The two great energies of the world that in Shakespeare’s day penetrated each other have fallen apart as speech and music fell apart at the Renaissance, and that has brought each to greater freedom, and we have to prepare a stage for the whole wealth of modern lyricism, for an art that is close to pure music, for those energies that would free the arts from imitation, that would ally acting to decoration and to the dance. We are not yet conscious, for as yet we have no philosophy while the opposite energy is conscious. All visible history, the discoveries of science, the discussions of politics, are with it; but as I read the world, the sudden changes, or rather the sudden revelation of future changes, are not from visible history but from its anti-self. Blake says somewhere in a Prophetic Book that things must complete themselves before they pass away, and every new logical development of the objective energy intensifies in an exact correspondence a counter energy, or rather adds to an always deepening unanalysable longing. That counter longing, having no visible past, can only become a conscious energy suddenly, in those moments of revelation which are as a flash of lightning. Are we approaching a supreme moment of self-consciousness, the two halves of the soul separate and face to face? A certain friend of mine has written upon this subject a couple of intricate poems called ‘The Faces of the Moon’ and ‘The Double Vision’ respectively, which are my continual study, and I must refer the reader to these poems for the necessary mathematical calculations. Were it not for that other gyre turning inward in exact measure with the outward whirl of its fellow, we would fall in a generation or so under some tyranny that would cease at last to be a tyranny, so perfect our acquiescence.

Constrained, arraigned, baffled, bent and unbent By these wire-jointed jaws and limbs of wood, Themselves obedient, Knowing not evil and good;

Obedient to some hidden magical breath. They do not even feel, so abstract are they, So dead beyond our death, Triumph that we obey.

W. B. YEATS.

Footnote 15:

I took the title from a book by Romain Rolland on some French theatrical experiments. ‘A People’s Theatre’ is not quite the same thing as ‘A Popular Theatre.’ The essay was published in _The Irish Statesman_ in the autumn of 1919.--W. B. Y., 1923.

Footnote 16:

I have read somewhere statistics that showed how popular education has coincided with the lessening of Shakespeare’s audience. In every chief town before it began Shakespeare was constantly played.

Footnote 17:

I live in Dublin now, and indolence and hatred of travel will probably compel me to make my experiment there after all.--W. B. Y., 1923.

THE COUNTESS CATHLEEN

‘The sorrowful are dumb for thee’

_Lament of Morion Shehone_ _for Miss Mary Bourke._

TO

MAUD GONNE

_PERSONS IN THE PLAY_

SHEMUS RUA, _a Peasant_. MARY, _his Wife_. TEIG, _his Son_. ALEEL, _a Poet_. THE COUNTESS CATHLEEN. OONA, _her Foster Mother_. Two Demons disguised as Merchants. Peasants, Servants, Angelical Beings.

_The Scene is laid in Ireland and in old times._