(Note to page 180 )
From "THE GAELIC AMERICAN," Oct. 14, 1911
IRISHMEN WILL STAMP OUT THE "PLAYBOY"
October 14, 1911:–" Resolved–That we, the United Irish-American Societies of New York, make every reasonable effort, through a committee, to induce those responsible for the presentation of The Playboy to withdraw it, and failing in this we pledge ourselves as one man to use every means in our power to drive the vile thing from the stage, as we drove McFadden's Row of Flats and the abomination produced by the Russell Brothers, and we ask the aid in this work of every decent Irish man and woman, and of the Catholic Church, whose doctrines and devotional practices are held up to scorn and ridicule in Synge's monstrosity."
(Note to page 202 )
From THE NEW YORK "TIMES"
November 28, 1911:–When Christopher Mahon [Page 281] said: "I killed my father a week and a half ago for the likes of that," instantly voices began to call from all over the theatre:
"Shame! Shame!"
A potato swept through the air from the gallery and smashed against the wings. Then came a shower of vegetables that rattled against the scenery and made the actors duck their heads and fly behind the stage setting for shelter.
A potato struck Miss Magee, and she, Irish like, drew herself up and glared defiance. Men were rising in the gallery and balcony and crying out to stop the performance. In the orchestra several men stood up and shook their fists.
"Go on with the play," came an order from the stage manager, and the players took their places and began again to speak their lines.
The tumult broke out more violently than before, and more vegetables came sailing through the air and rolled about the stage. Then began the fall of soft cubes that broke as they hit the stage. At first these filled the men and women in the audience and on the stage with fear, for only the disturbers knew what they were.
Soon all knew. They were capsules filled with asafoetida, and their odour was suffocating and most revolting.
One of the theatre employee had run to the street to ask for police protection at the outset of the disturbance, but the response was so slow that the ushers and the doortenders raced up the stairs and threw [Page 282] themselves into a knot of men who were standing and yelling "Shame!"
(Note to page 205 )
From THE NEW YORK "SUN"
Wednesday, November 29, 1911:–Col. Theodore Roosevelt, who had been entertained at dinner prior to the play by Lady Gregory, the author-producer of many of the Irish plays, and Chief Magistrate McAdoo sat with Lady Gregory in one of the lower tier boxes. Col. Roosevelt was there representing the Outlook, for he said that if he had any ideas on the subject of the morals and merits of Synge's play he would write them in Dr. Abbott's paper, and Magistrate McAdoo was there for Mayor Gaynor to stop the play if he saw anything contrary to the public morals in it. Mr. McAdoo said that his task was a light one and Col. Roosevelt did not have to say anything. He just applauded.
. . . . . . .
When Col. Roosevelt appeared on a side aisle escorting Lady Gregory to a seat in the box there was a patter of hand clapping and the Colonel gallantly insisted that Lady Gregory should stand and receive the applause.
"He 's here because he smells a fight," said some one in a whisper that rebounded from the acoustic board overhead and was audible all over the house.
When Magistrate McAdoo arrived somebody asked him if he were serving in an official capacity, to which he replied that the Mayor had asked him to drop in [Page 283] and see the play which had so roused the wrath of reputed Irishmen on the night before. He had orders, McAdoo said, to squash it the minute that he should see or hear anything that might be considered to have tobogganed over the line of discretion. But Mr. McAdoo said that he thought he would understand in a fair spirit, withal, the satire and irony of the play, if there was such, and he did not intend to be a martinet. The players graciously handed him out the prompt book between acts to see for himself that the line about "shifts" which had raised a storm of protest in Dublin as being indelicate had been deleted.
Nothing happened during the playing of the little curtain-raiser, The Gaol Gate, Lady Gregory's grim little tragedy of suffering Ireland, except that near the end of the single act in the playlet people in the gallery began a noisy warming up on their coughs and sneezes. Some of the plain-clothes men there began to amble around back of the aisles, and they laid their eyes on one individual with a thick neck who seemed about to pull something out from under his coat. Him they landed just as a quick curtain fell on the act and without ado they ousted him.
