Our culture, with its doctrine of sincerity and self-realisation, made us gentle and passive, and that the Middle Ages and the Renaissance were right to found theirs upon the imitation of [Christ] or of some classic hero [...]. St. Francis and Caesar Borgia made themselves overmastering, creative persons by turning from the mirror to meditation and the mask. (Mythologies, p.333.)

There is a relation between discipl[in]e and the theatrical sense. If we cannot imagine ourselves different from what we are, and try to assume that second self, we cannot impose a discipline upon ourselves though we may accept one from others. Active virtue, as distinguished from the passive acceptance of a code, is therefore theatrical, consciously dramatic, the wearing of a mask [...] (Mythologies, p.334

Note attribution to diary of 1908; var. 1909 in Louis MacNeice, W. B. Yeats, 1941], quoted in Yeats account of the genesis of The Player Queen, 1922, so cited in Frank Tuohy, Yeats, 1976, p.151; see also Jeffares, New Commentary, 1984, indicating that the above passage is self-copied by Yeats in The Player Queen, p.167-8].]

It seems to me that love if it is fine is essentially a discipline, but it neeeds so much wisdom that the love of Sheba and of Solomon must have lasted for all the silence of the Scriptures. In wise love each divines the high secret self of the other, and refusing to believe in the mere daily self creates a mirror where the lover or the beloved seees an image to copy in daily life. Love also creates the mask. (Memoirs, pp.144-45; also in Autobiographies, p.464 [’Explorations’, sect. 7]; quoted in J. M. Hone, W. B. Yeats 1865-1939, Macmillan, 1962, p.228.)

[...] The truest poetry is the most feigning’ (Quoted Tuohy, Yeats, 1976, p.151.)

"The Mask", a song in The Player Queen: ‘it was the mask engaged your mind,/And after set your heart to beat,/not what’s behind’.