ne such who were gentle in his plays, or I would say that
Grandfather Granahan, like the old gaffer in Mr. Masefield's "Nan," was
a part of the influence of Synge that is felt by both Mr. Masefield and
Mr. Mayne. Their styles, respectively, in "Nan" and "Red Turf," have in
them more than echoes of the style of Synge. The "wambling" old men of
Mr. Hardy come also to mind as one thinks of these old men of Mr.
Masefield and Mr. Mayne and Mr. Boyle. All in a sense play "chorus" to
the action of the play, but there is no one of them that is in the story
or play in which he appears on such grounds only. There are, of course,
old men everywhere, in all life they are an integral part, and
everywhere they are commentators on life once they feel that their day
is done, spectators of a pageant from the forefront of which they have
dropped to watch the following troupe pass by.

There is little mating in these plays of Mr. Mayne, and love of woman
worthy of the name of love only in "The Turn of the Road"; there is
parental love, too, but perhaps more of parental tyranny. Such parental
love as there is, however, actually expressed, makes one of the
memorable passages of Mr. Mayne. Mary Burke, after taunting her husband
to madness, tries to turn him from murder when she sees him, gun in
hand, by crying: "For the love of God, would you leave it down. Leave it
down and go in and look at the child sleeping. It would take the badness
from your mind the same as it did with me."

Though Mr. Mayne is a writer for the Ulster Literary Theatre of Belfast,
his allegiance to the Abbey group is clearly indicated in "Red Turf,"
which is the result of a study of Synge. I do not mean to say that Mr.
Mayne is not familiar with the speech of Connacht, but that it is Synge
who has taught him how to listen to it. There is little of the
influence of Synge in his three plays of the Black North, but when he
turns to Galway in "Red Turf," it is but natural that, writing of other
than his own people, he should write in a speech that has in it an echo
of that of him who has transmuted this speech into prose of the most
beautiful rhythm that English dramatic prose has known. The Bible is the
book of books in Ulster, and there is no page of Mr. Mayne's Ulster
plays but shows him acquainted with its great rhythms. Mr. Boyle,
skillful artificer of situation, and truthful depicter of character that
he is, and Mr. Colum, too, for all his closeness to the earth, are