CROSSING BORDERS: MOORE AND YEATS IN THE THEATRE

Abstract

George Moore's literary work crossed many borders, as described in the essays in this collection, but it was the breaching of a very particular type of border - an intellectual and moral one, which caused the sundering of his relationship with his great contemporary and onetime friend, the poet and playwright W.B. Yeats. In this essay I will look at how, following one reasonably successful collaboration, the trust which is necessary between collaborating writers and the recognition that borders must be agreed and sustained, as they had been, although with considerable difficulty and much argument, in their first collaboration, broke down in their ill-fated effort to work together to produce the play which was eventually published in 1902 under Yeats' name as Where There Is Nothing.Moore and Yeats first met in the Cheshire Cheese pub in London in May 1894. Yeats was twenty-nine years old with books such as The Wanderings of Oisin, The Countess Cathleen and various legends and lyrics, The Celtic Twilight, and the recently published play The Land of Heart 's Desire to his name, while Moore, thirteen years older, had already published eight novels, including A Modern Lover, A Drama in Muslin and Esther Waters, as well as books of poetry, plays and essays.At this meeting, the conversation, as described by Moore in Ave, turned after some initial fencing, to talk of the theatre and of Moore's experience in writing and producing his play The Strike at Arlingford in London in February the previous year. However, notwithstanding a common interest in the theatre, the relationship between the two writers did not immediately prosper and it was more than a year before they met again when both were living in the Temple area in London. During the next few years their acquaintance developed with some support from Lady Gregory, and while Moore was not in the west of Ireland in the summer of 1897 when the idea for an Irish Literary Theatre was first advanced, as Adrian Frazier tells us, From the very start, however, he was part of the plans for that theatre.1 Frazier describes how Moore came to Dublin during the controversial run of Yeats' The Countess Cathleen in May 1899 and involved himself, with great delight, in the ongoing arguments about the morality of Yeats' play.In the autumn of that year, much to Lady Gregory's dismay, a proposal to collaborate on a play for the Irish Literary Theatre on the theme of Diarmuid and Grania was agreed between Moore and Yeats. Writing to his sister Lily on 1 November 1899, Yeats described the progress to date and detailed how the work was to be divided:We made the first draft while I was in Tillyra - the that is a very full & rather lengthy account of all the scenes written like a story - & Moore is now writing the play out fully. He will then give it to me «fe I will go over it all putting it into my own language so as to keep the same key through out «fe making any other changes I see fit «fe sent [for send] it back to Moore.2The collaboration over Diarmuid and Grania became increasingly fractious and generated considerable correspondence extending over a period of more than a year, much of which has been published in Volumes II and III of Yeats' Collected Letters3 and in Volume I of Letters to W.B. Yeats? A few quotations from the letters of Moore to Yeats give a flavour of his thinking and show how the supposedly agreed borders in the division of labour were under threat: My dear Yeats .... If it was your intention all along to be supreme in command I wish you had taken the scenario and written the play, and For me to hand over a play the greater part of which is written by me, for final correction is an impossible proposal.5 Yeats was prepared to concede that Moore had a greater knowledge of the stage but was not prepared to go further:On the question of style however I [will] make no concession. Here in your turn you must give way to me . …