The production in America by the Irish players from the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, of Lennox Robinson’s comedy, The White-headed Boy, reawakens interest in a neglected decade of Anglo-Irish literature, - 1911-1921, - and - particularly in Mr. Robinson’s own work, most of which falls within that period. During the World War it was natural that little attention should be given to the progress of writing in Ireland; the Rebellion of 1916, in which Irish poets played prominent parts, and the death in Flanders of the nature poet, Francis Ledwidge, were occasions of momentary exceptions. But the work of Irish authors in the last ten years should be familiar to all who would follow and understand the changing temper of Ireland. No Irish writer more faithfully interprets this time than the realist, Lennox Robinson.

Still in his thirties, he is one of the most noteworthy of the coterie influenced by Synge to turn their talents to the interpretation of contemporary Irish life. Like Synge, Mr. Robinson has done the greater part of his work for the theatre. At the outset of his career he showed unusual dramatic ability, [158] and he has now developed firm technique. Even ten years ago Lady Gregory and Mr. Yeats had so high an opinion of the young playwright that they asked him to accompany them to this country; he has since become manager of the Abbey Theatre, and his new play not only has been given in Ireland but has been one of the recent successes in London. Lennox Robinson is a dramatist of assured position.

Mr. Robinson’s plays may be divided into two groups: those describing rural and small-town life in Ireland, and those dealing more or less remotely with Irish politics. To the first group belongs his earliest play, The Clancy Name, succeeded by The Crossroads, Harvest, and The White-headed Boy, the last produced originally in Dublin, on December 13, 1916. Between The Crossroads and The Whiteheaded Boy come the political plays, Patriots and The Dreamers. Mr. Robinson’s latest play, The Lost Leader, is likewise of this class. The author’s only novel, A Young Man from the South, and his Eight Short Stories were also published in this later period, although the novel was written before the Easter Rebellion.

Both prose volumes complement the plays. The novel is a penetrating study of a young man of Southern Unionist heritage in evolution from intense political conservatism to the physical-force radicalism of the Sinn Fein Party; the short stories are mainly accounts of life in that southern Ireland [159] where Mr. Robinson himself was born, the son of a clergyman in County Cork. The novel gives pictures of intellectual society in Dublin, and of the relations between unionists and nationalists, invaluable to the historian of the psychology behind the 1916 Rebellion; the identification of characters is, perhaps, as the foreword suggests, idle, but the fictitious Isabel Moore clearly suggests the Countess Markievicz, and other figures in the book bear resemblance to well-known persons in the Irish capital. Of the short stories, ‘“The Chalice” is a charming, though brief, psychological study of a priest of the Church of Ireland in a southern community. As is to be expected, the author’s prose fiction is dramatic in method; for the subject of novel or sketch Mr. Robinson chooses one or more striking situations, and develops his theme largely by means of dialogue; so that the best idea of his powers is to be gained by studying him as a dramatist.

The Crossroads, his first long play, indicates Lennox Robinson’s natural aptitude for suspense, situation, and climax. His plays are not closet drama. The Ibsen-like touch at the close of The Crossroads (in which the heroine is on the point of leaving her husband for her lover) becomes merely a device for complicating the suspense. Harvest and The Clancy Name are instinct with dramatic irony; there is a poignancy in Harvest suggestive of Synge. Although more melodramatic and less universal in theme, The [160] Clancy Name may be compared favorably with Riders to the Sea. The political plays, Patriots and The Dreamers, show their author’s growing command of technique: the final act of Patriots is of extraordinary emotional intensity; while The Dreamers, based upon Robert Emmet’s abortive rebellion in 1803, in proving the author’s ability sharply to differentiate among forty characters, marks him as possessing the power that distinguishes dramatist from playwright, the power of creating men and women with the semblance of reality. The fantastic Lost Leader, dealing with a reincarnated Parnell, is the work of a finished craftsman experimenting. It is surprising that any American manager should have attempted to produce in this country a play requiring for its comprehension so intimate a knowledge of the intricacies of Irish politics as does this subtle satire on Unionist, Nationalist, and Sinn Feiner. Mr. Robinson portrays not only the hardships of Irish life, of peasant farmer, small shopkeeper, politician, but the idealism of Irish character, often a prey to its own defects. Timothy Hurley, in Harvest, because he has brought himself to the verge of ruin by educating his children and starting them in positions in life superior to that he occupies, burns his own property to obtain the insurance; the idealism of James Nugent’s associates in Patriots is undermined by material prosperity. By showing Irishmen [161] men dissatisfied with their condition in life, with their fellow countrymen, yet struggling to hold a vision always before, although beyond, them, Mr. Robinson helps to explain why Sinn Fein, despite contradictions and illogicalities, has made such headway in Ireland. He is the dramatist of Irish discontent.

