Irish Plays And Playwrights

by

Cornelius Weygandt

with illustrations

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge

COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY CORNELIUS WEYGANDT
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published February 1913

W.B. Yeats

Preface

There are so many who have helped me with this book that I cannot beginto thank them one by one. If I name any, however, there are four I wouldname together. There is my old friend, long since dead, Lawrence Kelly,of County Wexford, who first told me Irish folk-stories, adding to thewonderment of my boyhood with his tales of Finn McCool, Dean Swift, and"The Red-haired Man." There is Dr. Robert Ellis Thompson, ofPhiladelphia, who quickened, by his enthusiasm, over "twenty goldenyears ago," my interest in all things Irish. There is Dr. ClarenceGriffin Child, my colleague, who recognized the power of these men Iwrite of in "Irish Plays and Playwrights" when there were fewer torecognize their power than there are to-day. There is Mr. John Quinn, ofNew York, without whose aid ten years ago the current Irish dramaticmovement would not have progressed as it has. He has lent forreproduction here the sketches by Mr. J.B. Yeats of Synge, Mr. GeorgeMoore, and Mr. Padraic Colum. All but all of the writers I mentionparticularly in these chapters have put me under obligation by cheerfulresponse to many letters full of questions as to their work. Mr. JamesH. Cousins and Mr. S. Lennox Robinson have taken especial trouble in mybehalf, and Lady Gregory, Mr. W.B. Yeats, and Mr. George W. Russell haveput themselves out in many ways that I might learn of Irish Letters.

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, December 28, 1912.