Three Wonder Plays Part 36

I have been looking at its first scenario, made according to my habit in rough pen and ink sketches, coloured with a pencil blue and red, and the changes from that early idea do not seem to have been very great, except that in the scene where Conan now hears the secret of the hiding-place of the Spell from the talk of the cats, the Bellows had been at that time left beside him by a dwarf from the rath, in his sleep. The cats work better, and I owe their success to the genius of our Stage Carpenter, Mr. Sean Barlow, whose head of the Dragon from my play of that name had been such a masterpiece that I longed to see these other enchanted heads from his hand.

The name of the play in that first scenario was "The Fault-Finder," but my cranky Conan broke from that narrowness. If the play has a moral it is given in the words of the Mother, "It's best make changes little by little, the same as you'd put clothes upon a growing child." The restlessness of the time may have found its way into Conan's mind, or as some critic wrote, "He thinks of the Bellows as Mr. Wilson thought of the League of Nations," and so his disappointment comes. As A.E. writes in "The National Being," "I am sympathetic with idealists in a hurry, but I do not think the world can be changed suddenly by some heavenly alchemy, as St. Paul was smitten by a light from the overworld. Though the heart in us cries out continually, 'Oh, hurry, hurry to the Golden Age,' though we think of revolutions, we know that the patient marshalling of human forces is wisdom.... Not by revolutions can humanity be perfected. I might quote from an old oracle, 'The G.o.ds are never so turned away from man as when he ascends to them by disorderly methods.' Our spirits may live in the Golden Age but our bodily life moves on slow feet, and needs the lantern on the path and the staff struck carefully into the darkness before us to see that the path beyond is not a mora.s.s, and the light not a will o' the wisp." (But this may not refer to our own Revolution, seeing that has been making a step now and again towards what many judged to be a will o' the wisp through over seven hundred years.)

As to the machinery of the play, the spell was first to have been worked by a harp hung up by some wandering magician, and that was to work its change according to the wind, as it blew from north or south, east or west.

But that would have been troublesome in practice, and the Bellows having once entered my mind, brought there I think by some scribbling of the pencil that showed Conan protecting himself with an umbrella, seemed to have every necessary quality, economy, efficiency, convenience.

As to Aristotle, his name is a part of our folklore. The old wife of one of our labourers told me one day, as a bee buzzed through the open door: "Aristotle of the Books was very wise but the bees got the better of him in the end. He wanted to know how did they pack the comb, and he wasted the best part of a fortnight watching them, and he could not see them doing it. Then he made a hive with a gla.s.s cover on it and put it over them, and he thought to watch them. But when he went to put his eye to the gla.s.s, they had it all covered with wax so that it was as black as the pot, and he was as blind as before.

He said he was never rightly killed till then. The bees had him beat that time surely." And Douglas Hyde brought home one day a story from Kilmacduagh bog, in which Aristotle took the place of Solomon, the Wise Man in our tales as well as in those of the East. And he said that as the story grew and the teller became more familiar, the name of Aristotle was shortened to that of Harry.

As to the songs they are all sung to the old Irish airs I give at the end.

A. GREGORY.

August 18, 1921.

THE JESTER

A PLAY IN THREE ACTS

FOR RICHARD

January, 1919

A.G.

PERSONS

_The Five Princes_.

_The Five Wrenboys_.

_The Guardian of the Princes and Governor of the Island_.

_The Servant_.

_The Two Dowager Messengers_.

_The Ogre_.

_The Jester_.

_Two Soldiers_.

_The Scene is laid in The Island of Hy Brasil, that appears every seven years_.

_Time: Out of mind_.

ACT I

ACT I

_Scene: A winter garden, with pots of flowering trees or fruit-trees. There are books about and some benches with cus.h.i.+ons on them and many cus.h.i.+ons on the ground. The young_ PRINCES _are sitting or lying at their ease. One is playing "Home, Sweet Home" on a harp. The_ SERVANT--_an old man_--_is standing in the background_.

_1st Prince_: Here, Gillie, will you please take off my shoe and see what there is in it that is pressing on my heel.

_Servant_: (_Taking it off and examining it_.) I see nothing.

_1st Prince_: Oh, yes, there is something; I have felt it all the morning. I have been thinking this long time of taking the shoe off, but I waited for you.

_Servant_: All I can find is a grain of poppy seed.

_1st Prince_: That is it of course--it was enough to hurt my skin.

_2nd Prince_: Gillie, there is a mayfly tickling my cheek. Will you please brush it away.

_Servant_: I will and welcome. (_Fans it off_.)

_3rd Prince_: Just give me, please, that book that is near my elbow. I cannot reach to it without taking my hand off my cheek.

_Servant_: I wouldn't wish you to do that.

(_Gives him book_.)

_4th Prince_: Gillie, I think, I am nearly sure, there is a feather in this cus.h.i.+on that has the quill in it yet. I feel something hard.

_Servant_: Give it to me till I will open it and make a search.

_4th Prince_: No, wait a while till I am not lying on it. I will put up with the discomfort till then.

_5th Prince_: Would it give you too much trouble, Gillie, when you waken me in the morning, to come and call me three times, so that I can have the joy of dropping off again?

_Servant_: Why wouldn't I? And there is a thing I would wish to know. There will be a supper laid out here this evening for the Dowager Messengers that are coming to the Island, and I would wish to provide for yourselves whatever food would be pleasing to you.

_1st Prince_: It is too warm for eating. All I will ask is a few grapes from Spain.

_2nd Prince_: A mouthful of jelly in a silver spoon ...or in the shape of a little castle with towers. When will the Lady Messengers be here?

_Servant_: Not before the fall of day.