an to drift along to complete Anglicanization, even though
that bring riches, peace, and content? An austere policy, surely, if I
read rightly the meaning of Mr. Yeats.

"Maeve" was not so well played at its production during the second
season's performances of "The Irish Literary Theatre" in February, 1900,
as "The Heather Field" had been performed in 1899, but it was almost as
enthusiastically received. It has not won for itself, however,
reproduction outside of Dublin, as did Mr. Martyn's first play, which
was played in New York, at the Carnegie Lyceum, in April, 1900, and
which was revived in London in 1903.

If objection be made to "The Enchanted Sea" as a reflection of "The Lady
from the Sea," it can be replied that the call of the sea that may not
be resisted is as old as the heart of man. Sea fairies, mermaids and
mermen, and the voice of the waters tugging as irresistibly on the tired
spirit as the undertow on the body tired with long swimming, are in
Gaelic literature from the beginning, and before Mr. Martyn had written
of the sea enchantment it had lent its charm to many of the stories of
"Fiona Macleod." It was two years after its publication in 1902 that, on
April 18 and 19, 1904, "The Enchanted Sea" was put on at the Antient
Concert Rooms, Dublin by "The Players' Club." It was not well played,
but according to Mr. Standish James O'Grady it was much better, seen and
listened to, than read. Writing, in his "All Ireland Review," of its
production, he puts it on record "I never saw an audience so attentive
and at the same time so undemonstrative. It was like being in church."
The audience probably felt the dignity of conception back of the
insufficiency of execution in the play and its ineffectiveness of
presentation. The story that Mr. Martyn dreamed to carry over the
footlights is of Mrs. Font, a peasant woman who has sent her husband, a
gentleman, to his grave a broken-spirited man because of her sacrifice
of his honor to advance their material position. When the curtain rises,
Mrs. Font has been thwarted, by the death of her son, in her lifelong
dream of obtaining possession of the Font estates. The estates have
reverted to her nephew, Guy Font, a strange boy, who has been brought up
by the peasantry of the west coast and so has come to share many of
their beliefs. He is fascinated by the sea by which he lives, and his
family's friend, Lord Mask, has been drawn to him, although there is
such disparity in