The citizen began to protest loudly that he was wedged in his seat and could not stir, but two of the strong arms persuaded him that he might as well unwedge himself before something happened. The little interlude was not sufficiently stirring even to attract the notice of those in the balcony and orchestra below. [Page 284]
. . . . . . .
Everybody believed that the trouble was all past with the second act, but the third and last was the noisiest of the three.
It appeared that, failing to find any single line to which they could take exception, those who had come to protest against what they conceived to be the libelling of the Irish race were ready to take it out in one long spell of hissing.
The cue was given when the drunken Michael James, the inn keeper, came on the stage to unite with a maudlin blessing the lovers, Christopher and Margaret.
As in the second act the seat of disturbance was in the balcony and thither six plain-clothes men were hastened. Three heads were together and one man was beating time with his hand while they took relays in hissing. The plain-clothes men descended and the three were yanked from their seats without benefit of explanation.
"But we 're Englishmen," said one of them, "and we take exception to the line, 'Khaki clad cut-throats,' meaning of course the English constabulary."
"And don't call me an Irishman," said the third, while he adjusted his neck gingerly in the collar that had been tightened by the cop's grip. "I 'm a Jew and I was born in St. Joe, Missoury, and I think this play's rotten, just on general principles. And if I think so I've got a right to show it. The law holds that anybody has got as good a right to show displeasure at a play as pleasure and I saw my lawyer before I came here, and–" [Page 285]
LETTER FROM MR. JOHN QUINN
TO THE EDITOR OF A DUBLIN NEWSPAPER
DEAR SIR: Now that the Irish players have been to New York and their work seen and judged; the readers of your paper may be interested in the publication of one or two facts in connection with their visit. For some time before the company came to New York there had been threats of an organised attempt by a small coterie of Irishmen to prevent the performance of Synge's Playboy. It was difficult for many people in New York who are interested in the drama and art to take these rumours seriously. The attempt to prevent the New York public from hearing the work of these Irish players of course failed. There was an organised attempt by perhaps a hundred or a hundred and fifty Irishmen on the first night The Playboy was given here to prevent the performance by hissing and booing, and by throwing potatoes and other objects at the actors, and red pepper and asafoetida among the audience. The disturbers were ejected from the theatre by the police. All the great metropolitan papers, morning and evening, condemned this organised disturbance. The second night, some six or seven disturbers were put out of the theatre by the police, and that was the end of the long-threatened attempt to break up the performance of these plays. The issue was not between the plays and the players and the disturbers, but between the New York public and the disturbers. This fight over Synge was of vast [Page 286] importance for us as a city. One night settled that question and settled it conclusively.
I have seen in some of the daily and one of the weekly Irish papers a statement to the effect that "The Playboy was hooted from the stage. . . after the worst riot ever witnessed in a New York playhouse." The statement that it was "hooted from the stage" is of course utterly false. The greatest disorder occurred during the first act. A few minutes after the curtain fell at the end of the first act it was raised again and the statement was made by a member of the company that the act would be given entirely over again. This announcement was greeted with cheers and applause from the great majority of the audience, who indignantly disapproved the attempt of the disturbers to prevent the performance. The play was not "hooted from the stage."
The attempt to prevent by force the hearing of the play having so signally failed, a committee waited upon the Mayor of New York City the next day and demanded the suppression of the plays. The Mayor requested Chief Judge McAdoo of the Court of Special Sessions to attend the play as his representative and report to him. Judge McAdoo is an Irishman, born in Ireland, and has had a distinguished public career as member of Congress, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and Police Commissioner of New York City, and he is now Chief Judge of the Court of Special Sessions. Judge McAdoo attended the play and made a report to the Mayor completely rejecting the charges that had been made against the morals and ethics of the play. [Page 287]
Both attempts to prevent the performance of the play, the first by force and the second by appeal to the authorities, having completely failed, the work of distorting in the Irish papers what actually took place then began.
