Our Irish Theatre PDF Download

Our Irish Theatre; A Chapter of Autobiography. 1913. Contents: The theatre in the making.-The blessing of the generations.-Playwriting.-The fight over "The playboy."-Synge.-The fight with the Castle.-"The playboy" in America.-Appendices: Plays produced by the Abbey Theatre Co. and its predecessors, with dates of first performances; "The Nation" on "Blanco Posnet;" "The playboy" in America; In the eyes of our enemies; In the eyes of our friends. Lady Gregory gives us a chapter of autobiography in "Our Irish Theater." She writes the book as an answer to the questions she whimsically imagines her grandson, Richard Gregory, might someday ask about her wanderings and her work -"What were they for, the writing, the journeys, and why did she have an enemy?" So she has put the story down, that we may know her part in the making of the Irish Theater the work of writing the plays and the fight with the Clan-na-Gael over "The Playboy of the Western World." Incidentally she has given us much that is valuable about Synge-much that no one else could give us regarding his struggle for success. The little poem below, which is included in this book was written shortly before the time of his death in 1909 forecasts his passing : "With Fifteen-ninety or Sixteen-sixteen We end Cervantes, Marot, Nashe or Green; Then Sixteen-thirteen till two score and nine Is Crashaw's niche, that honey-lipped divine. And so when all my little work is done They'll say I came in Eighteen-seventy-one, And died in Dublin. What year will they write For my poor passage to the stall of Night?" *** Final thought: This account of the modern movement fostered by Lady Gregory and others aimed to build up an Irish stage and Irish dramatic literature. (and it worked!)