instead of in the ones they have been giving for years?" And the thought soon ripened into realization. His brother, Frank, had dreamed of such a company since he read of the small beginnings out of which the Norwegian Theatre had grown; and just then, seeing some of "E's" (George Russell's) play, Deirdre, in the Ail Ireland Review, he asked the author if he would allow them to produce it, and, consent being given, the company put it into rehearsal at once. "E" got for them from Yeats Kathleen-Ni-Houlihan, to make up the programme. Thus it was that this company of amateurs and poets, now known as the Abbey Players, came into existence, and at St. Teresa's Hall, Clarendon Street, Dublin, gave their first performance on April 2, 1902.

Shortly afterwards they took a hall at the back of a shop in Camden Street, where they rehearsed and gave a few public performances. On "E" declining to be their president, Frank Fay suggested the name of W. B. Yeats, and he was elected, and in that way came again into the movement in which he has figured so largely ever since.

The company played occasionally in the Molesworth Hall, and produced there, among other pieces, Synge's In the Shadow of the Glen (October 8, 1903) and Riders to the Sea (February 25, 1904); Yeats's The Hour Glass (March 14, 1903) and The King's Threshold (October 8, 1903); Lady Gregory's Twenty-five (March 14, 1903); and Padraic Colum's Broken Soil (December 3, 1903).

On March 26, 1904, the company paid a flying one-day visit to the Royalty, London, and Miss A. E. F. Horniman, who had given Shaw, Yeats, and Dr. John Todhunter their first real start as playwrights at the Avenue, London, in MarchApril, 1894 (Shaw had had his first play, Widowers' Houses, played by the Independent Theatre in 1892), saw the performance, and was so impressed that she thought she would like to find a suitable home for such talent in Dublin, and fixed upon the old Mechanics' Institute and its surrounding buildings, and there the Abbey Theatre soon afterwards-on December 27, 1904 came into existence.

In writing of this Irish dramatic movement, one must always bear in mind that it was Yeats who first conceived the

idea of such a movement; the Fays who founded the school of Irish acting; and Miss Horniman who, like a fairy godmother, waved the wand, and gave it a habitation and a name-the Abbey Theatre-and endowed it for six years.

Play followed play with great rapidity, and dramatic societies sprang up all over the country, playing home-made productions in Gaelic and English. All Ireland seemed to be play-acting and play-writing; so much so that Frank Fay was heard to say that "he thought everyone had a play in his pocket, and that anyone in the street could be picked up and shaped into an actor or actress with a little training, Ireland was so teeming with talent!"

Dramatic Ireland had slumbered for a long while, and awoke with tremendous vigor for work. New dramatists sprang up in all parts of Ireland; The Ulster Literary Theatre started in Belfast; The Cork Dramatic Society, in Cork; The Theatre of Ireland, in Dublin; and others in Galway and Waterford soon followed. In Dublin at present more than half a dozen dramatic societies are continually producing new plays and discovering new acting talent. There are also two Gaelic dramatic societies. And nearly every town in Ireland now has its own dramatic class and its own dramatists. All this activity has come about within the last ten or twelve years, where, before, in many places, drama and acting were almost unknown.

Many Gaelic societies throughout the country put on Gaelic plays by Dr. Douglas Hyde, Pierce Beasley, Thomas Haynes, Canon Peter O'Leary, and others; and the Oireachtas (the Gaelic musical and literary festival) held each year in Dublin usually presents several Irish plays and offers prizes for new ones at each festival.

Of all the Irish playwrights who have arisen in recent years, Lady Gregory has produced most and W. B. Yeats is the most poetic. He is more a lyric poet than a dramatist, and is never satisfied with his work for the stage, but keeps eternally chopping and changing it. His Kathleen-Ni-Houlihan, though a dream-play, always appeals to an audience of Irish people. Perhaps his one-act Deirdre is the nearest approach to real drama he has done. Some of Lady Gregory's earlier one-act

farces, such as The Workhouse-Ward, are very amusing; The Rising of the Moon is a little dramatic gem, and The Gaol Gate is touched with genuine tragedy. Synge wrote only one playRiders to the Sea-that acts well. The others are admired by critics for the strangeness of their diction and the beauty of the nature-pictures scattered through them. His much-discussed Playboy of the Western World has become famous for the rows it has created at home and abroad from its very first production on January 26, 1907. William Boyle, who gets to the heart of those he writes about, has produced the most popular play of the movement in The Eloquent Dempsey, and a perfectly constructed one in The Building Fund. W. F. Casey's two plays-The Man Who Missed the Tide and The Suburban Groove-are both popular and actable. Padraic Colum's plays-The Land and Broken Soil (the latter rewritten and renamed The Fiddler's House)—are almost idyllic scenes of country life. Lennox Robinson's plays are harsh in tone, but dramatically effective, and T. C. Murray's Birthright and Maurice Harte are fine dramas, well constructed and full of true knowledge of the people he writes about. Seumas O'Kelly has written two strong dramas in The Shuiler's Child and The Bribe, and Seumas O'Brien one of the funniest Irish farces ever staged in Duty. R. J. Ray's play, The Casting Out of Martin Whelan, is the best this dramatist has as yet given us, and George Fitzmaurice's The Country Dressmaker has the elements of good drama in it. St. John G. Ervine has written a very human drama in Mixed Marriage. He hails from the north of Ireland; but Rutherford Mayne is the best of the Northern playwrights, and his plays, The Drone and The Turn of the Road, are splendid homely county Down comedies.

