Reading Journal 4

• Quick Notes on The Countess Cathleen
• a ponderous play
• Cathleen sells her soul to buy everyone's soul back and feed the hungry
• not sure...
• Quick Notes on On Baile's Strand
• a comedic take on a classic Irish tale
• as Cuchullian kills his son and rages against Concobar, the weaselly Fintain realizes he can use the opportunity to steal some food
• Quick Notes on Riders to the Sea
• an absolute tragedy
• Maurya wails about losing her 2nd to last son to the sea. Then she loses her last son. Four sons, a husband, and a father-in-law: all lost to sea.
• Quick Notes on In the Shadow of the Glen
• Dan fakes his death.
• Nora, Dan's wife, kindly welcomes Tramp and Michael.
• Dan reveals his deception and kicks Nora out of the house.
• Tramp explains to Nora that wandering free will be freeing.
• Notes from Lecture
• Lady Gregory, Prospectus, 1897
• "We propose to have performed in Dublin ... certain Celtic and Irish plays, which whatever be their degree of excellence will be written with a high ambition, and so to build up a Celtic and Irish school of dramatic literature"
• "We hope to find in Ireland an uncorrupted and imaginative audience trained to listen by its passion for oratory, and believe that our desire to bring upon the stage the deeper thoughts and emotions of Ireland will ensure for us a tolerant welcome, and that freedom to experiment which is not found in the theatres of England, and without which no new movement in art or literature can succeed"
• "We will show that Ireland is not the home of buffoonery and of easy sentiment, as it has been represented, but the home of an ancient idealism. We are confident of the support of all Irish people, who are weary of misrepresentation, in carrying out a work that is outside all the political questions that divide us"
• John Eglington, 'What should be the subjects of national drama?' (1899)
• "Supposing a writer of dramatic genius were to appear in Ireland, where would he look for the subject of a national drama? ... Would he look for it in the Irish legends, or in the life of the peasantry and folk-lore, or in Irish history and patriotism, or in life at large as reflected in his own consciousness?"
• Frank Fay, "An Irish National Theatre" (1902)
• "In short, we need to realise in Ireland that a national drama or literature must spring from a native interest in life and its problems and a strong capacity for life among the people. If these do not, or cannot exist, there cannot exist a national drama or literature.
• My notion of an Irish National Theater is that it ought to be the nursery of an Irish dramatic literature which, while making a world-wide appeal, would see life through Irish eyes.
• Yeats, 'An Irish National Theatre' (1908)
• 'If we think that a national play must be as near as possible a page out of The Spirit of the Nation put into dramatic form, and mean to go on thinking it to the end, then we may be sure that this generation will not see the rise in Ireland of a theatre that will reflect the life of Ireland as the Scandinavian theatre reflects the Scandinavian life. The brazen head has an unexpected way of falling to pieces.'
• 'I am a Nationalist, and certain of my intimate friends have made Irish politics the business of their lives, and this made certain thoughts take fire in such a way that I could give them dramatic expression. I had a very vivid dream one night, and I made Cathleen ni Houlihan out of this dream. But if some external necessity forced me to write nothing but drama with an obviously patriot intention ... I would have lost ... the power to write moving on any theme"
• Reading Journal
• First, let me outline our approach to these next four plays. After reading Lady Gregory's "Our National Theatre" and discussing it in our previous class, we have a firm understanding of Irish Drama. Our Irish playwrights, Gregory, Yeats, Synge, etc, are desperately concerned about gatekeeping--specifically gatekeeping by the Irish public at large. And rightfully so, as the public could riot like we are going to witness when we get to Playboy, or just give bad reviews and try to boycott their productions. Of course, this concerted effort by our playwrights also feels like gatekeeping, but to me at least, it seems appropriate. I don't know what this course would be if each play was like "a page out of The Spirit of the Nation" but I will trust Yeats warning that this course would be super lame if that were the case.
• To make a contemporary analogy, it's like Martin Scorsese attempting to gatekeep American cinema from the American public forcing, with their dollars, superhero movies exclusively into our cinemas. These Irish playwrights want to make art "whatever their degree of excellence will be written with a high ambition." I think the previous quote is probably a tweet from Scorcese, as I forgot to write down the citation from last class.
• With that said, let us consider how highly ambitious our four plays for this week are. The Countess Cathleen is probably so ambitious it went over my head. Let me save it for last.
• On Baile's Strand is great. We read The Tain in Irish literature with Dr. Buchelt, and so this heretical telling of the Irish legend is a masterpiece. This is art. Yeats basically answers the question, what would happen if you took Stan from The Irish Heiress or Algernon from The Importance of Being Earnest, and made him blind, and teleported him into the middle of the most important Irish legend of all time? Yeats is a legend.
• Riders to the Sea is also high ambition. Synge wants to flood the theater with tears. I imagined he succeeded. I cannot imagine a dry eye would have left the theater. "[She kneels down again and the curtain falls slowly.]" Imagine being in that audience.
• And then speaking of heretical works, how about In the Shadow of the Glen? This is stage realism, just like Riders to the Sea, but we did discuss that in melodrama the evil character always loses, and I do believe that happens here, even if the characters are quite grey. At the end of the play, Dan sits and drinks with Michael, but he has lost. And it is surprising, or it goes against the traditional female gender roles, that our hero is the woman who "[makes] a talk with the men passing." From the start, the audience must debate who is the hero. Nora does welcome the stranger, but she is overly concerned about wealth, and she is willing to pursue it with her womanly guile. So the audience may be unsure that they are supposed to root for her. But the wisdom in the play is ultimately provided by the Tramp, and although the Nora says she is not convinced, she does leave with the Tramp. Surely, Synge wants the audience to view Dan, who throws out his wife, as the villain, and everything the Tramp pours out goes against Nora's prejudices and vices, so if she hears his speech, the audience has to believe she will be on a far better path, as the Tramp argues.
• Okay, let me make an attempt at The Countess Cathleen. This play deals with the national trauma. And so maybe unlike On Baile's Strand or In the Shadow of the Glen, it is not trying to do anything subversive, but instead it is just trying to be the new national epic. Yeats wants Countess Cathleen to be the national story, that is grounded in their recent history, as opposed to this folk-lore tradition with a national story that does not really connect to the modern day lives of the peasants. That is my best take at the moment.