Savage Paganism: The Playboy of the Western World

Collins, Christopher

doi:10.1057/978-1-349-94872-7_7

Christopher Collins²

170 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter interrogates The Playboy of the Western World in relation to Synge’s scientific analysis of fairy changeling folklore. This chapter proposes an alternative reading of the infamous disturbances that greeted the opening of the performance by looking at the relationship between the play and the ‘Clonmel horror’ of 1895. In March of that year Bridget Cleary, a successful twenty-six year-old dressmaker from South Tipperary, was ritually immolated because she was feared to be a fairy changeling. The chapter tracks the relationship between the Clonmel horror and the dramaturgy of the play, and also the shocking ramifications that the dramaturgy of a play based on the Clonmel horror had in performance when one member of the audience explicitly identified the relationship.

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Notes

1.
Máire Nic Shiubhlaiugh, The Splendid Years (Dublin: James Duffy, 1955). For a full account of why Nic Shiubhlaigh decided to leave the company see, Nic Shiubhlaigh, The Splendid Years, 71–74. Also see, Adrian Frazier, Behind the Scenes: Yeats, Horniman and The Struggle for the Abbey Theatre (Berkley: University of California press, 1990), 121–28.
2.
Nic Shiubhlaigh, The Splendid Years, 71.
3.
Fay concluded that: ‘the great majority, thinking of religion and themselves, abominated the play on both counts. It had bad press and we lost money and audience over it’. See, George Fay and Catherine Carswell, The Fays of the Abbey Theatre: An Autobiographical Record (London: Rich and Cowan, 1935), 169. Similarly, George Roberts remembered that ‘the play was not at all popular on its first performance. At that time we were not accustomed to very large audiences, but there was an exceptionally small audience for the first performance of ‘The Well of the Saints’. The second and third performances were even worse. I remember counting the people in the house on one of these nights and there were less than 20 present’. See, George Roberts, ‘Memoirs of George roberts,’ Irish Times, 2 August 1955, 5.
4.
Fay and Carswell, The Fays of the Abbey Theatre, 212.
5.
Fay and Carswell, The Fays of the Abbey Theatre, 211.
6.
Fay and Carswell, The Fays of the Abbey Theatre, 213. Emphasis in original. Also see, Nic Shiubhlaigh, The Splendid Years, 81.
7.
James P. Conway, For and Against the Irish Players: From a Public Debate by Irishmen Before Irishmen and Irish Women (New York, 1911), 4. Conway’s article appears in a pamphlet and does not indicate a publishing house. This material was accessed in NYPL: Berg Coll MSS Synge.
8.
NLI MS: 1805, Vol. 1, January 26, 1907, ff.63–64.
9.
Declan Kiberd, Synge and the Irish Language (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1993), xvi.
10.
‘The Playboy of the West,’ Irish Times, 2 February 1907, 13.
11.
‘Police In,’ Irish Independent, 29 January 1907, 5.
12.
‘The Playboy of the West,’ Irish Times, 2 February 1907, 13.
13.
‘Abbey Theatre Scene,’ Evening Telegraph, 29 January 1907, 4.
14.
The Abbey Theatre’s roots are in The Irish Literary Theatre that Yeats founded with Lady Gregory, George Moore and Edward Martyn. It was founded in 1899.
15.
Garrigan Mattar, Primitivism, Science, and the Irish Revival, 173. Garrigan Mattar extrapolates these three defining features from several of le Braz’s works, with which Synge was familiar. However, these defining features are given significant treatment in Anatole le Braz, Le Théatre Celtique (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1905).
16.
Garrigan Mattar, Primitivism, Science, and the Irish Revival, 173.
17.
CW, vol. 2: 95.
18.
Garrigan Mattar, Primitivism, Science, and the Irish Revival, 173.
19.
CW, vol. 4: 97.
20.
Mrs MacDonnell, quoted in James Carney, The Playboy and The Yellow Lady (Dublin: Poolbeg, 1986), 5.
21.
Garrigan Mattar, Primitivism, Science, and the Irish Revival, 173.
22.
