• A Kish of Brogues (London: Simkin & Marshall 1899).

• The Building Fund (Dublin: Maunsel 1905); The Mineral Workers (Dublin: M. H. Gill 1910).
• The Eloquent Dempsey (Dublin: M. H. Gill 1911); Family Failing (Dublin: M. H. Gill 1912).

• ‘Irish Drama New Style’, in Glasgow Observer (6 April 1907), p.5 [important statement of reasons for withdrawing plays];.
• ‘In Ireland [our Irish letter] and Uproarious Scenes in Theatre’, in Do. (2 Feb. 1907), p.6.
• ‘Mr Boyle’s Protests’, in Do. (9 Feb. 1907), p.9.
• ‘On the Screen, The Playboy’, in Do. (6 Feb. 1907), p.9 [editorial].

Akin to that of Lady Gregory is the work of William Boyle, whose three and four-act comedies are the counterpart of her short farces, in their successful and constant appeal to popular audiences. It was not until 1905, when the Abbey Theatre was opened, that Boyle’s name was associated with the Dramatic Movement. He was known as a writer of verse and short stories for the newspapers, and had published a collection of peasant studies of the County Louth, A Kish of Brogues, in 1899. His published plays are four in number, and were published and produced as follows: The Building Fund (1905), The Eloquent Dempsey (1906), The Mineral Workers (1906), and Family, Failing (1912). In 1907 the author seceded from the Irish Theatre as a protest against Synge, whose Playboy did not meet with his approval. He eventually returned to give his Family Failing, and has since enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing three or four performances of that play in each season to one of Synge’s masterpiece. [139]

The Building Fund is the only work which calls for more than passing comment. It was written out of that knowledge of the Louth peasantry which was evident in the author long before he was attracted to the theatre by the first London visit of the Irish Players. While The Eloquent Dempsey and Family Failing are commonplace caricature, farcical to an extreme only found in a few of Lady Gregory’s latest comedies, The Building Fund is a sincere picture of rural manners. It relates how Mrs. Grogan, a grasping old woman, succeeds in defeating her equally selfish son and granddaughter, on the pretext of performing an act of charity. When two farmers call to ask for her contribution to the building fund of the new church, she and her son drive them away empty-handed. But she has conceived a plan whereby the greedy calculations of Shan and Sheila will come to nought, even when her much wished-for death takes place. When the farmers return on another occasion, she contributes to their collection by making a will leaving her money to the church. The plot is of the slightest, yet, so excellent is the characterization of the various types, and so skillfully is the dialogue woven, that the play holds the audience and the reader alike.

Technically the later plays are perhaps more perfect in their conformity to the accepted conventions of the " well- written " comedy. Surprises and stage effects are plentiful in the comedy of Jeremiah Dempsey, the opportunist politician whose eloquence betrays him, and in The Mineral Workers, with its account of the difficulties experienced by an Irish-American when he [140] tries to arouse the energies and enterprise of a community whose soil is rich in mineral qualities. Yet neither can be compared to that first play through which one feels the throb of real life, and hears the voices of authentic human beings. The variety of characters and motives is beyond the dramatist’s control in The Mineral Workers, while the absence of every dramatic element renders Family Failing as tiresome as its artificiality is incredible. The degradation of a powerful theme was never more striking than in this dull farce, which might have been a great comedy. In the hands of a writer who could exploit the dramatic quality of the theme, — the demoralizing effect of laziness and improvidence upon all who are subjected to their influence, — a fine play would have resulted. As it is we must conclude that William Boyle had given his best when the early enthusiasm of the Fay’s organization stirred him to write The Building Fund.

He has been encouraged to cater for the facile success of immediate popularity, which he and Lady Gregory alone, of all the earlier dramatists, share between them. The effect has been a gradual deterioration in the quality of the plays presented at the Abbey Theatre, accompanied by a corresponding decline in the nature of the audiences. Instead of educating public taste, everything is done to encourage people who come to be amused by an unusual spectacle, to get a change from the too familiar pleasures of the English drawing-room play and the musical comedies, which are the main part of England’s contribution to the Irish stage. Comic effects are secured by decking out imbeciles [141] and brutes in the shreds and tatters of peasant speech, and the superficial violence of melodrama replaces the drama of character, which can only come from an inner life. There are still new dramatists, however, worthy of the best traditions of the National Theatre, as we shall see in the following chapter. (pp.138-41; end.)

 Except that William Boyle’s plays for the Irish Theatre are in three or four acts they do not differ essentially from those of Lady Gregory. But Kiltartan speech does not enter into their composition, so they are deprived of one of Lady Gregory’s sources of humour and literary charm. This being true of the rank and file of “Abbey” playwrights, the author is more akin to them than to her, and the fact explains their inferiority. William Boyle had published a book of peasant sketches, A Kish of Brogues, six years before The Building Fund announced his adherence to the Dramatic Movement in 1905. He came forward, therefore, armed with his experiences as a story-teller, and with a certain preconception of the way in which the comedy of rural Irish manners should be presented. His first play was cast in the same setting as had provided the material for A Kish of Brogues, and the peasantry of County Louth are believable human beings, as he portrays them. But very soon it became evident that the author preferred to work from the machine-made pattern rather than from life. Perhaps the effort of attempting to express himself in a new medium upon a familiar theme stimulated his imagination at the beginning, for The Building Fund has remained unequalled by the plays which followed it. The Eloquent Dempsey (1906) is merely grotesque farce, and has no more bearing upon life than The Private Secretary [by Charles Hawtrey] or General John Regan [by George Birmingham]. The same is true of Family Failing, the most recent comedy by William Boyle, which suggests that no development may be expected of such art as his. The Mineral Workers, which was produced shortly after The Eloquent Dempsey, had more serious intentions, but the multiplicity of persons and motives got beyond the author’s control, to the defeat of his purpose. [350] The clash of modern methods and ideas, personified by a returned Irish-American engineer, with the ignorance and conservatism of the peasantry, whose land he wishes to mine, would have made an excellent study, but the practical success of the plays has been as farcical comedy. Next to Lady Gregory, the most popular writer of farce has been William Boyle. Yet The Building Fund showed that the dramatist could evoke laughter by characterisation, instead of caricature. Unfortunately he has shown no tendency to make his success of 1905 a point of progressive departure. He has moved further and further in the opposite direction, obtaining applause as a purveyor of facile amusement.

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