SOURCE: Flannery, James W. “W. B. Yeats and the Abbey Theatre Company.” Educational Theatre Journal 27, no. 2 (May 1972): 179-96.

[In the following essay, Flannery considers the political context in which the Abbey was established, focusing particularly on conflicts about the artistic vision the Abbey was to follow.]

1902-1905: THE POLITICS OF CREATING A THEATRE

From the very outset of his dramatic endeavors Yeats was determined to have his own theatre. After unsuccessful attempts to produce his plays in London during the 1890s and in Dublin with imported English professional actors at the Irish Literary Theatre (1899-1901), he set out to achieve his original intention with a plan of action that was as skillful as it was bold.¹ Yeats turned his attention in 1902 to a politically motivated Irish company of amateur actors under the direction of Frank and William Fay. Within a year Yeats secured a certain measure of control over the repertoire of the company, which was renamed the Irish National Theatre Society. New plays by Yeats, Lady Gregory and John Synge were performed. But the greatest boost to the efforts of the little company was the extraordinary critical response to its first London appearance, a one-night stand on Saturday, May 2, 1903. Largely due to Yeats's literary reputation and his genius with public relations, such an urbane English critic as Alfred Walkley declared that in spite of the actors' “natural clumsiness” the Irish dramatic movement was the long-sought answer to his call for a drama devoid of a “theatrical bag of tricks.”² When the company made another visit to London in March of the following year, Max Beerbohm was persuaded that “the blank faces and stiff movements” of the Irish actors were part of a “conscious inexpressiveness” somehow appropriate to the “spiritually and intellectually superior Keltic [sic] race.”³

The next decisive step in Yeats's plan was taken when he persuaded a wealthy and eccentric English patron of the arts, Annie Horniman, to purchase and renovate a small but fully equipped theatre for the Irish National Theatre Society. Miss Horniman had definite reservations about the ability of the Fays to manage such a theatre, but her belief in Yeats over-ruled all other considerations.⁴ On December 27, 1904, the Abbey Theatre opened its doors, the tangible result of nearly fifteen years' effort by Yeats.

His plan was not yet complete, however. Yeats, Lady Gregory and Synge were by this time the official Directors of the Irish National Theatre Society. But a considerable amount of power still remained in the hands of the Fays, especially with regard to the choice and casting of plays. In the autumn of 1905 this power was removed when a subsidy from Miss Horniman enabled the part-time amateur company to turn professional. The Irish National Theatre Society became a Limited Company, with complete artistic and financial authority delegated to the Directors. Yeats and his fellow playwrights were at last in full control of the theatre, with the Fays relegated to the distinctly subservient position of “employees.”⁵

1906-1907: THE TURNING POINT

Yeats could not have known it at the time but the 1906-1907 season of the Abbey Theatre was to prove a most significant turning point in his career as a dramatist. As Yeats was among the first to proclaim, the extraordinary impact of the Irish National Theatre Society owed as much to acting style developed under the guidance of Frank and Willie Fay as it did to the plays that were performed. Particularly when contrasted with the bombastic extravagance to be seen on the commercial English stage, the simplified but focussed stage blocking, musical delivery and sincere, unaffected deportment of the Irish players all combined to give the company an innocent, slightly exotic charm all its own.⁶ Indeed, the low-keyed style of the Abbey Theatre served as an inspiration for many English repertory companies founded towards the end of the decade.⁷

But while such essentially naturalistic techniques may have been appropriate for peasant plays, they obviously left a great deal to be desired when applied to the heroic verse tragedies which by 1903 Yeats had begun to write. In the Abbey Company's London engagement of December 1905 critics were enthusiastic about productions of plays by Lady Gregory, Padraic Colum and William Boyle. But the acting in Yeats's On Baile's Strand, particularly that of Frank Fay as Cuchulain, was attacked by a number of important reviewers, including William Archer.⁸ As a result, no verse plays were scheduled for the spring tour of 1906.⁹

For the autumn season of 1906 Yeats determined that some drastic changes were necessary if his personal dramatic needs were to be served. With Miss Horniman giving him strident encouragement, Yeats argued to his fellow Directors that it was essential for him to import from England an Irish actress named Florence Darragh to play the title role in the first production of his Deirdre and Dectora in a revival of The Shadowy Waters. In a letter to Synge, dated August 13, 1906, Yeats explained his reasons for this move:

You and Lady Gregory and Boyle can look forward to good performances of your plays from the present Company and from people who will join it in the natural course of things. You are already getting better performances than you could from any English Company. I am getting it, of course, from my prose plays. But I am essentially not a prose writer. At this moment in spite of Frank Fay's exquisite speaking I could get a much better performance in England of a play like Deirdre. … I require for Deirdre an emotional actress of great experience. … Miss Darragh is I think a great tragic actress, and she is Irish. It will probably be necessary … to add a man of equivalent power. … With a proportion of say one romantic or verse play, we shall sweep the country and make enough money to make ourselves independent of Miss Horniman. We have also to think of playing several weeks in London each year. The alternative to this is the giving of my plays to English companies, for if I am to be any use ever in Ireland I must get good performances. Till I get that I shall be looked on as an amateur.¹⁰

Neither of Yeats's fellow Directors were enthusiastic about the prospect of bringing an outsider to the Abbey Company. Lady Gregory had a strong suspicion that Miss Darragh was being sent by Miss Horniman in order to gain control over the Theatre. Synge's objectives were apparently motivated out of loyalty to the Fays and a fear that Willie Fay was on the verge of resigning.¹¹

Willie Fay was indeed furious about this new departure, and one can understand why. From the very outset of their relationship, one of the most bitterly contested fights between Yeats and himself had been over the power of casting plays.¹² In amateur theatre troupes, the interest of good actors is often sustained mainly by the challenge and variety of roles being offered them. The power of assigning roles is therefore one of the director's most effective means of maintaining authority over his actors. Thus, Willie Fay had insisted on a clause in the original rules of the Irish National Theatre Society to state that “the choice of actors shall be left to the decision of the Stage Manager in consultation with the author.” When the Abbey turned professional, this clause was removed. Thereafter the Directors governed casting, with the result that they, rather than the Fays, held this important psychological control over the Company.

