Denis Johnston (1901-84)

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Bibliographical details

Dramatic Works of Denis Johnston, ed. Joseph Ronsley, with a General Introduction and prefatory remarks on each play, Vol. 1 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1977) - CONTENTS. ‘General Introduction’; The Old Lady Says ‘No!’ (1929); ‘A Note on What Happened’; The Scythe and the Sunset; Storm Song; The Dreaming Dust (Gaiety 1940), and ‘Strange Occurrence on Ireland’s Eye’.

Do., Vol. 2 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1979), CONTENTS. ‘Preface: Concerning the Unicorn’; A Bride for the Unicorn (1933), The Moon in the Yellow River; A Fourth for Bridge; The Golden Cuckoo; Nine Rivers from Jordan [opera libretto]; The Táin [pageant]; Appendix: ‘Introducing the Enigmatic Dean Swift’.

Do., Vol. 3: Broadcast Plays and Essays (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1992), CONTENTS. Radio Plays: Lillibulero, Multiple Studio Blues, Great Parliamentarians: Lord Palmerston, High Command, The Gorgeous Lady Blessington, Amanda McKittrick Ros, In the Train. Television Drama: The Parnell Commission, Weep for the Cyclops, The Call to Arms, Operations at Killyfaddy, Murder Hath No Tongue. Essays on Broadcasting; Reviews; Appendices: Blind Man’s Buff, Riders to the Sidhe; A Radio Talk.

Archives

TCD Library holds 107 boxes of papers of Denis Johnston (1901-84) as TCD MS 10066, being play scripts and production materials including programmes, posters, photographs, scores, radio adaptations, press-cuttings, correspondence, and production copies of plays by other dramatists, 1925-83 [See TCD Library Guide - online.]

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References
D. E. S. Maxwell, A Critical History of Modern Irish Drama 1891-1980 (Cambridge UP 1984), lists The Dramatic Works of Denis Johnston, 2 vols. (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1977 & 1979), with general intro., and with preface and prefatory remarks on each play by Johnston. Also cites cites The Tain - a Pageant; Introducing the Enigmatic Dean Swift, et. al.

The World Book Encyclopedia, 1959 edition, in its article on World War II cites Nine Rivers from Jordan under "Books to Read", along with Churchill, Eisenhower et al. The encyclopedia is intended for American school students.

Bernard Share, ed., Far Green Fields, 1500 Years of Irish Travel Writing (Belfast: Blackstaff 1992) incls. extract from Nine Rivers from Jordan (London: Derek Verschoyle 1953).

Andrew Carpenter & Peter Fallon, eds., The Writers: A Sense of Ireland (Dublin: O’Brien Press 1980), selects ‘The Abbey in Those Days’, pp.66-70 [a memoir, with photo-port.].

Henry Boylan, Dictionary of Irish Biography (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1988) erroneously cites Brazen Head for Brazen Horn.

Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3, selects from The Old Lady Says ‘No!’ [176-81]; presented Gate, 3 July 1929; revived 1931, 1934, 1938, and Gaiety 1941 and 1947; Remarks at 171-173 [‘even DJ’s second play, The Moon in the Yellow River, Abbey 1931, forsook experiment for a realism that the Abbey directors indeed could welcome (despite the fact that the play had its origins in a parody of ‘the Abbey play’); its focus on precise political issues in the Free State (although achiev[ing] universal statement on paradox of conflicting ideals) prompts the recognition that much of the success of even The Old Lady [Says ‘No!’] had depended on a sure local knowledge; that had been a quintessentially Dublin play, an extravaganza of local lore, legend and feeling (never travelled well); the universalising theatrical impulses of Expressionism checked by Dublin man’s ambiguous feelings for his native place, metaphysical solemnity ... dispelled by Anglo-Irish sprezzatura, a wit bred of excruciatingly complex loyalties [here quotes ‘Strumpet City ...’, as infra]; the play concludes identifying Emmet’s terminal condition with a malaise symptomatic of the city’s experience’, ed. Terence Brown, 175]; also 657 [when Johnston wanted to criticise the Free State he had to reject the tenement play for the play of the streets, Fintan O’Toole, ‘Going West, the Country versus the City in Irish Writing’, in Crane Bag, 9.2 (1985)]; Biog., 232, as above. Works: Collected Plays (Jonathan Cape 1960); Collected Plays Vol. 1 (Gerrards Cross 1977); Vol. 2 (Gerrards Cross 1979); Bibl., Gene A. Barnett, Denis Johnston (Twayne 1978); Harold Ferrar, Denis Johnston’s Irish Theatre (Dolmen 1973); Joseph Ronsley, ed. Denis Johnston: A Retrospective (Gerrards Cross 1981), critical essays.

