Project Gutenberg's Irish Plays and Playwrights, by Cornelius Weygandt

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Title: Irish Plays and Playwrights

Author: Cornelius Weygandt

Release Date: August 11, 2006 [EBook #19028]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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IRISH PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHTS

BY

CORNELIUS WEYGANDT

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

[Illustration]

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge

COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY CORNELIUS WEYGANDT
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

_Published February 1913_

[Illustration]

PREFACE

There are so many who have helped me with this book that I cannot begin
to thank them one by one. If I name any, however, there are four I would
name together. There is my old friend, long since dead, Lawrence Kelly,
of County Wexford, who first told me Irish folk-stories, adding to the
wonderment of my boyhood with his tales of Finn McCool, Dean Swift, and
"The Red-haired Man." There is Dr. Robert Ellis Thompson, of
Philadelphia, who quickened, by his enthusiasm, over "twenty golden
years ago," my interest in all things Irish. There is Dr. Clarence
Griffin Child, my colleague, who recognized the power of these men I
write of in "Irish Plays and Playwrights" when there were fewer to
recognize their power than there are to-day. There is Mr. John Quinn, of
New York, without whose aid ten years ago the current Irish dramatic
movement would not have progressed as it has. He has lent for
reproduction here the sketches by Mr. J.B. Yeats of Synge, Mr. George
Moore, and Mr. Padraic Colum. All but all of the writers I mention
particularly in these chapters have put me under obligation by cheerful
response to many letters full of questions as to their work. Mr. James
H. Cousins and Mr. S. Lennox Robinson have taken especial trouble in my
behalf, and Lady Gregory, Mr. W.B. Yeats, and Mr. George W. Russell have
put themselves out in many ways that I might learn of Irish Letters.

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, December 28, 1912.

CONTENTS

I. T