under the tutelage of Mr. Yeats.

It is more than likely, as I say, that had it not been that drama was
needed for the Abbey Theatre she would not have attempted drama. But
more than likely it is, too, that had she written plays not made to
order they had reached wider through Irish society and plumbed deeper
into Irish life. Lady Gregory knows Irish life, from bottom to top, as
few Irishwomen and few Irishmen of her day know it; she has large heart,
wide tolerance, and abounding charity; and yet she was long content to
limit her plays of modern Ireland to farce, at times of a serious enough
purpose, but because it is farce, not of the first seriousness. It may
be, of course, that Lady Gregory knows best of any one her own powers,
and it is true that in the plays she has written she is at her best when
they are at their merriest. I cannot, however, but feel that this is a
success of intention rather than a success of instinct. She would have
them the most successful in a quality as far removed as might be from
that quality of troubled dreaminess which is the best of the dramas of
Mr. Yeats. Synge, it must be remembered, did not begin as a writer of
comedy, and there is little of that ripe irony that has no precedent in
English literature in that first play that he wrote for the Abbey
Theatre, "Riders to the Sea" (1903). Is it a coincidence that later, as
he found his bent for that sort of writing that culminated in "The
Playboy," Lady Gregory turned at times to historical drama and a farce
that grew as serious as comedy? There is, of course, in all her plays
serious indictment of national weaknesses, sometimes obvious indictment,
as in "The Deliverer" (1911), which records, in terms of folk-biblical
allegory, his countrymen's desertion of Parnell; sometimes indictment
not so obvious, as in "The Canavans" (1906), which rebukes that
shoneenism in high places which has for generations been one of the
curses of Ireland. To him who knows only a little of Irish life it is
easy to see the meaning but superficially concealed by the farcical
bustle, the laughter, and the lamentations. But to him who looks but on
the surface there is merriness enough and wittiness enough and wisdom
enough to make his loss of the deeper meaning, for him, but a little
loss.

There are enough characters presented, too, peasants generally and
townsfolk of the lower class, to make the farces a "reading of life."
What is wanting to him who looks for