there has been little of dramatic technique in his work, and in this, as in the nature of his characters, he somewhat resembles Eugene O'Neill. It will have been noted that most of the plays mentioned were produced before the war, and it has been already stated that very little of consequence has been done during the past ten years. At present the supply of Irish plays would seem to have almost ceased, and the Abbey Theatre is given over to revivals of Goldsmith, Ibsen, and Shaw. The Irish literary movement began with poetry, developed into drama, and now apparently has settled down to novels. The novel is to-day the accepted medium for Irish writers as the play was ten or fifteen years ago, and the quality of the programmes submitted by the Abbey Theatre has suffered in consequence. That may be but a passing phase; it may be that when the political turmoil has ceased the drama will have a new life. The years of turmoil through which Ireland has passed, from the great Dublin strike of 1913 to the civil warfare of 1923, will have provided material enough for powerful drama. This material is already being exploited by Sean O'Casey, and it may be that to the writers named will be added many others who have so far written only trivial plays, or who perhaps have never written at all. The Irish dramatic movement has had its years of brilliance and its years of decline. Perhaps the years of decline are near their end and a new era of brilliance is about to dawn. The work of the Dublin Drama League, which produces only the work of non-Irish dramatists, will aid considerably toward this end. It is well that Irish dramatists and potential dramatists should know something of the drama of other countries, and this knowledge may conduce to a stimulation, and perhaps a new orientation, of the drama in Ireland. ANDREW E. MALONE. ON LISTENING TO THE NIGHTINGALE It is always difficult to dissociate our impressions from literary and artistic memories, and it is especially difficult in the case of the nightingale's song, which has been the subject of hundreds of poems and allusions at all times and in all languages. In order to appreciate the true value of such interpretations, and how far they may have been influenced by popular traditions or prejudices, we must endeavour to place ourselves in the position of a child or an uneducated man and to ask ourselves how the song would strike us if we could listen to it in a purely receptive mood untainted by memories. Should we, for instance, in such circumstances, endorse the common belief that the nightingale's song is sad or melancholy? This question was raised by Coleridge a century and a half ago in his criticism of Milton's well-known lines: Sweet bird that shunn'st the noise of folly, Most musical, most melancholy. For Coleridge no bird can be melancholy. It is man who imparts his own mood to the song; he is sad, and likes to believe that Nature is sad with him : And many a poet echoes the conceit, Poet who has been building up the rhyme, When he had better far have stretched his limbs We should no doubt endorse this opinion if we could free ourselves from all prejudice; we should realise that there is nothing sad, nothing depressing, in that powerful and constant flow of melody. Its outbursts are sometimes disconnected, and we may lose the thread. It may be joy gone mad, but it is nevertheless one of the most overpowering expressions of joy which it is given to us to hear in this world. Still Milton's opinion is not exceptional. It may be found in many poems scattered through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In most of these poems, the nightingale is called Philomela, and the influence of mythology may have altered the spontaneous impression derived from the song. In his Ode to the Nightingale a French poet of the eighteenth century, JeanBaptiste Rousseau, wrote: Pourquoi, plaintive Philomèle, Tout cherche à vous marquer son zèle ? Evidently the poet thinks far less of the bird as it is than as it appears to him through the metamorphosis of mythology. La Fontaine tells us, in one of his fables, how Progne, the swallow, who lived in town, called on her poor sister' Philomela, who dwelt and sang in the woods. She begged her to leave her solitary retreat and give the people of the cities the opportunity of appreciating her talent : Aussi bien, en voyant les bois, Que Térée autrefois, Parmi des demeures pareilles, Exerça sa fureur sur vos divins appas. It is difficult to imagine how two of the most inspiring of all birds have been connected with the ghastly tragedy which has so many points in common with Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. Progne, the daughter of the King of Thebes, was given in marriage to Tereus, King of Thrace, who had helped her father to defend his city. After a time, finding that she could not live without the company of her devoted sister Philomela, she sent Tereus to Thebes to fetch her. On the way back Tereus violated Philomela and cut her tongue out to prevent her from denouncing him. She nevertheless succeeded in revealing the crime to Progne, who, in order to revenge herself on her husband, killed her only child and gave the body to the King to eat. The two sisters fled from the palace, and, being closely pursued by Tereus, prayed the gods to change them into birds. Whether we consider, as some scholars do, that the legend is of an