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32 symbolic national play of '98. Then followed Mr. Cousins's two little plays above referred to; "The Laying of the Foundations," by Mr. Frederick Ryan,—a realistic satire of Dublin life; and Mr. Yeats's incursion into farce, "A Pot of Broth." The appeal of the repertoire was widened in 1903 by the inclusion of plays by Lady Gregory, Mr. Colum, and Synge. "Twenty-five" could give offense to none in its story of self-sacrificing love, and Mr. Colum's "Broken Soil," coming as it did after "In the Shadow of the Glen," would have escaped hostile criticism in such a situation even had it been much more severe in its portrayal of peasant life in the Midlands than it was.

From the time of "The Countess Cathleen" (1899) to the time of "In the Shadow of the Glen" (1903), no one of the plays in the movement had seriously offended any large section of the public, and the younger generation of all classes was contributing largely of its intellectual members to the audience of the National Dramatic Company. The West Britons, the Dublin Castle set, the Trinity College group, were not much interested, and, indeed, that portion of the theatrical audience that fills the stalls in the average theatre the English-speaking world over has never taken very much interest in the plays of the movement, save to protest against "The Rising of the Moon" as disloyal to England, and to approve, misunderstanding its purpose, "The Playboy of the Western World" as a savage satire of the Irish Irishman. The audience that the movement has built up is an audience of free intelligences, largely from the poorer elements of the public, an audience that fills the cheaper places in the house. "The