Beltaine (Routledge Revivals)

The Organ of the Irish Literary Theatre

W B Yeats, W B Yeats

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136228636
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

First published in 1970, this book is a faithful representation of the original edition of Beltaine, a literary magazine edited by W. B. Yeats from May 1899to April 1900. Beltaine was the first of several magazines of the Irish Literary Theatre (later to become The Abbey Theatre) in which Yeats's editorial role was of utmost importance. It was an occasional publication and focused on promoting current works of Irish playwrights whilst challenging those of their English opponents.

The magazine mainly consists of a series of essays on the theatre in Dublin, and supplementing these are explanations and discussions of new plays, excerpts from which are often included.This bookwill be of interest to those with an interest in Yeats, early nineteenth-century literature, and Irish theatre.

SIXPENCE NET.

BELTAINE

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An Occasional Publication. Number Two. February 1900.

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THE ORGAN OF THE IRISH LITERARY THEATRE

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EDITED BY W. B. YEATS • • • •

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AT THE SIGN OF THE UNICORN, LONDON.

THE ORGAN OF THE IRISH LITERARY THEATRE

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BELTAINE

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Number Two • February MDCCCC • Edited by W. B. YEATS

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CONTENTS

PLANS AND METHODS By THE EDITOR

Is THE THEATRE A PLACE OF AMUSEMENT?

By GEORGE MOORE

A COMPARISON BETWEEN ENGLISH AND IRISH THEATRICAL AUDIENCES By EDWARD MARTYN

MAIVE; AND CERTAIN IRISH BELIEFS

By W. B. YEATS

THE LAST FEAST OF THE FIANNA

By ALICE MILLIGAN

THE IRISH LITERARY THEATRE, 1900

By W. B. YEATS

LAST YEAR. By AUGUSTA GREGORY

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VII CECIL COURT, SAINT MARTIN’S LANE, W.C.

LIST OF GUAR ANTORS

T. M. HEALY, M.P.	JUDGE KANE.
HON. EMILY LAWLESS.	COUNT DE BASTEROT.
RT. HON. W. E. H. LECKY.	JUDGE ROSS.
JOHN DILLON, M.P.	MASTER COURTENAY.
MARQUIS OF DUFFERIN car’ AVA.	MISS PURSER.
LORD MORRIS.	JUDGE BOND.
MISS FLORA SHAW.	D. J. O’DONOUGHUE.
HON. MARTIN MORRIS.	VISCOUNT GOUGH.
JOHN O’LEARY.	LORD CASTLETOWN.
MISS JANE BARLOW.	DR. KENNY.
T. W. LYSTER.	RT. HON. HORACE PLUNKETT, M.P
REV. J. MAHAFFY, D.D.	WILLIAM O’BRIEN.
SIR FREDERIC BURTON.	GEORGE COFFEY.
MISS MARGARET STOKES.	LOUIS PURSER.
G. W. RUSSELL.	LORD ARDILAUN.
MISS C. GORE BOOTH.	JOHN EGLINTON.
MISS EDITH OLDHAM.	W. P. GEOGHAGAN.
MISS MAUD GONNE.	T. W. ROLLESTON.
DOUGLAS HYDE, L.L.D.	DR. TODHUNTER.
W. P. COYNE.	LADY ARDILAUN.
W. P. COYNE.	LADY ARDILAUN.
LADY GREGORY.	T. P. GILL.
W. C. M’CARTHY.	GEORGE MOORE.
SIR GEORGE MORRIS.	EDWARD MARTYN.
W. F. BAILEY.	W. B. YEATS.

Plans and Methods

OUR plays this year have a half deliberate unity. Mr. Martyn’ s Maive, which I understand to symbolise Ireland’ s choice between English materialism and her own natural idealism, as well as the choice of every individual soul, will be followed, as Greek tragedies were followed by satires and Elizabethan masques by anti-masques, by Mr. George Moore’ s The Bending of the Bough,which tells of a like choice and of a contrary decision. Mr. Moore’ s play, which is, in its external form, the history of two Scottish cities, the one Celtic in the main and the other Saxon in the main, is a microcosm of the last ten years of public life in Ireland. I know, however, that he wishes it to be understood that he has in no instance consciously . satirised individual men, for he wars, as Blake claimed to do, with states of mind and not with individual men. If any person upon the stage resembles any living person it will be because he is himself a representative of the type. Mr. Moore uses for a symbol of any cause, that seeks the welfare of the nation as a whole, that movement for financial equity which has won the support of all our parties. If the play touches the imagination at all, it should make every man see beyond the symbol the cause nearest his heart, and its struggle against the common failings of humanity and those peculiar to Ireland. I do not think the followers of any Nationalist leader, on the one hand, or of Mr. Lecky or Mr. Plunkett, on the other, can object to its teaching, for it is aimed against none but those persons and parties who would put private or English interests before Irish interests. As Allingham wrote long since,—

‘We are one at heart if you be Ireland’ s friend,

Though leagues asunder our opinions tend:

There are but two great parties in the end ! ’

The Last Feast of the Fianna has an antiquarian as well as an artistic interest. Dr. Hyde is of opinion that the Usheen and Patric dialogues were spoken in character by two reciters, and that had Irish literature followed a natural development a regular drama would have followed from this beginning. Miss Milligan has added other characters. while preserving the emotions and expressions of the dialogues ; and if her play were acted without scenery it would resemble a possible form of old Irish drama. But for the extreme difficulty of the metre of the dialogues we would have acted this play in Irish, but the translator gave up after a few verses. We are anxious to get plays in Irish, and can we do so will very possibly push our work into the western counties, where it would be an important help to that movement for the revival of the Irish language on which the life of the nation may depend.

Mr. Moore and Mr. Martyn have put into their plays several eloquent things about the Celtic race, and certainly, if one were to, claim that there is something in sacred races, and that the Celt is of them, and to found one’ s claim on Mr. Nutt’ s pamphlets alone, one would not lack arguments. I am myself, however, more inclined to agree with Renan and to set store by a certain native tradition of thought that is passed on in the conversations of father and son, and in the institutions of life, and in literature, and in the examples of history. It is these that make nations and that mould the foreign settler after the national type in a few years; and it is these, whether they were made by men of foreign or of Celtic blood, that our theatre would express. If I call them Celtic—and I think Mr. Moore and Mr. Martyn would say the same—it is because of common usage, because the men who made them have less foreign than Celtic blood, and because it is the only word that describes us and those people of Western Scotland who share our language and all but what is most modern in our national traditions.

Prophecies are generally unfortunate, and I made some last year that have not come true ; but I think I may say that we will have no difficulty in getting good plays f...