A second problem for the Fays was the resignation of some of the most talented members of the early Company because of religious and political objections to plays chosen for production in 1903¹³ and because of a reluctance to turn professional in 1905.¹⁴ Frank Fay was as anxious as Yeats to develop “the special kind of acting” necessary to perform his verse plays.¹⁵ But his idea was to work slowly—carefully training and then giving practical experience to the talented young actors and actresses who had since come into the Company.¹⁶

Among the most promising of the new recruits was Sara Allgood, already a favorite of Lady Gregory because of her ability as a comedienne. Willie Fay had promised her the role of Deirdre and Frank Fay was giving her special lessons in verse-speaking when a series of letters began to arrive from Lady Gregory saying first that Deirdre was to be played by Miss Darragh, then that Sara was to have her choice of either Deirdre or Dectora, and finally that Miss Darragh was going to play the role. Willie could restrain himself no longer. In exasperation he wrote to Yeats on August 18, “What am I to make of it? I don't care a red cent which of them plays either part but is Dectora now finally to be rehearsed by Miss Allgood? I've got to keep down rows here but I can't if we change about week by week.”¹⁷

With all these obstacles in her path, it is not surprising that Miss Darrah had a very difficult time during her short stay at the Abbey Theatre. As she saw it, the Fays were slipshod and amateurish in all the practical aspects of running a professional theatre.¹⁸ As Willie Fay saw it, her “substantial salary” and “special status” on playbills introduced into the Company the “star” system which the Irish dramatic movement had originally set out to oppose.¹⁹

Artistically, Miss Darragh appears to have satisfied no one, including Yeats himself.²⁰ The reasons are probably best given in a letter which John Butler Yeats sent to his son:

She is an actress born, an actress genius, possibly a great actress. But her present style is altogether too florid, what is called too stagy. … It is unfortunate that Miss Darragh's acting “shows up” too glaringly the faults of the others—she has too much style. They hardly any. Frank Fay's dragging deliberation in speech and movement is a growing evil.²¹

Yeats had not yet given up the fight. Increasingly, he had grown to believe that the Fays were incapable of building the kind of acting company that might do his plays justice. He was also under a considerable amount of pressure from Miss Horniman to realize her original ideal of an “international art theatre.”²² In order to solve both problems Yeats presented to his fellow Directors a proposal in December 1906 whereby an experienced Managing Director would be appointed to the Abbey Theatre, whose duties would include handling administrative matters as well as staging Yeats's own verse plays and an increased number of plays from the classical repertoire.²³

Again Yeats went into great detail to explain why he thought this change necessary for the general good of the Theatre. At present, he declared, the Abbey Company was capable of performing “Irish peasant comedy and nothing else.” To continue on this course would only serve to “tire its [Dublin] audience out.” It was also a mistake to perform only comedies, particularly on tour, because “if we don't get an audience for work more burdened with thought pretty early we will make our audience expect comedy and resent anything else.”

Yeats points out that other dramatists, encouraged by the success of peasant comedies by Lady Gregory and William Boyle, were producing bad imitations of their work. It was therefore necessary for the Theatre to “widen its capacity of performance” in order to create a wider school of dramatists. The natural means of doing this was by performing “foreign masterpieces chosen as much for a means of training as for anything else.”

Returning to some of the ideas which had originally motivated his conception of the Irish Literary Theatre, Yeats stated:

We should keep before our minds the final object which is to create in this country a National Theatre something after the Continental pattern. … Such a National Theatre would perforce keep in mind its educational as well as artistic side. To be artistically noble it will have to be the acknowledged centre for some kind of art which no other Theatre in the world has in the same perfection. This art would necessarily be the representation of plays full of Irish characteristics, of plays that cannot be performed except by players who are constantly observing Irish people and things. … Such a Theatre must, however, if it is to do the educational work of a National Theatre be prepared to perform even though others can perform them better, representative plays of all the great schools.

Yeats now turned to the practical implications of his ideas, especially as they would affect acting and staging at the Abbey Theatre. Noting a recent decline in Willie Fay's acting, which had been evident to several other observers, including Miss Horniman and that indefatigable chronicler of the Irish dramatic movement Joseph Holloway,²⁴ Yeats declared that it was mainly due to overwork. Furthermore, it was a condition which, if not checked, would ultimately destroy Willie Fay's effectiveness as a comedian:

If he has to do the work of an assistant Stage Manager as well as that of a producer and actor in a year's time people will begin to talk of the monotony of his acting. He will be satisfied to express his personality instead of creating self-consistent personalities. … The Business side of the Theatre and the non-artistic side of the stage work must be put into other hands—this will ensure the efficiency of the comedy.

Frank Fay's tendency in both Deirdre and The Shadowy Waters to “sing his words too much” had been noted by Holloway, an astute critic of acting if not of drama. Holloway also observed that all the Abbey actors but Sara Allgood were “unconvincing” because “there was no real sap in them.”²⁵ Yeats employed similar terms to criticize Frank Fay's work as both an actor and teacher. Though “always beautiful to listen to,” Fay was “not improving.” Furthermore, actors left his tutelage “with no great clearness of elocution, with a fine feeling for both line and passage as units of sound with a sufficient no less fallible sense of accent, but without passion, without expression, either in voice or gesture.”

Yeats could not wholly condemn Fay for the Abbey actors' inability to speak verse. Having tested them individually, Yeats found that they were insensitive to the music and rhythm of poetry. More than anything else, however, they lacked the personal, scornful, soul-rending passion which he considered essential for the actor of tragedy. “From the first day of the Theatre,” Yeats declared ruefully, “I have known that it is almost impossible for us to find a passionate woman actress in Catholic Ireland.”

Yeats proposed two solutions to these problems: first, that Florence Farr be brought in for periodic six-week sessions to work with the Abbey Company on voice development and verse speaking; second, that he be granted the right to “bring in a player or players from without when I can do so without burdening the finances of the company more than my work is worth.” To do this, he added, “it will be necessary that he or she sometimes play in other work than mine.”

The responses of Synge and Lady Gregory to this detailed proposal reveal a good deal about the attitude they had come to take towards the Abbey Theatre and their own work in particular. Synge made his views known in a vehement three-page typewritten letter sent to Lady Gregory and Yeats. In it he argued strongly against taking continental municipal theatres as a model. He saw no reason for producing foreign plays, because the strength of the Irish movement had been “entirely creative.” The company, therefore, should remain small in order that the “native work” might keep it occupied. Willie Fay's problems might be handled simply by engaging an assistant stage manager for him. Synge was particularly reluctant to encourage any kind of arrangement whereby Miss Horniman would have “control of some of the departments.” Naturally, he was cognizant of the special “skill” required for Yeats's plays; but felt it was a mistake to go to England for actors. Looking back on Miss Darragh's performance, he argued that her kind of “emotion” was “best left to the imagination of the audience.” Perhaps Yeats, like Shakespeare, would do better to think of having his heroines played by small boys rather than by imported English actresses. “I would rather go on trying our own people for ten years than bring in this readymade style that is so likely to destroy the sort of distinction everyone recognizes in our own company,” he concluded.²⁶

Synge's arguments seem reasonable, but they appear in a truer perspective if one realizes that he did not totally share Yeats's theatrical ideals. Behind Yeats's back, Synge mocked what he termed a “Cuchullanoid National Theatre.”²⁷ Moreover, Synge had been well-served by the Fays. Thanks to the “special feeling” which Willie Fay had for his plays²⁸—and, ironically, thanks also to Yeats's unselfish promotion of his name—Synge was already recognized as the outstanding dramatist of the Irish movement.²⁹ Besides all of this, Synge was in the process of completing The Playboy of the Western World with Willie Fay in mind for the title role. Obviously, the last thing he wanted was to have Fay's peace of mind disturbed.³⁰ Yeats could not have picked a worse time to press his case.

