One-Act Plays Part 57

VAVASOUR [_suppressed intelligent joy in his eyes_]. No--o, not that, only I thought, I thought ye was goin' to--to--faint, Kats. I thought ye looked like it, Kats.

CATHERINE [_the happiness on her face vanishing, sinks on to the nearest settle_]. Uch, I'm a bad, bad woman, aye, Vavasour Jones, a _bad_ woman!

VAVASOUR [_puzzled, yet lightly_]. Nay, Kats, nay!

CATHERINE [_desperately and almost in tears_]. Ye cannot believe what I must tell ye. Lad, a year ago this night I went to the church porch, hopin', aye, prayin', ye'd be called, that I'd see your spirit walkin'.

VAVASOUR [_starting and recovering himself_]. Catherine, ye did that!

CATHERINE [_plunging on with her confession_]. Aye, lad, I did, I'd been so unhappy with the quarrelin' an' hard words. I could think of nothin' but gettin' rid of them.

VAVASOUR [_in a tone of condemnation and standing over her_]. That was bad, very bad indeed!

CATHERINE. An' then, lad, when I reached the church corner an' saw your spirit was really there, _really_ called, an' I knew ye'd not live the year out, I was frightened, but uch! lad, I was glad, I was indeed.

VAVASOUR [_looking grave_]. Catherine, 'twas a terrible thing to do!

CATHERINE [_meekly_]. Yiss, I know it now, but I didn't then. I was hard-hearted, an' I was weak with longin' to escape from it all. An'

when I ran home I was frightened, but uch! lad, I was glad, too, an'

now it hurts me so to think of it. Can you no comfort me?

VAVASOUR [_grudgingly, but not touching CATHERINE's outstretched hand_]. Aye, well, I could, but, Kats, 'twas such a terrible thing to do!

CATHERINE. Yiss, yiss, ye'll never be able to forgive me, I'm thinkin'. An' then when ye came in from the lodge, ye spoke so pleasantly to me that I was troubled. An' now the year through it has grown better an' better, an' I could think of nothin' but lovin' ye, an' wishing' ye to live, an' knowin' I was the cause of your bein'

called. Uch, lad, _can_ ye forgive me?

VAVASOUR [_slowly_]. Aye, I can, none of us is without sin; but, Catherine, it was wrong, aye, aye, 'twas a wicked thing for a woman to do.

CATHERINE [_still more meekly_]. An' then to-night, lad, I was expectin' ye to go, knowin' ye couldn't live after twelve, an' ye sittin' there so innocent an' mournful. An' when the time came, I wanted to die myself. Uch!

VAVASOUR [_sitting down beside her and putting an arm about her as he speaks in a superior tone of voice_]. No matter, dearie, now. It _was_ wrong in ye, but we're still here, an' it's been a sweet year, yiss, better nor a honeymoon, an' all the years after we'll make better nor this. There, there, Kats, let's have a bit of a wa.s.sail to celebrate our Allhallows' honeymoon, shall we?

CATHERINE [_starting to fetch a bowl_]. Yiss, lad, 'twould be fine, but, Vavasour, can ye forgive me, think, lad, for hopin', aye, an'

prayin' to see your spirit called, just wishin' that ye'd not live the year out?

VAVASOUR [_with condescension_]. Kats, I can, an' I'm not layin' it up against ye, though 'twas a wicked thing for ye to do--for anyone to do. Now, darlin', fetch the bowl.

CATHERINE [_starting for the bowl again but turning on him_].

Vavasour, how does it happen that the callin' is set aside, an' that ye're really here? Such a thing has not been in Beddgelert in the memory of man.

VAVASOUR [_with dignity_]. I'm not sayin' how it's happened, Kats, but I'm thinkin' 'tis modern times whatever, an' things have changed--aye, indeed, 'tis modern times.

CATHERINE [_sighing contentedly_]. Good! 'Tis lucky 'tis modern times whatever!

[THE CURTAIN.]

RIDERS TO THE SEA[41]

By JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE

[Footnote 41: Copyright, 1916, by L. E. Ba.s.sett. Reprinted by special arrangement with John W. Luce & Company, Boston.

Acting rights in the hands of Samuel French, 28 West 38 Street, New York.]

"He was of a dark type of Irishman, though not black-haired. Something in his air gave one the fancy that his face was dark from gravity.

Gravity filled the face and haunted it, as though the man behind were forever listening to life's case before pa.s.sing judgment.... When someone spoke to him he answered with grave Irish courtesy. When the talk became general he was silent.... His manner was that of a man too much interested in the life about him to wish to be more than a spectator. His interest was in life, not in ideas." In these words, John Masefield gives his first impressions of John Millington Synge, whom he met at a friend's house, in London, in January, 1903.

Synge, born April 16, 1871, at Newton Little, near Dublin, and dying in Dublin, March 24, 1909, belongs to that group of "inheritors of unfulfilled renown" who died before the prime of life was reached. He left six plays, notable the _Riders to the Sea_ and _Deirdre of the Sorrows_, that are among the greatest in our language. He was delicate from the beginning, and after some education in private schools in Dublin and Bray, left school when about fourteen and studied with a tutor. In 1892 he took his B.A. degree from Trinity College, Dublin, whose rolls contain a number of names famous in English literature.

