Page:Irish plays and playwrights (IA irishplaysplaywr00weygrich).pdf/105

Rh As one recalls the motive and situations and background and symbolism of "The Heather Field," not having read the play for some time, it seems far finer than when one returns to it. Fine, too, it must seem to any one reading a scenario of it and not offended, as one reading it constantly is by the inability of its dialogue to represent more of the person speaking than his point of view. The dialogue of Mr. Martyn is almost never true dramatic speech, and not only not true dramatic speech, but despite the very clear differentiation of the characters, with little of their personality or temperament in it.

"Maeve" has always seemed to me a lesser play than "The Heather Field," and it now leaves me even colder than of old. Nor, though I can see how fine in conception was the character of Mrs. Font in "The Enchanted Sea," does that one character seem to me, now, to redeem the undeveloped possibilities of the situations of the play, the incomplete characters of Guy and Mask and the failure of the dialogue assigned to the characters to approach true dramatic speech. "Maeve" is the better play of the two. With all its shortcomings it has about it an unearthliness of atmosphere, a quiet coldness of beauty that has come of the thought Mr. Martyn had, as he wrote it, of the moonlight on the Burren Hills in his home country. In this one respect Mr. Martyn has done what he would, for he holds that "the greatest beauty like the old Greek sculptures is always cold."

Mr. Martyn calls "Maeve" "a psychological drama in two acts." It relates the story of the last day and night in the life of a visionary girl, the hereditary princess of