Yeats's Country Of The Young

Abstract

Among the manuscripts and typescripts left by W. B. Yeats in the possession of his wife are two unpublished plays, one an unfinished manuscript consisting of two dialogues written in Yeats's inimitable, nearly undecipherable handwriting and the other a rough typescript inaccurately punctuated and proofread. The first was written in 1918 during the period of Yeats's interest in the Noh drama and has to do with a young girl, who lives as a goatherd in an old tower on a hill, and her lover, whose mother wants to block their marriage. This play is mentioned by Birgit Bjersby (though she makes an inaccurate quotation from the MS.) in her study of the Cuchulain legend in Yeats's works. The second play has been mentioned, as far as I know, only by Allen Wade. It is of interest chiefly for three reasons. First, it forms a dramatic milieu for “The Happy Townland,” a poem which Yeats liked well enough to preserve in his Collected Poems. Second, it throws some light upon Yeatsian symbology. And third, it is an example of a collaboration between Yeats and Lady Gregory. Allen Wade mentions this play only to assert that it evidently no longer exists. But four years ago a typescript of the play was shown to me by Mrs. Yeats. I found it to be a variation upon Lady Gregory's play, The Travelling Man.