Among other things it has been stated that the Abbey Theatre company was not a success in New York. On the contrary the success of the company has been beyond anything in my personal experience. The verdict of critical and artistic New York in favour of the work of the Irish Theatre has been emphatic. The pick of the intellectual and artistic public crowded the theatre during the weeks of the company's performances here and admired and enjoyed their work. In fact intelligent New Yorkers are yet wondering what was the real cause of the attempt to prevent the hearing of the plays. This is one of the mysteries of this winter in New York. I am proud, as a citizen of New York, that New York's verdict of approval was so swift and decisive, and I am proud of New York's quick recognition of the excellence of the new Irish school of drama and acting. As a man of Irish blood, my chief regret is that organised prejudice and prejudgment should have prevented these players from getting that welcome from a section of their own countrymen that I feel sure they will secure in future years. This prejudice was created and the prejudgment was largely caused by the publication of detached sentences and quotations from the plays, while ignoring the art of the actors and the humour and poetry and imaginative beauty of the plays, [Page 288] beauties which, as Sir Philip Sidney would say, "who knoweth not to be flowers of poetry did never walk into Apollo's garden."
Not only have the New York daily papers devoted columns to the work of this company throughout their stay, giving elaborate reviews of their work and long interviews with Lady Gregory and others, but many magazines have had articles on the subject of the plays and writers and on the Irish dramatic movement generally, among others the Yale Review, the Harvard Monthly, Collier's Weekly, the Nation (two notices), the Dramatic Mirror (five notices), the Metropolitan Magazine, Munsey's Magazine, the Craftsman, Life, Harper's Weekly (containing repeated notices), the Outlook, the Bookman, and others. Lady Gregory has contributed articles to the Yale Review, the World of Today and the Delineator, and has lectured at many places upon the Irish dramatic movement. The universities and colleges have shown the liveliest interest in the movement. The professors have lectured upon the plays and the plays have been studied in the college classes and the students have been advised to read them and see the players.
"THE PLAYBOY" IN PHILADELPHIA
(Note to page 218 )
From PHILADELPHIA "NORTH AMERICAN"
January 17, 1912:–Determined to force their dramatic views on the public despite the arrests at Monday night's demonstration, several Irishmen last [Page 289] night vented their disapproval of The Playboy of the Western World which had its second production by Irish Players at the Adelphi Theatre.
They started by coughing, and they caused the player-folk to become slightly nervous. They next essayed hissing, and cries of "shame," and finally one of their number rose to his feet in a formal protest.
Plain-clothes men throughout the house quelled the slight disturbance, but at every opportunity another belligerent broke into unruly behaviour.
The disorder approached the dignity of serious rioting in the second and third acts of the piece, and at the last a man from Connemara rose in the body of the house, whipped a speech from his coat pocket, and proceeded to interrupt the players with a harangue against the morality of the play.
His philippics were short-lived. Sixteen cops in plain clothes reached him at the same time, and the red man from Connemara disappeared, while the play was being brought to a close. . . .
Extra precautions were taken by the police to preserve order at last night's performance. The lights in the back of the house were not turned down at any time except the first few minutes of the one-act play Kathleen ni Houlihan which was the curtain-raiser to the longer piece.
Evidence that there would be trouble later in the evening was plain. Nearly the whole rear part of the house downstairs was filled with Irishmen.
As the little poetic vision of the author unrolled itself and the enthusiastic and for the most part [Page 290] cultured audience was steeping itself in the lyric beauty of the lines, two whole rows of the auditors were seized with a desire to cough or clear their throats. That caused a momentary lull in the play.
Up in the top gallery a thin but insistent ventriloquist piped, "This is rotten!" Cries of "Hush!" quieted the interrupter.
In the first act of The Playboy where the bulk of the disturbance occurred Monday night, no expression of opinion was made. But just as every one was settling down to enjoy the play, confident no more interruptions would occur, the trouble began.
One of the clan downstairs cried out his disapprobation. The lights were turned on full tilt, and policemen in plain clothes sprang up from every quarter of the house. Women left their seats in fear. A misguided youth near the orchestra threw his programme, doubled into a ball, at Miss Magee. He was promptly arrested.
The play was stopped for fully five minutes until all the men who showed signs of making trouble were evicted. A number of them laid low, however, and bobbed up now and again, whenever they wanted to. It kept the cops busy hustling them out of the doors. Superintendent Taylor and Captain of the Detectives Souder were in charge of the evictions and as each man was taken out two detectives were sent with him to City Hall where all were locked in.