For more on this subject see, Maria Leach and Jerome Fried, ‘Changeling,’ in Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend, ed. Maria Leach and Jerome Fried (London: New English Library, 1972), 208–209.
23.
‘The Burning of the Woman Cleary,’ Irish Times, 28 March 1895, 5. For an objective and expedited account of how Bridget was burnt alive see, ‘The “Witch-Burning” at Clonmel,’ Folklore 6, no. 4 (1895): 373–84.
24.
‘Ireland,’ Times, 26 March 1895, 8.
25.
‘The Burning of the Woman Cleary,’ 5.
26.
‘The Burning of the Woman Cleary,’ 5. It should be pointed out that the reference to ‘sensation’ in this quote is in reference to those present in the Clonmel Magistrates’ Court; the Irish Times published a verbatim account of Burke’s testimony that was made on 27 March.
27.
Angela Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story (London: Pimlico, 1999), 30.
28.
Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, 112.
29.
‘Tipperary Horror,’ Cork Examiner, 29 March 1895, 5.
30.
‘Tipperary Horror,’ Cork Examiner, 5.
31.
‘Tipperary Horror,’ 5.
32.
See, ‘The Tipperary Wife Burning,’ United Ireland, 13 April 1895, 3. See, ‘The Oscar Wilde Scandal,’ United Ireland, 13 April 1895, 3.
33.
Angela Bourke, ‘Hunting Out the Fairies: E.F. Benson, Oscar Wilde and the Burning of Bridget Cleary,’ in Wilde the Irishman, ed. Jerusha McCormack (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 43.
34.
Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, 199.
35.
‘The Tipperary Horror,’ Dublin Evening Mail, 27 March 1895, 2.
36.
Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, 10.
37.
‘The Tipperary Horror,’ Cork Examiner, 28 March 1895, 2.
38.
Garrigan Mattar, Primitivism, Science, and the Irish Revival, 173.
39.
Garrigan Mattar, Primitivism, Science, and the Irish Revival, 173.
40.
CW, vol. 4: 59, 56.
41.
CW, vol. 2: 80.
42.
J.M. Synge, quoted in A.F., ‘I Don’t Care a Rap,’ Dublin Evening Mail, 29 January 1907, 2.
43.
Oliver St John Gogarty, As I Was Going Down Sackville Street: A Phantasy in Fact (London: Rich and Cowan, 1937), 282.
44.
Gogarty, As I Was Going Down Sackville Street, 282.
45.
CL, vol. 1: 333. J.M. Synge to Stephen MacKenna, 17 April 1907. Emphasis in original. In an earlier draft of The Playboy, Synge directly references the Lynchehaun case (CW, vol. 4: 311) case and in an interview with Freeman’s Journal he explicitly refers to the case. See, ‘Abbey Theatre Scenes,’ Freeman’s Journal, 30 January 1907, 8. See also, Nic Shiubhlaigh, The Splendid Years, 82.
46.
CW, vol. 3: 19.
47.
W.B. Yeats, Uncollected Prose, vol. 1, ed. John P. Frayne (London: Macmillan, 1970), 284.
48.
CW, vol. 2: 5.
49.
W.B. Yeats, The Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats, vol. 2, 1896-1900, ed. Warwick Gould, John Kelly, and Deirdre Toomey (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 213. W.B. Yeats to William Sharp, 4 July 1898.
50.
Yeats, The Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats, vol. 2: 359. W.B. Yeats to Lady Gregory, 14 February 1899.
51.
Valeska von Eicken, quoted in Greene and Stephens, J.M. Synge: 1871–1909, 38. Valeska Von Eicken to J.M. Synge, 1 March 1894.
52.
NYPL MS: Berg Collection.
53.
Éilís ní Dhuibhne-Almqvist, ‘Synge’s use of Popular Material in The Shadow of the Glen,’ Béaloideas: The Journal of the Folklore of Ireland Society 58 (1990): 167.
54.
J.B. Yeats, Letters To His Son: W.B. Yeats and Others, 1869–1922, ed. Joseph Hone (London: Faber and Faber, 1944), 169. J.B. Yeats to W.B. Yeats, 25 December 1913.
55.
Garrigan Mattar, Primitivism, Science, and the Irish Revival, 53.
56.
