Collaborative One-Act Plays, 1901-1903: Cathleen ni Houlihan, The Pot Of Broth, The Country Of The Young, Heads or Harps

by W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory

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From reviews of The Cornell Yeats series: "For students of Yeats the whole series is bound to become an essential reference source and a stimulus to important critical re-readings of Yeats's major works. In a wider context, the series will also provide an extraordinary and perhaps unique insight into the creative process of a great artist."--Irish Literary Supplement "I consider the Cornell Yeats one of the most important scholarly projects of our time."--A. Walton Litz, Princeton show more University, coeditor of The Collected Poems of William Carols Williams and Personae: The Shorter Poems of Ezra Pound "The most ambitious of the many important projects in current studies of Yeats and perhaps of modern poetry generally.... The list of both general and series editors, as well as prospective preparers of individual volumes, reads like a Who's Who of Yeats textual studies in North America. Further, the project carries the blessing of Yeats's heirs and bespeaks an ongoing commitment from a major university press.... The series will inevitably engender critical studies based on a more solid footing than those of any other modern poet.... Its volumes will be consulted long after gyres of currently fashionable theory have run on."--Yeats Annual (1983) The four short works collected in this book were among the earliest plays to be authored collaboratively by W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory. Written in the pivotal years during which the "Irish Literary Theatre" experiment of 1899-1901 began to evolve into what would become the Abbey Theatre, they show both writers engaging with questions central to the early Irish dramatic movement: How should "Irishness" be represented on the stage? To what extent should artists engage directly with Nationalist politics? And what role might literature play in the creation of a new Ireland? The manuscripts presented here chart the evolution of two plays published over Yeats's name: "Cathleen ni Houlihan"--the pair's most successful collaboration, and the work that confirmed Yeats's credentials as a Nationalist writer--and the "peasant" farce "The Pot of Broth." This book also includes manuscript material for "The Country of the Young" and "Heads or Harps," which the writers left unpublished and unproduced during their lifetimes. show less

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William Butler Yeats

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William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin, Ireland on June 13, 1865. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and, along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn, and others, founded the Abbey Theatre, where he served as its chief playwright until the movement was joined by John Synge. Yeats' plays included The Countess Cathleen, The Land of show more Heart's Desire, Cathleen ni Houlihan, The King's Threshold, and Deirdre. Although a convinced patriot, Yeats deplored the hatred and the bigotry of the Nationalist movement, and his poetry is full of moving protests against it. He was appointed to the Irish Senate in 1922. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923 for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." He is one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the Nobel Prize. His poetry collections include The Wild Swans at Coole, Michael Robartes and the Dancer, The Tower, The Winding Stair and Other Poems, and Last Poems and Plays. He died on January 28, 1939 at the age of 73. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

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