n the theatre, where it began the evening, selected it for
applause. It is now what Shelley's _Cloud_ was for many years a comfort
to those who do not like to deny altogether the genius they cannot
understand. Yet I am certain that, in the long run, his grotesque plays
with their lyric beauty, their violent laughter, _The Playboy of the
Western World_ most of all, will be loved for holding so much of the
mind of Ireland. Synge has written of _The Playboy_, 'anyone who has
lived in real intimacy with the Irish peasantry will know that the
wildest sayings in this play are tame indeed compared with the fancies
one may hear at any little hillside cottage of Geesala, or Carraroe, or
Dingle Bay.' It is the strangest, the most beautiful expression in drama
of that Irish fantasy, which overflowing through all Irish Literature
that has come out of Ireland itself (compare the fantastic Irish account
of the Battle of Clontarf with the sober Norse account) is the unbroken
character of Irish genius. In modern days this genius has delighted in
mischievous extravagance, like that of the Gaelic poet's curse upon his
children, 'There are three things that I hate, the devil that is waiting
for my soul, the worms that are waiting for my body, my children, who
are waiting for my wealth and care neither for my body nor my soul: Oh,
Christ hang all in the same noose!' I think those words were spoken with
a delight in their vehemence that took out of anger half the bitterness
with all the gloom. An old man on the Aran Islands told me the very tale
on which _The Playboy_ is founded, beginning with the words, 'If any
gentleman has done a crime we'll hide him. There was a gentleman that
killed his father, and I had him in my own house six months till he got
away to America.' Despite the solemnity of his slow speech his eyes
shone as the eyes must have shone in that Trinity College branch of the
Gaelic League which began every meeting with prayers for the death of an
old Fellow of College who disliked their movement, or as they certainly
do when patriots are telling how short a time the prayers took to the
killing of him. I have seen a crowd, when certain Dublin papers had
wrought themselves into an imaginary loyalty, so possessed by what
seemed the very genius of satiric fantasy, that one all but looked to
find some feathered heel among the cobble stones. Part of the delight of
crowd or individual is always that somebody will be angry, somebody tak