ity
in turning it over to Mr. Moore to be rewritten,--as it was, being
presented as "The Bending of the Bough" (1900),--was revealed by Mr.
Moore in "Samhain" (October, 1901), and very much more fully, if less
kindly, in "Ave" (1911).

In its way their refusal to play Mr. Martyn's "A Tale of a Town" was as
creditable to the other powers in the theatre as was his magnanimity in
giving them the play to do with as they would. They knew their refusal
to play it might lead him to withdraw his support of the theatre and, in
the end, it was a factor in bringing about that result. After their
rejection of "A Tale of a Town," however, he still gave "The Irish
Literary Theatre" his support, allowing it to put on his "Maeve," and in
1901 contributing to "Samhain" (October), "A Plea for a National Theatre
in Ireland." Such a theatre Mr. Martyn had the power to give Ireland,
but he did not give it, when it was thought he might, and in 1902 all
hope of his giving his money for such a purpose was destroyed by his
transference of a fund of fifty thousand dollars to the Catholic
Pro-Cathedral in Dublin "for the purpose of founding and supporting a
Palestrina choir."

That Mr. Martyn was still a force to be reckoned with is revealed by the
trouble Mr. Yeats went to, in "Samhain" of October, 1902, to explain why
it was that the plays of the Irish National Dramatic Company were either
folk-drama or drama whose life was the "life of poetry" Mr. Martyn had
argued in "The United Irishmen," which up to the time of the
presentation of "In the Shadow of the Glen" was a stanch supporter of
the dramatic policies of Mr. Yeats, that the actors of the company
should be trained to the drama of modern society. "The acting of plays
like 'Deirdre,' and of 'Cathleen ni Houlihan,'" writes Mr. Yeats, "with
its speech of the country people, did not seem to him a preparation. It
is not, but that is as it should be. Our movement is a return to the
people, like the Russian movement of the early seventies, and the drama
of society could but magnify a condition of life which the countryman
and the artisan could but copy to their hurt. The play that is to give
them a quite natural pleasure should either tell them of their own life
or of that life of poetry where every man can see his own image, because
there alone does human nature escape from arbitrary conditions. Plays
about drawing-rooms are written for the middle classes of great cities,
for the classes who