Lady Gregory's response to Yeats's memorandum is remarkable for its ambiguity. On the whole, she agreed with Synge's objectives, and for many of the same reasons. Apart from her suspicion that any idea supported by Miss Horniman could only bode ill for the Abbey Theatre, keeping the Fays at the Abbey appears to have been her chief intention.³¹ Again, one cannot really blame her, for the Fays had contributed as much to the theatrical success of her plays as they had to Synge's. Moreover, many of her comic characters were inspired by and written to suit their striking personalities.³²

The ambiguity of Lady Gregory's response lies in the fact that, although she protested to Synge that it was necessary to procure good performances for Yeats because “the right to the first production of [his] plays is our chief distinction”, she either failed to understand Yeats's theatrical problems, or did not really want to. Thus, in a series of letters to Synge, Lady Gregory implied that Yeats, with his typical “impetuosity,” had not really known what he was doing when he brought Miss Darragh from England. If Miss Darragh had remained with the Theatre, she would have cared more for “showy parts” than for the good of Yeats. “Verse not being an easy success would probably be put aside for more popular plays with a tragic or melodramatic side to balance them.” The result would be that “the distinction of our work would be lost.” For this reason Lady Gregory firmly opposed the idea of importing any more thespians from England, either for Yeats's plays or for classical roles. To do this, she warned Synge with misplaced patriotic fervour, would be “a case of calling the Normans into Ireland.”

If the idea of bringing in another Miss Darragh was upsetting to Lady Gregory, the possibility of having an English Managing Director appalled her. “I wonder if the Managing Director would have a vote equal to yours or mine?” she prodded Synge. “If so it would be for the bringing in of English actors, in which we are not in agreement with Yeats, and Yeats's casting vote would carry it against us.” Synge was told to broach the whole matter delicately to Fay. “If he had valid reason for rejecting, then I think we should all refuse—and not be like Dillan and Co., giving up Parnell to please an English howl.”³³

Yeats's power of persuasion—and the practical need of staying in Miss Horniman's good graces in order to retain the Abbey subsidy—were ultimately the deciding factors. Under strict conditions with regard to his artistic and administrative powers and duties, Ben Iden Payne was appointed as the Managing Director of the Abbey Theatre in January 1907. Willie Fay's bruised feelings were somewhat assuaged with a salary increase of £100.³⁴ Miss Horniman opposed Florence Farr's being brought in to teach verse speaking on the grounds that she was “careless”;³⁵ but Frank Fay was nonetheless told by Yeats that in this capacity his services were no longer required.³⁶

Payne's stay at the Abbey was brief but turbulent. Rumors that his salary was to be £500 per year aroused the actors' antagonism even before his arrival in mid-February.³⁷ The closest he came to directing a classical play was a successful production of Maeterlinck's Interior in March. He got to direct only one play of Yeats—a revival of Deirdre in April—and further irritated the company, especially Sara Allgood, by casting his wife, Mona Limerick, in the title role.³⁸ Payne resigned from the Company in June 1907. Within a month it was announced that he was to become the Managing Director of a new English repertory theatre, The Manchester Gaiety Theatre, to be operated by Miss Horniman.³⁹ Looking back years later, he recalled that all his efforts at the Abbey were somehow stifled by “a form of passive resistance” from the actors and a vague “atmosphere of suspicion and intrigue.”⁴⁰

There is little doubt that the continued opposition of Synge, and particularly Lady Gregory, to Payne's presence at the Abbey contributed to his difficulties. Writing to Synge about Payne in March 1907, Lady Gregory found him “tiresome, very conscientious and energetic—but too great a craving for foreign masterpieces.” When Yeats apparently sought to have Payne produce Corneille's Polyeucte in order to develop a tragic actress, she opposed the idea, declaring, “I don't see why we should go out of our way to find parts for a great tragic actress, just the thing we haven't got. And in any case those immensely long speeches are out of date.”

Both Lady Gregory and Synge felt strongly that Payne's English methods did harm to the vocal style evolved by Frank Fay.⁴¹ Joseph Holloway again provides a clue as to what they meant in his observation that, under Payne, the Irish players tended to “shout or rant where they used to be dignified, calm and expressive.”⁴²

Despite her good intentions, it is evident that Lady Gregory had no understanding of why Fay's lack of inner passion and short physical stature made him so unsuitable for heroic roles in the plays of Yeats. Writing to Synge after the Playboy opening, she noted that it was well-acted. Then she commented, with a remarkable lack of theatrical insight, “It made me a little sad to think how long it will be before the verse plays can get anything like as good an all round show, though Frank Fay's beautiful speaking is enough to carry them through.” Lady Gregory's oversimplified solution for Yeats's difficulties—an idea with which Synge concurred—was to have him “do his best play in prose for acting, and put it into verse afterward.”⁴³

One cannot help concluding that the intransigence, theatrical ignorance and downright selfishness of Lady Gregory and Synge thwarted Yeats's ambitions for the early Abbey Theatre as much as any other cause. By blocking Yeats's efforts to widen the theatrical scope of the Abbey, they effectively limited the repertoire to Irish peasant plays. In so doing, they destroyed Yeats's hopes of receiving satisfactory productions of his own poetic plays. From 1906, with the exception of The Green Helmet in 1908, a satirical experiment in rhymed couplets utterly unlike any of his early works, no new plays were written by Yeats specifically for the Abbey Theatre Company until his adaptation of The Only Jealousy of Emer into the ballet Fighting the Waves for Ninette de Valois and the Abbey School of Ballet in 1927.⁴⁴

THE DEPARTURE OF THE FAYS

Miss Horniman announced her plans for the formation of the Manchester Gaiety Theatre in June 1907. At the same time, she made it clear to the Abbey Directors that after 1910 her subsidy would not be renewed. Lady Gregory received this news with a feeling close to jubilation. At last both the Abbey Theatre and Yeats were to be rid of Miss Horniman's baleful influence. Lady Gregory's biggest fear was that Miss Horniman would somehow persuade Yeats to take an active part in her new venture.⁴⁵ When Yeats declined to do this, on the grounds that he was too old to change his nationality,⁴⁶ Lady Gregory felt that the way was clear to start afresh. The first thing to do was re-establish a feasible working relationship with the Fays.⁴⁷

What Lady Gregory failed to realize was that the Fays had come to view their relationship with the Abbey Theatre in a new light. Until the announcement of the withdrawal of Miss Horniman's subsidy they had put up with much that was at variance with their basic concepts of theatre. Yeats's mysticism, the obscurity of some of his dramatic verse, and experiments such as pitched verse speaking had little appeal to them.⁴⁸ Nor did they enjoy facing a howling mob night after night in order to keep The Playboy of the Western World on the boards. When Yeats insisted on challenging that mob, and attendance figures began to drop drastically as a result, a spirit of rebellion began to set in.

