atest beauty like the old Greek sculptures is
always cold."

Mr. Martyn calls "Maeve" "a psychological drama in two acts." It relates
the story of the last day and night in the life of a visionary girl, the
hereditary princess of Burren in Clare, in the west of Ireland. On the
eve of her marriage to Hugh Fitz Walter, a rich young Englishman, whom
she will wed only for her father's sake to reestablish him in his
position as "The O'Heynes" among the neighboring gentry, she wanders off
into the Burren Hills with her old nurse Peg Inerny. Peg has fascinated
Maeve O'Heynes with tales of "the other people," convincing Maeve, as
she is convinced herself, that she changes from the old vagrant peasant
whom the countryside half fears into Queen Maeve, the great Amazon of
the Cuchulain legends. Maeve O'Heynes in her own dreams has seen great
heroes and heroines of Ireland's legendary past, and she believes that
they still live among the fairies as many a peasant to-day beside Peg
Inerny believes. So Maeve follows Peg to the mountains, though it is her
wedding-eve, to see these great people of old time and to meet a lover
she has seen in vision, the ideal man of her dreams. She finds her way
home several hours later through the white moonlight of the bitter March
night. Then, in a sort of trance, looking out of her window in the
half-ruined castle to the ruined abbey, the mysterious round tower, the
stony mountains, she beholds the vision of Queen Maeve, with an
attendant troupe of harpers and pages, rise from the cairn and approach
the castle. As the troupe returns from castle to cairn Maeve's spirit
passes with it under the Northern lights into the land of the ever-young
of Tir-nan-Ogue. When her sister goes to call her to make ready for her
wedding, she finds Maeve sitting still and cold at the open casement.
Maeve has found the supernatural lover, once human, of "boyish face
closehooded with short gold hair," and again only "a symbol of ideal
beauty," to be truly a "Prince of the hoar dew," for he is death. Maeve
has renounced life and sought "perfection in what unfolds as death."

Mr. Yeats explains the play ("Beltaine," February, 1900) to "symbolize
Ireland's choice between English materialism and her own natural
idealism, as well as the choice of every individual soul." Does it
follow that the lesson of "Maeve" is that it were better for Ireland to
be depopulated in her pursuit of national individuality, of ideal
beauty, th