g dream of her youngest a priest gone on the wind,
is struck dumb with horror at the thought of what her life will be from
this out.

The full significance of the tragedy of Maurice's fate can be realized
only by those who know intimately the ambitions hugged close to heart by
the Irish Catholic mother. It is more to her to have her boy a priest
even than it was yesterday to the Scotch Presbyterian mother to have her
boy a minister of the Kirk. It is the greatest glory that can come to
such a peasant mother to give one of her sons to the priesthood.

There is, I think, no propaganda in the play, and no intentional satire,
although in a way "Maurice Harte" affords a parallel to so definitely a
propagandist satire as Mr. Robinson's "Harvest." It is not education
that is the curse, however, in "Maurice Harte," but the belief that only
priesthood in the end can justify the sacrifices without which a college
education is almost impossible for an Irish peasant. Certain it is that
it is only for the pride of having their boy a priest that the typical
Irish Catholic peasant parents would make such sacrifices as the Hartes
have made, sacrifices involving them in debt to the extent of a thousand
dollars, to secure their son an education.

In a sense "Maurice Harte" is far other than the provincial study I have
here outlined. Its theme is allied, unquestionably, to that theme so
much larger in its relations than that of the spoiled priest, the theme
of the rebellious son, the son who will live his own life no matter what
may be his parents' will. It is only allied to it, however, not to be
identified with it, because Maurice is too fearful of disappointing his
parents, and too shrinking and ineffectual, to go against his parents'
will. In Ireland, as I have said elsewhere, such parental will, by a
survival of authority from the days of the clan system, was law until
yesterday, and there will therefore be those, I have no doubt, who will
find in the play a conflict of the old order and the new, but I do not
believe such conflict was the author's intent. Indeed, the play is
wholly of the old order. No love of man and woman figures as motive in
it as none had figured in "Birthright." There is parental love, of
course, in both plays, though in the case of both parents in "Maurice
Harte" and in the father in "Birthright" parental pride is a stronger
motive than parental love. Very true to Irish life is this absence of
passion as a de