Disheartening as it was to play to empty seats, the Fays were bothered even more by the thought that no money was coming into the box office. The Directors might have incomes from other sources, but the livelihood of the Fays and the other Abbey actors was dependent on their salaries from the Theatre. To them the principal significance of the loss of Miss Horniman's subsidy was that salaries were going to have to be paid from ticket sales. It was obviously going to be necessary to win back the “man in the street.” And the only way that could be accomplished was by performing “popular” plays.⁴⁹

The second problem, as the Fays saw it, was the recurrent one of maintaining company discipline. In the first flush of the nationalist impulse which fostered the Irish National Theatre Society it had been relatively easy to get actors to turn out, not only for three nights a week of rehearsals, but for two additional nights of elocution lessons from Frank Fay.⁵⁰ Such was the spirit at Camden Street Hall, the early home of the Irish National Theatre Society, that everyone felt they were “doing something for Ireland,” whether sewing a costume or rehearsing a walk-on role for six months.⁵¹

The Fays had hoped that some of this early idealism would carry over into a professional company, with the added advantage that the players could devote themselves on a full-time basis to perfecting their art.⁵² They found themselves sadly disillusioned when, although artistic standards might be higher, motivations were no longer so selfless. Laziness, born from the Irish actors' lack of seriousness and artistic pride, was a continuing frustration.⁵³ Willie Fay found it difficult at times even to get the company to rehearse and learn roles.⁵⁴ By the autumn of 1907 insubordination was rife, with Molly O'Neill running to Synge if Willie worked her too hard⁵⁵ and her sister Sara finding a soft ear in Lady Gregory whenever she felt that she was not getting satisfactory roles.⁵⁶

The supercilious attitude of the Directors, particularly Lady Gregory and Yeats, also contributed much to dissatisfaction within the company. Lady Gregory, except to the few who were her favorites, appears to have presented a forbidding, chilly façade. At times, her patronizing solicitude for the welfare of the Company caused her to interfere in people's personal lives.⁵⁷ Yeats's mask of lofty detachment was another problem. Despite the actors' continued objections, he publicly referred to them as “shop-girls” and “clerks.” In turn, they thought of him as a “poseur.” Stanislavsky has emphasized the care which he took at the Moscow Art Theatre to develop a sense of mutual respect between actors and directors as an essential element for true theatrical creativity. To many old Abbey Theatre actors, the thing they remember most about being in the presence of Lady Gregory and Yeats is simple fear.⁵⁸

All of this may explain, in part, Willie Fay's greatest personal problem in dealing with the early Abbey Company, his erratic and highly explosive temper. In his later years as a director in England, Fay was a model of charm and affability for all who worked with him;⁵⁹ but at the time with which we are dealing, because of the pressure of his own uncertain position and of too many artistic and administrative worries, his hot temper kept people around him continually on edge.⁶⁰ This, more than anything else, made Yeats believe that Fay was “thoroughly unfitted for the management of people.” It was only with the greatest reluctance that in June he agreed to restore the powers that Willie Fay had held before the advent of Payne. In a letter to Synge he predicted that Fay would never be able to hold the Company together, but added:

I don't see what else we can do. We want him to work for us as enthusiastically as possible with a view to ultimately making his living out of the thing and helping others to make theirs. The theatre is now a desperate enterprise and we must take desperate measures.⁶¹

Ironically, within a few months Lady Gregory came around to Yeats's view of the Fays. What apparently convinced her was that the Fays now made no attempt to hide their dislike not only for Yeats's plays but for her own as well. It was only with the greatest reluctance that the Fays presented a poor production of her full-length historical drama Dervorgilla in October 1907. This was followed by an even worse production of The Unicorn from the Stars, a none too successful adaptation by herself and Yeats of Yeats's Where There is Nothing. During one of the performances, out of sheer boredom Frank Fay fell asleep on stage. The Fays began to declare openly that Lady Gregory and Yeats were ruining the Abbey Theatre by “not giving other dramatists a chance.”⁶²

Among the “other dramatists” whom the Fays had in mind was a young Kerry author named George Fitzmaurice. Fitzmaurice's The Country Dressmaker had been given an extremely successful first production by the Abbey in early October. Despite a rich and original talent, he was never given proper recognition by Yeats or Lady Gregory, and at his death in 1963 left behind a considerable number of excellent unproduced plays.⁶³ It is to the credit of Willie Fay that he immediately championed Fitzmaurice's work, citing The Country Dressmaker as an example of the new kind of play that The Abbey ought to be producing. Whether the Directors liked it or not, he intended to revive The Country Dressmaker as soon as possible, he told Holloway.⁶⁴

The question of presenting popular new dramatists and of regaining effective control over the Abbey actors came to a head by the end of the year. On a tour to Manchester, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, Willie Fay found it impossible to maintain discipline. Sara Allgood and Molly O'Neill repeatedly missed rehearsals. J. M. Kerrigan, one of the most promising of the new players, was persistently late.⁶⁵ Willie's patience ran out. Upon returning to Dublin he fired off a letter to the Directors, in which he demanded:

1. That the Directors put up a notice shortly that all contracts with the National Theatre Society terminate on such a day. That people wishing to re-engage write to W. G. Fay.
2. That all engagements be for a season only and terminate by a fortnight's notice on either side.
3. That where the Directors require special actors or actresses for their performances I should engage them on terms to be decided between the Directors and myself and for such parts or performances as the Directors shall decide.
4. That the power of dismissing those under my contracts shall rest with me after due consultation with the Directors in the case of principals.
5. That there shall be no appeal to any other authority than mine by the people engaged by me on all matters dealt with in their contracts.⁶⁶

At a Directors' meeting on December 4, Willie Fay's demands for the right to dismiss and re-engage the company on a personal contract were refused. The Directors also refused to “abrogate the right of appeal … already possessed by the company”; though they agreed that “an improvement in discipline is necessary.” Their surprisingly democratic suggestion was that a committee from the company be selected to formulate “rules of discipline” in consultation with the Stage Manager and the Directors. These rules would then be “put to the company as a whole for their decision.”

One final point is of considerable significance:

That it be explained to the company that this Theatre must go on as a theatre for intellectual drama, whatever unpopularity that may involve. That no compromise can be accepted on this subject, but that if any member find himself unable to go on with us under the circumstances, we will not look upon it as unfriendly on his part if he go elsewhere, on the contrary we will help him if we can.⁶⁷

It seems evident that the Directors were not only calling Willie Fay's bluff: they were preparing to ease him out the door as expeditiously as possible.

Events began to move rapidly towards a climax. J. M. Kerrigan and Sara Allgood submitted letters of resignation. Kerrigan complained of the abusive language of Willie Fay. Sara's reason was that Fay had replaced her with his wife for a performance without changing her name on the program. Lady Gregory became furious at the affront to her favorite actress, especially since she was afraid that Sara might win a contract from Miss Horniman at the Manchester Gaiety Theatre.⁶⁸ Synge, who earlier in the year had been on the side of the Fays in thinking that he too was being discriminated against by Lady Gregory and Yeats,⁶⁹ now turned against them, largely because of the influence of his sweetheart, Molly O'Neill. Synge declared himself “sincerely sorry” that Fay had “put himself in an impossible position by a generally unwise behaviour that he is largely unconscious of.” At the same time he blandly dismissed the lack of company discipline, particularly that of Molly O'Neill, as due to “highly excitable” artistic temperament. “The difficulty of our position,” he wrote “is that Fay's claims are logical and reasonable if he was the right man for the position, but are impossible when we take into consideration all the little details of his personality.”⁷⁰

Together, Lady Gregory and Yeats concocted a plan whereby advantage would be taken of the general unrest in order to force the Fays' resignation. Thus it was to appear that it was not their idea but the will of the company.⁷¹ Writing from London on December 30, Yeats provided Synge with a detailed list of instructions.⁷² Synge was asked by Yeats first to calm down Kerrigan and then to draw up a list of grievances for the Abbey Company to present against Fay. These, he suggested, might include:

1. Violent language.
2. Irregularity at rehearsals, sometimes no importance being put on punctuality and at other times unexpected indignation (possibly this may be difficult to formulate).
3. Mrs. Fay being put into Sara Allgood's place in Glasgow and no attention paid to the fact on the programme. The Company are not concerned with Fay's explanation, which concerns us. He has done, so far as Sara Allgood is concerned, something upon which she could base an action. What we want is, first of all, violent language complained of and then some definite thing, which prevents the whole thing from seeming too vague.

