lization within limits so narrow; but the farce itself is
not lifted into dignity by any noble underlying attitude. "The Jack Daw"
(1907) has rumor again as its motive, as had "Spreading the News," but
it is not the motive of the play or any of its incidents that is the
best thing about it, but the character of Michael Cooney, of the
"seventh generation of Cooneys who trusted nobody living or dead." He
is, of course, caricatured, but he has possibilities of personality, and
he could have been worked into the fullness of a universal character had
"The Jack Daw" been comedy, we will say, instead of farce. Of all her
characters, that of Hyacinth Halvey is most nearly rounded out, but
then Lady Gregory has taken two little plays in which to present his
portrait, "The Full Moon" (1911) recording some of his later experiences
in Cloon and his final departure from the town, his introduction to
which was recorded in the play bearing his name.

"The Workhouse Ward" (1908), reaching from wild farce to sentimental
comedy, is hardly more than a dialogue, but it is given body by the
truth to Irish life out of which it is written, that quarreling is
better than loneliness. Lady Gregory has disowned "Twenty-five" (1902),
which is frankly melodrama, her only other experiment in which, in her
plays of modern Ireland, is "The Rising of the Moon" (1903). This play
relates the allowed escape from a police officer of a political prisoner
through that prisoner's persuading the officer that "patriotism" is
above his sworn duty to England.

Of the plays that may be called historical, "The Canavans" (1906) is the
best, because it is of the peasantry, I suppose, who change so little
with the years, and whom Lady Gregory presents so amusingly and so truly
in her modern farce comedy. "Kincora" (1903) takes us all the way back
to the eleventh century, deriving its name from Brian's Seat on the
Shannon and ending with his death at Clontarf. It is undistinguished
melodrama. "The White Cockade" (1905) is better only in so far as it
involves farce, farce in the kitchen of an inn on the Wexford coast just
after the Battle of the Boyne. "Devorgilla" (1908) is of a time between
the times of the two other historical plays, of the time a generation
later than the coming of the Normans to Ireland. It is pitched to a
higher key than any other of her historic plays, and it is held better
to its key, but its tragedy is far less impressive than the tragedy of
"