Helena Sheehan, Irish Television Drama, A Society and Its Stories (RTÉ/Mercier 1987), lists TV films, The Dreaming Dust, dir. Michael Barry (1966); The Glass Murder, dir. Peter Collinson (1963); The Moon in the Yellow River, dir. Shelah Richards (1964); the Scythe and the Sunset, dir. Chloe Gibson (1965); That Rooted Man, dir. Tony Barry (1971). Also, silent version of O’Connor’s Guests of the Nation (1936), with Barry Fitzgerald, Cyril Cusack, and Hilton Edwards [Walter Reade Theatre, 1994 Program].

TCD Library holds an extensive collection of diaries, from age 15 until shortly before his death covering his day-to-day life, his work, and the people he knew, together with much correspondence and unpublished writing.

University of Ulster Library (Coleraine) holds a collection of mostly published playscripts, radio talks, newspaper cuttings, microfilms of many of the diaries, &c.

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Notes
The Old Lady Says “No!” (1929): the play takes place in the mind of an actor playing Robert Emmet in a traditional patriotic drama who is knocked unconscious in an accident and dreams he is the real Emmet walking the streets of present-day Dublin. There he encounters the jarring contrast between the myth of Ireland and modern-day reality exemplified by the hypocrisy of politicians and the materialism of the populace. On his way he encounters latter-day rebels, empty-headed youth, the self-satisfied middle classes, and the statue of the parliamentarian Henry Grattan come to life. Yeats’s heroine Cathleen ni Houlihan, the symbol of Ireland, is transformed into a foul-mouthed hag of a flower seller. Emmet finds himself fighting the very people he would redeem. The play parodies the sentimental martyrdoms in Irish literature, and brings in the voices of the great Irish writers who have bequeathed so much to the world’s knowledge of itself. Despite its satirical tone the play in the end eloquently presents the revolutionary’s cry, “I will take this earth in both my hands and batter it into the semblance of my heart’s desire.” The action of the play opens in the garden of “The Priory”, the home of John Philpot Curran and his daughter Sarah, with whom Emmet is in love and for whom he fatally lingered at the time of his arrest close by on the night of the 25th August, 1803. First entitled Shadowdance, it was submitted to the Abbey and returned with Yeats scrawl on the cover, "The Old Lady Says 'No!'', referring to Lady Gregory. The author then sent it to the Gate Theatre. (See Irish Playography - online; accessed 12.06.2015.)

Strange Occurrence on Ireland’s Eye (1956): The historical event around which the play turns is the Kirwan murder, documented in Mathias Bodkin’s Famous Irish Trials (1914; rep. edn. 1956). The malefactor, William Bourke Kirwan, a miniature painter and son of a celebrated picture dealer, was accused of strangling his wife Maria Louisa Crowe (known as Sara) in 1852, with whom he shared a home at 11 Lwr. Merrion St. Kirwan had a second menage in Sandymount with one Maria Theresa Kenny and their eight childrenIn June 1852 he went to Howth with his wife on a painting expedition. She was found dead on a wet sheet at Long Hole by boatmen after he reported her missing. An inquest found the cause of death to be drowning but witnesses in Howth later claimed to have heard screams from the island. In spite of a court defence by Isaac Butt, the jury found him guilty in Dec. 1852. The death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment when it was found impossible to hear screams from the island and with the further revelation that his wife was epileptic. Kirwan was held on Spike Island, Co Cork, and spent a time in prison in a Bermuda penal colony. He was released in 1879 and emigrated to America having rejoined his mistress. Purportedly he revisited Ireland’s Eye before departing. There is a life of Kirwan in the Dictionary of Irish Biography (RIA 2008). Note that Frances Hoey (née Johnston) wrote a novel on Ireland’s Eye. (See Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction, 1919; also under Hoey, q.v.)

