ΧΙ A DRAMATIST OF CHANGING IRELAND HE production in America by the Irish players from the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, of Lennox Robinson's comedy, The White-headed Boy, reawakens interest in a neglected decade of AngloIrish literature, 1911-1921, — and particularly in Mr. Robinson's own work, most of which falls within that period. During the World War it was natural that little attention should be given to the progress of writing in Ireland; the Rebellion of 1916, in which Irish poets played prominent parts, and the death in Flanders of the nature poet, Francis Ledwidge, were occasions of momentary exceptions. But the work of Irish authors in the last ten years should be familiar to all who would follow and understand the changing temper of Ireland. No Irish writer more faithfully interprets this time than the realist, Lennox Robinson. Still in his thirties, he is one of the most noteworthy of the coterie influenced by Synge to turn their talents to the interpretation of contemporary Irish life. Like Synge, Mr. Robinson has done the greater part of his work for the theatre. At the outset of his career he showed unusual dramatic ability, and he has now developed firm technique. Even ten years ago Lady Gregory and Mr. Yeats had so high an opinion of the young playwright that they asked him to accompany them to this country; he has since become manager of the Abbey Theatre, and his new play not only has been given in Ireland but has been one of the recent successes in London. Lennox Robinson is a dramatist of assured position. Mr. Robinson's plays may be divided into two groups: those describing rural and small-town life in Ireland, and those dealing more or less remotely with Irish politics. To the first group belongs his earliest play, The Clancy Name, succeeded by The Crossroads, Harvest, and The White-headed Boy, the last produced originally in Dublin, on December 13, 1916. Between The Crossroads and The Whiteheaded Boy come the political plays, Patriots and The Dreamers. Mr. Robinson's latest play, The Lost Leader, is likewise of this class. The author's only novel, A Young Man from the South, and his Eight Short Stories were also published in this later period, although the novel was written before the Easter Rebellion. Both prose volumes complement the plays. The novel is a penetrating study of a young man of Southern Unionist heritage in evolution from intense political conservatism to the physical-force radicalism of the Sinn Fein Party; the short stories are mainly accounts of life in that southern Ireland where Mr. Robinson himself was born, the son of a clergyman in County Cork. The novel gives pictures of intellectual society in Dublin, and of the relations between unionists and nationalists, invaluable to the historian of the psychology behind the 1916 Rebellion; the identification of characters is, perhaps, as the foreword suggests, idle, but the fictitious Isabel Moore clearly suggests the Countess Markievicz, and other figures in the book bear resemblance to well-known persons in the Irish capital. Of the short stories, "The Chalice" is a charming, though brief, psychological study of a priest of the Church of Ireland in a southern community. As is to be expected, the author's prose fiction is dramatic in method; for the subject of novel or sketch Mr. Robinson chooses one or more striking situations, and develops his theme largely by means of dialogue; so that the best idea of his powers is to be gained by studying him as a dramatist. The Crossroads, his first long play, indicates Lennox Robinson's natural aptitude for suspense, situation, and climax. His plays are not closet drama. The Ibsen-like touch at the close of The Crossroads (in which the heroine is on the point of leaving her husband for her lover) becomes merely a device for complicating the suspense. Harvest and The Clancy Name are instinct with dramatic irony; there is a poignancy in Harvest suggestive of Synge. Although more melodramatic and less universal in theme, The Clancy Name may be compared favorably with Riders to the Sea. The political plays, Patriots and The Dreamers, show their author's growing command of technique: the final act of Patriots is of extraordinary emotional intensity; while The Dreamers, based upon Robert Emmet's abortive rebellion in 1803, in proving the author's ability sharply to differentiate among forty characters, marks him as possessing the power that distinguishes dramatist from playwright, the power of creating men and women with the semblance of reality. The fantastic Lost Leader, dealing with a reincarnated Parnell, is the work of a finished craftsman experimenting. It is surprising that any American manager should have attempted to produce in this country a play requiring for its comprehension so intimate a knowledge of the intricacies of Irish politics as does this subtle satire on Unionist, Nationalist, and Sinn Feiner. Mr. Robinson portrays not only the hardships of Irish life, of peasant farmer, small shopkeeper, politician, but the idealism of Irish character, often a prey to its own defects. Timothy Hurley, in Harvest, because he has brought himself to the verge of ruin by educating his children and starting them in positions in life superior to that he occupies, burns his own property to obtain the insurance; the idealism of James Nugent's associates in Patriots is undermined by material prosperity. By showing Irish men dissatisfied with their condition in life, with their fellow countrymen, yet struggling to hold a vision always before, although beyond, them, Mr. Robinson helps to explain why Sinn Fein, despite contradictions and illogicalities, has made such headway in Ireland. He is the dramatist of Irish discontent. A comparison between Robinson and Synge has already been suggested. Both have written of the Ireland of their day, yet Mr. Robinson is the more faithful realist, for he does not stamp his personality upon his dramas as did Synge. This may be due somewhat to the greater variety of people in Mr. Robinson's plays; he writes not only of the country but of the town, whereas Synge dealt almost exclusively with peasant life in remote districts. Synge, moreover, was always a protestant against circumstance; in all his work he stressed the aspirations rather than the failures of his characters; in the last analysis he is a romanticist, or an idealist, rather than a complete realist. Mr. Robinson, on the other hand, although he shows the dreams of his characters, shows with equal emphasis their thwarting; he stands outside his people, almost indifferent to their fate; circumstance leads them whither it will. Perhaps Synge's extraordinary ear for prose cadence was partly responsible for the emphasis he placed upon the imaginings of his people, who speak in language that is a garnering of picturesque phrases |