Some idea of the remarkable skill that Yeats had developed as a man of affairs may be gathered from the care that he took in planning the confrontation between the Fays and the Directors. “We cannot state the case of the members. They must do that,” he told Synge—having, of course, already advised him which of the actors' complaints to emphasize. “If they would threaten to resign, so much the better; but we have no right to demand that of them.”

Even the procedure at the projected meeting was planned:

I shall be in the chair. If I have a written statement before me of the Company's grievances I can give it priority and force Fay to fight on that issue. If I haven't I must hear the first speaker, or the first amendment. This will be equally the case whether we three Directors hold the meeting with nobody there except Fay and a few representatives of the whole Company, or with any possible arrangement of attendance. I mean everything must be in the most perfect order. If we meet alone by ourselves and Fay were to send in a written complaint, it would have to be considered, and any counteraction upon our part would seem a reply to it and not the cause of it.

Yeats's care to deny Fay the initiative was for fear that Fay would indict the Directors for trying to “suppress a popular work like the Dressmaker in the interests of our unpopular work.” Yeats's chief worry was that militant nationalist papers would take up the case against them. The Leader and Griffith's Sinn Fein could not be expected to understand that “the Playboy which they hate is fine art and that the Dressmaker which they like is nothing.” Minutes must “carefully be kept and signed” because of the possibility of appeal to the public.

In view of the overall circumstances, Yeats's final comment appears somewhat ironic, “Fay is a man of genius and often a very pleasant fellow, but he is just the kind of man who will make a very unfair opponent.”

For all the Machiavellian plotting, the final exit of the Fays apparently was handled in a much more mundane fashion. Following a trip to Galway in mid-January, during which Fay further enraged Lady Gregory by altering a bill of her plays, he was handed a letter, signed by all but one member of the company in which they threatened to resign if he were given the powers he demanded.⁷³ Seeing no alternative, Fay handed in his own resignation on January 13, 1908. Probably more out of a sense of loyalty than anything else, he was joined by his brother Frank on the same day.⁷⁴

THE EFFECTS OF THE FAYS' DEPARTURE

For everyone concerned, the long-term effects of the Fays' departure from the Abbey Theatre were unfortunate. Willie Fay went on to a fairly successful career in England as an actor, director and teacher. In a sense, the rest of his career was anti-climactic. He often felt frustrated by the thought that his work at the early Abbey had been forgotten and, more particularly, that the major share of credit for establishing the Theatre was taken by Yeats and Lady Gregory.⁷⁵

For Frank Fay it was a similar story. He drifted through a number of English Shakespearean touring companies for ten years before returning to Dublin. Increasingly, he was embittered by the supercilious manner in which Yeats habitually referred to his efforts in training the early Company.⁷⁶ Until his death in 1931, he eked out a difficult living as a teacher of elocution and director of amateur productions of Shakespeare and other Elizabethan dramatists.⁷⁷

Lady Gregory, Yeats and, until his death in March 1909, Synge, attempted to carry on the practical work of the Fays: staging plays, handling administrative duties, and even teaching acting.⁷⁸ Occasionally, a stage director was brought over from England to give a new spark to the Company.⁷⁹ But sooner or later difficulties with the actors, conflicts with Yeats and Lady Gregory, or sheer lack of funds caused the experiment to be abandoned.⁸⁰ As a result, the Company settled into the famous “Abbey style”—a style which, as the writer has experienced it, is compounded of a fumbling, shambling awkwardness, broadly stereotyped characterizations based more on earlier actors than on life, a masterly sense of word coloration which is all too often exploited for cheap laughs, and a vague feeling throughout that everything is underrehearsed.⁸¹ Paradoxically, attempts are made to justify this ineffective sloppiness by quoting from the canon of Abbey tradition. As Eric Bentley learned through a bitter experience as a visiting director, “At the Abbey, everything is sacrosanct, especially what is indefensible.”⁸²

Yeats, of course, ultimately suffered most of all for, as he declared in an open letter to Lady Gregory published in 1919, the success of this kind of theatre was to him “a discouragement and a defeat.”⁸³ The greatest hindrance to his development and ultimate reputation as a dramatist is that he never had a company of actors capable of adequately interpreting his plays. Obviously, what Yeats needed was a literate man of the theatre, such as Stanislavsky, Lugné-Poë, Copeau, or Grotowski to work side by side with him in educating and training theatre artists to possess the profound qualities of mind and spirit, talent and technique essential for interpreters of his plays.

The closest Yeats ever came to realizing these needs was with the short-lived Abbey Company and School of the Theatre which he ran in conjunction with the brilliant actor and director Nugent Monck in 1912 and 1913.⁸⁴ Experiments involving dance, pitched verse-speaking, modern lighting techniques, a new thrust stage, and even the deployment of incense and hymns in the foyer were carried out with a group of young actors dedicated to acquiring a complete education in the theatre.⁸⁵ Some of the most important revisions of Yeats's plays were carried out with the actors of the Second Company in mind. A combination of lack of funds and, as with Ben Iden Payne, Lady Gregory's antipathy to an English intruder forced Monck's resignation. For most of Yeats's career as a playwright, the staging of his and other imaginative works at the Abbey Theatre were left in the hands of the ineffectual Lennox Robinson.⁸⁶

It is, of course, extremely doubtful whether under the best of circumstances Willie Fay could have helped Yeats to realize his ideal “Theatre of Beauty.” Yeats found that Willie Fay had a “very defective” ear for verse; as a stage director he obviously had little imaginative or intellectual sympathy with Yeats's plays.⁸⁷

The case of Frank Fay was different. Given a good deal more understanding and patience on both sides during those difficult years when Yeats was trying to work out an acting style and method appropriate to his plays, it is probable that Frank Fay could have been of considerable help. Certainly, Abbey actors were never again to have so meticulous a training in voice production, diction, and verse speaking as he gave to the early Company.⁸⁸ Yeats himself admitted as much when, in 1937, he wrote a warm tribute to Fay and his knowledge of the history of acting. The article concluded: “Were he living now and both of us young I would ask his help to elaborate new conventions in writing and representation.”⁸⁹

Given their limited educational and cultural backgrounds, it is evident that the members of the early Abbey Company were incapable of realizing Yeats's dramatic ideals.⁹⁰ Nonetheless, looking back on a lifetime of frustration in the theatre, Yeats paid tribute to these actors along with the few great interpreters with whom he had been associated:

I have aimed at tragic ecstasy, and here and there in my own work and in the work of my friends I have seen it greatly played. … I am haunted by certain moments: Miss O'Neill in the last act of Synge's Deirdre, “Draw a little back with the squabbling of fools”; Kerrigan and Miss O'Neill playing in a private house that scene in Augusta Gregory's Full Moon where the young mad people in their helpless joy sing The Boys of Queen Anne; Frank Fay's entrance in the last act of The Well of the Saints; William Fay at the end of On Baile's Strand; Mrs. Patrick Campbell in my Deirdre, passionate and solitary; and in later years that great artist Ninette de Valois in Fighting the Waves. These things will, it may be, haunt me on my death-bed; what matter if people prefer another art. I have had my fill.⁹¹

Notes

1. See Ann Saddlemyer, “Worn Out with Dreams,” The World of W. B. Yeats, ed. Robin Skelton and Ann Saddlemyer (Dublin, 1965), pp. 104-132, for the most complete examination of the behind-the-scenes political struggles to create the Abbey Theatre.