Anatole le Braz, Essai Sur L’Histoire du Théatre Celtique (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1904), 46–47.
57.
CW, vol. 2: 107.
58.
TCD MS: 4382, f.51v.
59.
TCD MS: 4382, f.51v.
60.
TCD MS: 4382, f.51v.
61.
CW, vol. 1: xxxvi.
62.
CW, vol. 2: 53.
63.
W.B. Yeats, Letters to the New Island, ed. Horace Reynolds (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1934), 204.
64.
TCD MS: 4413, 17r. Synge read this on 15 April 1892.
65.
TCD MS: 4413, 3r. Synge read this on 18 March 1892.
66.
TCD: MS 4419, f.94r. Synge read this on 12 September 1898.
67.
TCD MS: 4419, f.98v. Synge first read this on 21 September 1898.
68.
CW, vol. 2: 128.
69.
Alfred Nutt, ‘An Essay upon the Irish Vision of the Happy Otherworld and the Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth,’ in The Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal, To The Land of The Living: An Old Irish Saga, vol. 2, trans. and ed. Kuno Meyer (London: David Nutt, 1897), 232n.
70.
J.M. Synge, Letters to Molly: John Millington Synge to Maire O’Neill, 1906–1909, ed. Ann Saddlemyer (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap, Harvard University Press, 1971), 225. J.M. Synge to Molly Allgood, 4 December 1907. Emphasis in original.
71.
Synge, Letters to Molly, 6. J.M. Synge to Molly Allgood, 20 July 1906.
72.
Edward Hutchinson Synge, quoted in W.J. McCormack, Fool of the Family (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2000), 128.
73.
Angela Bourke, ‘Hunting Out the Fairies,’ 38.
74.
Ellen Duncan, ‘The Playboy,’ Irish Times, 31 January 1907, 5.
75.
‘Mr. Synge’s New Play,’ Dublin Evening Herald, 6 February 1905, 3.
76.
Deborah Fleming, “A Man Who Does Not Exist”: The Irish Peasant in the Work of W.B. Yeats and J.M. Synge (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 78. For similar conclusions see, for example, Daniel Corkery, Synge and Anglo-Irish Literature (Cork: Mercier, 1966), 117; like Fleming, Corkery posits that ‘for the fairy religion, [Synge] had only little feeling’.
77.
W.B. Yeats, Autobiographies (London: Macmillan, 1955), 531.
78.
M, ‘Fairies and Folk-Lore,’ All Ireland Review 1, no. 42 (1900): 3.
79.
M, ‘Fairies and Folk-Lore,’ 3.
80.
Joep Leerssen, Remembrance and Imagination (Cork: Cork University Press, 1996), 14.
81.
Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans. and ed. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971), 360.
82.
Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 34.
83.
Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 102.
84.
Within the archives of the IFC there are many informants who testify to the Catholic clergy’s belief in the fairies in the Ireland of Synge’s time. See, for example, Seán Ó Flannagáin, ‘Conveying the Priest,’ IFC MS: 433, ff.35–36, County Clare; Michael Keenan, ‘Fourth Story by M. Keenan,’ IFC MS: 815, f.25, County Cavan. Also see, Pádraig Ó Héalaí, ‘Priest Versus Healer: The Legend of the Priest’s Stricken Horse,’ Béaloideas: The Journal of the Folklore of Ireland Society 62, no. 3 (1994): 171–88.
85.
K.M. Briggs, ‘The English Fairies,’ Folklore 68, no. 1 (1957): 271. While the title of Briggs’s article concerns English fairies she begins the discussion with the types of fairies that are peculiar to Great Britain and Ireland.
86.
Briggs, ‘The English Fairies,’ 270–71.
87.
Briggs, ‘The English Fairies,’ 271.
88.
Briggs, ‘The English Fairies,’ 271.
89.
Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, 29.
90.
The Census of Ireland for The Year 1861, Part III, Vital Statistics, vol. 2, Reports and Tables Relating to Deaths (Dublin: Alexander Thom, 1864), 36.
91.
‘Superstition,’ Examiner, 6 August 1826, 12.
92.
TCD: MS 4350, f.59v. Emphasis added.
93.
