I see that Mr. de Valera is extending his directorial
operations from the political seats of war into the camps of art. Last year he reduced the subsidy of £1,000 a year, which Mr. Cosgrave's government granted the Abbey Theatre, to £750. Now that reduced grant is to be discontinued unless the Abbey Players refrain from performing Synge's Playboy of the Western World and O'Casey's Plough and the Stars, in the course of their forthcoming tour in the United States. The President, it seems, has received representations from •" various societies " in America. There the matter rests for the moment, but subsidy or no subsidy, I find it difficult to believe that Mr. Yeats will agree to abandon two plays which have done so much for the reputation of the Abbey as a dramalic centre. Both were the cause of battles in the past, and in both cases the opposition was overridden. As a matter of fact, I believe that the demonstration against The Playboy was partly accidental. Lady Gregory, anticipating trouble, had installed a counter-detachment of under- graduates from Trinity College in the theatre. Unfor- tunately they did not turn up in that condition of purposeful sobriety that is indispensable to the counter- agitator, and according to one account it was their truculent attitude as much as events on the stage that provoked the rest of the audience to protest. However that may be, and whatever the opinions of theatre- goers in the past, I should have thought Americans of today could very well be left to form their own opinion of the two plays. They are by no means incapable of indicating disapproval when they do disapprove.
Previous page