2. Drama and Life (London, 1908), pp. 310-315. See Gerard Fay, The Abbey Theatre (Dublin, 1958), pp. 56-58, for reviews of the 1903 London appearance.

3. “Some Irish Plays and Players,” rpt. in Around Theatres, II (New York, 1930), 403.

4. See my Miss Annie F. Horniman and the Abbey Theatre (Dublin, 1970), pp. 9, 12-14. Hereafter cited as Horniman and The Abbey.

5. Rules of the Irish National Theatre Society (1903) and Rules of the National Theatre Society, Ltd. (1905). In the latter version the actors, including the Fays, are listed as “Employees.” Preserved in the National Library of Ireland (N. L. I.) Ms. 13068.

6. See, e.g., C. E. Montague, Dramatic Values (London, 1911), pp. 52-55.

7. See J. C. Trewin, The Birmingham Repertory Theatre (London, 1963), pp. 12, 15.

8. Archer found Frank Fay “not well suited to the heroic characters of Irish legend. For such a part as Cuchulain the company ought to find and train an actor of somewhat more impressive physical presence.” The World, Dec. 12, 1905, p. 1027.

9. See Lady Gregory to Synge (Dec. 6, 1906), preserved in Synge Papers, N. L. I. Ms. P5380. The letters quoted in this paper are unpublished unless otherwise stated.

10. In the possession of Michael Yeats.

11. Ibid. See David H. Greene and Edward M. Stephens, J. M. Synge 1871-1908 (New York, 1961), p. 208.

12. See Willie Fay to Yeats (Jan. 19, 1903), N. L. I. Ms. 13068.

13. Fay, The Abbey Theatre, pp. 51, 60; Greene and Stephens, pp. 150-157.

14. Maire Nic Schiublaigh and Edward Kenny, The Splendid Years (Dublin, 1955), pp. 12, 70-73.

15. Frank Fay to Yeats (August 16, 1902); N. L. I. Ms. 13068.

16. Frank Fay wrote to Yeats on July 7, 1902: “I doubt whether we ought to talk much about a national theatre yet. It's a rather large order. After ten years work we may have something to say. I look on our work as pioneer work. We even in a stronger measure than ‘L'Oeuvre’ represent the protest against commercialism.” N. L. I. Ms. 13068. See also letter from W. Fay to Yeats (August 1906) on the need to train actors, N. L. I. Ms. 5977.

17. N. L. I. Ms. 5977.

18. Yeats to Florence Farr (Oct. 1906), The Letters of W. B. Yeats, ed. Allan Wade (London, 1954), p. 481.

19. W. G. Fay and Catherine Carswell, The Fays of the Abbey Theatre (London, 1935), pp. 208-209. Synge also opposed star billing for Miss Darragh: “We go to the cultured people of these places to show them something that is new to them—our plays and the ensemble acting of our little company. If, however, we placard Miss Darragh, a very ordinary if clever actress, as the attraction, we put ourselves on a very different, and, I think, a very ridiculous footing. I am vehement against it.” Synge to Lady Gregory and Yeats (May 7, 1907), rpt. in Some Letters of J. M. Synge to Lady Gregory and Yeats, ed. Ann Saddlemyer (Dublin, 1971), pp. 50-51.

20. Lady Gregory to Synge (Dec. 1906), N. L. I. Ms. P5380.

21. (Dec. 1906), Letters to His Son (London, 1944), p. 99.

22. See Horniman and The Abbey, p. 23.

23. Memorandum from Yeats to Lady Gregory and Synge (Dec. 2, 1906), N. L. I. Ms. 13068.

24. See Horniman and The Abbey, pp. 18-22. Holloway corroborates her criticisms, which included an inconsistency from performance to performance, overacting, “gagging” (i.e., paraphrasing dialogue), and an inability to speak verse. Impressions of a Dublin Playgoer (1903), N. L. I. Ms. 1801, pp. 130, 565; (1906) Ms. 1804, p. 528. Willie Fay, on the other hand complained about the strain of having to create as many as four different characters for one evening's bill of plays. Fay and Carswell, p. 169.

25. Impressions of a Dublin Playgoer (Nov. 24, 1904; Dec. 1, 1906), N. L. I. Ms. 1804, pp. 676, 635.

26. (Dec. 13, 1906), Some Letters of J. M. Synge, pp. 41-45.

27. The phrase is not Synge's invention but that of his friend Stephen MacKenna, the classical scholar, who used it in a letter to Synge supporting Yeats's ideals. In reply Synge declared that “no drama can ever grow out of anything other than the fundamental realities of life which are never fantastic, are neither modern nor unmodern and, as I see them, rarely spring-dayish, or breezy or Cuchulanoid”. See Greene and Stephens, pp. 161-163.

28. See Maurice Bourgeois, John Millington Synge and the Irish Theatre (London, 1913), p. 175; Fays of the Abbey, p. 138.

29. Lady Gregory, Our Irish Theatre (London, 1914), p. 221.

30. Synge to Yeats (Jan. 9, 1907), printed in Fay, The Abbey Theatre, p. 111.

31. Lady Gregory to Synge (Dec. 1906), N. L. I. Ms. P5380.

32. The role of the “rebel” in The Rising of the Moon (described as being “five feet five” in height) and Cooney in The Jackdaw and The Canavans were obviously written for Willie Fay, while the title role in Hyacinth Halvey and Nestor in The Jackdaw were close to Frank Fay's off-stage personality.

33. Lady Gregory to Synge (Dec. 6, 1906; Jan. 6, 1906; Dec. 1906), N. L. I. Ms. P5380.

34. Synge to Yeats (Jan. 11, 1907), printed in Greene and Stephens, p. 235.

35. Lady Gregory to Synge, (Dec. 1906).

36. Holloway, Impressions of a Dublin Playgoer (Jan. 24, 1907) N. L. I. Ms. 1805, p. 59.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid. (March 19, 1907), p. 184.

39. Ibid. (July 15, 1907), pp. 443-444.

40. Letter from Ben Iden Payne (May 25, 1927), printed in Dawson Byrne, The Story of Ireland's National Theatre (Dublin, 1929), pp. 60-61.

41. (March 5, 1907; Jan. 1907; May 10, 1907), N. L. I. Ms. P5380, Synge dismissed Payne's Production of Deirdre as “a bastard literary pantomime, put on with many of the worst tricks of the English stage” Synge to Lady Gregory and Yeats (May 7, 1907), Some Letters of J. M. Synge, p. 51.

