he Spain or the England of
the Renaissance. It would seem idle to be saying this were not the
contention being raised all the time by certain patriotic groups of
Irishmen in America as well as in Ireland that the new drama is not a
native drama. It is, as a matter of fact, no less natively Irish than
the Elizabethan drama is natively English; it is really more native, for
no part of it of moment veils its nationality under even so slight a
disguise as "the Italian convention" of that drama. The new Irish drama
is more native in its stories than is the Elizabethan drama, as these
stories, even when they are stories found in variant forms in other
countries, are given the tones of Irish life. The structural forms and
the symbolic presentation of ideas of which the Abbey dramatists have
availed themselves have no more denationalized their plays than has the
Church, a Church from oversea, to which most of them belong,
denationalized the Irish people.

Synge, the master dramatist of the new movement, while he does not
reproduce the average Irishman, is just as natively Irish in his
extravagance and irony as the old folk-tale of the "Two Hags"; Lady
Gregory in her farces is in a similar way representative of the riot of
West-Country imagination; and Mr. Yeats, if further removed from the
Irishmen of to-day, is very like, in many of his moods, to the riddling
bards of long ago. The later men, many of them, are altogether Irish,
representative of the folk of one or another section of the country, Mr.
Murray and Mr. Robinson of Cork, Mr. Mayne and Mr. Ervine of Down, Mr.
Colum and Mr. Boyle of the Midlands.

One need not say that the Irishman is a born actor; all the Celts are
famed for "the beautiful speaking"; for eloquence; for powers of
impersonation; for quick changes of mood; for ease in running the gamut
of the emotions. Of these things come art of the stage, and these things
are the Irishman's in fullest measure. The Abbey Players have, however,
gone abroad for some elements of their art, perhaps for their repose of
manner, a quietude that is not the quietude of moodiness, a condition
not unusual in the Irishman; and in addition to this repose of manner,
which is fundamental and common to their presentation of realistic
modern plays and of poetic plays of legendary times, for a slowness and
dignity of gesture in the plays of legend, which is perhaps a borrowing
from the classic stage. Their repose of manner may come fro