W.B. Yeats, The Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats, vol. 1, 1865–1895, ed. John Kelly (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), 303. W.B. Yeats to John O’Leary, 23 July 1892.
94.
John Wilson Foster, Fictions of the Irish Literary Revival: A Changeling Art (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1987), 206.
95.
Kiberd, Synge and the Irish Language, 162.
96.
CW, vol. 2: 51.
97.
John C. Messenger, Inis Beag: Isle of Ireland (New York: Holt Reinehart and Winston, 1969), 99.
98.
Lady Gregory, quoted in J.M. Synge: 1871–1909, ed. David H. Greene and Edward M. Stephens (New York: Macmillan, 1959), 121.
99.
Greene and Stephens, J.M. Synge: 1871–1909, 121.
100.
CW, vol. 2: 156.
101.
CW, vol. 2: 165.
102.
CL, vol. 1: 74. J.M. Synge to Stephen MacKenna, 28 January 1904.
103.
For Yeats’s insistence that Synge should read The Golden Bough, see, Deirdre Toomey, ‘Killing the Da: Synge and The Golden Bough,’ in Sir James Frazer and the Literary Imagination, ed. Robert Frazer (London: Macmillan, 1990), 157.
104.
W.B. Yeats, ‘The Speckled Bird: A Novel by Mr. W.B. Yeats, A Section From The Novel with a note by Curtis Bradford,’ Irish Writing 31 (1955): 18.
105.
Anthony Valentine Roche, ‘The Otherworld Drama of John Millington Synge,’ (PhD diss., The University of California: Santa Barbara, 1984), 51.
106.
TCD MS: 4378, f.52v.
107.
Frazer, The Golden Bough, 57.
108.
Frazer, The Golden Bough, 56.
109.
Frazer, The Golden Bough, 56.
110.
CW, vol. 4: 97.
111.
Garrigan Mattar, Primitivism, Science, and the Irish Revival, 173.
112.
CW, vol. 4: 73.
113.
CW, vol. 4: 89.
114.
CW, vol. 4: 75.
115.
Frazer, The Golden Bough, 31.
116.
CW, vol. 4: 59.
117.
‘The Playboy of the West,’ Irish Times, 2 February 1907, 13.
118.
CW, vol. 4: 65.
119.
CW, vol. 4: 65.
120.
TCD MS: 4401, f.6r. Synge recorded this in September 1905.
121.
CW, vol. 4: 89.
122.
Angela Bourke, ‘The Virtual Reality of Irish Fairy Legend,’ Éire-Ireland: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Irish Studies 31: no. 1–2 (1996): 10, 12.
123.
CW, vol. 4: 61.
124.
Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, ‘The Fairy Belief and Official Religion in Ireland,’ in The Good People: New Fairylore Essays, ed. Peter Narváez (Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1997), 201.
125.
W.G. Wood-Martin, Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland, a Folklore Sketch: A Handbook of Irish pre-Christian Traditions, vol. 2 (New York: Kennikat, 1970), 14.
126.
CW, vol. 4: 73, 79.
127.
Joan Hoff and Marian Yeates, The Cooper’s Wife is Missing: The Trials of Bridget Cleary (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 166.
128.
‘The Tipperary Burning Case,’ Irish Times, 2 April 1895, 5. Bridget Cleary was immolated on 14 March but Bourke concludes that her death would have been in the very early minutes of 15 March. Thus, if Bridget was immolated on the 14 March, then nine days previously would have been 6 March. Bourke concludes that on 13 March, ‘Michael Cleary and his father-in-law, with help from Mary Kennedy and Johanna Burke, had nursed the feverish Bridget for over a week, watching her conditions deteriorate’ (Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, 75. Emphasis added). Thus, Bridget would have ostensibly fallen into fever on 6 March.
129.
Katherine Briggs, The Fairies in English Tradition and Literature (London: Bellew, 1989), 106. Although Briggs’s analysis pertains towards English fairies she regularly discusses Irish fairies and traditions. For example: ‘The Irish fairy beliefs are the most explicit and generally held, and here and there are many strands and varieties of belief. The fairies are of all sizes and various characters. […] There is a close connection between them and the dead’ (Briggs, The Fairies in English Tradition and Literature, 87–88).