42. Impressions of a Dublin Playgoer (April 20, 1907), N. L. I. Ms. 1805, pp. 270-273.

43. (Jan., 1907; Jan. 19, 1907), N. L. I. Ms. P5380; Synge to Lady Gregory (July 1, 1907), Some Letters of J. M. Synge, p. 54.

44. See G. M. Pinciss, “A Dancer for Mr. Yeats”, ETJ, 21 (Dec. 1969), 386-391.

45. Lady Gregory to Synge (June 21, 1907).

46. Yeats to Miss Horniman, Letters, pp. 500-501. Wade dates this letter tentatively as “early 1908.” Judging from the context, however, it is more probably from June or July 1907.

47. Lady Gregory to Synge (June 21, 1907).

48. In an interview with the writer (March 18, 1966) Padraic Colum said that the Fays objected to the obscurity of the opening speech of the King in The King's Threshold. Yeats replied to this criticism in a prologue to the play: “The stage manager says I've got to juggle for you. That I'm to cause a vision to come before your eyes, but he doesn't want to let me please myself. He says it must be simple, easy to understand, all about real human beings, but I'm going to please myself this time …” The Variorum Edition of the Plays of W. B. Yeats, ed. Russell K. Alspach (New York, 1966), pp. 313-314. This prologue was never performed (Letter, p. 409). Cf. Frank Fay to Yeats, objecting to his pitched verse experiments (Dec. 15, 1902), N. L. I. Ms. 13068.

49. So the Fays told Joseph Holloway; see Impressions of a Dublin Playgoer (July 4, 1907; July 26, 1907), N. L. I. Ms. 1805, pp. 419, 452. In an interview with the American critic Burns Mantle (April 1908), Willie Fay declared: “The public has to be humored at times … There's no use trying to force a new kind of drama down its throat … It's all right to tell people they ought to know better, but it's costly business trying to prove it to them.” Preserved in Fay Clippings, N. L. I. Ms. 5975, p. 50.

50. Impressions of a Dubin Playgoer (March 9, 1904), Ms. 1802, p. 579; (November 16, 1904), pp. 488-491.

51. Nic Schiubhlaigh, pp. 8-9, 26; cf. Letter from George Russell to Sara Purser (August 15, 1902) in which he notes that “the fiery youths of the company are rehearsing up to 12 o'clock.” Letters from A. E., ed. Alen Denson (London, 1961), p. 42.

52. Frank Fay to Yeats (March 18, 1903), N. L. I. Ms. 13068.

53. On August 22, 1906, Willie Fay wrote to Yeats complaining about the new members recruited for the Company: “It's got around town we are paying people and that we did well on tour so that every sundowner that turns up expects to be paid and it's perfectly absurd the cheek they have. They can't speak English, walk or do a thing. One has to begin at the very beginning with each of them and waste the time of our own people.” N. L. I. Ms. 5977.

54. Willie Fay to Yeats (Dec. 18, 1907), N. L. I. Ms. 13068.

55. Greene and Stephens, p. 219.

56. Elizabeth Coxhead, Daughters of Erin, (London, 1965), p. 193.

57. See, e.g., her embarrassment over Synge's love affair with Molly O'Neill (Greene and Stephens, p. 206), her concern over Frank Fay's infatuation for Sara Allgood (Letter to Synge, January 6, 1906), N. L. I. Ms. P5380, and especially her fear of “scandal or a row at the theatre” over Willie Fay's love affair with his fiancée, Brigit O'Dempsey (Letter to Synge, August 26, 1906).

58. Impressions of a Dublin Playgoer (Feb. 11, 1904), N. L. I. Ms. 1802, pp. 69-71. Cf. (Dec. 9, 1908), N. L. I. Ms. 1807. Interviews with numerous former Abbey actors and other theatre personnel including Emma Bodkin, Padraic Colum, May Craig, Eileen Crowe, Gabriel Fallon, Eric Gorman, Christine Hayden, Dr. John Larchet, Dr. George O'Brien, Shelah Richards and Dolly Robinson corroborate this impression.

59. Letter from Peggy Ashford to the writer, in which she says of Fay: “He was the first professional director I worked with and I remember gratefully his kindness and charm and humour” (March 28, 1966); Laurence Olivier also worked under Fay at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and recalled him as “a very kind, slightly roughshod, but warm director of me and the company I played with” Letter from Laurence Olivier to the writer (March 23, 1966).

60. Impressions of a Dublin Playgoer (January 4, 1908), N. L. I. Ms. 1806.

61. (August 14, 1907), N. L. I. Ms. P5380.

62. Impressions of a Dublin Playgoer, (Oct. 31, 1907; June 6, 1908; Nov. 23, 1907, N. L. I. Ms. 1805, pp. 714-716; Ms. 1806, pp. 583-584; Ms. 1805, pp. 290-292. Cf. Willie Fay's dismissal of both Dervorgilla and The Unicorn from the Stars, Fays of the Abbey Theatre, p. 228.

63. See Howard K. Slaughter, George Fitzmaurice and his Enchanted Land (Dublin, 1972).

64. Conversations with Willie Fay (Oct. 4, 1907; Nov. 23, 1907), Impressions of a Dublin Playgoer, N. L. I. Ms. 1805, pp. 627, 790-792.

65. Willie Fay to Yeats (Jan. 10, 1907), N. L. I. Ms. 13068; conversation with Willie Fay, (Jan. 4, 1908), Impressions of a Dublin Playgoer, N. L. I. Ms. 1806, pp. 18-20.

66. Letter dated Dec. 1, 1907, printed in Fay, The Abbey Theatre, p. 127.

67. Ibid.

68. Lady Gregory to Synge (Dec. 12, 1907; Dec. 19, 1907; Dec. 30, 1907), N. L. I. Ms P5380. Cf. Greene and Stephens, pp. 280-281.

69. Greene and Stephens, p. 269.

70. Synge to Lady Gregory (Dec. 18, 1907) and to Yeats (Dec. 19, 1907), Some Letters of J. M. Synge, pp. 65-67, 68-70.

71. Lady Gregory to Synge (Dec. 30, 1907).

72. N. L. I. Ms. P5380.

73. Conversation between Frank Fay and Joseph Holloway (June 29, 1913), Impressions of a Dublin Playgoer, N. L. I. Ms. 1815, p. 1148; Lady Gregory to Synge (Dec. 30, 1907).

74. Impressions of a Dublin Playgoer (Jan. 13, 1908), N. L. I. Ms. 1806, pp. 28-29. Another motive for Frank Fay's resignation was his longing for professional experience as a Shakespearean actor with one of the English stock companies that he admired. Letter from Frank Fay to Maire Garvey (May 27, 1908), Roberts Papers, N. L. I. Ms. 8320.

75. In the lecture delivered by Yeats to the Royal Swedish Academy on receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1923, he outlined the history of the Irish dramatic movement, singling out Maire O'Neill and Sara Allgood as “players of genius,” but mentioning the Fays only as “our two best men actors,” one “a stage-struck solicitor's clerk and the other a working man who had toured Ireland in a theatrical company managed by a negro.” “The Irish Dramatic Movement,” Autobiographies (London, 1961), p. 563. When Yeats apparently employed the same terms ten years later in a lecture to the Royal Dublin Academy, Mrs. W. G. Fay fired off an angry letter to him protesting the “contemptuous” reference. Letter (Feb. 27, 1933) preserved in Fay Papers, N. L. I. Ms. 2652, p. 52.

