Unity of Theme, Image, and Diction in The Silver Tassie

Abstract

When, in 1928, Yeats rejected O'Casey's manuscript of The Silver Tassie for use by the Abbey Theatre, among his unfavorable comments on the play were the following: "There is no dominating character, no dominating action, neither psychological unity nor unity of action ...", and "there should be no room in a play for anything that does not belong to it . ..." While the succeeding years have discredited much of Yeats's argument, I shall use the two criticisms I have quoted as my point of departure, for contrary to Yeats, unity and lack of irrelevancy are the most striking features of The Silver Tassie. Despite the fact that the play is part realistic and part expressionistic, its scenes and actions are interrelated. Even those scenes seemingly present for their comic relief alone sound echoes of earlier scenes. On the verbal and imagistic levels, the idiom of the play, though varied, is never haphazard. Image groups and speech patterns can be traced which bridge the gap between the realistic and the expressionistic. Recurrent themes fuse the two dramatic styles. The most important recurring theme is a concern with various aspects of and interrelationships among religion , violence, love and prayer. The most striking group of recurring images refers to the animal world. I shall discuss each of these, and then turn briefly to a consideration of other recurring themes and images, as well as to recurring patterns of speech.