Page:Irish plays and playwrights (IA irishplaysplaywr00weygrich).pdf/175

Rh to limit her plays of modern Ireland to farce, at times of a serious enough purpose, but because it is farce, not of the first seriousness. It may be, of course, that Lady Gregory knows best of any one her own powers, and it is true that in the plays she has written she is at her best when they are at their merriest. I cannot, however, but feel that this is a success of intention rather than a success of instinct. She would have them the most successful in a quality as far removed as might be from that quality of troubled dreaminess which is the best of the dramas of Mr. Yeats. Synge, it must be remembered, did not begin as a writer of comedy, and there is little of that ripe irony that has no precedent in English literature in that first play that he wrote for the Abbey Theatre, "Riders to the Sea" (1903). Is it a coincidence that later, as he found his bent for that sort of writing that culminated in "The Playboy," Lady Gregory turned at times to historical drama and a farce that grew as serious as comedy? There is, of course, in all her plays serious indictment of national weaknesses, sometimes obvious indictment, as in "The Deliverer" (1911), which records, in terms of folk-biblical allegory, his countrymen's desertion of Parnell; sometimes indictment not so obvious, as in "The Canavans" (1906), which rebukes that shoneenism in high places which has for generations been one of the curses of Ireland. To him who knows only a little of Irish life it is easy to see the meaning but superficially concealed by the farcical bustle, the laughter, and the lamentations. But to him who looks but on the surface there is merriness enough and wittiness enough and wisdom enough