130.
Ó Giolláin, ‘The Fairy Belief and Official Religion in Ireland,’ 203.
131.
Wood-Martin, Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland, vol. 2: 14.
132.
CW, vol. 4: 67.
133.
Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, 30.
134.
CW, vol. 4: 67.
135.
Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, 30.
136.
CW, vol. 4: 71–73.
137.
Carole G. Silver, Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 60.
138.
CW, vol. 4: 73.
139.
CW, vol. 4: 73.
140.
CW, vol. 4: 73.
141.
Hoff and Yeates, The Cooper’s Wife is Missing, 105.
142.
CW, vol. 4: 87.
143.
CW, vol. 4: 115.
144.
Séamas Mac Philib, ‘The Changeling: Irish Versions of a Migratory Legend in their International Context,’ Béaloideas: The Journal of the Folklore of Ireland Society 59 (1991): 125.
145.
CW, vol. 4: 139.
146.
Mac Philib, ‘The Changeling: Irish Versions of a Migratory Legend in their International Context,’ 125.
147.
CW, vol. 4: 99.
148.
CW, vol. 4: 95.
149.
CW, vol. 4: 103.
150.
Angela Bourke, ‘Reading a Woman’s Death: Colonial Text and Oral Tradition in Nineteenth-Century Ireland,’ Feminist Studies 21, no. 3 (1995): 580.
151.
CW, vol. 4: 153.
152.
W.B. Yeats, Prefaces and Introductions: Uncollected Prefaces and Introductions by Yeats to Works by Other Authors, and to Anthologies, ed. William H. O’Donnell (London: Macmillan, 1988), 58.
153.
Yeats, Prefaces and Introductions, 58.
154.
W.B. Yeats, Essays and Introduction (London: Macmillan, 1961), 429.
155.
M, ‘Fairies and Folk-Lore,’ 3.
156.
Yeats, The Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats, vol. 1: 146. W.B. Yeats to George Coffey, 14 February 1889.
157.
Yeats, The Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats, vol. 1: 146. W.B. Yeats to George Coffey, 14 February 1889. Emphasis in original.
158.
M, ‘Fairies and Folk-Lore,’ 3.
159.
Andrew Lang, ‘Changelings,’ Illustrated London News, 25 May 1895, 651.
160.
Hubert Butler, Escape from the Anthill (Mullingar: Lilliput, 1986), 65.
161.
Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, 86.
162.
Tom MacIntyre, What Happened Bridgie Cleary (Dublin: New Island, 2005), 92.
163.
Briggs, The Fairies in English Tradition and Literature, 115.
164.
CW, vol. 4: 175.
165.
CW, vol. 4: 171.
166.
CW, vol. 2: 56. However, de Jubainville had informed Synge about this theory in March, 1898 as his notes from de Jubainville’s lectures testify: ‘The Tuatha D came directly from Heaven’ (TCD MS: 4378, f.65r).
167.
CW, vol. 2: 56.
168.
CW, vol. 4: 73, 79.
169.
Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, 93.
170.
Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, 93. Interestingly, Carlo Gébler’s novel on the Clonmel horror, The Cure, interrogated the sexual relationship between Michael and Bridget Cleary. Within the confines of prose fiction Bridget’s method of appeasing her husband’s anger at her inability to become pregnant was ‘to make love more passionately and more often’ (Carlo Gébler, The Cure [London: Hamish Hamilton, 1994], 32).
171.
CW, vol. 4: 89.
172.
CW, vol. 4: 91.
173.
CW, vol. 4: 17.
174.
CW, vol. 4: 117, 61.
175.
CW, vol. 4: 75, 115, 155, 167.
176.
Angela Bourke and Patricia Lysaght, ‘Legends of the Supernatural,’ in The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, vol. 4, Irish Women’s Writing and Traditions, ed. Angela Bourke, Siobhán Kilfeather, Maria Luddy, Margaret Mac Curtain, Gerardine Meaney, Máirín Ní Dhonnchadha, Mary O’Dowd and Clair Wills (Cork: Cork University Press, 2002), 1285.
177.
TCD: MS 4378, f.50v.