explanatory nature and intimately connected with the main characteristics of the birds concerned, or-what seems far more likely that it is in the nature of one of those fairy tales in which close pursuit by some giant or witch is providentially avoided by a metamorphosis, the fact remains that the literary interpretation of the nightingale has been strongly affected and, to a certain extent, falsified by the character of the heroine with whom it is so closely associated. In earlier periods, when mythology does not influence literature to the same extent and when, according to Coleridge, the poet 'stretches his limbs beside the brook' instead of 'building up the rhyme,' the joyful element is far more in evidence. The literature of the Middle Ages, whether French, English or German, associates the nightingale with the glad coming of spring and the blossoming of love. Its call is the love-call used by Tristram, according to a poem of the thirteenth century, to draw Iseult from Mark's chamber to a last tryst in the woods before the final parting. In The Romaunt of the Rose, the nightingale is the leader of the bird chorus bursting into song at the coming of light and warmth in May. For Chaucer, the bird hides itself' among fresh leaves.' Its affinities with the night, which have been so much insisted upon by the Romanticists, are seldom shown. Evidently for the writers of the period, just as, may we add, for any casual observer of to-day, the bird sings as beautifully under the sun as under the moon, the only difference being that existing between the leader of the chorus and the soloist.1 Ronsard, who wrote about the middle of the sixteenth century, couples the nightingale with the lark in a morning song to his beloved : Marie, levez-vous, vous êtes paresseuse, Ja la gaye alouette au ciel a frédonné, Et ja le rossignol doucement jargonné, Dessus l'espine assis, sa complainte amoureuse. Though imbued with the traditions and fashions of the Renaissance, Ronsard scarcely alters the joyful character of the rossignol or rossignolet, as he often prefers to call it. Philomela, with all the melancholy which her name suggests, is far more prominent in the writings of Spenser and his contemporaries. We find in the works of Sir Philip Sidney and John Lilly, a generation later, some interesting poems in which the genuine image of medieval times is already affected by mythological associations, but without being spoilt by them : The nightingale, as soon as April bringeth Unto her rested sense a perfect waking, While late bare earth, proud of new clothing, springeth,! And mournfully bewailing; Her throat in tunes expresseth What grief her breast oppresseth For Tereus' force on her chaste will prevailing. The first lines of Sidney's song agree with the spring-like interpretation of medieval times, while the last have a flavour of the classical period. 1 Petrarch is a notable exception. The nightingale bemoans the loss of its mate, as the poet laments the death of Laura; but the Renaissance began much earlier in Italy, and Petrarch was already under the influence of the classic legend. The same successful blending of the two tendencies is shown in John Lilly's well-known ditty: What bird so sings, yet doth so wail? The bird's song is faithfully translated, while the story of Philomela influences its meaning. It is not merely a coincidence that, at the same period, the night aspect of the nightingale comes more and more to the fore. Knowing Philomela's story, the poets were naturally inclined to dwell on the characteristics of night, silence and solitude. It is scarcely necessary to recall Shakespeare's allusion in The Merchant of Venice: The nightingale, if she should sing by day, When every goose is cackling, would be thought Again, in Romeo and Juliet, in the farewell scene between the lovers, the nightingale stands for the symbol of night and the lark for the symbol of day, whereas, forty-one years before, Ronsard had associated them in his aubade. Shakespeare, however, never allows the human legend to interfere directly with his vision of Nature. When he speaks of Philomela and Progne in Titus Andronicus, it is not to compare the bird with the woman, but merely to explain one human tragedy by another. We are thus led back to the Lakists and the origins of the Romantic movement. This movement was a reaction, first in England and Germany, later in France, against the conventions of the classic period. One of these conventions consisted in looking at the wonders of Nature through the spectacles of mythology, and Coleridge's criticism of the melancholy bird' may be largely attributed to the desire to free himself from such preconceived ideas.2 Wordsworth's well-known outburst against the nightingale is no doubt due to a similar feeling, only, instead of accusing the poets who had wrongly interpreted the bird, he upbraids the innocent creature for the qualities which had been wrongly attributed to it. He prefers the stock-dove, Who sings of love with quiet blending, Slow to begin and never ending, Of serious faith and inward glee, not so much because its song is more beautiful, but because he feels an instinctive antagonism against the morbid passion which 2 It must, however, be noticed that in a previous poem, written presumably in 1795, Coleridge invokes Philomela, with her 'pity-pleading strains,' and, strangely enough, here also quotes Milton's words. |