The climax came when near the close of the last act the man from Connaught began his oratorical flights, drowning the speeches of the actors on the stage. [Page 291] All interest then centred upon the little knot of strugglers in the main aisle of the theatre and four more Irishmen were escorted, hatless and without overcoats, to the street.
As the men were arraigned at the City Hall, William A. Gray, counsel for the offenders at Monday night's riot, appeared for them. He said he had been sent by Joseph McLaughlin, a saloon-keeper and vice-president of the A. O. H., and he obtained a copy of the charges, with a view to getting the men out on bail. . . . Mr. Gray said he intended taking the matter before the courts and asking for an injunction to prohibit further productions of the play. He said his backer was Joseph McGarrity, a wholesale liquor dealer, in business at 144 South Third Street, who was one of those ejected from the theatre on Monday night.
Headed by Joseph McLaughlin, a delegation of seven prominent members of the Irish societies of the city waited on Mayor Blankenburg yesterday with a petition asking him to stop the production of John M. Synge's comedy The Playboy of the Western World on the ground that it is immoral.
The Mayor heard the comments of the Irishmen, but with great good humour pointed out that inasmuch as he could find nothing objectionable in the play, he could not promise to stop the production.
He informed the delegation that he had previously made inquiries of the mayors of New York, Boston, and Providence, where the play had been shown, and had received answers which plainly indicated it was not necessary to stop the play. [Page 292]
(Note to page 226 )
From PHILADELPHIA "NORTH AMERICAN"
IRISH PLAYERS APPEAR IN A "COURT COMEDY"; NO DECISION
ANSWER CHARGE OF IMMORALITY BROUGHT BY LIQUOR DEALER–
"PLAYBOY" DEFENDED AND ATTACKED BY WITNESSES
January 20, 1912:–Second only in point of order, not in worth, was the unadvertised comedy participated in by the Irish Players yesterday afternoon, at a matinee performance held in Judge Carr's room in the quarter sessions court
The public flocked to see, and stayed to witness, a most complete vindication of Synge's much discussed satirisation of the Irish character. The actors arrested for appearing in The Playboy of the Western World kept, however, in the background, while counsel on both sides engaged in lively tilts with two members of the clergy and the judge and other witnesses, furnishing the crowd with entertainment.
Eleven of the Irish Players who were held in $500 bail each by Magistrate Carey, at a hearing in his office earlier in the day, threw themselves upon the mercy of the quarter sessions court, to obtain a legal decision as to whether their play violated the McNichol act of 1911, which makes it a misdemeanor to present "lascivious, sacrilegious, obscene or indecent plays." The hearing before the court was brought about by a habeas corpus proceeding. [Page 293]
Although no decision was handed down after the argument, the attitude of the court was plainly shown, by the line of questions put to various witnesses. The testimony offered by Director of Public Safety Porter, who was called by the commonwealth, indicated that no fault could be found with the play. Judge Carr reserved decision, and adjourned court until Monday.
The defendants were represented by Charles Biddle, William Redheffer, Jr., Howard H. Yocum, and John Quinn, of New York. Directly back of them, in the courtroom, sat Lady Gregory, Mrs. Henry La Barre Jayne, and W. W. Bradford, the latter representing Liebler & Co., managers of the Irish Players.
SURPRISE FOR PROSECUTOR
William A. Gray represented Joseph McGarrity, the liquor dealer, who has taken principal part in the prosecution of the actors. He was aided at times by Assistant District Attorney Fox on behalf of the commonwealth, although the latter's action in calling Director Porter to give testimony caused Mr. Gray both surprise and embarrassment, inasmuch as Mr. Porter said there was nothing in the piece to offend the most devout and reverent of women. He said he had attended the theatre with his wife and that neither of them was "shocked"; on the contrary, distinctly pleased.
Mr. Gray called Joseph McGarrity to the stand. In all seriousness and sincerity the witness testified [Page 294] that, in his opinion, The Playboy was a wicked piece and that he thought he had a perfect right to show his disapproval by protesting. He was questioned by Judge Carr as to the reason why he did not leave the theatre before he was ejected, if he thought the play was bad. He could give no adequate reply.
