Profiles of a Poet

Abstract

THE YEAR NINETEEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE was not the best of times for the Abbey Theatre. Its finances were at their lowest ebb. Ireland's war of independence was rising to a peak-point; the notorious Black-and-Tans were loose upon the land; the streets of Joyce's Dublin were pocked with daily and nightly ambushes; a British curfew declared that citizens must be within their dwellings by 8:00 p.m. When a 9:00 p.m. curfew closed all the other theatres, the Abbey had remained defiantly open, but the additional hour was just one hour too much. Shaw, Yeats, and Lady Gregory, taking advantage of this temporary closure, gave lectures in London to help to keep the Abbey's doors open and to payoff its debt to the bank. Most of the Theatre's leading players had gone off to the U.S. on a tour of Lennox Robinson's The Whiteheaded Boy leaving behind a handful of part-time players—of whom I was a junior member—a promising School of Acting and a seasoned actor from the main company who remained behind to direct the School. A gift of £ 500 from Lady Ardilaun, added to the takings from the London lectures, gave the Theatre a new lease of life and, as soon as the British lifted their curfew to a more reasonable hour from the Theatre's point of view, Lady Gregory left the Black-and-Tan terror of Coole Park, Galway, for the Black-and-Tan terror of Abbey Street, Dublin, and ordered rehearsals to commence