Theatre Business: The Correspondence of the First Abbey Theatre Directors William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory and J. M. Synge ed. by Ann Saddlemyer

Abstract

per cent on the original price should be inflicted on Canadian buyers; but, since the case is all too typical, the long-term effects on scholarly publishing, and even on scholarship and teaching, are alarming to contemplate. n o r m a n p a g e / University of Alberta Ann Saddlemyer, sel. and ed., Theatre Business: The Correspondence of the First Abbey Theatre Directors William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory and J. M. Synge (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press; London: Colin Smythe Limited, 1982). 330. $20.00 One might be forgiven for wondering what on earth could remain to be said about the formative years of the Abbey Theatre. Surely from the small mountain of monographs and the sea of articles on the subject we know all there is to know. One’s first impression of Professor Saddlemyer’s book is that it would have filled a vacant niche even a decade ago; but that the work of the 1960s and 1970s (some of it Saddlemyer’s own) has rendered it redundant, particularly with the first volume of Synge’s letters already in print (again edited by the indefatigable Saddlemyer). Nevertheless, Theatre Business is a worthwhile volume to rest on the shelf next to Maurice Bour­ geois’s John Millington Synge and the Irish Theatre (1913), Alan Price’s Synge and Anglo-Irish Drama (1961), Brenna Clarke’s The Emergence of the Irish Peasant Play at the Abbey Theatre (1975), E. H. Mikhail’s /. M. Synge: Interviews and Recollections (1977), and Hogan and Kilroy’s The Abbey Theatre: The Years of Synge igog-igog (1978). Theatre Business is a compilation of the correspondence of the first Abbey Theatre directors: W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and J. M. Synge. It observes proper chronology and consistency of presentation: the letters are tran­ scribed in full and in sequence as far as possible (though some remain un­ dated). Saddlemyer’s passion for exactitude has led her to preserve the spelling and punctuation errors of the correspondents; and somehow it does bring us closer to their personalities to know that on occasions Yeats used the spelling “dispise,” and Synge “resussitate,” or that Lady Gregory (whose spelling seems to have been flawless) habitually omitted the possessive apos­ trophe. Nor is this desire for accuracy misplaced. Saddlemyer seems bent on combatting the carelessness of previous scholars; and in particular her book is an important corrective to the serious errors of transcription found in Hogan and Kilroy’s The Abbey Theatre: The Years of Synge. For example, it is illuminating to realize that when Synge was writing to Yeats about the painter Mrs. Taquair he did not call her “Mrs. Maguire” as recorded on 99 p. 72 of Hogan and Kilroy! Unfortunately, however, there is a problem with Saddlemyer’s own transcription of one of Synge’s letters, in which she may have to defer to Hogan and Kilroy. According to their book, Synge, in a letter to Yeats about a play by William Boyle which needed revising, wrote I rather agree with Fay that you would be more likely to get Boyle to put it to rights than Colum. Boyle would be sure to resent in his heart having Colum appointed to direct him. To me that sentence makes more sense than the following, which is Saddle­ myer’s version: I rather agree with Fay that you would be more likely to get Boyle to put it to rights than Colum appointed to direct him. Am I right in sensing an accidental ellipsis here? If, as I suspect, a line of print is missing, it should be re-inserted before a second edition of the book is contemplated. In electing to confine herself to the correspondence of the Abbey’s first directors, Saddlemyer condemns herself and us to a legion of footnotes, whose task is to explain the behaviour of the colourful characters that the letters are mostly about. Indeed, I hope it is no disservice to the mighty trio of writers represented to state that in this instance the more interesting figures seem to be the ones offstage. How one would like to hear from the “starry Fays” (William and Frank), from the dangerous Miss...