Page:Irish plays and playwrights (IA irishplaysplaywr00weygrich).pdf/83

 Rh "You will forget me. Speak, speak, Naisi, speak, And say that it is better that I go. I will not ask it. Do not speak a word, For I will take it all upon myself. Conchubar, I will go."

This is true dramatic speech, this has the accent of high tragedy, and weakly human as it is it does not take away at all from the queenliness of Deirdre. There are other passages that have such a tendency, however, true though they may be to the life they depict and to human nature of all time when in such a frenzy of fear and sorrow. Longer even than this heart's cry, however, I think I shall remember that line so near the opening of the play—

Lines greater than that are far to seek in English drama.

"The Green Helmet" (1910), a rewriting in a form of verse alien to the stage of the earlier prose "Golden Helmet" (1908), is hardly done out of any high intention, and although it is not wanting in a kind of strange and grotesque fascination, it is in result no higher than it was in intention. In fact the past five years, years much of whose time has been spent in forwarding the work of the Abbey Theatre, have not inspired Mr. Yeats to much work of importance. Mr. Yeats promises us more plays, but one cannot help wishing, if he must do verses other than lyric, he would put his hand now to a great epic. His "Wanderings of Oisin" is nearest this, near enough, for all the preponderance of lyric in it, to show that he could do it, were we without such lines of "large accent" as I have quoted