76. Frank Fay was particularly upset about Yeats's declaration that the famed Abbey style of minimal movement with focussed “blocking” came into being only because of the “inexperience” of the actors. “All we did was done deliberately, and with knowledge,” said Fay with justifiable anger. “I saw the same principle carried out when the great Sara Bernhardt played Phèdre.” Lecture, “Some Thoughts on Acting,” delivered to the Playhouse Circle, Dublin (1925), preserved in N. L. I. Ms. 10953.

77. See Gerard Fay, Fay's Third Book (London, 1964), p. 109 et passim; Austin Clarke, A Penny in the Clouds (London, 1968), p. 40.

78. Cf. Greene and Stephens, p. 284; Coxhead, Lady Gregory, pp. 96, 160, 175. See letter from Frank Fay to Joseph Holloway (April 7, 1908) in which he denigrates Yeats's ability as an acting coach and stage director. Yet Holloway himself noted no immediate decline in the acting standard of the Abbey Theatre after the departure of the Fays. Joseph Holloway's Abbey Theatre, ed. Robert Hogan and Michael O'Neill (Carbonale, 1967), pp. 110, 113.

79. William Poel was imported for a few weeks during the summer of 1908 to give lessons to the Company in speech and voice production; Norreys Connel came to the Abbey in the spring of 1909 as a stage director and manager; Nugent Monck in the autumn of 1911 as a teacher and stage director; and A. Patrick Wilson in the autumn of 1913 as a stage director and manager. See Joseph Holloway's Abbey Theatre, pp. 114, 127, 159; Peter Kavanagh The Story of Ireland's Abbey Theatre, (New York, 1950), pp. 89, 101.

80. Poel's methods were mocked by the Company (Joseph Holloway's Abbey Theatre, pp. 114-115); Connell ran into trouble with the actors when he sought to eliminate sloppy speech habits and “artistic snobbishness” (ibid., p. 280); Monck was apparently unable to get along with Lady Gregory on the American winter tour of 1912-1913, Impressions of a Dublin Playgoer (May 9, 1913), N. L. I. Ms. 1820, p. 852; A. Patrick Wilson, an Orange Scotsman, was thoroughly disliked by the Company, and, furthermore, antagonized Lady Gregory and Yeats by attempting to promote his own work (Theatre Correspondence, N. L. I. Ms. 13068). As with the Fays, a major part of the problem was that none of the imported directors and managers was given any effective control over the artistic or administrative operation of the Theatre (Theatre Correspondence, N. L. I. Ms. 13068).

81. Holloway records a consistent decline in the quality of acting in the Company from 1912 onwards, mainly because of a lack of discipline and of careful direction and training. Impressions of a Dublin Playgoer (1912), N. L. I. Ms 1814, p. 1129; (1913), N. L. I., Ms. 1816, pp. 108, 402-403, 408, 734. Cf. Ernest Boyd “The Irish National Theatre, A Criticism,” The Irish Times, Dec. 27, 1912, p. 5; Andrew Malone, “The Decline of the Irish Drama,” The Nineteenth Century, April 1925, p. 588; Mervyn Wall, “Some Thoughts on the Abbey Theatre,” Ireland Today, September 1936, pp. 4, 59; and Sean O'Faolain, Preface to She Had to Do Something (London, 1938), pp. 15-19. This last is written from the standpoint of a playwright whose work was destroyed by insensitive acting and directing.

82. Eric Bentley, “Heroic Wantonness,” In Search of Theatre (New York, 1954), p. 308.

83. “A People's Theatre” (1919), Explorations (London, 1962), p. 250.

84. See Norman Marshall, The Other Theatre (London, 1948), pp. 92-97, for a description of Nugent Monck's staging of medieval plays with the Maddermarket Theatre in Norwich, England.

85. See Interview with Yeats (The Irish Times, September 8, 1911) on the purposes and working methods of the Abbey Second Company under Nugent Monck. Henderson Collection N. L. I. Ms. 1734 (1911) V. 208.

86. By Robinson's own admission, when he was appointed as a stage director and Manager at the Abbey Theatre in 1910 his sole practical experience in the theatre had been three months of observing Granville Barker and Shaw at the Court Theatre, London. Lennox Robinson, Curtain's Up (London, 1942), p. 23. The general impression of Robinson as a stage director is that he was effective in coaching actors for realistic plays, but lacking in any sense of visual or musical style in staging more imaginative plays. Cf. Michael O'Neill, Lennox Robinson (New York, 1966), pp. 71-72; interviews with Hilton Edwards (Nov. 13, 1964), Michael MacLiammoir (August 4, 1966), Shelah Richards (May 1, 1966).

87. Memorandum to Lady Gregory and Synge (Dec. 2, 1906), N. L. I. Ms. P5380. In a letter to the dancer-actress Margot Ruddock (Sept. 20, 1935) Yeats declared: “I do not want him [Fay] to produce any work of mine, first because I do not think he would be natural with me and secondly because he is not sufficiently educated to produce work of my kind, and thirdly because he had, and probably has, the temper of the devil and is a black intriguer into the bargain.” Ah, Sweet Dancer!, ed. Roger McHugh (London, 1970), pp. 50-51.

88. Actors such as Sara Allgood, Maire Nic Shubhlaigh, and Dudley Digges paid tribute to Frank Fay's ability as a teacher of speech. Sara Allgood, “Lecture on the Abbey Theatre given in Manchester (1909) with corrections by W. B. Yeats,” N. L. I. Ms. 13572; The Splendid Years, pp. 8-9; Dudley Digges, “A Theatre was Made,” The Irish Digest, October 1939, p. 13.

89. “An Introduction for My Plays,” Essays and Introductions (London, 1961), p. 529.

90. Typical of the average Abbey actor's response to Yeats's ideas is the oft-repeated story of his attempt to have Arthur Sinclair “anticipate on his face the idea of the following phrase”—in other words, to motivate his lines. Yeats is said to have worked with Sinclair until suddenly he cried. “You've got it.” The next day Yeats stopped the rehearsal in despair, saying “You've lost it.” Sinclair's response was, “How could I have lost what I never knew I had?” The story is usually told as proof that Yeats “knew nothing about acting.” What this and many similar stories actually demonstrate are the artistic and intellectual limitations of the actors that Yeats was forced to employ at the Abbey Theatre. Cf. Holloway, Impressions of a Dublin Playgoer (November 8, 1913), N. L. I. Ms. 1816, pp. 405-406; Coxhead, p. 182; Lennox Robinson, Ireland's Abbey Theatre (London, 1951), p. 75. Yeats aptly described the limitations of the early Abbey actors as follows: “All these young people are the first generation in their family to do intellectual work, and though with strong, fresh and simple imagination and unspoiled taste, prolonged application is difficult to them. They have no acquired faculties.” “Journal” (1909), Yeats's Memoirs, ed. Denis Donoghue (London, 1972), p. 183.

91. “Preliminaries,” On the Boiler, (1939) Explorations, p. 516.