Page:Irish plays and playwrights (IA irishplaysplaywr00weygrich).pdf/79

 Rh Like Rustum he does not know who is the youth he is fighting until he has given him his death wound. Its high tragedy rends the more by the ironic setting of Blind Man and Fool, two wastrels, one of whom might have prevented the tragedy, but would not because the fight would give him and his fellow a chance to rob the larders in houses whose owners were watching it. No one can doubt the high intention of "On Baile's Strand," no one can deny that its story is essentially dramatic, no one can pass by certain passages without realization that here is great verse, blank verse that is true dramatic speech. Men remember Cuchulain's description of Aoife as men remember Maud Gonne.


 * "Ah! Conchubar, had you seen her

With that high, laughing, turbulent head of hers Thrown backward, and the bowstring at her ear. Or sitting at the fire with those grave eyes Full of good counsel as it were with wine, Or when love ran through all the lineaments Of her wild body."

One remembers these things, but if one has not seen the play on the stage, he does not bear with him memories of beauty such as one bears always with him from even the reading of "The Countess Cathleen" or of "The Land of Heart's Desire." Nor is one moved by "On Baile's Strand" as one is moved by other tellings of the same world story, as one is moved by the epic telling of it by Matthew Arnold in "Sohrab and Rustum," or even by such a casual telling of it as is Mr. Neil Munro's in "Black Murdo." If it were not for "Deirdre," in fact, one would have to say that the verse plays of