Seanchan 's Quest Restoring of the Poet's Right in Yeasts' Play The King's Threshold

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), the prominent Irish poet and dramatist was one of the foremost figures of twentieth-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Revival, and together with lady Gregory and Edward Martyn established the Abby Theatre, and served as its chief playwright during its early years. He was awarded the Noble Prize in literature for his always inspired poetry which in a highly artistic form gave expression to the spirit of a whole nation. The paper aims at analyzing the poet's quest for social freedom and poet's right in the state. The King's Threshold was first performed by the Irish National Theatre Society at the Molesworth Hall, in Dublin on 7 October, 1903. It is founded upon a Midieval-Irish story of the demands of the poets at the court of King Guaire at Gort, Co. Galway; it was also influenced by Edwin Ellis's play Sancan the bard (1905) which was published ten years earlier, by Edwin Ellis.

“A Play She Could Act in Dublin”

Chapter 2 follows the embodiments of Cathleen ni Houlihan by Maud Gonne and the tensions over ownership of that play, written with Lady Gregory with Gonne’s contributions to the staging, and created out of Yeats’s disappointment that Gonne rejected The Countess Cathleen. Beginning with Gonne’s real-life visitation dressed as a poor old woman at her own home, rented by Yeats, during the influenza pandemic of 1918 when she was on the run from the authorities, the chapter then explores Yeats’s earliest work with Gonne, challenging the “muse” designation, and focusing instead on Maud Gonne’s skills as a theatrical and political performer. The tensions over the ownership of that play between Yeats and Gonne show the two struggling over class, performance, and definitions of Irishness.

Collaboration and Yeats’s Deirdre

This chapter begins with the actual deaths of each of the actresses who contributed to Yeats’s Deirdre, stressing what is at stake in who gets credit for theatrical performance and then arguing for the different role each actress played in the development of this play. Yeats’s dependence on Lady Gregory, Maud Gonne, Florence Farr, Sara Allgood, Florence Darragh, and Mrs. Patrick Campbell in the creation of Deirdre clashed with his obsession with class-based individuality. Deirdre, like Yeats’s earliest plays written with and for Laura Armstrong, dramatizes the death of the heroine. Yeats tried to mold the Deirdre he wanted from actresses who appealed to him because they seemed other, different from the largely middle-class Abbey company, and reflective of his own ideal of female Irishness. The arguments between Yeats as writer and director and the actresses find their way into these revisions, changes that highlight tensions between gendered versions of events. The competing Deirdres of the Abbey and Yeats’s thousand pages of revisions show attempts to claim contested ground. The history of the play reveals tensions around ownership and representation as the women who inspired and performed the part revised Yeats’s initial vision and challenged Yeats’s idea of solitary, aristocratic ownership.

A “Brutal” Deirdre

Molly Allgood helped Synge with Deirdre of the Sorrows, discussing drafts with him, performing scenes he was struggling to write, even as he neared death in his hospital room, and helping to access the draft from Synge’s family after his death. She then completed the draft with Yeats and Lady Gregory as she knew best what Synge wanted from the play, and performed in the premier. This chapter argues for the collaborative nature of this play and the importance of the dying and dead female body onstage, an embodiment that became more important to Synge as he neared death and as he grew closer to Molly. The chapter closes with a look at Molly Allgood’s death in poverty from a fire as part of the argument that who gets credit for writing plays has real-world consequences for the bodies of the women who performed. In other words, Molly Allgood suffered physically from that erasure

THE PECULIARITIES OF IRISHISMS IN IRISH ENGLISH WITHIN THE PERIOD OF THE IRISH LITERARY REVIVAL (END OF THE 19TH – BEGINNING OF THE 20th CENTURY)

The article deals with the analysis of borrowings from the Irish language in Irish English within the period of the Irish literary revival (end of the 19th century – beginning of the 20th century) borrowed in the context of linguo-cultural communication. The article also examines the factors that affect the dynamics and productivity of such borrowings, among which – the absence of competitive equivalents in English, a necessity to establish social contacts between English and Irish speakers and cultures, the revival of Irish autochthonous elements, and others. Four main historic periods of borrowings in the course of Anglo-Irish contacts are schematically outlined with the article concentrating on the third period, i.e. the Gaelic Revival. The material for the article is based on the literary texts of the English-speaking Irish authors of late 19th and early 20th cc. (William Butler Yeats, Isabella Augusta Gregory (Lady Gregory), George William Russell (alias AE) and John Millington Synge). The peculiar features of Irish borrowings, their use and functions were examined as well. The expedience for a further study of borrowing tendencies and assimilation of Irish vocabulary in Irish English was substantiated, which would contribute to understanding the mechanisms and consequences of linguistic and cultural interaction in Ireland.