rod. I would
never give in to visions or to trances.

FATHER JOHN. We who hold the faith have no right to speak against
trance or vision. St. Teresa had them, St. Benedict, St. Anthony, St.
Columcille. St. Catherine of Sienna often lay a long time as if dead.

THOMAS. That might be so in the olden time, but those things are gone
out of the world now. Those that do their work fair and honest have no
occasion to