Mr. Gray then read passages from the book, declaring that it had been expurgated to make it presentable on the American stage. Frederick O'Donovan, one of the company, who takes the part of The Playboy, testified that productions of the play had been made in Dublin, Belfast, Cork, London, Oxford, Cambridge, Harrowgate, Boston, New York, New Haven, and Providence without causing any public disturbance except in New York, and without any criminal prosecution being brought anywhere.
It was pointed out to the court by Mr. Gray that Pennsylvania is the only State having a statute preventing immoral or sacrilegious plays and that this was of so recent a date that neither side could argue that other plays of a much more objectionable nature than this had been permitted without hindrance
Mr. Biddle and Mr. Quinn then summed up their arguments, in which the court concurred, openly. The New York lawyer paid a tribute to Philadelphia concerning the testimony of Director Porter. He said "Philadelphia ought to be proud of the manhood displayed by such a witness. He stood before this court and testified that he and his wife had witnessed the performance, and that neither was displeased by any exhibition of immorality. [Page 295]
"I say that any man who takes a lascivious meaning out of any of the lines of the play, or who declares that the piece is in any way improper, must have a depraved and an abnormal mind.
"I am ashamed that such men should come here and insult womanhood with their views. The American people are too good a judge of the Irish race to agree with them."
The court then took the case under advisement, reserving decision, counsel agreeing, under his advice, to allow the company to renew its bail bond of $5000.
(Note to page 242 )
"THE PLAYBOY" IN CHICAGO
From CHICAGO "DAILY TRIBUNE"
January 30, 1913:–Mayor Harrison last night was directed by an order passed by the city council to prohibit the presentation in Chicago of The Playboy of the Western World, a play which has caused riots and organised protests in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington when presented by the Irish Players.
What action the mayor will take he was not prepared to indicate at the conclusion of the council session. It was stated during the debate on the subject that the mayor holds discretionary powers, and with the backing of the council can prevent the play if he chooses. But there is nothing mandatory in the order of the council, which asked the mayor to cooperate with Chief of Police McWeeny.
The Mayor said he would investigate the legal phases
[Page 297] and also look into the character of the play before he decided upon steps to take.
MCINERNEY LEADS FIGHT
Ald. Michael McInerney led the movement for the council order.
"The play is a studied sarcasm on the Irish race," asserted Mr. McInerney, reading from a typewritten sheet; "it points no moral, and it teaches no lesson."
"Press agent!" shouted some one.
"No, I 'm not the press agent," asserted the alderman. "This play pictures an Irishman a coward, something that never happened, and it attacks the Irishwoman. There are no Irishmen connected with the company in any way."
In reply to a question whether Lady Gregory was Irish, McInerney replied he had not met "the lady," and then added:
"There 's a difference in being from Ireland and being Irish. There are lots of people in Ireland that are n't Irish. If you 're born in a stable, that does n't make you a horse."
Mr. Pringle stopped unanimous passage of the resolution.
"While I am not Irish," he said, "I believe Ald. McInerney knows what he is talking about; but I do not know enough about this subject to vote upon it at this time."
"Like Ald. Pringle," said Ald. Thomson, "I am not sufficiently informed, and I shall ask to be excused from voting." [Page 298]
GERMANS STRONG FOR IRISH
"Since some leading Irish organisations have chosen Germans to lead them," said Ald. Henry Utpatel, "I feel that that fact alone makes them a great race, and I shall vote with Ald. McInerney."
"Would you like to hear from the Poles?" asked Ald. Frank P. Danisch.
"That 's all right," said McInerney, "if this play is presented there will come along a play insulting the Poles or some other race. It is not right for Chicago to let any race be insulted."
The order was then adopted, Ald. Pringle and Thomson voting in the negative.
(Note to page 246 )
From CHICAGO "RECORD-HERALD"
February 1, 1912:–Chicago's City Council erred in passing an order directing the mayor and the chief of police to stop the production The Playboy of the Western World according to an opinion sent to Mayor Harrison yesterday by William H. Sexton, the city's corporation counsel.