178.
TCD: MS 4378, f.56v.
179.
CW, vol. 4: 170, 172.
180.
CW, vol. 4: 57.
181.
Melissa Sihra, interviewed by Christopher Collins. Dublin, Ireland. 5 July 2010. Dr Sihra, who visited the Cleary’s house in Ballyvadlea, South Tipperary on 2 August 2005, asked for directions to the house, which informants referred to the house as ‘the fairy house’.
182.
Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, 82.
183.
‘The Burning of the Woman Cleary,’ Irish Times, 28 March 1895, 5.
184.
CW, vol. 4: 169, 171.
185.
Frazer, The Golden Bough, 744.
186.
Butler, Escape from the Anthill, 64.
187.
CW, vol. 4: 169.
188.
Séan McMahon, ‘“Leave Troubling The Lord God”: A Note on Synge and Religion,’ Éire-Ireland: A Journal of Irish Studies 11, no. 1 (1976): 134.
189.
Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, 30.
190.
‘The “Witch-Burning” at Clonmel,’ 382.
191.
Louis Althusser, For Marx, trans. Ben Brewster (London: NLB, 1977), 233.
192.
Frazer, The Golden Bough, 26.
193.
Messenger, Inis Beag, 101.
194.
Garrigan Mattar, Primitivism, Science, and the Irish Revival, 173.
195.
Garrigan Mattar, Primitivism, Science, and the Irish Revival, 173.
196.
Nutt, ‘An Essay upon the Irish Vision of the Happy Otherworld,’ 232.
197.
Frazer, The Golden Bough, 588–9.
198.
TCD MS: 4378, f.56v.
199.
René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (London: Athlone, 1988), 8.
200.
CW, vol. 4: 73, 97.
201.
Lang, ‘Changelings,’ 651.
202.
Edward Clodd, ‘The Witch-Burning Case in Ireland,’ Times, 1 August 1895, 5.
203.
Silver, Strange and Secret Peoples, 85.
204.
Fay and Carswell, The Fays of the Abbey Theatre, 212.
205.
Lady Gregory, quoted in Ann Saddlemyer, ed., Theatre Business: The Correspondence of the First Abbey Theatre Directors: William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory and J.M. Synge, (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1982), 205n. Lady Gregory to W.B. Yeats, 12 January 1907.
206.
Joseph Holloway, NLI MS: 1805, 26 January 1907, f.64.
207.
R.F. Foster, W.B. Yeats: A Life, vol. 1, The Apprentice Mage: 1865–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 360.
208.
Herbert Grierson, quoted in Foster, W.B. Yeats: A Life, vol. 1: 360.
209.
See, W.B. Yeats, The Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats, vol. 4, 1905–1907, ed. John Kelly and Ronald Schuchard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 308n.
210.
Freddie Rokem, Performing History: Theatrical Representations of the Past in Contemporary Theatre (Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 2000), ix.
211.
Rokem, Performing History, ix.
212.
Rokem, Performing History, 13.
213.
‘Ireland,’ 8.
214.
Frazer, The Golden Bough, 748–9.
215.
Yeats, Essays and Introductions, 312.
216.
‘The Abbey Theatre,’ Freeman’s Journal, 29 January 1907, 7. Irish Independent reports this slightly differently: ‘What about Tipperary where the witch was burned’ (‘Police In,’ 5). It is not categorically clear that Daniel Sheehan was responsible for this comment. But Sheehan, who was known to be present, does seem to be the most likely transgressor. In The Silence of Barbara Synge, W.J. McCormack conjectures that the comment was indeed ‘the view of young Daniel Sheehan’ and that the ‘trainee doctor taunted the rioters with the cry, “What about Mullinahone and the witch burning?”’ See, W.J. McCormack, The Silence of Barbara Synge (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 226–27. R.F. Foster corroborates McCormack’s conjecture. See, Foster, W.B. Yeats: A Life, vol. 1: 360.
217.
‘The Abbey Theatre,’ 7.
218.
‘Dreadful Occurrence in Country Tipperary,’ Irish Times, 30 March 1895, 5.
219.
Emilie Pine, The Politics of Irish Memory: Performing Remembrance in Contemporary Irish Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 11.
