The Abbey Theatre

By L. A, G. STRONG IT is close on twenty years since I stopped short one wet afternoon in Oxford and stared incredulously at a playbill. ' The bill advertised the week's attraction at the (then) New Theatre, a farce entitled A Little Bit of Fluff. I had seen

• the farce already : what caught my eye was the name of one

- of the players. Collecting a friend, I went round to the theatre, and with some difficulty wriggled past the stage- doorkeeper. We were shown into a poky dressing-room lit by a naked gas jet. A little man, who was dabbing his face with a hare's foot, turned and looked at us enquiringly.

" Are you Mr. W. G. Fay, of the Abbey Theatre ? "

" I Was of the Abbey Theatre." " Well—will you come to lunch with us tomorrow ? " • He would. The luncheon took place in T. W. Earp's rooms in Beaumont Street, and there to a small but enthusiastic com- Pany the actor talked of his experience in the theatre. There Was some project at the time of an art theatre at Oxford. Before • the end of the afternoon, with a characteristic disregard of his -own financial welfare, he had promised his help to a bunch of Undergraduates, all complete strangers to him. We had fetched him there for hero-worship, and to be told of the past. Ile would not allow the hero-worship, but of the old Abbey days he talked freely, complaining, without bitterness, that the credit had all gone to the big, famous figures and that his work and his brother's was forgotten. " It would do us good in our profession," he said simply, looking round on us through his pince-nez., the wire of which was coming unwound, " if we had only a share of it ; I wouldn't be here with the Fluff." In his book* the claim, which everyone who knows the facts has always acknowledged, is set out temperately and with good humour. Synge's famous " All art is a collaboration " holds good of more than overhearing servant girls in the kitchen. A movement such as that of the Abbey Theatre comes to birth

only after long, unconscious preparation in the realm of ideas,

and from the perfectly timed meeting of genius with oppor- tunity. The time was ripe, the leaders were there with their Vision, the tempered instrument was ready to their hand : and the three forces together reared up the Abbey Theatre. It was a perfect example of what AE called the law of spiritual gravitation, the power of ideas to attract tuthemselves all that they need for consummation.

For a protagonist, the author surveys the scene with corn- Mendable clarity and fairness. He acknowledges frankly all that the movement owed to W. B. Yeats, to whom as dramatist

he pays vigorous tribute. He was in close sympathy with Synge, in all except consideration for the audience. In this

connexion he tells a staff that is news to me, and perhaps to • rnany others : that Synge, exasperated by the reception of The Well of the Saints, was in The Playboy deliberately hitting back at his detractors.

The book is racily written, with abundance of asides and many good stories. It combines unshakable faith in the actor's

art with practical good sense and an insistence on sheer pro- fessional competence as the basis of all " I have always taken care that the man in the last seat in the gallery shall both see and hear what he has paid his money for." From the usual drawback of actors' reminiscences it is quite free. Not that the author lacks egoism. The real title of the book should be " W. G. Fay : An Autobiography," for though Frank gets his share of generous and affectionate tribute, he is pushed off the stage, almost as soon as he comes on, by his brother's superior vitality and authority. These two qualities, which .make him so good a producer, make his book. He burns always to tell us how the. thing should be done, continually

*The Fays of the Abbey Theatre. By W. G. Fay and Catherine Carswell, (Rich and Cowan. 10s. 6d.) rushing up, as in the cartoon on p. 60, impelled, not by conceit, but by his very essence as a man who eats and drinks and breathes theatre, and finds life meaningless without it.

The Fays fell early victims to this craving. As boys, they were producing plays in their parents' drawing-room, spending their pennies on hessian out of which to make the scenery, dismayed by no difficulty, no• parental ultimatum. Willie was

the leading spirit, but it was Frank's collection of old plays that fired his enthusiasm and formed his taste, so that, despite all his devotion to the ordinary theatre, the fit-ups in which he was later to tour, and the ridiculous melodramas in which he had to play, it kept its integrity, and was able at once to seize on the new type of play offered by the poets. Leaving home and a safe job, the young actor served a hard apprentice-

ship to life and-to his art. He travelled with a circus, worked as an electrical engineer, managed a skating rink. Ile toured with

a negro manager, and staged a fight to draw custom to the theatre. He learned to meet and handle men of every type.

By the time the first Dublin company of enthusiasts had gathered together, they had at their hand a man who in sheer practical knowledge of the stage could give points to most pro- fessionals of thirty years' standing. The first production, on April 2nd, 1902, gave AE's Deirdre and Yeats' Kathleen ni Houlihan, with Maud Gonne in the title part, " This produc- tion " (he says simply) : " was the beginning of a movement that not only created A native drama in Ireland, but afterwards stimulated both Scotland and Wales to follow our example. It gave to the Gael that which had never before existed in the history of the race—a means of expressing the national consciousness through the medium of the drama."

lie goes on :

" The success of the plays was instantaneous. Nothing like them had ever been seen in Dublin. We could have played to the capacity of the hall for another week if circumstances, financial and otherwise, had permitted. Our audiences wore drawn largely from the working classes (who in every country make the best theatrical audiences because they come to the theatre to be entertained and not to digest their dinners). They were enthusiastic. Their joy was a delight to see. They loved the patriotic sentiment of Kathleen, while the romance of Deirdre was so beautiful and novel that they hardly know how to express their feelings. All this was as surprising as it was gratifying, for we had assumed that our audiences would be entirely composed of those who had always supported us, instead of which we discovered a public, and a largo public, that wanted what we could give them—plays about Ireland written by Irish- men and performed by Irishmen. The thought was so encouraging that Frank suggested we should try to keep the little company together and rehearse during the sun:a-nor months. Our main difficulty was the usual-one. We had no funds."

How the difficulty was overcome, and how the movement grew, will remain one of the most moving chapters in dramatic history.

W. G. Fay stayed at the Abbey till the beginning of 1908. Of the circumstances which led to his resignation, he speaks temperately. One might, however, suspect, from his own account even if there were no others, that he had become a little autocratic and fond of his own way. The interlude of Iden Payne should not of itself have transformed " a happy family " into a set of uneasy rebels. But that is a small point and the Abbey's loss was gain for a great many others. In the twenty-seven years that have since gone by, the little man in the pince-nez has acted and produced all over the kingdom, bringing to a dozen repertory companies his enthu- siasm, fresh as in those first days of the Ormond Dramatic Society, and the accumulated knowledge of half a century. To those who have met him, one need only say that his book is almost as good as his talk. Those who have not met him, when they read the book, will speedily wish they could.