The brief was prepared by William Dillon, brother of John Dillon, the Irish nationalist leader, one of Mr. Sexton's assistants. It held that the counsel order was of no legal effect, although the mayor could suppress the play if he decided that it was immoral or against public policy. Mr. Dillon further declared that the mayor would not be legally right in prohibiting the production. [Page 299]
"I read three pages of the book," declared Mayor Harrison, "and instead of finding anything immoral I found that the whole thing was wonderfully stupid. I shall abide by the corporation's opinion."
Interview for NEW YORK "EVENING SUN"
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW ON THE IRISH PLAYERS
"I presume, Mr. Shaw, you have heard the latest news of your Blanco Posnet in America with the Irish Players?" he was asked.
"No. Why? Has it failed?" Mr. Shaw answered.
"Quite the contrary," he was assured.
"Oh, in that case why should I hear about it?" he said. "Success is the usual thing with my plays; it is what I write them for. I only hear about them when something goes wrong."
"But are you not interested in the success of the Irish Players? Or was that a matter of course too?"
"By no means," Mr. Shaw answered. " I warned Lady Gregory that America was an extremely dangerous country to take a real Irish company to."
"But why? Surely America, with its immense Irish element–"
"Rubbish! There are not half a dozen real Irishmen in America outside that company of actors!" he exclaimed. "You don't suppose that all these Murphys and Doolans and Donovans and Farrells and Caseys and O'Connells who call themselves by romantic names like the Clan-na-Gael and the like are Irishmen! You know the sort of people I mean. They call Ireland the Old Country. . . . [Page 300]
"Shall I tell you what they did in Dublin to the Irish Players? There was a very great Irish dramatic poet, who died young, named John Synge–a real Irish name–just the sort of name the Clan-na-Gael never think of.
"Well, John Synge wrote a wonderful play called The Playboy of the Western World, which is now a classic. This play was not about an Irish peculiarity, but about a universal weakness of mankind: the habit of admiring bold scoundrels. Most of the heroes of history are bold scoundrels, you will notice. English and American boys read stories about Charles Peace, the burglar, and Ned Kelly, the highwayman, and even about Teddy Roosevelt, the rough-rider. The Playboy is a young man who brags of having killed his father, and is made almost as great a hero as if he were an Italian general who had killed several thousand other people's fathers. Synge satirises this like another Swift, but with a joyousness and a wild wealth of poetic imagery that Swift never achieved. Well, sir, if you please, this silly Dublin Clan-na-Gael, or whatever it called itself, suddenly struck out the brilliant idea that to satirise the follies of humanity is to insult the Irish nation, because the Irish nation is, in fact, the human race and has no follies, and stands there pure and beautiful and saintly to be eternally oppressed by England and collected for by the Clan. There were just enough of them to fill the Abbey Street Theatre for a night or two to the exclusion of the real Irish people, who simply get sick when they hear this sort of balderdash talked about [Page 301] Ireland. Instead of listening to a great play by a great Irishman they bawled and whistled and sang 'God Save Ireland' (not without reason, by the way), and prevented themselves from hearing a word of the performance. . . ."
"Do you think there will be trouble with the Clan in New York?"
"I think there may be trouble anywhere where there are men who have lost touch with Ireland and still keep up the old bragging and posing. You must bear in mind that Ireland is now in full reaction against them. The stage Irishman of the nineteenth century, generous, drunken, thriftless, with a joke always on his lips and a sentimental tear always in his eye, was highly successful as a borrower of money from Englishmen–both in Old and New England–who indulged and despised him because he flattered their sense of superiority. But the real Irishman of today is so ashamed of him and so deeply repentant for having ever stooped to countenance and ape him in the darkest days of the Captivity that the Irish Players have been unable to find a single play by a young writer in which Ireland is not lashed for its follies. We no longer brazen out the shame of our subjection by idle boasting. Even in Dublin, that city of tedious and silly derision where men can do nothing but sneer, they no longer sneer at other nations. In a modern Irish play the hero doesn't sing that 'Ould Ireland' is his country and his name it is Molloy; he pours forth all his bitterness on it like the prophets of old.
