Lady Gregory and Dr. Hyde stand out as the leading
workers. Mr. Larminie's "West Irish Folk-Tales" (1895) are model work
of their kind as are Lady Gregory's several books, of which I speak in
detail later. The work of Dr. Hyde is the most important work of this
sort, however, and it is not too much to say, as I intimated at the
outset, that, without his translation of "The Love Songs of Connacht"
(1894) and "The Religious Songs of Connacht" (1906), the prose of the
movement would never have attained that distinction of rhythm which
reveals English almost as a new language. I would gladly have written at
length of Dr. Hyde, but he has chosen to write his plays in Irish as
well as most of his verses. Yet so winning are the plays as translated
by Lady Gregory, and so greatly have they influenced the folk-plays in
English of the Abbey Theatre, that there is almost warrant for including
him. I cannot, of course, but I must at least bear testimony to the many
powers of these plays. Dr. Hyde can be trenchant, when satire is his
object, as in "The Bursting of the Bubble" (1903); or alive with
merriment when merriment is his desire, as in "The Poorhouse" (1903); or
full of quiet beauty when he writes of holy things, as in the "Lost
Saint" (1902). There are many other playwrights in Irish than Dr. Hyde,
but as no other plays in Irish than his have reacted to any extent on
the plays in English of the movement, I do not consider them, my object
in this book being to consider the dramatic writing in English of the
Celtic Renaissance, with relation to its value as a contribution to the
art of English letters. That there is a great deal else in the Celtic
Renaissance than its drama, I would, however, emphasize, though it is
true that every man of first literary power in the movement, except
Lionel Johnson and "John Eglinton," has tried his hand on at least one
Irish play. That Johnson would have come to write drama I firmly
believe, for in drama he could have reconciled two of the four loves
that were his life. He could not have put his love of Winchester, his
school, or his love of the classics into plays, but his love of Ireland
and his love of the Catholic Church would have blended, I believe, into
plays, still with the cloistered life of the seventh century, that would
have rivaled "The Hour-Glass," and plays about "Ninety-Eight" that would
have rivaled "Cathleen Houlihan."

There are many other poets, though, of the Celtic Renaiss