almost as many indictments of women as there are of England in
the plays of Mr. Martyn: Mrs. Tyrrell in "The Heather Field" and Mrs.
Font in "The Enchanted Sea," as well as all of the women in "A Tale of
a Town" save Miss Arabella Dean. In "Maeve," the heroine and Finola are
sympathetically presented, and there is a kind of attraction as well as
decided repulsion in Peg Inerny. But such sympathy as Mr. Martyn does
express here seems to be expressed not because the women are fellow
human beings, but because Maeve and Peg Inerny symbolize Ireland's
resistance to English ways and because Finola is filled with
loving-kindness for Maeve. Agnes Font in "The Enchanted Sea" escapes the
pillory rather inexplicably, for she is poor, weak girlhood unable to
understand the other-worldly idealism of her cousin and Lord Mask. But
since Mrs. Font was altogether repulsive and the men either too dreamy
for "common nature's daily food" or too hard in the way of the Black
North, Mr. Martyn felt, I suppose, that his hearers would be utterly
alienated were there not some one in the play sympathetic in the
ordinary way of human nature.

"A Tale of a Town" was put on for the first time at Molesworth Hall,
Dublin, late in October of 1905, by Cumann nan Gaedheal, not very
notably, but it was hailed by the Irish Ireland newspapers as admirable
propagandist material, "The United Irishmen" declaring that "an Irish
play which brings home to us, as this does, the secret of the endurance
of foreign government in this country, is a national asset."

Mr. Martyn has not cared enough for "The Place Hunters" (1905) to
publish it in book form, contenting himself with its printing in a
little periodical. It is, as its title indicates, a fellow of "A Tale of
a Town," but it has not back of it intensity of feeling enough to lift
itself out of farce.

Between "The Place Hunters" and "Grangecolman" is an interval of seven
years, but it is the Mr. Martyn of earlier plays, still faithful to
Ibsen and still of a dialogue more formal than that of life, that we
find in this play of his middle age. As you read "Grangecolman" you
think of "Rosmersholm," as you thought of "The Wild Duck" when you read
"The Heather Field." "Grangecolman" is the story of a daughter's
frustration of her elderly father's intention to marry his young
amanuensis, by playing the role of the family ghost, long fabled but
never seen, and being shot by the girl she feels is driving her out of