"The last time I saw an Irish play in Dublin, the [Page 302] line on which the hero made his most effective exit was 'I hate Ireland.' Even in the plays of Lady Gregory, penetrated as they are by that intense love of Ireland which is unintelligible to the many drunken blackguards with Irish names who make their nationality an excuse for their vices and their worthlessness there is no flattery of the Irish; she writes about the Irish as Molière wrote about the French, having a talent curiously like Molière.
"In the plays of Mr. Yeats you will find many Irish heroes, but nothing like 'the broth of a boy.' Now you can imagine the effect of all this on the American pseudo-Irish, who are still exploiting the old stage Ireland for all it is worth, and defiantly singing: 'Who fears to speak of '98?' under the very nose of the police–that is, the New York police, who are mostly Fenians. Their notion of patriotism is to listen jealously for the slightest hint that Ireland is not the home of every virtue and the martyr of every oppression, and thereupon to brawl and bully or to whine and protest, according to their popularity with the bystanders. When these people hear a little real Irish sentiment from the Irish Players they will not know where they are; they will think that the tour of the Irish company is an Orange conspiracy financed by Mr. Balfour."
"Have you seen what the Central Council of the Irish County Association of Greater Boston says about the Irish Players?"
"Yes; but please do not say I said so; it would make them insufferably conceited to know that their [Page 303] little literary effort had been read right through by me. You will observe that they begin by saying that they know their Ireland as children know their mother. Not a very happy bit of rhetoric that, because children never do know their mothers; they may idolise them or fear them, as the case may be, but they don't know them.
"But can you conceive a body of Englishmen or Frenchmen or Germans publishing such silly stuff about themselves or their country? If they said such a thing in Ireland they would be laughed out of the country. They declare that they are either Irish peasants or the sons of Irish peasants. What on earth does the son of an American emigrant know about Ireland? Fancy the emigrant himself, the man who has left Ireland to stew in its own juice, talking about feeling toward Ireland as children feel toward their mother. Of course a good many children do leave their mothers to starve; but I doubt if that was what they meant. No doubt they are peasants–a name, by the way, which they did not pick up in Ireland, where it is unknown–for they feel toward literature and art exactly as peasants do in all countries; that is, they regard them as departments of vice–of what policemen call gayety. . . .
"Good heavens! " exclaimed Bernard Shaw, waving a cutting from the Post in his hand, "see how they trot out all the old rubbish. 'Noble and impulsive,' 'generous, harum-scarum, lovable characters,' 'generosity, wit, and triumphant true love'; these are the national characteristics they modestly claim as Irish- [Page 304] men who know Ireland as children know their mother. . . ."
"May I ask one more question, Mr. Shaw? Who is the greatest living Irishman?"
"Well, there are such a lot of them. Mr. Yeats could give you off-hand the names of six men, not including himself or myself, who may possibly turn out to be the greatest of us all; for Ireland since she purified her soul from the Clan-na-Gael nonsense, is producing serious men; not merely Irishmen, you understand–for an Irishman is only a parochial man after all–but men in the fullest international as well as national sense–the wide human sense."
"There is an impression in America, Mr. Shaw, that you regard yourself as the greatest man that ever lived."
"I dare say. I sometimes think so myself when the others are doing something exceptionally foolish. But I am only one of the first attempts of the new Ireland. She will do better–probably has done better already–though the product is not yet grown up enough to be interviewed. Good morning."
From "THE GAELIC AMERICAN"
WHAT THE IRISH COUNTY ASSOCIATIONS OF BOSTON SAID OF BERNARD SHAW
January 13, 1912:–The writer of such fool conceptions is as blind as an eight-hour-old puppy to the operation of all spiritual agencies in the life of man. Shaw's writings bear about the same relation to [Page 305] genuine literature as Bryan O'Lynn's extemporised timepiece, a scooped out turnip with a cricket within, does to the Greenwich Observatory. . . .
Shaw stumbles along the bogs, morasses, and sand dunes of literature, without a terminal, leading the benighted and lost wayfarers still farther astray. His unhappy possession of infinite egotism and his utter lack of common sense make of him a rara avis indeed, a cross between a peacock and a gander. . . .
In conclusion let us say before we again notice this Barnum of literature he must produce a clean bill of sanity, superscribed by some reputable alienist.