220.
‘Abbey Theatre Scenes,’ 7. For a full account of Napoleon’s evening at The Playboy, see, The Abbey Row: Not Edited by W.B. Yeats (Dublin: Maunsel, 1907), 1–9.
221.
‘Abbey Theatre Scenes,’ 7.
222.
‘The Tipperary Burning Case,’ Irish Times, 2 April 1895, 5.
223.
‘Superstition,’ 12.
224.
Hoff and Yeates, The Cooper’s Wife is Missing, 276.
225.
James Joyce, The Selected Letters of James Joyce, ed. Richard Ellmann (London: Faber and Faber, 1975), 148. James Joyce to Stanislaus Joyce, 11 February 1907.
226.
Lady Gregory, quoted in ed. Ann Saddlemyer, Theatre Business, 205. Lady Gregory to J.M. Synge, 13 January 1907.
227.
NYPL MS: Berg Collection. Lady Gregory to Wilfrid Blunt. 20 April 1907.
228.
Roberts, ‘Memoirs of George Roberts,’ 5.
229.
George Moore, quoted in Robin Skelton, The Writings of J.M. Synge (London: Thames and Hudson, 1971), 118.
230.
Yeats, Essays and Introductions, 326.
231.
‘The Tipperary Horror,’ Cork Examiner, 28 March 1895, 5.
232.
Yeats, Uncollected Prose, vol. 1: 189.
233.
‘Irish Witches, Spells and Charms,’ Irish Times, 13 April 1895, 4.
234.
See, Edward Clodd, Tom Tit Tot: An Essay on Savage Philosophy in Folk-Tale (London: Duckworth, 1898), 83.
235.
W.B. Yeats, Uncollected Prose, vol. 2, ed. John P. Frayne and Colton Johnson (London: Macmillan, 1975), 277.
236.
W.B. Yeats, ‘Swedenborg, Mediums, and the Desolate Places,’ in Lady Gregory, Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1970), 360n.
237.
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238.
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240.
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241.
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243.
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244.
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245.
Synge’s diary for 4 October 1895 reads ‘Began the Descent of Man’ (TCD: MS 4416, f.131v). He would read it for over a week and on 12 October 1895 his diary reads ‘Finished Descent of Man’ (TCD: MS: 4416, f.135v). His notes can be found: TCD MS: 4379, ff.82v–83r.
246.
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247.
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248.
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249.
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250.
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251.
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252.
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253.
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254.
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255.
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256.
Holloway, NLI MS: 1805, 4 February 1907, f.85.
257.
Duncan, ‘The Playboy,’ 5.
258.
‘The Freedom of the Play,’ Irish Times, 5 February 1907, 8.
259.
James Kilroy, The ‘Playboy’ Riots (Dublin: Dolmen, 1971), 86.
260.
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261.
Kilroy, The ‘Playboy’ Riots, 86.
262.
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263.
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264.
E.F. Benson, The Collected Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson, ed. Richard Daly (London: Robinson, 1992), 619.
265.
Nic Shiubhlaigh, The Splendid Years, 81–82. A Kaffir kraal is a Zulu village.
266.
Jacques, ‘A Queer Hero In Mr. Synge’s Play Produced at the Abbey Theatre,’ Irish Independent, 28 January 1907, 4.
267.
Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham: Published Under the Superintendence of His Executor, John Bowring, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1843), 400.
268.
See, Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006), 37–46.
269.
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270.
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271.
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272.
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273.
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274.
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275.
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276.
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277.
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278.
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279.
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280.
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281.
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282.
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283.
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284.
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285.
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286.
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287.
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288.
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289.
Yeats, On the Boiler, 20.
290.
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291.
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292.
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293.
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294.
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295.
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296.
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297.
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298.
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299.
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301.
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302.
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303.
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304.
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305.
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306.
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307.
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308.
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309.
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310.
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311.
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312.
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313.
CL, vol. 1: 286. J.M. Synge to the Editor of the Irish Times, 30 January 1907.

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Christopher Collins

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Collins, C. (2016). Savage Paganism: The Playboy of the Western World . In: Theatre and Residual Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-94872-7_7

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