Bernard Shaw's John Bull's Other Island, as Irish plays go, is a fine specimen; Canon Hannay has written two successful comedies, Eleanor's Enterprise and General John Regan-the latter not wholly to the taste of the people of the west. James Stephens and Jane Barlow have also tried their hands at playwriting, with but moderate success. Perhaps the modern drama that made the most impression when first played was The Heather Fiela, by Edward Martyn. It gripped and

remains a lasting memory with all who saw it in 1899. But I think I have written enough to show that the Irish Theatre of today is in a very alive condition, and that if the great National Dramatist has not yet arrived, he is sure to emerge. When that time comes, the actors are here ready to interpret such work to perfection.

An article, however brief, on the Irish Theatre, would be incomplete without mention of the world-famous tragedians, John Edward MacCullough, Lawrence Patrick Barrett, and Barry Sullivan; of genial comedians like Charles Sullivan and Hubert O'Grady; of sterling actors like Shiel Barry, John Brougham, Leonard Boyne, J. D. Beveridge, and Thomas Nerney; or of operatic artists like Denis O'Sullivan and Joseph O'Mara-many of whom have passed away, but some, fortunately, are with us still,

REFERENCES:

John Genest: Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration to 1830 (1832; vol. 10 is devoted to the Irish Stage); Chetwood: General History of the Stage, more particularly of the Irish Theatre (Dublin, 1749); Molloy: Romance of the Irish Stage; Baker: Biographia Dramatica (Dublin, 1782); Hitchcock: An Historical View of the Irish Stage from its Earliest Period down to the Season of 1788; Doran: Their Majesties' Servants, or Annals of the English Stage (London, 1865); Hughes: The Pre-Victorian Drama in Dublin; The History of the Theatre Royal, Dublin (Dublin, 1870); Levey and O'Rourke: Annals of the Theatre Royal (Dublin, 1880); O'Neill: Irish Theatrical History (Dublin, 1910); Brown: A Guide to Books on Ireland (Dublin, 1912); Lawrence: The Abbey Theatre (in the Weekly Freeman, Dublin, Dec., 1912), Origin of the Abbey Theatre (in Sinn Fein, Dublin, Feb. 14, 1914); Weygandt: Irish Plays and Playwrights (London, 1913); Lady Gregory: Our Irish Theatre (London, 1914); Bourgeois: John M. Synge and the Irish Theatre (London, 1913); Moore: Hail and Farewell, 3 vols. (London, 1911-1914); Esmore: The Ulster Literary Theatre (in the Lady of the House, Dublin, Nov. 15, 1913); the Reviews, Beltaine (1899-1900) and Samhain (1901-1903).

THE

IRISH JOURNALISTS

BY MICHAEL MACDONAGH.

HE most splendid testimony to the Irish genius in journalism is afforded by the London press of the opening decades of the twentieth century. One of the greatest newspaper organizers of modern times is Lord Northcliffe. As the principal proprietor and guiding mind of both the Times and the Daily Mail, he directly influences public opinion, from the steps of the Throne and the door of the Cabinet, to the errand boy and the servant maid. T. P. O'Connor, M. P., is the most popular writer on current social and political topics, and so amazing is his versatility that every subject he touches is illumined by those fine qualities, vision and sincerity. The most renowned of political writers is J. L. Garvin of the Pall Mall Gazette and the Observer. By his leading articles he has done as much as the late Joseph Chamberlain by his speeches to democratize and humanize the old Tory party of England. The authoritative special correspondent, studying at first hand all the problems which divide the nations of Europe, and knowing personally most of its rulers and statesmen, is E. J. Dillon of the Daily Telegraph. And when the quarrels of nations are transferred from the chancelleries to the stricken field there is no one among the war correspondents more enterprising and intrepid in his methods, or more picturesque and vivid with his pen, than M. H. Donohoe of the Daily Chronicle. All these men are Irish. Could there be more striking proof of the natural bent and aptitude of the Irish mind for journalism?

Dean Swift was the mightiest journalist that ever stirred the sluggish soul of humanity. Were he alive today and had he at his command the enormous circulation of a great daily newspaper, he would keep millions in a perpetual mental ferment, such was the ferocious indignation into which he was aroused by wrong and injustice and his gift of savage ironical expression. Swift, as a young student in Trinity College, Dublin, saw the birth of the first offspring of the Irish mind in journalism. The Dublin News Letter made its appearance