Cold Passion: A Study OfThe Herne's Egg

Abstract

IN HIS EARLIER PLAYS Yeats was intent on building up illusion, on fortifying the matter of myth against the hostile intrusions of the unbeliever. The Romantic virtues he presented could be regarded ironically only by the enemy, and all the irony within the plays was expended on the characters lacking faith in the supremacy of the imagination and unwilling to commit themselves to some image of desirable perfection. In the later plays he is both surer of his ability to create illusion with authority and more indifferent to the need to do so. Consequently he dares to be ironic about myth and finally (in The Death of Cuchulain) about himself. The Green Helmet (1910) is the last play in which the hero receives unqualified approval. The later plays do not, I think, ever repudiate either myth or romance, but they gain by being read with a sense of humor. They are at once more lyrically intense and more intellectually playful. Yeats trusts his power of incantation more but has less hope that his ideas will be found persuasive.