A comparison between Robinson and Synge has already been suggested. Both have written of the Ireland of their day, yet Mr. Robinson is the more faithful realist, for he does not stamp his personality upon his dramas as did Synge. This may be due somewhat to the greater variety of people in Mr. Robinson’s plays; he writes not only of the country but of the town, whereas Synge dealt almost exclusively with peasant life in remote districts. Synge, moreover, was always a protestant against circumstance; in all his work he stressed the aspirations rather than the failures of his characters; in the last analysis he is a romanticist, or an idealist, rather than a complete realist Mr. Robinson, on the other a hand, although he shows the dreams of his characters, shows with equal emphasis their thwarting; he stands outside his people, almost indifferent to their fate; circumstance leads them whither it will. Perhaps Synge’s extraordinary ear for prose cadence was partly responsible for the emphasis he placed upon the imaginings of his people, who speak in alanguage that is a garnering of picturesque phrases [162] rather than a faithful rendering of common speech. Nobly struggling against Destiny, Synge’s figures have passionate poetic utterance; crushed by the monotony of every day, Mr. Robinson’s men and women confine themselves to the less vivid words of familiar intercourse.

It is, however, interesting to find that the younger writer’s finest play is The Dreamers. In this, like Synge in Deirdre of the Sorrows, the author writes of an earlier Ireland, in which he also most closely approaches the romanticism of his great predecessor. Amazing that, after the production of this play, and its publication with its outspoken preface, in 1915, the Government should have been surprised by the Rebellion of 1916: but of such is the obtuseness of governments. The theme was certainly suggested by the shaping of events in Ireland at the time. The preface also notes the author’s attitude toward his material:

There is fact in this play and there is fancy, and only the student of those dreaming days will know where the one merges with the other. He is scarcely likely to approve of this attempt to recapture the emotion of an historical episode by means that are very often unhistorical; to his trained mind any study of Robert Emmet’s insurrection which ignores Owen Kirwan, Anne Devlin and many another is unworthy of serious consideration. But selection and rejection of incidents and characters is the beginning and end of all playmaking; [163] even in plays dealing with imaginary people there must always remain the country on the dark side of the moon, unknown to the audience but as vivid to the playwright as the side that shines on the stage. How much more crowded must that dark side be in an historical play when into a few acts must be crushed the emotions and actions of hundreds of people during several months? That is the only defence I can offer to his just criticism on the omissions in the play.

He will also, probably, quarrel with the title of the play and say that Robert Emmet was practical in all his qualities, a soldier, a tactician, a most able organizer. I agree. But all these things were fused together for one purpose by the most practical quality of all- his dream. Dreams are the only permanent things in life, the only heritage that can be hoarded or spent, and yet handed down intact from generation to generation. Robert Emmet’s dream came down to him through - how many? - generations. He passed it on undimmed. -It is being dreamed to-day, as vivid as ever and - they say - as unpractical.

The skill with which Mr. Robinson has in The Dreamers created a large number of characters, has already been referred to. The third scene of the second act, where the stage shows a room in the White Bull Inn, Dublin, on the night of Emmet’s rebellion, may be taken as a good instance of the dramatist’s mastery of situation, dialogue, and character:

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The act closes with continued indecision and cowardice on the part of the men at the inn.

From what has been said, one might imagine Mr. Robinson’s plays devoid of humor; the supposition would be far from the truth; humor gleams constantly through his realism; but it was not until late in 1916 that he produced the comedy of The Whiteheaded Boy. This is in marked contrast to The Dreamers, for, perhaps as a result of reaction to the grave events in Ireland during the spring, it is also devoid of politics. In power of characterization the dramatist has advanced even beyond The Dreamers; the dialogue sparkles; upon these the play depends, for the plot, although adequate, is slight.

The White-headed Boy is the old-fashioned comedy of Irish life raised to real artistry, yet having a serious purpose - keen satire of those who educate their children, without consulting them, for a station beyond their birth and for which the young people themselves may have no inclination. Mr. Robinson had already touched the theme in Harvest, but there it is swallowed up by the tragedy of Mary; here it [167] forms the background of the romance of Denis; it is of such universal application that, coupled with the dramatist’s masterly delineation of the foibles of human nature, it makes The White-headed Boy a comedy that can be appreciated in any country. In the stage directions of the printed version, the author has adopted the device of commenting upon his characters. There follows the opening of the play, the scene the interior of Mrs. Geoghegan’s house in an Irish village:

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Like other writers, in his youth Lennox Robinson was chiefly impressed with the difficulties that beset men and women; but in maturity he is more than ever conscious of the humor that leavens human suffering; with time has come completer understanding of the stuff a dramatist’s dreams are made of.

1922.