While at college, he studied music at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, where he won a scholarship. His first impulse was to make music his career, and he spent portions of the next four years in Germany, France, and Italy studying music and traveling. In May, 1898, he first went to the Aran Islands, later to be the scene of _Riders to the Sea_. Thereafter in Paris in 1899 he met Yeats, who advised him to go back to the Aran Islands to renew his contact with the simple folk there. For the next three years he divided his time between Paris and Ireland. It was in 1904 that his play, _Riders to the Sea_,[42] was first produced. He was at Dublin that same year for the opening of the Abbey Theatre, of which he was one of the advisers. Whenever the Irish Players visited England, he traveled with them. In 1909 came the operation that ended his life.

[Footnote 42: For a list of Synge's other plays, see E. A.

Boyd, _The Contemporary Drama of Ireland_, Boston, 1917.]

Synge's book, _The Aran Islands_, which is a record of his various visits to these three islands lying about thirty miles off the coast of County Galway, is full of material that throws light on the setting and characterization of _Riders to the Sea_. The central incident in this play was suggested to Synge while he was sojourning on Inishmaan, the middle island of the Aran group, by a tale that he heard of a man whose body had been washed up on a distant coast, and who had been identified as belonging to the Islands, because of his characteristic garments. When on Inishmaan, Synge himself lived in just such a cottage as that which is the background for the tragedy of Maurya's sons. He wrote of this cottage, "The kitchen itself, where I will spend most of my time, is full of beauty and distinction. The red dresses of the women who cl.u.s.ter round the fire on their stools give a glow of almost Eastern richness, and the walls have been toned by the surf-smoke to a soft brown that blends with the gray earth-color of the floor. Many sorts of fishing-tackle, and the nets and oilskins of the men, are hung up on the walls or among the open rafters." And the following pa.s.sage from his _Aran Islands_ is an eloquent description of the atmosphere there: "A week of smoking fog has pa.s.sed over and given me a strange sense of exile and desolation. I walk round the island nearly every day, yet I can see nothing anywhere but a ma.s.s of wet rock, a strip of surf, and then a tumult of waves.

"The slaty limestone has grown black with the water that is dripping on it, and wherever I turn there is the same gray obsession twining and wreathing itself among the narrow fields, and the same wail from the wind that shrieks and whistles in the loose rubble of the walls."

Mr. Masefield, in his recollections of Synge, reports also the following conversation between himself and the Irish playwright: Synge saying, "They [the islanders] asked me to fiddle to them so that they might dance," and Mr. Masefield asking, "Do you play, then?" and Synge answering, "I fiddle a little. I try to learn something different for them every time. The last time I learned to do conjuring tricks.

They'd get tired of me if I didn't bring something new. I'm thinking of learning the penny whistle before I go again."

A later visitor[43] to the Aran Islands, Miss B. N. Hedderman, a district nurse, gives further evidences of the simplicity of those people from whom the characters of _Riders to the Sea_ were drawn. She tells of a man who owned a house with two comfortable rooms in it, one of which he leveled ruthlessly because he had dreamed that it hindered the pa.s.sage of the "good people." The ill.u.s.trations in her little book showing cottage interiors and peasant costumes will be found useful by groups who are planning to produce _Riders to the Sea_. But the best guide to the costumes and social life of the West of Ireland is J. B.

Yeats.[44]

[Footnote 43: B. N. Hedderman, _Glimpses of My Life in Aran_, Bristol, 1917.]

[Footnote 44: J. B. Yeats, _Life in the West of Ireland_, Dublin and London, 1912. The color prints and line drawings in this book are very beautiful. Cf. also J. M. Synge, _The Aran Islands_. With drawings by Jack B. Yeats, Dublin and London, 1907.]

The _Drama Calendar_ of December 13, 1920, offers the following suggestion for a musical setting for the play: "The attention of Little Theatre directors is called to a musical prelude to Synge's _Riders to the Sea_, arranged by Henry F. Gilbert from the Symphonic Prologue, which was played at the Worcester Musical Festival this fall. This original arrangement of the material is intended to build the mood which the play sustains, and is simply orchestrated for seven instruments. Every Little Theatre should be able to gather such an orchestra. Here is an opportunity to give continuity to a program of one-acts; music answers a question which is one of the hardest the director has to solve: how a mood which is to be created and sustained in the brief s.p.a.ce of twenty minutes shall not be too fleeting."

RIDERS TO THE SEA

_A PLAY IN ONE ACT_

_First performed at the Molesworth Hall, Dublin, February 25, 1904._

CHARACTERS

MAURYA, _an old woman._ BARTLEY, _her son._ CATHLEEN, _her daughter._ NORA, _a younger daughter._ MEN AND WOMEN.

_SCENE._--_An Island off the West of Ireland._