dramas of a more
palatable and less "stage-Irish" character than those of his
immediate predecessors, some excellent plays, Irish in character and
tone, had from time to time found their way to the stage. However,
Boucicault sweetened our stage by the production of _The Colleen
Bawn, Arrah-na-Pogue_, and _The Shaughraun_, and showed by his
rollicking impersonations of Myles, Shan, and Conn, how good-humored,
hearty, and self-sacrificing Irish boys in humble life can be. He had
great technical knowledge of stagecraft, and that has helped to make
his Irish plays live in the popular goodwill right up to today.

A revolt against Boucicault's Irish boys, all fun and frolic, and
charming colleens, who could do no wrong, has made our modern
playwrights go to the other extreme; so that now we find our stage
peopled with peasants, cruel, hard, and forbidding for the most part,
and with colleens who are the reverse of lovable in thought or act.
Neither picture is quite true of our people. What is really wanted is
the happy medium, which few, if any, of our new playwrights have yet
given us.

If our great popular Irish drama has yet to come, I think the Fays
have made it possible to say that a distinct and really fine dramatic
school has arisen in Ireland, evolved out of their wonderful skill in
teaching, producing, and acting; and if we are not always really
delighted with what our playwrights give us, the almost perfect way
in which the plays are served up by the actors invariably wholly
satisfies. It is the actors who have made the Abbey Theatre famous,
and not the plays. Such acting as theirs cast a spell over all who
see them. What pleasing memories do the names of W.G. Fay, Frank J.
Fay, Dudley Digges, Sara Allgood, Arthur Sinclair, Maire O'Neill,
Maire ni Shuiblaigh, J.M. Kerrigan, Fred O'Donovan, Eileen O'Doherty,
Una O'Connor, Eithne Magee, Nora Desmond, and John Connolly recall!

With the production of W.B. Yeats's poetic one-act play, _The Land of
Heart's Desire_, at the Avenue Theatre, London, on March 29, 1894,
began the modern Irish dramatic movement. When the poet had tasted
the joys of the footlights, he longed to see an Irish Literary
Theatre realized in Ireland. Five years later, in the Antient Concert
Rooms, Dublin, on May 9, 1899, his play, _The Countess Cathleen_, was
produced, and his desire gratified. The experiment was tried for
three years and then dropped; plays by Yeats, Edward Martyn, George
Moore,