The Moon in the Yellow River (Abbey 27 April 1931), concerns an extremist republican plot to blow up a hydroelectric power-station, with Darrell Blake as the Irreconcilable, Tausch as the German manager, Lanigan as the soldier who eliminates Blake, and Willie Reilly as Blake’s side-kick; also Roddy Dobelle (played by F. J. McCormick), the occupant of a naval fortress and his 13-year old daughter whose mother’s death in childbirth has blocked his love for her.

Note: On quitting his room in Bloomsbury House Club in 1927, Johnston inscribed lines from Pound on the wall: ‘And Li-Po / Also died drunk. / He tried to embrace a Moon / In the Yellow River.’ (See Bernard Adams, Denis Johnston: A Life, 2002, p.90.)

Further: In the Preface to the 1959 Collected Plays, Johnston he gave brief descriptions of each of the six plays contained in it, indentifying The Scythe and the Sunset and A Fourth for Bridge as ‘two antimelodramas about war’ and The Moon in the Yellow River as ‘an exercise in character drawing’. [Email communication from Rory Johnston.]

Hilton Edwards remarks on The Old Lady Says ‘No!’ at its premiere in 1929: ‘It read like a railway guide and played like Tristan and Isolde.’ (See The Old Lady Says ‘No!’, Colin Smythe; Washington; Catholic Univ. of America Press 1992).

James Plunkett: Plunkett took the phrase ‘Strumpet City’ in The Old Lady Says ‘No!’, as the title of a novel in 1969. A corrupt version of the speech from which it comes is included in Sean McMahon, ed., Book of Irish Quotations (Dublin: O’Brien Press), substituting ‘so rich with memories’ for ‘so sick with memories’ in the original. The erroneous version was repeated in The Field Day Anthology of Irish Literature (1991), under Johnston [see References, supra].

Further: A corrupt version of a Thomas Davis poem appears in Orders and Desecrations (ed. Rory Johnston 1992), following the version sourced by the publisher in Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Literature (1991), being copied there from a tampering Victorian editor [this correction made by Rory Johnston, in email to RICORSO].

Note: the American students’ travel guide Let’s Go Britain and Ireland (Cambridge, Mass.: E. P. Dutton 1986) writes: ‘James Joyce loved his “Strumpet city in the sunset”’ - effectually but erroneously ascribing Johnston’s coinage to the older writer. (Editions 1977-97 listed in COPAC; editions of 1995, 2005, and 2007 listed on Let’s Go website.)

Benedict Kiely: Kiely notes that Denis Johnston, and also Philip Rooney, wrote plays about the case of Thomas Hartley Montgomery, a sub-inspector of police, who was hanged for the murder of William Glass, cashier of the Northern bank, in Newtownstewart, for a century among the most celebrated Ulster murders. (Benedict Kiely, Sing to the Bird, London: Methuen 1991, p.139.)

Bernard Adams, Johnston’s biographer, was b. in Dublin and ed. at Portora, Enniskillen and TCD (English); BBC journalist in N. Ireland and BBC TV producer in London; full-time writer. (See Clé publ. catalogue, 2002.)

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Johnston papers: Johnston himself deposited microfilm copies of his diaries with autobiographical links (‘omnibus’) in the University of Ulster (Coleraine) and several American universities. These formed the basis of study by Joseph Ronsley who met with unflattering references to himself among them. His papers were presented to TCD Library by his children in 1986 incl. manuscripts and unbuttoned diaries kept continuously from the age of 15, forming the basis of a biography by Adams (Denis Johnston: A Life, 2002).

“The Old Orange Flute”: Denis Johnston sang the traditional song of this title associated with the Ulster Orange Order in St. Peter’s Square with others to symbolise his freedom from papal thraldom (Nine Rivers from Jordan).

Note: Patrick Maume calls Nine Rivers to Jordan ‘an interesting pastiche on Ulysses’ and ascribes “The Old Orange Flute” to Peadar Kearney [q.v.] - but is corrected by Rory Johnston who identifies it as a traditional song, adding that Denis Johnston sang it with companions on that occasion.

See version at King Laoghaire Traditional Music [online]:

Namesake: One Denis Johnston b. Dromahair, Co. Leitrim, in 1869, is represented in W. J. Paul, Modern Irish Poets (1894).

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